{Liz & Kat} Non-muddy forest explorations! {Hydra & Measle}

In the blink of an eye Hydra had sneaked out of her hiding place and run at Silence, subsequently attempting to knock her forward directly AT Jackdaww and the pool of water they'd just climbed out of. Immediately following that little prank, she flew back up into the trees giggling and spitting little puffs of smoke. "If you want to trip up Jack and make sure they fall in, I'd be infinitely happier! SIlence hates cold and I bet if she runs into Jack there won't be much you'll need to do."

Oh why did Hydra have to be so cold?! As soon as the dragon ran into her, she tried to maintain her balance and not fall against Jackdaww. "Nyeh! Cold dragon, cold dragon!" she squeaked as she inevitably stumbled into the aforementioned knight. If experience was anything to go by, then she could expect in the next few seconds that they'd both fall back into the water. Sadly it was only moments later she landed against his chest with a muffled "Oof!" In her mind she was bemoaning her luck in reference to the cold little dragon that seemed to take a shine to her so quickly.

Hydra soon joined Measle in laughing and curled up next to him. "Ahhh Measle you've made me one happy snowflake!" Finally she quit laughing and looked over at the pair, noticing that at least one of them was blushing, specifically Silence. She couldn't really blame her either, seeing as she was right up next to Jackdaww. It was still one of the funniest things she'd seen yet with this pair. "I suggest we hide though, they won't be too happy with this!" she laughed.

Silence was in a state of shock and was incapable of hiding the dark blush that covered her face. "Um. . .I-uh. . ." It made things worse when she actually looked up at him and realized how close their faces were. "S-Sorry. . ." she squeaked/whispered. "I'm such a klutz. . ." With a cringe she moved away from him and tried to climb out of the pool. Those dragons were really going to have some trouble later. She'd make sure to embarrass the daylights out of them every chance she got darn it!

Hydra was quick to follow in the trees and clumsily landed at the bottom of a tree. "Well maybe "now" they'll have no other choice but to be around each other!" True enough in theory, but Silence wasn't one to give in so quickly on such matters, and now that she knew what was going on, she wasn't going to make it any easier on the dragons. "Except now they're mad and we may want to stay in the trees till they calm down." Her tail was swishing back and forth from the laughing fit she had earlier. "So, shall we fly ahead or simply hang back and let them get some distance before we get moving?" She had all day, and she didn't feel like doing much of anything with that time.

Silence quietly accepted his help and climbed out of the water, only to lay on a rock out in a patch of sunlight. It was a strange way to try and dry off, but it was very effective on a hot sunny day if there was an express need for it. Hydra was studying Silence's behavior and shook her head. "I think at this point they're as close as they'll get with us meddling constantly. Though to be fair I don't think there's really a spark between them. She's too headstrong and outgoing and he's. . .too much the opposite." Silence hadn't really paid the dragons any mind up until that point and she overheard Hydra quite by accident. So they were trying to play matchmaker, hmm? It wasn't going to work for a handful of reasons; she and Jack were too different, she didn't exactly feel up to disrupting her current lifestyle, and Jack was just not her type.

After warming a bit in the sun and untangling her hair, she wandered over to Jackdaww and sat down. "If you want I'll tell you what happened yesterday, since it seems you drank yourself stupid and can't remember any of it. I've come to the conclusion that you're so nervous around me because you think we slept together. That idea is completely false; we didn't come anywhere close to that." Maybe that would smooth things out a bit and he'd stop acting quite so strange, maybe. "At any rate we simply sat around playing cards and you drank yourself under the table, then I got you moved to the barn where you woke up."

Meanwhile Hydra had curled up in the shade for a snooze, when she heard rustling nearby and managed to catch a rabbit to cuddle for a brief moment or two. After it started to shiver she let it go and yawned. "So I take it you've been humanized, yes?" He wasn't anything like other dragons she'd met in the past, he was more like a human than he was a dragon at least in personality.

"No no snowflake I was just curious!" she insisted as she snuggled up under his wing. After hearing the humans' conversation she laughed as well. "I knew there was a reason I liked that girl!" Sadly their fun came at the expense of the two humans who were now very embarrassed. Hydra snorted and almost tried to hide under Measle. "Nyeh, humans are just annoying me is all. Kinda wanna leave 'em for a bit, just for some time on our own. Pleeeease Measle?" she begged. Jackdaww was starting to grate on her nerves and she wanted away from him.

