Wishes and Scales @lady_kaivodulin

[forrestertailor]

The town in the middle of the swamp had a name, but none of the locals used the one Eligre had been given when she set out to find the naga that ruled the swamp. She found herself among a small clutch of whitewashed buildings, put up among chestnut trees that still hung with blood stained hammocks, echoes from when the town's founder carried his pregnant wife on their long expedition through the mountains and down into the humid jungle where they made their home. Everyone in town confirmed that reality began shortly before their founder, who in his dotage had gone mad and was now tied to the chestnut tree in the center of his family's courtyard, doted on by his granddaughters and niece, built the white house in the middle of town. They said that, for ages, no one in town died because it was new, and Death could not find them on the map. But then an old traveler, the leader of a circus, settled in town with his dear friend, the founder, and when he died and left the founder's son his crow-feathered hat, then Death found the little town with no name. 

The locals were... informative, though they could not be made to be helpful. They knew many things, particularly about their founding family and its erratic, incestuous dealings, and despite the madness of that family most people agreed they were no worse than the other people in the world. Cock fighting was illegal, and rumblings from the capitol far away from the swamp stated that houses must be painted blue, not white. When Eligre arrived a tall, dark young man with a waxed mustache was organizing a troop of bastard sons to march on the capitol's forces and demand the rights of bastards to inherit, and for houses to be painted whatever color people pleased. She watched the squadron form, the mustachioed boy's eyes fiery and dark and wet, and watched him ride off with an unmistakable air of failure already drifting around him like an unseen flock of crows.

An ancient old woman, his mother, stood outside the palatial white house with the begonias on the porch, and told her about the ruler of the swamp. 

The bizarre little town owned none of its strangeness to their neighbor, though they often relied on them for guidance, luck, and the fulfillment of wishes. Stories abounded of the wish granter: women given new faces and bodies when they bowed and asked in a strong voice, children imbued with the wisdom of ancient creatures, a rabbit who whiled their way into manhood, men devoured for the crime of mumbling. It was, to a learned mage, par for the course as wish granting went. Intense, powerful magic but unpredictable. She could not interview any of the grantees, only the few people at the edges of their stories, but Eligre could be sure the stories were real. And such a place, a swampy jungle where mere habitation could create a town like Macondo, gave every indication of very very old, and very very powerful magic. 

She was told the naga was picky, vain, and liked opulent gifts. Those few who returned from the spring had all brought elegant gifts to lay before the creature, and nothing was ever heard of those who journeyed there empty handed. The snake considered conduct an artform, had been heard letting their operatic voice free in long verses that shivered through the heavy wet jungle leaves. He despised ugliness, but gave little thought to morals, instead preferring to be entertained by the world, not lectured. 

After dressing and starting out in the pre-dawn hours, hoping to avoid the irrepressible heat of the jungle, she knew she was close as the flora started to shift to tones of deep purple, the trees grew tall and thick and ridged with scaly bark, ferns drifted up with peacock eyes at their tips and waved Cambrian stamen. The ground was thick with wet underbrush, the sun blocked by the far off tops of trees leaving the swamp in a perpetual steamy twilight. 

In the dimness, behind her, away, but never far enough, the smell of smoke followed. Pacing ever closer, until she could feel the dry heat crackling on her skin and hear the panting thing with every wrong turn.

Just passed noon, as the sun blazed far above and the jungle roasted down below, she heard the voice delighting itself in the branches. Strong, deep, with a musical lilt. Poetry, by the meter, but she couldn't make out the language. It called to mind shedding manuscripts that withered with the softest touch of fresh air. She followed the sound and the swamp grew warmer still, until the air was a foggy, humid wall she had to press her whole body through.

At last the trees opened onto a pyramid of stone and the noise of laughing water. On a hill, the only hill she had seen since leaving the strange little town, a series of terraced stone pools spilled out on all sides. Pouring one into another, the hotspring was made of small tide pools at its base, that grew and deepened in steppes up to a single pool at the top of the hill. There, with his long tail wound along the edge in big, heavy coils, its tip wagging to and fro with the patter of his verse, the naga bathed.

