He is not immediately evident to any sense other than telepathy.

But telepathy can pinpoint his exact location. ...Which is less helpful when "his exact location" is apparently on the other side of a significant amount of rock and earth. It takes him and Erik several minutes to locate the cave opening.

It's dark in there.

Something looks out at them. Something with huge green-gold eyes and a not particularly human silhouette dimly visible in the darkness.

Fascinating. Beautiful. "Hello!" he calls out cheerfully.

The silhouette shifts. Changing position or changing shape, it's hard to tell. The eyes, at least, remain the same. They blink once.

"Hello," rumbles a deep, amused voice, with a flash of bright white fangs.

"My name is Charles Xavier, and this is my associate, Erik Lehnsherr."

"Why are you here?"

"Erik and I are seeking out other people like ourselves, people with extraordinary abilities."

He laughs. It sounds like the kind of laugh you might ascribe to an ogre or a dragon, deep and loud and wild.

"What for?"

"There is a man," Erik says firmly, "who also has powers, who needs to die."

"Who needs to be stopped," Charles says. It sounds like an old argument. "He's been manipulating international politics for some time--to what ends, precisely, we don't yet know, but not good ones, not for anyone but him."

"Politics," he says contemptuously. "Politics is what I started living in caves to get away from."

"We're not doing politics," he says. "I suppose Charles might be, but as far as the rest of us are concerned, Shaw is the threat."

"What we've observed suggests Shaw is having to keep an active enough hand in everything that the situation will resolve itself reasonably well once he's off the playing field."

"And why should I care?"

"If you like living out in the woods all by yourself with little to no human contact, I suspect you have less reason to care than most. But if you don't--we're building a place where people like us can be, one that will last long after Shaw is gone. You don't have to be alone."

He laughs again.

"I've been alone since before Napoleon's empire. It suits me fine."

"Since--that's amazing," he says earnestly. "What else can you do?"

A movement in the darkness that might be a shrug. "I can fly," he offers as an example.

"Groovy. We've only found one other who can fly, so far."

"Oh?"

"Her name is Angel. She has dragonfly wings that melt into her back so that they appear to be tattoos."

"And she spits fireballs."

"Charming, if limited."

"Most of us are, one way or another. Most have only one ability, though it may manifest in different ways, although Shaw's telepath is proof that entirely disparate powers are possible. In addition to her mental abilities, she has the capacity to transform her body into solid diamond."

Snort. "I've never done that."

"Are you a shapeshifter, then? My sister is, and she can't duplicate Frost's trick either."

Indistinct shrug. "I am... myself."

"Most people are. Do you want to hear more about the others' abilities?"

"All right."

"I'm a telepath. Like Emma Frost, although I can't turn into diamond, and less defensively oriented. Erik can manipulate metal. I already told you about my sister, and Angel. Of the others we've met--there's a young man named Alex who can throw incredible rings of plasma, and one named Armando whose body adapts to whatever challenges are put before him, and one named Sean who has an incredibly powerful voice."

"What manner of shapeshifter is your sister?"

"She can turn into anyone, clothes and all. She can't turn into animals. I don't know if she could shift as far away from the standard human body plan as you have; she's spent most of her life using her ability to blend into society. In her natural form she has blue skin and scales." There is an immense amount of fondness in his voice when he talks about her.

"All my forms are natural to me."

"That's fortunate for you. Raven has to expend at least a little attention to maintain any shape other than her blue one."

"Perhaps she'll get better with practice," he suggests.

"She has. It used to be--very difficult--for her to stay shapeshifted for very long. It caused her considerable trouble when she was a child."

"I can imagine," he says, amused. "I can look human if I wish, but finding clothes is always such a bother."

"That was almost never a problem for her. Her blue form can wear clothes as well as any."

"Well, as you've noticed, I live in a bear's den."

"I noticed you live in a cave, at least; I didn't notice any bears."

