[mariah?!]

"As you can see—" gesturing to his swollen abdomen "—I'm currently occupied, so I'll have to pass you up on the offer."

He paused. "Although if you want to stand there until the piss stops, you just might convince me not to shred your eyes out."

Īf Israfel had actually gave a shit, he might've demanded that the gryphon take back his last remark, for its words had been seeped in disrespect and no one disrespected a dragon. So why wasn't Israfel jumping to his old lover's defense? Oh, right. Because he didn't give a shit. Like he'd waste his precious excretion on that arrogant lizard. Tch. Besides, neither Svara nor Angcarch knew he was nearby—the rain of Ceyana always acted like an acid fog, permeating every inch of the land with a unnerving lack for days, sometimes weeks, depending on the severity of the occasion. Due to the scentless prey, most species of predators on the island had gone extinct as a result of starvation. Even the dragons had been at risk, once upon a time. If it hadn't been for the wyvernai, the tarragon might've succumbed altogether, but family was family, right?

The reason the wyvernai weren't affected by the island's quirk was thanks to their genetics, which had scrambled their sensory organization. Some wyvernai heard images, for instance, and others felt with their eyes. Many of them could identify creatures of prey by the body heat they gave off.

Even Israfel, who had been the runt of his litter, had been born blind in one eye and deaf on his entire left side. Rather than suffer from the traditional genetic glitch, he was another case entirely—for a short time, one part of his soul had belonged to the Otherside and although he'd grown out of the sickness, some of the symptoms still lingered.

Anyway, he stood in the shadows, watching the scene unfold with tenuous amusement. His unkempt talons had uprooted a small sapling and now, in an attempt to occupy himself, he gnawed on its branches, his tail sending ripples through the thick grasses around him as it swept carelessly to and fro. All the while, his eyes never left the gryphon and the tarragon—the gryphon, especially. Here Israfel had been, wondering what it had been up to in all the time they'd been apart from one another—worrying, sort of—and the devilish little minx had been out and about, getting itself knocked up. And quite fabulously, too, from the looks of it. The swell of Svara's abdomen was just positively .. delicious.

"Congrats to the father," he said finally, his voice the same rasping hiss from before. Unsurprising, really, considering the thing didn't get much use. The only person he ever spoke to was Angcarch and even then, they never really spoke, unless you counted the sounds they made while they were vigorously fucking as conversation. He let out a snort, abandoning his sapling in favor of Svara's ankle; darting out from amongst the shadows and bowling the blond-haired gryphon over with a frightening disregard for the child that he carried within his womb.

"Hello, amoureux," he greeted cheerily, grinning around his mouthful of bone and angles. "Missed me, didn't you?"