Even from afar she could tell he was a creature of enormous proportions, his coils wider around than her whole body and piled such that she couldn't guess how long he must be. His tail was pure black, so deep and lightless the eye struggled not to fall endlessly into it, dappled with the humidity. The foggy light left all of him the color of coal, a soft shimmer hinting at the iridescence of his scales. Their head and shoulders hung over the edge of the steaming pool, long arms made of long cords of muscle, ending in long hands with long fingers wearing a king's random of shiny rings. Their face was peaceful, self-satisfied, and lost in their poetry. Eyes closed, canted back in repose with their long neck exposed to the steam heat. Miles of black braids hung down nearly to the next tier of the spring, ten feet below, each braid threaded with jewels and gold and shimmering stones. The way they drifted in the air Eligre could tell they were even thinner than her little finger. 

The naga finished his verse and, sighing at the profound beauty of his recitation, sank more and more of his tail into the water until it poured over the edge, dousing his shoulders and chin and running down to the other pools in long chiming rivets. 

Comments

[lady_kaivodulin]

It's like a place out of a tall tale, the village with the white houses and the people for whom the wildest dreams were everyday reality, if only in their dreamy heads. But it's a Wish that she seeks and she supposes that these are the kind of people one finds while looking for the kind of storied and strange magic she's after. She lets them recommend how best to dress for their odd benefactor's pleasure, goes broke buying both stories and trinkets and bolts of lawn so fine they can be pulled through a ring to wrap around herself.

But all the money in the world can't buy her out of the fix she's in so what good is it to keep?

She tries to get more straightforward directions, or someone to guide her to the place where the creature lives but she mostly just runs out of money in exchange for more inane rambling. So she sets out on her own, hoping it's not too far to go in her linen and pretty jewelry.

The buzz of insects is almost loud enough to drown out the panting at her heels. Almost. She hurries onward, not keen to be out here in the dark when she can almost feel hot breath, the drip of slavering anticipation.

She is sweaty and bug-bitten and exhausted by the time she finally beholds the beautiful, absurd sight of the creature draped over his bathing pools. She's sure she's not making a graceful entrance, sure he can hear her panting as she ascends the stones, the air so thick that drawing it into her lungs was almost painful.

The hum of magic in the air traces patterns on her skin that make her shiver and she can smell it, like the perfume of certain aphrodisiac flowers.

"Finally." She says, as she steps up to the big bathing pool, ignoring the screaming ache in her legs and the blisters in her boots. "You must be the one they speak of so highly down below, the granter of wishes."

No committed to the sibilant 'S's but we'll see how it goes

[forrestertailor]

The snake's eyes open, bright and round and firefly green. He lifts his head, looking up at the tiny woman at the lip of his pool. His head tilts to the side, his eyes unblinking as they move over the fine lawn draped around her. He tastes the air, his long black tongue flashing out and almost flicking her nose before it darts back between his bow lips. It moves so quickly she only recalls the vague forked shape when its out of sight.

"I?" The naga drifts forward, his coils sighing as they slide passed her and continue pouring into the water. He moves through the water easily, sinking up to his chin and then rising to prop both arms on the stone lip of the pool, at her feet. His eyes glow, slipping up her body to the pale, sweaty face hemmed in by slick black hair. As he lounges in front of her Eligre sees the hundred weight of gold and precious stones roped around his neck, bobbing on the surface of the water.

The naga smiles at her, cupping his cheek in a jewel bedecked hand. Long black nails wait at the tip of each finger. Despite his glowing eyes and striking features, the lines in his cheek give him an oddly human expression.

"It'sss true, I have granted a wish or two in my time. They speak of me, eh? Tell me, little frog, what do they sssay?"

[lady_kaivodulin]

She's not prepared for the emerald scrutiny of his gaze and suddenly feels very aware of how frizzy her hair has gone, trying to escape the huge, braided coil pinned at the back of her skull. The linen clings to her sweat, giving her body a sort of wet-drapery effect of pale lawn against flushed alabaster where it presses, translucent, against her skin.

"They say that you like pretty presents and flattery and that if I please you, you have the power to grant me anything I need or desire." She says. "So I've brought you all of this." She holds out her arms, gestures to the baubles on her wrists and around her neck. Perhaps the way her movement directs his gaze to her body under the delicate fabric is incidental. Perhaps not. "And I have need of your considerable power."

There's a big spider on my desk and I lost track of him I'm going to DIE

[forrestertailor]

[[I killed the spider and I didn't cry or scream or throw up in office but I can feel my white streak growing in even now]]

"Iss that all they say?" His head tips to the other side, his fingers curling down towards his palm where his nails drift lightly over his skin. The naga's curiosity, his big eyes and bow lips, all give him a clueless, puppy-dog look.

