Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Sticky

"If you lot are done," Itek drawled, smirking, "Marcus wants to know where we'll be eating dinner this evening. I wasn't about to say off Korr's ass."

"That would be an option, I suppose," I said.

"Don't tempt my brother!" Asund called from the hallway. "He'd do it just to prove a point."

"Well, the food would be served cold," Korr said, trying to sneak the comb from my hand while I was distracted. He did not succeed.

Asund popped his head over Itek's shoulder. "Did I not just warn you to not encourage the situation? Perhon would live to scandalize you. In the way you would not like nor ever recover from."

"That sounds intriguing and challenging."

"Could you not parade your ass for everyone curious about it?" I asked Korr, because knowing him, he would say something and one thing would lead to another and he would end up being a table for the evening. Perhon might have been family, but he was also a wolf who wanted something, and with wolves, their pack always came before their family.

Ormiss appeared in the doorway, expression dour. "It is not your ass to parade any longer, dragon. Be respectful."

Then Ormiss walked away in a swirl of dark braids.

Itek watched him go, then looked back at us. "I have to tell the bird something. Here or there? And we are going to have to decide what we are going to tell him. He is on his own with these bugs."

"Isn't that what we're going to tell him?" Ormiss asked from farther down the hallway.

"Diplomatically," Itek said over his shoulder.

Ormiss swished back into view. "I am aware you mean diplomatically. I am telling you that is the diplomatic way of doing it. He is a wolf that came all this way to beg for help. He is desperate, and he is doing something desperate, and he knows that we all know it's desperate. Respect him and his desperation enough to tell him we are not in a position to help him directly. Then we make plans to go to the northern mountains."

Northern mountains? Who ever said anything about the northern mountains? That was the exact opposite direction I wanted to go.

Ormiss looked around my room, then stepped carefully over the threshold, one eye on me to make sure I wasn't about to banish him.

Asund leaned against the other side of the door from from Itek. "Why would we go north?"

Ormiss pointed at Korr and Ethat. "If I remember my dragon customs properly, they need to present Theia to the other dragons of their roost. Breeching this protocol is somewhat on the same scale of disgrace as a Hippocamp stallion not having prepared his consort's abode."

Ethat fiddled worriedly with his fingers while Korr's lips bent down in an annoyed frown.

"And," Ormiss held up a finger, "Theia has been seeing snowy mountains. We need to pursue what the God of Barren Branches told her, and where better to do that than the last remote forest in autumn where unicorns were seen? And it will give us the opportunity to go to speak with the dragons and the gryphons to the south on our way back about the bugs. We have to send Perhon away empty-handed, but we do not need to abandon him."

Ethat fiddled, his fireflies turning to black flies with worry. Korr reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

"After that, if we still have no real answers," Ormiss turned his attention to me. He came over and knelt at my knee, skirts pooling around him. "And then if we still need more answers, I will take you to the island where we met, and we will look for this tower."

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Peeeeepppsssssss

Ooooh, GONNA GO MEET THE FAMILY. GONNA GO MEET THE FAMILY. 

Who's excited? I'm excited! Yay! 

Now I must go try to puzzle over TikTok. I abandoned it for a while, then recently went back to it, and now it's just trying to convince me all I want to watch is people doing stupid dancing and/or lip syncing lame stuff. 

It's so bad I actually checked all my like and follow history on my profiles to make sure my accounts weren't doing weird things while I was on hiatus. Nope. Literally the only things I've ever liked are book/author stuff. And the occasional cat video. I wonder if it's because TiKTok is quarantined on the "plague phone"  (I keep TikTok on a factory reset stripped-to-the-bones phone tied to a burner Google account that is ONLY used to TikTok) and it doesn't have anything useful to spy on, so it's like "MILLIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE LOVE THIS STUFF. YOU WILL LOVE IT TO. YOU MUST. PLEASE NEVER LEAVE US AGAIN. CONSUME. OBEY. CONFORM. SUBMIT." 

I can't believe I'm about to say it, but the pimple popping videos it fed me when I first started were better than watching people dance in random places. Either I cringe or I get annoyed at the assholes who go into business for themselves making videos on planes or buses or the dairy section of Piggly Wiggly or gyrating on the Publix fried chicken or whatever. You aren't the Main Character. Stop. Just stop. Either way, I mush "do not like" and scroll as fast as I can. 

Where are the cat videos. ._. I want to find that cat that wears capes and walks down a catwalk again... 

~Merry

(paltry pantster) 

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