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[wildmage_daine]

This all could be a good deal worse, as Daine often reminds herself.

Kitten's not as big as she could be, first off. Not as big as her ma had been, just big enough that there's no question of her being grown up. Which means the farmhouse wasn't completely wrecked when the change happened, and that what damage there is shouldn't be too much trouble to fix.

(Though there's nothing to be done for the potting shed. That's a complete loss.)

And though Kitten's mind and magic seem the same as they've always been, Daine knows enough other folk with powerful magic to help at least keep her hid. They've found a place out in the forest well away from any hiking trails, and Magnus has done a wonder with glamours and other magics to keep folk from noticing Kitten's there. The dragonet (well, dragon) doesn't seem overly fond of it -- she keeps sneezing when she gets too close to the invisible line where the magic sits, and Daine can't quite tell if it's involuntary or if Kit's trying to make a point -- but she's been staying within the bounds of it. So far.

The two real difficulties are keeping her both fed and entertained. Kitten can eat most anything, which is a small mercy, but it's still hard to buy (and haul) thrice Daine's own body weight in food every day without getting odd looks from folk at the grocery store. Worse, there's just nothing for Kit to do out in the woods. Daine's been keeping her company and reading to her, but she can tell the dragon's getting restless. And a bored, large dragon is the last thing the city needs.

Daine's on her way to Kit's hiding place after yet another food run, a stuffed backpack slung over her shoulders and a bag dangling from each hand. It's a trip she's made often enough for her formerly brisk march to have faded into something closer to a trudge (can she really blame Kit for being bored with all this when she's bored with it, too?), but she's fair determined to just get to her charge without incident.

Tired and preoccupied as she is, when a body appears in front of her, she moves to sidestep them with an absent, "Pardon," not even giving them a glance.


[ooc: who wants to meet a big dragon?? Hopefully someone Daine already knows, because tbh she's not gonna trust a stranger with this. But friends and acquaintances are welcomed and encouraged -- especially those who have met tiny!Kitten before.]

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[lil_lion]

Anduin almost walks into the young woman. Pulling back as she apologizes, he readies one of his own before realizing he has seen her before. "Wait," he says. "I know you- you're the not-a-druid I met when I first arrived. Daine? It's Anduin Wrynn."

[wildmage_daine]

Daine blinks, first thrown and then a touch guilty to realize it's someone she knows -- or at least someone she ought to have recognized. It's lucky for her that he offers his name again. In her current states, she doubts she would've remembered it.

"Anduin," she says with a nod, shifting her grip on the groceries. "I remember. Sorry, I didn't see you." She can just about feel her brain failing to turn up the social niceties that ought to follow, like she's in a play and she's forgot her lines. But she's so tired.

[lil_lion]

He looks her over compassionately. She looks weary, certainly physically at the very least. He doesn't know Daine well enough to yet tell if she is troubled or if he has merely come across her path at a bad time. "Please, allow me to return your kindness." He holds out his open hand. It's midday, there's a clear sky. Even so, sunlight seems to pool in his palm. "A simple trick of the Light, you could say: a levitation spell, to relieve the weight of your goods for a time."

[wildmage_daine]

The sight of his hand beginning to glow certainly gets her attention, and Daine stands a bit straighter. "Magicking the bags?" Her first thought is that it sounds heavenly, but her second is a bit more cautious. Kitten's already dealing with more spellwork than she'd probably like. Daine's not sure if her patience would extend to food that was tainted with someone else's Gift.

"Will it, er... stick?" she asks. "Not that I'm not grateful, it's just that Kit can usually tell when things've been magicked, and she's meant to eat all this."

[modern_alpha]

The potting shed was, frankly, no great loss. Although both Daine and Lyall had expressed something like gratitude for the secondary workspace, he knew that his talents were in the beautification of people and hats and not in the building of sheds. Seeing it splintered and destroyed was a bit like being given an ugly portrait as a gift and not being able to put it away only for it to fall off the wall and ruin itself on its own.

So he was not angry with Kitten. Just perturbed.

