Life Given, Life Earned (Peregrine x Lady Alainn)

Status
Not open for further replies.
"I see no reason why not," Aldrig replied with a laugh. "It isn't as though you weigh much, and I'll have no problems carrying enough air and heat for you to survive up there." His eyes turned upwards again, looking to the sky, and memories of the days when he would go flying so high that he could see the curve of the world flashed through his mind. Those had been carefree days, however they might have felt at the time. His fights with Gottam over the nature of the world had seemed so important then, even if he understood their triviality now. When the fighting reached its peak he would always take Verdini and run off to the other side of the world, drifting lazily through the breeze with Verdini panting happily on his back. Then he would float along the sky and stare at the stars, and consider simply flying away. Flying until one of those tiny points of light became a sun in its own right, and see what waited on the planets around it. He never went, of course. He never would have left his friends, his family, that far behind. No matter how much Gottam infuriated him. Now they were waiting for him, somewhere out there. He would go back to them soon.

Jolted from his thoughts by the sound of a voice, Aldrig turned and blinked momentarily at Nym, for one second getting her figure confused with that of his oldest friend. A moment later and he smiled at her. "I'm sorry. Could you repeat that?"
 
The fox girl settled onto her back again, hands linked behind her head, and closed her eyes, her imaginings absorbed with zipping through clouds on Driggy's back and barking at startled birds. Or would he likely clutch her in a talon? That would work much better, actually. Easier to aim her revenge on pigeon heads. Then after they'd thoroughly dominated the skies around Haven, she would tip her wet little nose straight up and tuck her legs tight against her body, give her tail a whirl, and Driggy would soar them right up to the sun until the entire world was just as small as a greeny-grey anthill! What was the sun really like anyway? Was it a big, flat circle of yellow painted on the sky's surface like a puppet backdrop? Probably not, because it moved. Hmm. Maybe it was a ball on a stick. Ooooh, no! One of those roller thingies in a dome where you could tug on one end of the sheet and it changed the constellations!

Nym lay there for a while with a stupidly satisfied grin plastered to her face as all these imaginings floated in on one thought and floated out on another. Birds, flying foxes, rotating stars on a planetarium's night sky, puppet shows, an Aldrig puppet with a yellow circle pasted to the back of his head soaring among puffy, cotton clouds...

She sighed-- a long, drawn out process that pretty much ended in a yawn. A lazy eye wandered open to see what Driggy was up to all silent over there. He was up to staring out yonder. Or had been. Or was completely ignoring her and thinking deep, godlike thoughts. That is to say, he was probably waiting on her to break the silence, or something very like. Well, the fox girl didn't mind obliging the dragon boy. She hadn't been doing anything important anyway.

Nym reluctantly sat up, paused to scratch an itch behind her ear with the heel of her palm, and pushed herself up onto her feet. In moments she was by Aldrig's side. He hardly noticed her approach. She could see the moon from here! It was round, full, and bright. Well, not all the way full, Nym amended in her head. It had another couple nights to go until it reached fullness. The middle festival day. That's when really big things happened in the streets! Her head tilted to one side, then the other as her large, curious eyes regarded the moon sitting before them now. It always reminded her of something when it looked like this, but the girl could never remember what.

She shook the deep stuff out of her head and went back to admiring the moon. "So, if you can fly to the top of the world, could ya touch the moon, too?"

Aldrig didn't respond for a moment and Nym was starting to wonder if maybe he hadn't been waiting around for her company after all. But then he turned, smiled, and asked ever so interested-like if she'd repeat. Luckily, Nym had been paying attention to herself. Or near enough. She nodded towards the glowing orb hanging just above them.

"The moon there. Have you ever touched the moon? Or sat on it when it's nothin' but a sliver in the sky? Sometimes, if I look reeeeeeeaally hard and squint my eyes like this, I can make out a person sittin' up there. Don't know iffen it's a girl or a boy, so's I go back and forth on it. One night she's a little girl like me who got lost and she sits up there until someone can go up there to find her and so I talk to her to keep her company until her folks can find her. Another night he might be a boy from a distant star and he's gotta choose from allllllllll the girls in the world which one to be his princess 'cause he's a prince where he's from. I'll sit up here and talk with him all night long about all the pretty girls I've seen runnin' around and lettin' him know which ones to steer clear from. I think he appreciates the tips, but he ain't acted on any of them yet. He's probably waitin' for someone special, but I don't run into too many of them here. Most girls are soooo stuck up!"

Nym set her weight against the half-wall and leaned on her elbows over the ledge. Another sigh escaped her, this one more dreamy than sleepy. "Could ya fly to a star if you wanted to? Could you pluck it up out of the sky if ya wanted to? Is yer magic that powerful?"

