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"I'm ready." Shrieky gives a slight nod, and sets off, at Wolfgang's side. It's good that he's not managed to offend Wolfgang (although really, Shrieky supposes that being told you're startlingly beautiful is actually a pretty poor insult, as far as insults go.) and now that the initial shock of the other man's appearance has worn off, he feels calmer again.

"I remembered a story. After we spoke, I mean. About a man who tried to murder the sun." He glances at Wolfgang, waiting for confirmation that he should tell his story.

"No, I'm very fond of them, actually." Shrieky's never actually seen a dog from above eye level before, since most of his contact with them has involved him slumped up over the edge of his moat, and the dogs in question trying desperately to figure out what exactly he is.

His steps are still slightly awkward, as if he's not quite confident in the way he moves yet, but his spirits are undampened, and he's not astute enough to pick up on any of Ilde's weariness.

"So how did you learn to play the Harp? Is it a common thing, where you are from?"

Shrieky resists the urge to applaud Tyrion's amazing dwarven tumble, but he fails to resist the urge to stare, because that... that was excellent! It was the single best utilization of legs that he's ever seen! If he tried to jump off a ladder, then he'd probably just break his neck and die, and actually, the prospect of climbing the one which Tyrion so artfully descended is a little intimidating to him.

Fortunately, what he lacks in leg use, Shrieky makes up for in the length of his arms.

"I've never actually seen one, but yes! In my world they are known to reside in mountains, and to hoard great treasures." He replies, reaching up to carefully pull the large book out from the shelf. "I don't believe that I've ever heard of one being aquatic before, but there is no shortage of things here which I've never heard of."

The book comes down, and Shrieky catches it with both arms, stumbling back slightly. It reminds him of the kind of books Everett would have owned, and that thought makes him suddenly dubious about his chances of actually being able to read it.

It's a bit awkward to watch someone to lipread while walking, but Ilde's been doing it long enough that she manages, and tends not to miss as much as she used to. (It used to involve a bit more tripping over her own feet than it does now, too.)

"No, it's not really," she says, shrugging, "but my family's very musical. My father." Her extended family is mostly unrelated; it had been Emery and his baby against the world for a long time. "He's a composer, and we had a lot of instruments; the first one I learned was piano, and I mostly focused on the cello, but we had a concert harp that had been in the family and I really liked it. He taught me, mostly."

Piano first because it was Emery's own instrument of choice, then singing lessons with the piano lessons, then the cello and harp later, and she's picked up violin on her own in Baedal so as to offer it as one of the instruments she can teach. There's a lot of music in Ilde's life, one way or the other, and she's accustomed to it being that way. It's the only thing, above the water, that she never has any difficulty in hearing.

It resonates in other senses.

"You inherited it then." Whether he means the ability to play, or the opportunity to learn, even Shrieky's not entirely certain of. Still, he gives a slight nod in response to her answers, "I don't believe I've ever heard a cello being played, but I think that harp music is wonderful. I think... to be able to use one, you must be very gifted."

He resists the urge to tell her that she's lucky, because it feels like putting it down to luck would detract from the fact that she's clearly spent a long time learning these things, and being taught them. He suspects that there are many people who have the luck and opportunity to do things, but never the actual conviction to do them.

Both the ability and the opportunity were inherited, ultimately; her sheer talent comes about by nature, as much as she's dedicated time to it, and she'd been born into almost obscene privilege. She and her father would've had very different lives, if not for the safety net of the family fortune-- it's something she never quite forgets, how lucky she was before Prometheus and the storm.

She's stopped wondering what she would've done with herself if not for that now that she could satisfy her curiosity simply by asking Jae or Hasi. She doesn't really want to know.

"It's not a very practical talent," she says, with an odd, skewed little smile, "but I'm not a very practical person." Not really, however much she'd often like to present herself that way. Her tone is confiding and self-skewering; inviting him in on a joke.

Edited (i type good) 2012-02-05 19:21 (UTC)

"Treasures? I wonder what they'd want with those." Tyrion thinks about it as he heads toward a table with the stepladder in tow, though in fact he can get on the chair just fine. "Perhaps a sort of lure for people to come like meals delivered to their door. Okay, let's take a look. It might use some unique terminology but what matters is that you're interested."

Once the book is positioned so they can both read it, Tyrion leafs through to the first entry, which features a small drawing.

"'These are the most gregarious of all dragons, and are famous for their love of conversation.' The dragons I know of don't talk. 'They crave sunlight and dry heat, so they frequent hot, arid regions, particulary sandy deserts. They like to make their lairs in high, rocky caves.'" He pauses and glances at Shrieky. "Sound like something you want to know more about?"

