Resting her head against his chest, Anastasia could hear A murmured thumping, regular but roughly in tune to the music in the air which was coming from Uriel’s chest. It was that most hypnotic of all sounds; the beat of another’s heart. It was paced, but loud. It was not frantic, at least not for a beast his size, or maybe it could have been. But the way it was synchronous with the rhythm in the air was what marked it out.

Anastasia at first found herself simply working in time with his movements. Those legs entwined and feet inches from one another as the graceful dragon monarch led the Sun Queen around. As she adjusted and continued to put her effort into keeping up and learn the movements. Each repeat of the steps gave her a clear confidence that grew and grew as the music rose and fell almost in time with that pumping muscle that lay inside that chest. It reminded her in a slightly morbid way of the stories of her world… how the priests praised her gods before even she was born. It calmed her moreso than anything else as the gentle rushing of air turned her attention now to those amber wings that enveloped her slightly, hiding her form somewhat from the prying eyes around them.

“…I honestly never thought i’d… be in a position like this. To be alive and swaying with a man in a foreign court seems much like the life i was prepared for yet… it’s a life that i was never willing to accept”

“You feared losing the power you had built for yourself. Becoming a trophy to some higher lord.” Uriel mused to her as he looked out to the crowd. “In you I do not see a subject or a vassal. My role is to mediate for a thousand territories. You are as integral to the Imperium as any who sit within the Praetor’s Presidium.”

She was quiet as she gazed out between his wings to the lords and ladies of the court, lost in her thoughts as she listened to the great dragon above speak and sooth her with his reassuring words a soft smile against her beak as she gazed up with those stern purple eyes.

[i]“I fear it is all for nothing… I’ve tasted it all and i cannot go back– …I refuse to go back to the way things were. I aim to climb ever higher until I find wherein the gods and heavens themselves lie.” a pause came about between the rims of her beak “Or high enough to know the fall shall kill not cripple me” she muttered with a rather firm expression.

“…But …you. You I could be a trophy for.” she teased with a roll of her eyes.