"You realize it's freaky when you—"

The dragon flickers and disappears, then reappears back on Veron's shoulder.

"Ow!"

"There done sorry bye!" She pecks his forehead as if in a kiss, then flies back to David's shoulder. Through the car. Again.

Veron has a faintly pained expression.

"I am seeing now why she prefers to be an inside soul. I am seeing it very clearly."

David has not quite been able to move since that last question.

He shakes his head. "I'm fine."

"Apparently we are both very atypical people," Harry says, exiting the car. "It's usually the human who has to do the separating, daemons are supposed to be affected worse by it."

"You can be fine without being okay. Wanna snuggle? You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"I don't think she's unaffected, precisely," muses Veron, as he also exits the car. "I think she's... working. She said she had things to do, I think she was serious. And she couldn't do it without being separated, so she did that. Flickered to the Plane of Shadow and then back, which I did not know she could do, but makes sense when I think about it."

"...yes. I would like that."

"David probably could use some work. And, yeah, daemons can do what you can do, far as I can tell. Though David's not as good at magic, for some reason."

The little shoulder dragon carefully curls around his shoulders like a scarf, nestling under his jacket so she can be scale to skin. She makes a little purring sound that is faintly soothing.

"I mean, I'd guessed she could get to the Plane of Shadow on her own, since she can fly through the car. The weird part was getting back, but I guess I'm an anchor to let her do that easily. The Plane of Shadow doesn't like separating things from themselves. It makes sense that it'd help put us back together. Which is freaky but neat."

When they enter the apartment, David shrugs out of the majority of his clothes and transforms into an enormous black wolf, shedding the remainder in the process. He curls up around the tiny dragon, looking somewhat tragical.

Harry looks confused, then turns to Veron. "...I need to do some magic with my shiny new coins. You wanna stay up or come down?"

David is going to be so very snuggled. As snuggled as this little dragon can make him. Snuggle snuggle snuggle.

"It's okay, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere, I'm here," she murmurs, snuggling.

"Uh," says Veron, looking at their cuddling souls. Does that... have implications he's not aware of? That seems like the kind of thing that might have implications. Also David is a wolf now??? Okay??? Sure??? If he wants to be a wolf he can be a wolf???

He is not entirely sure what's going on with the souls, but he gets the impression that they maybe want some space right now. He definitely wants to give them space right now.

"Yeah, sure, I can come along," he agrees.

"Great!"

He shifts the rug to reveal the trapdoor to the basement laboratory. Then he descends the ladder, taking the rungs two at a time less out of excitement than because his legs are so damn long.

"Bob! I figured out how the Gruffs were finding me! And how to fuck with them in a really hilarious way! Wake up!"

"Ooh!" Bob's eyelights flicker on. "Also: hi, Veron! I see you've done something fucky to your soul! Excellent!"

"Hi, Bob," says Veron, descending at a more leisurely speed. Entirely due to his legs not being so damn long. "I did, yep, you're very observant. I'm here to, uh." Supervise? Avoid thinking about awkward implications of the souls upstairs? Get things from the bottom shelf, because Harry seems like he'd probably have trouble with that? Make impressed sounds? "Fetch things, I guess?"

"A noble calling."

"That's not entirely fair. You're also here to receive exposition."

His mouth twitches, then he decides to play along. Why not. He draws his feet together, straightens to his full height, and sketches a formal bow.

"I'll do my utmost to pay attention."

Harry giggles chuckles manfully. Then he turns to the shelves and starts taking miscellaneous objects, including something that would, if Veron knew that trains exist, look remarkably like a model train set.

"So, context: Last year, I smashed my way into Arctis Tor, the personal stronghold of Mab, queen of Winter and general creep, to rescue Molly, my soon-to-be apprentice. This pissed off Winter. As a rule, anything that pisses off Winter makes Summer happy. So Lily, the current Summer Lady, gave me..." He pulls a leaf-shaped badge from his coat and tosses it onto a workbench. "This. The physical representation of a favor owed me by the Summer Court."