This time she paused for enough breath to let Driggy get a word in edge-wise.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Aldrig listened to Nym's babbling as patiently as ever, in no hurry to get a word in edgewise. It didn't really bother him how utterly incorrect her ramblings were either; it wasn't though she had any way to know better. Most people were ignorant about the cosmos around them, even those who had the resources or connections to receive a true education. Nym certainly hadn't had any of those opportunities.

An unexpected smile suddenly flickered across the dragon god's face, an almost impish gleam entering his eyes. Aldrig was not normally one to use someone's ignorance against them, he would normally have preferred to instruct them so that they could understand where their thinking had been incorrect, but something in the honest, wide eyed, excited look on Nym's face proved far too tempting of a target. "If you like," Aldrig replied, his tone not varying from his usual cool composure. The only thing that might have given away his game was the subtly amused smile that played across his face, but that was hardly an uncommon expression for him to wear.

Aldrig lifted his hands up towards the sky, before closing his fingers one by one to form a fist. He then brought his hand back down and presented it before Nym, before slowly uncurling his fingers once more.

In the middle of his palm rested a small, brightly glowing orb, barely larger than one of Nym's fingernails. Despite its small size, it burned brightly and intensely, to the point it was almost impossible to look at. Bright, pale light glowed from it, almost as though Aldrig had compressed the light of the sun into a little pinprick.

As a matter of fact, that was almost exactly what he had done. The little light in his hand wasn't really a star, although it was made from almost the exact same thing as real stars. A real star would have engulfed this tiny planet, burning it away to nothing in a matter of moments. But Nym didn't know that, and Aldrig couldn't help but laugh at the look of excitement on her face. He'd explain the trick to her. In a few more minutes.
 
Being a god must be so amazing. Nym watched in awe as Aldrig simply reached for the heavens, straining on her tiptoes to get a better look as the god's long fingers enclosed a pinpoint of light from the night sky. Indeed, her whole body strained in fervent eagerness; large, brown eyes about popped out of their sockets, the slim, pale neck stretched taut, and even her unruly red locks gave the impression that at any moment her foxy ears might spring from her noggin in rapt attention.

The fist lowered dramatically, as if time slowed down in half to prolong the suspense pattering in her heart. Her breath got stuck somewhere between her chest and her throat. Slowly the fingers uncurled before her to reveal a delicate twinkle nestled in the folds of skin in Aldrig's cupped hand. There it sat bright, beautiful, and almost fuzzy in all its starry splendor. A star, a real star!

"Wow," Nym breathed. The rest of the trapped air continued to leak from her gaping mouth. The little rogue bent closer until her nose levelled with Aldrig's palm. "It's so tiny! You can hardly tell it's missing from up there. Maybe it's a baby?" She then contemplated the glowing ball for a silent moment or two, merely content with staring at the twinkling miracle in Driggy's hand. Finally, her eyes tore away from the star and flicked up to the god's laughing ones.

"You are so lucky to have so much magic. It's...it's.... wow. I wish I had magic. Even just a little, teensy, weensy bit!" Nym sighed and her gaze drifted down to the star once more. Then in a mesmerized whisper she asked, "What would happen if I ate it?"

A thoroughly valid question, considering who it came from.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
"It would burn you. Badly," Aldrig replied, his usual humor completely missing from his voice, almost as though to impress upon his charge what a bad idea it would be to try and consume the bright little orb in his palm. He stared at her solemnly for a moment, making sure his words had been taken seriously and not dismissed, before a lazy smile crossed his face again. "As for magic, you do have it. How else do you think you could transform between a fox and a human?"

Aldrig really had intended to tell her that the orb in his hand wasn't a star, or, at least, not a true one. Not one of the bright pinpricks of light that seemed to hang suspended in the pitch black sky. But he had waited too long to begin his lesson, enjoying the innocent wonder on Nym's face. Perhaps it was because he had been a stone statue for so long, or maybe it was because Aldrig had never really interacted with mortals all that much, even when the other god's had still been around, but Nym's behavior now was both unfamiliar and remarkably enjoyable. Therefore, he waited. But, when the moment finally came to explain to Nym about the 'star' in his hands, Aldrig instead found a much better bit of information to impart upon the young thief: the true nature of magic.

It wasn't surprising that she didn't know. When Aldrig had still reigned freely as a god, before he had been forced to imprison himself within stone skin to keep himself alive, all mortals seemed unaware of what magic truly was. They were able to somehow implicitly understand what they were and were not capable of, and were able to implement that understanding to cast the mysterious "magic". A long time may have passed, but Aldrig doubted that humanity's understanding of magic had really grown all that much. If the finest scholars could only guess, how could one little street urchin know the truth.

