The pair stares at her as one would look at a Christmas tree - quietly, intrigued, excitement bubbling just behind. The first, the stag, is less inclined to speak, just as she is in tune with the sound of silence, letting it be her cloak, her shield. The latter, the drake, looks at her with his gemstone eyes, as precious as they are rare, and coos for her to come closer, closer still. She should wonder if he were inviting her in to devour her whole, for Dalmatia knows she is small enough for him to gobble in a single bite.
She does not wonder this.
With a slight dip of her chin, the woman obliges the primordial beast. If anything, she feels more inclined, seeing his wings - thick, membranous, veiny and so unlike her own - reminds her of her father, of what he'd tell her of her mother (she was soft, they two, these winged things beside the fire, are not), to join them with a winged beast there. Unlike her mother, and very much like her, Damascus is dark and beautiful, his spines glinting like the darker, iridescent sides of her wings.
As a girl, perhaps she would shiver with the same amazement that the golden man sees when looking upon her (otherworldly, strange, exotic, yet so alluring, a beacon of power, of independence, of freedom), but Dalmatia is far from a child, farther still from that innocence that once graced her lithe form.
Meat has yet to return to her ribs, her hips, but she is not a walking corpse as she'd been fresh from the catacombs beside the sea.
"Of everything I knew, this has not changed," she states simply, coming to settle beside the fire, opposite the bonded pair that share a shattered soul between them. There is nothing sharp about her when she lies herself upon the ground, content, for now, to listen to the puff of a dragon's breath, to watch the flame toy with golden hair on a dark-faced man.
He is beautiful, but she knows so many beautiful things that are monsters underneath.
Dalmatia does not trust them at all.
Beware: I am fearless, and therefore, powerful.
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