paradisalost | [Thread] [Storytime in the evening]

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[Thread] [Storytime in the evening]

Who: Anyone can join in if you're in to listen to his stories or you want his crudely drawn maps of the wilderness of Paradisa.
What: Draco decided to finally open himself up to a crowd of humans to tell stories. Mostly what he knew of medival European folklore and tales of King Arthur. I made my referrences basing on a few Arthurian movies I had seen. (Monthy Python and the Holy Grail does not count. XD; )
When: Late afternoon, around late 4pm.
Where: By the knolls on the outskirts of the city. Gather your horses, it's a tad far, but you'll get your chance to see this dragon up close.
Rating: PG

~

On the knolls, the scenery is tranquil. The dark orange sun is setting into the late afternoon over the horizon behind him. The mythically enormous dragon, almost as large about approximately one half to one-third of the castle itself, walked on all fours until he found a spot to his liking and he settle down comfortably on the grass recumbent.

He had his few spirtual servants, those who were his personal attendants on the courtesy of the caslte skittering around at his command already at his order to set up a pile of firewood under a large cauldron full of water and saturated tea-bags. He scrutinized them with his reptillian eyes. Once they completed their tasks, he shooed them away and with a fiery breath, he blew a single fire ball to warm up the tea to boil.

With a bored yawn, he waited cheerfully for his visitors (hoping they would bring him some sweets to pay him tribute) and in the meanwhile he brainstormed the stories from his own time, he tries to remember every detail from his memory which is quite difficult nowadays because it’s fragmented and blurry due to the magic of this strange world.

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It had taken Lana a goodly amount of time to choose a horse to take to where the dragon had indicated. At first she'd decided she should take the little sorrel at the end that she called Sally. She wasn't very fast but she also was about as skittish as a bag of bricks. She was sure an atomic bomb would do little to spook her. When she was taking down a bridle she changed her mind and decided to take the huge, black, draft cross mare she'd taken such a liking to. She called this one Friday, the mare seemed to respond well to that name. Friday was snotty, headstrong, flighty, opinionated and bossy but she was also almost unnaturally aggressive and Lana had decided that it might be a better idea to bring an aggressive animal than a passive one. Friday would probably rather try to dominate the dragon than run.

Lana and Friday moved across the land very swiftly for the greater part of the journey but Lana could tell when Friday smelled the dragon. The horse slowed and got jumpier. Lana looked down at her journal, she'd brought it so she could see the map that the dragon had drawn. Splendid she was very nearly there.

The moment they crossed into sight of the dragon Friday exploded into a terrified backpedal and attempt to run away. Lana spent a good ten minutes getting the animal under control but she'd been wise to bring the more aggressive horse. After that time the horse realized that the dragon wasn't coming any closer and finally stood still for Lana to dismount.

Lana tied her to a tree and hauled a pack nearly as large as Lana herself off of the horse. She wobbled and staggered under it for a moment then weaving and swaying due to her apparent inability to see past the thing made her way closer to the dragon.

She flopped the pack down then looked up at him. It was the first time she actually was able to get a good look at him. She caught her breath. He was enormous and looked unbelievably powerful. She didn't even want to look at his claws and she imagined that he probably had an equally frightening set of teeth beneath those lips of his.
She opened her mouth to say something, running through her mind what her first words to the creature should be. You're beautiful? You're huge? Hello? Oh my god, dragon? Finally she managed to sputter, "I....I should have brought...more snacks."

The tea didn't boil yet when the fire was ablazed warmly, "Hello,you came early madame." He remarked good-humoredly and bowed his head politely. His sinewy tail lay flat behind him where the knoll deep downward in a gentle sweep. "Lay the treats beside me, right here, where my neck could reach." he patted the grass ground on his right paw. "The tea is boiling, so I hope you brought a cup with you. If you want it sugared and lemoned, my servants will attend you." A few of castle's servants waved to denote their existence and service.

As his neck craned up to an upright position, he looked at the distance behind her, "We should wait for the others, I did invite some people to gather here."

Lana swallowed and nodded. She looked back as well then hauled the large pack over to where he'd patted the grass. She felt very bold walking that close to the dragon's paw but she figured that if he had wanted to eat her he wouldn't have run into any problems and would have done so already. She imagined custards and such tasted better than herself anyway. She opened the pack and began to unload it, revealing that the entire contents of the very large bag had been filled with treats for the dragon. She had expected him to be big, after all. She looked up at him, "I brought a lot of the custards and berry things you asked for but I brought some other things as well. I figured those two snacks could only be captivating for so long before they got boring......." She stopped then lowered her brows, trying to remember, "Did I ever catch your name?...Did you ever catch mine for that matter?"

