The soft thud of wingbeats announced Blight's arrival.

He'd been fishing in Monoceros, dipping in and out of the Gorge, but for once he felt like a soft glide through dimmer air. Not the blinding bright heat of the Twister cave, but a more peaceful, languid drift through this ancient, half-forgotten darkness. False starlight glittered over his tattered wings, his some twenty-foot-long body--still growing--banking and gliding off toward the forum.

The meeting some a week or so ago felt both fresh in his mind, and as though it had been two cycles; such a momentous event, and yet now there was nothing here but dark and empty stone.

His silhouette swept, angled, in a great circle over the forum's seats. He'd watched only from a vast distance, waiting, barely able to even pick out the figures here. He'd only heard of the discussion after the fact and he was still thinking about it.

What lay outside the cave? What precisely did it mean, to produce; and was it worth the cost of escape?

Did he want to escape? Was his home so terribly bad? Perhaps a bird might hunger for open air, but something in Blight was content with dim, dark crypts of a cave, lurking with damp growth in every hidden corner.

Lanky adolescent body banked again, twisting back toward the arena's edge, lithe form gracefully agile. The wings went back to beating, a soft and echoing thump that would be sure to carry for some distance; and then he swept in to land, to perch atop a ruined arch near the outer edges of the city, overlooking the forum itself.

As he landed, he felt, and heard, the quiet swarm of Blackflies as they caught up to him: now familiar, a constant buzz of questionable companions that landed and flitted about his body, feeding on the thin bacterial film that his skin exuded. He tolerated them, skin twitching now and then as this one or that caused him to itch; but mostly he perched still and silent, his form ominous silhouette, his ghostlight eyes idly searching Orion for he knew not what.

@Carja

So far, Orion was rather... boring. Nothing really interesting, except for the shinies in the ceiling of the cave. Carja had attempted to fly up there, but her wings were still weak and refused to bear her weight. It didn't help that she didn't know how to fly at all, yet she seemed to expect success every time she tried, only to fall flat on her face and wail for a minute or so before trying again.

The baby leviathan slowly sat back after her latest attempt, her wing claws on the ground as they bore her weight, pushing her front up as she stood, head raised as she extended her front legs as if to reach for the glowing rocks. When that didn't work, she sat down again, legs splayed, and whined, tail lashing in frustration. She was getting hungry again, and she hated being hungry.

After scouring around for a moment, she decided to try again and took a wobbly running start towards the edge of a flat expanse of rock, not expecting the drop that came after it.

Carja flung herself off the edge, wings extended and legs splayed awkwardly, and looked down.

The floor had to be a good 20 feet down from where she'd ended up, and she panicked, wings and limbs flailing, before pitching downwards with a high-pitched shriek, spiraling around like a seed pod as she fell down further and further.

How was she going to get out of this?

@Blight

Blight was still perched quietly on the roof of one of the ruined buildings when a distant screech reached his hearing. He turned, the spines along his neck rising slightly in alarm, and waited. When no further sound immediately came, he hesitated; it hadn't been a good noise... but perhaps it was only somebody hunting? A cave rat, perhaps, or something else, crying out?

Curiosity gripped him and after a few moments he took flight, launching into a graceful glide, his lightweight body barely more than drifting along. As he went, he cast out both senses and magic, alert to whatever it might have been.

A distant gleam--a faint turquoise glow, and the sheen of light over a small body--caught his eye, and he banked to sweep down and land close by.

"Hello?" he ventured--and then it became clearer. A hatchling? he wondered--or just very small, perhaps? Was it even a Greater-? He'd certainly never seen a lesser that looked this way; but then again, he'd never seen anything that had. Except maybe Orthoclase-Alpha, with its malformed, misplaced eyes..?

Blight's own eyes narrowed as he tried to figure this one out, a quick glance around ensuring that no Alpha was coming in for an ambush. When he saw nothing, he began to wing-walk toward the small form, head tilted curiously to one side.

@Carja

Carja cracked her eyes open and lifted her head, her head swaying as if she was inebriated. She slowly stood up and shook her body out, her shoulder bruised from where she'd landed on it.

She heard a voice, then saw a shadow cast over her, and whirled around, tail lashing as her eyes slowly moved up the massive dragon in front of her. Two wings, two legs, horns, and a tail... like her. She blinked slowly, each pair of eyes closing at different intervals, meaning that she always had at least one pair open at a time. It was eerie how the secondary pairs seemed to stare endlessly, but she soon shifted to shake herself out again.

"Hii~!" she chirped, sitting down, her wing-paws settling down on the ground too.

Carja sneezed suddenly and waved a blackfly away with a paw, and started to chase after it, her attention stolen by the small bug as she chased it around, jumping up and trying to fly after it when it eluded her, but to no avail, her wings flapping unevenly and only making her fall back down onto her paws. The dragonet hissed in frustration and swiped at it one last time before sitting down dejectedly, grumbling softly as she flopped down onto her side and pouted. What good was a dragon that couldn't fly?

@Blight

Blight studied the creature, his head tilting. It... vaguely looked like a dragon, but it had no eyes--or were those light spots on the side of its head eyes? He couldn't tell; the way they closed one half, then the other reminded him almost of creepy gills, or something.

