#DID YOU GUYS KNOW CHIPMUNKS HAVE DECENTLY LONG TAILS

[enthusiastic-nimrod]

Sally Acorn! Or rather, Sally the Chipmunk?

So awhile back someone on twitter made an art challenge to redesign Sally for people who expressly aren't into her, and I finally bit the bullet and did it!

This design was specifically inspired by her SATAM look, and I'm actually really proud of it- but I do think it could use another draft or two to really make it pop.

[acephysicskarkat]

Duet

I was just packing up from practicing in my garage when Rosetta shot bolt upright.

Rosetta’s my dragon.  She’s mostly a blue, but there aren’t any blue breeds that are crestbacks, so there’s definitely some other stuff in there.  Her crest is also malformed, so it flops over to the right all the time instead of standing straight up like crests are supposed to.  When I got my undercut, I made sure it flopped over to the right as well, so we matched.  She seems to appreciate the ‘do when she’s riding on my shoulder.

Anyway, Rosetta’s awesome. Smarter than some people I’ve met, although to be fair I’ve met some really dumb people.  Also, I’ve managed to teach her to play the drums.  Some dragons have an amazing sense of music.

In this case, though, she’d apparently heard something in the bushes – yes, even though we’d both just been rocking out for the last twenty minutes.  I don’t know how her ears work.  I put down my electric guitar and went to have a look…

…and found a white dragon.

I looked up a lot of dragon breeds when I was a kid and obsessed with them, so I recognised him as a purebred at once.  Specifically, he was a seraph – a rare and very expensive featherwing breed, with a long, wavy feather sticking out the back of his head like a ponytail.

“Hey there, little guy,” I said, keeping my voice gentle and sing-song – at least, as far as I could. “Someone’s gotta be missing you. Come on, I’m not gonna hurt you…”

Cold fangs nipped at my fingers, but after a few moments, the newcomer seemed to decide I could be trusted.  A heart-shaped tag on a simple but expensive-looking collar told me that this was Ludwig, and gave an address.  Needless to say, it was on the rich side of town; if you lived anywhere else, getting a seraph would probably leave you in a cardboard box.

“You up for a trip, little buddy?” I said, and  Ludwig hopped up onto my wrist.  “Great. Let’s go find your owner.”

***

The house Ludwig’s collar pointed me at wasn’t the biggest in the district, but since my house is basically six rooms including the garage, which doesn’t even have a car in it, it still made my place look like a shoebox.  And here I was carrying a dragon probably worth as much as a car.

Some low, shitty part of me whispered that I should just run away and sell the thing, but I felt the comforting weight of Rosetta on my shoulder and shut that thought down.  I knew how I’d feel if Rosetta went missing. I wasn’t going to inflict that on anyone, not even for a big sack of money.

I was just about to knock on the door when it swung open and all my brain’s resources were assigned to Being Gay simultaneously.

She was gorgeous. Blue eyes, a tight ponytail of night-dark hair, wearing a tailored shirt and elegant pants, carrying a handbag that probably cost more than anything I’d ever owned and holding a bundle of Missing Dragon posters with Ludwig’s picture on them and the legend “IF FOUND, CALL GWYNEIRA” and a number I couldn’t quite make out.  Standing there in my leather jacket, pride pins on full display, an old skirt, hand-repaired glasses and big, tough boots, I felt like a nail driven into a classical painting.  I had no business being here and I knew it.

After a frozen second, her face broke into a smile.  “You found him!  Thank you so much!”

“Uh.”  My brain whirred for a few agonisingly slow seconds, and then some parts of it kicked into gear.  “He was hanging around my garage.  Must have heard my music and thought it sounded interesting.”

“Oh, a fellow musician!” she said.  “What instrument, pray tell?”

“Well, I dabbled when I was a kid, but these days I mostly stick with the axe.”

“Axe?  You mean a weapon?”

“No, I mean an electric-” A stray neuron sparked back to life. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”

She gave a too-innocent wide-eyed look and then started laughing.  After a few moments, I did too.

