Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Kraawww!" Bell declared, standing imperiously over the half finished wooden flute. "... No, Bell, see... I need you to move. I need you to let me work with Marko's flute." Vera had, after all, promised the Harper a new flute before her fingers had been broken. She intended to make up for lost time now, but her newly hatched blue flit was having none of it. "Kraww." "Move it." "Kraaaw!" "..." That had precipitated a series of struggles with the aforementioned 'lizard.

"Krraawwwww!" Exasperated, Vera picked up the little beastie and set him down on the table a distance from herself and the flute. "You can't have that. That is not yours." "... Kraaww." That was a sullen tone if she had ever heard one. Oh dear. "I don't care what faces you make at me, you still can't have that." Delicate little tools did not need to be played with quite like that. She rolled her eyes, and proceeded to try to ignore the flit.

... Unfortunately, winged things had this rather irritating tendency to simply fly back to where they weren't wanted. "Krrraaawww!" He was having none of that. Stretching himself up to his tallest, the flitter puffed his chest out and attempted to look important. "... You are aware that you are ridiculous, right?" Oy. Of all the personalities that he could've ended up with, it had to be an arrogant self important one didn't it?

"Krraww," Bell said disapprovingly, eying the newcomer. "No, he doesn't, does he?" Vera pried the firelizard's feet off of her instrument, and tossed him in the air. He took off, and circled around her head, landing on her shoulder... and started the process again. "Shardit, Bell, that is not a toy." She so rarely swore that it would have been a bit startling, if only one of the other Harpers had been around.

"Are you offering?" she asked, not quite able to conceal the faint hope in her voice. Flutes were difficult enough to work with without the addition of a firelizard to the mix. "Kraaaaaawww!" Apparently the offered assistance was not welcome as far as Bell was concerned. The blue flit flared his wings, hissing in a threatening manner.

She eyed him. "Bell..." "Kraaw!" "Bell." "Sssssss..." Rolling her eyes, the Journeyman Harper attempted to extricate the hissing creature from his perch up on her shoulder. He clung fiercely to the material of her sleeveless tunic, making his disapproval very, very plain. "Hush, you." "Ssss!" At least he wasn't biting her.

"Yes, he is. I don't know where he learned that behavior," she said exasperatedly, tugging on the little beast. Bell, who was having none of that, clung all the harder. "He's always like this." Really, that was a pity, but there was nothing to be done about it. She was no firelizard traner by any means, and he was not willing to behave himself.

"Then I shall take you up on your offer," Vera said, attempting to transfer the flit over to the young man. The flit, it appeared, was not going to tolerate such an indignity. "Ssssssss!" Bell said, fanning his wings and digging his feet in. "Shame on you. Come play with the nice man." "Kraawww!" He drew himself up to his full height and hissed again. If fanning his wings and hissing didn't get his point across, he didn't know what would. This was entirely inappropriate! How dare the not-Vera thing try to take him from her? His toys were here, not there.

... And it was trying to bribe him! He knew that the moment he left his mistress she would be in danger. Xeran had taught him well, and he remembered his lessons. Hissing, the blue hatchling took a swipe at Alambri, expressing his displeasure at the current state of things. "Yes, his name is Bell. Other names include 'nuisance', 'shardit', and 'hey you'." The little brat wasn't cooperating at all.

The fish bits smelled good... but not good enough to draw Bell away from his position as a sentinel. "Sss!" He took another swipe at Alambri, coincidentally (or not so coincidentally) shaking the fish bit from his grasp. He flipped his wings onto his back and raised his head as if to say 'Idiot. Don't you know that my food is brought to me, and not the other way around?' ... Obviously this had proven to be true in the past. Why it wasn't working now, Bell didn't know. "Aye, instruments are my specialty," Vera said distractedly as she tried once again to deal with her firelizard.

"I don't think that he quite approves of you, no. Whether he likes you is another matter. He's a bit young to be forming opinions of that nature just yet." Which should really have been obvious, but for the fact that Bell had a tendency to just... act like he was the most grown up flit that there ever was. He was, of course, entirely wrong. Vera wasn't sure what to make of it yet, except that she thought that it was rather adorable in its own way. Bell, of course, was only interested in the charm because he believed that it was a gift, an offering appropriately bestowed upon one of his superior nature. Obviously, the human was recognizing himself as the inferior creature, and offering tribute to appease the mighty firelizard. "Kraaww!" he said imperiously, puffing his chest out, and gravely transferred himself to Alambri... before proceeding to peck him.

