Thread: Once, We Touched The Clouds (Ghost_kitty & Erit of Eastcris)

Belching smoke, eating meat, wings, hatching out of a rock... egg... that I filched from an abandoned Dekieri shrine... Autrin sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. You certainly are an interesting little bugger, aren't you? He fed another helping of his meal to the hatchling before running a fingertip along its back, feeling the edges it its spines and the smoothness of its scales. Maybe once I turn over that tablet for study I can have the old windbags take a look at you, too, mh? See if anyone knows what in blazes you are. Breakfast continued, ultimately turning out with lion's share of the chicken vanishing down the lizard's gullet, and Autrin puzzled out a means to keep his little companion out of sight while he took the walk across town, eventually settling on packing the creature into his sack with one last helping of meat and leaving it open enough for it to breathe. Errest was not the largest town in the world, but it was large enough that if you looked hard enough you could find just about anything even with the sun just barely clear of the horizon, merchants and hawkers cried their wares, craftsmen busied themselves in their shops, soldiers patrolled the streets and kept down the worst of the trouble. It was a little out-of-the-way place where people came when they sought the unexplored and the unknown, the last big settlement at the time before one found themselves at the edges of the most modern maps. The old empire had records extending far beyond, of course, and any adventurer worth the name knew the geography in those wild lands of the old world long before setting foot in it, but they were places unseen in many hundred of years, with knowledge and treasures yet to be recovered by industrious youths like the earth-eyed man with hair the hue of ravens and skin the tone of dusk, a feisty and frusrating crimson lizard in the sack he carried in hand alongside his trusted weapon. He was certainly having an adventure that day, as he wound his way through the streets of Errest towards the small courtyard of the university it held many academies sent researchers to the frontier towns, and a fair amount of wealth alongside them, to acquire whatever relics they could from those more willing to risk life and limp delving the ruins and wrecks of the world. Autrin knocked, sharp and quick, upon the weathered oaken door of the building and smiled at the familiar, haggard face of his most common associate. Winston! He laughed, gesturing with the bag that was looking the worse for wear for containing his little curiosity. It had been an effort to keep the insistent creature out of view. I have a few things you might be interested in. So early in the morning? The scholar retorted tiredly, Normally you only come here after... The older man's jaw cracked open in an irrepressible yawn, ... after you've sold off everything you can. What in blazes do you have in that sack that could be so impor- Autrin shushed him and barged through as the bag began to shudder with the scaled beast's complaints once again, setting it on the floor and, scarcely half an hour after stuffing it into the bag, pulling forth the strange being which had woken him so early in the day. He and the scholar exchanged bewildered and confused stares in between curious glances at the creature. I have this, Autrin explained, it hatched from a stone I brought back from one of the altars. There was a tablet with it, which I also brought I was hoping you might be able to translate it in case there was any clue as to what this thing was, exactly. Winston shuffled by, fishing forth the mentioned slab and setting it quickly on a desk alongside many thick tomes worn from over-perusal. It was one such grimoire that the elder man cracked open, fingers tracing along the symbols and associated meanings, the rules of the Dekieri grammar and other facets of the language. While the scholar worked, Autrin occupied himself with his charge, trying to keep it from burning the place down and nipping at things it shouldn't, generally preventing too much mayhem from its wondering romp through a new place. Well, Winston declared, whoever wrote this was certainly in one hell of a hurry. There is none of the usual poetic flow found in even the most dire of scripts it reads almost like a hastily-scrawled farewell to a loved one. This is, in all likelihood, the last words of a Dekieri priest... I would like to keep this once I've finished, Autrin. Of course, of course, old man, the hunter dismissed him, only half paying attention. It isn't like I have a use for it. Same price as usual. And so it continued while the researcher worked to glean what knowledge he could of the tablet and, from it, of the hatchling.