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Entry 198

"Now, let's see."

Bronnie tried not to fidget; that was generally a bad idea when you were in a job interview. She wanted Ing, but the raven was flapping around outside. The interview had been going on for a good half hour, while she was asked questions about skills and experience and such.

Lorelei tapped her pen against her teeth. "What else... ah. I have a few questions that really don't have any impact on whether or not I hire you, but as I hire quite a broad range of non-humans, I'd like to ask to get to know a bit about you and what sort of job would suit you. Do you mind answering them?"

"Not at all."

"Great. Now, first off, I see that you have green claws. Is that natural or polish?"

"Er. It's natural." Bronnie glanced at them involuntarily.

"Ah, good to know. You realise, of course, that you can't handle food with nail polish. Is the colour due to any sort of venom or anything similar?"

"No," she said slowly, "they're just... green."

"Fair enough." Lorelei made a quick note on her clipboard. "Any sort of destructive abilities that aren't completely under your control? If there are any, for safety reasons I may have to limit where you can work."

"Well, not really. Not anymore." At Lorelei's sharp glance, Bronnie continued quickly, "Not since I got Ing. He's, well, my familiar. And it hasn't been out of control since then."

"Ah! I see. What was it?"

"Shadow manipulation."

"Oh, clever. You'd get along well with Sheila. Wingspan?"

"... I've never measured."

"Well, no problem. You could keep them out of the way in a tight spot?"

"Most of the time, sure."

"You have any sort of special dietary or wardrobe requirements?"

"What about unintended shapeshifting?"

Bronnie bit her lip. "Um."

"Yes? Go on," Lorelei prompted.

"Well, it's just... when I'm shedding, I get stuck in my... other shape, for a week or so."

"Ah. What is your other shape, then?"

"Well... a dragon." Bronnie shifted awkwardly.

"Should've guessed," Lorelei laughed. "How often do you shed?"

"Not often anymore. Maybe a few times a year."

"Well, we'll keep that in mind. Don't look scared! Right now, I employ a lycanthrope who can't work during the full moon, a wraith who has a tendency to accidentally walk through things when she's extremely stressed, and I used to have a cashier who was banned from the kitchen and had to wear gloves because of poison under his nails. I just want to know, so I'm prepared." Lorelei smiled. "Bronwen, is there anything else you think I should know?"

She paused. "I can't think of anything, offhand."

"Well, if you think of anything, tell me." Lorelei put down her clipboard. "But congratulations. After this, and based upon Amano's excellent recommendation, I can pretty much guarantee you a job. I'll call you in a few days and let you know when you can come in for a training shift."

"Oh!" Bronwen grinned. "Thank you!"

"Not at all. Thank you."

Log

Bronnie, with a faint clink of jewelry, peered out from the back room.

Well, great. Here, Mum had asked her to watch the shop, and like a fool she'd agreed, and she'd sat and been bored to tears, and the moment she has to duck into the back room, people come in.

She peered around the door, and slunk as sneakily as she could over to the desk, and sat with a rustle of dark wings. Bronnie coiled her tail around her ankles and contrived to look as though she'd been there all along, like she was supposed to have been.

Min beams at Ayo and leans forward to get a better look at her. She coos at the little dragon in an almost bird like manner, though it's more awkward than it would be if she was in her natural form.

"My name is Min," she introduces herself to Ayo, then looks up at Lorelei. She stands upright again, surprised by the naga's question. She'd held onto squirming children before, but what would the safe answer be?

"Um, maybe," Min holds out her hands a bit, "You could tell me?" For once in her life, Min actually thought about what she was saying. Seems a baby is important enough for that! But the sound of Bronnie emerging from the back room makes her look away from Ayo and Lorelei to the desk.

"Who're you?"

Of course thinking before she speaks doesn't last.

Lorelei notices Bronwen around the same time Jasmine does. The Naga smiles and tells her hello, trying to be as friendly as possible.

---

Ayo trills back at Jasmine, until she too notices Bronwen. Without warning, the little dragon jumps out of Lorelei's hands again, and tries to reach the newcomer. There are so many people to see!

---

After Ayo hits the floor in a run, Lorelei tries to grab her daughter, who ends up slipping through her grasp. As the little dragon zooms not four feet away from her target, the Naga finally captures her daughter, who is still squirming, and holds her close. "We are going to have to put a leash on you..."

