@Juri01
Ray only stared blankly at the Pearlcatcher's friend, his grey-blue eyes glistening with disbelief and unshed humour. "You're kidding."
"Do I look like I'm joking?" Dalcenti snapped as his posture stiffened with contained anger. "Leave."
The elder Harpy just snorted, treading towards the door, hauling it open and slamming it shut behind him.
Kharis, still clinging onto the pieces of glass and shrapnel she'd picked up from the floor and Cadoc's shuddering body, moved towards her room in the Treasury to dump them into the crate in the corner. She heard her walnut-coloured overcoat whistle against the stone floor as she finished descending the carpeted stairs to Cadoc's Jewellery shop, felt her orange-hued shirt become sticky with sweat from such an awkwardly abnormal day for the Trading Company. It was very rare that anything that eventful happened at the workshop, considering Dal's managing skills over the Company itself.
She rounded the corner to her Treasury as swiftly as she could to avoid an awkward talk about what happened with her greyed Tundra friend and saw that his mate - a tiny Fae called Tinuel - was picking sadly at the treasure placed before her.
"Hey," Kharis said, talking softly so as to not override the dragoness's emotions, "is everything okay?"
"I suppose," was her only reply, her mouth telling lies but her eyes showing only truth.
Kharis's heart sank to the pit of her stomach. "No, that was a stupid question for me to ask. What's wrong?"
"I just... I didn't expect someone like Ray to demand that of a sweet little boy."
"I don't think any of us did, really."
Tinuel only sighed, that being the only thing to suggest that she didn't want to talk about it anymore. Kharis obliged gratefully. She wasn't the best at talking about feelings, despite her outgoing nature. Thinking constantly about the event, she trudged towards the corner and dumped the shrapnel into the empty abyss of a crate before returning to her desk and looking around to distract herself.
The walls were a simple cream colour, the sunlighy hitting it in certain spots to make it look like a marigold and light-creamy pattern. Soft white curtains were held over large, one-sided windows the shape of an Imperial's wings, flapping lazily from the small breeze coming through a few open patches of glass. Two separate Oakwood desks were placed at angles in the room, making extra space for the crates upon crates of treasure and gems the feminine duo would sometimes have to sort and count and weigh. There were a pair of gold-coated weighing scales at the corner and shining silver nameplates in the front-center of them. Kharis had a framed photograph of her, her two grey friends Dalcenti and Fuchur and their Jeweler fashionista - Cadoc - whilst Tinuel had a picture of her mate and herself, both smiling and happy in the midst of a crystal clear beach. The only real difference between the two desks - other than the nameplates - were the piles of paperwork. Since Tinuel was given the job of an assistant Treasurer, Kharis had tons of paperwork to fill out for both her and Tin. It was aggravating, but all the same it was the job she loved.
A soft pat-pat of clawed paws came through the doorway into the treasury and Kharis stared Dekoda right in the eyes. "Yes, young one?"
"I wanted to apologise to you." He turned his small hands in circles with mere anxiety, his feathers fluffed and his wings stiff.
"No need. It wasn't your fault."
"It was."
"Not necessarily, youngling. Ray can-- could be quite manipulative." She bit her lip to stop herself from using the present tense. He's gone now, after all. "You don't need to worry about that anymore, though."
The young Harpy only stared at his claws on his padded, scaly feet with his bright eyes. "Okay."
"Go run along, now. I'm sure your sister is worried about you."
He scampered off with little hesitation. The youngest of all their workers, had barely come into working there, and yet he'd already been manipulated by someone who the Company once trusted.
Another head peeked in through the doorway. Dalcenti.
"Hey, Tinuel," he said gently before nodding to Kharis. "Can I talk to you?"
"Of course."
She got up from her Wildclaw-sized Oakwood desk and hovered out of the room after her mate, closing the door behind her.
Sighing, the shining-winged Pearlcatcher placed her head in a soft but scratched paw and stared at the tower of paperwork before her. It was all leases and shares, wages and taxes. Cadoc's injury hadn't even been put into play yet, and that would mean another tens of sheets to do. A groan escaped her; she knew she had to do it, but it was all such a headache.
