firewater cannot kill a dragon [open thread]

[Roo]

It was kind of cute how concerned he was for her. It didn't seem like that big of a deal to her, but maybe it's just what she was used to. He tried to ease the tension a bit with a joke. "Of course you didn't hurt me, I'm not that fragile. I don't know, I guess I've just adapted to getting injured easily, so I'm fine with that. What bothers me more is how sensitive my skin is to processed materials, you have no idea how much stuff is made out of cotton!" She said.

"Anyway, I feel like I've told you enough about what it's like being a nymph, how's being a drake?" She turned to him, eyes brimming with curiosity. She was constantly told that she acted like a child too much, asking slightly inappropriate questions and being a tad too loud in social settings. But in her opinion, she had a long life ahead of her, so why not enjoy childhood a bit longer than everyone else?

[Hunter]

By god, she was full of energy. Good to know he hadn't inadvertently harmed her, though. He'd have to log that in the back of his mind -- declare the material in your gloves or don't wear any when you're offering to shake hands, and keep in mind that there are some people even more sensitive than humans, and that you won't always know who they are when you meet them.

Not being able to touch so many things, though, that did sound like a pain in the ass.

Darrion should have seen her question coming, but it sounded strange nonetheless, and he wasn't truly sure how to answer, making his response a little bit awkward. "It's... uh..." He scratched in front of his ear and took a drink of his beer, avoiding her gaze. He wasn't the best person to answer this question -- not because he didn't know, but because it was all he knew, and it was hard to figure how to compare it to anything else or separate it out from the general life things. There was one thing that stood out, though.

"Kinda... inconvenient," he answered at last, and he chuckled at himself. "I mean, you're always cold all the time, and..." He glanced away for a moment. "...well I don't mean to complain, but it does feel like we got the short end of the stick, sometimes." He shrugged. "Could be worse." And with that, he took another drink and knocked on the plasticy faux-wood under his hand.

[Roo]

She kind of felt bad for asking the question seeing his response. He was avoiding eye contact with her and stuttering, maybe it was a sensitive subject... but she was still really curious. It's not every day you meet a drake anyway. Her grandmother had told her about drakes sure, but that was with a general description of each species, and usually ended with if you come in contact with this species, run away if possible or something similar.

"Yeah, you're kind of cold blooded right? It must be a pain in the winter." Papina sighed and looked at him. She still didn't quite know what to think of him, but she also didn't want to be rude staring at him too much. She sipped her drink and put it back on the counter. "Though I understand what you mean about getting the short end of the stick. I feel like humans don't realize how good they have it nowadays. They set all the laws and social norms, and what do we get..." She stopped herself before she ranted more.

Papina shifted in her seat. The subject was getting a bit more controversial than she would've liked, especially with a stranger, so she changed the subject. "Never mind about that, is it true that you can breath fire?" She chirped and gave a wide smile.

[Hunter]

To her comment about winter, he grunted in the affirmative, and he had to arch an eyebrow at her when she started going off about privileged humans. He agreed with her, of course, but it wasn't normal to hear people talk that way. He'd been raised up to believe he should be grateful if he was lucky enough to hold down a job and stay out of jail, and as much as all the systematic catering to humans inconvenienced him too, he'd internalized the idea that you were never supposed to say anything about it. At least beings like the two of them were allowed to live a relatively normal life. As he'd said before: could be worse.

The question about fire seemed like a rather sudden change of subject. Darrion blinked and looked at her for a moment, a blank look on his face.

"Yeahhh," he answered at last, eying her and drawing out the word as though it were patently obvious and as though he didn't understand why she was asking. It wasn't rude or annoying of her to ask, just... odd, seeing as it was something he took for granted. "It's-- I mean-- It's nothing too impressive," he told her, with a small shrug and a self-conscious smile. "Nothing big. Just enough sparks to get some tinder going."

As he looked at her, it truly sank in how curious she was and how foreign this was to her, and with his gaze fixed on her face, his smile grew wider, spreading to one side of his face with a roguish wrinkling of his nose as he leaned in and asked her in his husky voice, "You want a demonstration?"

[Roo]

Papina's eyes lit up with the notion of setting things on fire. "Of course I would!" She trilled. A smile stretched from ear to ear. Oh this is so exciting she thought. Even if it only was a small spark, it was more than anyone she knew could do. She spun around in her chair glancing around the bar. "But where should we go, what will you light?" She asked as she gazed at the drake. He was actually smiling for once. It was a wide smile too that actually brightened up his harsh face. Even his eyes seemed to lighten up with this statement. She looked away after she realized she'd been staring for a bit too long. 

