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Second round of character sketches.  Tad.  Preening rock star type. 

Little birdie.

Robin Levesque.  In Sim and in RL. 

Expiration.

 A long time ago, there was a princess who was passing fair.  But her pride outstripped her beauty to the detriment of the land.  The Sun turned green at seeing her.  The dairyland clouds curdled in response.   Dragons arrived in greedy droves.   The country turned under her growing legend, sucking in draughts of hopeful air, sending out streams of sour disappointment.  Before long, the golden plates were all empty.  The environment could sustain only the most rancid of beasts and the only suitors that came were the bogmen, the waterstriders, and the lines and lines of persistent frogs. 

Big Grin.

It's a seemingly seasonal thing.  Sometimes you've just got to send out the call and instigate a gathering of dragons.

A flight of dragons?
A fancy of dragons?
A convention of dragons?

A Dudgeon of Dragons.   
                             (they are famous for alighting on the highest of piques)

Cretan.

It wasn't an honor.  It was goddamned randomness.  A lottery.  I went to my grandmother--for nothing, it seems.  She was a pitiless woman and that day she was in a high, philosophic humour. 

"Daedalus was no mazemaker.  He was too keen for that.  He watched.  He saw the undernetting of all this.  That labyrinth is a thumbprint of the universe.  There are no wrong turns--you follow those whorls and you end up exactly where you should."  Theseus needed a cord--that man never knew where he needed to be. 

I mentioned the Beast. 

"His step-father calls him Asterion."  Starry.  "And you should be more respectful.  He has a lofty calling and you are it.  He will take you and eye you up and place you on the cosmic spit.  The gods can't abide our human peaks and puckers.  He'll burn off those mortal edges."  I am reminded now of the Glorious Peliades.  "Reduce you to your densest.  Rub you smooth and shiny like a planet."  She laughed.  "But I suppose that'll be scant reassurance when you're looking into those pink, oozing eyes."

All I saw of those eyes was them laying on the palace floor.  Scattered in brains, cast from their orbits.