usir | closed

Daud's eyes go to the winged cat over Shura's shoulder immediately, though his expression doesn't shift. The dragon then, most likely under the same disguise charm Billie managed to procure from Red. To Daud's credit (as much credit as can be given to someone who simply waltzes in the door, at any rate) he doesn't seem to have touched anything else.

"If you want people to stop breaking in, you should train your animas to guard it," he answers, with no remorse, then straightforwardly going right ahead with why he's really here.

"Lurk's back. Thought you'd want to know."

Edited 2019-05-20 08:38 (UTC)

Shura gives him a stink eye, her lip curling up as she tries to hold back her temper and stop herself from throwing the herbs in her hand at his head. Yes, yes, Shishi was capable of guarding the place. But sometimes Shishi had to go out and hunt, and sometimes, it was perfectly reasonable to knock on the door like a sane person??

But there he goes, getting straight to the point. Billie was back. That was most likely a good thing. Billie might have a grudge, but if it was something important, Shura suspects Billie would have come herself to mete out whatever revenge she wanted. Daud coming here and bringing that up...

"You know, you could have just sent a message if that's all you wanted to say." If he was coming to her, then he probably knew Shura was responsible for Billie's injuries, if not her death. If he wanted to get her back, this was a weird way of going about it.

Aconite hops down from Shishi's back. It's less of a hop and more of a smooth glide, her wings spreading wide as she takes a little min-flight to the floor and takes a step towards Daud. She only gets that one step before Shishi snatches her up and carries her off to the bed. If Shura's tense, it doesn't show in her body, continuing to sort out the plants on the table. Shishi's sudden protectiveness of the dragonet gives more away, his fur gleaming iridescent as he moves. Or maybe he just really thinks she needs a bath, who knows.

Shura's likely alert enough to sense killing intent when it's present, and Daud isn't giving that off -- yet. It's always a 'yet,' where him and Billie are concerned. He scans the plants that Shura's sorting on the table impassively, whatever assessment he's making something he keeps to himself for now.

"Taking on a maddened shiftling isn't an easy thing," he says. "I saw her body. I don't think you survived that either, but you gave as good as you got. Not many people can fight like that."

"You don't think?" Shura says wryly. He might not want to harm her yet, but that could always change.

She pulls out bunch of flowers, small white blossoms no bigger than the tip of Daud's pinky surrounded by leafy greens. It isn't a useful plant, but most mothers discouraged their children from picking the wildflower on the basis of the white flowers bringing bad luck to the home. Shura hands the neatly tied bundle to Daud without looking twice at him.

"Take the flowers off of the stems," she orders, peering back into the bag and pulling out one last bunch of green. And then, as if this is a normal conversation to be having, "I can't tell if you're tryin' to compliment me or not, but if you are, this is a weird way of going about it."

The tiefling does as he’s bid without needing to be told twice, movements deft though he keeps his gloves on. As obtuse as ever, he won’t answer the bit as to whether he’s praising her or not, instead continuing conversationally.

“It reminded me of a rumor I heard some time ago, that’s all,” he says, just as conversationally as before. “About a line of female assassins trained by a reclusive snake. Though I thought they were better known for poisons, not their bladework.”

He looks down at the flowers under his fingers. Dried and prepared correctly, the blossoms he’s peeling from their stems would mean a foul death for someone someday.

Edited 2019-05-23 02:22 (UTC)

If he's going to annoy her in her own home, she may as well get something out of it in return. She'll rummage through a cabinet to get a bowl to hold the flowers in, but otherwise doesn't help. He seems to know what he's doing, and that leaves her time to start hanging a few of the bundles in the window.

"Reclusive isn't really the word I'd use," Shura replies, entirely unperturbed by his comment. There's no point in denying it or trying to hide. Her past hasn't been a secret for a while, and Daud had figured out enough for himself based on what he said. There was the matter of how he put the clues together, but he's an ass of a man and unlikely to say anything.

"What would you use, then?" The tiefling's hands are steady as he works. Even if he didn't have his own experience preparing sleeping draughts and weak poisons during his time as an assassin, a childhood of helping prepare freshly harvested herbs for turning into all sorts of tinctures and remedies have sunk the motions into muscle memory.

Her lack of apparent surprise is noted, but the corner of Daud's vision is trained on her animas and his disguised charge -- he's already figured that the lion is a far clearer tell for Shura's emotions than her face.

Lonely, Shura considers saying, but doesn't.