"You wouldn't," he says, amused. "I ate her."

"Then does it still qualify as a bear's den?"

He laughs. "A matter of interpretation, I suppose."

"Well, it would probably be even more difficult to keep clothes if there were a bear still around to wreck them."

Snort. "True."

"If access to clothes is an inhibiting factor, don't worry about it--we have more than sufficient funds to provide for such things."

"He means he's rich and doesn't have anything better to do with his money," Erik snorts. "Suffice to say that more than one of our previous recruits had jobs they left behind, and aren't going to have to worry about being able to find new ones."

"I wouldn't have put it like that."

"No, but it's true."

"I suppose it isn't the worst thing I could be doing with my time."

"That's the spirit. What's your name, by the way, I don't think you said?"

"Serafin."

"That's lovely."

"Thank you," he says, a little dryly.

He opens his mouth--

"Charles, don't babble at him about the etymology of his name."

"Which one of us is a telepath again?"

"I don't need to be. You're far too predictable."

He giggles.

"Fine, I'll skip it." He glances at Serafin. "So will you come with us?"

"Hm," he says. "No, I don't think so. But I don't mind if you visit again."

Sigh. "Perhaps later. We're going to be very busy for the foreseeable future. Do you mind if I show you where to go if you change your mind?"

Shrug. "No, I don't mind."

--And a map unfolds in his mind. They are here, in the northwestern United States; the meeting place is there, in Virginia.

"Interesting trick."

"It's not the most complicated thing I've ever done."

"I imagine not. How did you find me?"

"We have a machine that amplifies my telepathy, allowing me to locate mutants--people with powers--all over the country."

"Clever. Good luck."

"Thank you."

They leave.

They're very cute but he's glad they left; it was getting hard to make the words come out right. Maybe he's been out of the world a little too long.

A few days later someone else comes through the forest. This one doesn't seek him out, and appears to be a perfectly normal hiker, albeit one unusually oblivious to the dangers of the area. She's very interested in the local wildlife, though, stopping periodically to sketch this or that plant.

And does she notice the distant shadow following her? Most people don't.

No, she is very much absorbed in her sketching.

He pounces on her in a canyon, a midnight-blue giant with claws like knives and teeth like a bear trap.

She screams, and--

Blood rips its way out of her body, leaving gaping wounds behind it, trying to form a defensive barrier around her, pushing his hands away. It shapes into a solid oblong shield, with enough surface tension to make squeezing through it very difficult and enough wetness to make it slippery.

...well that's unexpected. And very attractive.

He slashes at the barrier with his claws.

This works, for certain definitions of "work"; certainly he pierces the barrier. But it reforms as soon as his claws have passed through, and begins moving away from him.

'Away from him' is a tricky prospect when there is so much of him in such a comparatively small space. He grows, and grows wings, and his wings come down to seal off both sides of the canyon, leaving her trapped in darkness.

The blood bubble is still for a few moments.

Then it reconfigures itself from a solid barrier into a cage, and she demands, "What do you want."

(Her wounds appear to have healed, although her clothes didn't recover.)

"Why," he wonders, "do so many people travel without consulting local rumours? That is how you end up stumbling into local dangers all unwarned."

"Local rumors about monsters in the woods are usually false."

"But if you had listened to them," he says reasonably, "you would know what I want."

"Were they telling the truth about that part too? I didn't want to assume, it seemed very plausibly the kind of thing a bunch of think-with-their dicks men with nothing better to do would have come up with."

He laughs.

"Have you ever considered asking nicely first?"

He idly runs a claw down one of the bars of her blood-cage.

"That sounds very unlikely to get me what I want."

"I mean, it's not like propositioning someone magically makes you unable to rape them if they say no," she points out reasonably. "And you never know, there's people into all kinds of things."

"Are you trying to tell me you want to be raped to death by the monster in the woods?"

