Cat and Dragon - Printable Version

Cat and Dragon - Printable Version

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RE: Cat and Dragon - skiesofpurple - 02-19-2021

“Thank you.” Said the dragon, deadpan, at hearing that it was stupid for him to be a dragon. He leaned back on his haunches and spread his wings, gesturing with his claws as if to say, ‘look right here! one genuine dragon! 100% real!’

“I’m not from here, obviously. I came from the south.” He didn’t say which part of the south. He’d heard that the rest of the dragons, the communities of dragons, came from even further south than he lived, but that wasn’t an important detail to get across right now. “I looked like an elf,” he corrected, “but I’m always a dragon.”

Eric snorted smoke at the thief, pointedly. The kicks didn’t hurt, but he didn’t think he should let them slide, either. This idiot probably still thought that he was obsessed with him, given how hard he kept arguing as if it was utter fact. Eric carefully restrained himself from rolling his entire head again.

“Magic swords are different,” He insisted. “Mind magic doesn’t work on me. Will ‘o the wisp, sirens, mermaids, they can’t hold me in thrall. I can’t be compelled, it doesn’t work like that. Besides, I wouldn’t do anything that would get me hunted by knights in the first place! You’re the one robbing people with magic you can’t control! I was stopping you!” Why the hell didn’t this guy get how wrong and shady it was to walk up to a caravan and start demanding whatever goods he wanted? And a HORSE!

“Even if you can’t control it, you should at least trade for the stuff you ask for. You can’t just rob people!” Why was this so god damn hard? It was a lot easier to convince people of the morally superior path in the stories. Everyone usually just knew. Robbing people was wrong, curse or not!

RE: Cat and Dragon - SolitareLee - 02-19-2021

"Uh-huh, yeah, okay, except the part where you just terrorized a group of caravanners headed, by their general direction, into Crithe, country of a thousand wanna-be heroes. You turned into a giant dragon and took off after a dude that, again, I have to remind you of this fact, they all love and gave shit to because they wanted to. By the time they get to town, the story is going to be of the terrifying dragon who deceived them before going crazy and trying to kill some homeless mountain kid who was running for his life. You don't think even a little about how things look, huh?

"Look," Sparta said with a snort. "I'm really not here to get into some argument on morality or how I live my life with some dragon who, one, probably barely understands human society and, two, is arguing that they're clearly not obsessed with me while being like, kind of visibly obsessed with what I do and how I do it. If you're not being magically compelled to be interested in me, why be interested at all? Do you really think the greater evil here is some kid who is clearly living wild in the mountains being given cheese? That's your major concern in life? Absolutely zero magical compulsion, and theoretical cheese theft is your hill to die on? So much so as to terrify the group you were traveling with? Even if you fucking killed me and took the cheese back, do you think they'd be happy about that? Happy to know you'd been lying to them, that they'd been traveling with some dangerous creature the whole time? They'd run at the sight of you, and that only if they were too scared to try and stab you. But I mean you don't have to take my word for it."

Pausing in his unending torrent of disdain, he nudged the bag towards the dragon. "If you're totally not obsessed with me and just all about your version of justice here, take the cheese. See if they're happy with what you just did. I'll go back to starving and freezing in the mountains, but hey, if another caravan rolls through here before winter hits, maybe I can trade them for food with some like, leaves and sticks!"

RE: Cat and Dragon - skiesofpurple - 02-20-2021

“I didn’t!” Eric tried to insist, but it was getting hard to hold on to his resolve when the kid continued just barreling on with derision, apparently about to keep going without rest for longer than Eric even thought possible. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He hadn’t thought. How could just. Escaping from a crowd be considered terrorizing? He’d only flown away! He hadn’t even touched anyone! He knew that new elves were a bit weird about the whole dragon thing, but they came around pretty quickly once he offered to take them flying.

Were humans really so different?

“That’s not even close to what happened…” He protested merely for the sake of protesting, at this point. “And why would I want to kill you? You haven’t even tried to hurt anyone yet!” Humans were, apparently, a lot different. Eric’s heart sunk at the thought of the caravan just being gone. The idea they’d just leave him behind. That they wouldn’t even go looking for the kid who kept insisting that they ‘loved’ him. He had a bad feeling in his gut, different from before but just as twistingly unpleasant, and his instinct were telling him that this annoying shit was right. Not about everything, but about enough. One thing was for sure, he’d have to check for himself.

