He almost preened under her admiration. Almost. It was the better of several reactions he could have expected. He was utterly still as she did as he directed, only the slow blink of his eyes showing that he lived. That and the gentle rise and fall of his sides as the great lungs expanded and collapsed. It felt good to feel the air on his scales again. The cold seemed more distant now, only the occasional nip on the thin places where the skin showed. He couldn't explain, exactly, how the magic worked. He had never been terribly scholarly. He only knew he didn't like it though the discomfort could be ignored with practice.

When she spoke he huffed a little, drawing her closer to the broadly muscled chest so she would be more protected from the wind of flight. He waited until she seemed settled. The pads of his hands were unscaled, leaving smooth warm flesh the color of dark, fertile earth. The little mage nearly blended in with the coloring. His bone colored talons could retract like a cat's, only the sharp tip exposed on the end of each finger.

"You are very observant." He rumbled a little at her statement. Humor was perhaps not so easy to hear in such a voice but it was there, warm and pleased. "I will most likely not be able to hear you while flying, but I can feel you. I will not drop you."

With her so close to him now he could sense the tiny voices of the beads and crystals she carried. They seemed especially bright and strange, changed by whatever magic this mage imbued them with. He listened for a moment. They were still lovely, he decided, but different. Different the way a flute is from a bird song. Equally beautiful but not the same.

His wings snapped out in a sudden rush and the powerful muscles of his hinds launched him into the air with a hard beat. The sun striking through the membranes dappled the ground below in shades of grey and green and even subtly gold, as though a summer canopy had suddenly filled the air. His eyes narrowed against the wind as he gained altitude. The initial climb was hard, but once he had sufficient height it eased a little. He was not a fast flyer- he was slow, and steady. Neither was he particularly agile. He made up for that lack with strength and endurance though. He hoped his passenger would not get too cold in the thin, high air.

Ahead, the islands gradually grew closer. In less than half an hour the nearest loomed large in his sights, rather larger than her expected. He almost expected it to tip on landing so he took an extra few moments to circle above the strange place. Much like the gems in her hair, the earth and stone on this island seemed changed by magic, the voices alien yet lovely. The climate was also strange- as he dropped lower warm air seemed to well up around him. The island was covered in temperate foliage, making it difficult to choose a landing site.

Finally he settled on the edge of the island were a rocky outcrop stood out from the trees. Keeping her cupped close to his chest with one paw he dropped the other to help catch the stone, claws digging in as though it were soft dirt. He alighted as gingerly as he was able but the island did not twist or swing or unbalance as he half expected. Then he lowered his hand to let her off, folding his wings back against his sides. "Whatever magic suspends these islands has changed the nature of the stones and metals. It will be interesting to see what we find."

Obelisk crouched like some new growth of stone on the edge of the island, bone colored talons sunk deep into the rock to hold his weight on the edge. His tail whipped slowly out in the open air behind him, heavy with muscle. He sunk his head down until his chin nearly touched his paws, back arched up, wings mostly closed but ready to snap out in case he lost his grip or the island decided to take exception to him. He didn't really trust it. The earth didn't feel right, as much as he liked the sounds. It wasn't normal, and so it seemed to only be prudent not to trust that it would act like normal earth. Still, he thought he could start to unwind individual voices from the symphony.

The brief, high notes of her magic channeled through the stones made him huff softly, a pleased noise. His eyes closed as he listened. It wasn't really listening with his ears though- he knew that. Long ago he'd figured out that his hearing and his magic were two separate things even if they often seemed the same. Even deaf, he would be able to hear the songs of stone. When the stone flew in neat little circles, a soft hiss escaped him- a gentle laugh.

"I have never seen islands that float before. Perhaps it is the magic that keeps them suspended that changes things." He tilted his head slightly to the side and waited as she performed the spell again, or perhaps another one. He couldn't really tell the difference. He stretched his wings, briefly casting shade across the area near them. Then he straightened up and carefully stepped away from the edge, moving more firmly onto solid ground. His neck lifted on the heavily muscles neck, grey eyes drifting across the island's scape.

"Shall we walk a ways? I think there is silver on the island, and perhaps opal." His voice sounded more hesitant than it had before, questioning. He couldn't be sure of what he heard, only guess. But those were perhaps some of the things he was most familiar with. He thought he could sense the underlying echoes of familiar songs, like a bard had taken their own spin on an old classic.

He didn't seem to see the anger when she turned on him. Instead, he lifted his face to the wind as if scenting the wind though he was doing no such thing. He did, however, see the desire at his mention of the precious mineral he thought he had identified. Now solidly on land, he raked his talons into the ground, testing the ground. It churned the earth over and broke the stone. To his sensitive nose, he could smell the fertility of the dirt and the make up of the stone.

"I can hear them, I think. The melodies are different but I think the refrain is the same." He shifted, turned his head this way and that, then pointing one massive claw to the west. "There." He hesitated, then let his paw fall. Slowly his talons drew back into his paws. The ones in the back showed more than the fore. He tightly tucked his wings in against his side, then crouched low and lowered his head until his chin touched the dirt.

"Would you like a ride? I do not know how comfortable it will be, but you could find somewhere on my neck to sit." One of his paws shifted forward so she could use it as a step up. The scales were heavy and thick along the back of his neck, thinner and more flexible as it got closer to his throat. This close, she might be able to see some of the irregularities in the scales, old wounds long since healed over.

