Danny alights in a graceless, panting mess somewhere out in the deep woods.

Similarly, his friends pant beside him, shivering from chill winds as they slide off his back.

Shakily, Danny curls in on himself, tail twining near his nose and wings cupping over his form. Despite his ears, all he hears is his own rabbit-quick heartbeat, thudding against peaceful and cool earth. He squeezes his bright eyes shut.

Delicate ears pick up two pairs of footsteps; one stomps over accompanied by huffing, the other is gentler and with forced quiet breathing.

"You good, dude?" Tucker says gently, unsurely.

Danny knows no hands touch him, making a reply ineffectual; not that he wants to respond, or even be touched. All he does is curl in on himself tighter, paws crushed against his belly, tail like a taut rope.

Sam, on the other hand, does not afford him any space. She toes the dragon with her boot tactlessly, sarcastically intoning, "geez, guess we found out why your parents weren't calling."

For a moment, an unsavory impulse of lifted wings and bared fangs crosses Danny's mind, but it is fleeting; all the tension stays, none going forth towards anger as the dragon remains shaking and coiled.

Tucker's steps become harsher beside him. "Lay off, Sam," he hisses characteristically defensive, gesturing his hands at Danny as though that will make the witch see how twitchy he has become.

For a moment, all is still. Danny's ears twitch at an intake of breath from Sam,in preparation of a snap— but just as fast, it blows out, and her combat boots crunch against leaves as she takes a harsh step backward.

"A better question," Tucker begins, this time addressing Danny, while simultaneously shooting Sam a harsh glare, "is can I touch you?"

Danny holds still, letting tremors prick at his fur for a moment. He digs his claws into the ground, kneading the dirt, then retracting the points. Then again, again, again; he doesn't know how many times he repeats the soothing motion.

A nod. Slow, but the dragon gives it nonetheless.

Tucker eases down, sitting in the cool dirt awkwardly. A warm hand on the dragon's neck, then slowly, the press of Tucker's back against Danny, a gentle lean in opposition to Danny's desperate shudders and raised hackles.

Sam shuffles a little guiltily on the side. "Would it help if I joined?"

Danny looks up, eyes watering pathetically, looking like a wobbly-eyed little cat. A wet sniffle. A nod.

"I don't know why I ever found you scary," Tucker mutters in jest as he gives the dragon a pat, attempting to lighten the mood. He succeeds in getting a little humored huff from Danny.

Sam mirrors Tucker, settling awkwardly down on the piney earth. She leans into an awkward approximation of a hug around Danny's leathery wing; size and position made such action difficult... but the sentiment was still there, at least.

"I knew my parents would... come after me, if they saw me," Danny croaks slowly, voice dribbling from his trembling, fanged mouth. The word hunted was carefully avoided, crushed in his teeth, but still slides out between the lines. "But I didn't think they'd find me," he admitted, head drifting down into the tight encasement of paws— "I didn't think any of this would happen," he murmured.. It was almost a plea, subtly begging the universe for the clear wrong to be righted.

"We're fixing it," Sam reminds him bluntly.

Beneath her, she feels the wing shift beneath her as Danny does his best shrug.

"With the help of some… weird demon thing, who gave us basically no directions. While being chased by the government— and now, my parents." Something like a gurgle escapes the dragon's throat.

Silence between the trio. The trees rustle, masking Danny's heavy breathing.

After a moment, Danny takes a shallow breath and releases it in a puff. Green sparks drift on its trail like unspoken words, but all Danny says is, "I'm making too big a deal about that stuff."

The dragon stands and shakes his neck, causing Sam and Tuck to tip forward into the dirt

Tucker makes an aborted comforting noise, Sam a frustrated one— but Danny merely strides away from them in cold silence, something predatory and tense in the way he moves.

Tail snaking, lowered sweeping head, gleaming eyes, lithe walk. Powerful, he reminds himself. The pricked ears, the puffed fur, the panicked look… those are outliers. He's not just faking— not at all.

xXx

It's an hour from when Danny says he's calm that Tucker and Sam genuinely deem him approachable— the dragon, over that time, had settled. Bristles became smooth, twitchiness became stable. Mostly, the pair of humans went by his ears; no longer were they twisting about, looking incessantly and desperately for danger at every angle, a radar.

