He smiles, never having been overly impressed with the empty, idle niceities of social demand himself, and even less so since entering Helovia. He's found that most of the natives are impeccably and uninterestingly well mannered, at least until you insult their sensibilities, relatives, or physical attributes, something that he does on a more regular basis than bowel movements. Far from being repulsed by the mares unusual tack in conversation starting, he finds her blunt morbidity engaging, a twitch of amusement softening the angle of his ears.

"Drowning." He answers mildly, turning his head to gesture toward the well lit oceanscape outside. "If we were far enough down for the pressure alone to be lethal we wouldn't have enough light to see by. I think I'd prefer to be crushed by the stone and glass instead though. No need to draw it out." Drowning is a relatively slow process as far as he understands it, the body first sealing itself off from further water inhalation and then convulsively trying to draw in air that isn't available. While he accepts death as an unavoidable, undeterrable force of nature, he shrinks from the idea of unnecessary suffering, the thirty to sixty seconds of being aware that one is drowning definitely falling into that category by his reckoning.

Strom, his head and an inch or two of indescriminate neck/body still free of his cotton haven, thoroughly disapproves of such morbid thoughts. His little heart clenches at the mental images being evoked. 'Sad.' He complains, flicking his tongue and cocking his pear shaped head at the sound of the bronze dragons trill. Immediately he's acutely interested in the creature, never having seen one himself and jealously aware that the stallion had intended to hatch and bond with one of those instead of him, though he doesn't hold it against the bronze.

Snakes don't have any vocalization save the iconic hiss of negative emotions, so he simply stares unblinking - for snakes don't have eyelids to raise or lower in emotional intensity either - in the dragons direction and hopes that this somehow translates to: Hello. I'm Strom. Who are you? What are you doing? Can you really breathe fire? How big will you grow? What's it like having legs? By some miracle of reptilian understanding. The stallion breathes his own wordless greeting to the bronze, briefly studying its size and color in comparison to the white faced stallions gold and red.

He still finds the creatures fascinating and somewhat romanticized in his mind despite his recent personal experiences which include, but are not limited to, having thorns removed from his genitals by tiny dragon hands, but the desire to have one of his own has faded dramatically since bonding with and fully accepting the bond of his own companion. Now he looks at them with a more neutral appreciation than the previously covetous obsession, a development that immeasurably pleases the young python, almost enough to forgive his bonded for basically planning his own death until the black opens his mouth for a second time.

Turning back to the mare, he suddenly asks, "Do you think Kisamoa would scavenge us? Well, maybe not you. The Earth God would probably frown on his emissaries eating his children, but me at least. With that nightmare mouth, he's no vegetarian." Pescetarian, maybe, he thinks, but definitely a carnivore.



"Alby talks" 'Strom talks'
OOC // @Isopia