Baeris and the others residing at the Healing Den knew that there was a holiday coming up, and like usual the Den itself started putting decorations up before anyone else did. Holly sprang from corners of shelves, railings, and the whole interior of several flitter containment nooks. Tinsel draped itself from hallway entrances, and most annoying of all, at least to certain dragons, a gigantic Noble Fir tree grew suddenly overnight in the middle of the main flight dome.

The littler dragons could fly around it, and many did just that, enjoying its scent and the lively air it gave off. The bigger dragons harrumphed and muttered things about having to exit the Den to fly, yaddayadda.

Even they came back to find gifts wrapped carefully and addressed to them, below this massive tree. Decorating the massive evergreen was a difficult matter, and it was one which the Den left to the human and draconic inhabitants.

"Of all the times not to have a good magician around," Baeris said, straining to reach one branch while two of her children scampered around halfway up the trunk. "They'd have all this stuff floated up there by now."

"We think it's better this way," said Baelin, tossing his sister a bow and another handful of shiny silver tinsel.

"I definitely think it's better this way," answered Kali. If the pair weren't actually cats themselves, they acted rather too much like Ivo - who was spending his time curled up at the bottom of the tree waiting for a spare shiny bit to fall toward him, so he could chase it. He had no idea that his ancestor Istvan had done extremely similar things when he was young and shapeshifted.

"I could always call in the Zekirans," Kalkin said, leaning against the main hall opening, "but you'd complain about too much snow or something."

"There will not be snow inside the Den," Baeris said with gritted teeth.

"There might be, sooner than you think," another voice said, and it was foreign to everyone. "That is, if you want it."

Her name was Vilupa, and she shone like any true Whorling would. Baeris nodded, "well, I suppose that if you want to put some icicles on the tree, not too many, that would be fine."

The dragoness, who was close to five times the size of the smaller green-gold Dulath who had come down to see what was going on, nodded casually and a sparkling of pure ice danced from her mouth. Where it hit the tree, tiny ice shards remained. It was still green with bits of snowy-cover, far from 'flocked'.

"Thank you, that is just perfect," Baeris said, "I think you should probably find a place up near the big dens, you're not going to be able to ..."

Vilupa had hunkered down into a compact, short-tailed, just-bigger-than-elephant sized dragon, heading toward the interconnected hallways of the Den proper.

"Never mind, have fun storming the castle..." Baeris laughed, and continued to toss shiny ornaments onto the tree's branches.

Abilities: Verbal Speech, Ice Breath Weapon, Gravity Manipulation, Alter Physical Body, Flight: Wingless
Size: 66 feet long
Name: Vilupa
Gender: Female
Colors: White, silver-blue, blue
Personality: apathetic; unconcerned, indifferent, considerate

Did it surprise anyone else that there was a second dragon hanging out near the gigantic tree, the next day? Hardly. What did surprise everyone was that he was so... awful.

He got his long nose into everything (sometimes leaving a trail of moisture, probably from his steamy breath) and occasionally made very raunchy comments about both humans and dragons nearby.

Lenlit spoke little, but said way too much. Kalkin even referred to him as "mister tee-em-aye over there". But Lenlit would turn a transparent shade, his flesh changing to a translucent glassy substance. Within an hour or so, he'd found the hatching sands and went to town. He would play with the warm sand a little, licking his claws and back spines (erotically, throwing the nearby females into fits, and making several males rather angry) and sticking them into the sand as hard as he could. That meant writhing, indeed on his back to get those sticky spines good and covered. Then - he abruptly changed into his glass-shape.

The sand went with him. Caught creating beautiful objects that shimmered and sparkled for the tree, some of the locals instantly caught on to his game, and brought him different kinds of sand. He made dark, obsidian-colored ornaments; then turned to ones as bright and bold as his own mixed hide; then to compete with Vilupa's icicles he shaped dazzling glass shards to emulate them. Of course, watch out if they fell on you...

Name: Lenilt Ratcarver
Gender: Male
Size: 60 feet long
Color: Red, white, gold
Abilities: Verbal Speech, Teleporation, Steam Breath Weapon, Alter Physical Structure: Glass, Shapechange
Personality: hard, repulsive, disgusting

"This isn't going to be happening much more, is it?" Baeris asked, and was rewarded with a chuckling dragon laugh. But Apai didn't speak, he merely floated through the air, occasionally moving his milky-white wing-things to stir the air. Between he and Vilupa, they'd decorated the entire accessable Den with icy snowy bits.

"At least he's small," Kalkin said with a shrug. The holiday season certainly did seem to have picked up since last year. In as much as the Den experienced time.

Apai seemed to enjoy relaxing - hovering just above the floor - near one of the big fireplaces. And though it wasn't at all spiteful or done to harm anyone, he kept shifting Ivo and his kin, as well as Atrocity's xeno-shifter son Kedok, into their fully-human forms. Ivo wasn't all that disturbed by this, but Kedok occasionally had to back away from the odd bright-eyed dragon just so he could regain some control over his own body...

NEXT

Name: Apai Ruta
Gender: Male
Personality: open, open-minded, natural, genuine
Height: Four feet ten inches
Alignment: Scrupulous
Abilities: Telepathy, Icy Air Breath Weapon, Flight: Wingless, Shape Change Others