Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon (Dennis)

[Safia Chatterjee]

Safia sighed at her tray, picking absent-mindedly through what she'd chosen for lunch - it was utterly plain, like usual, and not nearly spicy enough for her taste.  If she could have afforded it, she would make herself meals every day; she was a good cook, thanks to her mother, and had been used to the food of her home country before she was carted off to Hammel.

Nevertheless, she started eating.  Safia wasn't anti-social by any means, but she hadn't seen any of her girl friends in the cafeteria yet, so she was sitting by herself for the time being.  It wasn't something she liked doing - she always felt like there were eyes watching her with ill intent, and her paranoia made her gaze travel around the room constantly, scowling at anyone (okay, any boy, really) that happened to be looking her way.  Good-for-nothing creeps...

The Indian girl didn't realize her fangs had popped out until she took her next bite, and she nearly bit through her lip.  Safia yelped, covering her mouth as her eyes watered against the unexpected pain.  Damn things!  She hesitantly dabbed her finger against her lip and hissed as she pulled away to see it spotted with blood.  Great.  Now she'd just gone and made an idiot out of herself.  Whatever.  Determined not to let it deter her, she focused on retracting her teeth and wiped her mouth with a napkin.  Hopefully no one had heard or seen her...

[Dennis Pautler]

If Safia thought that kind of yelp wouldn’t attract attention, she was dead wrong. At least eight people in her general vicinity turned to look at her, before going back to their lunches and resuming the general buzz of cafeteria chatter. Dennis happened to be walking past her, carrying his own tray of food, and he thought to stop and ask if there were any particular reason for a sound like that.

“Hey, you doing alright?” he asked, casually, meaning to move on once he got an affirmative.

But she’d pulled away a napkin from her lips, which he could see were dotted with bright red spots of blood. Dennis instantly pulled a face. He didn’t have a good track record with blood: too much of it made his stomach feel queasy, and that went hand-in-hand with needles, too. Safia had yet to answer him, but he went on anyway.

“Oh shit,” he said, “you’re bleeding.” Like she didn’t know that already.

Dennis put down his tray beside hers. He bent over to peer at her; his eyes squinted, trying to find the source. He could see that the blood welled from a space on her lip, and he could see, too, the length of her incisors.

“Oh my god. Are those real?” he asked.

[Safia Chatterjee]

If there was one thing Safia perhaps had too much of, it was pride. She hated backing down for anything, hated looking weak or lesser than others. And, consequently, she hated asking for help, and had hard time accepting it when it was offered.

So when the stranger (a boy, nonetheless) walked by asking if she was alright, the already irritated girl scowled more. "Yeah, I'm fine," she replied with a bit more snap than necessary. Had she been in a better mood, she might not have sounded so rude, but she wasn't in the mood for being nice.

She had to try very hard not to roll her eyes at his obvious statement. "Yes, it appears I am," Safia said slowly, glancing down at the napkin. This wasn't the first time this had happened, and likely wouldn't be the last.

The dragon-girl was about to snap at him again that she was fine and that he should stop gawking at her stupidity when he asked... "Huh?" What, the bite marks? Oh, no, he must've seen- "My fangs? Yeah, they are." Safia pulled back her lips slightly so the boy could get a better look. It was better than him staring elsewhere, she supposed. "And, as you can see, they are very good at piercing through skin." Safia snorted and concentrated on making them look normal again; soon enough, they looked like average teeth. "Now that we've finished staring, can I get back to eating in peace?" She sent the boy a hard smile, hoping he didn't decide to sit at her table for any reason. "Or do you want to hear what else I can do with my body?" It was a sarcastic question, but she cursed herself for sounding the least bit inviting.

[Dennis Pautler]

The first thing he thought about Safia was that she looked different. Kind of weird, but cool. He’d never seen such an even skin tone on a person, and in such a shade, like coffee, or chocolate, or something smooth and – well, he wouldn’t go there. The fangs certainly added rather than detracted. He was interested in her the same way many were interested in his tattoos.

Dennis smiled. Safia seemed stand-offish, but he didn’t pick up on it. Instead, he sat down beside her in spite of all her hopes, glancing with upright eyebrows at her teeth when she bared them. “Cool,” he said, and he meant it.

