@cozymoth
(planning on entering, don’t mind me! c: just giving myself a ping so i don’t forget. thanks sm for the opportunity, i’ll edit this post with some lore soon! <3)
edit: okay, here’s my entry! it’s a bit of a story i wrote about el. the other prominent character mentioned here is haruhi, who has a description of her personality in her bio if you click here, but it’s not required reading to understand what’s written here! it’s a bit messy and disjointed haha, but i think i’m actually pretty happy with it, and i hope it’s alright :] words in parentheses, italics, and quotes are sign language. (“x”) those without parentheses are in spoken word. terribly sorry for the length lol, it got out of hand.
~
teacup • 1,134 words
most dragons don’t quite know what to make heads or tails of el, and there isn’t much grounds to blame them- by all accounts, she’s a remarkably odd fae. it’s certainly not every day one encounters a dragon partially deaf, and especially not within songbird keep, a clan most remarkable for its love of music and song. confusion is a natural, if tedious, response. el has long since learned to take such a reaction in stride with impressive ease; she’s had a whole lifetime to grow familiar with it, after all. the sting still works its’ way beneath her scales, on occasion, that feeling of strange “otherness” that tends to make other dragons cast looks at her with a bitter mix of annoyance or pity. she communicates on paper, and does her best to get by, and it’s a slog but, ultimately, fine. that’s really the most optimistic way she could put it.
what drove el originally to the keep’s walls wasn’t necessarily a joy for the bardic arts, as with most of its outsider occupants (although she now revels in them just as much as any clanmate, of course. it’d be more difficult not to, with how often they’re all clamoring for a song.) their paths met, rather, at the allegorical crossroads between the plains, the nearby marketplace, and a quaint little shop operated by one notably silver-tongued haruhi.
haruhi, adept salesperson she is, is no stranger to repeat customers. none she particularly considers friends, with her tendency for petty lies and swindling in the name of a deal, but familiar faces nonetheless. each and every time she regales the story of her and el’s first interactions, this is a detail she makes unmistakably clear: haruhi’s reputation as a solitary, individualistic dragon will not suffer under her watch just because she had to go and fall in love like a fool, that one time. “it wasn’t my fault,” a phase frequently repeated in these teasing sessions among clanmates, ”you should’ve seen her, walking into my shop. prettiest thing here to the world pillar, on earthshaker’s beard.”
(somewhere just exempt from perspective, el is most certainly flushed, as always when this topic drifts to the forefront of the keep’s communal discussions. learning to lip-read was almost surely a mistake, if these are the conversations she’s privy to. el’s talons frantically sign out, familiarly, some frustrated variation of (“haruhi, sweetheart, please. i’m filing for divorce,”) fond and scolding in equal parts. no one mentions haruhi’s blush, obviously, because even those with bravery the likes of coreopsis don’t have a death wish.)
regardless, when the fae and nocturne had their first encounter, it was an occurrence of mutual fascination between the two. haruhi had always known herself to have that sort of aura, one that draws others in- makes them easier to trick, at least. meeting someone else with that same effect was, well. disarming and charming and infuriating, all in one concise blow. el was perfectly oblivious; she was passing through town when the rain began, a dreary and seemingly nonending storm that finally drove her into the nearest shop as to not get lost in the marketplace’s bustling swarm.
haruhi had every reason to turn the fae away, upon later reflection. she was damper than the tidelord’s gills, for heaven’s sake, and didn’t necessarily have any plans to be a paying customer. these objections were sustained for about four whole minutes, before haruhi inexplicably found herself sliding a cup of tea to her visitor and goading her into a conversation.
in el’s regard of the situation, it was all she could do to not be bowled over by the kindness. haruhi knew sign language; any good merchant should be able to sell to any customer, deaf or mute or otherwise, in her humble opinion. this was not a commonly held belief around those parts of the plains, despite the shopkeeper’s nonchalance about it. after having spent a length of traveling having to use written words to “speak,” the interaction was a breath of fresh air. the nocturne regarded her almost boredly, asked no prying questions, accepted her with a nod and the subsequent continuous flash of talons through the air. like something pleasantly and passingly interesting, and nothing more. being both a particularly small dragon as well as hard of hearing had exposed el to unfortunate amounts of patronizing “wow!”s and “how do you [x]?” throughout her travels leading to the town. so, by all metrics, her relief was fair.
in less charitable terms, however, el had stumbled upon both a considerate and pretty girl. as a wlw dragon and hopeless romantic, it was inevitable for her to fall head over heels before the third turn of conversation. haruhi, despite being arguably the most functional bisexual of the keep, wasn’t much better off herself. (which isn’t terribly surprising in itself, to be fair. “most functional” meant little when the entire clan was, and still is, comprised of walking disasters.)
as with all things, the storm passed, accompanied by el herself when her time came.
nonetheless, when sunshine broke the next morning, haruhi arrived to find an uninvited visitor on the front porch. the nocturne bristled nigh immediately. such a surprise was rarely good, and she’d been robbed one too many times. a sharp quip lay in wait on her tongue, but then- but then the stranger smiled, small and unsure of herself, wrapping iridescent wings around her spotted body as if to propel herself into the words while she signed them. and the stranger wasn’t much of a stranger at all, haruhi realized.
(“hi.”) el’s claws fluttered, flustered evidently at the nocturne’s sudden presence. haruhi’s maw curled upwards, entirely unbidden. she responded in kind, claws slightly crooked in a bit of a daze.
(“you seemed nice. yesterday. i forgot to thank you, though. so, i wanted to ask if- you know, only if you want to..”)
right here is where el faltered; signing out the beginnings of many words on end before heaving a sigh. she rushed her paws back and forth a few quick passes, as if wiping some proverbial whiteboard clean, and began anew. more straightforward this time. signs short and to the point, el’s gaze flickered between meeting haruhi’s eyes and taking a keen interest in the floor.
(“there’s a tea shop down the street.”)
haruhi blinked. her claws twitched at her sides, but el wasn’t finished, yet. she was determined- there was something, here. she felt sure of it, and as a general rule, el usually felt quite sure of little.
(“.... can i pay you back?”)
a stammered reply or two later, haruhi’s shop was closed on a weekday in the very first instance since its’ creation; a whole day of profits, down the drain.
glancing at el from over the brim of a teacup, the nocturne simply couldn’t find it within her to mind.
~
thanks for the opportunity and inspiration! to anyone who reads this: i hope you enjoyed it like i enjoyed writing it, and thank you as well for your time <3
