Owen took the coin pouch from Daxten and weighed in his own palm, peeked inside, then nodded to himself thoughtfully. He tucked the money away in a pouch, pulling out a small pad of paper and what appeared to be a stick of charcoal as he began jotting down notes while the younger man spoke.
"Practical," he noted approvingly with a small nod. His eyes flickered over Daxten's shoulder toward Azalea, who was doing her best to hold as still as possible as Gwaine was forced to sort of clamber over her in an effort to get an accurate measurement of the length of her haunches between her wings.
The dragon shot her new partner a quick, droll look as Gwaine's foot slipped and he sort of collapsed sideways along her spine with a "whoof!", though she somehow managed to keep herself relatively still.
Owen snorted quietly and shook his head, though his eyes were bright and clever as they flickered over Azalea again from nose to tail, then back to Daxten. "Well, it sounds to me like what you two need is something light and flexible, that you could mayhaps both get in and out of in a hurry."
"It'll make sense in the long run, too," Gwaine piped up from where he now stood under Azalea's left wing, measuring the length of the first spindly joint that stretched through the pure white, nearly translucent membrane. "With the ice dragons from down out of the mountains, the females tend to be smaller, faster. Built for speed and agility rather than brute force. So you two will probably run a lot of recon missions, that sort of thing. A light, flexible saddle will go a long way with that. Not to mention it'll keep you somewhat insulated from her breath, since it's easier to wrap that kind of saddle in wool or something around the seat and pommel."
"For this much..." Owen mused, tilting his head back and forth as he apparently ran some mental calculations. "We could have something basic done up in...about three days. Maybe three and a half, if you want the insulation Gwaine mentioned. You probably already noticed that ice dragons hold a chill the same way the more common breeds retain warmth in their scales."
Azalea huffed and rolled her eyes. One of the strangest aspects of living in her dragon form among mainly humans, she had discovered, was the simultaneous reverence and patronizing that tended to be directed toward her. People recognized that she was a sentient creature--and a rather powerful one at that--but most still couldn't seem to move past the idea of "beast" that her form projected, and would sometimes talk about her as though she, and the rest of her kind, were little more than intelligent livestock.
As Gwaine and his father just had, though she knew the young man didn't mean anything by it. He tended to get clinical when he was working, much like Owen.
So rather than get properly offended, she just sat in silence, watching the three men dryly with her head once more resting on folded paws.
