[Faroah]

A few miles north of Alexshire was a sleepy little village nestled into a curve in the river. Faroah had no idea what the village was called or what the villagers did all day long. What he did know was that a particularly yummy variety of insect lived in the reedy grasses along the riverbank here, and that there was a particularly pretty rock with his name on it. Overlooking the riverbend, the rock - not much larger than Faroah himself, but situated in a perfect spot for insect hunting - was curved inward on the top slightly, a shape that made for a very comfy, if temporary, nest.

It wasn't a place he visited often, preferring to hunt in the much safer gardens surrounding Xanth's temple. It was too close to river traffic, the river road was right behind him, and strange men came regularly with silly poles with hooks at the end to pull wriggly fishies out of the water. But the draw of the pretties here was too much for Faroah to resist once he got it into his head that he wanted yummies so, whenever he remembered them, he'd get a sudden craving that couldn't be denied.

He'd found a couple of shinies washed up in the grasses here, too, on his previous visits. Not tonight, though. The silly water was being mean and the glow-pretties weren't coming close enough for him to snatch. If he got much hungrier, he'd think about moving, but for now, with the warm spring sun slowly setting and bathing the fields in pretty colours, he was content to nestle there on the rock with his tongue hanging out slightly and his eyes at half-mast, watching the pretty glow-flies lazily.

((OOC: I'll leave this thread open indefinitely, so even if it's months later, don't hesitate to post! ^^))

¤ Piper's Boutique ¤ Dafont ¤ Wonderland Effect ¤ Meilin Wong ¤ Anime Rain ¤

[Lazuli]

It was sunset by the time Lazuli arrived in the village. Dressed in her long white travel jacket with a pack of food and whatnot slung over a shoulder, she carried in her gloved hands an object wrapped up like a mummy in thickly bound cloth. It was skinny in width but taller than her by a few feet, and from what could be defined from its wrappings the tip of it was wider than the rest and somewhat jaggedly shaped. It also smelled like... spices.

The few villagers who walked by stared at her as she passed, but none really said anything but shift by until some brave soul came up and asked politely and curiously as to what she was doing carrying such a large mysterious thing through the streets. "I'm delivering it for somebody," Lazuli answered, and continued on her way.

Lazuli quite liked to travel, and she liked her job, but some people one crazy lady was strangely needy. Her role as delivery girl usually took her up and down the streets of New Alexandria, but the industry apparently expanded over night or something, for her most recent employer had somehow managed to put her all the way up north to a village that had taken ages to find. "You are the only one who can do this for me!!" the wild-eyed woman had said to her before shoving money for journey supplies.

Lazuli halted by the road and set down the oversized package. She reached into her pocket to check a piece of paper with the address of the receiver. Unfortunately, despite walking around for the next hour or so, she could not find where the place she was supposed to go to was. Finally, the tired nymph stopped by the river bank to enjoy the sight of the fireflies. She laid the package against a nearby tree and was looking out at the river when she caught a flash of color a short distance away. A spiky blob of red was twitching on a rock, but upon closer inspection Lazuli realized with surprise that it was not a blob but a dragon! "A tiny one!" she cried out reverently. She creeped closer to look at it.

[Faroah]

At the sound of a voice crying out so close to his temporary nest, Faroah startled off his rock, his rear end slopping into the cool water with a splash that caused another flurry of movement as the fireflies and other insects of the reeds scattered into the air.

“Eeeeh!” Screeching as his forelegs scrambled for purchase against the rush of the water trying to drag his rear end downstream, Faroah snickered and chattered frantically. His tiny claws lost purchase, but just before he was dragged under the water he teleported with a muted poof that plopped him down in the grass at the girl's feet so he could tell her what-for.

“Naga, ee neh oo!” Dripping cool water everywhere, he flapped his wings at her feet and shook himself, his tail whipping out so that a large droplet flew off the end like a missile. He tried to breathe tiny flames at her, too, but his nostrils were wet so all that came out was a choking burst of steam that had him coughing, snickering and snackering even more.