“Fine.” He finally spat, snagging the bag in his claws. “I’m going to bring back the goods that you stole.” Unwilling to give him any more time to start laying into him again, Eric promptly turned around and launched himself in the air, winging it back to the road just as quickly as he’d caught up the the thief.

And there he landed, right in the middle of an empty road, the stink of fear and people and horse slowly fading off into the distance.

It would have been as easy as breathing to catch up with them in this form. Even if he’d still only had two legs, catching up with the caravan would probably take under an hour. But even still, newly exposed to this world where simply being a dragon was enough to make everyone fear him, he knew that it would be a bad idea.

The asshole was right. They’d left him behind.

They hadn’t even bothered to toss out his travel sack, taking along his spare set of clothes and the few goods he’d decided to take with him. The gold was all that he carried with him at all times, paranoid at the stories of how it could make humans go mad at the sight of it and unwilling to risk it getting stolen, but that was gone, too, used up in his transformation. All he had now was a twice stolen sack of cheese, furs, and leather that he didn’t even need.

With a long sigh, Eric closed his eyes. This was the first major setback of his journey. It was the first true test of his character. What he decided to do next would shape the direction of his fate and what sort of ending he might have. If one thing was abundantly clear to him, he needed to know more about living among humans if he was ever going to be accepted by them. And for that, he’d need a human who wasn’t going to run away at the first sight of him.

Decision made, Eric nodded to himself and took back to the skies, leisurely tracking down the thief he’d only just abandoned. He didn’t bother finding him quickly, although he could. He wasn’t all that far from where Eric had left him, even if it had taken him a while to get to what seemed to be his home camp. Eric simply didn’t want to see the little shit and have to admit that he was right… about some things. Not all of them.

After sulking along the clouds for as long as he’d let himself, Eric finally circled down to land outside of what seemed to be a cave, doing his best to keep his landing relatively silent. Well. Silent for a dragon. With a huff, he dropped the sack of stolen goods at the cave entrance and back off a little ways into the trees, laying down with a thump. Still clearly visible, but also making an attempt to look like he was given the annoying shit some space. He didn’t bother saying anything, of course. He wasn’t completely done with his sulk just yet and he didn’t even have a swamp to sink himself into until he felt like dealing with the world again. This would have to be good enough.

RE: Cat and Dragon - SolitareLee - 02-20-2021

Sparta was capable of talking himself out of most situations, although indignation wasn't normally the result of him laying into someone like that. He wouldn't have done it if he hadn't been pissed. He wouldn't have done it if it hadn't been a dragon. It's not like anyone would be upset if a dragon killed itself, anyway. According to most people that would be a service to the realm. Make him a grade-a hero. He snorted at the thought.

He couldn't just sit here in the dirt. He had to make tracks, and hope that the dragon was away long enough to lose whatever diluted effect had made it through its supposed magic resistance. Which honestly sounded like it could be a thing, since he didn't act exactly like everyone else. But immunity? Pff. No way. No such luck. If he didn't get the fuck out of here, he'd wake up in the morning with a dragon on top of him.

He didn't even fucking make it til morning.

He'd been in the process of packing up his home camp--which he'd only just gotten set up as well as he liked, and no one appreciated how hard it was to find uninhabited caves in the mountains--when there was a loud thud outside. He paused in what he was doing, then swore, then swore again.

Sure enough, outside the cave entrance was his pittance in furs and cheese. Looks like the humans hadn't wanted the monster back. But he couldn't even feel smug about that, because there was a clearly visible dragon like ten feet away.

"Thanks for the cheese, asshole. I don't need an apology if that's what you're waiting the fuck around for. Keep your dignity and just get the hell out of here. Or, hell, do you one better. I'll let you keep the fucking cave if you promise to stop stalking me. Dragons love caves, right? There's a tree not far from here with a great view of the road. Sit there until another caravan comes by, trick them, and you can leave feeling as morally superior as you damn well please."