Now, they rested gently at the nape of his neck— still slightly angled up, remaining a bit jumpy at sudden sounds… in other words, not too much different than "normal." The new normal, at least, one where Danny had ears that could flick around.

This decision to approach was not communicated verbally— after all, commenting on why would be heard by said ears, and thus indirectly remind Danny of why he was tense, something that (once again wordlessly) the pair decided they wanted to avoid.

Tucker decided to go first. Sam hangs back, not knowing Danny all that precisely. She decides it's best to swallow her pride, let Tuck take the reins in matters relating to his best friend. She gave a shudder, feeling like she'd gotten all mushy.

"Hey," Tucker drew out the ey, long and grandiose, matching its length with an exaggerated slide over to Danny. "Wassup?"

Danny's ears unsurely flicked around. "Not much," he settled on, falling a little further out of that tense state. Emerald eyes hop back and forth between Sam and Tucker, before settling shamefully on the ground as he mutters, "sorry I freaked."

Tucker took a glance at Sam, who wasn't in contact with the dragon and was staring at Tucker in question. He frowned while crafting a statement to appease Danny, and to let her in; two birds, one stone. "Freaking out was okay, man, it's natural."

Sam gives a somewhat forced nod, not used to the whole comforting and friendliness deals.

The dragon gave a little disbelieving shrug and huff, then shifted tactics— "what now?"

Tucker blinked, then repeated, "uh, what now?" He was unprepared for that.

Thankfully, Sam wasn't similarly unprepared. "Who knows how far you went," she scoffs, and a bit of that crazed grin returns when she thinks of Danny's burst of massive speed that set the whole world into a blur of motion. "I'm assuming your wings are tired," she tacked on, glancing at the way the wingtips scraped the ground, as though Danny didn't have the energy to even fold them up properly.

The dragon bobbed his head in acknowledgment, then tilted it uncertainly, as though asking: so?

"So," Sam filled in, "we should just set up camp."

"We don't have food!" Tuck barked in protest.

"If Danny's too tired to fly," Sam looked at Danny for confirmation, and a sheepish, shameful shrug with a nod provided that. "Then we have to give him the chance to recharge and deal." Before Tuck could protest, she trudged on, "this is what happens when he ingests a potion on the run from government idiots, then carries us away from his parents as well, and has an emotional break—"

"Yup," Tuck cuts off loudly, "got it!"

Danny gives a deadpan look at both of them and a sigh.

"Well, we don't have tents," Tucker points out, "or, you know, anything else."

"Thanks for the reminder," Sam hisses. She points at a large stick on the ground. "Go find me sticks like that. I'm making a lean-to."

xXx

Tucker loads the last batch of sticks onto Danny's back, resting them between the large spikes. He's aware of the edges, sure, but significantly less overtly afraid than before; he supposes that you can get used to anything, given time; it's been a week since the beginning of this chaotic road trip.

"Where's the next wisp thing?" He huffs to Danny as he picks up his own meager set of lumber and the two trudge back.

"I dunno," the dragons said slowly. "Before I could kind of hear that one, on the edge, but now…" he trails. "Nada."

"Hm," Tuck grunts. "Well then we're stuck, I guess."

Danny squints. "I'm sure there's another way of tracking them," he grunts, then shuffles away from Tucker— and no longer in contact, the conversation ends.

xXx

Danny is helping muscle as the group builds the lean-to. He is something big for the logs to lean on, and something heavy to push things in place.

Once finished, the extra logs go into forming a pyramid for a fire. Sam sits and grinds two sticks together, attempting to light it.

Danny prods the small of her back with the narrow tip of his tail. "Let me try."

She blinks, steps back, and watches him curiously.

With a little sigh, Danny exhales a tiny spark of green electricity into the collection of dry woods and brush— and fwoomf, fire.

"It's green," Tucker states obviously, and indeed it is; the same bright, emerald green as Danny's magic, and the same bright green trapped in the stones they use for communication.

