03-18-2026, 11:35 PM
starboard
make it pretty, but train it to kill
Any cruelty she has ever known was something she created for her own amusement. It had never been directed towards her, and certainly not by her mother. Her mother was quiet and reserved, but with the immense power of the wind at her beck and call. She had raised Starboard well enough, trying to impress upon her the importance of being kind to others.
It was not a lesson Starboard took to easily, though she learned enough to suit her own needs. She learned enough to keep her mother's prying dragon eyes away, too.
She can't find it in herself to be cruel to her new friend, though. Despite her very nature begging her to do so, she tries to remember her mother's careful lessons.
Maybe sometimes nature can be softened by nurture?
He steps towards her warily but she makes no move to strike. She could, of course, but he seems harmless enough. Instead, she closes the gap and angles away from him, her sleek body perpendicular with his harsher one, so they are standing side by side. When he offers his name she counters it with a slight frown. "Son", he says simply. It is almost derogatory in its simplicity. "Well, Son it is, I suppose. Your parents weren't very creative." she muses. Son was maybe better than Soggy Boy in any case.
His question gives her pause, though she stretches her watery wing out to brush down his dripping side in a rare display of kindness. She eyes him thoroughly, taking notice that his heat signature is more blues than reds. Her mouth opens slightly and her tongue darts out from between her fangs, searching for living scents, like flesh, blood, and sweat. The only taste she receives are rot and graveworms, algae and stagnation. "Well, you're walking and talking, so you must be alive-ish. But...you smell like a corpse and you're cold, so a little dead-ish too, Sogg...I mean, Son." she says, catching herself quickly.
Word count: 329
@son