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Now, it wasn't that Okassis was lazy or any such thing. He understood work, and its importance, and was always willing to pitch in his full effort - under normal circumstances. But shards, he wanted to see those eggs...!

But it was obvious that Zara didn't have the same need he did. And why should she - she'd probably been to see them half a dozen times already! Okassis would just have to be patient if he wanted for her to show him where he could glimpse the Hatching Grounds, he supposed. But damn, did he hate it....

Dunking the mop into the bucket, he set his back to his work, swabbing the ground with ferocious determination. "Do the queens - hff - get upset often?" he asked, eyes focused on doing a quick, but thorough, job.

"Now you're just trying to goad me," Okassis sniggered as Zara wondered whether or not anyone had tried sneaking onto the sands in recent years. It was a joke though - mostly... no, he decided, it is. He was pushing his luck enough by trying to get a glimpse, he didn't need to go further.

Not now, anyway.

Deftly, Okassis swabbed off the rest of the floor, eager to get the chore behind him. Soon enough, they had a clean room under their feet. Dropping the mop off into the bucket, Okassis wiped his sleeve across his face (a largely exaggerated gesture - it wasn't as though he'd actually worked up a sweat from cleaning the room) and grinned. "Satisfied?"

"Hey, that was a real recipe!" Okassis insisted, grinning. "There's a little Hold in the Far Reaches, it's all they drink there! Swear by the First Egg, it's true!" In all fairness, he might admit, he wasn't sure if it were trundlebug legs that they used... but some sort of part off some sort of bug, it was all the same. "Besides," he went on, "it did its job. Did you see how everyone jumped alive when they heard the ingredient? Hah! That's how you ought to be waking up in the morning!"

Mirthful, Okassis wiped his hands on the front of his shirt and began walking. "This way, isn't it?" he asked, taking Zara's insistence that they hurry as a signal to, you know... hurry.

"Fish-klah... I got a couple ideas there," Okassis answered as they walked, tucking the glows into his pockets. He gestured with his hands as he spoke, animating his thoughts - "See, at first I'd thought it was Sovann, of course - that would be just the sort of thing a seaholder boy like him would come up with! - but he'd said not. And believe me, he would've told me. So then I'd thought, Inaari... she might have a more devious side. It'd been neck-and-neck before that pot had gotten spiked, you know. But Nose, she might've done it just for the gossip... and then there'd been any number of folk by the table...."

He glanced to his walking companion. "What do you think? Got an inkling?"

Okassis pricked up his head, catching sight of the crack. He nodded to signal his acquiescence - it would have been a bit silly to answer it verbally, he thought - and crept nearer to the crack.

Hunching his shoulders as he approached and tucking the glows under his shirt, where they wouldn't let off so much visible light, he moved into position so that they could both get a glimpse out at the sands. The vantage point wasn't necessarily great from where he stood, but he thought that he could see a few colors beyond the monotonous sand - a splash of blue here, a touch of green there (one of the eggs he'd Touched, he thought), maybe a sliver of gold scales....

"Is that the Queen?" he whispered, crouching to try and get a better vantage point without jostling Zara for room.

The Trader b--

Okassis had been very fixated on the crack, but managed to break himself away from it long enough to give Zara an astounded look. "That's what they're calling me? Really?" he questioned, as subduedly as he could while still affecting proper shock. "Shards, I would've thought I'd have rated a better nickname than that! Guess I haven't been trying hard enough yet." Joking as he was, there was something about it that seemed to unsettle him as well. Of course, that could just be because he wasn't sure which rumors Zara had heard to bring her to that question....

Okassis gave Zara a sidelong look. His face had lost its cheer, or any semblance of his usual easy-going self. How much did he want to talk to her about? It wasn't as though he knew her well yet, and she was edging on something that was pretty personal. She had the decency to know it, though, and the fact that she offered him an out....

"Yeah, that was me," he agreed, a calm smile emerging on his face. "Had a spat coming in. It's probably not as bad as they tell you it was; bled a bit is all, had to lie-down a while. Busted up my ankle for a while, but that's mostly past now. Had to be worth it, though." Looking back to the eggs, Okassis maintained the strange serenity. "It will be, anyway." One of these eggs, maybe. Certainly maybe. He wasn't here to joke around, or because he was lost; he had purpose. He planned on Impressing, just as soon as the right dragon came along. All he needed was luck, or circumstance, and he'd be justified for everything.

"Guessing by the wrapping? Fff," Okassis huffed dismissively. Turning his head back to the clutch and smiling, he explained, "You can't appraise things a glance, and this worse than most. Though, if I had to put money down...." Taking a few seconds to measure the angles, he pointed out the larger of the two touching eggs, the Lunar Wrasse - one of the few likely to hold a bigger boy dragon. "That's one of the two I touched. I'd want that one."

"How about you? Got hopes on any one?"