"I could help you with that," Biffy said, nodding at Daine's burden. "Would you like to relieve your shoulders?"

[wildmage_daine]

Daine had felt a bit bad about the potting shed, though she'd felt worse before she realized that talk of repairs just so happened to not really include it. Biffy's mannerisms are familiar enough by now for her to read the implicit relief in his unwillingness to get fussed over it.

As if there isn't plenty else to fuss over.

She smiles ruefully as she passes the bags over. She probably shouldn't have run this errand alone in the first place, but she's painfully aware of how much there is to be done at any given time, and how much longer that list has grown since Kitten grew, too. And she knows it's fair foolish to try and give everyone else a break without dreaming of taking one, herself. But Kitten is her responsibility, first and foremost.

"Probably a lost cause, by now," she says, rolling her shoulders and pointedly hitching up her backpack. "They'll get relieved whenever Kitten does." Which has to be soon, she tells herself. Darrow's nonsense never seems built to last.

[modern_alpha]

Biffy gave Daine a pointed look as he hefted the backpack over one shoulder and carried the remaining bags by their handles as if they contained little more than a carton of eggs. Perhaps it was true that there'd be no real end to this until Kitten returned to her usual size, but Biffy saw no reason not to take advantage of his own strength to make things a little easier on Daine.

"You know, I think there's a patron saint of lost causes," Biffy said, casting his mind back to any lessons he'd been taught and finding that the answer was probably within his grasp but not within his interest.

"How many pounds is she going through at a time now?"

[wildmage_daine]

"There might well be a god of them, back home," Daine replies with a wry smile. "Though I don't think my gods or your saints can hear us from here."

However sheepish she might feel over being caught, it's an undeniable relief to not have to carry the bags. She rolls her shoulders again, trying not to make the motion too obvious as she walks alongside him.

At his question, she snorts. "More than my shoulders would prefer. She can down at least a hundred in a sitting." Sobering, she adds, "It's not really the food that worries me. Feeding her is easier than keeping her entertained."

[scythe_lucifer]

"Hey." Rowan's intention, in stepping in front of Daine, had been to make her stop and see him, but apparently that plan would not work today. Instead he would have to try something verbal, since she seemed preoccupied. And had her hands full.

"Let me help you with some of that?" He had no idea where she was going with so much food. Didn't they have a car at the house or at least a gaggle of people to help her out?

[wildmage_daine]

Daine pulls up short, startled and then embarrassed. Mithros, now she's all but walking right through her friends. "Rowan, hullo. Sorry, I... things've been odd." She shakes her head at herself, because that's not much of an excuse, then offers him a sheepish smile.

The prospect of help with her bags is more welcome than it ought to be. She knows it was silly to make the trip on her own, but Kit's her responsibility more than anyone else's, and she already feels bad about the damage to the farmhouse and the extra work they've all had to shoulder since it happened.

Even so, she pauses halfway through the motion of passing them over. Rowan doesn't know where she's going with these, and though he's met Kitten before, the dragonet is almost unrecognizable now that she's grown. Even if she doesn't take him any farther than the farmhouse, it's still probably out of his way. "It's a bit of a walk," she hedges. "I don't know how much time you have to spare."

[scythe_lucifer]

Things tended to always be odd in Darrow, Rowan found, but he felt concern anyway for the distracted manner in which Daine was working. It wasn't like her to be so out of it, not around someone she knew, nor so vague, not really.

She stopped halfway through handing over the bags, and Rowan frowned at the hesitation, but reached out the took the bags from her hands, regardless.

"Plenty," Rowan assured her. "As long as you're going to tell me what's wrong while we walk."

[wildmage_daine]

"I s'pose that's fair." Daine lets her hands drop, then tips her head in the direction they're going before starting to walk.

She waits until there aren't any other pedestrians nearby before starting to explain. "It's Kitten," she says quietly. At least Rowan has met her already, so she doesn't have to explain that she has a dragon in the first place. That simplifies things. With a nod towards the bags he's carrying, she adds, "This is all for her. She's grown up. Not as much as she could've done -- she's not as big as her ma was -- but she's... plenty big, now. Too big to fit in the house."