RE: Cat and Dragon - skiesofpurple - 02-20-2021

Eric shifted his head from where it was laying on the ground just enough to get one eye on the small angry pink man. He watched him start right up with the angry commentary again and took in a deep breath, wondering what else was lingering under the cloud of anger he wielded like a sword. The magic muddled everything up too much for him to tell. Probably some fear in there, though. He was so loud. Annoying. And mean. How in the hell did the magic manage to make everyone love him when he was actually like this?

“Why in the world would I apologize to you.” He wondered out loud, not even bothering to make it a question. At the idea of joining another caravan, he flinched and avoided the thought by flopping over to sprawl out in his side, considering the pros and cons of just taking a nap for a while to wait and see if this would all be better when he woke up.

“I can’t.” He grumbled instead, staring up at the blue sky through the leaves of the trees. Maybe flying would be better than a nap. If he napped now, who knows what this crazy person might do. Maybe he could actually charm monsters and bears and wolves. Maybe he’d be able to get them to attack him while he was asleep. Being bitten was never a great way to wake up. Especially not by something with teeth that mattered.

Gods. How was he going to meet a real knight now, when all humans were apparently instinctually afraid of dragons and, if the thief was to be believed, would probably try to kill him the moment they saw his true form?

“Maybe I should just go back home.” He mused, but immediately rejected the idea with a snort. He’d just left! What kind of shitty hero’s journey would that be if he turned back at his first test of bravery? “Fuck. You don’t happen to have a pile of gold lying around somewhere?”

RE: Cat and Dragon - SolitareLee - 02-20-2021

"Right, I forgot, you don't have the traditional moral center that considers things like assault and stalking apology-worthy. I should really be used to that. But you know what, that works, because I don't care. It's not actually my job to think about your shit, and I don't really care whether you join a caravan or fly back home, having been thoroughly disillusioned by human society or whatever you're sulking about."

Sparta was dragging the Cheese-bag of Infinite Trouble into a pile with his other things, which were getting strapped onto what was essentially a bizarre cross between a kid's wagon and a sled.

Sparta snorted with laughter. "Okay, I get that like, dragons don't understand the whole precious metals and gems things, or have giant hordes or whatever, but there has to be a limit to how stupid this gets. No, I very obviously don't have a pile of gold. I would not need to beg for cheese if I had a fucking pile of gold, or even a single fucking coin! Do you know how much one gold coin is? No, of course you don't. I'll use simple concepts. No. I don't have gold. I am what is known as a hermit. I live outside of society. I don't have currency or an extensive number of valuables. I have literally nothing for you here, in fact, and I can't express with words how much I don't want any extra immortal stalkers in my life. The part of our lives that overlap need to end now, and stay that way, forever, thanks. Bye."

RE: Cat and Dragon - skiesofpurple - 02-20-2021

“I wasn’t assaulting you, I was apprehending you!” Eric protested before he could think better of it. He could already feel himself getting worked up again, pulled in by blatant misrepresentation of the facts! Sure, he fucked up a bit and didn’t understand how humans would have reacted to him transforming, but that didn’t change the fact that this guy was a thief. He was stealing from them! And he would have taken much, much more if Eric hadn’t done anything about it! Good guys were supposed to stop robbery! The robbers being alone and living in the woods didn’t change that! Well, unless it was from some ‘rich asshole’, but those people hadn’t been like that.

“Why are you like this?” He asked the clouds, genuinely curious. Eric had never, in his life, met someone who was so determined to be unpleasant to talk to.

Deciding that just ignored everything awful that came out of his mouth, Eric listened for actual facts in between all of the insults. It was getting to be almost impressive how he never seemed to run out of them. “Extra immortal stalkers…” And how he peppered genuinely disturbing statements in here and there. Who’d want to stalk this guy? More of the people who ‘loved’ him? “Do you know where I can find gold?

“Wait.” Eric seemed to finally notice the cart and how it was packed with pretty much anything valuable nearby. He rolled back over to his legs underneath himself and sat up, asking, “Where are you going? We’re talking!”

RE: Cat and Dragon - SolitareLee - 02-20-2021

"Those words are synonyms," Sparta informed him dryly. "Apprehending is assault that people with legal authority do, something you also don't have, by the way. Not that anyone really does out here." Outside the bounds of a city, of a country, the only laws were those of nature. "Please get over yourself either faster or further away. Preferably both."