He listens, blinking slowly and drawing the tip of a nail back and forth down his hairless cheek. The snake's movements are unhurried, mellow and liquid despite his size and bulk. Despite the urgent mission that's brought her tracking through a swamp full of crazy people and climbing up to the top of the only hill for miles around.

Moving with gravity, yet weightless, the snake plants both hands on the lip of the pool and pushes themself up. Long, round muscles are etched black-on-black in their arms then gone as Luka rises out of the water and keeps rising. Hot water and steam pours off of them, spray finding her damp face and hands as the snake loops a coil to the left of her left foot and he leans very close.

"Let'ss see," He moves just behind her, leaving a view of his endless coils simmering in the pool in a loose, deepening black spiral, refracted and wavering through the steam. This close the spider-light touch of magic intensifies, weaving ancient patterns on her skin through her clouds of lawn. Its touch is powerful, indifferent, with the coolness of the first dawn. Just chilly enough that the skating power leaves her feeling the weight and heat of the jungle air. It's touch shifts across her body, feathery and soft at her fingertips and heavy, expectant, like waves breaking across her chest.

His hand takes hers, lifting her rings into the light with her alabaster skin standing out like silver moonlight against his dark sea. He hums, a deep breathless note that reverberates in his chest, just beside her ear. She can see his head leaned passed her shoulder, a few long braids drifting along her arm as he scans her rings, her bangles and bracelets, the armband holding lawn against her shoulder. His tongue leaps out, a flash of black and silver, and tastes a tumbled rock on her finger. He shifts, looking down her other arm from behind her, then his scaly coils sigh as he leans over her right ear, looking straight down at her. His tongue zips across her cheek, the forked tip lighting across the pool of her collarbones and just under the linen clinging to her chest.

This close she can just make out a long, iridescent diamond on his back, a subtle silver in the wide scales of his belly. His braids chime as he moves and he smells dry, woody and green, like budding verbena.

"Very fine piecess," He says, settling atop his thick coils to her right. His head lilts this way and that, his firefly eyes dancing in the gloom of his face. "And this is all you bring?"

Oh no!

[lady_kaivodulin]

"I could bring nothing else. All I had left was traded for information about you." She says. "There is only me and these trinkets, which I was assured would please you."

She's almost dizzy from the power she can feel at their proximity. She wants to inhale it like hash smoke, take it into her body, and feel it shimmer through her veins. She wants to hold it in her hands. She wants to bend it to her will.

She wants to surround herself with it so that she cannot be harmed by the thing in the woods, nor the masters that it serves.

The forked tongue that flicks through the perfumed sweat gathering at her collarbone makes her want to be surrounded in an entirely different way, but she pulls herself together to focus.

"I need your help rather urgently." She says, her eyes huge and liquid when they look up at him, surrounded by their heavy ring of black cosmetic. "I cannot risk going back through the woods without it."

I know, I almost died fr in real life

[forrestertailor]

“No? Why is that? What chasess you, little frog?” He bends towards her, always somewhat stooped towards the object of his focus. It makes his long face even nosier, his bright eyes shining with curiosity.

While he wastes her time his hand wanders back up her wrist, fingering her rings, he tail sloughs coil by coil out of the pool. It winds around them in a steadily widening perimeter, though the spring still looks full of blackness. Ahead of the rest, the tip of his tail taps at the toe of her left foot, then seeks the warmth of her ankle. It’s soft and very warm from the bath, each scale delicate and dreamy smooth.

[lady_kaivodulin]

"I need a wish. I need a promise broken, the kind I can't just break myself without consequence." She says, watching him examine her jewelry. She can hear the sigh of loops and loops of scaly muscle, seemingly endless as he pulls himself from the bath.


She feels his tail wind around her ankle, glancing down with a startled expression.

"I won't be safe until I'm out of it. I already risked my life even going into the woods to come here." She says, gesturing down to the velvet green dark of the undergrowth below them. "There must be something I can give you."

[forrestertailor]

“Most people tell me a sstory,” they prime their chin on their palm, fingers drumming delicately on an obsidian cheekbone. Their tail winds once around her bony little ankle, its tip slowly rising along the muscle of her calf. She’s such a small creature, with loud spiky magic in her core. He can feel it, as if he were watching a storm far off on the sea, its fury yet lashing the shore. A metallic, coppery spark in the roiling clouds.

“You come with a wish, you come braided and polished, just as you sshould. But you don’t have a past, no sstory to tell me.” Lacing their fingers together, he draws her around to face him. His other hand takes her jaw (so tiny and brittle!) and lifts her face up so her white eye and shock of spider-silk hair catch the light.

