Trivantis

The ruin was forever full of myriad creatures of spikes and stone, and thus one scooting through them all did not attract too much attention.

Even when it was moving with incredible speed and with an obvious destination in mind.

The culprit was a short, round, and scarlet little kallin-dwarf, with a cinnabar constitution and pliant quills of sickly shimmering mercury - and a long tail, stretching out behind it, held with an almost fluid balance. It sprinted around miners, hurdled over carts, leaping and bounding and carrying an enormous crate over its head with an ease that would have spoken to an almost absurdly disproportional strength, were it worn on anything but a little rock monster.

Aside from its path, the only indication that there was something utterly wrong with the little dwarf was its pair of brilliant orange eyes that were far more alert and organic than a kallin would ever be.

And slit pupils dilated with interest within those luminous orange pools as it spotted something ahead; most of the older kallin, startlingly used to this sort of thing, simply got out of its way - perhaps with a tacit agreement to never speak about this one to their tauren superiors.

It could have passed as an illusion of stonewalking; with an almost frog-like leap, the little red creature launched itself right at what had appeared to be a collapsed tunnel. But instead of smearing both itself and its prize against the boulders rather unproductively, it passed through it, appearing almost liquid - and the crate phasing in an altogether different manner, with the barest whisper of enchantment, catching only slightly on whatever magic dampener that bound the Storm-Born within - hopefully not with much more side-effects on its captive than the same twist of the inner ear as the drop of an amusement ride.

Deftly, impossibly, the kallin continued, down through the black - a ventilation opening here, a tunnel there, around another collapse and zigging where it had appeared the path should have zagged.

And finally, it launched into a cave-like enclosure - narrow, but with a high, stalactite-encrusted ceiling, and dimly lit by glowing round baubles and pilfered crystals

The 'walls,' where they were lit, appeared to house remains of glass bottles, decades-rusted alchemical instruments and the dusty, haphazardly-assembled tables they all sat upon would have looked old beneath their thick layer of dust and debris - if they weren't dwarfed by the sunken remains of old columns and the twisted carved figures of old, behind them.

The air was musty, but almost improbably breathable despite this - was it artificially created? It must have been, perhaps for this strange and small space alone.

And it was in this odd enclosure that the dwarf and the crate finally slowed to a stop.

Violently and eagerly, with claws suddenly sprouted, far too big and wicked for anything the kallin could have ever spawned even in the meanest mines, it tore AT the crate, never mind the locks and handles - yet ever-mindful of leaving whatever-it-was within unharmed. The wood splintered and gave without a fight, stripped away with the ease of a banana peel.

But as she'd spotted the person within, at the revelation of the whatever-it-was, the rock creature hesitated.

That it was Krin, she'd known, Zazeal had told her that much. But the possibility that it would have been a child simply hadn't appeared to cross her mind - and the truth seemed to stop the greedy creature in her tracks.

A long pause before the bindings, too, were severed with a slick swipe of a clawtip, and the kallin backed up wordlessly, with a humbled gait- and quietly dissolved, grew into a serpentine mass of coils and fins.

And there, Evren simply sat, silently, stretched on her belly, fins drooped, visibly disheartened. Her neck dropped to rest on petulantly folded arms as she stared at her prize.

The size of the crate - It appeared to have simply been for the sheer length of the child's wings, and not for the child itself. For how they kept her bound, and for the dirty and cold condition of her, if not for the wings she likely would have been stuffed in something much, much smaller.

But perhaps the size of the crate was a curse, for how much the poor thing jostled, despite Evren's best care not to.

Distinctly awake, and terrified, the tearing open of the crate was met with wide, panicked eyes, muffled whimpers and yells filled with whimpers, albeit raspy ones. Oh, how the minotaur had been outright delighted, as much as a creature such as he could be, for her sale.

Even loosed, the weak little creature, aside from spitting out the soiled gag, just lay there for a moment, her eyes shut tight and waiting for whatever doom a monster such as that rock-beast might bring upon her. ...However, when no such thing happened to the balled-up little krin, an eye finally peaked open.