---

Ayo squirms and begins to cry out. There are so many people here to see, why is mommy stopping her from seeing all these new people?

Bronwen blinked in utter confusion at Ayo. "Er. Hello?"

She gave herself a shake. She hadn't been like that as a kid, surely? She hoped not.

"I'm, uh, Bronnie. I'm... I'm just watching the shop for my mum." Her gaze rested for a moment on Jasmine, clearly puzzled.

Jasmine starts when Ayo leaps from her mother's grasp once again, moving to the side so she doesn't get in the way. When Bronwen introduces herself she immediately brightens, gazing with interest for a moment.

"You're Sunny's daughter? She's mentioned you before!" Min nods and, despite Ayo also making an attempt to reach her, she goes over to the desk, "I'm Min!" She looks to Ayo and Lorelei curiously when the naga catches the little dragon. Then she grins, deciding that she likes this dragon.

"I'm Lorelei," the Naga smiled, still holding on to her squirming daughter. "This is my daughter, Ayo. So you're running the shop for your mom? Tell her thank..."

Without warning, Ayo slipped out of grasp again and made a beeline towards Bronwen.

---

Ayo dashed towards Bronwen for a second time; she would make it! She would meet the new person! As fast as her little legs could carry her, the little girl kept running. She would get to the new girl, she would...

---

Not five feet away from Bronwen, Lorelei again grabbed Ayo and held her close to her. "Do not do that again," she said in a warning/scolding type voice. Not only had Ayo slipped from her grasp a second time, but she had almost slipped on the floor.

"I'm really sorry," she apologized to both Jasmine and Bronwen, "I think we need to go home and get some of that energy out."

---

Ayo began to cry when mommy scolded her. She hadn't done anything bad! She just wanted to see the new people! As mommy walked out of the store and back towards home, the dragon began to bite at her hair; she wanted to go back and see the new people...!

"Er, bye." Bronnie watches Lorelei and Ayo go, still a little baffled.

She looked up at Min, then, from her chair, and her forehead creased in thought. This... this girl would have to be one of the fully dragon children, wouldn't she?

Bronnie stood, and held out a clawed hand for a handshake. "Nice to meet you, Min. Yeah, Sunny is my mother."

Min watches as Lorelei and Ayo leave with a frown- she'd missed seeing people, hopefully she'd see the.. um. snake woman and little yellow dragon again. But there is still someone here! She looks back to Bronnie and smiles.

"Nice to meet you, too!" Min shakes Bronnie's hand, then releases it, "Why isn't Sunny here today?"

"Eh, Mum was busy with one of my sisters," Bronnie said, rather carelessly. "They went shopping or something." She shrugged. "Mum says even she needs a day off, which I guess is true, but I have to work too." She made a face, then grinned.

Bronnie's explanation isn't very shocking to Min, for sometimes Ecavi is occupied with Myze and Ceri rather than her, though she hadn't seemed very busy with work lately. When Bronnie mentions that she has to work, Min's eyes widen ever so slightly. She'd never even thought about working herself, even though that was always something her mother did, she hadn't really thought of herself doing such a thing.

"Oh, working doesn't sound like much fun," she says, but then pauses, "Well, maybe not some work."

Ignorant to the exsistance of things such as paperwork, it seems to her that some jobs wouldn't be so bad.

"It's not so bad," Bronnie said. "I work in a little cafe. Pay's okay, I'm saving up. I want to get a place of my own, eventually." She looked slightly conspiratorial for a moment. "I have no idea where," she confided. "I hate the idea of living in the city. It's nice enough to visit, but... we've always lived out in the middle of nowhere.

"You do? What do you do at the cafe?" Min asks curiously, then is surprised again by the mention of wanting her own place. Something else she'd never actually thought about, and it's almost funny.

"I was in Durem before, it's a lot busier than Barton is," she says, trying to sound important, or like she can add something to the conversation.

"Eh, some register, but mostly I prepare food in the kitchen." Bronnie grinned, on familiar ground. "I like it. It's crazy, though. I think there's only two people working there who are actually fully human. And about three who are half-human, like me."

It was sort of eating at her... Min was fully dragon. Despite being rather younger, Min would be able to do all those sorts of dragony things she couldn't do properly--if not now, then eventually.