"One, it's not rape if I say yes, two, I really doubt you could actually fuck me to death. Did you notice how I am no longer bleeding from several major blood vessels?"

"I did notice that."

Since she's no longer trying to run, he folds his wings and shifts down to a more reasonable size, ten feet tall instead of twenty. His skin turns blood-red to match her cage. He has a mane and tail like a lion's but is otherwise mostly human, claws and fangs excepted.

"You look very nice when you bleed."

"Oh, I know. Trust me, if I were as trivial to kill as a normal person, I would not have survived puberty."

"That sounds like a story I'd enjoy hearing."

"It is less sexy than it sounds," she admits. "Puberty was when I started being able to rip the blood from my own body and make it do what I wanted, and my control--wasn't perfect, to start. If I hadn't been a masochist the story would be more unpleasant for me but not, like, actually much less dangerous absent the healing factor that came with it."

"I fail to see how that's supposed to sound unattractive."

"Well, I said less sexy than it sounds, not zero sexy, it's just the story had less masturbation and more laundry than I originally implied."

He laughs. He wraps his hands around the bars of her cage and leans on them.

"I'd offer to take you to dinner, but I eat what I hunt, and raw at that. Hardly the thing to charm a lady."

"That's sweet. I dunno, I've got a lighter, there's wood around, we could probably finagle something if we really wanted to."

"Shall I hunt you a deer, then?" He grins. "What's your name?"

"Lacey Stevens."

"Serafin. Delighted to meet you."

"Likewise! This is way more interesting than random plants."

He laughs.

She lets the parts of the cage that aren't bearing his weight spatter into the dust and sits up and grins at him.

He lets go and stretches his wings, and keeps stretching, scales flowing over his skin like water, until there is a glittering dragon with scales like the night sky coiled around her.

"Wow, that's gorgeous," she breathes.

The dragon laughs. "Want to come hunting with me?"

"Sure! Am I supposed to actually help, or just come along and watch, because I can do either of those things."

"Just come along and watch."

"Okay. Am I meant to ride you, where should I climb up?"

He crouches so she can climb up onto his shoulders.

She does.

He leaps to the top of a cliff and launches himself into the sky from there. Sitting astride his neck is not the most stable possible way to fly, but the view is certainly nice, and his scales are a good texture, comfortable without being slippery.

She clings to his neck and whoops with delight.

He giggles.

It doesn't take him long to spot a deer; he swoops. The deer doesn't know what hit it.

"Very nice."

He shifts again; now he's back to being ten feet tall and humanoid, though still covered in starry blue-black scales, and holding Lacey in his arms. He grins at her.

She kisses him.

He kisses back.

"Beautiful," she murmurs, running a hand down his scaled arm.

He laughs. "Am I really?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Well, I'm certainly glad you think so."

She wraps her arms around his neck and goes back to kissing him.

Mmmmm. Kisses.

"Should we do something about the deer?" he asks after a minute.

"...Yes, yes we should," she says reluctantly. "...Um, you said you normally eat what you kill raw, I could cut off like a leg or something and you could eat the rest? And then I don't have to worry about skinning the whole thing?"

"Sounds reasonable enough to me." He puts her down.

She holds out an arm, and it bruises, and then blood rises from the bruise in a fine mist, and condenses, and she picks up one of the deer's legs by the foot and with a cracking noise the blood slices the leg off.

Well that's distracting.

The blood proceeds to flay the skin from the leg with a vrrr noise and then act as a cutting instrument as she pries the meat from the bone.

He laughs.

"It's very convenient being able to do this without people running and screaming!"

"I imagine it is."

"Mhm. Now I just need to cook the stuff." She looks at the meat in her hands, shrugs, takes off her ruined shirt, bundles the meat in the clean side, and starts collecting suitable firewood.

Serafin turns into a dragon again and curls up and watches her.

"...Possibly a silly question, but can you breathe fire when you're like that?"

"Wouldn't that be fun? But no, I cannot."

