Twenty-three

"Kitty?" Jaina mumbled from the ground. Daylight just didn't agree with her, and the redhead was losing their argument.

Sunev tilted her snout to gaze at her. After a long moment's appraisal, he trilled shrilly and swung his body in a 360. His whip-like tail snapped her across the mouth and one ear.

"OW!" the woman hollered.

"!" the dragon sang in a very satisfied tone. He leapt before she could react further, catching a breeze up to the roof's edge.

A sullen Jaina looked about for Suitov and crawled in his direction. "Dragons," she told him icily. "Grr."

Suitov, who was after all a genius, surmised that this wasn't the best time to regale her with details of dragons' fascinating physiology, politics and discussion methods.

He reached out a hand to help Jaina up. "Not keen on dragons, then?" he asked.

A few of the local wyverns "hawk" and "iauk"ed their morning bickering from the treetops. Wyverns are late risers.

"Not ones that Indiana Jones me in the face," she grumbled, and swore loudly at the rooftop decor. By the time she realised Suitov probably didn't recognise the reference, she was in mid-vitriol.

Sunev sounded notes suspiciously akin to schoolyard taunting and wiggled his tail mockingly. The presence of other draconids in the area drew his attention, though. He attempted a few basic melodic inquiries of his fellows.

It wasn't as though Suitov was surprised to find that a female apparently spoke a completely different language. He rippled lightly through Jaina's surface thoughts. (Silly hats and whip references, lawks a mercy.)

There was silence from the treetops, then a half-hearted territorial racket started up.

"I've seen them mob kites," Suitov said. "If that's your pet or friend or anything, you might want to call it down before it gets into a scrap."

Ayu-Asra, still hissing and in a worse mood than ever, perked up upon hearing the racket the wyverns made. Looking for trouble, were they? He made an attempt at immitating their calls, but then settled for a lion's roar that was way louder than a small creature like him should be able to produce. He took to the air and swept away toward the trees.

"I'm sorry. Is everyone alright?" Sylvie had walked back to the group. She was mainly addressing the cat, and hoped she had not mis-heard and only imagined it speaking.

Jelly looked up and stared at her. "Of COURSE I'm not alright, you s..daughter of a silly person! I was just attacked by a bleeding midget dragon! I've never been so insulted in my life!"

He looked down and resumed washing his paws, muttering. "Well, maybe that time with the poodle in .. bah, that place with all the crazy wizards. Or the one with... no, maybe not." He looked back up. "ALMOST never been insulted so in my life. And that's still pretty bad."

"I'm sorry." Sylvie was not sure about what, but politeness rarely hurts.
"I think there's no reason to be offended. I mean, he did not want to insult you. He's just a stupid animal." In contrast to this talking animal, who just purposefully insulted her parents. But as far as she could tell her father was silly indeed, so that was alright.

The redhead stuck her tongue out at Sunev before answering Suitov. "It's not a friend. Know how I know? 'Cause friends don't smack people in the face!" Obviously Jaina had attended only the tamest of parties.

Ayu-Asra's unexpected roar left Sunev shaken. Sunev's eyes spun as recoiled, drawing his long neck into a tight zigzag. He coiled his tail around himself and kept his wings open but low against the roof, and re-assessed his situation.

Jaina eyed the cat. "It talks. Did you know it talks?" she demanded of Suitov, finger pointed squarely at the feline. She was still just a little cranky from the aftereffects of drinking Djew.

Agueda was snoozing.

"I toffk too!" complained Baskerville through a mouthful of sugary pastry. "Why duffen't anyone notifft me?"

He skirted the cat with a growl and headbutted Jaina in the knees with too much force to be ignored, though not enough to topple.

"You what, too?"

Jelly looks up at Jaina with a vicious grin. "He says he talks. Well, he tried to say it. I don't think he's very good at it, myself. But what can you really expect from a, well, a Dog." The last word is spat out fast with a grimace, and Jelly takes a second or two to wash out his mouth with grass.

He looks back up and hops to his feet, walking slightly unsteadily over to Jaina and twining around her legs, passing under the fuming Basky with a grin as he purrs loudly. He stops in front of her and stands on his hind legs, placing his front paws as high on her legs as he can reach (not very far) and grins, his teeth glinting in his mouth like so many tiny needles. "And of course I can talk. Did you think I was just some ordinary cat? Not a mistake you should make again. Just sayin."

