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Character: Suluksati
Stage: Khehora
Luck: 30
Creature: Gaili Dragon x 10
Success Rate: 6 - 100

Win x 10: (60 x 10) = 600/2 = 300exp
Total: 300exp
+ 10 Luk

Jijikko stretched, maw opening wide as he dug his front talons into the caked, red-clay earth of the desert and lifted his hind quarters up behind him, tail drawing out straight and wings flicking lazily. Enough to draw up a small, red-orange cloud of dust around him as he yawned. Some days — though not every day — his body just called out for a midday nap, and this had been one of those: the Eowyn sun baking down over the hot earth, the air crisp and rippling with approaching summer, and the winds from the southwest, bringing with them the extra scent of volcanic dust from Kaiatasel itself. Perfect arrangement for a good, solid rest during the hottest hours of the day when the earth was warm and welcoming.

Now, though, Jijikko’s stomach demanded attention. The needs of his wearied muscles had been met, but his appetite — that was another beast altogether — and as he blinked the grogginess from his eyes, shaking his snout to help rouse himself, he stretched his neck high, sniffing the desert air. Meat. Dalaks. Uruu. And even kargoths? Perhaps one of those strange, two-legger contraptions where they stored a lot of live meat all at once but didn’t eat it immediately. Like what Raemos’ family seemed to have.

In addition to that, though, there was something else on the wind. Something new. Khehora, definitely, but unique in a way that Jiji couldn’t immediately pin down. For once, Jijikko’s curiosity won over his stomach, and he beat his wings, taking off into the air and starting towards the source of the strange scent. Lady khehora, he figured, was worth making lunch wait. At least temporarily.

He hummed, a low pleased rumble in his throat as he flew, shaking off the lingering effects of sleep and starting to scout out the area. Despite being one, he had actually had relatively little interaction with khehora outside of his immediate family, thanks to them being a very narrow, solitary nesting group, and the idea of making acquaintances with more appealed to him greatly. Particularly those with such an attractive scent.

To Jijikko’s great pleasure, the search didn’t last terribly long, and the source of his ‘mystery scent’ stood out against the dark red-orange of the desert fairly strikingly: pristine, white feathers, tipped with pale green as though dipped in the ink of a pastel forest. Jijikko grinned broadly and dove downwards. Though the subject of his previous encounter — Carrion — had not been terribly impressed with the move, Jijikko still opted for as grand an entrance as he could manage, crashing to the earth mere inches from the new khehora with a proud ripple of gaili magic circling out around him and a broad stretch of his wings to show off his size.

“Greetings, fair wanderer,” he said, leaning in close to get a better, close-up scent of the lady. “Any chance a magnificent creature like yourself might need help with something? My body, and all the strength therein, is here to serve you.”

“Jijikko,” Jiji answered, raising his snout proudly and giving a showy puff of his chest scales so that they they rippled in the sun, wings flitting outwards again in a not-terribly-subtle attempt to make himself look bigger and more impressive. “And you, fair lady?”

Her feathers had seemed to literally glow, even in the shadows, and though he had heard of the feathered subspecies and seen a few in passing, he’d never had the opportunity to actually meet and speak with one. They looked magnificent. Such a lovely white, and well-groomed. How she kept herself looking lovely in the desert was a mystery to Jiji, but his mind was far too busy imagining how soft they would feel against his nose or underbelly. He wondered if she had a mate. She didn’t smell of another khehora, which was promising.

Another rumble from his gut, and a gust of wind from the direction of the dalak farm reminded Jijikko of his previous intentions, and distracted him momentarily from his musings. “Are you, by any chance, in a mood for lunch?” She didn’t smell of a recent meal, and perhaps, if he was fortunate, he could show off his newly practiced hunting skills and impress her with a fresh meal. What could possibly be better than new meat, a full belly, and the attention of a lady khehora?

