He wonders what she means by, “of course.” There were numerous (somewhat) logical recourses for smashing stones together, such as the procuring of tools, or the hunting of geodes – a thing he’d watched dragons do as a boy, fishing lumpy, white stones from creeks, before dropping them from heights to the earth below. If you could find the shards of them when it was safe to approach the landing zone, one could find thousands of crystals, hiding in the heart of a seemingly malformed, ugly rock.

He thinks with poor humor that it is cruelly ironic to think of the geodes now, after so many weeks of struggling with discovering the truth of how his bronze dragon statuette had come to be. It would have been a helpful thought, but, what does it truly matter? He’s pretty sure he’s found the solution, anyway, smiling at Isi, especially because she seems quite forlorn about her lack of belonging, unlike some wanderers he’s met. To be honest, most of them seemed to enjoy meandering about without aim or purpose quite immensely, Isi being the first he’d ever met who seemed to dislike her social status at all.

Nodding a hello to the brown dragon with a friendly twinkle gleaming in his blue eyes, Dragomir feels the same immediate like of the earthen beast as he does all other dragons, reminded instantaneously of the first (and only, for the first years of his life) friends he’d ever had.

Similar, but the metal requires a magic I have not yet mastered, or understand. The Earth’s stone is less challenging. Masonry is not truly my magic, after all, but a small mote of his power, moving through me, his bass voice remarks, his hoof digging a small rut into the earth, into which he presses the faintly lustrous, ruddy stone, and promptly buries it. He’d learned, serving the Moon Goddess, and having been the vessel of her divine craft, that the power could feel like yours, if you let yourself arrogantly think so. It would then, too, hurt as if it had been torn away, when it was retracted, and poured through another, instead. Knowing what he knew of the Moon, he had taken it as a lesson; he should not arrogantly cleave to things, as if they were his own, which he was merely loaned through the grace of another. In all the ways he had failed to respect the treasure he had been bequeathed by the Goddess, he would honor the gifts of the Earth; not in spite, but in retribution, as he no longer served the mistress of Wind, and Shadow, but her gentle, fatherly brother, but could certainly atone for his past through the goodness of his future. I didn’t need to learn, as I’m having to with the metal. It just happens.

What is your favorite animal? he asks her, warmly, almost randomly, but for the shifting of his hoof over the recently buried, broken stone.

[ OOC: His personal magic is to grow metal objects from metallic ores already present in stones, though he can also make stone with his herd crafting. :D He’s currently got an iron-heavy rock, which are pretty common around the area I live in (I have a few hanging about the house, even xD). While the metal present in them isn’t really solid metal, but you can still see some luster, kinda like mica. Here are some pictures of the things here if you are interested: Outside | Inside ]