A’s POV
A gentle hand brushed against my shoulder and I jolted awake, I didn’t even realize I’d been asleep. My eyes cracked open to the morning sun, and Erica sitting beside me.
“Good morning, tiny. I’d love to let ya sleep some more, but I wanna get some distance from here by sundown.” She pulled me to my feet, “Ready to go?”
I made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a yelp, but I guess that was enough of an answer for her as she started gently guiding me forward. I was tired, my hands hurt, and every step revealed some new sting or bruise, but Erica was right. We had to move, there was just one thing I was worried about.
“You didn’t sleep, did you?”
“What?”
“You took first watch, those fucking ants showed up less than halfway through my watch, and once we made it outside, I’m the one who passed out, right?”
She looked back at me.
“Yep, we still gotta move though.”
I don’t know what it was, but something about that pissed me off. It’s not that I disagreed with her, we had to move, I just- I didn’t have “friends” before, and now I did and she was going to take care of herself dammit!
I stopped walking.
“You need to worry about yourself too, Erica! You could’ve woke me up or something but you didn’t, and now you’re just gonna walk till sunset? Eat some goddamn celery on the road and call it good?”
I might have been overreacting here, but honestly I didn’t care. These last two days had been awful, and I was still hurting from last night, and I was still covered in dried bug juice, and there was no way in hell I was going to be able to make this trip alone. Even if I could make it, I wouldn’t want to, I’d be too scared. I needed her to care about herself, to worry about herself. While she was running around punching heads off last night, I’d been making a fire, or worse, nearly getting eaten alive. I couldn’t protect her, I couldn’t do anything, and that hurt worst of all.
Erica took a slow, measured breath.
“Okay”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. How about this, we walk till noon, that’s probably about two or three hours off. We get some distance, then we take a break. We both have some food, and you keep an eye on things while I get a couple hours of beauty sleep. Sound fair?”
I figured that was the best I was going to get.
“Yeah, sounds fair.”
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Erica’s POV
A was being a pain, but I guess I couldn’t really blame them. Last night hadn’t treated them well, and even though I stopped the bleeding, they were probably hurting a lot worse than they were letting on. Even though they were being a pain, they weren’t exactly wrong either. I was absolutely exhausted, but that just made it all the more important that we get as far away from those damn bugs as possible.
We trekked on, weaving our way through the crumbling city as the sun crept closer and closer to its apex. Soon though, we came upon a brand new problem. A massive river had sprung up, slicing across roads and through buildings where there most certainly hadn’t been a river before. It spanned well over fifty feet, with a worryingly powerful current, and a steep drop off about 5 feet in. We stopped at the river’s edge, the sun having nearly peaked anyways. I sat by the water, and decided I’d try to clean some of the ant juice out of my shirt before I took a nap. As I finally got the neck of the shirt past my horns, I figured I’d try to make a little conversation, so I asked the question I probably should’ve asked a long time ago.
“So A, what are your pronouns?”
"I... I am not sure?"
Not sure? about what?
ah, that's your expectations for A's response. I see lol! I am not a smart woman
@ashlynflagg
I just felt like commenting it without any context, so I am at fault as well.
Personally I think Erica is happy to have someone to talk to and doesn't want to be protected.
I was kinda expecting A to be fully healed upon awakening ngl. I take the thought I had of A being a dragon was likely wrong. They may have strength, which is virtually useless with A, but that seems about it. Unless being a dragon means their evolution is taking a lot longer? They have currently have zero defence, magic, offense, or even wings basically they have nothing of which dragons are very famously known for. Do they even have a tail or claws? Usually a dragons tail is a deadly weapon. Also, no massive healing factor either is interesting, I was thinking if they didnt have a dragons defence then maybe they have healing. A I'd guess is probably more of some kind of lizard like a salamander or bearded dragon or something. Currently they have very little thats dragon about them, horns and maybe some scales are about it but those arent exclusive to dragons.
I will neither confirm or deny A's dragonness, what I will say is they definitely aren't done changing, not even close.
@ashlynflagg What? How dare you build up plot points and develop things slowly?! I want my instant gratification! (jk, jk XD)
@ashlynflagg What do you mean it's a slow transition... We want dragons appearing in town this instant. Nah it's better this way.
She does have the claws and some scales