"Ah well."

She gets her firewood piled up, throws in a couple of blank pages torn from her sketchbook for kindling, pours the blood out in a circle around the pile, and sets it alight.

The dragon watches.

She finds a handful of appropriate sticks, skewers the meat, and sets it up on an impromptu spit.

"I am Mankind!" she exclaims, punching the air. "See my mastery of fire and complex tools and tremble!"

He playfully snaps his teeth near her head.

"Not you," she says, making a vague pushing-away gesture. "You're--sapient--you could use tools and fire if you wanted."

He laughs.

She giggles and flops against his side.

It's cute.

He snakes his head over to the rest of the deer and eats it in two bites.

"How does eating interact with the size thing?"

Shrug. "Very conveniently."

"Just conveniently like your stomach isn't going to explode when it gets smaller, or also conveniently like you're not going to need to eat for a while after that?"

He laughs. "Yes, both of those."

"Cool." She gets up to turn the spit. It doesn't take that much longer before she deems the meat cooked enough to eat.

Serafin-the-dragon watches her.

She grins at him as she rips chunks of meat from the skewer with her teeth, not bothering to let it cool first. "This is surprisingly delicious," she observes.

He laughs.

When she is done she wipes her hands on the cleanest parts of her torn and bloodstained jeans and starts taking off her hiking boots.

"I hope you have a change of clothes somewhere," he says, amused.

"Yeah, but not right here, so I'd rather leave these ones technically wearable until I can get to them. And good hiking boots and bras are expensive and these ones escaped basically unscathed, so." She finishes wrestling her boots off, strips off the socks and stuffs them inside, and starts wriggling out of her pants and underwear. "...By the by, not sure if this went without saying but I'd really rather you were humanoid for the actual sex part."

He giggles. "How humanoid is humanoid?"

"Moreso than not? Every shape I've seen you assume so far besides this one qualifies."

"Well, luckily for you I have a similar preference."

"Good." She unhooks her bra and tosses it on the pile of clothes and grins at him.

He grins back, and then he's ten feet tall and humanoid and scooping her up for a kiss.

Mm, kiss. She is very enthusiastic about kiss.

It's kind of delightful how enthusiastic she is.

"Mmmmmm," she purrs into the kiss.

"Are you," kiss, "very sure I can't kill you?"

"...Don't do anything to my skull, if you can help it, I'm not sure I'm immune to brain damage," she allows.

"All right." Kiss. "I can manage that."

Kiss! Artfully swirly bruises!

Kiss. Giggle. Claws slicing down her back.

She arches, throwing her head back, and moans, before returning to kisses.

He purrs. The next time he feels like hurting her, he bites her shoulder.

This will result in some very approving noises.

Mmmmm. And if he bites harder next time?

More positive noises! ...And it heals part of the way. There's still wounds but it's only about as bad as it was before he bit the second time.

"No one's ever enjoyed it this much before," he says, digging his claws into her back.

"I'm special," she gasps.

"You're lovely." Rip.

Shriek.

Purr.

"Nnyess..."

He puts her down on the ground, the better to get really serious with the claws and teeth.

Any injury that inhibits her ability to feel some area or other or almost removes a significant chunk of flesh gets healed enough for not that. But she is so very enthusiastic about acquiring those among other injuries.

She is just delicious is what she is.

And how does she feel about being pinned to the ground and violently fucked?

Very, very positive.

Good.

He starts out ten feet tall, but pretty soon it's more like twenty, and it begins to be obvious how someone might die of this.

Wow, yeah. She stops holding back on letting her body heal itself.

Serafin is having lots of fun.

Lacey certainly isn't complaining. The experience is pretty bizarre, but not in a bad way.

Flesh tears and bones break. It's a very destructive process.

There is some screaming involved but it is a very different kind of scream than he's used to hearing.

It's a nice kind of screaming.

