strangetrip | [GP] puppies and kitties and buns, oh my!

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[GP] puppies and kitties and buns, oh my!

Not everyone had a Trinket, Vex thought during a lazy afternoon tickle fight-turned-cuddle session with her most excellent bear. In fact, most people wouldn't want a Trinket, but that was because they lacked appreciation for the finest things in life. They probably would've liked him better when he was still a cub.

Aaaaaw, Trink had been so fucking cute when he was a baby.

Baby animals were always cute. Even the dangerous ones.

Whether it was a harmless twist to her brother's penchant for pranks or a desire to shake things up a little in this resort prison that was way too quiet or hint of boredom and curiosity about the limited magic Vex had, she couldn't say, but one Conjure Animals later, and her room was full of small, fluffy, cuddly baby animals... and one much larger bear sniffing at them in confusion.

Looking very pleased with herself – and okay, a little surprised at just how many fuzzballs there were – Vex opened the door to her room. "There are lots of people here. Go make friends and have some fun."

The animals tumbled, stalk-pounced, and hopped out of her room and all over the inn looking for people to play with, and just before they were out of her sight, Vex added, "And if you see my brother... you can pee on him if you want."

[OOC: fey creatures in the form of baby animals invade the inn for an hour. have fun. feel free to link to pics or gifs of the cuteness in your tags if you'd like.]

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After determining the small white snake he'd found squiggling about didn't have fangs, Vax'ildan was entirely happy to give it friendly pets and let it squirm about his person more or less as it pleased. "I know you're not here long," he told the snake from where he'd sat them at a table in the cafe. The snake itself had curled around his neck for a bit, then slid itself over to investigate one black, feathery shoulder, where Vax had tipped his face towards the thing to watch. "But maybe you should have a name for the time being. If there's other snakes about, we don't want to go getting you confused," he said by way of silly excuse. "Simon's been taken. If you've got other ideas, I'm all ears."

"What about Sebastian?" Steph asked, amusement clear in her tone. She strolled over and dropped into an opposite chair, holding a glass of orange juice. A robin perched on her shoulder, half-hidden by her hair. "Or Helga, if it's a girl."

"My stubbier half, in all her knowledge about such things, says he's a boy." Vax reached to scoop up the long body carefully with one hand and then the other, holding the snake out cupped between them for Steph's approval. He didn't know if she'd much appreciate snakes or not, but the big-eyed smiley-noodle leaned its face in her direction as if to smell what she was about.

Steph held still, smiling slightly but conscious of the little bird on her shoulder. The snake's tongue flickered out and she didn't resist the urge to return the favor. "He's adorable." She lifted a hand to gently brush a finger over his smooth scaly head. "That's so cool."

She gestured to the robin currently puffed up on her shoulder, neck disappeared into his feathery chest. "This one's Damian. He's grumpy and small."

Vax didn't even notice the bitty bird nestled against her golden hair until Steph pointed him out, really quite distracted by her being arguably more adorable than the snake in vaguely his direction. But once she had, he stopped to consider the red-breasted bird glaring (yes, glaring) at him with beady eyes.

Containing the spooling serpent to one palm and putting him down by his side, Vax reached with the other hand to give the tiny fellow a pat - and met with a sharp little beak for his trouble. "Ow, hey!" It had surprised him more than hurt, but what a little shit. Hadn't Vex said they were supposed to be friendly? "What's his problem?"

Steph contained her laugh fairly well, and shrugged the shoulder that did not have a cranky terror bird on it. "I have literally no idea. When I found him, he was screaming the most annoyed song you've ever heard, then he landed on my shoulder and refused to leave. Hence the name."

She risked pecking to reach up and scritch the bird's neck. "I suppose he's hoping that I'll take him somewhere he can get into a fight. I didn't put my hair over him, by the way. He did that himself. "

"Must be a name for peevish people where you're from." He took this as another of Steph's little jokes that would take more work to have explained than the fun she'd had in telling it, so he didn't heckle her to get overly specific. But he was very glad she'd come across the angry bird before he had.

"They're fey, if you didn't know," he thought she might rather hear now before being confused or disappointed later. He showed his forearm, which the snake had begun exploring in a lazy coil. "Magic woodland friends. They'll go poof back into the air before too long."

"Damian's the youngest of us. Robins." Us, in this case, the same way he'd use Vox Machina as us. As family and unit of justice. His explanation of the spell made her eyes go a little soft and her smile rueful. "They're not going to stay? That's too bad. It would have been cool to have this guy around. Teach at least one of them to have some fun."

She stopped petting the bird and picked up her juice instead. "How did they get here?"

His expression shifted to something more understanding, as she explained the name and how it had to do with robins. Robins. Her people.

"My sister called them up. More than that, I can't say - she's always been more in touch with nature than me." He pursed his lips slightly, thinking of Keyleth, but ended up not saying so.

He turned his attention instead back to the little snake fellow, picking it up to where they could look one another in the face. "Has 'Sebastian' got a special meaning, too?"

"So your sister is a Disney princess." Because basically, who else could summon cute little animals out of thin air? Steph made a mental note to see if she could get the inn to deliver her a copy of Cinderella for sharing.

"Nothing to Sebastian. It just seems like a good name for a snek. Nice sssss sound for hissing. Ssssebassstian. If I was going with a more meaningful name, hmm." She cupped her chin in her hand and pondered man and snake. "He seems like a nice, well-mannered chap. Serious. Maybe Alfred."

"Baroness, actually," Vax corrected lightly. He wondered if Disney was a great and mighty kingdom.

