shatterverse | (no subject)

Oliver nods absentmindedly to Nhim, very much done talking about this. He tries once more to center himself.

"There are a lotta people with magic, here. Like Inty and Gabe. Inty knows things, and Gabe knows how things are. And they're really special. Did you ever meet a unicorn?"

"Oliver can perform magic as well," Nhim points out-look, Oliver-talk that won't cause him to turn funny colors! "But yes, I've met many unicorns. ...I very nearly ate one once, but that was a mistake. I couldn't see her horn until I dove."

"Oh, yeah," Bridgette replies, a world of dismissiveness in her tone.

Bridgette's expression soon becomes horrified. "I'm...real glad you didn't eat it," she mumbles, subdued.

Dead bodies don't bother Bridgette much anymore after Captain Trips, but the idea of dead unicorns really does.

"I broke my dive, at least, before I hit her. I ended up apologizing quite profusely." She shakes her head. "I don't eat anything capable of speaking."

Notice how she said 'I', rather than 'dragons'.

"That's good," Bridgette tells her approvingly.

"You'd have to fly a real long way to get to someplace cold all the time," she mentions.

Nhim nods, dropping her head back to her forefeet. "That seems to be the case, unfortunately. I think I might have to settle for somewhere's that cold most of the time...or at least for a good portion of the year. I'm afraid traveling isn't quite as easy for me as it once was."

"You could try Vermont? It's like that."

Bridgette suddenly looks at the door, smiling a little. "Marie, c’mon out – it's a dragon!"

Bridgette becomes anxious, looking back at Nhim long enough to say, "Uh, 'scuse me..." before hurrying over to the door and going inside.

"I'm afraid I don't know where that is." She starts to look to Oliver for help, but pauses as she watches Bridgette, tilting her head to the side, then going, "Hm." to Oliver.

Oliver cracks his eye open to determine that Bridge is out of earshot.

"She's quite lonely, I expect," he says pityingly.

Nhim turns to look at him, her ears pricking forward. "What makes you say that? Are there not many children here?"

"Her sister, poor thing. And the only other children I've seen have been a young boy who works in the kitchen and Hana and Loo, Mel's toddlers."

"If there are enough adults around, though, there ought to be more soon enough, though. It would be some time before they could keep her company, but..."

Nhim knows all about the relatively rapid rate of human reproduction.

Oliver's mouth quirks in a smile as he closes his eyes again. "I hope I shall be asked to perform some marriages first."

She shrugs a but, grunting at the movement. "I think it varies depending on the group, in my world-I've heard some humans mention such things, but not others."

"Oh, heathens of my world have marriages as well," Oliver agrees. "But I would hope those here would keep to civilized codes of conduct."

Nhim sounds amused, gaping her jaws in a smile. "Raxis and I were quite civilized, but we never married. It's not what we dragons do."

Oliver's eye cracks open just a moment, but then he shrugs it off. "As long as you kept to the codes of your God in other ways, who am I to object?"

Hey, dragons - and what's he going to do, trying to guilt Nhim into marrying someone who isn't even here? Pfft.

"Gods," she corrects, still smiling. "Humans and dragons have a tendency towards doing things in very different ways, I've noticed."

"Ah, gods. What are their names?" He's simply curious, and his tone reflects that.

Something like Nhim obviously doesn't worship evil gods, anyway, so who's he to condemn?

"Well, there are several. All dragons have a particular weapon they can breathe or spit, you see, and the gods represent each type, as well as aspects that connect to them. We worship all of them, but our patron god or goddess depends of what we happen to produce.

Mokrad the red-fire and god of life, renewal, and the day.
Adikos the black-acid and god of destruction, logic, and warfare.
Rhennathi the green-poison gas and goddess of the earth, plants, and animals.
Oelmu the white-ice and the goddess of water, healing, and the death.
Stoath the blue-lightning and the god of weather, the seasons, and time.
and Denos the gold-air and goddess of the air itself, magic, and night."

She flicks an ear. "I don't think humans normally assign their gods such a variety of powers when they have a pantheon, but it makes sense to us, at least."

Oliver doesn't look like he's listening - head still bowed, eyes closed. It takes him a moment to get through all that information and respond.

"My God is the Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth." A faint smile. "Nothing quite as involved as all that.

"What breath weapon do you have?"

If he had to guess, he'd pin Nhim down as a worshipper of Mokrad, purely because Oliver thinks he sounds the best of the lot. Fire, renewal and the day - Godsworn do love those images.

Nhim gapes her jaws slightly in a smile of her own. "As I said, humans and dragons do things quite differently. Our religion isn't that elaborate by some standards, though."

At the question, Nhim rears her head back and spits with a strange sound-halfway between a cough and a roar-targeting a patch of ground a good distance away from Oliver. The spit-a foul looking glob of black-hits the ground and begins to hiss, burning at the grass and soil and smoking. "Acid," she says, seeming pleased with her demonstration. "I'm quite good at aiming it-I've had centuries to practice it."

The noise Nhim makes has Oliver's head lifting and eyes opening. He stares - surprised and impressed - at the smoking patch of ground.

"The black god, correct? Destruction and...?" He can't remember the rest of Adikos's attributes. His expression of faint surprise remains.

Oliver's world is one where non-demonic magic is defined by personality. Boys manifest their powers in unpredictable, often cruel ways, which are chanelled into one or more of the Eight Holy Disciplines as they mature (in the faith, is the idea). This supernatural effect of Nhim's (for of course a breath weapon must be magic!), and what it speaks to in her character, is troubling.

"Warfare, and logic. I prefer to lean towards logic the most out of all of them, though I've fought in more than my fair share of battles. It's rather hard to avoid when evil keeps overtaking things on a regular basis. It always has to be fought back, after all."

She shrugs. "And if not for logic, how can you expect to fight a war well? The destruction...well, I've always thought that ties in well enough to what acid does."

Oliver nods slowly, closing his eyes once more.

"How do you worship your god?"

It's mainly curiosity, with a hint of 'I hope your god doesn't ask you to destroy towns in his name'.