Just as she grabbed the first piece, a snack sounded beside her on the glass. Her eyes rolling, she turned to see Ray throwing rocks at her recently polished windows.
He was stood on the dirt road a few feet away from the Trading Company's building, picking up small pebbles from the side and chipping the glass with them. His silver tinted feathers were shining in the afternoon sun, his dark eyes staring into the room even though he couldn't see it from the outside. In his hand were a bunch more pebbles, all looking rather sharp from being chipped and run over by carts.
Kharis threw open a slot in the window with all of her contained anger and glared at the recently-fired Harpy. "What are you doing?"
"Oh good, I got your attention. I need to ask a favour--"
"The answer's no."
"Kharis, please?"
"No. Raybarn, you've just been fired and you think I want to help you? You could've killed one of my friends with your stupidity!"
"Ah. Well--"
She thrust her paw in the direction of the road leading away. "Go."
After a small amount of hesitation, the Harpy turned on his scaly heel and left, uttering curses too horrid for her to want to remember.
---
A smash sounded from downstairs, awakening the Pearlcatcher with a start. It wasn't abnormal for the building to make weird noises in the night such as high-pitched creaking noises, but a shatter was definitely new.
She rushed out of bed, slipping on a nightgown to keep in the body warmth - the building's heating went off on a night - and cracked open the door to see what had happened.
The moonlight shone in from the skylights above the entrance room downstairs, highlighting certain spots in the floor with squares of silver-white. A large chandelier swung slightly in a newfound breeze in the center of the roof with crystals clinking against each other and the gold-coated links creaking quietly. Carpet the colour of blood-red flowed down a sweeping wooden staircase before their rooms, the tiniest pieces of shining shrapnel sticking up like tiny mountains in a river of red.
Dalcenti was further up the hall, rubbing his eyes with all the energy he could muster. He still wore his day clothes, probably having fallen asleep at his desk yet again. His glasses were lopsided, his eyes droopy and heavy-lidded with all of his fur being matted and mangled into small knots. "What's going on?" he asked sleepily.
"I haven't got the foggiest idea," Fuchur replied before Kharis could even blink. He was suddenly stood next to her, his cloudy green eyes staring at Dalcenti but never truly seeing more than a dark silhouette. "Maybe it was one of the Harpies?"
"Quite possibly," Kharis butted in before they could take her out of the conversation unintentionally.
Dalcenti took it upon himself to march towards the stairs, flowing down them like a greyed cloud. Fuchur followed after him and Kharis held the rear. It felt like a battle formation for a possible intruder to the Pearlcatcher, but she rolled with it as if it were normal. Only one thought crossed her mind in the process of the getting down the stairs; was it Ray?
The journey down the stairs was quicker than expected, having reached the bottom in under a minute. Dal was gone, supposedly going to check on the Harpies to see who was missing, if any of them were. Fuchur went off looking in all the room to see what smashed, whilst Kharis took herself to the treasury to look inside.
And wouldn't you know it; the window was smashed in.
She felt anger well up inside her. "DAL! FUCHUR! COME HERE!"
Padded feet slapped against the floor as the duo rushed in to see what she was seeing. The treasure was missing, the crates empty and the window practically gone. Kharis saw that her desk was flipped, one of the legs smashed and missing. The photo frame that had been on her desk was turned downside-up on the floor, small bits of glass cutting through the wooden boards around it. She bent down to pick it up and wiped the rest of the glass clean from the frame, only to notice that half of the actual photo itself was missing. Her and Cadoc were gone.
"Who could've done this?" Fuchur growled, feeling around the crates in search of any stray bits of treasure.
"My guess is Ray," Dalcenti muttered.
"I wouldn't put it past him."
"Neither would I."
Kharis remained silent through the exchange between the two older dragons, continuously staring at the photo. Could it be a sign, or is it just a coincidence?
"Kharis?"
Her attention snapped to the Tundra behind her. "Yeah?"
"Have you found something?"
"Just our old photo."
"Let me see."
She handed it over reluctantly, glancing anywhere around the room but Dalcenti.
"Why are--"
"I don't know, but it's honestly terrifying me."
"Don't worry, we'll keep both you and Cadoc safe."