¤ Piper's Boutique ¤ Dafont ¤ Wonderland Effect ¤ Meilin Wong ¤ Anime Rain ¤

[Lazuli]

"Oh, no!" Lazuli’s hands flew to her mouth in alarm when she saw the tiny dragon drop into the water. She hadn't meant to scare it! She rushed forward and peeked over the edge, prepared to pull the poor creature out of the gushing river at all costs. She had been about to reach in when suddenly the red scales vanished from the foam and reappeared by her feet as though through a magician's trick. Teleportation?

Lazuli stepped back to give the dragon space just as he—it was a he, right?—released a jet of steam from his nose. She tried to fan away the cloud of water droplets with her hand, and with a wave of elemental power she forced the steam to disappear. She would have used her nymphly ability to parch off the dragon too, but it didn't seem polite to subject him to that at the moment. Instead, she hurriedly retrieved from her jacket a handkerchief embroidered with chibi bear heads, scrunched it into a ball, and attempted to dab at the little thing. Meanwhile, she stammered honestly her apologies, eyes wide. "Ah! I'm really sorry!" she blurted in a high-pitched voice, hoping that he would not stay angry with her. "I-I didn't intend for that to happen at all—I'll make up for it, I promise! Would you like food? Cookies? Cabbage leaves?"

[Faroah]

“Oo, ookih!” Yes, yes, give him cookies! “Cookies, cookies!” Faroah chattered at her, verbally and telepathically even though only 'Vari could hear that. He scampered around her feet with his snout in the air, trying to sniff out the promised pretties. He liked cookies. He really liked cookies, and since the shiny fireflies weren't letting him eat them today, he'd eat something even tastier. Yes yes! Tasty tasty.

Snickering in a tone that sounded very much like "yum yum, yum yum", Faroah poofed into the air right in front of the girl's face, dropping like a stone for half a foot before his wings started flapping frantically to keep him in her line of sight. “Ookih, ookih! Ara yumyum ookih!” If she tried feeding him cabbage instead, though, he was going to burn it to a crisp. Blegh, cabbage. Yum cookies!

¤ Piper's Boutique ¤ Dafont ¤ Wonderland Effect ¤ Meilin Wong ¤ Anime Rain ¤

[Lazuli]

Lazuli immediately brightened up when she heard the sudden change in the dragon's tone. "So you want them?" she said happily. She reached into her travel pack and pulled out a bag of sugar cookies with tiny chocolates in them (he did want the cookies, right? Not the cabbage? ...She took out the cabbage too just in case.) A portion of the cookies may have accidentally been crushed during the journey, but it was probably okay. She opened the bag, kneeled down so that the dragon could stop fluttering, and held it out to him so that he could reach in with his snout and eat all that he wanted. "This is all for you! And if you want more, just tell me?" Lazuli smiled cheerfully.

She looked at the dragon curiously. How in the world did he poof in and out of the air like that? I wish I could do that! she thought. Lazuli did not really know anything about dragons, but that only made it more interesting. She wondered if this was a baby dragon due to his small size. "What's your name, by the way?" she asked conversationally. "My name is Lazuli." She wondered if he could reply, but he had very obviously spoken the word 'cookies'. Suddenly, her trip to this village seemed much brighter. She conveniently began to forget about the package she was supposed to deliver... Cute little dragons really did demand one's attention.

[Faroah]

Faroah didn't waste time telling her that, yes, he really did want them. Instead, when she went to open her pack and knelt down, he poofed onto the top and scampered across it to the opening, jewelled eyes bright with greed. “Ine!” he claimed with a loud shriek. “Ine! Ookih ine! Ara' ookih!” There was no way his stomach could take all those cookies, but that wouldn't stop him from trying even if it made him sick again.

