The other, red as blood and spines dull as bone, straightens and lengthens, quarrelsome sinew unraveling and reknitting into a pose of simultaneous power and fortitude. Lilómiel's skittering mind snaps into focus upon Vérzés' erect posture, the tangled thickets of his irritable thoughts traveling towards places of battle and establishing dominance. His companion's lips pucker, ears flicking backwards uncertainly; no, she reprimands, letting the refusal swing and cut through the squamation's wily planning—but even in her scolding, she wonders if it might be better to simply let them have at it, as predators sometimes must. Without order and rulers, the world may as well be a place of anarchy; a place where each and every man was on his or her own.

Unbidden, Nymeria's gaze strays thoughtfully to Volterra, crimson-hued irises calculating and curious. If it came down to a fight between them, who would win? They were each as balanced to one another as could be; he in the ways of earth and their ancestor, Terrador, and she in water and ocean, no doubt a strange throwback to the peculiar magics of her mother's lineage. Oh! What that would be! It was a divine thought, a lovely one that flushed her right from head to toes to dream of: imagine, their bodies heaving on the sand and the smack and hit and crack of their immortal flesh, the scrape of teeth over black hide and their dragons warring in fire and ash above.

"Perhaps," Nymeria proclaims, dipping her head in acquaintance of Volterra's point. "And yet on the other hand, it is also a trademark of fools and tragic heroes." A hint of an unruly smile twitches up her lips as she studies her brother, head beginning to lilt off to the side.

Are you still as pigheaded as I remember you to be?

Their companions seem to steady, easing off one another (much to Nymeria's approval.) Lilómiel chirps, fluting his mild disappointment, and settles back on her withers, weight curling over the girl's body comfortably. His silver-sheathed talons nestle and knead in the curly locks of her growing mane—don't you dare rip that out, you bastard—and he lets trickle a puff of smoke from his nostrils, his body immediately beginning to warm against her. A handy trick, that; sometimes she thought without his accompanying, fire-borne warmth, her ears might've fallen off by now.

It is her dragon, not her, that notices the cold billowing from Vérzés' nostrils at mention of his name.

Surprise undulates through their bond, and Nym recoils, jerking abruptly upright to stare once again at the red dragon. A good name, she thinks, absent-mindedly; she should compliment her brother on his typically boorish little-boy well-thought decision. Instead, this sense of shock (really, Lilómiel, is it that astonishing?) prevails. Does Volterra know? Once more her attention turns towards her readily maturing brother. "Yes," and here she trickles off, musing—"Lil sees your bonded, Vérzés, doesn't breathe fire. That's rather peculiar, isn't it?"

Together they draw up tall, indignant, and she arches her neck, lifting her brows waspishly, lips pressing and needling together. Once again, rather forcibly, she is reminded of her brother's size, the burgeoning muscle stretching his black skin and the thickness of his bones; she is too small beside him, and even with her growing curves and lengthening mane and proud lines she feels to be a miginard mare, something to be protected rather than feared.

And she abhors Volterra for his good fucking genes.

"They would never dare—" The arachnid's eyes sweep close, and she swallows, nares flexing wide in rage and terror—"to do those things to her." Those repulsive, dreadful things; "... that is... she is a god, Volterra. They wouldn't."

Would they?