"I know you will. But still..."
The gentle giant placed his paw upon the Pearlcatcher's shoulder, smiling warmly at her. "I promise."
---
Nothing happened for a while after that. The crystal window was fixed, and they soon built up on the treasure they'd initially lost to the robbery. Kharis was always riddled with anxiety, and so was Cadoc when he found out, but day after day they both worried less.
Cadoc returned to jewelling after a few days, his skills having improved somehow while he was resting as he presented the fair maidens that came into the Company with beautiful necklaces and even a few earrings and crowns here and there to be given to the highest of classes that came from class-ruled clans.
Kharis returned to the Treasury, where Dal and Tinuel were both willing to help her with the overflowing pile of paperwork now stacked on the floor. She was eternally grateful for their help when it turned out most were forms for shares in the Company and ideas to sell off to them in exchange for money. Even for a very intelligent Pearlcatcher like herself, she couldn't figure out how to do it without Dal's help.
After a few hours, a knock came at the door to the Trading Company and Dalcenti had to take a break from helping in order to see to it. At first, everyone thought it was one of the Harpies causing trouble again by knocking on their desk and waiting for a dragon or dragoness to open the door so they could shoot out into the street, but when Dalcenti returned, he did so with another dragon.
Well, undead dragon.
He tipped his fedora at the Pearlcatcher politely. "Hello, ma'am. We recently caught the culprit of the robbery and I was wondering if you and your friend would like to help us out. He refuses to talk."
"Who is it?" Kharis asked with curiosity in her tone.
"A Harpy who goes by the name of Ray? Heard of him?"
Dalcenti sighed sadly, shaking his head. "I knew it."
"So you have heard of him?"
"He was fired recently for manipulating our newest worker into injuring one of my friends."
"Oh my. Is he okay?"
"He's fine."
The Imperial skeleton turned back to the Pearlcatcher female. "So, would you mind helping me?"
Anger was bubbling in the Pearlcatcher's eyes as she stood up with stiffness in her muscles and fire in her heart. "Yes. I'll help."
Done!
Ray only stared blankly at the Pearlcatcher's friend, his grey-blue eyes glistening with disbelief and unshed humour. "You're kidding."
"Do I look like I'm joking?" Dalcenti snapped as his posture stiffened with contained anger. "Leave."
The elder Harpy just snorted, treading towards the door, hauling it open and slamming it shut behind him.
Kharis, still clinging onto the pieces of glass and shrapnel she'd picked up from the floor and Cadoc's shuddering body, moved towards her room in the Treasury to dump them into the crate in the corner. She heard her walnut-coloured overcoat whistle against the stone floor as she finished descending the carpeted stairs to Cadoc's Jewellery shop, felt her orange-hued shirt become sticky with sweat from such an awkwardly abnormal day for the Trading Company. It was very rare that anything that eventful happened at the workshop, considering Dal's managing skills over the Company itself.
She rounded the corner to her Treasury as swiftly as she could to avoid an awkward talk about what happened with her greyed Tundra friend and saw that his mate - a tiny Fae called Tinuel - was picking sadly at the treasure placed before her.
"Hey," Kharis said, talking softly so as to not override the dragoness's emotions, "is everything okay?"
"I suppose," was her only reply, her mouth telling lies but her eyes showing only truth.
Kharis's heart sank to the pit of her stomach. "No, that was a stupid question for me to ask. What's wrong?"
"I just... I didn't expect someone like Ray to demand that of a sweet little boy."
"I don't think any of us did, really."
Tinuel only sighed, that being the only thing to suggest that she didn't want to talk about it anymore. Kharis obliged gratefully. She wasn't the best at talking about feelings, despite her outgoing nature. Thinking constantly about the event, she trudged towards the corner and dumped the shrapnel into the empty abyss of a crate before returning to her desk and looking around to distract herself.