After he finishes, he shrinks down to ten feet tall again and kisses her.

Her head--almost everything above the ribs, in fact--is pretty much undamaged; she can totally kiss back while the lower half of her body knits itself back together.

"That was amazing."

"I'm glad you enjoyed it." Kiss. "It was interesting to be so thoroughly appreciated."

Kiss. "Ha, yeah, I bet you don't get much of that." Kiss. "Well, I am happy to be the occupant of a rare niche." Kiss.

Mmmm, kisses.

Kisses! "Is it going to up the interestingness-due-to-appreciation if I say that was literally the best sex I have ever had, and I was not a virgin?"

"Ooh." Kiss. "I'm flattered."

Kiss. "Well, usually I don't even bring up the masochism, and--even when I do, it's...not really safe to admit how much I can handle."

"Mm?"

"Can you imagine what would happen if I told someone 'go ahead, stab me in the kidney, I'll be fine a minute after you take the knife out'?"

...he laughs.

"If we were in an actual bed I would be swatting you with a pillow right about now," she tells him, half-serious.

"Stabbing you in the kidney sounds enjoyable."

"Oh, my, how surprising, surely there is nothing in our acquaintance so far that could have led me to predict this," she giggles.

Snort. Nuzzle.

Snuggle. Nuzzle. "Wanna go again?"

He laughs. "All right."

They can experiment with stabbing her in the kidney!

But does it really count as stabbing when he's doing it with a claw instead of a knife? It's mutually enjoyable either way, mind, so perhaps the distinction isn't too important.

His claws can resemble knives pretty closely if he chooses!

Close enough. It hurts gloriously. Positive vocalizations indicate this.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. She's so lovely.

She is covered in dirt and blood and who knows what else but she sure can make some pretty noises.

Dirt and blood is an attractive look on her.

Is he going to do anything about that besides her kidney because she is very much in favor.

Yes, yes he is.

Turns out last time he was being gentle.

Well gentle is a relative term but holy fuck wow yes.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

And, eventually, snuggles. He trails his fingers along an exposed rib.

The rib ceases to be exposed not long after; not healing takes concentration and Lacey is kind of not in a fit state to concentrate on things.

It's fascinating to watch.

Once she is mostly healed and mostly coherent she snuggles back.

"I think I like you," he says, with a rib-cracking hug.

She giggles. "I think I like you too."

"Mm." Nuzzle. "Works out nicely, then, doesn't it?"

"Mhm." Thoughtful snuggle.

Serafin is perfectly comfortable snuggling her on the forest floor for a while.

Yeah. Whatever else, snuggles are good.

Cozy! (He's back to having a mane, now, and no scales. Soft fluffy legendary monster.)

Ooh, that is more cozy. Lacey approves.

Cozy soft snuggles.

Cozy soft. Eventually miscellaneous fluids get tacky and annoying and she extrudes a thin layer of blood on relevant surfaces to clean them off efficiently.

It's kind of cute. Serafin giggles.

"Things you don't consider about size differences," she says wryly, glancing at relevant volumes of relevant fluids. "Seriously, damn."

Snicker.

Sigh. Snuggle. "I just wish I knew what to do next."

"What do you mean?"

"...Lots of things, I guess. I have--questions, but I don't know if you'd be willing or able to answer them, and--I don't know what I want to do about this, I like you a lot and the sex is fantastic and maybe if you have a willing partner who can not die on you you won't need to rape people to death but on the other hand I don't actually want to move to a forest, and in general I've sort of had no idea what to do with my life since I graduated college."

"I like you a lot too. What sorts of questions?"

"Are you the same as me? Do you know what we are? I have--no idea how I can do what I can do--but you're the first other strange and fantastical thing I've ever observed."

"I met someone a while ago who said he knew where to find a lot of other strange and fantastical things. He was very excitable about it," he says.

"Really?"

He laughs. "Yes. He told me where to go but I'd have no hope of passing on the instructions. I could take you there, though."

