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🕑 Added 2024-12-24 19:09:31 +0000 UTC"This isn't an adventure." Sindri whined pitifully from atop Dryth's head. Well, his head was on top of Dryth's head, the rest of him was trailing down Dryth's shoulders and back.
"I did try and warn you." Dryth pointed out.
After they'd left the first woman's office, they'd headed to the floor she'd told them to go too and found a man who was in charge of identifying if beings were magical or not. Which was certainly a job, but if you asked Dryth it was kind of a ridiculous one. Thankfully the man hadn't sent them anywhere else but he had been unhappy with the paperwork they'd handed in. Ewan had apparently found and filled out a version of the form that specifically did not identify Sindri's species. The man did not like that and demanded to know what Sindri was. That freaked Dryth out more than he was willing to admit afterward and he decided to go with what his teacher apparently wanted without any further instruction.
He'd meekly asked if the paperwork was incorrectly filled out or anything was wrong with it, which the man ignored and made the same demand again. Dryth responded by asking if there was anyone else to speak to, which had led to the man getting angrier and seething at Dryth while telling him to identify Sindri now. Right as Dryth had been about to bolt for the door to go find Ewan another man opened the door to the office with a death stare trained on the first man. The newcomer walked into the office without breaking eye contact with the first man and moved right into his personal space. He pointed at the door while looming over the other man, who fled immediately.
The new man calmly sat in the now vacant chair and turned to look at Dryth and Sindri. He radiated an sense of intimidation that didn't have anything to do with what had just happened or who he was. There was just a feeling that this man was dangerous, and shouldn't be trifled with. He just watched them for a moment before drawing a card and flourishing it. Nothing noticeable happened and the card vanished.
"My apologies for his treatment of you, that was incredibly unprofessional of him and I'll make sure he's reprimanded properly."
"...Thank you?"
"There's no need for thanks, I'm merely doing my job." He turned to look directly at Sindri for a few seconds. "Coatl are a rarely encountered species on this plane. I recommend following your teacher's direction and only telling people what your partner is if necessary. Most people won't be able to identify him on sight."
Dryth glanced at his friend. Sindri's wings fit incredibly close to his body when he wasn't spreading them out, making him look like a snake with a streak of feathers growing from his back. Combined with the feathers that sprouted in a crest along his head, then unless you knew better it would be pretty hard to identify them as wings when he had them tucked in like that. "I'll do that."
"Good. I'm sure you're aware already, your teacher being who he is, that the Association isn't a perfect organization and neither are it's members or employees. Some of them," His eyes flickered to the closed door, "Partake in some unscrupulous activities in addition to their regular employment. I wouldn't identify your partner to anyone unless you must." The man repeated his warning again with more emphasis.
"I understand."
"Good." He reached into the desk without looking and brought out a stamp, which he promptly stamped Dryth's form with. "Your partner has been identified as a magical being." The man nodded deeply to him and gestured at the door. "Until we meet again."
"Thank you." Dryth took the dismissal as it was intended and immediately fled at his most polite speed. He made it all the way to the nearest stairwell and went halfway up the flight of stairs before stopping. "Who the hell was that?"
"I have no idea." Sindri shook the top third of his body back and forth as he stared down the stairs. "I don't think he's following us though. Did I understand the context their correctly? Was he saying that first guy who got angry was going to do something bad if he found out I was a coatl?"
"That's exactly what I think he was saying." Kay said back, then shook himself. "I should stick to telepathy while we're here. But yeah, that's what it sounded like."
"What do you think he would do if he found out?"
"I don't know. It's probably something to do with your people being rare here, so... Kidnap you and sell you to a collector, maybe? Or something else as bad."
Sindri's feathers stood up along his body and wings as he bristled angrily. "I'm a person, not a thing to be sold!"
"I know, but bad people don't really care if what they're doing is bad. We don't actually know if that's what he was going to do either, I was just guessing."
"Still, if the scary man felt the need to warn us about him, I'm going to remember what the angry guy looks like so we can stay away."
"Me too. Did that goodbye the second man give us feel ominous to you at all?"
"Oh, it was so ominous. It sounded like he knew that we were going to see him again." Sindri shuddered. "Kinda creepy."
"Well that is an encounter we are telling Ewan in detail. Let's get this back to the first lady, hopefully that's out last stop and we can take care of the other papers next."
It was not the last stop they had to make, it wasn't even the next to last stop. They headed back to the first lady, who took their stamped papers and took them out of the folder after reading them, only to stamp them on other pages two more times and hand them back to him in a different folder, which she put in the first folder. She then sent him back down two more floors to the bottom to take it to another office to get stamped by someone else for some other nonsensical reason, then come back to her. He went downstairs, got another stamp, went back up to her, and then repeated the process two more times until the woman finally took the paperwork, wrapped it in a piece of string and handed it back to him.
"Take that up one floor to the processing line and they'll handle the rest. You have a nice day." She told him, in a voice that told him she did not care a single bit about whether his day was nice or not, she just wanted him gone.
"You too." Dryth fled the office and headed to the processing line at his best speed. There he stood in line with no one in front of him to wait for someone to appear at the booth. Eventually a young woman that looked just as jaded as the older woman downstairs appeared and called for the next person. She took the paperwork, set it aside, and handed him a slip of paper with a number written on it.
"Go sit over there and wait for your number to be called," She said, before vanishing into the back.
And that is how Dryth and Sindri found themselves sitting in an empty waiting room for half an hour while Sindri complained that they were not on an adventure.
"But Ewan said it was wrestling a beast!"
"I think it was more of a metaphor for it being long and tedious, not that it was an adventure."