Ah, that was petty.

"Oooh," she murmurs, smiling- mostly drawn in by the fact Bronnie speaks positively and has a grin on her face. She leans back on her scaly heels when Bronnie explains about the people working with her, not as surprising as the other stuff for she's seen lots of different people just walking around.

"You're half human?" she asks, tilting her head, "You look normal to me. I don't look much like a dragon anymore, not as much, but I am. I just decided to look this way one night, I guess."

She doesn't know she's hitting a sore spot, she is mostly just talking.

Bronnie winced visibly. "Yes, I'm half human," she said. And if it wasn't strictly accurate, she certainly wasn't sure how her biological father's ancestry worked, exactly. "And it's not so bad, but... well, I'm not too good with shapeshifting... this is about as much as I can manage."

Despite her mother's insistence that it would become easier with practice, it never seemed to.

"You're probably already bigger in your dragon form than I'll ever be, for all I'm older," she added. "Mum said something about that..."

Jasmine notices the wince, but is encouraged by the fact that Bronwen keeps talking, no matter what tone she takes with it. The golden dragon girl finds it interesting.

"I'm not very good at shapeshifting either," she chimes in, "I don't know what you're supposed to do, it's all just happens to me. Like-" she rolls up one of her sleeves and holds out an arm- "The scales used to stop here, but they came back up to here!" She points to the line where the golden scales meet the yellow scales on her arm and then to where the yellow scales meet skin. The scales on her arms had extended from just past her wrist to just before her elbow when she's gotten mad at Tilia.

"How big are you in your dragon form?" she asks curiously, "It's easier not to hit stuff and move around in a house when you aren't bigger. Around our house anyway."

"I'm... pretty much exactly the same size I am now. And I probably won't ever get bigger." Bronnie grimaced. "Mum's.... Mum's big, y'know. Like, too big for the house. I guess that's normal."

She supposed, anyway. Really, her mother and her uncle were the only other dragons she'd ever seen in their natural shape.

Bronnie inspected Min's arm pensively, then shrugged. "I don't know about things like that, though I saw my Uncle Ray get reallyangry, once. Scales started popping out all over. It was pretty weird."

"Wow, I'm not too big for our house," Min says, sounding amazed, "I wasn't last time, anyways! It's lucky that you can be smaller like this, then, or we'd all be stuck outside." She nods as if she knows exactly what she's talking about.

She takes another look at her arm, making a face, "Really? I was mad at Tilia when this happened, there are more on the rest of my arm too but they aren't as close together. It is really weird."

Min rolls her sleeve back down, "It's why I brought that-" she points to the note she'd left on the desk before Bronnie had come out of the back room, "I had to apologize to Tilia, but I don't know where she lives. That's 'cause she didn't give me ve- er- I didn't understand her directions."

She'd just written her apology, she wasn't going to call the directions bad again incase it somehow got her into more trouble.

Bronnie shrugs. "I don't know. Mum might know where people live--I guess she sort of has to--but she's not here."

She sits back on the desk, vaguely hoping Sunny doesn't come in to see that, and quite unaware of the fact that Sunny regularly sits on the desk as well. Bronnie wraps her tail around her ankles. "I... I guess the rules are just different for me. I'm different sized, and... everything."

"Maybe they'll come by sometime and get it from here," Min says, mimicing the shrug, "They do come here sometimes, if they didn't we wouldn't have fought in the first place 'cause we wouldn't have met up." She doesn't mean it like it might sound, but she rarely means things like she makes them sound.

She listens as Bronnie explains that that the rules are different for her, focussing on the word different.

"Well, everyone is different," she says, again saying likely the best thing Sunny ever told her, "It doesn't matter if you're a different size or whatever 'everything' meant! It just means .. um.. that you're different, and that's not a bad thing."

She pauses.

"Sunny said so."

Clearly Min has a lot of trust in anything Sunny says.

That hadn't been exactly what Bronnie meant, but she didn't feel like explaining further. Though it depressed her, somewhat; had she really gone through the name quest, and become a full member of the tribe, just to feel this alien and out of place with someone who probably didn't know all that much about the tribe, anyway?

"It sounds like the sort of thing Mum would say," she forced herself to laugh, her nose wrinkling. "I know she's said that to me plenty of times."