It was she that brought up the possibility of something else happening, and if there was the slightest chance of that, Dennis intended to stay where he was. He’d never heard of anyone who could just grow fangs like that, never met anyone. There were plenty of pyrokinetics and hydrokinetics and the like but this sort of body modification, he thought, was unheard of. “Can you?”

The way he was sitting there, with a shine in his eye and a dumb smile on his face, meant that his inquiry was nothing but innocent. “What are you?”

[Safia Chatterjee]

Could Safia read Dennis's thoughts, she would have instantly (and unfairly) been more hostile, since he was really that intrigued with her appearance. It was simply how she'd become around men, always presuming they only wanted to use her until they proved otherwise.

He was kinda cute, she'd give him that, but Safia's thoughts didn't linger much on it. Because shit, no, he was sitting down, and the Indian girl was still dabbing at her bleeding lips like some damn idiot who'd tried to bite their food without paying attention and argh! "Kind of you to say," she replied, smiling thinly.

Ugh. Why had she said anything!? This guy was obviously either too dumb or too pushy to respond to her less than pleasant tone of voice, so Safia wasn't sure what else to do. "Yes," she replied shortly. "It wouldn't be appropriate to do most of it in a crowded cafeteria, though." Mostly because it would give her even more unwanted attention; a half-dragon girl tended to case a stir.

What are you? Oh, God, was he really asking that? Safia was about to snap back that she wasn't anything, but for some reason his choice of words gave her an idea that she just couldn't resist. "You are in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn, of House Targaryen. Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons." She let this sink in for a good several moments of silence, only giving the boy a wide, challenging smile as she let her scales pop out from her shoulders and forearms and sit, glistening and black as obsidian, on her skin.

[Dennis Pautler]

It would take more than that to put him off. He wasn’t hostile; it just took a while for him to pick up hints.

He blinked, then tilted his head. He was confused, that was for sure: the name sounded familiar but he couldn’t quite place it, being ignorant of the TV show (and most pop phenomenon). He could only stare as she churned out her speech.

“So your name is Daenerys,” he said, after she was done, one eyebrow raised and the other puckered low. Luckily, he was distracted then by her radical change in appearance; scales grew out her skin, dark black, as gleaming as metal. He jumped and made a sound, halfway between a gasp and laughter. “What is that? What is that?” he asked her, smile wide, enthusiastic at the strange reptilian growth on her otherwise smooth, cocoa skin. “You’re a –“

Dennis wasn’t sure: Safia had said something about Andals and Khaleesis and – oh, dragons, of course – but that couldn’t be true. Dragons weren’t real. The confusion on his face was palpable; he’d stopped midsentence. “A…”

[Safia Chatterjee]

If the boy watched Game of Thrones (which, it seemed, most people did these days, so Safia thought he'd call her out), he would know where she got the reference from and hopefully laugh or at least be mildly amused. But when he looked at her with confusion, Safia had to hold in a snicker. He had no idea what she was talking about. And it was hilarious.

She was going to run with this.

"Yeah, but you can call me Dany," she told him as seriously as she could. Her cheeks were hurting from trying not to smile. "What's your n-?" Before she could actually be polite and ask his own name (because she had determined by now that he was either too dumb to be harmful or, shocker, actually not a creepy jerk that wanted to play with her), he seemed to get entranced by her scales. Which, honestly, wasn't a surprise - her scales were awesome. "They're scales," she said simply, as though that wasn't obvious.

"I'm a....?" Safia couldn't help it, she was grinning now. His excitement was actually amusing her; she didn't mind that he was interested in her body as long as it wasn't of the sexual nature. "Dragon? Yeah, I am." She held up her hands and concentrated on forming them into claws as well. "There's more, too," she explained. "I have a tail. And wings. And horns. Like any respectable dragon." They just weren't very clothes-friendly, at least with the wings and tail. "Pretty awesome, right?" She almost flicked her tongue out at him, but thought that might be a little too much. "What about you? What can you do?"

She figured anyone that seemed to interested in her ability couldn't be too bad, so she was giving this guy a shot. Whatever his name was. And he was, admittedly, pretty cute.