"I--that would be wonderful."

Kiss. "Then I will."

Kisssss. "Thank you. I've always wondered--this is fantastic."

He laughs and hugs her.

She grins and hugs back, insofar as his bulk allows.

He laughs again. Now he is a very huggably sized human!

"...Hi! Wow, of course you can do that, why did it not occur to me you could do that."

"I don't do it very often."

"Well, it certainly makes you easier to hug." Snuggle. "...I honestly wasn't assuming you were actually human."

"I was born human. Didn't start turning into a monster until later."

Nod. "Why the forest hermitry?"

Shrug. "It suits me. I was... for a while I couldn't control the shifts, I just took whatever form felt most right at any given moment. By the time I got that sorted out well enough that I could enter buildings without demolishing them, I was already used to living like this. And it does have its advantages. I like being a legendary monster no one's quite sure exists."

Wince. "That sounds unpleasant. How long have you been out here? It...seemed like kind of an old legend."

"A while."

Snuggle. "Well--how far away is the place? It might...be easier, at least, if you were human-shaped for most of the trip."

"Easier how?"

"Well for one thing my car is not built to hold people ten feet tall."

"I can fly," he reminds her.

"How fast?"

"Fast."

"Okay. ...Probably best to travel at night, then. Especially while we're still near here. I really would rather avoid things like people thinking I was being stalked by a rape demon and needed rescuing."

Giggle. "But you are being stalked by a rape demon," he says, hugging her.

"It's not stalking when I know and arranged it with you in advance, I don't think you actually qualify as a demon, and I am not one of your victims," she says firmly.

Shrug. Snuggle.

"Whatever else I am not being stalked by a rape demon to the tune of requiring rescue."

Giggle. "Fair."

"...If I did stay, would you stop?"

"I suspect you'd get bored of living in the forest long before it came up."

"I guess."

"Mm?"

"I like you and I don't want you to be unhappy but I don't want anyone else to get hurt, either."

"You make me plenty happy."

"Well. I'm glad of that." Snuggle.

Snuggle.

Snuggle.

She considers how early it is, considers the whole "travel at night" thing, and lets herself doze off on him.

Well that's adorable.

Will she wake up if he carries her and her stuff back to his cave?

Not really she is kind of hella tired after regenerating that much.

Then he can curl up with her and have a cozy fluffy nap.

She wakes up in the evening and blinks in disorientation at her surroundings.

"Mm?"

"Where am I?"

"My cave."

"Did you carry me? Silly question, how else would I have got here. Did you bring my things?"

"Yeah."

"Mmkay." Snuggle.

Snuggle.

Kiss?

Kiss!

"You have exquisite taste in forms."

He laughs. "Thank you."

Kisssnuggle. Kisssnugglesquirm.

Mmm.

And how does she like this form?

Differently but not less! Being able to kiss him during is very nice.

She's so cute.

He kind of also is like this.

They make a hell of a pair, don't they.

Pretty much. It's kind of ridiculous.

But a good kind of ridiculous!

Oh, definitely.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. She is good and warm and cozy and he likes her very much.

He has probably not been snuggled in a very long time and she is doing her very best to make up the deficit.

With great success!

Because she's awesome.

...Awesome and hungry, it transpires a moment later when her stomach decides to interrupt.

He smiles and kisses her. "Should I go hunting again?"

"Could do. I also have food in my car--dunno when you wanted to leave..."

Shrug. "Whenever you like. I'm hardly about to miss an appointment."

"I think I might rather leave sooner rather than later. There...isn't that much to do, here, besides have sex with you and eat venison, not that those aren't perfectly lovely activities, but."

He giggles.

"I would rather not get bored of them before I have to!"

"Perfectly fair!" Kiss.

Kiss! And then giving her pile of clothes a resigned look. "I should really get dressed if we're headed out," she mutters. She does not sound like she wants to put those clothes back on.