Another flash of his tongue, just above her scar.

“Very dangerous for pretty girls to break their promisses.”

[lady_kaivodulin]

She gasps when he draws her close. Holds her hand like a lover, flicks his tongue over her skin. The magic on him makes her want to press closer, like sinking deeper into one of his bathing pools.

She softens her voice and her vicious little face. She feels his tail creeping up her leg and doesn't try to pull away.

"Please help me, a fate worse than death awaits me if you don't." She pleads, trying to sound alluringly breathless rather than just hot and tired. "There must be something I can give you." She turns her head into the hand on her jaw and presses her painted lips to his palm, boldly.

Down below, something huge reaches the treeline and paces: the same scent of magic that so intoxicates her with its ancient power also makes the beast wary.

Gross dog be upon you!

[forrestertailor]

His eyes darken at the kiss, slit pupils growing into fat black diamonds.

“Pretty and relentlesss,” he muses, their rings chiming together as he pulls her close. His hand slips down to her throat, the tips of his fingers smooth and cool on the back of her neck. His thumb pets her lower lip. His other arm winds behind her back with his hand on her ribs. Draws her up, pressing her chest to his belly.

“I could use you,” he tells her, his tail tickling the back of her knee and curling around her thigh. “See how long you last, teach you to be tireless, too.”

The breathless hum sounds again, like the singing of cicadas, buzzing through her where their bodies meet.

“You will make a fine cupbearer. Never far, always ready to sserve when I grow thirsty.”

He grins, long white fangs shining. Luka starts to say more but pauses, the thing in the trees catching his attention. The electric air of his magic shifts, a bolt zinging across to break open the trees and spear the beast. It rolls, claws and teeth and black tar squirming and trailing off of it as it tumbles free of the jungle.

The thing stands, moving goey snapped legs as if each limb were broken yet still animated by an unfeeling will. The hellhound’s head raises, a long dripping mass of tar with eyes, teeth, clumps of hair dipping and bobbing across its surface. A black tongue peels free, grows jagged mismatched teeth and snaps its new jaws. The red light of hellfire glints between them. The hound’s shoulders rise, bulky and bubbling with smoke and flame. Dribbling and panting, its boiling body closes the spear-wound and it growls, black ripples churning across its face.

[lady_kaivodulin]

Whatever flirtatious thing she's feeling around in her scheming brain for shatters apart when the hellhound is in bare daylight.

"There, you see it now." She says, with genuine misery. "It will take me if I try to cross the forest again." She parts the drape of the fabric around her torso so he can see the vicious-looking sigil cut or burned into the space between her breasts. "It will drag me back to the one who sent it and I will suffer an eternity of pain." She presses close to them, her face pressed just below their breastbone.

"I will be your cupbearer, I will pay any price for you to grant my wish: to break the bonds which tie me to the hells. I'll always be at your side to serve you, as I don't dare leave it for fear it will seize me the moment I can no longer feel your magic against my skin."

Damn she got his ass hook, line, and sucker

[forrestertailor]

His scaly back is leathery, tiny beveled scales as smooth and cool as polished stones under her fingers. Each one is no bigger than her fingernail, little midnight gems. His chest, round and supple under her cheek, is suddenly familiar and human in contrast to the long stretch of scale and muscle beneath. Following from the bony V of his hips are wide, silver glinting belly scales, perfectly smooth with just a little give. His body moves minutely with the tensing of small chains of muscle, his scales rippling gently. She can feel the enormity of his form, like his magic, so accustomed to easy power he handles it with a delicacy, like a fragile favorite toy.

He takes in the bare white skin shining with sweat and finally breathing, free of its lawn confines. The blackened, burnt scar carving her up. A familiar sigil, matching the sooty, brimstone taste of her aura. Humming, their hand smooths over the top of her breast and the harsh shape of her brand pales and disappears as if they wiped a little ash from her chest. In the close air between them an invisible silver thread winds around them and ties itself off.

"Touching, very touching," He watches her with a smile. The hand on her throat thumbs her chin up, towards the hellhound.

She feels them do something, tugging at the weave of magic holding reality together without seeming to do anything. A twist of steam shifts at the spring's edge, roiling and churning as the air picks up and a wave of force rockets towards the beast. Slicing through the air, it hammers into the hound's ugly liquid face and throws it back, splattering it across the base of an ancient tree. The beasts lets out a gout of flame, breaking open with a plume of putrid smoke, and green hungry plant life springs up to cover its blackness.

The thing is gone and Eligre's magic feels no different.

