milliways_bar | (no subject)

And oh, look, there- someone who's just come in from upstairs.

He has HANDS.

"Hroph!"

That's what his name sounds like when said through a mouth full of clothing. Cera canters over excitedly, stegosaurus following happily.

Hey, the human might have food, right?

Look left, look right, look down- "Ah! Cera!" He smiles and crouches down, holding a hand out to her. "Good to see you. This a friend of yours?"

Cera spits her bundle into his hand.

"Hi, Rho! This is Spike! He's a Spike-tail!"

Spike reaches Rho and starts chewing amiacably on his pants leg.

Rho gently attempts to redirect the chewing and probably fails. Oh well. It's a tough suit. "Hello, Spike," he says. "Good to meet you. Do you always- does he always do that, Cera?"

"He's just hungry," Cera explains. "he eats a lot because he's so young. He can't talk yet."

Her eys her on her own suit, and shifting the front half of her weight from front foot to foot excitedly.

"Can I have my pants on, please?"

"Ah, okay," says Rho, nodding. "I'll get him some tree stars from the bar, then." He places the order and puts the plate of leaves down before turning back to Cera. "This isn't pants, Cera. This is just clothes. Pants cover your legs."

American usage. How dastardly.

Dastardly indeed. Cera tosses her head proudly.

"I knew that! I was just testing you!" Really, it's almost convincing.

"Can I have my clothes on, please?" she corrects, still hopping excitedly.

Spike, meanwhile, doesn't say anything because he's munching his way through the leaves.

Rho grins, because come on, baby dinosaur. She reminds him a great deal of the children of the Terblinck ambassador, before the incident at Mauna Kea.

"Sure," he says. "Hold still and let me get this part under your frill, there..."

Bits of Cera stand still in succession as she waits impatiently for him to dress her.

"I'm the only one in the entire Great Valley to have clothes!" she tells him happily. "Everyone's really really jealous."

Rho pauses to picture an entire valley full of juvenile dinosaurs in various stages of clothing.

... yep, that sounds like the Terblinck ambassador's household all right.

"I'll bet they are," Rho says. "There- I think I have them all fastened. Does that feel right to you?"

Cera wiggles around in the suit for a few seconds, before prancing around in a big circle to try it out.

"Yes, thank you very much!"

Spike, by now has run out of tree stars, and is nibbling at one of Rho's shoelaces, pulling at it do get a better hold.

"Any time, Cera," Rho says. "Any- oh, oh. Spike, don't do that." He does his best to get the shoelace away.

"No, Spike!" Cera headbutts Spike in the side, causing him to stumble sideways uncertainly. "You don't eat clothes!"

Spike fails to look suitably chastised, and wanders off a little way looking for food.

"He's only a baby," she explains to Rho.

"That's all right," Rho says. "I'm sure he'll figure it out eventually."

He looks at the baby triceratops in the bulletproof vest thoughtfully.

"Say, Cera... how fast can you run?"

"Really really really fast!" Cera says promptly. "I'm the fastest three-horn there ever ever was and three-horns are much fastre than Long-Necks and Spike-Tails!

"This one time we were all attakced by a Sharp-Tooth and I saved us all by running! I said 'Hey! Sharp-Tooth! Over here!' And I ran and I ran and i led the Sharp-Tooth away from my friends. But I wasn't scared, because I run so fast!"

Yes, there ar action to the story, which include Cera running in circles around Rho's legs.

And Rho, oddly enough, is used to this. Granted, it's more often a case of trying to walk through the middle of a room full of the Worm Brothers without tripping over anybody, but still. "Very impressive," he says approvingly. "What's a Sharp-tooth?"

Cera stops in front of Rho and looks up at him dramatically.

"They're the scariest vicous meanest things in the world!" She says, eyes growing wide with the drama. "They stand on their back legs and growl and chase and will eat you if you get caught!

"But I'm not scared of them! No sir!"

"Oh," says Rho. And then he goes on to prove that yes, he is Ray under the skin, because no one else could say something quite so boneheaded as:

"I think I met one of those last night."

Cera's bravado melts away in an instant and her eyes go wider still.

"Were you scared?"

... okay, this would be an excellent time at which to backpedal...

"A little," Rho admits. "She was kind of big."

Cera nods mute agreement, although lots of things are big if you're two feet high.

"What did you do?" she asks, awed.

"Well," says Rho...

... you know, somehow he doesn't think that 'I politely greeted her and gave her baby a handful of meat and played 'fetch' with the baby' is going to go over well...

"Bar?" he says. "Could I have a paintball gun, please? Loaded? I need to show Cera something."

Cera stares at the gun.

"What is that?" she asks, Sharp-tooths apparently forgotten for the moment.

Rho smiles. "This," he says, "is called a paintball gun. This is something that humans came up with because we don't have claws, or fangs, or horns, or bone rills like you do."

He hefts the weapon and looks around. "Okay," he says, picking up the plate that the tree-stars arrived on. "Can you take this and prop it up against... oh, that table over there for me? So it's straight up and down and I'm looking right at it?"