Hearing a faint rustling from beside her, Eve tried to ignore the miniature crystalline icy dragon that appeared to be sitting on her shoulder. 'Appeared' being the key word there. She could see the dragon, and she could both hear and smell it, but it had no physical presence. She had found that out the first time she had attempted to pick it up from napping in her waste basket, when she had reached for it her hand had gone right through. It had appeared the same day as the strange, deep red, slightly ominous stone embedded in her wrist, so she figured they were linked, but no matter what she had done the dragon wouldn't go away, it just sat smugly on her desk blowing smoke rings through it's nose, accompanied with little huffing noises.
So now, of course, it was haughtily surveying everything from it's perch on her shoulder as she clambered off the bus, and either people round here were used to tiny blue dragons riding round on shoulders, or Eve was the only one who could see it, which, when she thought about it that way, made much more sense.
A mysterious letter had brought her here, and really it had been a strange thing among strange things, so she wasn't that surprised to see she wasn't the only one loitering outside the building. Tugging her hoodie closer around her Eve glared up at the building and fished for courage, taking silent confidence from the purple-grey smoke rings drifting out in front of her.