She'd also taken out some cabbage, though, and Faroah snickered his disgust at her. Cabbage wasn't pretty or shiny or yummy. It made him sick for all the wrong reasons, and he very deliberately turned his back on it, his tail flicking up at it. “Ookih, Ara' ookih.” Yes, yes, he liked this girl.

A small chunk of cookie clutched in his foreclaws, Faroah nibbled at the edges, his gaze flitting from the girl to check she wasn't doing anything mean like tryiing to stuff him into a cage, and the cookies to make sure they were still there, Faroah snickered. “Aza,” he mimicked, trying to say her name even though he'd forget it as soon as she said something else. “Aza, Ara.” He snickered again before shoving the rest of the lump of cookie in his snout so that his little cheeks bulged out, his tail curling around another chunk. Cookieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

¤ Piper's Boutique ¤ Dafont ¤ Wonderland Effect ¤ Meilin Wong ¤ Anime Rain ¤

[Euphenia]

She couldn't count how many times she'd cajoled her mother into telling her how it felt to fly, she'd done it so many times. It was supposed to be the ultimate freedom. There were no restraints upon a master of their wings. They could go anywhere and do anything, or at least so thought the mostly landbound nyad.

Euphenia had tried so many times to achieve the wondrous feat of flight. The skills of her grandparents kept the winged nymph's beauty from being marred, but in the right light, if someone looked close enough and knew what they were actually looking for, then the nyad's many tiny scars would be readily apparent. Those faint pink shiny marks practically covered her from neck to toe. They were from jagged branches, sharp stones, unforgiving ground, and any other sort of hazard one could imagine someone who regularly leapt from tall heights would encounter when obeying the pull of gravity. Only Phen's face had been spared, which she owed entirely to the instinct of covering it with anything available, usually her arms, before she smacked into anything potentially damaging.

This time she would make it! She was so sure.

It had taken all afternoon to climb to the rickety top branches of the tree overlooking the river, but it was worth it! The view was incredible. Phen rubbed her aching biceps as she tried to make out the details of Alexshire from where she was perched, and then beyond that to the clustered buildings of New Alexandria. Could she really have walked all that way by herself? A pang from her sore feet enforced the reality that the nyad had traveled for miles on them and then decided to climb up the tallest tree she could find. "It's for a good cause", she reminded her protesting muscles, "You'll see."

Her body wasn't so sure. Hadn't it gone through this time and time before? Nervousness hit, and hit hard, but Euphenia wasn't persuaded. Despite her insides twisting into knots, she primed her wings, pumping them up and down several times. To give herself courage, she began to sing a song her mother had taught her.

"While we slumber and sleep
The sun leaps up from the deep.
Daylight born at the leap!
Rapid, dominant, free,
Athirst to bathe in the uttermost sea.

While we linger at play,
If the year would stand at May!
Winds are up and away
Over land, over sea,
To their goal wherever their goal may be."

Belting out the encouraging words, Phen spread her arms out wide, addressing the sky as if it were her audience back in The Birdcage. She waited till she'd gotten to the final verse of the song before crouching on her branch, then taking off at a sprint. The tree limb bounced like a diving board when she finally leapt off of it and stretched her wings as far as she could.

"It is time to arise
To race for the promised prize,
The Sun flies, the Wind flies.
We are strong, we are free .. EeeeEEEeeeek!"

For a few wonderful moments, the nyad's dove gray wings had caught an updraft and she'd glided. In her joy, she had kept singing "A Song of Flight", bursting with happiness at her success. Yet it was not to last. Once the wind changed direction, gravity demanded its due, and the winged nymph was falling. No matter how hard she flapped, the most she managed was to slow her descent from a bone cracking plumment to a breath stealing splash into the river.

"I was so close ... So close, mother."