Shishi doesn't seem to notice that Daud is paying him much mind. He's busy grooming a squirmy dragon who's more interested in trying to look at the stranger at her table. But there's a moment where he pauses and looks straight at Daud, calm and unimpressed. There's a golden-orange ring in his eyes that wasn't there before that Daud might notice, though Shishi won't hold his stare for long. The only thing that gives away any sense of annoyance is the flick of his tail. Whether it's because of Daud or because Aconite won't hold still is hard to say.

There isn't much room to hang anything, but Shura seems to have a place in mind for each bundle. It's haphazard, but in a dingy place like this, it'll work. It's only when she's done, moving to wash her hands in a bucket of water near the door does she reply.

"Depends. But cut the crap. Hachiro's been dead a long time. What do you want?"

“That was all I wanted to know,” Daud answers, simply. The provenance of Shura’s skills, a sense of where she came from; it’s at least one mystery (mostly) answered, enough to quiet that restless need to know at the back of his mind. Everything else — her motives, what she wants — is trivial.

Though there is one more thing that comes to mind, and he says it absently as he brushes petals into some semblance of order.

“Don’t take it against Lurk.”

That's all he wanted to know. Great. And was he going to offer her anything in return for that confirmation? Daud was shrewd, and though Shura hadn't seen much reason to deny him, she knows that Daud wouldn't have asked if the information wouldn't have some value or other to him. Of course not. No, he was going to ask her to do something!

Again, she doesn't reply immediately. She busies herself with finding something to distract Aconite, whose squirming is just about enough to wiggle out of her caretaker's paws. She settles on pulling out a jar of dried fruit, taking a few pieces out and softly whistling to catch Aconite's attention. It works, and the dragonet comes barreling out from Shishi's grasp and skidding to a halt at Shura's feet. The illusion doesn't look too odd when Aconite stands up on her hind legs and paws at Shura's leg, but the way she stays standing while she eats her snack is unusual for any kind of cat.

That taken care of, Shura will turn her attention back to Daud.

"Y'know, it wasn't until I said your name that she got violent."

If it’s meant to be a hit, it’s difficult to tell whether it finds its mark, if it’s information the tiefling already knew or something he’s only finding out now. Daud’s expression doesn’t change, and the movement of his hands doesn’t slow, but he’ll spend a few moments openly watching Aconite guzzle down her snack and considering how much to say before he responds.

“If you thought that would bring her back to her senses, she’s told you less than I thought.”

If Daud is going to look at her, Aconite is going to stare right back at him, chewing with her mouth wide open and holding on to Shura's leg with a wing hand. It's just another thing that looks odd under the illusion.

"She hasn't told me anything." Billie hadn't said anything, and Shura hadn't pried. She wasn't blind, however, and there was a familiarity in the way they acted around each other that made it easy enough to guess that they knew each other before. But Shura's starting to understand why the mention of Daud's name might have pissed her off. He's certainly getting on Shura's nerves with that neutral expression of his.

... It really is a useless illusion if that dragon doesn't know how to act even a little bit catlike, isn't it. Well, it's not his dragon, but Daud's going to make a mental note to suggest training Red to move in different ways to Billie as well as all the rest.

"If she hasn't told you anything, then it's not my place to," Daud answers. He doesn't know what conclusions Shura's come to, and in truth, he doesn't much care.

Billie might, though. And it's that thought that has him raising his eyes, fixing them on Shura.

"I didn't come here to pick a fight," he says, with a stiffness that suggests those words aren't probably something he hasn't had much experience saying out loud. But as Shura's already aptly observed, Daud isn't one to engage in small talk, so. "Whatever your reasons are for the things you've done, you've been a good ally. That death should have been mine."

It's a two month old baby, Daud can't expect too much out of her! A sheltered baby, at that. For all that Shura isn't much of a nurturer, the dragon seems entirely comfortable with the situation, tugging at Shura's boot and reaching up with her forearms for another piece of fruit once she has the first swallowed. Shura gives her another piece.

Shura, though, doesn't quite know how to take what Daud says. He was the one who should have died, don't hold it against Billie. Her own student had always been able to pull himself out of trouble; she never had to do this for him. But this--

"Does she know you're here?"

Meanwhile, Aconite is still watching Daud, carefully trying to figure out just what his deal was. She waddles to him on her hind legs, holding her snack out to him. It's a very generous offer, one that she'll give in spite of Shura calling her name in low warning.