"Weird," Danny grunts, but still seems to take a fire is fire mentality in the way he curls up by it. He looks momentarily up at the pair of them, especially Tuck who is clutching his stomach, and snakes his tail around. "My wings just ache," he says slowly, "probably 'cuz I haven't used 'em much, I guess. I'll go get food soon."

"We can manage half a day," Sam grunts, cutting off what would be exaggerated relief from Tucker.

Danny's fire is warm and comforting, as is the presence of his friends (worn out as they are). There is promise of food tomorrow, of things getting back tomorrow, but until then… his eyes drift shut, emerald fire becoming a smudge behind his eyelids before it is consumed by dreams.

xXx

"I suppose that was my mistake," the blue creature says, "to not give you a map."

"Hh," is Danny's graceful and eloquent response.

The creature snorts, giving a braying chuckle, eyes glinting red.

"How are you in my head?" Danny asks, long snout pressed against the floor.

The demonic creature spreads its elegant wings, revealing a human shape under the white, cape-like things. A human shape covered in fat, glinting blue scales, set on a backdrop of the blood red undersides of its wings. "I have my ways, little badger," the slick voice says.

Danny's not sure if he imagines it, but those red eyes get deeper, more red. Looking into them feels like a pool, a pool of thick quicksand creeping slowly up his chin. Danny barely notices that the blue thing is fading a little, slipping. The creature blinks hard, and shakes his head while gritting sharp teeth, and flickers back to solidity. Its eyes are a firey red again, not the slow moving, stagnant red of before, and their trancelike quality is gone.

"Are you a dream demon?" He probes. Danny then cocks his head— "little badger?"

"Oh, not in the least," the thing chuckles. "We just share… connections," it clarifies, about as clear as mud. "And yes, your patterns are quite black and white and alike, hm?"

"Are you the one who cursed me?!" Danny barks, and his fur prickles into aggression, hackles highlighting his spikes, the spikes themselves standing taller and wider.

"Wrong again," the thing chuckles. "Though closer," it hints, "as I am related."

"What is this, twenty questions?" Danny snaps into the void.

The creature just snorts, not deigning the snark with an answer.

Silence reigns for a few moments, heaving and awkward, and Danny feels as though he did something wrong, like a petulant child in front of a sneering adult.

"A map," he prompts, chickening out a little. "You're going to give me like, a magic map…?" Danny immediately trails off into thoughts of runestones and talismans that point the right direction.

The creature laughs at him, heartily. "Not everything has to be magic."

Danny blinks.

xXx

"Uh, what?" Tucker grumbles sleepily at the dragon that snaps his neck up and barks nonsense into the night.

"Uh," Danny grunts, ever eloquent. "Where'd he…"

Tucker spares another glance at the dragon that is mumbling and grumbling before settling back into his uncomfortable earthen nest, barely awake at all and quickly losing any awareness.

That's when Danny notices something— something bright, glowing with pale energy.

Danny gets up, green toe pads pressed against the earth, making him quiet. It is almost eerily easy to slide over his now once again sleeping friend, carefully placing his feet. He has no issue with stumbling in the dark anymore, after all.

Still, Tucker's rustling fills him with a surge of adrenaline that only the shifting of those you are trying to remain quiet around to fulfill their sleep can. It causes Danny to tense up and freeze, hanging awkward above his friend.

Tucker is a heavy sleeper, though, and the movement passes. Danny goes back to nosing around, investigating where the now vanished brightness went.

...Tucker's bag.

It lights up again.

Danny instinctively simply sticks his nose right into the zipper. He stands there a moment, blinking with the bag wrapped around his snout, before he shakes himself and retracts, instead going in with claws.

They find the bright square easily, and Danny pinches it— not with his claws, but with the soft undersides of his lengthy toes.

The sight is so normal that Danny needs a moment to process it. He was, after all, rather expecting some runestone, some talisman, something of that odd and magical nature at this point.

From his talons dangles Tucker's phone. It's not unlocked, but the notification reads "these, little badger, are the locations to your salvation." Images are attached, but do not show considering the phone's locked state.

Danny gapes at it, and all he can wonder is how that creature could even type.

xXx

Apologies for the wait.