He had quite a collection of random objects accumulating back in his grove; earlier in the week, he’d discovered an elk skull and dragged it to his clearing, nestling in well against his collection of random bits of interesting wood and bone, vines and flexible branches, unique stones and twinkling gemstones he’d managed to salvage from various regions. All together, he thought he had enough of a stock pile going of every thing but gems to suffice for the time, and so he had slipped out of the Edge and southward, out towards the caves they had lived in for nearly a season.

Cresting into the hot and dry red expanse, he walks with muzzle lowered and eyes searching for any stones near enough to the surface that he should be able to loosen them with minimal manipulation of the glass encasing them in the earth. He carries the husk of a woody fruit with him, hollow and sufficient enough for a good number of stones to return home with, discovered about a month ago in the forests bordering the Edge and the Thistle Meadow. He’d had to chip away some rotted material from the thing, but it will serve many uses to him before it finally succumbs to time.

Finding a closely clustered path of stones partially revealed in the glass, he drops his gourd-like carrying object and turns his focus to them, willing the confining silica to relinquish their hold on the glittering things; the sapphires and rubies below the particular section he works on wobble and quake under the pressure of his mental will until a thin enough layer of glass has been removed from around them that he can gingerly manipulate them up and out with his lips.

@[Parelia]
[ OOC: Wing joint armor planning thread! <3 Please let me know if you no longer want them ASAP so I can adjust his schedule as need be. ]

A question pulls him from his thoughts, simple features rising with raised brows and curiously twinkling blue eyes, his lips pulling into a subtle frown at the sight of a pegasus mare, her sides swollen with child. It is not her presence that offends him – he’s truly trying to look past the initial horror that flits through him at the sight of her disfigurements, rising like blasphemous steeples from her shoulders – merely her appearance nostalgic and bitter. For a fleeting second, she is pitch black and drenched in rain, dragging her body through the brush.

For a moment, his knees tremble beneath him and he forces the wad of acrid saliva that has accumulated in his mouth down into the roiling pit of his belly.

Replacing his grimace with a façade of friendliness, he attempts to push aside his sins for the moment, physically showing the motion by tapping his gourd with a hoof to send it spinning away, the gems inside tinkling merrily as it slides to a halt some foot or so away from him.

He gets so nervous during conversations that it’s probably best its out of crushing range.

"Gathering stones for my projects," he says, though they are not truly meant for anything at the moment other than experimentation and stockpiling. He’s not really sure what else she wants to know; he could endlessly explain the way he manipulates the glass to loosen them, or where he had gotten the gourd and how it served him use at all.

She doesn’t want to know about all that, he silently chides himself, holding his tongue for the time as he admires the pretty blue tone of her feathers and mane.

@[Parelia]

"Glasswork," he says in reply to her inquiry, slowly easing into the warmth of her persona and the open way she embraced his own reserved company. He is quite fortunate that this land is full of so many with kind hearts, their souls like embers that defrosted his reservations when confronted by strangers with strange parts, and thinks this quietly to himself as she introduces herself and the bird who perches atop her head. Nodding as he knows is polite, he swallows the nerves that have accumulated on his tongue and introduces himself as well. "Dragomir." Though he speaks with few words, the tone is friendly enough, shy and reserved as it rumbles deep as oceans from darkened lips.

Looking more fully as she asks him to show her the magic at play again, a soft smile beginning to grow on his features that mirrors the way her boundlessly kind expression beams onto him. She’s so small, he thinks to himself, reminded of the dainty mare he’d helped with her egg in the caves, and suddenly realizes that his reservations around a woman the size of a very young him are childish and weak.

Swallowing his sigh and pushing the inertia into a nod, he returns his eyes to the layer of glass that lies over a blue stone quite similar in shade to the mare’s feathers. First, he pictures the image of the object he desires, imagines the back of the stone that he cannot see from the angle it is clasped in, and then he rings it in glass. In his mind, he breaks the glass apart into particles of sand, every sliver of silica mentally chipped and hewn until he is sure the stone lingers freely beneath the top layer of glass. Turning his focus to that thin lid that holds the prize in place, he turns this too into sand. All the while, his will pours from him, undulates visibly as white mist that manipulates the object of his power as he wishes, so symbolic to a boy grown to a man within the dreamy embrace of fog.

"Most of the work… you can’t see," he says while he works, slow and hazy as if he speaks through a veil of velvet, though it is truly that his mind is not truly present in reality while he manipulates the glass, "its about seeing it as you want it to be. Not as it is." Lowering his darkened lips to the loosened prize at his hooves, he removes it tactfully and rolls it across the earth towards the creamy mare's position, his soft smile returning to his mouth as he returns his clear blue eyes to her own.