"Faerie cursed me to be an asshole," Sparta replied sarcastically. "You can find gold in a city, in a bank. For fuck's sake, why do you suddenly think I'm a gold expert? I've literally always been out here. The only time I see gold is when people try to give it to me, and why would I take it? It's useless. Just fly northeast and rob a bank or something, far away from me."

Sparta glanced, blinking, between the cart and the dragon. "God in the skies you're thick. We are not talking. We are having a continued nonconsentual encounter fueled by my curse and your stupidity. I'm leaving to go somewhere where you aren't, which is my current primary desire in life. I'm uprooting all my shit to get away from you, so maybe flex that supposed magical resistance of yours and empower yourself to take a hint."

RE: Cat and Dragon - skiesofpurple - 02-20-2021

“Explains a lot.” Eric spat back, eyes narrowing as he lost control of his mounting annoyance. To be fair, he was mostly annoyed at himself at this point, but he would have usually been able to keep that mostly under wraps. What wasn’t helping was that this thief seemed practically hand-crafted to itch under his scales, as if he were a stuck bit of shed right between his wings.

Eric finally rose to his feet, half growling as he advanced on the human and the cart. “I can’t go to a city like this! And I’m not a thief!” He stopped with one leg planted in front of the cart, effectively blocking its path as he maybe. Loomed a little. He couldn’t help it, it he was annoyed. No one took it seriously, usually, even when he mantled his wings and looked a LOT bigger than he usually did. It was instincts!

“Would you just stop for a minute? I am NOT in obsessed with you, your curse does NOT confound me. I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be! You’re the most unpleasant person I have ever met! And I have younger siblings! But you’re the only human here and I need you to answer a few questions so I can figure out what to do next!”

A pause. A snort. And the least genuine, “Please” that had ever been heard in these woods finally grit its way past his teeth.

There. Ma would be proud.

RE: Cat and Dragon - SolitareLee - 02-20-2021

Sparta flinched when a furious dragon rolled up on him. Of course he did. It was a pretty natural reaction, and it was hard not to panic the more he realized he had no way of forcing the dragon away and probably few people he could kite it onto. He'd have to go all the way into Crithe to have a chance, and he probably wouldn't survive a dragon that long.

Sparta, shoulder scrunched and tensed and actively trying to not look like he was cowering, considered this "request" for a moment.

"... No," he decided, unsurprised when the dragon looked offended and confused. He surely wasn't used to the term. "Now, that's unfortunate. I have something that you need, but I don't want to give it to you. It doesn't matter if I can afford it or not, if I can survive the giving. I don't want to. So what do you do now? Do you take it? Do you force the matter? Do you use strength or fear to get this thing from me that you need, not just want, but need?"

Sparta paused long enough for his point to sink in, but not long enough for the dragon to answer. "Stop acting like you're above me. Put in a situation not half as dire as mine, and you're acting just the same. I don't even have the option to ask nicely and then take no for an answer. But you do. So maybe take your own stuffy, bullshit advice and offer me a trade."

RE: Cat and Dragon - skiesofpurple - 02-20-2021

He blinked, then his eyes narrowed at the blunt refusal. Eric could feel the burning desire to let flames spill down his throat and claim the annoyance in front of him, but held it back without a thought. As much as he hated to admit it, the asshole had a point. Blunt, cruel, and crude he might be, but he had a fucking point.

Eric took in a deep breath and let it out, slowly, forcing himself to just stop for a moment, recalibrate. Let his wings lower and tuck comfortably to his sides. This person was annoying. He was a thief. None of that meant he deserved to die. And it certainly didn’t mean that Eric wasn’t partly at fault here. He wasn’t too chickenshit to admit to it, not when it had been made so abundantly clear.

But that didn’t mean he had to let him go just yet.

“Fine.” Eric dipped his head. “I concede.” And then he looked back up, staring him down. “What do you want? What do you need? And do NOT just tell me to leave again. You say your situation is dire. Surely there’s something that would make it better enough that you’ll answer a few questions.”

RE: Cat and Dragon - SolitareLee - 02-20-2021

Happy as he wasn't to be the source of personal growth for some shithead dragon, this was still a bitch of a situation. Sparta ran a hand irritably through his stupid, unnaturally colored hair.