And she jumped, wings fluttering furiously, buzzing - shooting her across the floor, skittering until she came to a slamming stop right into a wall, oh so thankfully missing one of those tables covered in rust and glass. A yelp, and the child bounced, rolled; ended up in a heap on the ground, wings still occasionally giving a tiny buzz.

...Kaur pried her face from the ground with a squeaky little moan, her strangely pupiled eyes finally dragging up to focus on the creature that as yet did not chase and gobble her up - and she froze, eyes growing ever-so-wide.

But...was that fear?? No. Something about the odd creature's gaze had changed, immediately, vibrantly even in her poor state. Awe. Excitement. Glee.

Bzzzzzzzz-

And the tiny krin propelled herself at Evren, screeching something in a distinctly Eastern language - "DRAGON!!"

She'd expected the little thing's initial inactivity. She'd expected running. She'd expected shouting. She didn't expect a hug.

Evren's fins snapped up, pupils shrunk to startled slits, and her head reared like a startled cobra - though not so high as to warrant fully rising to her feet, or to spear her head on the rocks above. Even within the pathetic light, she was evidently very familiar with the space of this little cavern.

And - with a little creature now rather insistent on attaching herself onto her forearm, this monster many times the Storm-born's size, with her enormous orange eyes as round as saucers, looked rather at a loss for what to do about it all!

"Slow, slow - SLOW, you'll tear yourself apart in this state, little firefly-! That bull didn't even give you scraps? Or a little blanket? Rude."

Grumbling lowly, she shifted and uncrossed her forearms, freeing up one paw as to peel the little girl off of her other as carefully as possible. Every poke of a claw-tipped finger was more of a nudge, and a wide berth was especially drawn around the little girl's fragile-appearing wings.

"Even the kallin get blankets, and they aren't even warm creatures. Erm..."

She squinted, then, and dipped low again. Her enormous snout snuffled around the Stormborn's hair as she examined her, that grumble drawling into a purr that was meant to be nonthreatening, if not outright reassuring.

"I don't know that word, little one. Do you know others? Who are you?"

Ev's head was out of the way - perhaps for the better, as the dirty little thing would have clung to her snout, given the chance. As it was, her tiny clawed hands were stroking scales - and outright clinging to the dragon's forearm, as she realized just how warm the creature was. Kaur pressed her cheek greedily into the warmth.

Little Kaur only heard half of what Evren said, her head already beginning to buzz with exhaustion washing over her; the krin was already beginning to shake, and not just from how chill she was. Her little arms were easily plucked from their previously tight hold, and her wings had settled to just a tiny vibration.

"What? What?"

The words still didn't translate, and sounded terribly confused; pink eyes came up to the dragon snuffling her hair-and she managed to grab on, pull herself up just enough to lean against the creature's snout. And then . . . with equal confusion, slump off again, eyes closed by the time she hit the ground, if she did.

With a startled, sharp hum, Evren pushed her with her snout, just enough to tip her in the opposite direction, right into an overlarge paw - luckily the little creature didn't have that far to fall.

And there she just stared, fins flattened once more. Sniffed, again.

Feeding Krin was something she was rather clueless about - unless she was fattening them up. Yet this was rather obviously an entirely different matter, and her experience with rodent children was virtually nonexistent. They were omnivorous, right? Yes? She'd never imagined the sort to be picky, and when one was starving, one couldn't afford to be...

But Evren couldn't take her out of here, not yet. Not like this. Between her fragile state, the cost the dragon had paid to obtain her, and the rather unfortunate fact that more denizens above ground saw an airborne snack as a challenge rather than a rarity...it wasn't happening.

Hm.

She had a slight supply of perishable provisions down here, often brought in an unremarkable brown bag - it was nigh inhospitable otherwise when she wasn't around for its pathetic upkeep both magical and non.

Perhaps she could start there.

---

It was a human that would have met the little winged rodent when she awoke - albeit an orange-eyed human with a ludicrously long tail, one that draped across the uneven floor, only curling upwards in a twitch at the very tip.

She was kneeling down, holding her little prize in the crook of an arm - the utterly clueless and somewhat alarmed expression magnified on a now-smaller face. The rodent's unlikely captor had been busy while she was out; the remains of Evren's supply bag had been sliced, wrapped and reconstructed into a little makeshift scarf, which she'd carefully wrapped around the child - still mindful of the wings.