He looked straight at her and she could see how narrow and black his pupils are, which is natural in big lizards like him. If he has eyebrows, they would cock up in amusement, "Ah," he began airly, "names. In beginning I don't have a name until a knight named me Draco, which is latin in Dragon." He chuckled, his soft laughter is smooth like metal sliding over metal, "So calling me Draco is calling me dragon in another language." He then inspects the bags, sniffing them a bit and he looks pleased, "Variety you say? You're quite creative." Then he munched on a berry tart by slick out his long forked tongue and wrapped it around to capture it in his large jaws, which she could see rows of sharp teeth as long as daggers. "And your name?" He asked as he chewed quietly.

Lana quite suddenly smiled brilliantly at him.Any nervousness she had fluttered away the moment he laughed. "My name is Lana," she said, "And in all technicality calling me Lana is calling me 'light' in another language." She winked at him then stared at his neck for a moment. With the bluntness that people had come to know her for she looked up at him again and asked, "May I touch you?"

Her blunt question earned her another chuckle, "Of course you can, if you don't have a dagger behind your back," then he looked at her and smiled secretly if dragons could smile. He watched her, wondering where she should lay her on, "I'm not a fuzzy creature though." The row of his scales rippled through his sinewy skin.

Lana looked fascinated, staring at his scales as he spoke. She reached out both of her hands and touched his neck with her palms down, one on the front of it and one on the side. She ran her hands down them toward his shoulder, positively enthralled. The way his neck met his shoulders reminded her of somewhere between equine and feline. Such an interesting combination. "You're beautiful..." she said quietly.
To say she was giddy with elation was an understatement. She, Lana Lang, was touching a DRAGON. A living, breathing, story telling, fire breathing? dragon.

He watched her standing on tippy toes to touch him to physically convinced her senses that he's real, like dragons always watch the world rotating forever, "Now, if you're a female dragon, I would take that as a flirting," he said with charmed humor, "but with you being human, I take it as a compliment. Careful on the belly areas though, they're the vulnerable parts, and I'm quite ticklish and parnoid."

Lana looked up at him in surprise then laughed, "Oh, I'm sure if I was a female dragon I'd be perfectly happy to hit on you." She chuckled a little more then paused. "It's possible that you shoudln't have told me that you're ticklish," she said with a grin but continued to examin his scales by his shoulder. Then, using his foot to help her lean she looked at the edge of one of his wings, almost afraid to touch it. It looked so delicate for such a huge creature. She liked the way his skin and scales felt. After a moment's pause she looked up, "This might be HORRIBLY rude of a question but please don't take offense I'm just curious.... Do you like to be...well...pet I guess."
She cringed at her own question, that was NOT a question that you asked. But he had four legs and usually four legged things liked petting! She was terribly curious.

"I wouldn't mind at all, but don't be surprise if I couldn't feel a thing from your tiny hands. I'm very thick-skinned and it would take a sturdy sword or spear to pierce through," he said matter-of-factly. He isn't afraid to say he's easily vulnerable and mortal to physical attacks, he knew he could trust this curious woman on his whim. His fanned out his wings a bit, but they're too hard to reach for her height, but he's kind enough to allow her to see the tiny veins on the membranes on his wings. They looked like branches of a tree but only dark crimson with his blood. "But do keep in mind that I'm not tame," he chirped, "I'm free as man."

Lana looked at his wings in wonder then Snorted at his next comment. "Man isn't free. They just think they are."

She continued exploring his skin and scales in fascination and delight. "We're all prisoners of some sort. Of our jobs, our families, obligations, our governments, our consciences...and now Paradisa," she said in a distracted sort of way. She looked up at him, "Anywhere in particular you'd like me to scratch?"

"I know that," he said lightly, "just figurative speech. Are you familiar with the tales of King Arthur?" And at her inquiry, he said in good humor, "That's thoughtful of you, but I'm not a furry sort of animal and if you scratch me long enough, your nails will be trimmed to the quick." Another woman, Sue, a young girl with angelical-like wings, is coming in their view, "You may take your seat."