(( "A Song of Flight" was composed by Edward Elgar based on a poem by Christina Rossetti ))

[Lazuli]

Oh... guess he didn't like the cabbage after all. Lazuli put the leafy vegetable away for later use and watched him chomp down the cookies instead. She smiled... she was starting to feel hungry too, watching the dragon eat like that. She tried to make sense of the sounds he was making. "So your name is Aza? Or is it Ara?" she wondered aloud with no idea that the dragon had actually been trying to repeat her name. "I'll just call you Aza then! It sounds more masculine than--"

A sound interrupted her. She glanced up, frowning, wondering if she had imagined it, and then in her peripheral vision noticed a sudden blur of color. She turned around just in time to see a winged girl splash into the river like a fallen angel. She jumped up, possibly upsetting the bag of cookies onto Aza as she did so, and quickly stepped to the edge of the riverbank, craning forward to see where the girl was. She spotted a layer of bubbles where the girl had fallen. "Oh no, that's not good," she said, while without hesitation grabbing the mummified package from its perch. She thrust one end into the river. "Grab onto this!" she called, hoping that it was long enough.

[Faroah]

Faroah would have tried to repeat his name to teach her how to say it, but, for one thing, it wouldn't matter how many times he said it. She'd always get it wrong because he couldn't speak Elysian well enough. For another, he was too busy snickering cookie crumbs all over himself.

Cookie, cookieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, mine mine mine!

When he heard the splash, Faroah looked up, his tiny foreclaws clutched to his snout in an effort to keep an over-sized bite in his mouth, but he would have happily let the girl be rushed downriver before he'd give up his yummies. He had to shriek, though, when the pretty lady dumped yummies on his head and dashed off, and spit crumbs out as he chattered in excitement. More, more, more! Cookieeeeeeeeeeeeees! Dashing about frantically, he collect each chunk and crumb into his little foreclaws, cradling them against his scaly chest, and patted them lovingly into a pile he could climb.

¤ Piper's Boutique ¤ Dafont ¤ Wonderland Effect ¤ Meilin Wong ¤ Anime Rain ¤

[Euphenia]

The water was deep.

Deep and cold.

The impact had knocked the breath out of the nyad, exploding from her mouth and nose in a profusion of bubbles. Phen's mind was in such disarray that it latched onto an innocent memory at the sight of them.

"You'll come back and see me often, right? Promise?"

Bubbles drifted by under a summer sky, reflecting the green and brown of the ground below and the cheery blue and white from above. They popped when they made contact with a black leather swathed arm. It was a muscular arm, yet feminine. The fingers that belonged to it captured one of the prismatic floating spheres, and seemed to know just how to close without bursting their prisoner.

"I promise."

Energy throbbed all around her, even as the depths tried to reel in their prize. Every feather of her wings had sucked up their fill of liquid. She was being dragged down, down, down ... Offering no resistance, the winged nymph had overturned underwater. Staring up at the surface, where the promise of life shone in fagments of light, Euphenia's past flickered behind her eyes. She was engulfed, surrounded by her element. Perhaps this was meant to be. No more struggling, no more pain. She would be one with her element forever.

"Mother ..." The word was stolen from her, using more precious air to make still more bubbles. Ceaseless bubbles, escaping to the surface she couldn't find the energy to reach.

"You must promise me something as well, Sunshine."

She was warm and safe, held in arms that smelled of vanilla and leather. Vanilla, leather, and just a hint of mint.

"Never give up. Stick it out. I'll always come back, but you have to be here for me to come back to. Alright?"

"Now, promise me."

"Promise me, Phen."

The light dimmed, and sound crashed against her ears. Something, something was in the water. Something solid.

"Gaf onna his!"

Azure serpentine eyes smiled in her memory. She could almost smell Dante instead of the wet.

"I so wanted to know you ..."

Sea green eyes replaced them, their stark determination piercing her soul.

"Never give up."

She reached, pushing away the fatigue in her arms, straining for the dark shape that had become her lifeline. She wanted to live. Forcing her eyes to widen, Phen expelled the very last of her air as she focused on the water around her and willed it to let her go.