"I appreciate that." Obelisk rumbled. And he did. She was quite polite now and it soothed some part of him that had for a long time been fed on the devotion of many. He let the thought gently brush through his mind. He no longer grieved it, really, but he did still sorrow for what had happened. But his mind was currently fixed in the present. He was perhaps as curious as she to see how the magic had changed the earth here- perhaps even more so.

He waited, still as stone, as she climbed up onto him. It was actually a bit strange. Once she moved past the more sensitive scales on his hands he could only just feel the pressure of her weight. No heavier than a butterfly's wing but he was none the less acutely aware of her. Not only mundanely, but the songs of her many gems. She had good taste, he mused. To dress herself in beads of stone and carry gems. She knew beauty when she found it.

"Good." When she said she was ready, he slowly rose up. He kept his head as steady as he could, moving it slowly and smoothly whenever he paused to listen for the minerals that serenaded him so sweetly and uniquely. As they walked, the song changed and swelled until he could feel it chiming through his bones like. There were other threads of song, fainter, but the sound he was fairly certain was silver was very close. Then he stopped, crouching low again and lowering his head to the ground. This area was thickly wooded, so he had to push some of the trees aside. Trunks crunched as he made himself a clearing so he could get his head down far enough for Shimmer to dismount and for him to see.

There was a narrow gash in the earth there, half overgrown with brambles. "I think we will find what we seek down there. I will have to change."

As she peered down into the gash, he began to gather himself in. And in. And in. It didn't take a lot of actual time and yet it seemed to take forever to Obelisk as he drew on the guise of man again. It left him sweating and shaking, with an aching hollow in his heart. Silent, he pulled the clothing from his pack and drew it on out of habit, forgetting boots entirely. He felt deaf. It had been so long since he'd changed shapes that he forgot how terrible it felt to do this. And losing his touch to the stones was possibly the worst of it. Scrubbing the sweat off his brow onto one of his sleeves, he swept back his hair and moved up to join her at the gash.

"No-" he paused, listening to how the word echoed in his own chest and skull, strange a foreign. Then he cleared his throat and started again. "No, I don't believe it's far down. This scree of rock should go to the bottom though it may be steep." He crouched and tapped the fall of loose rock at one end of the gash that disappeared into the dark maw. He eyed the opened with some trepidation, then began to work his way inside. The loose slope of rock was quite steep but it did provide a pathway down into the darkness and he half slid, half fell down it in a clatter of gravel and shale. Almost immediately he could tell the chamber within was large. It was in the echo of sound, strange and queer as if it weren't quite right.

It was then that he realized he had quite forgotten any light and the narrow opening in the earth didn't provide much more than a dim glow. "The echoes sound strange." He called back, listening to how the words seemed to ripple and distort before they came back to him, a memory of sound through water. He was still standing at the bottom of the loose slope of rock, waiting for his eyes to adjust and unwilling to go further without being able to see. He thought he could make out a lip of rock not more than four or five feet in front of him that seemed to indicate some kind of drop off. He growled under his breath- he felt all but blind like this.

As she came down with the light, Obelisk was equally awed. This was beauty. Not the cut, polished, worked stone that so many value but this. Raw and stunning. As the earth had made it. The crystals bounced the light around the cavern in strange shafts and shimmering rainbows until the whole thing glowed with a gentle illumination. Only a few dark shadows in oddly angled nooks remained and he paid those no mind for the moment. He walked to the edge of the ridge and gazed down- the floor ran with rivulets of silver. Crystals jutted up like clusters of jagged, icy flowers creating a landscape of juxtaposed dull rock and brilliant light.

"It's beautiful." He spoke softly, almost reverently. Eyeing the drop off he judged it to be climbable and began scaling the fifteen or so feet to the floor of the cavern. The crystals were sharp and once he slipped a little and left a scarlet slash of blood on the tip of one cluster as his hand scraped across it. He dropped the last few feet to a clear space on the floor and landed in a puddle of silver. He traced his hands over the veins of metal, ignoring the blood still slowly seeping from the cut in his palm.

Every movement, every breath seemed to echo back to him strange and distorted. He straightened. Carefully, the dragon picked his way into a more open area, away from the ridge. Then he took a deep breath and sang. Just a few words, a short verse in a language he hadn't spoken since before his entrapment. He feared that his own language was a dying one, never spoken for fear of being found out and not being taught to the youth growing up in this age of hiding. It was more suited to the teeth and tongues of the draconic maw but his human throat managed a fair approximation of the sonorous melody.

Then he stopped and listened as the cavern seemed to sing back to him a harmony that was not quite like the verse, changed by the nature of stone and crystal and sound.

"It happens with gold too." Obelisk's smile was distant, distracted, as though he was still listening to the remnants of the echoes. It was the closest he could come to getting the crystals to sing like they did when he wore his true form. He walked over to where she stood and touched the wall gently, running his fingertips over it as she had.

"Dull rock and earth protect it- if they did not, would it be so valuable?" He shook his head, but his voice was serious, thoughtful. "It is much rarer to find it entwined with crystal. I have seen gold such, though not in these quantities." He stepped back and turned, surveying the cavern again. Then he delicately picked his way across the ground until he was beneath the giant chandelier of crystal that struck down from the ceiling, like a knife stabbed into the heart of the island.

"Let me know when you are finished. Then we can decide if we shall camp here or go to another island. Or return to your horse if your curiosity is satiated." He lowered himself into a tailor's seat and closed his eyes, listening.