Lana shrugged and rolled her shoulders. She was sore from riding...she was always sore these days with the combination of riding every day again and running up and down 15 flights of stairs multiple times in a day. She wandered back to her seat in the grass and smiled at the newcomer before flopping down.

The lowering sun cast a rusty glow on all of Paradisa. It seemed to Sue that everything in Paradisa was so much lovelier than it was back home. She hadn't seen green grass since she had been inside the cage, and even then it was artificial. She'd always been surrounded by artificial things; animals, plants, not even the air was untouched. But here, everything was natural. Everything breathed and grew, and she could smell it on the wind and hear it in the air. And now, Sue inhaled deeply from the rooftops in anticipation, she was going to go see something she'd never seen before. Something new, something she couldn't have seen back home.

She'd flown to the forest. She would have much rather liked the alternative--she didn't quite know how people would react if they knew that she was a sorcerer and could do such things--but she honestly knew nothing about riding horses. Perhaps one day she'd have to ask one of them how it's done. Walking was out of the picture if she'd wanted to get there in any sort of reasonable time, and she didn't want to be rude and keep a host waiting. Draco had certainly been very kind to invite her to listen to his stories on such short notice; she definitely didn't want to let him down.

She slowly wandered into the clearing, taking in her surroundings. The trees, the earth, the fire, and of course, the clearing's occupants. Her posture suggested that she was nervous; her small frame seemed child-like compared with the other woman, and seemed downright tiny next to the dragon. Her face, however, showed no fear, only wonder. She couldn't help but stare a little as she moved about. She silently placed a rather large basket she'd been carrying on the ground close by, and broke all eye contact to pat the very nervous horse on the head. She whispered something to it and it seemed to calm down a little bit, still casting nervous glances towards Draco and shuffling it's hooves about.

Then she turned to both the dragon and the woman and bowed deeply. She stood up shortly afterwards and said simply and quietly, "Good afternoon."

He noticed her presence, hearing how her sing-song voice sounded light like a bird, and he bowed his head lightly at her, "And a good afternoon to you." Then he titled his great head, his great eyes scanning her wings and in a calm voice which sound like metal quietly sliding over metal, "May I ask, what are you? An angel?" The rusty glow of the sun made his eyes glow like dark fire and darken his hard scaly hide into the color of the Earth. In the meanwhile, the aromatic smell of tea is boiling in the air.

"O-oh." How silly of her, she seemed to have forgotten her wings in her excitement. She glanced back behind her... An angel? They certainly didn't quite look like the mechanical wings she was used too, probably because of the environment surrounding her. She wasn't surrounded by artificial birds anymore, so perhaps she no longer needed artificial wings.

"That's very kind of you." she said softly, looking straight into his eyes as best she could; they were large, but very beautiful, "I'm not an angel though. Just a bird finally free of her cage." She concentrated for a brief moment, closing her eyes and focusing her energies. Her wings faded away and she moved to sit down. "I'm not sure if it interests you, but some people back home called me a Sorcerer of sorts..." she took a comfy seat in the grass, down next to the other woman, crossing her legs and hoping that Draco wouldn't mind her being a Clover. After all, he had known of stories of wizards, right? And they were similar, sort of.

A boy came over and sat down next to her. It looked like this might end up quite the story-telling. She'd never actually had stories told to her, she recalled, as there had been no one around to tell them to her. All she had were stories from books, which were not quite the same thing.

"Um... I brought some things," she said a bit timidly, "I've never really been to something like this, so I wasn't sure what I needed, so I brought extra. There are cups and things for tea..." she tried to relax, "If anyone needs them. And I brought you some snacks if you'd like them too, Draco."

Strange, it was hard for her to look these other people in the eye and talk to them normally... And yet whenever she spoke to the dragon, she felt fine, not nervous at all. Maybe it was because he felt more like an animal than a person. She'd always had a sort of connection with animals, so that must have been part of it.

"Sorcerers? I know many of them. Some of them had tried and true trapped me in their cages so I would obey them under their power. I too have wings, but everyone failed to clipped them," he said whimsically. When she took her spot and mentioned about the snacks she brought, he motioned her to lay them right next to the pile where Lana had laid. "So, you're not a human, but a bird?" He examined her with interests, but her wings had already faded. "You seem to be a person of power. After all, you have a way with words."