@[Parelia]

He nods to her niceties, agreeing silently that in ways perhaps it was pleasant to meet one as kind as this mare, no matter how her appearance unsettled him inwardly or that he was trying to work with a mare and her bird hovering over his shoulder. For a land full of magic, he thinks, people here spend a lot of time staring at others who happen to have some, as if one’s power should be a secret hidden unless they felt like dealing with a swarm of curious onlookers. He personally was the sort to stare eagerly from a distance, as he had with Kahlua’s wall building or Mirage’s massive dragon shape, unless presented immediately with the arcane as he had been with Amaris’ spirit dragons. He wonders curiously how magically imbibed the woman before him is; it wasn’t so long ago that he was quite ordinary indeed.

The Moon’s gift was a fine one; it made him feel more at home in this land of magic and enchantment, a part of something, and so he let the other woman watch as a prophet lets others come to hear his words. There is something holy in the art, as if the magic of the land is the true faith to which each heart thrums and the Gods are only faces of its might.

When he returns from the magic in his thoughts, he finds the mare quickly falling upon the jewel he rolls towards her, and his lips form a pleased smile watching her enjoy such a small task so much. As her awe struck question comes to him, he almost wants to laugh, but refrains; it is possible she has not heard of the Glaziers within World’s Edge. Perhaps she has never seen the wall, or the myriad glass objects its people held close to their hearts. "Most anything you can think of is possible," he says, his smile still light on his features, ”the Moon’s gift is dexterous." Glancing at his gourd all that distance away, he bites down a sigh that threatens to escape him at his foolishness of putting all his things so far from him that he cannot show her with a stone. Oh well, he decides; she seems smart enough to understand the meaning of most anything.


@[Parelia]

He halfheartedly watches the bird take flight, not taking from the situation what the other mare did as was so often the case with him. He merely assumes the falcon has seen a snack some distance off and is out to capture it, not that it is a sign the bird has accepted him as someone to not be afraid of. Dragomir doesn’t feel that he is imposing in anyway, even after the disaster in the willow grove, and while he has faith that should it come to blows between himself and another, he will do alright enough to live, he would rather things stay quiet and peaceful, a droll sort of life.

He requires no flash or glamour, only a peace of mind. He would wish, if he knew the reason the bird had finally left their company, that he could be the sort who could wholly be trusted to uphold such notions – but he knows he is not. He can only try to be better than who he has been in the past.

After a few fleeting seconds of silence, his thoughts and sights are broken from the peregrine that has taken to the heavens, his face returning to the buttermilk mare with ears raised and pale eyes twinkling curiously. Make her something? He supposes it wouldn’t be too difficult a task, even if he began and finished work here and now, so long as she doesn’t want anything that requires materials back home or elsewhere in the land. His shoulders move in a rolling shrug, simple features tilted as he gives his reply.

"What were you wanting?" he asks, the yes implied in his rhetoric as he moves to fetch his gourd some distance away, assuming that whatever trinket she has in mind will surely have gemstones in it. Women were predictable in that they loved things that were beautiful, and as he returned back to her with his gourd between straight white teeth he takes a glance at her, her sweet shyness reminiscent of Alysanne, and his lips curve into a soft smile as the idea of what he’ll ask in exchange comes to mind and he lays his carrying device on the ground before him. "I have some supplies with me. Anything you’d like, within reason, of course – though I would like to trade," he adds, hoping it is not too steep a request arising from the lips of a novice such as himself, "I have friends back home who enjoy herbology; I’m sure they’d love some seeds and saplings for their garden, from wherever your home is." He pauses, his smile growing awkward as he realizes he may be assuming too much. "Sorry. I just haven’t seen you around the World’s Edge. I’m only guessing you don’t live there."

@[Parelia]

He watches her smile race bright and cheerful across her lips, a warm ripple spreading in his heart that he is learning to recognize as an emotion of fulfillment; that he can make a woman smile with just the promise of a pretty thing or two means something to him, most prominently that he can affect someone’s life and features so directly and that, though his art, he helps another in some way. She asks for armor, a suitable and logical thing with purpose, and his blue eyes trace her spine as she describes her reasons for wanting them to find the scars there, pale pink against the painted cream of her coat.

His brows rise. It was as if she’d been stabbed and sliced by some relentless thorn.

It was no matter to him, really, he supposes, brushing the dark preludes of the scarring along her from the fringes of his thoughts and already imagining ways to give her what she desired. He glances down at his gourd and sees several quarter inch chunks of blue stone that mirror the color of her hair as she asks; they don’t sparkle and gleam like sapphire or emerald, but they are pretty, speckled with black like a robin’s egg.

He finds it fitting, seeing as she is part bird herself.

Still, there are only enough of the blue stones in the gourd to make one band, and so he returns her smile as she accepts his offer of a trade and parts his lips to reply, wrapping up the deal. "Come find me in World’s Edge when you have the items to exchange; I should have enough of the stones gathered then to create them. I’ll have to make the bands directly onto your wings,” he says with a softening to his expression, "so be prepared to spend some time when you come. Just ask for me at the border, the others should be cordial as usual.”