(Ugh sorry, not feeling the best at the moment. Hopefully better posts will be to come!)

[Hunter]

[ Aw.  I hope you feel better. ]

The way she got all excited about it was fun to watch, even if it seemed childlike for anyone to care so much about something so normal. It was just that new to her, he supposed.

Darrion waved his hand palm-down, telling her, "Settle down, we don't need to go anywhere. Ain't a law against lighting things in an establishment like this." Otherwise they'd have to kick out all the smokers.

He was still smiling at her as he said it, though, not quite as broadly, but still a few degrees warmer than he'd looked before, even when he noticed her staring -- which, he was sure, was just out of the anticipation that he would perform a trick any second now.  And he was willing to oblige.

"Got anything on you that you want to burn? Old high school essays? Pictures of your ex?" He didn't wait for an answer, glancing down as he added, "Wait, here, I think I've still got a receipt from earlier." He fished it out of his pocket and started folding it up.  She was about to be very disappointed.

It didn't necessarily have to take long, but he decided to draw out the process for her sake.  Focusing on one edge, he brought the paper up to his open lips and exhaled through his mouth slowly, releasing traces of the gas that would provide the fuel.  Then a sharp click sounded from the back of his throat, and a luminous rush of sparks flew from between his lips, lighting the paper and the tips of his fingers.  He hardly flinched, twisting his wrist and giving the paper a brief shake to get the flame under control.

Darrion held out the singed paper with an extended arm and leaned back with a self-satisfied smile.  There was a contented look in his half-closed eyes, and when he exhaled again, a few stray embers drifted out of his nose.

[Roo]

Papina gave a nervous laugh when he mentioned old high school essays. She never actually went to high school, or at least a traditional school. The elders in the tribe taught her basic things like reading, writing, and arithmetic, but it was far from a traditional education.  People generally judged her when she told them she never went to high school, so generally she never bothered to share that factoid about her life. When he found an old receipt,she was relieved.

He seemed to drag out the process a bit longer than it needed to be. Everything he did seemed a bit... exaggerated. She didn't mind though, it made the whole process seem more magical. Her eyes widened as he exhaled and the sparks came out. It was terrifyingly beautiful how the sparks came out of his mouth and set the paper on fire. She was always a bit afraid of fire, but mesmerized at the same time. And Darrion seemed so calm around the fire. Probably just because he's been around the substance his whole life.

She stared at the singed paper, mouth slightly ajar as he exhaled the final few sparks from his lungs. "That was amazing!" She gasped, still wide eyed. "That'd be so much more convenient when starting a campfire." Papina joked, calming herself down a bit. She felt a bit like a child being shown a magic trick through the whole process. While she genuinely was easily excited, she'd realized that this wasn't the best first impression to make. She made a mental note to act more serious.

[Hunter]

[ I can't believe I forgot to mention the scales on his hands when they shook hands. >> ]

The look on her face was about what he'd expected: excited, frightened, amazed. She was a little easy to impress, in his opinion, but there were worse traits to have, and he didn't look down on her for it. It was far better than dealing with someone who regarded him as scaly trash and expected him to compensate for his heritage. All but a few of the humans he'd interacted with viewed drakes as ruffians ranging between petty thieves and hardened arsonists, and he was supposed to distinguish himself from them and prove himself a civilized exception by being simperingly sweet and servile, even if it wasn't in his nature.

Darrion could tell she wasn't as comfortable with fire as he was, but she didn't seem about to judge him negatively for it, either. Amazing was a rather positively-tinted word.

"Heh, yeah..." He'd never been camping, but he'd helped stoke the bonfire at family reunions before. "Comes in handy sometimes, and it feels nice. The only downside is human smokers always asking you for a light as soon as they see your feathers." He smiled a little and crumpled the paper in his hand before stuffing it back in his pocket. There were some other downsides he wasn't counting, like the reputation it gave them, but like he'd said, he didn't like to complain.

[Roo]

(Yeah, I only realized that he had them on his hands after that part.. oh well!)

"That must be annoying," Papina said in regards to having to light up human's cigarettes. She leaned back a bit in her chair, "Normally for me it's just requests to help with gardening and such, so it's not that bad." She explained. Considering she worked as a florist this was technically part of her job, but her coworkers were never asked to visit customers azalea bushes to revive them very often.