Bubbles.

They exploded around her as the river buckled, its current changed. Bubbles surged behind her as the nyad shot foward, hugging the stick-like object and doggedly clinging to it. Her drenched wings stayed mostly in the water, along with a great deal of the rest of her body, but she could breathe again. Coughing up water she'd swallowed on the way to the surface, Phen tried to peer through her bedraggled hair to see who had come to her rescue, half expecting her mother, Enyo, to be the one holding the other end of ... whatever the heck she had a deathgrip on. "H-hello," she lamely greeted Lazuli, "Sorry for the trouble, but could you pull me in? I'll try to assist."

The river had realigned itself in a hurry, as if embarassed that anything short of Xanth's own handiwork would effect it thus. The speed of its current doubled to make up for lost time. It was tugging at Euphenia, seeming particularly interested in hauling her away by the wings. The nyad tightened her grip on the strangely textured "stick", terrified of what would happen if she were to let go. "Sooner-than-later-would-be-good-please," she babbled, already kicking for all she was worth to try and get closer to the river bank Lazuli was on.

(( The reason for the "momentus dramaticus" is because I saw a great opportunity to have Euphenia earn the leveling up of her Elemental Manipulation. I can edit if necessary. ))

[Lazuli]

Lazuli breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the girl had surfaced from the river's depths. She seemed to be a nyad like herself, judging by the disturbance in the water. The other nymph had tangled pale hair and almost cloudy blue eyes that appeared to be for a moment lost in some sort of reverie. Lazuli also noticed her wings, pretty but the primary source of the problem--half anyeli? Now was not the time to wonder.

Nodding at the girl's request because she was pulling too hard to answer, Lazuli gripped the mummy stick with all her strength and began backing away from the river's edge while trying to encourage the water to let go. It somewhat felt like trying to heave a hoard of rocks and there could have been an anvil tucked in there too if not for the other girl's efforts.

Deciding that she should work out more, Lazuli slowly backed toward Aza and his hoard. At least the nymph was steadily getting closer toward shore. ...Just a bit more!

And then Lazuli tripped over the cookie hill possibly with Aza sprawled across it. "Eee!" A part of her worried that she had crushed the dragon, but most of her was rushing to grab hold of the lifeline. Luckily for everyone but Aza, the edge of the stick had caught on the side of a rock, and Lazuli sprang up and somehow managed to grip it securely again. Whew, that was close!

[Faroah]

Faroah had barely finished collecting his little nest of cookies, which he planned to take back home to his real nest to devour them in peace, when a great big foot came after him.

Actually, it wasn't that much bigger than him, but it may as well have been a giant's for the amount of panic in his voice as he shrieked and chattered, frantically trying to gather the cookie pile closer under his little belly in a vain attempt to shield his yummies from the damage he knew was coming.

He was lucky Lazuli tripped rather than stepping on him, because instead of smooshing him, he was merely kicked. He only had himself to blame since he could have easily teleported out of harms' way, but Faroah was too busy stubbornly clinging to his yummies to let a little thing like survival instincts get in his way.

Not that he had many to begin with.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!”

He lay where he'd tumbled, hurty and sad and limply reaching out towards the crumbled, scattered cookie pieces as if he could make them come to him if he just concentrated hard enough. And all the while, he snickered and chattered and made rude noises at the girls who'd ruined his cookie nest. “Ara ookih,” he chittered sadly. “Ara ahn ookih. Ara ahn ookih!”

((He's not badly injured, he just thinks he is. ))

¤ Piper's Boutique ¤ Dafont ¤ Wonderland Effect ¤ Meilin Wong ¤ Anime Rain ¤

[Euphenia]

"Please don't let me be too heavy. Please don't let me be too heavy," Euphenia repeated over and over inside her head as Lazuli strained to try and help the water logged nyad to shore.