He laughs.

She sighs and disentangles herself and puts on torn garments covered in dried blood. Ick, but marginally better than nudity if she bears any likelihood of running into people.

"Well, that's more attractive than I was expecting."

"Well, it does have a lot of blood."

"Mm."

"Where are we relative to where you ambushed me? I can find the car from there, but..."

"I could fly you there?"

"That works."

Dragon!

She bundles up the objects that are not bloodstained garments and climbs onto his shoulders.

Dragon dragon dragon.

And then she retraces her steps back to where there is a car waiting. There are no other cars in the area. She smiles.

"So, it really doesn't look like there's anyone around after all, or going to be anytime soon, and I never want to wear these ever again," she says brightly.

He shifts human and grins at her.

She kisses him.

Mmm.

"Gotta say, when I said 'we're alone and my clothes are disposable' I was not especially expecting you to assume the least destructive form."

"Destructive enough." Kiss.

Kiss. Momentary interruption of kiss to throw non-disposable objects into the car. More kiss.

Her clothes come apart in his hands like tissue paper.

Ooh. Approving noises.

Her feelings on being pinned to the ground haven't changed, right?

Not a bit.

Good!

Eee.

Wonderful.

Is he going to kiss her, during? Pinned down like this her ability to kiss him first is highly limited.

She's very kissable!

Excellent.

Yes.

Eventually they finish and after some snuggling she gets up and pulls on some not-destroyed-at-all clothes from the car.

And he re-dragons, and looks consideringly at the car.

"I could probably carry that," he says.

"Could you carry it without leaving obvious claw marks?"

He laughs. "Yes."

"Cool. Which direction are we going, anyway?"

Shrug. "East."

"Cool." She makes sure the doors are securely closed and nothing's going to fall out and climbs on his shoulders.

He picks up the car. The car seems perfectly unharmed by this change in its circumstances. Off they go.

This is really excellent and Lacey does not holler excitedly about it because the whole point of traveling by night is stealth but she is tempted.

It's kind of fun.

He's pretty fast. They might not take more than a night or two to get there.

It occurs to her partway through the first night that they didn't actually arrange for what to do during the day but figures she can work with wherever he decides to touch down.

He finds a nice secluded spot to land as dawn begins to approach, and puts her car down and curls up next to it.

She considers the merits of various options and elects to sleep in the backseat of the car.

Serafin sleeps like a dragon, which is to say, nothing bothers him.

It is multiple decades too early for Lacey to have been warned not to tickle him but she doesn't anyway.

She wakes before nightfall and pulls out a book to read while keeping an eye on her companion.

Eventually he yawns, which is quite a sight, and stretches out his wings and curves his neck around to peer into the vehicle.

She grins and waves and opens the door and slides out. "Good--not morning, but."

Shift. "Good not-morning to you too." Kiss.

Kiss. "Mm. I should probably do something about breakfast. Not-breakfast. Whatever," she sighs. She kisses him again instead.

"Mm. Yeah."

"...Do you want to eat something that isn't raw meat?"

He laughs. "Sure."

She grins and unearths a package of sugar cookies from the car's trunk. She takes one for herself and hands him one.

Nom.

Nom. "What do you think?"

"Ooh, I should see if I have any chocolate."

"That sounds promising."

"Oh, it is." She locates a chocolate bar and hands it over with a flourish.

Hug.

Snuggle.

"I make such great impulsive life choices."

"I agree!"

She giggles and locates something a bit more substantial to eat for unbreakfast.

Serafin interferes in the unbreakfasting process by snuggling her.

He's underestimating her if he thinks she can't snuggle and eat at the same time.

Cozy!

Cozy and nutritious.

When she's done eating she temporarily desnuggles to pack the rest of the food away.

Dragon time?

Yes.

Dragon time whee!

Wheeeeee! Dragon time is awesome.

It's pretty great.