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Sylvia and Donnie had gotten invites to the movies, the question was would they be going together?

Sylvia's trying to rise above the petty desire to pout, so she shows up at his place promptly, wearing a Teflon smile.

Mary Douglas answers the door, a cheery smile on her face. "Sylvia! How are you? Come in, please. Donnie's upstairs, on the computer, I think."

It's not hard to hear her mind clicking away. Dammit, Donnie. What did you do now? Sylvianever comes over unannounced..

Like all good girls, Sylvia's trained to be polite to the parents, no matter what.  "Hi, Mrs. Douglas.  Is everything okay?  I hear things were exciting this past week."

"Exciting isn't quite the word for it, I'd say. Everyone is still in one piece, so I consider that a win. Go on up. I hear his music playing and he has that silly lock charm on the door so he won't be interrupted. Do you want something to drink?"

Sylvia's afraid of what that means, coming from Mary, so she shakes her head, smiles, and trots up the stairs.  She's also afraid of what kind of spell Donnie has on the door, all things considered, so instead of knocking or even touching the knob she simply calls out from the hallway.  "The calves of Mulgore rest easy tonight, safe from elven raiders.  How about taking your heifer out for a look at the stars?"

There is a click and Donnie's door opens a sliver. The music is still playing and wierd lights seem to pass by the door.

Donnie doesn't answer.

Sylvia, paranoid by dint of experience, nudges the door open with her foot and peeps before she enters.  "It's all okay," she half-sings to herself under her breath.  "Everything's all right."  Still, she's going through her training:  check your corners; keep your head low; one quick look; count targets; get ready to make that fight or flight decision like a rational human being instead of a panicky animal.  She's twitchy these days, but she's twitchy and alive.

It's like the scene of some wierd movie. Donnie floats about three feet off of the ground, surrounded by glowing symbols that hover in the air dripping sparkling light. He is stripped to a pair of sweatpants, and his brow is furrowed as he mouths words that make little sense to Sylvia, a slightly insane combination of gibberish and mathematics. He continually reaches out, twisting and tweaking symbols as he types on his PDA (which is too floating next to him). He finshes writing one section, shoving the symbols aside and pulling other ones forward, linking them with sweeps of his hand, fingers strained in odd contorting patterns.

"The alesfith divided by the sum of kinta, so the kinetics don't overwhelm the weave. Hmm. That doesn't make the iddus any easier to lift and meet the verbage, here. If I twist these and slide them into the ascendant position.."

Sylvia hears a meep! from above, and looking up, sees Pip clutching the door frame. As soon as she sees him, he drops to her shoulder and nuzzles her cheek, giving her earlobe a flick of the tongue.

She rubs his head and neck with her fingertips and figures the door wouldn't have opened if she wasn't supposed to go in.  "He likes to sleep above the covers of the bed," she mutters.  "Five feet above the covers."

The bed seems unoccupied, though, and she climbs onto the ratty, vintage-2001 Lord of the Rings comforter and pulls a paperback out of her bag.

Donnie takes another six or seven minutes to finish up, muttering all the while, until the configuration of symbols seems to please him. He moves his PDA over to one side of the glittering wall and reaches out with his other hand, pulling the entire mess towards and into the PDA, leaving it glowing brightly for a few moments until the glare fades. Donnie stands and catches the PDA as his gravity spell is dismissed.

"Hi sweetie! You look nice! Why are you all dr-ohmygoddidwehaveadaterightnow?" His smile morphs into a look of fear.

Sylvia flashes him a look of even sweetness over the top of her paperback.  "I thought we were going to the film festival, but I might be mistaken.  Are you interested?  No pressure."  There is, in fact, pressure, but it's pressure as applied by Uma Thurman in Kill Bill.  A few steps in the wrong direction, and Donnie might fall over dead.

"Um, heh. Of course! Whatever youo want, Sylvie."  He smiles a sickly smile, perhaps aware how close he is to the end of his young life. "Let me grab a quick shower and make myself presentable, okay?"

He nearly runs out of the room.

Pip meeps! in amusement and looks at Sylvia, eyes swirling.

"I don't know how things work with dragons," she tells him, still rendering the kitty massage, "but here the female lizard is the big, chompy one, and in courtship the male is the one who just tries not to get killed."

Pip basks in the attention, rolling on his back so she can get his belly. As to draconic mating rituals, he seems mum.

Donnie bustles back in, wearing a plaid terrycloth bathrobe. He gives Sylvia a quick smile as he rummages for clothes in his drawers. "Showers are much faster without hair."

He takes his findings back to the bathroom to get dressed.

Sylvia speaks up through the door.  "Are you planning to keep it like that?"

"No!"  comes the muffled reply, as if she caught him pulling his shirt on. "I miss my hair. Besides, you lose a lot of heat from your head. Without hair it's worse."

stumbleTHUMP

"I'm alright. Just fell over trying to get my jeans on."