Whatever Bronnie feels, Min certainly doesn't. She doesn't understand why Bronwen would feel out of place, not seeing much different with being half human if you just were smaller. Still young and ignorant, she just smiles.

"Yeah!"

"You don't have to live with her," Bronnie laughs, suddenly at ease. "If I cut myself in the kitchen, after she's done freaking out at me, it's all, 'I know a story,' and it's insane. I don't think most mothers do that. It was great when I was really little, but..." She shakes her head. "I dunno. She's okay."

Entry 201

Sunny rushed into the ER, her face red. She had a quick word with attending nurse, and hurried over to Bronnie's bed, partioned off with curtains. She nearly collided with Lorelei, coming out.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Sunny gasped. "I'm looking for... for my daughter."

"You must be Bronnie's mother," Lorelei guessed. She would have expected more than this tiny blonde horned woman to be Bronnie's mother, but there was no doubt, in her mind, of where Bronnie got her draconic heritage; in her fear and worry, silver scales were breaking out over Sunny's arms. "Ms. Shadoweaver? I'm Lorelei..."

"Sundragyn." Sunny exhaled. "The name is Bennali Sundragyn. Shadoweaver is Bronnie's name. It's complicated. But I am her mother. What happened?"

Lorelei wrung her hands. "I'm not sure. Bronnie was helping me unload flour off the truck. We opened the box, and she passed out. I almost missed it, in the rush, but... it wasn't flour at all."

Sunny turned very pale. "What?"

"Nothing I've ever seen before. Some sort of herb."

"What did it look like?"

"Purplish red, looked sort of like spiky bay leaves."

"Oh no. Oh no oh no." Sunny clapped her hands to her face.

"What is it?" Lorelei was alarmed.

"Redcap," she moaned. "I'd bet my life on it."

Sunny pushed ahead into the curtained area; Bronnie lay on a cot, sleepy-eyed, but conscious, with an IV in her arm. Sunny attacked her with kisses. "Oh. Oh, my poor little wyrmling."

"Mum?" Bronnie peered at her groggily.

"You'll be okay. You'll be okay," Sunny whispered, and flopped down in a chair next to her.

"I don't understand," Lorelei said. "What was it?"

"Redcap is a key ingredient in dragonsbane, and very poisonous to my species," Sunny whispered. "Harmless unless eaten to most people, but prepared properly, even a good, strong sniff can be fatal..."

"Oh, lord..."

"If she's alive now, she'll be okay." Sunny burrowed her face in the blankets beside Bronnie. "Just takes time..."

Lorelei excused herself; she could not think of a reason why anything like that would arrive at her deli, but it was not reassuring.

Entry 203 (I live!)

Bronnie wandered into the living room, hair wet from her regular after-work shower, hands in her pockets, and discovered her younger sister scowling at the television over a game controller.

"I can't figure out how to get up the wall," the goosegirl lamented, without looking back.

"Whatcha playing?"

"Lego Star Wars," Dana said, a bit guiltily; it was, after all, not her game but ostensibly Bronwen's, even if Sunny was the one who played it most of the time.

"Scoot over." Bronnie sat down next to her, picked up the second controller, and pressed start to join in. For the next several minutes, they struggled to get up the wall together, with the elder girl giving directions, at last finding success.

The level finished, Dana gave a triumphant honk, and then looked over at her older sister. "Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"What's it like to fly?"

Bronnie raised an eyebrow. "It's... just. Sort of like swimming in the sky, I guess, but a little scarier."

"Do you think I could fly?" Dana's voice was eager.

"I don't know," Bronwen admitted, eyeing Dana's "wings" that were really closer to being arms. "Maybe when you're bigger."

Dana's bill wrinkled a bit in a slight pout. "I went and looked at geese in the encyclopedia," she said. "When they stop looking fluffy and have feathers like mine, then they can fly. But I can't."

"Well, you're not like them." Bronnie found herself, to her annoyance, echoing her mother's words. "You're a person-goose, not an animal-goose."

"But that's weird."

"Yeah, well, there are animal-dragons, too, remember?" Bronnie gestured to Zhay, who was dozing catlike on the back of the sofa.

"Right!" Dana brightened considerably.

At this moment, there was a sound like a door slamming, and Sunny's voice rang through the house from upstairs. "DANA!"

