[img]http://i.imgur.com/SsySWU5.png[/img] In the wake of the battle just ended, Leila lay against the ground; her eyes half shut and body still except the slow rising and falling of her chest as she breathed, which was the only, barely noticeable, signal that she was still alive. The scene she last remembered as an intertwined chaos of screams and cries seems to have long degenerated into a much more stable state. The sound of conversation and the occasional groans from the injured echoed only in the background, at a distance. Flames survived in small batches on the scorched land, but were withering. The once rampaging dragons - - dragons. At the thought of that her eyes widened and her upper body jolted up in a way that would remind one of the schoolgirl who woke up late to realize she forgot to set the alarm last night. Jolted up was, of course, jolted up as far as possible before the injury in her waist forced the muscles to give up and brought her back down, grunting in pain. So that was what knocked her out, she thought, in her struggle to piece together the recent events that she could not remember. She turned her head to the left, away from the scorching sun that pained her eyes. Behind the few batches of taller grass that obscured the range of her sight, she noticed the figure of the recently crowned Ice King, collapsed not far away and only just sitting up. There was no-one she knew on her right. Ushering all of her strength she managed to lift herself off the ground, but only to have to stop in a crouching position on her ground. She was still dizzy. A few “hic”s escaped her throat as she felt like throwing up several times. She never did vomit, but the intense discomfort from contracting the already strained muscles was enough to endure. In the middle of that she noticed an arm extended her way at the edge of her range of sight. She turned around to see it was Haku, who seemed to have been much quicker to recover. His mage’s robes, once a bright white that echoed the colour of the element he controlled, was now worn and torn in places and covered in specks of dirt and dust, much like her own clothes. He might or might not have said something to her, which she did not hear. She took the hand. Assisted by the boy beside her, with half of her weight supported by an arm wrapped around him, the two of them walked together, in staggering (and seemingly-not-as-staggering, in Haku's case) steps towards the rest of the Lost Souls. [center]* * * *[/center] The Lost souls were regrouped on the hillside. Everyone seemed to be there. Leila looked upwards to see the mighty creatures standing in front of them. The sun - a bright light of the afternoon that seemed to never have left the sky since their arrival in Sol - showered rays from above, forcing her to narrow her eyes to see (she was perhaps too tired to bring up her hand) the silhouettes of the dragons. Three of them, standing tall - at least as tall as three story buildings, she gauged. How creatures of such a caliber could even function escaped her mind. A body structure that could hold up with that weight. A circulation system powerful enough to maintain it. And the dragons even flew! Muscles strong enough to propel those wings. And they did it [i]elegantly[/i]. A sensory system powerful enough to control their movements with such intricacy... The dragons also spoke. She was even more amazed by that fact. One of the dragons shifted its stance, expanding and flapping its wings to provide a cushion for its landing. Leila only watched in awe as the winds that escaped the flapping wings swept across her face. "Beautiful, aren't they?" She said, as her footsteps slowed down and stopped at the end of their little trip to rejoin the lot of humans, near Harper and Just besides the rock Inadi had made his seat. The dragons stood aside one another. Leila found herself imagining the dragons as a family of sorts. She smiled. She actually enjoyed that thought - A family of glorious beasts. Guardians of a treasure, or something along those lines. That was a wild idea, of course, and she didn't spend much time entertaining it - and yet she enjoyed the thought. Funny how she also almost thought one of those dragons almost looked like the little floofy one they met back at the caves. She kept gazing up with intense interest throughout as most of the conversation happened between the other Lost Souls and the dragons. Amulets, dragons, witches, conspiracies. She didn't really understand what was happening. She didn’t know how the battle ended and how the dragons suddenly calmed down. She might have been able to piece back a few things from the traces in the conversation, though she was too distracted to listen anyway. But, somehow, for once, she was completely comfortable with not knowing. Perhaps she was just a bit too tired to think about it all, too tired to try to comprehend it. Yet the scene alone sufficed in making her feel glad. Neither was that a thing she could explain, but she was happy with that too. Leila found the scene to be...calm, in a way. The sun was scorching, the smell of charcoal still filled the air, the heat was still unbearable - but everything seemed so peaceful. The battle ended. They were safe. For once in this journey in this realm of madness, she felt like everything was going to be okay. Then she looked back at the dragons, in the same admiration as she did earlier. Only then did she notice that it was not only the humans who were worn out by the battle. The dragons, as mighty as they were, could also be seen with apparent signs of physical distress: scales worn and cracked, scrapes on the surface of their tough, study skin. The one that was seen with the magical trinket dangling from its neck (-[i]so they did it after all[/i]-) seemed to be particularly upset. Reptilian faces don’t convey expressions all that well, but the stress the creature was experiencing was well evident. The dragon was fierce and had been growling angrily most of this time, yet each display of anger came also with anxiousness and despair, almost like that of a frustrated child; and he never did quite calm down completely despite the efforts of his companion. The large, feathered dragon besides him was not as beat-up as the other, yet worry masked her face as she asked the lost souls about their son. Leila felt that bit sad about this. She thought that maybe she should do something. Yet she did not know the answers to their questions - the whereabouts of the little fluffy dragon remained unknown to her. Leila looked around a bit. Their discussions seemed to have come to a pause for the moment and some of the lost souls were having conversations of their own now. Slowly, Leila slid her arm away from Haku, shifting her weight back onto her legs as she took slow steps, tentative and small at first, forwards. Since the dragons understood their speak… Leila looked up again at the dragons as she stopped, a number of steps closer to them, with her feet barely managing to keep her standing. The faces of the dragons were close to each other and near the ground. [i]I’m sure your child is fine.[/i] She wasn’t sure if she thought that or said it out loud. She intended to say it, yet even if she did the loudest she could manage under this state was probably barely a dragon’s whisper and she doubted they would hear it. But she was almost certain that they would understand. Leila tiptoed a bit so that her arms could reach high enough - it hurt, but she didn’t seem too bothered by that at the moment. She proceeded to try to hug the dragon on the snout.