She reached out, and Ludwig hopped across from my wrist to hers.  She waggled a finger under the dragon’s snub little nose and said, “I hope you won’t be pulling any more disappearing acts, Ludwig.”  Ludwig gave a smug, catlike smile and hopped up to her shoulder, and she turned back to me, reaching into her bag.  “I didn’t have time to put the posters up, but I was planning to give a reward for finding him-”

Take the money, Vetra, you dumbass, the parts of my brain that were functioning said.  Your amp is so old it was designed for the mandolin. Take the money, stick it in a jar, and when you have enough money, buy an amp that isn’t held together with baling twine.

Then my mouth, operating entirely independently from those parts, said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure?”  When my treacherous head nodded, she said, “Then at least allow me to buy you dinner.”

***

I was crammed into the only halfway decent dress I owned and had eaten something about half the size of an actual proper meal, but somehow I was still having a great time.

“So then we found the drummer hanging from the tree, in his underwear, rope around his ankle, and all he had to say when we let him down was, ‘I hate chipmunks.’”  Gwyneira choked back a laugh, and I shook my head.  “The band didn’t last long after that, although the bass player still crashes on my couch when he’s in town.”

“Such an…adventurous lifestyle,” she said, and sipped her wine.  

“But I’ve probably rambled long enough.”  I stabbed what I had been assured was the correct fork into a too-small morsel of chicken and said, “You said you were a musician, but you haven’t even told me what instrument.”

“Oh, how rude of me.” She cut a slice off…well, I don’t speak French, so whatever it was she was eating, and said, “I’m a violinist.”

“Huh.  Just as a hobby, or-”

“Professionally.”  She adjusted the cuffs on her suit, an outfit choice that was just deeply unfair.  “Have you ever studied much classical music?”

Show her how smart you are.  “Tell the truth, uh…I never really got into it.  I like my music with a bit more impact to it, you know?”  I mimed shredding on the air guitar.  Nailed it.

“I think I can show you plenty of impact,” she said, her delicate features arranged into a cocky smirk. “Come to my place tomorrow afternoon, and bring your…‘axe’.”

***

Rosetta took a deep breath and spat lightning into the amplifier.  For some reason, dragon thunder-breath doesn’t just charge a battery; it keeps it charging.  I scratched her behind the ear, and she grinned up at me, then spread her wings and soared over to the drums.

Ludwig raised his head from the piano, and Gwyneira started to play.

Notes didn’t fall from the violin; they rose, soaring into the air like birdsong.  Her voice, just as high and pure, mingled with it, underscored but never challenged by the slow, measured notes of Ludwig on the piano.

It was beautiful, but I wasn’t just here to listen.

I was here to play.

As the notes from the violin started to die away, I flicked my plectrum between my fingers like an old-time riverboat hustler playing with a coin.  Rosetta chose the tempo, her bunched-up claws striking the drums, a drumstick wrapped in her tail striking a cymbal, and my axe sang as I began: not the high, pure note of birdsong, but the howl of an iron wolf.

After a few bars, the piano started up again, but without its previous dignity and reserve.  Ludwig, apparently, relished the chance to cut loose a bit.  His claws struck the keys with speed rather than precision, keeping up with the beat of the drum and the snarl of the electric guitar, mixing in the occasional, perfectly timed glissando.

Then the violin’s song started up again.

Gwyneira’s eyes were closed, but she was keeping up with the much faster tempo like she was born to it, her bow dancing over the strings.  Her violin and my guitar weaved notes around each other, twining together like the tails of dragons in love.  It was like we were instinctively opening spaces for the other to slip into, letting the instruments work together rather than battle for dominance.

It was the kind of jam session you usually only get once in a lifetime.

***

Anyway, that’s how I met my girlfriend.

I own some nicer clothes, now.  I speak a little French.  And, you know, I’m starting to get along with classical music.  I mean, give me the faster ones any day – you should hear my cover of Rondo Alla Turca on the electric guitar, it’ll knock your socks off – but, you know, we meet halfway.

And I mean halfway.  Gwyneira looks like a goddess in anything, but when she’s let her hair out of its ponytail?  When she’s at a rock concert, just letting it all out, headbanging along? It’s amazing.  She’s amazing.

There have been challenges – you try finding good homes for an entire clutch of half-seraph, half-mongrel dragon hatchlings sometime – but we’re going pretty damn well.  She’s even talked about starting a proper band – weaving classical and rock together.

And if that never comes to pass?  If we can’t get a gig or find a good rhythm guitar?  At least we can still jam together.