Dana made a small, guilty, squeaking noise.

"What did you do?" Bronnie asked, suddenly suspicious.

The goosegirl honked again. "You know the clock in the guest room?"

"Oh my god... Come on, you, let's clear out."

Dana climbed onto Bronnie's back, between her wings, and Bronnie ran out the front door, grabbing coats and boots as they did so. Once outside, Bronnie spread her wings and managed to get airborne, despite the added weight, and the two of them made for Barton, giggling at their near escape.

"I thought Mum locked up her tools."

"I know where she keeps the key," Dana explained.

Entry 205

"Mr. Leeds, this is my friend Bronwen that I was telling you about."

Sheila's landlord was a tall, gaunt older man with a waxy complexion and short dark hair flecked with grey. If it hadn't been for her friend's assurance that he really was fully human, Bronnie would have doubted it. As it was, she found herself wondering if a zombie could get away with calling himself fully human.

Sometimes, Gaia was very odd.

Mr. Leeds squinted at Bronnie suspiciously, and grunted. "All right. Well, the room's upstairs." He turned and headed up the stairs behind him, without glancing back.

Sheila gestured at Bronnie to follow, and she hurried up after him, trying to ignore the weight of Ing on her shoulder. Sheila moved in silently behind her.

Mr. Leeds unlocked a door on the fourth floor, moving slowly and deliberately. At last, he opened it up, and pulled the door aside.

It was not a large apartment. Bronnie hadn't expected it to be. It was, however, a lot nicer than she had thought. The ceiling was fairly high, something she could appreciate with her wings. The walls were a fairly plain off-white colour, but the floors were all a pale yellow hardwood, except in the kitchen and bathroom where it was a white-yellow-and-rose linoleum. The bedroom had a large window, and the main room opened on to an airy balcony.

"The floor's been refinished," Mr. Leeds said. "Last person in here scratched up the floor something awful. I admit I have a hard time renting this room. Lot of undead in this building, and one demon--you probably know that, if you know Sheila--so not a lot of people come here looking for brightly-lit rooms. Light's not a problem for you?"

"Ah, no." Bronnie peered out the balcony critically. Sheila hung back; when she went outside in the day she usually wore layers of clothing, and she lacked them now. The balcony overlooked a nearby park. Ing cawed something about the roadkill nearby; she made a face. "Gross, Ing," she murmured. Aloud, she said, "Would you mind terribly if I came in and out of this window? It's such a good launch point."

"All the same to me." Mr. Leeds shrugged one bony shoulder. His expression, she noted, was still exactly the same as it had been when she had come in.

"How much?"

He named a price.

Bronnie hesitated. It was certainly easily affordable. That had to be a side effect of the numerous undead in the building. Sheila had insisted firmly that none of them were dangerous, and there were certainly other regular mortal people renting out rooms here. No one had ever died in Mr. Leeds's apartment building.

She had to wonder, though, what her mother would say.

Entry 207

Bronnie all but threw herself at Ghlyssa when she had opened the door; as she was just a smidgen under six feet, and her "big sister" was barely 5'4", this proved to be a bad idea; Glee staggered back, unprepared for this assault.

"Sorry," Bronnie repented, almost at once, and stepped back to let Ghlyssa inside.

"It's okay," Glee assured her.

"I was just... I haven't seen you, and..." Bronwen chewed on her knuckle, suddenly miserable.

"I'm fine." She looked around, her brow creasing in thought. "I like your new place," she offered.

Bronnie laughed self-consciously, and nudged her milk-crate-table with a toe. "I need furniture, still, but I like it. I'd offer some tea, but I don't have a kettle yet. How about fruit punch?"

"Yes, please."

As Bronwen was poking around in the half of the room marked as kitchen, mostly by the change in the flooring into linoleum, Ghlyssa sighed suddenly.

"Bronnie. I wanted to ask you something."

"What's that?" Bronnie looked up. From the open window across the room, the scruffy-looking raven that had, until now, been ignoring the conversation, turned an interested eye on them.

Ghlyssa tapped her fingers together. "It's about Airyn, actually. She made some pact to get magic, with her friend Star. Star's, um, a demon."

Bronwen's tail, grew unusually still. "Is she okay?"

