Two

"Oh, it's all right," he said quietly, happy to be rid of the fish anyway. As an opportunist he wasn't sad if someone was offering to do something he would have had to do anyway, although there were things he felt he owed, still.

On the topic of coincidences and stories, however... Sebastian looked a little surprised. "Stories?" he asked, in a tone that suggested he had his suspicions. A slightly worried crease appeared on his forehead as he busied himself with the contents of his messenger bag.

"Nico told me some unlikely tales of running into old friends in the oddest of places." Sylvie shrugged lightly, dismissing the stories themselves as not to be discussed.

She'd earlier already organised a flat stone as working surface and now set to gutting and cleaning the fish.

"Of course I don't know if this would be an odd place for you... Do you live near here?"

Nico. Yes, the kingfisher. He couldn't help but smile at that - and the woman's curiosity. "Coincidences... well, those do happen. I sometimes surprise myself by thinking of certain people just before running into them," he said and relaxed, sitting down close enough to watch her work.

Then he considered her question.

"I don't really live much anywhere," Sebastian said carefully and inspected his fingernails momentarily. "I'm a bit of a wanderer: so no, this is rather as close to home as it gets." Ultimately, he thought, looking a little faraway for a few heartbeats. Then his mind slipped far from the thoughts about abandoned homes; he turned the question around. "How about you?"

"At the moment I'm, hm, call it employed, to a scholar in Canyet. He's working on an encyclopedia of plants, and I've been gathering information and samples in this area." That contact had been a bit of a lucky strike.

She frowned for a moment at the thought of home, also catching a bit of Sebastian's mood, then shrugged, and continued more lightly than she felt, "I'd like to find a way back home, but not starving is important. Anyway, there are worse things one could do than wandering and learning."

He looked up and smiled sincerely at the attempt. "I'm not doing much anything for, well, as long as I want to if you'd like someone to keep the dragon occupied," Sebastian said a little jokingly - but only a little. "I tend to agree on the starving bit. But home... you're away from home?" His tone was not joking anymore, but respectful instead. Almost grave, but not stoneface serious. Respectful.

He produced a metallic flask from his messenger bag and then paused to study Sylvie again.

Sylvie looked at Sebastian for a moment, then hummed thoughtfully and turned er eyes back to her work. She was not perturbed - well, not much - just a bit puzzled about the change in tone, and tried to figure out how to put the answer.

"Away from the city I grew up in. It's traditional to take to the road for a while, and it's a great experience" - she looked up with a gleam of enthusiasm in her eyes; it was nothing but the truth - "but I, heh, went a bit further than expected."

The enthusiuasm and words extracted a smile from the half-elf, who raised a squint at the sunny sky again. He looked a little happier just for that: the sun, the answers and questions and the sound of the river. "A rite of passage, hm?" he asked and 'juggled' with the flask absentmindedly for a moment.

"What kind of traditions are you talking about if you don't mind me asking?" He couldn't really help his curiosity. The world had raised him to be that way, and when faced with a possibility to act on that natural impulse the half-elf didn't have to think twice. (He didn't even think once, at times.)

He set the flask on the sand.

"Craftsmen's traditions?" She wasn't sure what he was getting at.

"Anyone having finished their training takes to the road for at least a year, to practise their profession, and usually to learn from other masters."

She prodded the dragon. Since that got only a lazy blink, she picked him up and set him down again next to her pack, so she could dig out the salt and some seasoning herbs.

The dragon sneezed and looked at her, but apparently didn't feel like complaining further. Instead he walked over to Sebastian.

"Oh. All right. Maybe I should have known that," Sebastian conceded and, instead of asking another question, locked his eyes on the dragon, at whom he directed a faint smile. The cooing sound came as an afterthought.

"Does he or she have a name?" the half-elf asked and leaned a little lower the peer at the dragon. The way the light reflected off of the little thing...

He idly wondered if he had something in common with magpies. Surely not!

"His name's Ayu-Asra." The left head turned to look at her for a moment, then the whole creature curled up directly next to Sebastian.

"Do you want to keep him?" Sylvie asked jokingly.

Memorising the name wasn't too hard. It had an appealing quality to it. Sebastian smiled a little at Sylvie's tone and gently scritched the base of Ayu-Asra's necks. "Thank you. I've had enough pets for one lifetime, though. I take it he's a bit of a rascal?"