"Do you smoke?" She asked, hoping the answer was no. It wasn't so much smoking that she minded, more of the tobacco plant. It drained so much of the nutrients from the grounds, and left very little for other plants. To her, the tobacco business was just exploitation, of the land and the farmers, where as the same land could be used to farm more useful crops.

[Hunter]

Oh, right, florist -- he'd almost forgotten about that. Sounded nice, being around pretty flowers all the time... though knowing himself, he'd probably go to feel one of the petals end up bruising or ripping it off by accident, thanks to how difficult it was for him to even sense when he'd made contact with anything that thin and delicate.

"Huh? ...Nah, not anymore," he answered, with a shake of his head and a wave of his hand. "With an immune system like mine, you don't want any reason to get cancer, that's for sure." He took a drink and looked at her again, wiping his mouth on his jacket sleeve. "Why do you ask?"

[Roo]

She'd forgotten about Drakes having awful immune systems. It'd be awful to be sick all the time. Being sick in and of itself was awful, but being so susceptible to various ailments must be torturous. Papina had only gotten very ill a couple of times, and even then it was nothing serious or frequent.

She was relieved he didn't smoke. "Well to be frank, I don't like tobacco. It's a pain to grow." She answered to his question, not quite wanting to go into the politics of her actual answer. Personally, she had never actually grown tobacco, she's just heard it's hard to grow. She paused trying to think of another question to ask.

"Did you grow up in Mossy Hollow?" She asked after a bit. It was always an interesting question to ask, mostly because she's never been outside of the town. She's always been curious as to what lies beyond the town limits.

[Hunter]

Okay, so she'd been testing him, then. He didn't particularly mind her trying to fish out things she might not like about him, but it made him take her questions a different way, grinning at her in a quiet, slightly-amused manner. "Did you?" he fired back, briefly raising his eyebrows. He shrugged and leaned back. "I mean, I always thought nymphs lived, you know, out in the woods and the... not in houses, or anything. Don't you prefer it out there, outside of the city?" He didn't feel one way or the other about urban landscapes versus the swamps and woodland, except for the fact that modern buildings were an awful lot more likely to have built-in heating.

[Roo]

She noticed how he redirected the question, which seemed a bit suspicious. She wondered if he was hiding anything. But she went on to answering his question. At first she was confused. Of course I've lived in the town, I can't leave this area. Then she realized he was talking about living in town opposed to around town. She was glad she realized this before she started talking. "I've been living in the forest my whole life, going in and out of town once I got older." She explained. "And yeah, I prefer it in the woods, but it's nice to get a change in scenery every once in a while. Plus I work in town. I wouldn't go out nearly as much if I didn't work here."

[Hunter]

"So you do live in the woods." His eyebrows shot up as he inclined his head toward her. The idea was entirely foreign to him. He wouldn't last a day in the woods. "But how... how does that work? Do you have a shelter or something? Where do you keep all your blankets? What do you do for heat?" That was always the main question on his mind -- how to stay warm and make sure you didn't catch cold. He'd had relatives who had passed away from things like pneumonia and the flu; he took the matter seriously, as did they all.

The flurry of questions was a bit much, compared to his typical demeanor, and Darrion hoped she didn't mind him being curious -- although she'd be a bit of a hypocrite to fault him for that.

[Roo]

It was nice that he was finally asking questions for once. She felt as if she was asking to many questions anyway, so it was nice that he was asking questions too. But these were questions that she didn't know whether or not she should answer. The group of dryads her family was a part of had been there for a long while, and thus had an establishment in the forest. They hid most blankets and other supplies within large groups of thorns that a few of the elders would expose when necessary. When blankets were being used in the winter, they'd be hidden in the trees. Where they slept depended on the dryad, Papina slept in the top branches of a Sycamore tree. Others slept closer to the ground, relying on their camouflage to protect them. She didn't quite trust it as much as they did, especially during the full moon. Plus, her tree was surprisingly comfortable.

She knew all this, but she wasn't sure whether or not she should tell it to Darrion. It wasn't so much that she didn't trust him, more so that she didn't trust whoever else may be listening in the bar. She didn't want to risk the lives of her friends and family over a man she met moments ago, so she opted out of the question. She tilted her head a bit, smiled at him, and told him simply "It's a secret!"