It would seem that sorcerers from his time did rather horrible things. No wonder the Wizards worried about what would happen if she was allowed out of the cage. She knew she never would have done something like that on purpose, but who knows? People were manipulative, and sometimes bad things happened...

She was stirred out of her thoughts by his question. How to answer? "It's... A bit complicated. I'm not really... What most people would normally call a 'human,' but the thing is..." she looked down at her folded hands, "Where I'm from, I'm the only one. Of my kind, that is." she tried to look up and remain polite, "It sounds silly, but birds were the closest thing I had to friends when I was alone, so I suppose I found myself associating with them. We all get placed in cages, and we all wish to fly freely..." she felt a bit silly for opening up like that.

"W-what of you? Dragons in my world are only in stories... Or if they do exist, they've hidden themselves very, very well, so I'm afraid I don't know much about them..."

Hayner was really interested in hearing the dragon speak and actually seeing him. He didn't know how to ride horses, but he was fit and young, so he decided to walk. He smiled as he walked along, grass soft under his shoes. He munched on one of the sweets he knew the dragon requested; the rest were in a green canvas backpack slung over his shoulder.

He reached the place not too late, and sat down next to the other two with a warm smile and a small wave. He then looked up at Draco with a lot of childlike wonder in his brown eyes.

"... wow." was his only, monosyllabic response to the sight.

The dragon merely nodded, amused by the boy's human curiosity. "And a good afternoon to you boy," he said in a steely voice and then he craned his great head to the cauldron, checking to see if the tea is boiling and simmering nicely. "I see you brought me treats, put it over to the pile next to me, you may keep some to yourself and have a seat among the maidens over here." The two maidens, Lana and Sue had arrived first, already seat on the grass.

Another "wow" escaped his lips and he nodded obediently, taking out two cookies from the bag for himself and dumping the rest in the pile. He had also brought a mug for tea and grabbed that from his backpack as well. He munched on the cookies and sat beside the girls.

"We'll wait for a while to see if more people would come along and join us," he continued, "I don't like latecomers coming in and interrupt me when I speak." When he eyed the cauldron, he ordered one of his servants to stirred the tea with a large copper dipper of sorts to mix the tea bags. The first thing he learned from Lana is learning the names of potential allies, which would come in handy if potential dragonslayers would come along and he needed human aide. "What's your name, boy? I'm Draco."

"Sounds fair." he mentioned casually. "Oh, Draco, huh? That's latin. My name is Hayner." he smiled warmly. Making friends with such a big, strong creature would certainly be to the normal human's advantage.

"Hayner," he repeated after him and he's extremely pleased to hear that the boy is knowledgable on the meaning of his name, "oh yes, latin, that's absolutely correct. How did you know that?" The aromatic smell of tea is wafting through air, making the atmosphere among him and his guest relaxing and cozy.

"Eh." he shrugged and smiled. "Back in my home world we had to take foreign languages and stuff. Latin was one of the few things that I actually paid attention to." He smelled the air and took a seat. "that tea smells really good."

"Ah, most humans I met told me I was named after one of the biggest constellations." He then looked up to the sky, "However the allignment of the stars here are all wrong and there's not a single constellation I could recognized."

He looks up as well, with a curious look on his face. "A constellation, huh. Yeah... this is a different world, so I guess there would be a different sky."

His tail moved about lazily, shifting its position on the grass, his eyes still up at the stars "Precisely, so you noticed the stars are different too?"

"Well, see, the town where I come from was in a kind of twilight like thing almost permenantly. We only got to see stars every other day or so, and only if you stayed up really late. But from what I noticed, they are different."

For Lois Lane, seeing was believing. Or in some cases, not-seeing, as with the invisible man. This was certainly a case of the former, right down to the delicacies she'd purchased in the nice little tea shop in town.

And right on to the old gelding who took to thinking dirt meant food anywhere, and was lipping around in the dust looking for whatever he thought was there as Lois grimaced and tugged on the reins from where she stood on the ground.

No way she was trying to get back up on this... thing until she was outside the city. The yards down from the castle stables to town had been scary enough.

Which meant she was making progress like most fabled folk; very, very slowly. For now.

Another horse was galloping up the know and the great dragon veered his head toward Lois direction. He was delighted to see another visitor, another maiden coming in to join for storytime. The leathery wings on his back are reclined, closed bone to bone on his back.

The tea at this point has been boiling thorougly and he called his servants to finally serve tea to his guests.

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[Thread] [Storytime in the evening]

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