"She's fine," Glee stressed, though she was beginning to blush a deep green. "But. I thought. Well, you're a little bit demon. And I thought you might be able to put my mind at ease."

Bronnie didn't say anything. She poured the juice, and handed one to Glee, and still just stared into her own cup.

Ing, from the window, croaked reprovingly at her.

"Shut up," she said, without feeling.

"Bronnie?"

"Glee, I can't." She shook her head, the ever-present glow of her eyes flashing briefly brighter. "I can't put your mind at ease. To be honest, that part of me... has always really scared me."

"Sunny says," Glee pointed out, "that demons aren't necessarily evil. I know Airyn's friend isn't."

"I know. Mum's right about that, anyway. I don't know that my... my father," she said the word hesitantly, her mouth twisting around the unfamiliar word, "wasn't evil. So it worries me."

The raven scratched an itch, and cawed at her again.

"Shut up."

"You're worried that you're evil?" Ghlyssa frowned faintly. "You're not evil, Bronnie. I know you're not. Not even a little bit."

"Thank you," Bronwen said. She took a drink. "If you wanted me to give you some sort of what-it's-like-to-be-demonic thing, I don't think I can help you. I guess I wouldn't think that Airyn would go evil, either, if that's what you wanted to hear. But I don't know s**t about this stuff, Glee. It's just... what I am. But no one's ever sat me down and said, this-and-this-is-how-it-goes."

"Oh." Ghlyssa smiled, faintly embarrased. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean--"

"Forget it," Bronnie said lightly. She set down her cup, crossed the room in a sudden sprint, and scooped up Ing in a sudden rush of black feathers. "And you're just crabby, Ing." The raven struggled a bit, backwinged her lightly, and managed to right himself enough to climb up onto her shoulder, where he settled himself, eyes half-shut.

"Do you really understand him?" Ghlyssa couldn't help but ask. "I mean. I know enough people with familiars, I suppose, but..."

"I understand him." Bronnie tapped Ing on his beak. "He keeps telling me I'm not practicing enough, actually. Which is true," she added hastily, when the raven showed signs of rousing grouchily. "I'm just busy all the time, and tired when I'm not."

Ing gave her an approving look.

"Glee. If you don't mind my saying so... I think the time you spent as a tree... really did you good. You seem... different."

Ghlyssa tapped her fingers together. "I think I'm a little more of the Earthkeeper, a little less of Ghlyssa. It's so complicated," she complained. "Do you think it's bad?"

"You're still Glee," Bronnie scoffed. "And as I understand it, the Earthkeeper's still you."

Entry 210

Sunny blinked at her daughter in some confusion. "You want to what?"

"I want to borrow Ga'yagas."

The pard, deeply purple and gold, winged in black and gold, poked his head around a doorway at the mention of his name.

"Um." Bronnie faltered. "If it's all right with him, of course."

Ga'yagas, ever glad to see Bronnie, came and sat at her feet; he rubbed his head against her fondly. In the pard's mind, it was not so long ago that he had trailed after a little girl who had needed guarding.

"I have to warn you, Yagas," Bronwen murmured, "that this might be a little dangerous."

The pard just purred. He would go wherever his little girl wanted him to go.

"But. Bronwen, what is this about?" Sunny scowled, doing her best to look cross but only coming across as worried, which she was.

Bronnie stared at the floor. "Mum. There was. There were some... people... I met on my namequest. The ones who named me, actually. They came to ask me a favour."

Sunny's voice was soft. "What sort of favour?"

"I don't know yet."

"Bronnie... I'll... I'll come with you. If you're that worried, if you want help, you know I'll--"

"No, Mum." Bronwen shook her head. "I don't want to worry you. I'm... I'm an adult. I can do this myself."

Sunny was silent for a moment. "There is a certain debt inherent in being named by someone. But just because they named you doesn't mean you have the obligation to put yourself in danger for their sake! You can refuse!"

"I don't want to do that, Mum."

"Of course you don't." Sunny kissed her daughter on the cheek, hugged her tightly. "I know you better than that. Be careful. Yagas, you keep an eye on her."

As Bronnie and Ga'yagas left, she sighed down at the pard. "Thanks for coming," she said. "I don't think this is really going to be too dangerous. But we are going to be dealing with demonic things. At least as demonic as I am, anyway."

Ga'yagas only flicked his tail.