strangetrip | [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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"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."

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

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