The walls were a simple cream colour, the sunlighy hitting it in certain spots to make it look like a marigold and light-creamy pattern. Soft white curtains were held over large, one-sided windows the shape of an Imperial's wings, flapping lazily from the small breeze coming through a few open patches of glass. Two separate Oakwood desks were placed at angles in the room, making extra space for the crates upon crates of treasure and gems the feminine duo would sometimes have to sort and count and weigh. There were a pair of gold-coated weighing scales at the corner and shining silver nameplates in the front-center of them. Kharis had a framed photograph of her, her two grey friends Dalcenti and Fuchur and their Jeweler fashionista - Cadoc - whilst Tinuel had a picture of her mate and herself, both smiling and happy in the midst of a crystal clear beach. The only real difference between the two desks - other than the nameplates - were the piles of paperwork. Since Tinuel was given the job of an assistant Treasurer, Kharis had tons of paperwork to fill out for both her and Tin. It was aggravating, but all the same it was the job she loved.
A soft pat-pat of clawed paws came through the doorway into the treasury and Kharis stared Dekoda right in the eyes. "Yes, young one?"
"I wanted to apologise to you." He turned his small hands in circles with mere anxiety, his feathers fluffed and his wings stiff.
"No need. It wasn't your fault."
"It was."
"Not necessarily, youngling. Ray can-- could be quite manipulative." She bit her lip to stop herself from using the present tense. He's gone now, after all. "You don't need to worry about that anymore, though."
The young Harpy only stared at his claws on his padded, scaly feet with his bright eyes. "Okay."
"Go run along, now. I'm sure your sister is worried about you."
He scampered off with little hesitation. The youngest of all their workers, had barely come into working there, and yet he'd already been manipulated by someone who the Company once trusted.
Another head peeked in through the doorway. Dalcenti.
"Hey, Tinuel," he said gently before nodding to Kharis. "Can I talk to you?"
"Of course."
She got up from her Wildclaw-sized Oakwood desk and hovered out of the room after her mate, closing the door behind her.
Sighing, the shining-winged Pearlcatcher placed her head in a soft but scratched paw and stared at the tower of paperwork before her. It was all leases and shares, wages and taxes. Cadoc's injury hadn't even been put into play yet, and that would mean another tens of sheets to do. A groan escaped her; she knew she had to do it, but it was all such a headache.
Just as she grabbed the first piece, a snack sounded beside her on the glass. Her eyes rolling, she turned to see Ray throwing rocks at her recently polished windows.
He was stood on the dirt road a few feet away from the Trading Company's building, picking up small pebbles from the side and chipping the glass with them. His silver tinted feathers were shining in the afternoon sun, his dark eyes staring into the room even though he couldn't see it from the outside. In his hand were a bunch more pebbles, all looking rather sharp from being chipped and run over by carts.
Kharis threw open a slot in the window with all of her contained anger and glared at the recently-fired Harpy. "What are you doing?"
"Oh good, I got your attention. I need to ask a favour--"
"The answer's no."
"Kharis, please?"
"No. Raybarn, you've just been fired and you think I want to help you? You could've killed one of my friends with your stupidity!"
"Ah. Well--"
She thrust her paw in the direction of the road leading away. "Go."
After a small amount of hesitation, the Harpy turned on his scaly heel and left, uttering curses too horrid for her to want to remember.
---
A smash sounded from downstairs, awakening the Pearlcatcher with a start. It wasn't abnormal for the building to make weird noises in the night such as high-pitched creaking noises, but a shatter was definitely new.
She rushed out of bed, slipping on a nightgown to keep in the body warmth - the building's heating went off on a night - and cracked open the door to see what had happened.
The moonlight shone in from the skylights above the entrance room downstairs, highlighting certain spots in the floor with squares of silver-white. A large chandelier swung slightly in a newfound breeze in the center of the roof with crystals clinking against each other and the gold-coated links creaking quietly. Carpet the colour of blood-red flowed down a sweeping wooden staircase before their rooms, the tiniest pieces of shining shrapnel sticking up like tiny mountains in a river of red.
Dalcenti was further up the hall, rubbing his eyes with all the energy he could muster. He still wore his day clothes, probably having fallen asleep at his desk yet again. His glasses were lopsided, his eyes droopy and heavy-lidded with all of his fur being matted and mangled into small knots. "What's going on?" he asked sleepily.