[very_sharpe]

"Do you want help carrying that?" Thomas asked. Daine looked a little rough, which was ot something he'd say, so instead he offered to help. She didn't even look up when she bumped him, which didn't seem like her at all.

"Are you... alright, Daine?"

[wildmage_daine]

Daine blinks up at him, taking a moment longer than she should to recognize who she's run into. "Thomas. Hullo." Then, as her own poor manners catch up with her, she winces. "Sorry. It's... been a strange few days."

Part of her wants to unload everything onto him, all at once, if only because she knows from experience that he'd bear it all with more grace than most. But just because he could doesn't mean he should have to. She settles for holding up the bags hopefully. "It'd be nice to have help with these, though, if it's no trouble to you. I feel like all I've been doing is hauling food, lately."

[very_sharpe]

"It's no trouble," he assured her as he took the bags. "Have you somehow become the farm house's designated grocery runner?"

He couldn't imagine why else she'd been hauling food so frequently, and if that was somehow the case, it seemed rather unfair. Daine was a strong girl, but surely Biffy and Lyall could lend a hand.

[wildmage_daine]

"No." Daine wrinkles her nose, then amends, "Not exactly." She doesn't want Thomas to think anyone else has put her up to this, because that wouldn't be fair. Pack helps, and Biffy and Lyall have been no exception. But they still have jobs, and Robin to look after. If Daine has to take a few trips upon herself, that's just the way of it.

"It's not for the whole farmhouse," she explains with a smile that's as much a wince as anything else. "It's all for Kitten."

[simplesam]

It wasn't like Daine to be so absent-minded, and she looked pretty tired too. That worried him. Sam knew Daine could take care of herself in whatever shape she chose, of course he did, but she was a friend and he worried, so he put out a hand to catch her eye. He didn't touch her. He didn't stop her, but he hopefully caught her eye.

"Hey, you alright there?" he asked curious.y

[wildmage_daine]

Her first instinct is to be perplexed by the hold-up, but she relaxes a little when she sees who's stopped her. "Oh, Sam. Hullo. I'm well enough, just..." she trails off into a tired, hapless shrug. "Things've been a bit... busy."

Which is an understatement. But she's not going to start talking about the state Kitten's in while standing in the middle of the thoroughfare.

[simplesam]

"I hear that," Sam replied. The summer had been real busy at the bar, which was a good problem to have, but still left him feeling like he couldn't ever quite catch up.

"Anything I can help with?"

There probably wasn't, but he'd offer just the same.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Easy," Bull said, more gentle than he'd been with anyone else all day. Daine looked ready to fall over, which is a little unusual in itself. Without asking, Bull relieved her of one of the bags; he'd go for the other when she was actually paying attention.

"You look like you're on a death walk."

[wildmage_daine]

Daine blinks up -- far up -- at him, then winces. A death walk sounds more than a bit dramatic. "Does it really look that bad?" she asks, making no objection to him taking the bags. He could probably carry her, too, and hardly feel the weight.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"It's a distinctive trudge," he said with a wry smile. "What's on your mind?" No one walked like that with a clear head, that much he was sure of. Bull had done his fair share of trudging, slowed by burdens he carried alone.

The strange wish-curse had forced him to relieve some of those burdens, but he wasn't sure if he was grateful. Maybe after it was all over and he had regained himself he'd feel better about it.

[mettle_some]

"It's alright," Tansy answers. She whirls on her heel to walk alongside her. "D'you need help?" She's rather bored today, because all of her usual haunts have been picked clean of plants, and she's got nothing really to do, nowhere to really go.

[wildmage_daine]

Tansy looks the sort of fresh and perky that makes Daine feel as if she's just crawled out of a hole, and she has to suppress a sigh.

"Probably," Daine says with a wry smile and a pointed heft of her bags. "But only if you're not busy. I'm getting fair used to hauling food at this point."

[mettle_some]

"I'm dreadfully not busy," she answers with a laugh. She reaches, grasping a handful of bags from her. "Here, I'll get this."