thebastion | Day 277 [Open]

Entry tags:

Day 277 [Open]

Who: Zuko and anyone
Open: Open!
When: Day 277
Where: Near the river
What: BABBY DRAGON
Format: I'll match
Warnings: Honor

It's been a few days since Zuko paid a visit to the Monument for some personal purchases. Most of those were swiftly hidden away inside her house, although the faint sounds of music the past few evenings might have given one of them away.

She's much less secretive about her final purchase. She's had to be, really, because it was in fact a gigantic egg, and she hasn't let that thing out of her sight for a moment. This doesn't mean that she's given up any of her usual activities, aside from Skyway trips, but even while she's training or at the pool it's always been sitting nearby wrapped in a blanket.

But today's the day. She's just finishing up her training routine on the Bastion side of the river when she hears something stirring inside. She immediately crouches down to watch with rapt attention as something slowly emerges: a baby red dragon, serpentine and nearly the length of her arm.

This is the moment where all her doubts come back to her because she has never so much as seen a baby dragon before much less taken care of one. What do.

((Feel free to run into her pre- or post-hatching, and anywhere in the general vicinity of the lake!))

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Rob's seen the egg at their training sessions, so he knows generally what's up, but seeing that it's hatched is a different story. Because it's cute.

"Oh hey it hatched!"

He comes over and squats down, reaching out to pet it. If it has a good sense of smell, this newcomer smells of mammoth brain, raw mammoth meat, and urine.

"Aren't you a cute little... is it a guy or a girl?"

"Colin says she's a girl."

The little dragon gets a wiff of him and crawls up Zuko's arm to her shoulder away from him. The other people she's met haven't smelled like that! What is that?

"You have to take it slow, she's still shy." Zuko strokes the underside of her snout. "It's okay. He's nothing to be scared of."

That's the smell of delicious things. And something that humans do on a regular basis. Usually those smells aren't all together on a human but Rob's been tanning.

"Don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt you. Your mommy wouldn't be happy with me if I did. Besides, you're too cute."

He holds out his hand to the dragon, giving her a chance to examine it before he tries petting her again.

Everything is new and strange and big, but so far she's been encouraged not to be scared of any of it. The little dragon stretches her head out on her neck to sniff his hand again, whiskers twitching. Zuko just sits patiently, hoping her being calm communicates that that's how the dragon should be.

Once she's had a bit longer to smell him, Rob begins slowly moving his hand forwards until his fingers are under her chin and he can try to gently scratch her there.

Baby dragon is tense for about three seconds before she just admits this is nice and her head bobs a little with the chin scratches.

"See? He's not so bad."

Banzu continues scratching, with a grin on his face.

"She have a name yet?"

"Not yet. I'm still thinking about it."

"Hm. How about 'Alexstrasza'? It's the name of the queen of the red dragonflight in a story, the Life-Binder who protects all life in the world."

~~Neeeeeerd.~~

"Alexstrasza?" Well, that's kind of hard to say.

"I don't know. It's not very personal. I want it to be a name that tells her where she comes from."

He momentarily considers suggesting "Zukosdóttir" but decides not to for a variety of reasons.

"Mm. I'm not very good at coming up with names, sorry. I'll suggest not making reference to her size, because it's probably a safe assumption that she's not going to be this small for long."

Okay enough chin-scratches for now. Let's trying pettings.

"You're gonna be a big dragon, aren't you? Yes you are. Yes you are~"

Ohh, pettings are nice, too. Baby dragon resettles herself more comfortably on Zuko's shoulder.

"She really is," Zuko confirms. "I'm just not sure how fast she'll grow."

"Dunno either. Hm."

The pettings stop as he has an idea.

"Don't worry, I'll be right back."

He gives a quick glance behind him then starts walking backwards. As he does so, he pulls some kind of green and black block out of his pocket and holds it up. With the push of a button, it unrolls like a scroll into a datapad like Colin's.

"Both of you look at me and smile."

It's probably hypocritical of him to be taking a photo of them without permission when he would object to someone taking a photo of him.

Zuko doesn't smile. She just looks confused, as does the baby dragon. Why did the pettings stop?

"What are you doing?"

"Taking a picture, so we can look back and remember how tiny she was when she was born." Oh wait, Zuko's from a lower-tech world isn't she? "It's... like having someone paint a portrait of you, only it only takes a few seconds."

Which is exactly what Colin suggested. She doesn't look any more thrilled now about having a picture of herself.

"Well, why not just take one of her?"

"You wouldn't be able to tell how big she was without something to compare her to."

"It doesn't have to be my face."

It could be her arm or something.

"I guess not, but it's more convenient if it's something you can't lose so you can compare her against the same thing as time goes by."

He's actually already taken a picture by mistake but there's no way for her to tell and he'd rather be giving her one where she's posing.

"I don't plan on losing my arm any time soon."

Zuko gently moves baby dragon to her forearm and holds it out. "Just sit still for one second. He's going to take your portrait."

"I'd hope not."

Well, this'll have to do. The whole process will be very anticlimactic for Zuko; Rob taps at the pad's screen a couple times to take a picture, change the zoom level, and then to take the picture again, no flash needed because it's still light out. He walks back over, tapping the pad a couple more times to make the image fill the screen.

"What do you think?"

He turns it around to show them. It's a photo of the baby dragon on Zuko's forearm, with nothing else of Zuko visible unlike the other two photos he has. He has a steady hand when taking pictures so it's straight and there's no blurring, but other than that it's basically the most average possible photograph that could be taken here.

Anticlimactic? You forget that this is the first photograph Zuko has ever seen. He just captured an image with that thing in a matter of seconds that could take even a talented painter hours to reproduce.

"It's so lifelike," she remarks. "Look, that's you."

Baby dragon seems less impressed. She looks when Zuko points, but she's probably too young to be able to recognize herself.

"It's supposed to be as accurate as possible. Though now that I'm looking at it, this is even better than the pictures I'm used to back home."

A video would probably get a better reaction, but baby dragon isn't being active enough to make a good recording.

Maybe once she learns to breathe fire. That will probably make for some fabulous home videos.

"It's the speed that's impressive. It felt like we had to sit all day for the court painter."

"'Court painter'? You... royalty?"

Presumably she would've said something by now if she expected him to treat her specially, so it's more out of curiosity than anything.

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