Her weight wasn't usually something Phen worried over. Her diet hadn't strayed far from what she was raised on, and she was so active that she burned off calories easily. Yet right then, as the roar of the river slapped at her ears, Phen was mentally tallying every pound. Some encourgagement was definitely in order. "You're doing great!" she yelled over the sound of the water, the spray her legs were kicking up getting whiter as she redoubled her efforts, "I can almost reach the rocks!"

They'd won several inches, and she could feel herself being pulled for another few. "Almost there ... almost ... Oh!"

"No!" She was sliding back, the river reclaiming her wings first. How had it happened? She'd kept a firm hold on the strange pole the whole time! Euphenia's heart pounded so hard in her chest, it felt like it wanted to win free of it. The nyad's fingers curled into the semblance of claws, fingernails digging into the cloth the stick-like object was wrapped in. In her moment of panic, she blurted the first phrase that came to mind. "Are you alright?!"

Later Phen would probably be shaking her head at the memory of her demand to know the well being of her rescuer. What if the girl had run off, or knocked herself unconcious? How would she answer then? What little energy Phen had left should have been focused on trying to make that last few feet to safety, not wanting to know the health of the person on the other side of the stick.

The river hadn't gotten much of the winged nymph back in tow when her whole body jerked, her progress backward abruptly halted. Out of reflex Phen's arms curled tighter about the makeshift staff and she lifted her head as high as she could. There was no way she was going to breathe in more water if she could help it! "I'm going to keep kicking," she announced to no one in particular, gathering up her strength to try and pull herself along the hopefully secured pole. If the woman on the shore started helping again, all the better. Euphenia wasn't sure if she could make it on her own, but she had to try.

(( Phen can't hear Faroah's fussing, so she's not reacting to it. Just a bit longer, little guy. Let me get her on land first. ))

[Lazuli]

"I'm fine! I've got it! All is well!" Lazuli called out in an effort to reassure. Unfortunately, she did not know if the other nymph could hear it over Aza's screeches. She surely hoped that the girl was fine, but it seemed that the nyad had managed to hang on as Lazuli still felt a weight at the other end. She felt relieved but also slightly sad--this was the first time that the water had become an enemy. But the safety of her fellow nymph was more important and she had faith that everything would be all right.

Instead of pulling on the end of the stick, Lazuli reached forward to grip it more around the middle. She heaved and ho'd, and with the help of the girl on the other side, they seemed to make more progress. It remotely reminded her of tug of war, and luckily the rope was slowly inching toward her side.

Oh! The nymph's pretty silver hair seemed to be drifting closer now! She waited until the girl was at a close enough distance and thrust out an arm. "Can you grab my hand?" Then she shouted, "Aza! Please come and help!"

After this, she would need to feed him more cookies.

[Faroah]

Faroah was still whining and reaching for his yummies, even though the brief pain of being kicked aside was gone. Xanth would have chastised him but still got up to give him the yummies, then she'd have rained pretty kisses on his head and tickled his belly and fed him crumb by crumb until she decided he'd had enough (which was always much sooner than he'd have stopped eating). Then she'd have nestled him in her hair or in her lap and petted him while he napped, cooing prettily and telling him how much she loved him and how beautiful he was and how enormous his nest was and that he was such a good hunter, yes, yes!

So why weren't the two girls fawning over him, too?

“Ara itty,” he told them insistently, more than a little bemused by their lack of attention. They were just playing around in the water when they should be petting him. Look at me, look at meeeeeeeeeee!

“Aza! Please come and help!”

“Naga,” Faroah snickered, shaking himself bodily so that his wings flapped in a snap of lilac leather and his tail flicked. He scrambled onto his feet and scampered across to the scattered cookies, chattering morosely. There was little more than crumbs left now and Faroah wanted cookies. Cookie, cookie!