Vera glanced up from her work to observe Alambri, and shook her head. "It's simple enough. You're talking to me. My mentor trained him to keep young men aware from me." Particularly ones who were friendly and determined to hold up a conversation for her. ... Where was Xeran, come to think of it? He usually had an uncanny way of arriving just in time to catch her in the act of introducing herself to some nice young man. Hmmn. Ah well. She'd take whatever chance she could get to make a new friend. "I am Journeyman Harper Vera," she replied, feeling very much as though she was being rather obvious with the 'Harper' bit. It wasn't to be helped, though. She wanted to establish herself as a person with goals, and interests, and not just a random Candidate, which she most definitely was not. Xer would've blown a gasket if a dragon had found her on Search. "Krraawww!" Bell declared, pecking at Alambri again in an attempt to dissuade him from talking to his mistress. "Oh, I've been here for a time. Not truly long, really."

"He certainly is," Vera said fondly, a touch of exasperation in her voice. "Kraww!" Bell shrieked, not at all impressed by the attempt at a distraction. ... The paw that reached out and caught the bauble was a mere coincidence. Quite. "Krrraaaw!" He pecked Alambri determinedly, asserting his dominance and superiority once more. "Kraww." It was obvious that the human did not understand his elevated speech patterns and thought processes. He would have to teach him the ways of the firelizard, and then perhaps he would be able to drive the fool thing away. "Careful, keep calling him mighty and he will develop more of an ego than he was born with." Which, really, was difficult to imagine under the circumstances. "Before I journeyed to Ista, I visited Keroon and Tillek, along with various other smaller holds." They had sent her to Seaholds, primarily, with the understanding that she would be able to get through to some of the more salt-thickened hides.

"Travel is a lot less exciting than you'd think, really. It involves a lot of dust, and saddle sores, and blisters." Vera was the sort who tended to simply walk wherever that she could. "... And once, a boat as well." Ista was an Island, after all. Instruments didn't really like being on boats, as far as she could tell. Wood in general didn't respond well to environments that tended to warp it. That, and metal was inclined to rust... it was a mess, overall. Hmmn, the flute was coming along nicely. She turned it this way and that, searching for inconsistences and flaws. Putting it to her lips, she blew, testing the sound. "Kraaawwwww!" Well, apparently Bell didn't like it so much. "What is it that you normally do, when you are not attempting to entertain cranky firelizards?" she asked, feeling somewhat curious. She hadn't really had the opportunity to make a male friend before who wasn't a Harper. At least she thought he wasn't a Harper. ... Appearances could sometimes be deceiving. "Hmm, well, it's somewhere in between, actually. I like traveling, but I also enjoy teaching. It's a bit difficult to teach when one cannot stay with any given group of students for a solid block of time." Bell, distracted by the flute's sound, did not peck Alambri.

As strange as it might sound, Vera had once deeply enjoyed her lessons. Then again, they were Harper lessons, so that did tend to make them better by definition, in her opinion. "I liked my lessons," she remarked, fingering the flute, which was on its way towards being finished, but certainly not complete by any stretch of the imagination. "I have always enjoyed lessons, but then again, you don't have Xeran and Marko for teachers." Which was very true, of course. Poor lad. "Who teaches Candidate lessons, anyway?" Surely S'van would know something about that, but alas, her erstwhile cousin was nowhere to be found. No doubt he was off bathing Galliath or getting into some mischief with Kas. "I think my cranky firelizard doesn't prefer you, but I expect that that is just because of Xeran's training. He's turned him into something of an attack flit."

"Krraaawww!" Bell screeched, pecking the hand that Alambri held up. "No, no. Shame on you, Bell. That is quite enough." "Krraww." Clearly, Bell disagreed. "Those don't look like they were fun," she observed, glancing at the lad's hand. "I wouldn't want to work with a forge, personally... though I sometimes have to improvise, when fashioning metal instruments. Hot metal is hot metal." And she was lucky enough not to have been burned. "Do you not wear wherhide gloves? Or rather, did you not?" That seemed somewhat unnecessarily dangerous to her, and she raised an eyebrow at the lad, shaking her head slightly. "This flute isn't quite finished, no. It's on its way there, but I think it will be another sevenday or so before I can truly say that it is done." And then, no doubt, she would have to seek Marko out to see if there were another changes he wanted made to his instrument.