Hooray! He will be so very pretty!

She eventually ends up removing and retying the larger ribbon to turn it into a centerpiece above his ear; the smaller ribbons can be used more freely. She asks for more when she runs out, and soon enough he has many pretty red ribbons in his hair. It looks completely ridiculous.

"All right," she says, when she's finished. "All done. Would you like to make a mirror see my work?"

He conjures a mirror. He looks in it.

...he cracks up.

She giggles, too.

"I think that means I did a good job!"

He ruffles his own hair vigorously, and ribbons untie themselves and braids unpick themselves and he's back to normal, though festooned with discarded ribbons.

Well that's adorable. She picks the discarded ribbons off of him and piles them into a tidy stack, then kisses his hair once he's free of the ribbon menace.

"So casually destroying my hard work! Such a mean dragon."

He laughs and hugs her.

Giggle-hug.

"Do you deny it, sir? You have committed the terrible crime of destroying the work of an artist!"

"Somehow I don't think that would even make it onto a list of my crimes."

"... No, I suppose not," she sighs, deflating a little. Pensive snuggle.

...hug. "Sorry."

"It's okay. I - I don't want to dismiss the things you've done, or awkwardly dance around certain topics to avoid ever being reminded of them, just. It does make me sad." Hug.

Snuggle-hug.

Snuggle-hug.

"So, magic lessons?" she prompts, after a snugglesome pause.

Snugglesome pauses are the best kind!

"Hmm - have you tried learning magic before?"

"From a book, once. And then I got frustrated and decided that I'd need an actual tutor to pick it up, and didn't want to make that into a whole... thing."

He laughs and hugs her. "Okay. Well, here."

He retrieves one of the discarded hair ribbons and hands it to her.

"You can try the trick I learned with. So - the way I think of magic, it's... almost like you're making things part of yourself, and then moving them or changing them the same way you'd lift your arm or close your hand? Which is why you can't shape people directly, they're already part of themselves. I don't know why it's so hard for people to shape themselves, maybe it's because you don't need magic to make your body part of you so you can't do magic to it once it is. Anyway, when I was learning I'd pick something up, a stick or something, and I'd study it really hard and get to know it as well as I could, and then close my eyes and try to feel what was happening to it, like it was really part of me. It'll probably help to have somebody else around to poke the ribbon for you, otherwise it's hard to tell if you've got it."

"Huh. All right." Snuggle, careful inspection of the ribbon. "Any recommendation for how long I attempt to empathize with and accept the ribbon as my own?"

Giggle.

"It might take a while. I think I tried almost an hour before it worked, the first time."

"Oh, is that all," she says, lightly. Yeah, it's this kind of thing that led her to put this on hold. Still, she nestles into his arms to settle in for some proper ribbon gazing. "Yep, this is a good snuggling-compatible hobby."

He laughs, and wraps his arms around her, and snuggles her while she makes friends with the ribbon.

She makes a little pleased hum when he wraps his arms around her, then: yes, let's make friends with the ribbon. Such a nice ribbon. Such a pretty shade of red, that she pointedly avoids comparing to Zekanare's scales. No, no comparison to be made here, she's trying to consider this ribbon as an extension of herself. Adding him into the mix wouldn't help. Interestingly enough, both sides of the ribbon have the same color and texture, and the ends are - well, she doesn't know the term for it, actually. But it's not like the ribbon has been cut from a longer length of ribbon. Instead, it's like it was made this way, woven to be this precise length - which, yes, that makes sense. It was. It was made specifically because she asked for it - there's got to be something to that to making it feel like it's part of her, surely.

After dissecting the ribbon for a while, she gets to actually trying to feel like it's a part of her. She's a princess, it's a ribbon, surely ribbons belong at least tangentially with princesses. She's certainly worn dresses with ribbons included. When she was younger, she'd worn them in her hair. This particular ribbon was only made because she requested its existence. With careful study, she knows it extremely well. It is her ribbon, she has claimed royal sovereignty over it, it is an extension of herself and her will and as such she should know what's going on with it, because that is part of her princessly set of responsibilities. It is right and proper for her to treat it as part of her. It's hers.

"... Try poking it?" she requests, after she feels she's gotten this idea good and imprinted.

He pokes the ribbon.

"Nnnnope," sighs Saveth, a little frustrated. "Should I be coming at this from a more - physical side of things than a more intellectual side of things?"

"What do you mean?"