Alfred, he remembered, was the mother hen to the Robins and Bat-people. "Might be a lot of pressure to live up to that last. And there's no sssssss at all to take advantage of. Sebastian it is."

"...Hmm? What's that?" He turned his face, putting it closer to Sebastian's tiny snoot as he looked back at Steph. "He says thanks very much for being better at this than me," he translated.

Steph's eyes widened. "Do you really speak snake?" Because if he did, she was going to call him Harry Potter for at least a month. Also, that was the coolest thing she'd ever heard.

"...wait, like a real Baroness? Is this because she's with Percy? Or are you a Baron?"

"I speak a few languages," Vax admitted, eyes brightening a touch for Steph's wonder. "But I don't speak snake. Our conversations so far are mostly one-sided.

"Her title is very real. And it did come from Percy, because he's highborn, and he could think of no greater gift for the woman he's in love with than to make her out to be noble, too. ...Our mother was a peasant, our father is an asshole, and being highborn wouldn't be worth the trouble of it, not for me," he told her. "But Vex did have to earn her title, and she had to do that part all on her own."

Edited 2017-09-22 14:07 (UTC)

As Steph only spoke English, she was still impressed, even if Vax wasn't actually Harry Potter.

"How do you earn a title? We don't have titles where I'm from. Not noble ones anyway. Highborn or lowborn is...basically how much money you have."

"That always does play a part, even where we're from," Vax agreed. If for no other reason than Percy's family having so much money in the first place was the only way he'd been able to give Vex her title. "But you can also get a title by doing a particular job, or as a reward for some sort of amazing feat in service to the people. Vex had to commune with the forest and hunt a nasty creature for the sake of protecting Whitestone."

"Was there a sword in a stone that she had to pull out too?" Steph felt like communing with a forest and hunting a nasty creature was way easier than making a few billion dollars. To be fair, it was probably harder than it sounded.

"There are countries where nobility is still a thing. I think there's this one guy who's a Scottish Duke but he actually runs a sign shop in South Africa. Because dukedoms don't pay the bills."

Merrill didn't know where the little white fawn had come from, but he seemed to enjoy wobbling after her, so she wasn't going to argue over much with it. It was the closest to a halla she'd seen in months.

It leaned heavily against her leg and squawked up at her. She didn't- She wasn't involved with the halla. How on earth was she meant to know what they needed.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught feathered shoulders and didn't even think that much before she turned and reached for the elbow. Anders. Anders knew about animals. He could help. "I think he's- Oh. Hello. You're not Anders. I'm sorry. The feathers threw me off."

Vax turned to blink at the elven girl with the curious tattoos for a moment before it sank in what she meant. "The tall fellow with the cat and the staff," he supposed. He thought he'd seen the two together at one point, though he hadn't exactly made proper introductions with either of them. "Yeah, no, you've got the wrong brooding bird."

He might've been more guarded around her, what with the ears and the very little love to be lost there. But it was difficult to be cool and serious when the girl had a huge-eyed fawn that was all legs and wobbly knees bumping along at her side, and he found himself smiling at the pair.

The city elf, right. Very odd looking for a city elf. So many feathers. Merrill did laugh a little, turning slightly pink at the description. He certainly wasn't wrong about Anders and his...usual lack of cheerfulness. "He does tend to brood. In both senses. I'm surprised he just has the one cat, usually he's got a whole flock of them. Herd? What do you call a group of cats, I wonder."

The fawn bleated loudly again.

"No, I don't think that's it."

"Too many," Vax suggested, expression going further amused. "I take it your little friend there appeared suddenly today, the same as mine?" He lifted his handful of snake and gave its little head a friendly rubbing. "The deer, that is. Not the serious fellow."

"He di-" The fawn bleated loudly again at the other elf's knee and Merrill sighed heavily. "I think they both might be serious fellows."

The snake didn't seem especially particular about how he was handled, so Vax obliged the serious fellow making that demanding noise, starting with draping the snake carefully around his neck. Then he reached out a hand slowly, to see if the fuzz of the fawn's head was as soft as it looked.

"Hello, little man," he made his voice warm and gentle. "Do you know, I can get very serious too sometimes."

Lindsey needed a drink, and beer wasn't going to suffice. Which was the only reason he was in the main building today, studiously ignoring the line of ducklings stupid enough to have imprinted on him of all people. When he saw emo-bird, boy-twin elf – Vax, not to be confused with his sister Vex who had a bear she didn't hide nearly as well as she thought she did although there had to be magic involved somehow, and no, it didn't matter Lindsey'd never been formally introduced, not knowing things was a good way to get yourself in trouble Lindsey didn't need – playing with a snake, he paused. Why couldn't Lindsey have been that lucky? Fucking ducks.

"I didn't know we were a stop on the Whitesnake reunion tour." No, he didn't expect Vax to get the reference. Yes, he made it anyway.

It was the very growly stablehand, Vax realized as he glanced over. Which was something of a surprise, because he didn't seem to much like talking to anybody, except for the girl that hardly ever spoke herself. Though they'd seen one another now and again, Vax had never quite exchanged more than two words at a time with the man.

"Have you got one as well?"

"Nah, snakes got more sense than that." More sense than baby ducks anyway, and Lindsey continued to act as though he didn't hear the high pitched quacks coming from around his boots.

"It's a band where I come from. Whitesnake. With the leather, the feathers, and the hair, you'd fit right in." Lindsey shook his head. "Don't mind me. Gotta find humor where we can around here. It's a joke."

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[GP] puppies and kitties and buns, oh my!

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