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 Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 7:38 pm
"Just don't go out of sight of the limo, Reese," Edge called as he glanced through a folder of Reese's homework assignments, then disappeared inside the DCorp tower. The air was alive with the promise of spring, and his little seahorse boy had requested to remain outside today in order to practice rolling his wheelchair around on the smooth concrete. With Wilbur tucked in the limousine, ever watchful, Edge had seen it as a safe request to comply with.
"Kay!" Reese called, waving his hand frantically as his father ducked away. Turning himself in the seat of the chair to look at the limo, he smiled behind the black lens sunglasses lent to him by Edge and gave another wave to the guardian he knew was watching. Then, nodding his head in self determination, he began slowly rolling himself down the sidewalk, about 20 feet or so before turning around and rolling himself back.
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 7:49 pm
A tall, almost-teenage girl walked out of the building at about the same time that Edge entered, her cell phone held up to one ear. Alaqua was talking into the device. "Uh, huh. We'll be waiting outside. Yeah, yeah. Bye." The girl sighed and shoved her phone into the pocket of her pants, glancing back at the dragon following along behind her. "Mom's on her way." Normally, the pair waited inside for Niki to show up and pick them up after classes, but the nicer weather had drawn them outdoors.
"Good." The brass dragon said, eager to flop down in the sunlight. He hated classes, always had. It didn't seem fair to him that the teachers got to talk all of the time and he didn't. Ala even got to talk some. "Long, 'La?"
The girl shrugged. "I dunno. Mom didn't say."
It was then that the dragon noticed the kid wheeling about in a chair. That looked like fun! The large creature bounded joyfully over to where Reese was practicing. Maybe this kid would like to hear some of his stories! "Hello!" Bob (he preferred Jormungandr) happily chirped to the seahorse boy.
Ala frowned as her dragon bounced off and started jogging over to where the beast was headed.
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 8:14 pm
Reese had just completed an about face, if a very shaky one, when he glanced up and yipped. There, bouncing towards him, was a very (comparatively) large...lizard! A really neat looking lizard with wings and a pretty...color...
Brass. Somewhere in the back of his head Reese remembered a B with a neat looking lizard on it, that Poppa had explained was...B for brass, like the crayon. The other had been D, hadn't it? D for dragon?
So that made the shiny thing a Brass Dragon! Oh, wasn't he a smart cookie?
"Hi!" His voice nearly a squeal of excitement, waving both hands so vigorously that he was rocking in the wheelchair. "You're a Brath!" Oh, to be that blatantly obvious again.
While Reese knew dragons from cartoons and picture books, Poppa never gotten around to explaining what brass was. So, this, obviously must be a Brass! Without knowing what it was, Reese had never thought he'd get to meet one...and now, here he was, face to face with a real live Brass!
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 8:28 pm
The dragon in question skidded to a halt before the boy's chair and nodded. "Yes." The tip of his tail flicked back and forth in his joy. "I'm Jormungandr."
At that point, Ala arrived, panting a bit. "His name's Bob. He's decided to call himself something else now, though..."
The dragon glared at the silly girl with whom he'd been stuck. He gave a long sigh of suffering. "Not Bob," the dragon said with disdain, "'La. Jormu-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know..." The girl eyed the dragon for a moment. Try as she must, she still couldn't think of the creature as anything other than 'Bob'.
Bob (or Jormungandr, whichever) looked hurt at being interrupted. He turned his attention back to the young boy instead. "She call me Bob, but me really be Jormungandr." The dragon whispered (as much as was draconicly possible) to the boy.
Ala, fortunately, decided to ignore the dragon's whisper and eyed the boy for a moment. He was young. And he didn't have legs. How weird. If only she'd had the luck of being young, then the girl probably would've asked why. But the sad thing about growing up was that you couldn't speak whatever popped into your mind anymore. Growing up sucked.
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 8:51 pm
Oh, there was no way in the world Reese was going to be able to pronounce that name. But damn if he wasn't going to try.
"Joarmahndaaaandier," he tried, slowly, to pronounce the name before scrunching up his nose in dissatisfaction. No, that hadn't sounded right at all. "That'th a big name." Was all he could offer in his most apologetic tone, hoping that the dragon wouldn't be offended because Reese could not call him the right name.
He didn't want to hurt Jormungandr's feelings, after all.
"I'm Reethe," he said very matter-of-factly. "It'th a thmaller name, but I like it." He waved at Ala when he noticed her looking at him, not phased by the fact that her gaze had settled rather uncomfortably on the wheelchair. Lots of people looked at him weird because of it, though he didn't understand why.
"What'th your name?"
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 8:59 pm
The dragon flicked his tail happily. At least this boy was trying to call him by the right name. "Reethe?" The dragon didn't quite catch onto the boy's lisp. In his opinion that was an odd name, but who was he to talk?
Ala noticed the boy eyeing her. "I'm Ala. You don't have to call him by that silly name if you don't want to. Bob's a lot easier to say."
The dragon snorted. He just hoped that the boy didn't listen to his silly girl. Like Bob was a better name than Jormungandr? As if! The creature looked at Reese, curiously. "Wanna hear a story?"
Ala groaned, praying that the boy'd say no. Otherwise, the silly brass would just go on and on and on...