Silence meanwhile struggled not to laugh at Jack's reaction. "Easy, easy, Jackie. I wasn't aiming to fluster you, even though that seems to be what I've done. Talk to me! What in the world am I doing that has you acting this way? I never meant for you to be this awkward around me, and yet that's just what's happened! You assumed we slept together, you have no idea what happened the night before, and I swear from one moment to the next you want away from me more and more. If you want me gone just say the word and I'll leave."

"Maybe we just fly on ahead and wait for them to catch up? 'Course then the question of how far to go comes up, so perhaps. . .We go about ten miles off and just sleep away the afternoon? It'll take them till nightfall to get ten miles anyway at the rate they're going." In return to the nudge she moved forward and lightly tapped his head with the end of her tail. "Shall we be off lightning bug?" She wasted no time in getting into the air and hovering so as not to get ahead of Measle. Seeing as he couldn't fly too well as of yet, it was best not to make him use so much energy.

Silence laughed at Jack's actions and poked him in the chest. "Bah! No need to act all manly. Yes, I forgive you, but no you don't need to act like that. I'd rather you be a blushing klutz than a sexist pig any day of the year." At least he was truly apologizing, but still everything had been awkward since that morning, it would be tough to change that with this one. Oh well, wasn't HER fault he was stupid and drank himself under the table. Men were very very strange creatures indeed, or at least this one was.

Measle nodded and took off after Hydra, following her lead. He felt ever so slightly like a puppet, just following her about, but he couldn’t help it. It was like all his thoughts got dizzy and fell out. It was a nice feeling.

“So, what’s our plan for the rest of the day? I know that those two will be bickering, so we can basically forget about them. Jackdaww at least is safe if he’s arguing. It stops him wandering off.” Measle asked, banking a little towards Hydra so that he was half-flying, half gliding close by her side. He could tell she was going easy on him, letting him save his energy, and he was glad. His stamina was reasonable on the ground, and although his wings had been growing stronger all the time he’d been with Hydra, he still wasn’t a patch on her when it came to flying.

-

“Excuse me? Did you just call me a ‘sexist pig’? I just offered you an apology!” Jackdaww said sharply. He wasn’t sure if he dared /shout/ at Silence, but he was getting close – one more apparently thinly veiled insult would have him yelling. Well, maybe that would be better: to shout out the tiny bit of residual awkwardness rather than grumble all day. And maybe Silence’s blunt jabs at him weren’t actually meant as insults. Well Jackdaww didn't see it that way. He had felt insulted more times than he felt comfortable counting that day.

“So, let’s get this straight, I’m a klutz, a pig, and permanently single. Any other thoughts you’d like to share?” Jackdaww added harshly, after taking a moment to run over all the verbal knocks that he had taken that day. There were more too, but be didn't feel like going through each one in turn.

(I'm always hoping for confrontation on the inside, just testing Silence's patience as much as possible )

Silence reached out and smacked him harshly. "Excuse YOU! I said nothing of the sort! If this is how you treat people I'm not surprised your only friend is a dragon that you basically raised!" Forget dealing with this guy for any length of time, she was out of here! She marched off a ways and looked back. "Yes you're a klutz, and you're extremely dense, but I DID NOT call you a sexist pig! Maybe if you took the time to LISTEN to what people say to you, you'd have more friends and you might not be single! At the rate you're going you'll eventually alienate Measle!" With that she took off into the underbrush half angry half wanting to cry from what'd just happened. So her luck wasn't so good after all. . .

Hydra landed in a bit of a tumble and rolled onto her side with a laugh. Her wings were now covered in dirt and leaves and somehow she didn't even care. "Landing here's a doozy Measle! Be careful!" she called. Upon rolling upright and looking around she was not too surprised to see that the trees hadn't thinned in the least. The way she'd been going the trees seemed to get thicker the further they went. "Your human will have serious issues getting through here."

She turned and gave him the most hellish glare imaginable before speaking. "It was a compliment! I like the fact that you're shy and clumsy, what I don't like is when you fly off the handle about it!" In the end she wound up heading in the same direction she'd been going, and got herself horrifically lost. It wasn't until she stopped running that she realized just how far she'd gotten, and it alarmed her. After assessing the situation she climbed up into the nearest tree and settled in for what she figured would be a very long while before anyone ever decided to come looking for her. With a sad sigh to herself, she curled up on her branch prayed that there wasn't much in that area that preferred to climb trees.