"That's confusing! Why didn't he just say that?"
No idea, but if I had to guess-"
"Number three!" A bored voice called out into the empty room.
Dryth didn't know why he looked down at the paper to check his number, he and Sindri were the only people there, but he did. They were, praise be, number three, so Dryth jumped to his feet and power walked to the older man who had appeared. "Number three." He said, holding out his paper.
"Great." The old man took the paper and handed Dryth a thick card. "Here's your license. If you lose it there's a fine to get it replaced and you have to renew your license within five years of today." Then the old man turned and walked off.
"... That was it!?" Sindri demanded. "We did all that waiting and walking and getting stamps for someone to hand us a card and walk off!? What was the point of any of that!?"
"The point was to get the card so that we don't have to deal with more annoying stuff when we go other places. I guess. That's what Ewan said at least. You're right though that's a super stupid process."
"What did any of those stamps even mean!?"
"No idea buddy."
"And we have to go do this again!?" He wailed.
"Hey, at least Ewan said that the status change papers took less time."
It did take less time, with there only being two trips to go and get different stamps for the papers after short walk to the Personnel Division's building and without any angry workers shouting at them or mysteriously appearing men that gave cryptic warnings and farewells. Sindri was completely fed up with the entire thing, especially by the time they ended up in another waiting room, this one with other people in it at least, waiting to turn in their fully complete packet to finalize Dryth's change in status.
"I totally get why Ewan hates this place so much." Sindri grumbled as Dryth took a seat in one of the open chairs. "This is ridiculous."
"I agree that it's all a bit much, but it's not like we can overthrow the system and implement our own replacement. We have to just make do with what we have and get all our paperwork correct."
"Well someday, when I'm as big as grandma, we're gonna come back here and eat this place and by then we'll be strong enough to totally make our own system, which won't have any stupid stamps that don't do anything except-"
Dryth was interrupted from his amused listening to Sindri's rant by someone coming over and standing over him.
"Young man, do you have a license to have that creature with you?" A severe looking woman in robes demanded as she did her best to loom over the pair.
Dryth looked up at her and slowly pulled out the license he'd just gotten an hour ago. She snatched it from his hand and read it, her frown getting deeper and deeper as she moved from line to line. Eventually she huffed and held the license out away from her like it had offended her somehow. Dryth took it from her and she stormed off to sit back down on the other side of the room.
"What was that? Right, that settles it, I'm not even going to eat this place I'm just gonna land on top of it and crush it. I hate it here!" Sindri hurriedly spun around from staring angrily at the woman to look at Dryth. "I mean here at this Association place, not here with you!"
"I know that's what you meant," Dryth replied with a chuckle. He reached out with a finger and scratched at Sindri's head.
"Ooh, that feels nice. I should get you to help me when it's time to molt, I bet having fingers will make it so much easier than normal."
"You molt?"
The emotions Sindri pushed at him had the same feel as eyes being rolled. "I'm a snake with feathered wings, of course I molt. I replace my feathers and grow a new skin every year."
"Oh. I haven't really dealt with birds or reptiles much until now. My family runs a farm and the only animals we had were some pigs and an old bull the village shares for plowing. The only-"
"Number one five eight!"
That was their number so Dryth stopped telling Sindri about his childhood and hurried to meet the person calling. They led him to a small office where an older woman who could have been twins with the first woman they'd had to interact with except for that this new woman had a larger nose.
"Hello..." She glanced down at the paperwork. "Dryth. You're making a status change today?"
"Yes I am." He replied after sitting into the chair she pointed at.
"Hmmm." She quickly read through the short packet. "Well Dryth, this type of change isn't exactly standard these days. It's much more-"
Sindri reared upward, his feathers sticking out every which way. "Is she trying to make us do more paperwork!? I thought we were done!"
Dryth made sure not to laugh out loud at his partners panic, although that didn't stop Sindri from feeling his amusement. "Ma'am, is there anything wrong with my paperwork?"
"... No, there isn't." She answered reluctantly after a long pause.
"Then please go ahead with my status change."
She stared at him for a long moment. "... Very well." She grabbed a large stamp and slammed it down aggressively onto his papers. "Status change complete. You need take nothing with you. Have a nice day."
At Sindri's urging Dryth left the office and the building before anything else could come up.
"Freedom!" Sindri cheered as they made their escape. "Sweet, glorious freedom!"
Hey, put your wings away! We're supposed to hide what you are from strangers, remember?"
"Didn't Ewan say that there were other kinds of snakes with wings out there?" Sindri stopped flapping his wings and messing up Dryth's hair and coiled around his neck again. "We can just pretend I'm one of those."
"I think the other kinds all have leathery wings, like bats."
"Didn't he say that there was one other kind with feathers? Eh, whatever. If I'm wrong we can just say I'm a mutation or something."
"We can talk about it with Ewan when we tell him about running into the guy who yelled and the scary man who warned us. I'm sure he'll have something good we can tell people."
"That works too. Hey! Let's go exploring while we wait for Ewan to find us."
"Sure, he said we could as long as we don't get in trouble. You pick where you want to go."
"Sweet!" Sindri cast his head about as he scented the air. "That way! It smells interesting over there!"
Dryth started going over a report for Ewan about what had happened while he followed Sindri's lead toward 'the interesting smell', doing his best to memorize what the two men had looked like. The angry guy was pretty easy, he'd been portly and short, and had turned red when he started shouting. The scary man was...
Dryth slammed his foot down as he came to a stop.
Sindri turned to look at him. "What's wrong?"
"Do you remember what the scary man looked like at all?"
"... Wow, he's scary!"
