Friend Is For Talk! [Azh]

At first the dark did not care to reply to Pesk. It took a solid minute before the first flutter of distant movement approached from the shadows.

But it wasn't any wher. What swooped out of the gloom seemed all-wing, and only when it flopped to the ground in front of the black did the rest of its body resolve. Smaller than Pesk's smallest nail, the creature had a round head with tapered knobs spoking off the sides. Its skin was white and frail, such that the blue pulse of a heart could be seen at its center and its other organs and veins webbed its abdomen through.

"Eepoo," it said, then pulled its small hands up and scrubbed furiously at its button snout. A picture of a mottled blue tunnelsnake was handed to Pesk, almost solid as the living thing. Billy hopped back up off the floor and began whizzing in circles a few inches above. "Eek!" He disappeared, then reappeared in a few different spots around the wherpair, always completing three further winged revolutions before disappearing with a squeak.

Bad wander, get bite, a new voice grumbled, loud enough that Pesk could pick it up as its owner shambled out from the same tunnel the flit had emerged from. The moment Billy reappeared near the ground, a wedge-head on an unusually long neck snapped up and nipped him out of the air.

"Eep!"

For a moment the firelizard was gone inside that big-eyed skull, then Tusk mushed her mouth around and he reappeared, pinned between the tips of her jaws in a condensed white ball. Holding him as such, Tusk retracted slightly toward her own tunnel, turning one yellow eye and then the other on Pesk. When her bonded finally shuffled into view with a glow on his belt and a cane in his hand, she oozed back behind him. Tuss started to smile at Pel, but gave a start as a certain alarming image was passed to him. He looked down at his wheret, who had already reached her full seagreen length.

"What did I say?" Tussbuul inquired, inflection disappointed but not precisely firm. Tusk hunched her head back toward her shoulders, tightening her oral grip on the firelizard. Tuss tapped his cane-point against the stone floor a couple times and the green hunched further, then reluctantly put her nose to the ground and deposited Billy there. Her thin lips were drawn and her eyes pulsing orange as she looked back up to her master. "Awww," Tuss chuckled, scritching her smooth-leather head. Tusk eyed Pesk while she received her mate's affections, then turned that dainty snout towards him and blurted her pale yellowy tongue from the end. Sss!

Billy was still lying in a crunched-up mass on the floor as Tuss turned back to Pel and bowed stiffly in apology. "Good evening," the Masterminer chirped, apparently in a better mood than either of his associates.