Chunks of what could only be described as gryphon-jerky she'd already waved under her nose, and a little cluster of grapes was nestled loosely in the crook of her free arm. There was no water down here; none that wasn't tainted with an odd silvery sludge, at any rate, none she'd have been willing to try herself, much less give to one so tiny.

But it was a start.

Far from Evren and Kaur...

The feline sat in his darkened lair, leaning over a large tome. A quill rested in his hand, the feathered end wiggling back and forth as he scratched and scrawled dark lines into parchment. On a table near him sat an array of crystals and candles emitting a soft violet glow and a low droning hum. His brow lowered as he glanced at the ritual with a grumpy frown. For weeks it had sat there, offering nothing useful and just making that constant low buzz. He put up with it thus far, but what patience he had was growing thin.

A few hours passed. The black cat lifted a hand to yawn, then froze. The room, normally dim save for the candles that provided what little light he needed, was suddenly filled with soft light. He turned to the array, which now flared and reverberated with thrumming magic. A broad grin crossed his muzzle as he approached. With deft motions of his hands he brought the energies together into a strong glow. The power roiled and coalesced into a cloud, and soon a vision emerged.

"Ahh... so that is where you've been, little one..."

What an awkward bundle was Kaur to hold, with those wings. But a small and a light one.

The too-small child woke eventually - the jostling around of her body as it was dressed, and the eventual scent of food was what brought her back. That large, round nose twitched - and without even opening her eyes, Kaur chomped right down. Little hands grabbed any and all offered jerky as her eyes fluttered open - and then she became quite voracious, wolfing down every morsel she could!

Another twitch of the nose - and she found the grapes. Those went fast, and were probably helpful to stave off the few coughs she'd choked back from the dryness of the jerky. It didn't even matter who was holding her, or where she was - not until she was done. And even then...what mattered was finding more food.

With an almost panicked look, the little krin finally even acknowledged Evren, her arm, her worried look - but it was only to suddenly clamber up against the woman - the 'human' - to sniff almost instinctively at her mouth for any hidden food. Then she stopped, suddenly, startled. Who was this?

BZZZZ - wings flickered to life, and the little rodent girl would just shoot backward - and knock right into a table with a frightened yelp. "AHH! Who-!" Tumbling back down to the ground - a seemingly common thing for the unnaturally winged rodent - Kaur scrambled to her feet, unconsciously tugging at her new 'clothing' while staring wide-eyed at this strange woman.

And something happened: pupils split, shifted; formed two halves of a circle in each eye; a soft hue change took place on the krin's now shimmering wings.

Half a second alter, Kaur's face lit up - and there was that strange word again, as she shouted, "DRAGON!" in her own language.

BZZZZ -Kaur excitedly shot forward again, wings overtaking her wobbly run - CRASH, the excited child slammed right into Evren once more, little arms clinging insistently, grimy cheek rubbing excitedly against the transformed creature. "Dragon, dragon, DRAGON!"

A tiny rodent hugging the paw of a giant dragon naturally did very little to impact the dragon - but a hug propelled by magical wings transformed the tiny creature's motion into a downright glomp - and few things the size and shape of humans could resist collapsing under the power of such things!

And so, Evren was down! Down, sprawled, with a bit of a grunted yelp, in a tumble of tails both red and scaly and those at the rear of her long coat.

But she caught her! Perhaps to her own surprise, one writ large upon her face. There was a bit of a beat before she carefully lifted her prize and sat back up.

And she held on. Relaxed her grip into a hug of her own, idly fixing and poking at the little girl's displaced little curls, before she shifted her little bundle about into a proper cradling hold.

"You keep saying that - what is it, what-?" But she could guess, it wasn't an inconceivable leap of logic. Still, she persisted in the area's Latin - perhaps in an effort to draw out other languages from the child.

With a demonstrative gesture, she placed a free hand on her own chest.

"Evren. Dragon," the word was the one the child had used. "Who are you?" Palm upward then, a flourish indicating the rodent; an implied question.