Well, Aldrig would simply have to teach her.
 
"It takes magic to turn into a fox? Truly?" Nym gaped. The thought had never occurred to her before. Shifting took magic? But it was so easy! There wasn't anything hanky-panky about it. All she ever did was concentrate really, really hard [or freak out with a rush of adrenaline] and poof! Fluffy tail. No, it was too simple. Way too simple. If it was magic, she'd feel something tingly-like or a hear an angel choir singing some alleluia chorus in the background. There was none of that, though. Only an instantaneous slide into a wriggling, furry little body with a beautiful tail.

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Driggy must have some ulterior motive and was merely teasing her. He teased her a lot, actually. When he wasn't ruffling her hair up. Why should this be any different? Her having magic was about as likely as a pig suddenly sprouting wings and flying off. Less likely, in fact. The girl knew without a shadow of doubt there was no way she could pluck a star out of the sky. It took magic to do that. She was loathe to get her hopes up.

"Yer pulling' my tail," Nym accused him suspiciously.
 
"A little hard right now," Aldrig replied, still amused, as his hand closed on empty air near his hip and gave a tugging motion. A grin crossed his face at his amusement at his own joke, even if he could acknowledge it wasn't really all that humorous.

However, a few moments later, he returned to his usual straight browed, serious expression. Nym's expression more than told him that his guess about her ignorance of magic had been completely correct. Well, then. Time to begin the lesson. But how to begin it in a way that she could understand? In this instance, it would have been easier to have a philosopher than a street child. Then again, she would probably be far more willing to accept that she might not know everything there was to know than someone who considered themselves an authority on the subject.

"Tell me Nym," Aldrig began after another couple moments of silence, once he had finished collecting the words in his head. "What do you think magic is?"
 
  • Like
Reactions: Lady Alainn
Aldrig's joke may not have been very funny, but the fact that a god capable of throwing lightning bolts on misbehaving people or holding stars in his palm was attempting humour was funny enough itself and Nym giggled appreciatively. She copied his movement and pretended to yank on her own imaginary tail with a wide, lop-sided grin. Neither one of them had a tail to pull currently. Whatever Driggy was going to say, it would be the real thing. The realest real thing. The thing realer than any real thing the Oracles or the puppet master or the magician staying in the tavern down the street ever said. The realest of the real things that only a real god could know about real things.

Brown eyes shining in eager wonderment, Nym clasped her hands to her chest and waited. And waited. And waited. Then, finally, Aldrig's mouth opened. Sound came out. The sounds made words. Real words about real, deep, meaningful things. They piled together into a sentence that housed the secrets of all real things regarding magic... Wait, what? A single sentence? A single... question?

"What. Do I think. Magic is," Nym echoed blankly. Her hands plummeted and slapped against her legs in a dumbfounded way. Was this the secret of magic, then? That the magic of a person was whatever a person thought it was? But no, then everyone would have some magic. Everyone could turn into foxes. And Nym knew for a FACT that most people couldn't do that because any time she did, nobody suspected it at all. So what was magic? She'd never really given much thought over what it was before, or if she had it hadn't been a very important thought and it'd vanished long ago. Most of her philosophomical thoughts tended to do that. A pity, because she really liked being philosophomical.

"Well..." she began, then stopped. What was magic? An idea, a wave of the hand, something she didn't have. Or might have. "I think it might be..." Her nose scrunched up and she scratched the back of her head. "It might be..." She tilted her head to one side, then the other as if that could get the thoughts flowing better. Only certain people could access magic. It had to be a thing. That didn't help much. "It might be a thing..." A thing that what? That only certain people knew how to access. Like a pool of stuff that floated all over the world and-- No, that was silly. She never saw big pools floating in the sky. Oh well, it was the best idea she had at the moment. Her eyes rolled up to peer at Aldrig out of the corners all sly-like so he wouldn't know she was trying to gauge his expressions to see if she was on the right track at all.

"I think it might be a thing like a big pool with sparkly stuff in it that floats in the air and only people with magic can see it and then it has a password that only these people know so that no one without magic can accidentally use it and blow up the whole earth." Nym straightened up with a mischievous smirk and clasped her hands behind her back like a pupil who just finished the answer to a really hard math problem on a chalkboard. Of course, Nym had never been to school to know what that felt like, but she had a pretty good idea what it looked like from squishing her muzzle against the windowpanes and peeking in.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back