Sleeping Dragon but stars burn out, my dear, and everything golden dies

With the meetings end, Magpie had spun away from the Heda to work off her anger; it would do neither of them any good if she were to immediately round upon Thuringwethil with teeth bared. Instead, as had become tradition, the Corvidae sought out some small game— rabbits, of course— to relieve her aggression. She cleaned the blood from her chops with a delicate sweep of her tongue when she finished. After a moment of considering the wisdom in bringing the ass of an hare to the Commander as some sort of passive aggressive message (and deciding against it), the black-and-white female sought out a trail that would lead her to Thuringwethil.

She was still annoyed with the entire situation— it all seemed so hasty and needless to the peace-loving Corvidae— but with a full belly and worked muscles, Magpie felt calm enough to approach the yearling with honey instead of cayenne pepper. As she followed the trail, there was something familiar about the scent... it tickled a part of her brain, but she could make no sense of it. It was a familiarity that went beyond the Sleeping Dragon and its Commander. She shrugged it off as some kind of weird deja vu.

As she approached the Commander's den, she prepared to alert Thuringwethil to her presence with a stern, "We need to talk."— but a muffled voice stopped her, and Magpie slipped into the den just as it said, "I missed you." And when the Corvidae's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized who had said it, and who she had scented intermingled with the Commander's own scent. With an odd sound— a mix of both a growl and whine— Magpie backpedaled, struggling to make sense of... everything.

With her rear now hanging outside of the den, words came forth, unbidden.

"What the fuck?"