Dragoncrest Cliffs so i'm surrounded

It just about took everything within her to keep the fur along her spine settled at the sound of his voice. Aure made it a point to not look up; to not lean toward the words and the lips they fell from. To not shiver with her own nerves, her own guilt. "Yes. Yes, that word, whatever it means. Anyways," 'Nomajokas' — it'd sounded particuarly threatening, so she'd thought to whisk it away with the other scraps of this cliff-language she'd acquired. Opalia arrived at her side, looking as harried as the herbalist herself had felt; still felt, now. ”I’ve been meaning to instate my own apothecary, you see? I was in  midst of my search for a hollow when— well, when this happened.”

”Are you okay? What are you doing, Aure?” Ivory, she was ivory. She made her façade linger into something much more relaxed, and she did the next best thing: smiled, soft and slow, regardless of her bedraggled and muddied state. Rather than answer either of them, she quietly mused, ”If Rose is as forgiving as she’s presented herself to be, then I should be fine. All ze same, I think it would do ze kru good to have a secondary. Apothecary, I mean. Not so much toil on Rose’s shoulders.” And more labor for my sake.

With that, Aure wobbled to a stand before sloughing her way from the waters, trilling as she went, ”I do not believe we have truly met before, O-... Opalia, is it?” The inscrutable curl of her shoulders was something that couldn’t be hid, but the skayona turned to gleam at Dio’s daughter all the same. Gleam toward the both of them, really, but in all truthfulness? — her own loathing, deprecation, and searing regret was probably as clear as day to any practical-born. But damned if she wasn’t trying, even if it was through the thin veils of vulnerability.

So, she smiled all the same, and her attention towards Opalia, and whatever was left of it for Verx, was genuine. ”Are you a warrior, as well? Like Verx?” — Was it even okay to call him that anymore? Heart in her throat or no, her eyes flickered over the both of them; habitual, searching for physical hurts, at least.