Turning back to her, Luka could not look more self-satisfied. But his expression droops as the illusion on her chest bubbles and smokes, her brand searing back into view.

"Oh-- My, my."

[lady_kaivodulin]

Eligre, a woman descended four generations back from a she-elf treasure hunter who coupled with a green dragon, finds a brief moment of fearless pleasure at his body in her embrace. Luka is something unbelievably powerful and rare and for a moment she imagines what it would be like to feel all that muscle writhing under her touch. The idea of all that power both physically and magic between her legs, made obedient to her by pleasure alone makes her shiver.

She feels the vast span of his hand over her skin, wiping away the brand like it's nothing and for a moment she could almost kiss him with the rush of relief she feels. When he wipes the hellhound from the material plane she cries out with joy and relief only to have it turn back to pain as the brand reassurts itself. She doesn't even have time to consider that his efforts were only illusory, only disappearing the brand and not the bargain. She lurches away from him, clutching her chest as the brand burns as bright as the day it was placed.

"No--!"

The family proclivity for scalies...

[forrestertailor]

As she jumps away his hand gropes to keep hold of her, squeezing her breast before her nipple is plucked from his pinching fingers. The grip of his tail on her leg almost topples her into the steaming pool, it loosens as heavy coils brim up around her ankles. Ready to constrict if she tries leaping away again.

"Tricky, tricky girl, breaking a devil's bargain with a wish." They run the point of one long nail over their lip as they speak. "How clever you are, little frog. And Hell is full of clever people, don't you know? What sshall we do when Abraxas rises up and begss my cupbearer from me?"

He draws close again, taking her chin and making her face him, not the brand.

"Who claims you, if your soul is Hell's and your body is mine?"

[lady_kaivodulin]

"Are you saying you can't do it?" She asks, and her little face curdles into rage and she's suddenly a squirming kitten in his grip, pushing at his chest with her porcelain hands. "You're not powerful enough to break it? Then I've no reason to give myself to you, since you can't hold up your end of the bargain."

She should probably appeal to his vanity, but insinuating that his ego is undeserved is the best she can manage under the circumstances.

"Might have known you were just sitting up here tricking bumpkins with parlor tricks."

Guess who just learned the name of the chemical enzyme that fireflies useeee!!!

[forrestertailor]

"'Parlor tricks?'" He's been interrogative and accusatory but now she sees a bright flash of anger in his luciferase eyes. There's a great shuddering of the air around her, like the crack of a cannon firing, but no smoke and no ball fly. Instead her color vision dims, greens blooming everywhere in all different tones and hues. Her skin is cracked and dry, then grows waxen and thirsty even in the thick jungle air. Her bones narrow, shrinking and grinding down into a tiny new body and her tongue grows elastic, balled in the back of her throat just beyond the holes where her new round, wet eyes sink down to help her swallow.

Luka twists the orientation of her next move, so the little frog can't jump anywhere but into his palm. Keeping her in the crush of his fist, he sighs and slithers inside.

From where she rides she can see his belly, the occasional inch of a cave wall, and she smells wet air freshening and cooling as he moves down and down for a long time. The next thing she's aware of is his fist opening and she falls into a fluted crystal glass of ice cold water.

Luka, his body wound around the semi-circular Orange Parlor, lays on a heap of bright colored pillows. The walls are entirely covered with tapestries of orange, purple, and goldenrod. The floor is covered with cushions, papers, thick rugs and silver bric-a-brac. Around him is more wealth and beauty than most people enjoy in three lifetimes, and this is the room where he brings guests he can't stand. She hasn't earned the Red Room yet but he doesn't doubt she has it in her.

He watches her, his cheek leaned on the beveled shape of his rings, and finally sighed when he decides her cold blooded body has had enough ice water. With another pop Eligre regains herself, sopping wet and sending the fluted glass skittering across the floor.

[[Not clocked in at the Description Factory just yet but we'll get there]]

[lady_kaivodulin]

It is incredibly unpleasant to be turned into a frog, physically, so for a while he has blessed silence as she's in the sheer shock of the pain and disorientation.

She's a very pretty frog at least, of the kind people catch to make paralytic arrows from the slick of their skin, jet black with bright green spots that warn of the danger.

Once she recovers her senses, however, she makes a series of leaky shrieks into the curl of his hand. The ice water cools her temper somewhat and she's numb and sleepy by the time he releases her from the amphibious prison, whimpering as she's dashed across the floor, dress now mostly a transparent and unpleasant hindrance where it clings to her and drips. She's gasping and sputtering and shivering and her eyes blaze when she looks at him, trying to find some dignity where there isn't any to be found.