"It's quite possible that we made a wrong turn, happens to the best of navigators. Even birds go the wrong way on occasion. Why don't we poke about in the opposite direction and see if we can't figure a way around all this? The humans will likely get stuck a little further into this treeline than we did." Upon backing out of the brush and shaking the excess leaves and twigs from her wings, she flapped them to test how much space she had to move. Turns out the further back she moved, the less restricted her movements became. "It's like a wall of fibrous vegetation is about twenty or so feet ahead." Now came the question of what in the world was making this "wall" of sorts. Couldn't be anything living, there was just no way something that large existed in these times. "Suppose finding Jack and Silence is the best idea now."

In the time since she'd stormed off, what Jack had said to her really hit like a ton of bricks. Was that all she did, cause problems. . .? It was enough to bring tears to her eyes, and that took quite a lot usually. The quiet of the woods around her was nearly deafening, and hearing Jack shouting for her just about caused her to fall from her perch. "Over here!" she called on impulse. Her short call was followed by some colorful language as she literally dropped out of the tree. "Hellfire and brimstone!" she swore as she got back to her feet. "Really must be useless if I can't even climb out of a tree." She wandered in the general direction of his voice and paused. "Where are you Jackie?" she shouted.

"You never know with those two, honestly. She's a firecracker and he's dense as a brick." She looked around and gave a distinct frown. "I suppose we could do some forest clearing if we have to. I'll freeze a few trees and knock them over so we can get back into the air. Unless you'd like to continue walking for a while?" Walking didn't sound so nice to her. Her leg was giving her fits and it was just too much to risk staying on the ground. "Would prefer to be above this mess instead of in it, but it's your call."

Hydra huffed a bit and jumped into the air to take off, having a bit of issue with the vines around her, but they soon froze solid and broke into chunks, almost like they'd been submerged in liquid nitrogen. "Gah this forest is a pain!" she snapped irritatedly. She struggled through it for a bit longer before finally getting free. "That. . .was a chore and half from Hades. . ." she panted as she hovered beside Measle. "Let's find those humans and make sure nothing's happened to them." She sniffed the air for a few moments and wandered a few feet here and there before locking onto a direction. "That-a-way!"

"I'm about as fine as it gets besides busting my butt." Upon getting up she hugged Jackdaww and blatantly would refuse to let go if he asked, at least in that moment. She'd gotten quite scared in the short time she'd been alone. "D-Do I really cause that much trouble. . .?" she asked sadly. "If so I'll just head back to Caspan once we're out of these woods." She finally let him go and crossed her arms shyly, as if she felt bad for hugging him to start with. The fact that she'd done that now just felt awkward.

Silence felt like she just wanted to hug Jack and not let go. Why on earth was that?! Maybe. . .Maybe it was because he was just as strange as her, stranger even. Or perhaps he was just naive and shy and it was too adorable to stand. "I guess I'll stay around a while longer. Now where did those two dragons get off to. . .?" she asked looking around. Apparently the sun was setting, or starting on its way down at least, because there started to be a bit of a bite to the breeze as it rustled its way through the canopy and underbrush. "Either it's getting nippy or one of the dragon pair is nearby. Hydra is the ice dragon, right?"

"Well when we took off we went in a different direction it seems. We veered to the right, and they to the left. The right yielded nothing but a dense wall of plant matter, so let's see where the left takes us." Honestly it seemed that Jack and Silence were headed in a better direction than they'd gone, but then again when they set off they figured the humans would pay attention to where the pair went. Oh well, humans weren't always observant, and Jackie certainly had his hands full with that gypsy. "It's also the fact that every visible path through this place looks nearly identical. Not a whole lot of those actually go THROUGH either, they meander and double back on each other."

Silence stuck a bit closer to Jackdaww as the wind picked up, and realized there was something literally pulling the heat out of her. She also soon realized he was keeping something in his pocket, both from the fact that it made contact with her side, and the fact that it had this awful black glow. "What the devil are you keeping in your pocket? It's sucking the heat straight out of me!" she just about shouted. It wasn't a shout of anger, but of shock; her left side now felt freezing cold to the touch and she was starting to shiver. "I don't mean to shout but wow that's cold!" Rather than risk setting the forest on fire, she simply switched sides and continued to hug him. "If I make you uncomfortable, just say so and I'll move." she remarked quietly.

"Magic affects everything, I suppose this forest is in some way alive. Whether the paths move, create illusions, or something else entirely I'm not sure, but looking at the path we took, it was indeed a straight line below the cloud cover. We'll have a hay-day trying to find those two from way up here with that thick canopy stretching on for miles. We may have to land and try again in the morning, perhaps a good night's sleep will give us a better chance." She glided a bit lower and scanned what ground she could see, but no luck. The humans were likely going to be on their own till morning at this rate.