22 April 2012
My eyebrows raised. Minor wyrms don't have voices. They grunt, they hiss, they even let loose the occasional roar, but they don't speak. Ever. So I let the bow go slack and stepped away. The voice let out a sigh of relief, and out of the bush came the voice's body. First a head, then shoulders, and you know the rest. When the voice had completely extracted itself from the bush (it took a good 5 minutes) I was able to get a good look at the teenage boy that was now standing before me. And then I looked at the ears.
Uh oh. Small. Not elfin at all. I immediately switched on "Ice Maiden" mode. "You shouldn't be here," I said brusquely, "it's dangerous." Good. I needed to keep my sentences a short as possible. But he wasn't playing along. "Thanks for doing that. You know... getting that arrow out of my face...". He laughed nervously, as if it was some sort of joke. I raised an eyebrow. "Why is it dangerous?" I decided to use simple language to put this human off, as our clan's draconian classification system would only pique his interest. "To put it simply, there's a huge dragon prowling this area , and I don't want to be the one responsible for your untimely demise." Good words, and a bit of hyperbole never hurt anyone... and it didn't seem to hurt the boy either. "Really? Don't worry, I can take care of myself." He seemed worryingly self confident for a human that had just had an arrow pointed at his face. I took a second look at the boy (this time getting past his ears). Medium height and build, not particularly strong, with a messy crop of dark brown hair, with a fringe falling to just above his deep brown eyes. He didn't look to be carrying any sort of weapon, so I allowed myself a laugh. "Ha! Take care of yourself? My grandmother could do better than you!"
So I turned away from the obviously deluded boy and started jogging along the ridge. I got about 200 metres before I was knocked off my feet by the large bulk of one minor wyrm.
A Conversation • Opuss № I