Jijikko blinked, entirely unused to actually having positive responses to his wooing attempts. For the most part, it had always felt like a one-sided dance of preening and attempting to glimmer as much as possible with the hope that once in a thousand kernels of sand, there would be someone who decided to participate. What to do once such a response was found however, what to do with it and how to actually participate was a mystery. Rather embarrassingly, he found himself unresponsive at first, attention rooted to the way light caught on her feathers and how her voice sounded, and the glint of her colors, and the heat that the combined effect sent rippling under his scales. He gave a soft, lowly-trilled purr of sound when he recovered from his brief speechlessness and situated his wings.

“I just so happened to be coming this way in search of lunch myself. I smelled fresh, live meat here — a whole great slew of them up just ahead.” He lifted his snout with the words, the angle of his body posture indicating his intended direction intrinsically. “Dalaks, uruu, and even great kargoths, all in one area.” After a flick of a glance towards his lady companion, Jijikko gave the fleeting, toothy equivalent of a khehora grin and then hustled low to the ground in preparation to bound off. “If you wait but a moment, I’ll scout it out myself!”

And with that, he was off, two bounds and then up, into the air in the direction he had originally caught his prey’s scent. What he found was better than he could have possibly hoped. A true miracle, really: a whole cluster of dalaks, uruu, sheron, and kargoths, each walled off in their own little wood-marked segments by strange posts. How they survived in such small spaces without access to food or shelter was a great mystery to him — though perhaps, he thought, they took shelter in the large, more Magescian-like structures that took the place of caves?

Regardless of the details of their precise life strategy, though, the fact remained that they were all right there. Trapped and available. Almost as if their entire purpose in life was to be slaughtered and eaten conveniently without the hassle of going out into the mountains to hunt them.

It was, truly, a marvel.

With a loud, boisterous trill of enthusiasm, Jijikko did not waste another moment, and dove, careening downwards into the nearest cluster of yellow puff-feathered uruu. Not expecting a massive intrusion from the sky in the least, the poor creatures immediately became a sea of squeaking and squawking yellow feathers tottering around in a panic. Jijikko, for his part, found this all the more hilariously entertaining, and beamed as he pounced. One, two, three, four. Occasionally, one would manage to escape the first crunch of his talons, but for the most part, it was an exercise in futility for the tiny round birds, and Jijikko managed to down approximately four before remembering that he was supposed to also be gathering food for someone else besides himself.

Rumbling abashedly, he dipped his snout, using his claws to push at the yellow feathers now stuck around his jaw like crumbs evidencing a small child having eaten cookies they were not yet deserving of. Once satisfied that he had hopefully scraped away the majority of the evidence, he traipsed over the low wooden barrier separating the uruu and dalaks — unconcerned that his weight seemed to partially demolish a portion of it on his way through — before starting giddily after one of the now-screaming flightless beasts.

Seconds after successfully pinning one of the hapless creatures and holding it up by its broken neck in triumph, an arrow buried itself in the turf not a full foot from his talons and a distinctly non-dalak voice cut in over the frey.

“Out — out, you thief!” the Magescian snarled, and — in his surprise — Jijikko dropped the dalak from his snout, taking an uncertain step back and glancing about himself.

“Theif?” he parroted. “Where? I’ll help you stop them! What have they stolen? I’ll—”

“You — YOU, you…greedy beast of—”

Before Jijikko could quite comprehend what the poor, flustered and clearly confused Magescian was trying to get across, a low groan of panic sounded from one of the neighboring kargoths, followed closely after by a baritone, earth-shaking roar that could only — and did — belong to a dragon. Jijikko stilled in his tracks, snout twitching around to eye the scene as a massive — though average, for its breed — gaili dragon dropped down, barreling into one of the previously objecting kargoths and beginning its attempt to cart it away, however unsuccessfully at first.

That — that must be the thief!

Jijikko puffed up, spreading his wings and rearing back with giddy anticipation. This, finally, was a chance for adventure!

“I’ll stop it!” was the last clear thing uttered before he bounded off for the dragon many times his size and easily strong enough to crush him under its rear toe.