"Hey there, you must be new here!" He said, giving a casual bow when he'd caught 'her' attention. "I'm Cemitae, and I work around here. Can I show a lovely lady like you around?"

Lathan blinked and pushed his glasses further up his nose with his free hand. Of course his first thought was that the Avengaean was quite a specimen of feminine beauty--from a scientific point of view, of course, given that Dajina beauty-standards were reversed. Quickly I corrected himself. After several years of exposure to different cultures--including those of the humans and their look-alikes--the fair-skinned fellow realized that this was actually a man! Cemitae, unfortunately, hadn't grasped things from his side, yet. He was still rambling. "Oh," Lathan said, the translator he'd brought with him finally working, "Oh, no, you've got it all wrong. I'm Lathan O-ama, but I'm not a female as you seem to have assumed."

Being Avengaean, the Fire Dragon was capable of understanding just about any non-native language, though he could tell that it wasn't one that he'd heard before! That wasn't what he was thinking of, however. "Pardon me?" He asked, not quite grasping what Lathan had said.

"I'm as male as you appear to be, er... Cemitae, was it?"

"Urr..." the dragon's words ran out. How embarrassing... Raising a hand to his bright hair, he finally nodded. Well, he may as well salvage the situation... "Yeah... that's right. Look, I'm sorry... um... still, if you're new, I'd be delighted to show you around..." Not that he wanted to stay in Lathan's presence, not after messing up so badly!

Lathan, at least, didn't seem to be too phased. He was listening to the translator absently, already jotting down notes in a vertical scrawl across his note pad. "Oh, certainly," he replied, after the pause between Cemitae's words and the translators'. "I'm here with my bond, who wished to visit the Nidus in order to fly--to mate, I mean."

"Oh..." Cemitae nodded, thoughts branching out in two directions. Part of him wanted to ask "Who, what? What's she like, what's she look like? What are my chances?"... that sort of thing. Another part, and the one that he decided to follow up on demanded at least a little formality, and certainly some politeness. "That's nice! The Nidus is a nice place, and there haven't been a lot of flights, here... it's a new establishment, you know."

"Really, so I have heard!" The Dajina flipped the page he was writing on, then said, "please, tell me more... er..."

"Cemitae," the Fire supplied. He'd gotten the idea that perhaps this fellow was a little absent minded, but he kept that thought buried, letting himself be questioned by the fair skinned man.

Scorching and flambaying and letting those prepackaged spells rip, the dragon had (over time, at least) become a rather good chef--and the food he prepared was always in dragon-sized portions. If a dragon didn't care for running down their food, they could always come to the kitchens, and tonight there were more then usual. Lathan's gold beauty was among them. "You cook with quite the passion," she'd said, surprsing Cemitae from the task at hand.

Turning, he caught sight of the lovely dragoness, and immediately noted how her golden mohawk seemed to glitter in the gentle light from the ceiling and walls. Her hide seemed to be definitely glowing. She was the one--the one that Lathan had been talking about. Attempting a friendly smile--hoping it didn't look like a leer--Cemitae briefly returned to the food, adding finishing touches and sending it on its way to a waiting Wyld. "I try," he said, looking back. But Supersyllaba had gone on.

Supersyllaba, sunning herself in the open spaces between garden and hatching sands, cast him a low-lidded look. "Mm, you're the chef who was singing pop music under his breath."

Cemitae's ears drooped. "You heard that?"

"I make a point not to miss the details."

"Oh... well... yeah," he added, his voice sheepish. "I can't help it, I like to sing. Do you mind if I sit here?" Indicating an open patch nearby the smaller dragon, he waited until she nodded agreement before plopping himself down. "Oof! Anyways, I met your bond--"

"Lathan?" Supersyllaba turned her head fully, golden eyes studying him. "Oh yes, you're the one who was hitting on him, aren't you? Your voice sounds just the same."

"You heard that?!" Cemitae nearly buried his head in his paws, embarrassed beyond belief. He as going nowhere with this meeting, despite all of his efforts. "It was purely an accident, I swear--"

The golden dragoness laughed, drowning out his profuse apologies. "You'd be surprised how often people mistake him for a girl... it was Cemitae, wasn't it? Yes, well, don't be too upset. It's happened before, and it will probably happen again." She laughed again, this time more softly, and shook her head. "I guess you're trying to court me, aren't you?"

"Am I that obvious?" Those paws were looking mighty safe at this moment...

"Well, considering slightly less then half the dragon population of the Nidus has been looking me over, lately, I wouldn't assume anything less." She lowered her head again, sighing with pleasure at the heat of the sun--a real sun, not those fake tanning-rooms offered at the station! Speaking with her eyes closed, she continued, "really, though, I may only be a quarter 'refined' dragon, but I think I'd rather know my options beforehand then to rise from a bloody bath and expect some big brute to take me mid-flight. It seems so... tasteless."

Cemitae said nothing, not quite sure how to deal with her straight-forwardness. He agreed with her, though he didn't want to sound as if he were speaking only to please her. Then again... "I think I know what you mean." It was time for a conversation change! "'Only a quarter refined dragon'? What do you mean by that?"

"Well," Supersyllaba said, noting the way that Cemitae danced around the subject of flights, filing it away for later, "my mother was born from a giant frenzy, and my father... I'm not quite certain which he was, as they listed three from the flight that concieved my siblings and I. My grandparents were siblings on one side of the family tree, as far as I can tell, and my paternal grandmother was something wild. My grandfather was--is--a Fire, like yourself. Actually... that was part of the reason that I wanted to visit here."

Cemitae nodded along, his long hair gently wafting on a cooling breeze. "He's living here?"

"Apparently. From what I could research, Aunes is the one I'm looking fore."

The name brought a number of things into perspective for Cemitae, and the Fire showed it through a narrowing of the eyes, a slight flick of the ear. Aunes Selamputo, father of all of the half-fire Wylds that inhabitted the Nidus, including Ny'aetia, his Dux and one-time lover, and Auhato, one of the several males that Cemitae felt the strong urge to compete with. This all meant that Supersyllaba was one of their children, which meant that she was probably younger then him by a great deal. And yet... she certainly acted like an adult. She was well-spoken and seemed to know what she was talking about. Certainly keen witted. If he had been younger, Cemitae might have shrivelled at the thought of speaking with her... but he'd put those days behind him. "Well, you've come to the right place," he finally said, his voice only barely hinting at his indecision. "Though I think Aunes and his bond are still on Mythicalae, hunting Wylds..."

"No kidding," The gold dragoness replied, cracking open an eye. She really was gorgeous, Cemitae thought. "Hmm, well. Maybe he'll return before we leave, or maybe we'll stay here for a while. Either way, I'm still planning on rising. It's strange, you know. It's like several different heats are trying to poke at me at once." She grinned, opening her eyes fully to note Cemitae's obvious discomfort. She'd let him be, no sense in scaring off another suitor. "But now I suppose I'm rambling. Usually Lathan does that, but what can you do?"

"Not much, I suppose." Cemitae rose, then bowed deeply, his firey wings spread wide. "It's been nice to talk to you, Supersyllaba," he said, nodding and smiling, covering his own self-conciousness. "I hope to see you again, soon. I have to be off, now."

"Hmm, likewise, Cemitae." She shifted and closed her eyes again, determined to catch as much sun as she could. The Avengaean, in the meantime, set a brisk pace back to his apartment. That could have gone better...