"I haven't got the foggiest idea," Fuchur replied before Kharis could even blink. He was suddenly stood next to her, his cloudy green eyes staring at Dalcenti but never truly seeing more than a dark silhouette. "Maybe it was one of the Harpies?"
"Quite possibly," Kharis butted in before they could take her out of the conversation unintentionally.
Dalcenti took it upon himself to march towards the stairs, flowing down them like a greyed cloud. Fuchur followed after him and Kharis held the rear. It felt like a battle formation for a possible intruder to the Pearlcatcher, but she rolled with it as if it were normal. Only one thought crossed her mind in the process of the getting down the stairs; was it Ray?
The journey down the stairs was quicker than expected, having reached the bottom in under a minute. Dal was gone, supposedly going to check on the Harpies to see who was missing, if any of them were. Fuchur went off looking in all the room to see what smashed, whilst Kharis took herself to the treasury to look inside.
And wouldn't you know it; the window was smashed in.
She felt anger well up inside her. "DAL! FUCHUR! COME HERE!"
Padded feet slapped against the floor as the duo rushed in to see what she was seeing. The treasure was missing, the crates empty and the window practically gone. Kharis saw that her desk was flipped, one of the legs smashed and missing. The photo frame that had been on her desk was turned downside-up on the floor, small bits of glass cutting through the wooden boards around it. She bent down to pick it up and wiped the rest of the glass clean from the frame, only to notice that half of the actual photo itself was missing. Her and Cadoc were gone.
"Who could've done this?" Fuchur growled, feeling around the crates in search of any stray bits of treasure.
"My guess is Ray," Dalcenti muttered.
"I wouldn't put it past him."
"Neither would I."
Kharis remained silent through the exchange between the two older dragons, continuously staring at the photo. Could it be a sign, or is it just a coincidence?
"Kharis?"
Her attention snapped to the Tundra behind her. "Yeah?"
"Have you found something?"
"Just our old photo."
"Let me see."
She handed it over reluctantly, glancing anywhere around the room but Dalcenti.
"Why are--"
"I don't know, but it's honestly terrifying me."
"Don't worry, we'll keep both you and Cadoc safe."
"I know you will. But still..."
The gentle giant placed his paw upon the Pearlcatcher's shoulder, smiling warmly at her. "I promise."
---
Nothing happened for a while after that. The crystal window was fixed, and they soon built up on the treasure they'd initially lost to the robbery. Kharis was always riddled with anxiety, and so was Cadoc when he found out, but day after day they both worried less.
Cadoc returned to jewelling after a few days, his skills having improved somehow while he was resting as he presented the fair maidens that came into the Company with beautiful necklaces and even a few earrings and crowns here and there to be given to the highest of classes that came from class-ruled clans.
Kharis returned to the Treasury, where Dal and Tinuel were both willing to help her with the overflowing pile of paperwork now stacked on the floor. She was eternally grateful for their help when it turned out most were forms for shares in the Company and ideas to sell off to them in exchange for money. Even for a very intelligent Pearlcatcher like herself, she couldn't figure out how to do it without Dal's help.
After a few hours, a knock came at the door to the Trading Company and Dalcenti had to take a break from helping in order to see to it. At first, everyone thought it was one of the Harpies causing trouble again by knocking on their desk and waiting for a dragon or dragoness to open the door so they could shoot out into the street, but when Dalcenti returned, he did so with another dragon.
Well, undead dragon.
He tipped his fedora at the Pearlcatcher politely. "Hello, ma'am. We recently caught the culprit of the robbery and I was wondering if you and your friend would like to help us out. He refuses to talk."
"Who is it?" Kharis asked with curiosity in her tone.
"A Harpy who goes by the name of Ray? Heard of him?"
Dalcenti sighed sadly, shaking his head. "I knew it."
"So you have heard of him?"
"He was fired recently for manipulating our newest worker into injuring one of my friends."
"Oh my. Is he okay?"
"He's fine."
The Imperial skeleton turned back to the Pearlcatcher female. "So, would you mind helping me?"
Anger was bubbling in the Pearlcatcher's eyes as she stood up with stiffness in her muscles and fire in her heart. "Yes. I'll help."
Made by Ozie in Ozie's Lore Shop!
---Done!