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 9:20 pm
Reese found himself in conflict. He'd never be able to pronounce the big long name...but if the dragon didn't want to be called Bob, then well, why should Reese call him a name he didn't like?
He wouldn't like it if someone kept calling him...a different name, would he?
Pushing air into his left cheek, Reese puffed it out as his brow furrowed into a V with thought. "I can try..." He was trying to think of a nickname, but Jormungandr didn't lend itself to many short phrases. "A nickname?" his tone rising, hopefully.
But a story had been offered, hadn't it? And oh, did Reese like stories! Edge read to Reese all the time, about all different things. And sometimes he read him different versions of the same story, just to give Reese "perspective." Big word, he liked it.
"Thure!" he cheered it, giving an excited clap of his hands. But...he wanted a specific story. "Where'd your dragon come from?" He was talking to Alaqua! Obviously, this was her dragon...so of course she would know the story best! "Wath he an egg firtht?"
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 9:30 pm
The dragon thought for a moment, the decided that a nickname might not be bad. "Nickname... sure." Bob got rather excited as the boy agreed to a story, but gave a loud snort as the boy turned to the silly girl at his side for a story. Well, okay, at least it was going to be about him. And he couldn't exactly tell this story from his perspective.
Alaqua was rather surprised to be asked to tell a story. And about that pesky overgrown reptile. "Hmm? Oh, yeah. Bob came from an egg. It was a rather neat egg, too. But I was excited to get to see my egg when D-corp sent me the letter about it. I had to wait forever for him to hatch from his egg, though. The techs called and said he was hatching and so my mom and my sister and I all rushed here to see. It was my mom who told me Bob was a boy." Okay, so not a very long story.
The brass dragon gave a snort. He could tell better stories than that.
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 9:45 pm
There had been a lot of words in that story that Reese had recognized. DCorp, especially, because Poppa mentioned it to him all the time. DCorp sent him a letter today, this homework is from DCorp, they had to visit DCorp today...
And techs. He knew that word too, but he couldn't remember where from. Before Poppa, people used to talk about "lab techs" and "D-techs" all the time. One of his last memories before coming to live with Poppa and Wilbur was of someone calling for a tech to take "the boy" down to the meeting room.
"You're tho lucky," he finally sighed, rocking himself back and forth in the wheelchair. The comment was directed at Ala, but Reese was looking at...Bob. He seemed, wistful? "I with I could get a dragon, too."
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Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 9:57 pm
Ala eyed the boy oddly for a long moment, though this time it wasn't because of his mode of transportation. "But... didn't they tell you?" By her thumbjerk towards the large building behind them, she indicated that the they she was speaking of was D-corp. "That's what we're made for." Surely they'd told him that much, right? "We're made to be partnered with a dragon." She eyed the boy for a moment, trying to guess his age. "You'll probably get your egg soon..."
Bob flopped onto the ground and gently rested his head in Reese's lap, silently requesting for a headrub.
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Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 10:24 pm
"I get...a...what??" If they ever had told Reese, he'd forgotten. Neither Edge nor Wilbur ever mentioned it either. Reese's little face was perplexed as he looked down at Bob, scratching behind the frills on the dragon's head. Maybe Edge had forgotten too? But...those people where always contacting him. They were here today! No...surely his father couldn't have forgotten something as important as this!
"They...made uth?" he asked slowly, tentatively, looking up at Ala with very sad but curious eyes. "How'd they do that?"
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Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2007 3:47 pm
Ala patted the boy's shoulder. Apparently they'd forgotten to tell him. Or something like that. "Yeah, you should be getting your egg soon, probably. They'll send you a letter in the mail about it." At least, she had.
"Yeah, they made us... I dunno how, though." The girl shrugged. She'd asked her mother once, but the answer had been rather confusing as Niki had a hard time putting it in easier terms for the kid to understand.
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Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2007 9:10 pm
Reese chewed on his lip, still perplexed over the secrets being kept from him by the two people in this world he trusted the most. He didn't feel happy inside...it made his tummy sick and his chest felt tight. He didn't like this. He didn't like it one bit.
Ala's hand upon his shoulder drew his gaze up to her, and he smiled despite himself. Her nose was funny and cute looking, and if the situation hadn't been so serious he probably would have reached out and poked it just to find out what it felt like.
"I get one...thoon?" he said, feeling a little more chipper at the thought. He looked down at Bob again, and that's when his happy returned. His tail coiled excitedly around his footrest once more, and Reese leaned down to squeeze Bob around his neck with all of his little seahorse might.
"I get a dragon!!"
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Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 7:08 pm
Bob gave a startled grunt sound as the boy suddenly wrapped his arms about the wyrmling.
Ala grinned at Reese. "Yeah, at least, I think so. I know it was a while ago that I first got to see Bob's egg." She couldn't recall exactly when, but it had been a long time ago when she was a lot shorter. Not to say that she wasn't short right now...
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Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 9:36 pm
Reese snickered as Bob gurgled under him, easing up on his hold to pet the dragon's head once again. He was going to have to ask Poppa about this...like where would the dragon stay or what would it eat? Reese knew he really liked shrimp; would the dragon like shrimp too?
Well, wait. Why ask Poppa when Ala was here? She had a dragon, she must know a lot about them!
"Ala, can you tell me about dragonth?" he asked, his eyes somewhat pleading. "No oneth told me anything 'bout dem..."
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