What a polite little dragon. You’d hardly think she was under Shura’s care at all. Gravely, Daud leans down to take the fruit he’s being offered, murmuring a quiet thanks before he accepts it and straightens up. He won’t be as quick to pop it into his mouth as Aconite was.

“No, she doesn’t.” And he doubts she’d be happy if she knew, likely to consider this to be unnecessarily meddlesome, but he won’t tell if Shura doesn’t.

"I see." She never had to kowtow for her student's sake, but it wasn't as if she hadn't taken preemptive measures without his knowledge. Whether or not Billie ought to be told about what Daud was doing, Shura would leave that matter between them. Shura purses her lips, keeping an eye on the dragon.

It's amazing that anything could grow up to be sweet tempered under Shura's care. But the dragonet just happens to be good natured, and Shura's given her a safe place to be sweet in. Mostly sweet. Daud taking her present and telling her thanks is totally giving her permission to start trying to climb up his leg.

As the little dragon clambers up his leg, Daud will allow it, largely because he's not in favor of finding out if Shishi will interpret any form of contact with the 'kitten' as an attack. It's probably about time that he admits he's got a pretty good idea of what's under that illusion, so...

"Does it have a name?"

Shishi is indeed watching Daud very carefully. For all that he is prepared to pounce if something happens, both Shura and her animas are really just anticipating the dragonet's first heartbreak and the ensuing bawling that was bound to happen after being rejected.

"Aconite," Shura replies, trying to decide if he's merely tolerating the dragonet or if there's something else. She doesn't doubt that he could guess at what was actually trying to get into his lap. The illusion spell wasn't hard to spot, and besides, Billie was likely to have told Daud about her. "But only Strange calls her that."

Edited 2019-06-02 03:19 (UTC)

"A poisonous plant also known as wolfsbane or monkshood," Daud muses, shaking his head. Strange choice for a name, but then again, it is literally Strange's choice. Fitting for a former assassin's dragon, though, after a fashion. He won't shove Aconite off, but he also won't necessarily be welcoming, look down at her and frowning slightly.

"Can you take the illusion off?" If it's the same mechanism as Billie's, he could probably puzzle it out, but on the off chance he might break it if she's modified it... best not.

Edited 2019-06-02 22:00 (UTC)

“It seemed to fit.” And it wasn’t as if Shura had better ideas herself.

At his request, Shura will move to unclasp the collar from the dragon’s neck, and just like that, there’s a scaly lizard looking up at Daud. She seems fascinated by him, particularly focused on the horns on his head. That’s definitely not anything she’s seen before, and she makes a soft trilling sound as she stands on her back legs to get a better look. She’s just a baby, too young and inexperienced to realize that getting up on Daud’s head and playing with his horns might be incredibly rude. But Shura knows better, and she knows that Aconite is curious and dumb enough to try.

“She’s going to try gettin’ on your head in a second.”

Daud takes his time looking over her once she's been revealed, taking in her size relative to Red in his mind, noting how she holds herself. Climbing on his head, though, that certainly can't be allowed, so he'll finally move to shift her, taking advantage of the fact that she's freed up a set of her claws to scoop her efficiently off his lap and deposit her briskly onto the table.

"Best teach her to be less trusting of strangers," he says instead, unmoved by whatever dragon tantrum being removed may produce.

Aconite lets out a whining noise, the spines on her back raising up. No, the table is not where she wanted to be!! She could get up on the table on her own, thanks! She moves to the edge of the table to hop back on Daud's lap, but Shura catches her, holding her back until she stops wriggling.

"She doesn't get to meet too many strangers, you know." Great backseat parenting, Daud!

Daud's a grandparent now, everyone knows that job is literally to do nothing but backseat parent all the time. Sorry wiggly baby, it's your mom's job to discipline you now!

"Being a commonly reviled species doesn't usually lend itself well to social opportunities." Also, her mom being occasionally dead probably doesn't help. "In another time, she might have been raised like a princess, like Adira's dragon in Didymos. Now she's a fugitive."

Gosh, maybe Daud should use some of the grandparent wisdom on his student so she doesn't go berserk at the mere mention of his name!

"Maybe the next batch of 'em will be somewhere in the middle." But for now, Aconite will have to deal with living in a shithole, stuck in a pen during the daylight hours Shura was gone. The dragonet continues to struggle and whine, and eventually Shura picks her up and dumps her back on the floor, reaching for one of the bare stems on the table and shoving it in her claws. Aconite whimpers again, but when Shura gives her a shove towards the pile of linens in the corner, Aconite grudgingly obeys the unspoken command and scampers off with the stem in claw, but not without a cranky growl.