"This seems to be a real point of confusion for you, but one of my all-time needs is, in fact, for you to not be around me. We're in a very unfortunate situation where the more you insist that you can stop whenever you want to, you just don't want to, the more unlikely it becomes that you actually can. Yeah, sure, I have needs. Who doesn't? I need food, I need supplies, I need to have been able to make a big enough haul off that last caravan to survive the winter. But frankly, what I need more than that is to not risk a violent--don't fucking protest that, so far our whole relationship has been you threatening me, you attacking me, you showing up to menace me, you trying to intimidate me again... You get my point--dragon not being as magic immune as he thinks he is. So, yeah, no matter what other shit you wanna offer me, one of the things that needs to happen is you leaving me alone, permanently."

RE: Cat and Dragon - skiesofpurple - 02-21-2021

“That can be arranged. Hopefully soon.” Eric muttered as he considered the rest of the rant thrown his way. Even if he couldn’t leave just yet, there was plenty of other things he could do that might be enough to motivate this asshole into helping him. At least a little bit.

“But first, I need enough gold to transform back into a form that won’t get me attacked the moment I go into a human town. And enough gold to transform back, too. I don’t like the idea of being stuck like that. I can help you with supplies. That’s easy. I can hunt for meat and sniff out fruits. I can even skin the hides if you need more furs. On the big stuff, at least, it’s getting too hard to properly skin small things anymore.” As he spoke, he started to get excited at the idea of helping, visibly pleased to be explaining all the things he knew how to do and was good at. For the first time in what felt like weeks, he was somewhat in more comfortable ground. Was it weird that he sort of missed his chores from back home? He really missed doing chores.

“If you can help me find a town or - shit, probably not a city. Some place that might have enough gold for that, I can help you get what you need to survive the winter. I’m sure I can find something to… to exchange for gold?” Now this was the stumbling block. The sticking point. The part where he had no fucking clue what he was going to do. He knew he needed the gold, but how to get it without stealing it? How much some gold even worth? It was just some shiny metal, but the thief spoke about it as if it was super important to humans, even if it was also sort of useless. He didn’t even know how his family had gotten the gold for his hatchday! Well. Could he trade deer for it??? How many deer would it take for him to have enough to transform???

All questions, no answers. And only one very unpleasant person to go to for advice, who didn’t want anything to do with him. Best not to panic about it and just. Move forward.

RE: Cat and Dragon - SolitareLee - 02-21-2021

"Hunting isn't difficult," Sparta said with a sigh. "If there weren't a giant fucking dragon here, I'd probably already be covered with squirrels. I just find it unpleasant. Fruits, maybe. You can at least cover more ground. Not that any amount of fruit would be enough to get me through the winter. I actually don't think you can produce as much value as you just cost me, but whatever. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you'll probably be more than happy to help me even after I answer your dumb questions. Just like, a guess on my part, but I'm assuming you'll take any excuse to stick around." He sighed, a long, drawn out thing that carried more decades of exhaustion than he'd been alive.

"But I think you're maybe skipping over a few important steps in your extremely dumb plan. How much gold do you even need? And how in God's name were you intending on trading anything for it? Putting aside how much stuff you'd need to get even a single gold coin, let alone a lot of it, you are, at present, a dragon. You can't go into a town. Before you even dream to suggest it, yes, I could get it, if I wanted, but I don't, and I think you'd find anything to do with me morally repugnant. Also, again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, I don't want to." The last thing he needed was to get into trouble because of this stupid shitty fucking dragon. He avoided towns at all costs, even small ones, because they carried stories better than caravans, and also because mobs formed more naturally there, as well.

RE: Cat and Dragon - skiesofpurple - 02-21-2021

Eric stared for a moment, held tilted just slightly, before it seemed that a realization came over him and he let out a long breath. “There’s no way you’re going to believe I’m immune to your curse.” He hummed to himself, but what came out was more of a contemplative rumble. “Fine. If all of my ideas will get one or both of us killed and you don’t care enough to help come up with something, I guess all I can do is stay with you until winter is over so that you don’t die and then head back home in the spring.”

He stared at the thief after that, more than a little fed up, and waited to see what new flavor of disgust that sort of challenge would inspire from him.