He cast another look around, and then settled back, peering. It could speak, at least, or at least offer a basic 'hi.' But Blight had never dealt with a newly-hatched child, before--not when he hadn't been a child, too, himself. He fought back to remember what it had been like. He hadn't known all that many words, had he-? He'd had to learn as he went. He wasn't sure how old this thing was--given its tumbling about and the fact it'd only offered a "hi," he had to assume young. So he was tentative as he spoke, careful with his words, trying to gauge how much it comprehended.

"Are you okay? I heard a cry. My name is Blight," he added, after a brief pause.

His slender, ragged-finned neck extended down, and a gentle gust of warm breath came from flared nostrils. With it, a brief surge of cleansing magicka, of bacteria--to strengthen the child, cure it if it were somehow sick. Then his head coiled back over his shoulders, his neck an s-shaped reptilian or avian curve, as he settled back and watched Carja quizzically. "Are you a dragon?" he asked, unsure; and then, worried that if it were a baby dragon, it might be out here all alone: "Where's your family?"

@Carja

Carja turned her head to face Blight, sniffing in his direction rather shyly before creeping off to one side. Each eye focused on his tail, her own wagging as she crouched down and slapped it with a paw, before springing away like a frightened cat when it moved.

Words.

She looked up at the dragon and blinked, wondering what the other was trying to say. Her knowledge really only extended to her encounters with two other Gembound, though one of them was younger than her, and spoke only a few words.

"Bbbthhh," she burbled, clearly trying to mimic the other's name, "Bbbbb... Blaa!!"

Delighted in her own accomplishment, she sprung to the side and danced in a circle, before scrunching her nose and sneezing as the other breathed over her. Ew- she didn't like that feeling.

"... Caaaaah- Carrrrrr...", she cooed, speaking mostly nonsense before finally spitting a name out, "Carja!!"

@Blight

Blight turned, watching bemusedly as the baby dragon (?) pounced at his tattered tail-tip, pouncing around not unlike--not unlike Bug, actually. The cat-dragon, his aunt-by-adoption, tended to pounce and race around just like this.

Huh.

The attempt at his name was... well, it was something; but "Carja" was clear enough. He wasn't sure if she'd stick with it as she grew, or if it'd just been a randomly-blurted sound, but he settled, blinking. "Carja." A pause, then. Where did he go from here..? Obviously, she was very, very new--a child, coherent but barely; a conscious Greater but without any experience to work with.

Hm.

"Well, ahh... are you okay? Are you all right here? Uhh--hungry? You don't have a family, too?" Blight wasn't quite sure why he thought she might understand this stuff the second time, when she hadn't the first; but he had to ask, right? He wasn't sure what else to say.

@Carja

That was a word she knew. Hungry.

"Hungry?", she burbled, "Yes. Yes hungry."

Carja's belly growled as she sat down, wondering what 'family' was. Maybe it was food? She sure hoped so.

"... Fly," she said, looking up at the dragon.

The dragonet shook her head and toddled off, climbing the cliffs with some difficulty before positioning herself at the edge of an outcropping and spreading her wings. Her head bobbed up and down as she flapped weakly, before springing forward like a squirrel, wings stretched out and limbs pawing at the air as she flapped frantically, trying to keep herself aloft.

Carja spiraled downwards and landed awkwardly, and lifted her head to spit out a mouthful of dirt. She snarled weakly and slapped her paws against the ground angrily, upset that she didn't get it.

@Blight

Blight was about to suggest a hunt, but the child's flailing at once made him realize the problem. She can't fly, he thought. He could probably help her with that; he could fly, after all. And he'd learned fast, throwing himself into the air after the bat Umbra had begun to teach him.

But how to teach another..?

Swimming was... somewhat similar; he could take her, perhaps, to swim and learn to support her weight with wings. But then again he'd half-drowned doing that, himself, half duck floating on the surface, half drowning rat dipping beneath. So... maybe not the best idea. But somewhere with water underneath-? Somewhere he could drop her, and let her learn to glide without fear of real harm when she hit the ground?

"I can take you somewhere, teach you to fly?" he offered. Not Monoceros--that was close, and warm, but the river ran too fast to risk a hatchling in. He'd hate to lose her like that. Pisces was more still, but cold. That left Fornax--of warm, surging water--and Cetus, with its broad, dark swamp.

"There's a warm ocean I can take you too? Or a dark swamp? If you want. We can go fishing, then," he offered quietly. "There'd be water for if you fall?" And if she did, he could scoop her out easily enough; safe, and fun! ...He hoped.

@Carja

Carja looked up at Blight, blinking up at him gently. She shook herself off and wiped the dirt off her face before galloping over to the larger dragon and plopping herself down, craning her head to look up.

"I can take you somewhere, teach you how to fly?"

That she understood, and nodded wildly, so excited to finally learn to fly. She'd gotten away with hunting rats and mice, but once she got bigger, it would be an issue to be able to pursue larger prey on foot, with her large wings and claws that clicked loudly on the stone floor of most of the caves.

"For?", she mumbled, wondering where that was, and what it was like.

Vaguely, she remembered the swamp she'd been in, and shuddered a bit. Those black waters weren't the nicest to drink from, and she remembered red eyes suddenly appearing as a fish with a maw full of teeth snapped at her nose. Not very nice.

"Foooor~!!", she crowed in excitement, tail wagging.

@Blight