Maybe Ara had more. Not the yuckyuck cabbage, more yummies! Yes, yes, she'd have more!

Faroah scampered across the grass to Ara's foot and wrapped himself around her ankle, shrieking insistently. “Ookih, ookih! Ara ahn ookih!” And since she seemed so distracted by her efforts to fish the other girl out of the water, and he wanted all her attention on him, he did the only thing he could think to do.

Teleport the both of them a couple of feet away from the water to land with a muted plop in the grass. “Ookih!” he demanded. “Ookih ookih!”

(( I hope the GM's okay. ))

¤ Piper's Boutique ¤ Dafont ¤ Wonderland Effect ¤ Meilin Wong ¤ Anime Rain ¤

[Euphenia]

(( It's peachy with me, Emma. ))

By some miracle, Euphenia heard Lazuli over the winged nymph's heartbeat pounding in her ears, the possessive gurgling of the river, the loud splashing caused by Phen's own legs kicking furiously, and the new (to Euphenia) noise of someone else speaking in horribly mangled Elysian. Just how many people would be around a river bank at that time in the evening, anyway? "Thank Xanth you're alright!" the nyad exclaimed, offering up a brief prayer of gratitude to the goddess.

Words could not have described the pure joy that filled Phen's being when her toes dug into the muck at the edge of the bank. Not even the loss of her shoes, victims of her earlier fall and probably since sucked to the bottom of the greedy river, could darken the light of her happiness. She was practically glowing by the time Lazuli thrust out her arm. "I'll try!" Phen decided, letting one hand relax its hold of the stick that had kept the nyad from joining the fate of her shoes and reaching up, her fingertips just brushing against Lazuli's. "Almost there!"

Then things got weird.

Well, weirder really, since falling into a river and being helped by kind passerby was unusual for Euphenia unto itself. One moment she was straining to grab onto the other girl's hand, the other she was crossing her arms in front of her face and tucking into a roll before making impact with the ground. Her wings didn't adjust as fast they would have without being weighed down by so much water, so they weren't properly wrapped about her when the roll began. What had the potential to be a quick and maybe even an impressive maneuver to get Euphenia gracefully to her feet turned into a half twist ending with a very unimpressive flop, leaving heavy and wet wings splayed wide open with their owner equally sprawled on the grass. "Ugh," Phen groaned, her soaked hands going to her face to push hair out of her eyes and mouth.

Phen's usually musical voice had suffered from the whole ordeal, and was therefore sounding more than a little scratchy when she muttered, "I think I'm in one piece. How is everyone else? Does anyone know what just happened?"

Blowing some of the more stubborn strands of clinging hair away from her lips, twilight eyes searched for the source of the squeaking voice demanding an 'ookih'. Those eyes widened in surprise when they beheld the agitated imp dragon in all his frisking glory. "By the Lady's Delight ... Ah, hello, little one."

Phen wasn't in any kind of condition to be worried about someone other than herself, but she struggled to sit up anyway, carefully extending a hand in the dragonet's direction. "It's alright, pretty one. All will be well. We'll find your 'ookih'."

"Whatever in the worlds that is," Phen finished under her breath. Remaining orientated on the dragon, she tried to look around without moving her head. "Miss? Are you still here?" she inquired, trying to hide her growing apprehension.

(( I'm going by the assumption that Faroah 'ported everyone a little ways above the grass rather than on the grass. ))

[Lazuli]

(( Fine with me, too ))

Oh, yay! They had made contact! Lazuli prepared to pull the nymph onto the bank and--

Well, that was kind of odd.

Lazuli had never been teleported before, and for some reason she couldn't recall exactly what it felt like despite it happening only a second earlier. She landed on the grass in a position as though someone had pushed her over onto her back. The scent of grass overpowered her nose. She stayed still for a moment out of curiosity. Hmm... teleportation was funky.

"I think I'm in one piece. How is everyone else? Does anyone know what just happened?"