Nah, you never learn how to manage your kids. That's a joy that Shura's going to eventually discover for herself. While Shura's managing Aconite, Daud will peel off a glove to actually take a bite of the fruit the dragon offered him, watching the scene without comment.

"Or the next batch of them can end up like that blue dragon." It's not an unlikely possibility, given as into dragons as the damned cult seems to be. That, if nothing else, is a reason Aconite should learn to be warier of strangers.

"There's no telling if the cult has some means of locating them or not."

"If they could locate them, I'm sure they would have." It isn't as if Shura hasn't had her own worries and thoughts about the subject. She can't explain why she's bothered to take care of the dragon for so long, but it's becoming more trouble as the weeks go by.

"Or maybe there's just not enough magic in them to be worth their time just yet." Let some idiots raise up a few dragons, then let their dragon snap them up for dinner. Great plan!

"Unless it doesn't benefit to find them now," Daud agrees. "It's the latter that concerns me."

And now a dragon sits at the side of one of Idan's rulers, not remotely hidden in plain sight.

"What made you decide to pick up that egg instead of destroying it?"

That’s a good question. Shura has a terrible answer.

“You don’t approve, huh?” She doesn’t blame him. In retrospect, she doesn’t know if she should have taken it. Shura sits down at the table, arms crossed over her chest.

“I picked it up because I thought it was somethin’ else. I knew it was magic, but it was right on the side of the road and then put it up. I didn’t know what it was until she hatched, honestly.”

"I didn't approve when learned about the egg Billie brought back, either." Daud shrugs. Implicitly, he doesn't approve of anyone else who's raising a dragon, but he's hardly going to rip people's scaly infants right out of their arms and stomp on them.

As Shura goes on, though, Daud just stares at her, expression as neutral as ever.

"What did her egg look like and where exactly did you find it? Near the city?"

Edited 2019-06-05 04:56 (UTC)

Did Daud approve of anything??

“Green and small. Bigger than a chicken egg.” Shura motions with her hands to demonstrate the size. “And it was outside the City. Not too far. I saw some mushrooms growin’, and so I looked closer. Don’t know if someone sat down to rest and it fell out of their bag or what. A kid coulda found it at any time, so it couldn’t have been there long.”

She still has the eggshell, actually.

Daud approves of Shura, really. Or else he probably wouldn't be here. The tiefling cocks his head, mulling it over, then shakes his head.

"I don't believe in dragon eggs spontaneously appearing out of nowhere," he murmurs. "It's odd just how many of them started turning up."

"And I wouldn't believe in people managing to coming back from the dead with their minds in one piece, but it looks like we're here now."

There is a soft sort of thwap sound from the pile of linens. Aconite's discovered that smacking things with the stem is satisfying, and she cheerfully continues to thump the pile with the stem, all signs of her momentary agitation gone.

"Us comin' back might be related to the eggs starting to show back up. But I can't really say. We're not any better caretakers for them than the next person. If they were only going to listen to us, then that Adira wouldn't have been able to pull off that spectacle of hers with the one she has."

"And the cult wouldn't have been able to capture their dragon."

The tiefling frowns, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms.

"I'm not sure I care for that dragon finding itself in Adira's arms either, but it's too late to do anything about it now." Short of dragon assassination, anyway, which might get them in trouble in and of itself... and it's not exactly like Daud's in that business.

"Hard to say how that's gonna go." Shura shrugs. Fortuna might be another Logistykon in the making, she might not. It was hard to say so early on. "She might be smart enough to not feed the thing magic just to make it strong."

Unlike certain a certain someone they knew. But Alistair Tourmaline was something else, and that reminds Shura of Alice's little "gift."

"Did you see Strange's mirror?"

It's a change of topic that Daud wasn't expecting, but his only reaction to it at first is a slow blink before he leans forward slightly in his seat.

"What mirror?"

“Gimme a sec.”.

And with that, Shura will turn to retrieve a small chest from the top of a shelf, setting it on the table in front of Daud. Aconite stops in her game to watch; she isn’t allowed on that shelf, and so she’s naturally curious. There’s nothing about the chest that stands out on first glance. It is warded, and it takes Shura a second to navigate the spell, unlocking a side drawer and pulling a small bundle of worn cloth from it. Shura slides it on the table to Daud, sitting across from him at the table.