"I always assumed that they were like giant, fire breathing magpies." Shrieky offers, following Tyrion to the table. He takes a seat beside the dwarf, and scootches his chair in so that he can see the book well, "Although, from what I was told, many people did try to go into their homes. Killing them was treated as a noble pursuit, because it proved so difficult."

He leans in closely, to peer at the image of the dragon, before Tyrion begins to read the text. As he begins to read, Shrieky's eyes flick up from the image to search through the text eagerly.

"Where is that part? Here?" He points at a patch of text beside the image of the Dragon. Somewhat predictably, it is the wrong patch of text. Still, from his demeanor it's easy enough to tell that he's enthusiastic to hear more.

"Well, I've always felt that practicality is vastly overrated." Although being the single most useless being ever created, Shrieky kind of had to think that, or else he'd be doomed to a life of extremely low self esteem. He flashes her a little grin though, catching the tone used as he continues onward towards her home.

"I'd much prefer to listen to someone play the harp than... I don't know, than listen to them explain the mechanics of hunting to me."

"Sometimes." He shrugs one shoulder and begins to lead the way - it's an easy trip on the El Train, and by now, Jae's learned how to keep from getting too wigged out as they pass over Bonetown. "It seems to heat up quicker by the water, but I think it's just... light reflecting off the ocean, or bad weather getting blown inland or... something."

He's not a meteorologist, okay.

"Somewhat less ill-tempered, I think." He deadpans, then says, "Ah, no, it's this part. The other part, that's 'Brass dragons have dull, motted brown scales at birth. As time goes on, the scales become more brassy until they reach a warm, burnished appearance.' How good are you with your letters...?"

The slight trailing off marks his sudden memory of the inexplicable text conversation he had upon arrival. Granted, he had a few of those, but that's the one that stood out most in his mind. Is this... Tyrion tries not to laugh suddenly, stifling it by staring fixedly at the drawing.

"I know the alphabet." Shrieky replies, a little curtly, "But you need to show me which word it is you're reading out, or I get lost."

That's right, Tyrion, you have to put your finger under each word as you read it, or he can't follow along. It's the only way. When Tyrion falls silent, Shrieky turns to look at him, to check if there's any immediately obvious reason why he's no longer providing a commentary.

"Is there something wrong?"

Shrieky falls into pace beside Jae, trusting him to be able to figure out a route that won't leave them lost and broken hearted in a ditch somewhere. "Perhaps the side with the water is closer to the sun? Or maybe it's got something to do with how the two moons pull the tides..."

Shrieky is enjoying this game of 'speculate wildly about the weather'.

Wolfgang keeps pace with Shrieky, because otherwise he's got those mile-long legs and tends to go too fast -- and it's not like they're in a rush, they've got all afternoon. He sticks his hands in his pockets and inclines his head. At least he can recognise a cue when it's right in front of him. "I don't think I've heard that one; how does it go?"

"You know, I really can't figure out the two moons thing. I keep thinking of stories where planets get moved and gravity from them all being too close together makes everything implode."

What a comforting thought! But really, it is pretty strange. Jae's magical senses are in a poor state and he is effectively nearly nose-blind where that occurs, but even he can sense the other-worldliness of Baedal. He knew the moment he came outside that it wasn't Earth.

Tyrion clears his throat hastily. "Ah, no, just wondering if they meant 'mottled' instead of 'motted', I'm not familiar with that term. You know, this may take some time. Which I'm not opposed to in the slightest, I have plenty of that for now. Might I ask your name?"

He hadn't gotten a name out of that mystery conversant, but there's something entertaining and appealing about trying to read through tomes of dragon lore with this sullen individual. It's not that no one cares for dragons at home, but no one cared to read or talk with him about them. It was primarily a solitary interest that others looked at with tolerant amusement. (The word 'geeky' hasn't entered Tyrion's lexicon yet.)

"It sounds as though you're overthinking it." Shrieky offers, although this might partly be because his understanding of how the universe works is pretty archaic, "The way I look at it is: Having one moon is good, so having two moons is even better."

Concerns successfully laid to rest. You're welcome, Jae. It may have been through a sheer lack of worldliness which spared Shrieky from feeling the same sense of strangeness as others did in Baedel. Of course it was all very new to him, and a little daunting, but for all he knew this was what all cities were like, once you you into the depths of them.