This time he had a bit a knowing smile on his face as he looked at Sylvie and gathered his hair over one shoulder. He gave the sun another look before looking at his boots thoughtfully.

Sylvie got up again to retrieve a small bundle of skewers she'd set to soak in the river. Her boots were safely tucked away, and her feet were quite happy being rid of them for a while. No-one cared what the boots felt.

All the while, she enumerated good-humouredly, "Hm... bothers strangers with begging for food - when he doesn't just steal it - and occasionally with random cussing, or more-or-less mock attacks; gets terribly noisy to draw attention, usually in inopportune moments; when we stay in one place for a while he starts a hoard, which means shiny things go missing all around... I think I'd have to go with 'yes'."

Then there was the point that just seeing him unnerved quite a few people, but that couldn't be blamed on the dragon, no matter how far you stretched "blame".

"Nothing I should wish on anyone else, hm? I'm at least used to it."

It was quite plain she was indeed fond of the little beast despite it all. That was mostly by force of habit.

What a character you are, he thought as he looked at Ayu-Asra with a faint grin. "A bit of an understatement on my part then," Sebastian offered in a similar tone and regarded Sylvie contemplatively for a moment. The hoarding comment was vaguely interesting, but only vaguely. Her reluctant fondness was more interesting.

Sebastian slipped his feet out of his boots and moved them next to his messenger bag with a foot that was just as pale as his face. He studied Ayu-Asra again for a while. "Can't say I've ever seen a little friend like this, though."

The dragon stirred as Sebastian moved, and watched him. In answer to the last question he uttered what was clearly spoken words. Without understanding the language, they sounded suspiciously like a curse.

Sylvie ignored that and answered, "In the mountains of Vaenn they are... well, 'common' may be the wrong word, but everyone knows they are there, and if someone sees one, that's just what happens sometimes. I never came across them anywhere else, save as pets or familiars."

She grew calmer - a bit less lively and more thougtful. Vaenn seemed a bit closer to home, even if it had been a world removed.

His shoulders shook once, signalling a silent chuckle Ayu-Asra had managed to squeeze out of him. He continued giving the dragon scratchies anyway and nodded at Sylvie's words, idly wondering if anyone had ever tried stealing the spirited little thing.

Based on what Sylvie had said, he wasn't sure anyone in their right minds would do so - and if they would have, well, the dragon was here, wasn't he? "They're all this friendly?" He assumed their pet status meant these dragons didn't taste too good or present much of a hunting challenge. Either that or Sylvie's culture was a quite a bit different from what he usually delt with.

Just as well, that.

Hm, it had been a while...
"The wild ones are rather shy, and the females generally are vicious, no matter how they grew up. This one here's used to people right from the start."

"Ah." The half-elf fell silent, satisfied with that piece of information. He sat still for a while, watching the river drowsily as he relaxed again under the sunshine and the proximity of cooling water. The weather was too good, and certainly wonderful enough to rob away both his talkative and cautious facets at the same time. Mostly, anyway.

Sylvie watched the food and couldn't keep her mind from wandering a bit.

Garv had complained so regularly if called "little friend" that Ayu-Asra still remembered.
And home... It had to be the weather, at least partly.

"I think the fish is about done."

And she had forgotten the bread. She pulled a thin cloth sack from her supplies, which held some flat loaves that'd even work for small plates. She'd mixed in some ground nuts into the dough.

"Help yourself?"

A silvery mane tilted a little to the side. "Ah, thank you," he said and left Ayu-Asra alone, pulling his hands out of his gloves. Very faint scar tissue was visible in his palms if one looked at them closely enough: Sebastian certainly didn't attempt to make them visible or try to hide them as he settled a little closer and accepted the offer.

He didn't start eating immediately, however. "I'm sorry if I seem a little out of it. I'm still a little confused," he said apologetically and topped it off with an owlish blink and a ghost of a smile. "I didn't expect to bump into a friendly face here." (They were so few and far in between anyway, and considering a certain someone's sense of humour...)

He blinked again and glanced at the fish. "How long have you been doing your work hereabouts?"

"A month, about, and I'm on my way back."

She cut a fish for herself into pieces to have it cool faster, and shrugged, and smiled wryly at Sebastian.

"Things happen, I guess. You're in this area for the first time?"