“I got a piece of it, too. A present from Alice while she was in hiding. Look at it for a bit.”

If it were someone else asking, Daud wouldn't be so quick to comply, but Shura's not played him false before, though he notes the precautions she's taken with it. He pulls the bundle closer to him, peeling the cloth apart with care, speaking as he goes.

"A present?" His lips thin. "Did she say where she got it?"

"No. It was her animas that delivered it to me, and I haven't had the chance to ask her about it. But the enchantment on it checks out." Slowly, very slowly, Aconite begins to move from her spot. Shura gives her a quick glance, and Aconite freezes in place. Better to ignore her, Shura decides, looking away. Aconite continues her (relatively) quiet approach.

"I assume it was whole when she first saw it. Whether or not someone dropped it or if she broke it on purpose to share, I don't know."

"If she did break it, that's seven years of bad luck she can't afford," Daud murmurs, without much inflection, careful with the mirror's edges as he lifts it to take a look at his reflection. Like Shura, he elects to ignore Aconite -- visibly, anyway. He'll be quick to move the shard out of her way if it looks like she might be about to pounce, but for now, his concentration's on the image in the glass.

"Maybe a little bad luck could tip the scales in her favor," Shura replies wryly. That's how it worked, right? If Alice had enough bad luck piled up, maybe fortune would take pity on her.

But Shura doesn't have much to say, caught between watching for Daud's reaction when his reflection changes for that bare second and listening to Aconite's claws softly click on the floor. The dragonet is taking her time and being surprisingly quiet.

That's most assuredly not how that works.

"Maybe it doesn't matter since she's living on borrowed time," Daud comments, not adding, like the rest of us. He doesn't want to reflect on that too much, so he focuses on the mirror shard instead. He can sense the enchantment on it, recognizes its general shape, but he doesn't catch onto its actual nature until he blinks and sees, for a bare moment, the flash of scales fanning out on his cheeks.

The reaction is subtle, but immediate. His eyes narrow, and his tail stiffens as he forces himself not to do anything as dramatic as throw it across the room, but he does lower it to the table, shaking his head.

"Fortune has a cruel sense of humor."

"Fortune's a bitch," Shura replies, sliding the piece of glass back towards her and moving to wrap it back up. It isn't a priceless relic, but it has its use and she'd rather it not get shattered again.

"Dunno what exactly it means. Dragonborn hafta to agree to the whole thing, but I'm pretty sure a corpse rotting in the ground for a century couldn't consent to it. But I don't like the alternative." Undead scaleskins, what a great idea.

Aconite stills for a moment as she nears the table, then sprints, jumping from the dirt floor to Shura's chair, then to the table. She reaches her goal, and she's just so amazed and pleased with herself that she just about forgets what she was after in the first place, looking to Shura with what is probably a gleeful dragon face. Shura is less than impressed, turning her head just enough to look at the dragonet, raising a brow. "What do you want?"

"At least we aren't going mad from pain," Daud points out. That has to count for something, doesn't it? His brow furrows slightly, voice going dry.

"But dead dragons can't give their consent either. We know that making a dragonborn requires consent from both; the lack of it creates a scaleskin." He pauses, lingering over the thought. But what if neither of them could give consent? If they were both just functionally objects bound together? He doesn't like the thought of that.

In any case, the dragonet isn't an effective distraction from dark thoughts, but it's one he'll let himself take for once, watching them both silently.

"Not yet, at least." It hadn't even been a year; who knew how long whatever spell this was was going to keep them in one piece.

Still, at this point, it's all conjecture and theory, things Shura didn't usually have much patience for, so she'll take care of whatever it is Aconite wants instead. The chest on the table is fascinating, but so is the piece of mirror that Shura was just messing with. She reaches a little claw out to the fabric and tugs at it. Shura remains entirely unimpressed.

"It's a mirror, you've seen this thing before." Well, maybe not this exact mirror, but Shura had procured a small hand mirror for herself, and the dragonet had spent plenty of time looking at it. Shura's explanation doesn't satisfy Aconite, and she continues to tug at the fabric. "Seriously? Fine. But you better not touch it."

If Daud wants to stay silent, then Shura will busy herself with keeping the dragon entertained. Aconite's reflection fascinates her, but it is something she's seen before, and she'll turn her attention back to the chest to find her next amusement.

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