After a few more moments of struggling, he opens the door. "That always pisses me off about those illustrations of barbarians trudging through snow with loincloths, bare chests with wolfskin boots. Fackers would have gotten hypothermia in no time and be in no condition to rape and pillage when they got to their destination."

"Barbarians have high CON," Sylvia blurts, then blanches.  "Look what you've done to me.  Those church people who say D&D is a corrupting influence are right."

Donnie cackles in his best Dr. Evil laugh. "MWaahaha MWAhahahah Mwahahah! Soon you will be buying your OWN set of dice and arguing the merits of priest versus paladin as the designated party healer! My transmogrification of you will be complete!" He cackles again as he walks down the stairs.

He calls out to his mom "Going to this movie marathon thingy, mom! Call my cell if you need anything!"

As they leave the front door, Donnie says in a faux movie announcer voice "THE INTENSE CULT TRAINING THROUGH D&D PREPARED DEBBIE TO ACCEPT THE INVITATION TO ENTER A WITCHS' COVEN. (http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp)

"Debbie Does D&D?" Sylvia asks, then shudders.

"Chick Tracts! Fun for all ages. Remind me to show you online. A religious nutball who thinks everyone and every other religion is 'of the devil' or something. Some of them are kind of funny. As in 'ha-ha, that dude's crazy' kind of funny. The one I just quotes is, of course, directed towards Dungeons & Dragons."

He takes her hand as they walk in the brisk winter air. His warmth spreads to her and suddenly the air is not so chill any longer.

Sylvia smiles and leans into him a bit from time to time, happy to be alone with him.  "Sometimes it seems like a significant portion of the population defines itself by negatives.  It's like they adopt a template, a group identity, and then kind of sketch the battle lines.  If you're on the other side of the line, you're bad.  If you're on this side of the line, you're good.  It's an ill-considered way of making you feel better about yourself by casting someone else as the unbeliever, or the uncool, or the bad guy."

She stops herself and looks warily at him.  "Too much?  That was my best attempt at light conversation."

Donnie winks. "Yeah, but who does the White Trash look down on? Hillbillies? Monkeys? 'Hey lookit dat, Maw! Dat funny little hairy man done stuck in a cage!"
He shakes his head. "Nah. Humanity defines itself by it's differences, not by it's similarities that cross over national boundries and skin color. Medically, we're all the same with some minute differences in genetic make-up. Strangely, do are most dragons. It's one of the fe things shared by both: racism. Cerulean Drakes are the best fliers and look with disdain on the others. Bronze battlers are mostly warriors or teachers of warriors, they think scholars are weak. Heck, dragonettes like Pip are considered nuisance by many of the large dragons, and Pip is sure as hell a lot smarter than many of them. Salamander is an uncultured and unlettered barbarian to their eyes. Barely more than a beast, but there is a mind in there."  

"I find it hard to believe that Althea looks down on anyone except in the literal sense."  She pauses.  "She's not simple, is she?"

"No, Althea is a sweetheart. I think she's far from the norm for Cerulean Drakes though. She just really wants to do her part in maintaining the balance between the two worlds. As far as her intelligence goes, I have no idea. She's the only Cerulean I have spoken to. I just get the impression that the majority of her people are snobs. She's an exception to the rule. All the other dragons like her, even Salamander, primarily because she isn't interested in subterfuge, or politics, or any of the other crap that causes interfighting between the breeds. She's just genuinely a nice dragon. She's fascinated by humanity and was the first to volunteer when the call went out for protectors of the newest BorderLord. It just took me a while to find the strength to pull her through."

"Do they write?  Do they build things?  Do they make things?  Not Cerulean Drakes in particular but dragons as a whole.  I'm thinking about the whole social-studies thing, what civilization is like when you're not human."

Donnie shrugs. "I don't know. I've never asked. We should pick Uther's brain. He's be the one most likely to answer us without being evasive. Hey, have you ever, you know, 'looked into' any of the dragons?"

Sylvia shakes her head.  "I didn't want to get eaten.  Should I?"

Donnie grins, a bit ferally. "They wouldn't eat you."

They walk on for a few moments and Donnie says "Look into Pip. I am curious. I can talk to them, mind to mind, but I don't know what they are thinking, only what they are saying."

Sylvia shrugs and looks around for the dragonet.  If she can find him, she sends a questing tendril of telepathy into that alien mind.

The sensation is different than looking into a human mind.  It's too alien to understand anything beyond feral impulses and random images.  Pip cocks his head towards Sylvia, and she gets the impression that he can sense her telepathic presence, but none of what he seems to be thinking is making it to her in any clear form.

"Wow," Sylvia says in hushed fascination.  "It's like looking into Bell Jar's head but much more complex."