With a long deep purr he slides his paws back down her legs, twitches a paw in a half-hearted feint towards Basky's nose, and saunters off towards the last crumbs of food.

Baskerville lunged at Jelly, realised his mouth was otherwise occupied, and contented himself with a growl. It was one of those deep, primeval dawn'a'time boneshakers, the ones that never seem to upset cats in the slightest, and it smelt of apple turnover.

"If I may ask..." She sat down clumsily. "Are the stories about cats and dogs not getting along true? I mean, I've known several who did, so I thought it was normal... So now I wonder what's the rule and what the exception."
Sylvie blinked and surpressed a yawn. Tired, but going to sleep in the morning wouldn't do, would it? Apart from that she was tired enough not to care about feeling a bit silly asking such questions.

It did distract from the racket Ayu-Asra and whatever was out there were raising.

Jelly curled up next to a rather miraculously whole and still steaming hot apple turnover, (which if you had been watching very carefully had both not been there before and been there the whole time. best not to think about it) and dug in, devouring it almost as quickly as Basky could his. This would be quite a sight. In between abnormally large and sharptoothed mouthfuls, he blurted out an answer to the rather rude question about doggies.

"Weshlll, you sheee. We can live together peacefully." (scrumpsh, munch) "It just needs a smartsher doggishe who can mind his own bushhhienesh." Here he paused to belch loudly. "Thish one seems to be rather a shtoopid exshample of the racshe. I'll leave him alone if he growshe a brain and shtops harrashing me."

"Thatsch--" glollop "--that's precisely typical of the feline mindset! Everything's everyone else's fault, anyone who disagrees with the wonderful wonderful puss has to be stupid or feral! Gaaah!! I'm so sick of it!!!" Baskerville seemed close to hyperventilating. "You know it was a cat who came up with the expression dog's breakfast to mean a mess? It's pure purrpaganda!! They eat more messily than us, and their mouths are dirtier!!! And it was a first-century conspiracy of cats that came up with the dog in the manger proverb - the original fable was the cat in the manger!! Think about it, a smug little obstructionist who refuses to move from her comfy comfy bed even though she's in everyone's way and no earthly use to anyone? Does that say dog to you? No!! Cat!!! Cat!!! Oh the injustice, oh the caninity!!"

His sides heaved and curlicues of drool swung from his jaws.

Jaina's eyes blinked at her feet several times in quick succession. Her brain was spinning, trying to keep balanced with reality, and so far getting quite skewed instead.

"But.. you look like an ordinary cat," the dazed redhead told Jelly. "Not that it's a perfect indicator, but where I'm from we have a saying: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like -- well I hadn't heard you then," she backpedaled quickly. The sight of sharp teeth brought her old training to the fore, making her skin shimmer faintly as she finally backed away from the quarreling animals.

Leathern wings landed and folded a few feet from the food. Sunev had caught of a whiff of apple and didn't like that he had missed out on it. He grabbed some cooled toast instead. Then the little dragon made a rude noise at the cat and promptly took to the air again, buzzing Jaina and Suitov as he flew to the roof.

Jaina blinked again. This was a strange morning even by her standards.

"'Round my parts we have a sarcastic saying -- if it's red, it's a setter," Suitov contributed, wondering if he'd have to explain it to the more literal-minded guests.

He also knew a joke to which the punchline was "Them ducks sunk," but it wasn't very funny so he kept it to himself. Suitov's mind seemed able to accumulate any number of snatches of lyric, cant and folk tale. Nobody on Shade had invented pub quizzes, except the more informal "Whose round is it, anyway?". He had thus missed his true calling.

Jaina smiled at Suitov for responding and sidled closer to him. Her glowing skin began to fade. "Does that make me a bitch?" she inquired, appraisingly twisting a lock of her hair before her face.

Sunev perched on the roof's edge and gleefully devoured his latest pastry. His crumbs rained onto the ground below and on anyone too near the walls of the inn.

"Perhaps if you wanted it to..." "And anyway, there's nothing wrong with being a bitch or the son of a bitch! Since when did man's best friend become the butt of so many pejorative terms? You've got dog loyal, dog tired, heavy as a wet dog, hounded expressions, mongrel verses, like, the list goes on! I mean, what's with that?!

"Of course my mother really was a humungous bitch." Baskerville forgot his tirade in order to scratch himself.