Lazuli sat up and was pleased to see that the lady she had just helped save was well--disheveled but well. She noticed happily that the winged nymph had acquainted herself with Aza. "Oh yes, I'm here," she responded to her question. Then she tried to explain what had just happened. "I think Aza transported us to another space with his dragon powers." She held out her hands in the air as though to demonstrate. "Like... poof!"

While they had been struggling by the river, Lazuli's pack had ended up flung to the side, and she retrieved it now to fetch Aza's much-desired "ookihs". The thickness of the cabbage leaves had kept the lovely treats in pristine condition and the cookies made muffled yet rich crunchy noises as Lazuli opened the bag. She set it down in front of Aza's snout like last time and took out another batch for her new nymph friend. "Do you want these?" she asked brightly. "Aza sure loves them. Oh, and my name is Lazuli. Could you tell me yours?"

[Faroah]

Completely uninterested in trying to explain what he'd done, Faroah snickered dismissively. Cookie, cookie! When the drowned rat held out a hand, his immediate thought was that she had cookies too, yes, yes, yummies! It wasn't until he'd scampered across to her, up into her lap, further to her shoulder and then down her arm to wrap himself around her wrist that he realised her hand was empty. Even then, he clutched at her thumb and tried to pry her fingers apart as if she could be hiding his yummies in her open palm somehow. “Ookih, ookih! Ara ahn ookih!” he told her insistently and suspiciously, blinking up at her as if expecting the cookies to just suddenly appear.

And then there they were! “Ookih!” he exclaimed in joy, reaching out his tiny foreclaws and stretching his neck down from the blonde's wet hand as Lazuli put out her little collection. “Ine! Ine ine ine ine!” In his greed, he didn't bother to scamper back the way he'd come, simply dropped into the grass and crawled bodily into Aza's bag. “Ookiiiiiiiihhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Ecstatic, he gathered the unbroken cookies as close to his belly as possible, nibbling greedily at the edge of one.

They didn't stay unbroken for long.

¤ Piper's Boutique ¤ Dafont ¤ Wonderland Effect ¤ Meilin Wong ¤ Anime Rain ¤

[Euphenia]

PB · DaFont · Aethereality · rcr · Obsidian Dawn· Beyond Tonight · Dreams Time

"Dragon powers?" Phen repeated, her frazzled brain latching onto those two words. She remembered reading some things about dragons, but what imp dragons could do was hazy in her memory. She'd never presumed that she'd ever encounter a dragon of any type, so she'd focused her studies on more common creatures. Maybe she should try to get in touch with her grandfather sooner than later and borrow some books. "So, his name is Aza."

Sorting out who was who, at least in part, seemed to help in realigning the winged nymph's thought processes. She remembered to smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you both. My name is ... Eek!"

She was going to offer Lazuli her free hand to possibly clasp the other woman's as she introduced herself, but then the dragonet was swarming all over her! Once her initial shock went away, Euphenia found herself afflicted with a case of the giggles. "Hee! Heh heh hee! H-hey, that t-tickles!" Her silvery chuckle proved that her voice had recovered considerably in the last few minutes.

The little dragon was done with his antics faster than Phen could say "Dragon want an ookih?", and soon she was left blinking at a pile of cookies that had verily seemed to appear out of thin air. "Oooh. Well, that explains a thing or two."

Not bothering "Aza" as he gathered his sweet treasures, Euphenia leaned the short distance necessary to offer Lazuli her hand in a more official manner than before. "My name is Euphenia, but just about everyone calls me Phen." She tried for another smile, which wasn't too hard, since her first hadn't fully left her face. "I thank Xanth for your timely intervention, and wish to offer you my gratitude for saving my life. How may I repay you?"

A glance was afforded for what cookies had avoided becoming a part of the imp dragon's hoard. "Those do look good, and I find myself really hungry. Perhaps we could share our provisions and make a meal of it?"