And yet, he didn't simply eat her, so there's that.

"All that just to bring me down here?" She snorts, picking up a cushion to cover herself with as she sits in a widening puddle on one of his brightly patterned rugs.

Lmaoo 5 storey walk up to a chorus of ‘eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[forrestertailor]

Small wonder that one so poisonous would be so beautiful.

They consider turning the pillow she clutches into a swarm of yellow butterflies, but decides seeing her body isn’t worth it. Already Luka can see the caprice that’s landed Eligre in this place, and they have to concede she’s a rare one indeed, to fear devils so little that she would worm her way out of their bargain. Perhaps she’s forgotten (how could she?) that he too is beautiful.

They unfurl their hand, tilting their cheek flush with their palm, and raise an indolent finger to point at the crystal glass on the other side of the room.

“Cupbearer, you’ve made a mess. See to it.”

[lady_kaivodulin]

She makes a peevish noise as she tosses the cushion away and goes to retrieve the crystal glass, squinting at it to make sure it doesn't have any cracks or chips. It is surprisingly whole, perhaps due to the sheer amount of cushions and rugs about. She waves away the puddles of water on the floor and returns the cup to the little lacquered table where it had come from.

"Satisfied?" She asks, arms crossed over her chest, brand the color of fresh ink through the fabric.

[forrestertailor]

They pin her with their swamp-light eyes, watching with an unreadable animal expression. Their tongue laps out, lazily this time so she can actually see it before it zips back between their lips. Slowly, with the heap of cushions bobbing under them and revealing more and more silk, satin, velvet, tassels, mirrored eyelets and thick embroidery, they roll onto their back and let their braids cascade out across the pillows, the rugs.

They stretch out an arm and raise a finger, snagging its nail in the wet fabric of her dress right over her brand. Pulls her over, looking up at her with their nose level with her belly.

"Your bargain," the room hums softly with their voice, gentle in repose as their eyes skate up and through her wet gown. "What did you win?"

[lady_kaivodulin]

"Expansion of the power I was born with." She says, with the same bitterness as one might speak of a collapsed marriage. "And the ability to read and access texts and materials forbidden to most magic users who either balked at the notion of unlimited power or could not read text obfuscated by infernal or dead language. Abraxas gave me the power to see things that are hidden." Which is why he had taken one of her eyes before his acolytes had cut his mark into her chest.

[forrestertailor]

"Power power power," The firefly eyes roll and his tail wags back and forth on the other side of the room, punctuating his words with dry taps on the floor. "And never enough. Abraxasss would be so glad if I handed you over."

Their finger plucks free from her gown, letting it frump down over her brand. They ball their fists and stretch both arms, head pressing back into the pillows as they yawn. Their tongue laps out and back into its narrow split, fangs standing out pointedly until they sigh and blink up at her.

"Why? So you can never die? Rule here? Rule Hell?"

[lady_kaivodulin]

"So I can do whatever I wish. But mostly just to know." She says. "You wouldn't understand, of course. You who already have so much power at your fingertips. Supposedly."

She frowns down at them.

"It's not my fault for wanting things. Having ambition. Having curiosity. Having hunger."

Lmk if the polymorphy gets on your nerves 👍

[forrestertailor]

Luka frowns, upside-down, not managing to look sympathetic. He twirls a finger lazily through the air and her left hand turns froggy, she-elf sized but webbed, with four long black and green digits. Her rings clatter to the floor and he scoops them up, making them roll one after the other in a neat line into his grasp. Bored, he puts them on one by one and decides how they look. Waves his fingers and watches the light.

Like her hand the rings are changed by no mere illusion, instead rewritten to fit his fingers and made to stay that way until he decides otherwise.

He casts off two, tossing them aside like they’re simple chunks of iron.

“I’ve had she-elf before, delicate flavor. Floral when the meat hasn’t ssoured. I expect you will taste much better as a frog. That’ss what I know of hunger.”

No way, it's deeply funny esp since she's so vain about her body

[lady_kaivodulin]

She yelps, shaking the froggy hand with a wet flap.

"You asked me why I put myself in this position, I answered you." She hisses back, skittering after her rings. "And I'm sure frog or woman I'll be bitter."

She stands as far away from his body as she's able, though his long tail seems to encircle the room.

"Telling me you can't help me would have been sufficient. Playing games just to embarrass me is unkind."