Elora snorted. "You are utterly shameless," she informed her mate briskly, but she was smiling a bit as she said it. Melisma laughed, waving farewell to Sahana with another rapid burst of Yoreiqi before she grabbed Elora's arm and towed her back out of the shop.
"Just for a while" turned into nearly two hours—and by the time the younger dragon had returned with the knight in tow, Elora was shifting uncomfortably and tugging absently at the blue fabric twisting around her body. She honestly had no idea where it was Melisma had disappeared to after dragging her back and forth through the port town looking for something—that had been roughly the first hour—but when she had returned, it had been with..."gifts".
"I look like a walking chandelier," Elora grumbled, fiddling with the hem of her wrap for the umpteenth time.
"You look lovely," Melisma retorted, positively beaming. The dragon had somehow retrieved a collection of colored-glass faux gems—all in shades of blue and green, with a few sparkling bits of gold—and had spent what Elora considered to be an exorbitant amount of time fastening them in swirling, spiraled patterns over Sahana's cloth. The end result was something like an artist's vaguely over ambitious attempt at painting a night sky in nothing but jewel tones. Elora was fairly convinced that magic of some sort had been involved, as Melisma claimed happily that they would be easy enough to remove should she wish.
"Was all this really necessary?" Elora asked with a faint sense of baffled futility. She wasn't used to people being so...so friendly. For no discernible reason. The poor thing must have truly been starved for companionship, she supposed.
"It was," Melly chirped happily in response, cheerfully oblivious to Elora's spinning thoughts. "You know dragons like a bit of shine."
"This is not a bit of shine," she protested with a laugh. "And it's not as though I'm trying to seduce Merradin, you know. We're already—"
"We're back!" Melisma called, ushering Elora back into the maze of fluttering fabric that made up Sahana's shop.