The considerateness is appreciated, especially since Shrieky is still pretty unsteady, even on his relatively short legs. He's not... as slow as he started out, but he's not going to be recognized for his power walking skills any time soon.

"Well, there was this man, and he and his wife dearly wanted children. So they performed the necessary sequence of steps, and late one night, she gave birth to a baby boy. At first, the boy was healthy, but when the sun came up, he suddenly grew weak, and by the time the sun was high in the sky, the little boy was dead."

He glances to Wolfgang, checking that he's paying attention, before continuing:

"A few years later, the man and the woman tried again for a child, and this time they had a little daughter, but again, when the sun rose? She died. They tried this one more time, a few years later, but once again, the moment the sun was in the sky, their child began to fade from them. So the man decided that he was going to stop the sun from taking any more of his children. He packed his bow and his arrows, and he set off east in the dead of night, so that when the sun first rose the next day, he would be right there waiting to shoot the sun down!"

Edited (wall o' text needed some line breaks :c) 2012-02-06 18:27 (UTC)

Shrieky's expression registers a moment of open discomfort at the question, before he clears his throat and studiously directs his eyes towards the picture of the Brass Dragon. "Mermaid."

He decides against volunteering any additional information to go with that, instead skimming his eyes loftily across the pages, as if he has any idea what any of the words there say.

"Speed is important there," Ilde says, absently, "and patience." ...underwater, anyway, and she assumes he's sufficiently familiar with catching a fish himself; for all that she's spoiled by restaurants and homecooking, it's sometimes completely impossible to resist the impulse to bite something swimming quickly by her, wriggling and scaled.

"You see? The harp is far more interesting." He replies automatically, because it's the truth. The convenient thing about living in a relatively enclosed ecological environment, was that Patience had never been much of an issue when it came to his needing to catch fish. There were only so many places for them to hide in the moat, and as a hungry mermaid, Shrieky had tracked down all of these places while he was still relatively young.

The phrase 'necessary sequence of steps' makes him smile. "I take it that didn't go very well for him."

"Not particularly well, no, but considering he was trying to kill the actual sun, that's probably for the best." Shrieky answered, almost as an aside, before continuing, "So, as predicted, with the first rays of light began to enliven the sky, over the horizon came the sun! He rode on a chariot, and all around him was a host of men and women who glowed like they were made of gold. When the man saw them, he felt ashamed of what he had meant to do, so he dropped his bow and tried to hide, but the higher the sun rose, the more impossible it became for the man to find a place where it couldn't reach it. Finally, the sun found him, and it said:"

He pauses, to clear his throat and put on his best 'sun' voice, "Why is it you came here, man? With your bow and arrow?" His voice slips back into it's normal pitch now that the Sun's important line has been spoken, "And the man told the sun about how it had killed his children, and how angry he had been. So the sun gestured back towards the golden people who'd risen across the horizon with him, and told the man that they were his children, and would he like them back? But when the man looked at them, he could tell that really, they weren't his children anymore. So he let the sun rise on with them, and returned to his wife, and they had no more children for the sun to steal."

He sends a sidelong glance towards Wolfgang, "And that's how it ends."

Edited (icon repetition) 2012-02-07 16:27 (UTC)

His head tilts slightly to one side as he takes all this in. "Well, that was rather rude of the sun," he says as they come up to the metro station. The trains are quick -- there ought to be one coming by shortly. "Although I guess being willing to give them back is nicer than they usually are, but stealing children is kind of messed up. And also disturbingly common in stories like this. Where is that from?"

"I think the sun knew that the man could never actually take his children back. It's like if you were about to eat something, and I took it from you and rubbed my tongue on it, then offered it back. No matter how much you wanted it originally, it would still be somewhat spoiled." Shrieky would never do that, of course. Once you had licked something, trying to give it away was rude.

Peering down the train lines, he answers the question, a little absent mindedly, "Not from my home. I had a friend, before I came here, who left me for a year, to marry a woman on another continent. That was one of the stories they told him while he was there."

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SCALEY PALS 4 LYFE!!!!1!

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imagine a high school AU where they both fill notebooks with mystical creatures during math class

Having to sit in the front cause they can't be trusted not to do beautiful drawings of cocatrice :|

GET OUT OF THERE, PROFIT :|

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beautiful

Really we have just described my high school years ;-;

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HAHAHA, imagining teenyCatherine carefully drawing out that bat comic

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I had a lot of feelings about bats ;-; and THE PERILS WHICH ACCOMPANY THEM

i lol'd

i wept :c

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