The dim, ashy air lingering above the city did not stop its bustle. Citizens of many forms streaked along the streets, only stopping to browse wares or glance upon the majestic panels of stained glass. A state of idleness was a luxury,

Even if he did know that, the new arrival still would not step out. Wedged into the darkest corner he could find, "Staccato"-as he was encouraged to call himself- remained hunched down, frozen. The shadows masked everything but his six eyes, with the front ones wide with fear.

That lute lady... he should've taken her with him. Or at least get her name. She would've known what to do. He didn't. People passed too quick for him to muster up words. Their faces too unreadable to measure generosity. What was he to do besides watch and hope?

Slowly, carefully, he inched along the ground in hopes to peek around the wall he currently hugged, body scuffing along the ground.

"I'm... still not... entirely sure about this. People are staring...."

The skeleton--and she really is a skeleton--walked into the town without her disguise for the first time... well, ever. Sure, she'd dropped it a few times before, and circumstances had even forced her to drop it in public a few times before, but for the past fifty years she's always at least started with it.

It is only thanks to her traveling companions and newly-minted bondmates (oh stars above, she actually did it and they actually said yes, aaaaa) that she would even consider something like this. The Blackfeather clan already has three skeletal chicks running around as part of the family--her family--and none of them have ever worn disguises. None of them have ever felt ashamed about who or what they are, even if it draws stares. Of course, that's because their mother would take swift action if anyone ever tried anything with regards to one of her own, but still....

The entire family must be quite an eye-catching sight by now, Beak perhaps most of all, but... Well. If they can be open, then she... a nervous mental sigh-equivalent. She can try. Let the judgment commence, she supposes....

Rena giggles softly, silver eye lights dancing with amusement as she gently squeezes her skeletal bondmate’s hand, “...careful, ka’to’bi. don’t you know they can smell fear?” the lich trills happily, her wings fluttering a little before folding back up against her back as she smiles. It’s been some time since that trip to the Archive, and while things may not have gone perfectly - she still remembers Nev’s shattered eggs, now carefully placed in a shrine above the hearth - she’s more than happy with the results…

…the children trill gleefully, giggling and chirping as they dart after each other in a rough circle around their parents, shining eyes and glowing eye lights dancing with mirth…

…Hum and Chimes in particular seem to be really enjoying themselves, Chimes smiling brightly as she tugs her undead twin along be the hand, while Hum sports a softer smile in the shape of her eye lights…

…and then Hum flinches as the family passes by a particular alleyway, the copper eyed skeleton stumbling to a stop as she turns her head, those copper eye lights shifting in their empty sockets until they’re focused on Staccato’s own multitude of eyes, the little fledgling tilting her head and letting out a curious trill…

Chimes stops a few seconds later, the brassy eyed chick tilting her head at her sister and chirping curiously...

Beak's tentative voice grabbed his attention first, questions immediately springing to mind. They sounded afraid, much like him. Why was that?

He moved a little further out, placing a hairy clawed hand against the wall facing towards the streets. The light glinted off something metallic below his eyes.
With some squinting towards the voice's general direction, he soon spotted the unusual crew just as they passed by him. The sight, however, only brought forth more questions, such as-

What in world were they?

His gaze went to Beak first. They certainly stood out. He couldn't even find words to describe what he was looking at. Same with the short ones, the really short ones. Perhaps they were related?
Rena and her feathered children were curious too, sparking the faintest sense of déjà vu despite him knowing nothing about them.

They were all interesting to say the least...

Staccato kept staring, transfixed, up until he heard that little chirp.

Immediately all eyes met Hum's. Where did this little one come from?? Why were she looking back here? Had she noticed him?

He stared back, trying to follow her gaze, tensing as he realized that her eyes were indeed on him. Oh boy...

As he racked his brain for an appropriate response, he heard the second chirp, turning his head until he noticed Chimes. 
There was two of them??

What to do here, neither of these little ones seemed afraid yet. Did they want something? He had nothing. They'd move on soon enough. A shame too, he really did wonder. Were they from this city? He could ask that, right??

Alas, all these thoughts flashed through his head in a second, and with the group still mobile, there was no time to truly ponder.

And so, he spoke without a second thought. Unfortunately, because he couldn't decide between a question and a greeting, what came out was hushed, raspy gibberish.

"Ha-hi-whoare..."

...Dang it

Beak smiles down at Hum and Chimes as the two of them venture forth... or at least the one of them does, even if the other still seems shy about going all the adventures her twin is eager to discover. Beak herself still remembers when the two of them were set up in a nest inside her ribcage just so she could carry them around... they really do grow up quickly, don't they?

"Hmm? What's that--"

She glances in the direction the other two are glancing, not seeing anything at first... and then seeing it. It? Them? Seeing... that. If she still had a beating heart, she... might not, after how badly startled she is by the sight of the stranger.

"Wh--"

It was subtle at first, but the closer attention Staccato pays to the family--to Beak in particular--the more likely they are to notice that Beak isn't communicating verbally; that every "word" she "speaks" is a direct telepathic brodacast instead. The others all seem perfectly capable of using their vocal cords--even the other skeletons, who by all rights shouldn't have any, can still nevertheless speak normally. The elder skeleton alone seems an anomaly in this regard.

She also seems about as nervous as Staccato likely is, if not more. She makes no aggressive movements--she makes no movements at all, really, save for taking a tense, possibly defensive stance. She owes her very life to the family she now travels with having given her a chance instead of attacking on sight, and she means to pay that favor forward.... but she nevertheless remains ready should this meeting turn less-than-friendly.

"G... greetings. Well met, friend...?"

Rena tilts her head, those shining silver eyes turning to examine the stranger with a curious trill…the lich is still for a moment, and then she’s stepping close and it becomes apparent just how tiny she is, a solid four feet of crow examining the spider with curious eyes for a long moment before speaking, “...well, you’re new…” and then those eye lights flare a dangerous, caustic white when the Blackfeather matriarch catches sight of the muzzle, an angry hiss and a puff of frigid frog jetting from her beak as she closes her eyes and takes a slow breath to try and calm herself…

…when those eyes open they’re still ablaze with that caustic, icy light, and when she speaks her voice is deceptively soft and gentle, as though her eyes aren’t alight with carefully restrained malice, “...d’ye need some help gettin’ that…thing offa yer face, lort’yrlr ‘no?¹”

Even as the lich speaks, her fingers twitch, almost physically itching for her lockpicks, for the rending flesh of the people who’d done this - she can’t let another slaver go free - no. no, that can wait. the Hunt can wait…for now, this arachnid before her needs help, and that’s something she can provide…

---

1 - Ravenstongue - roughly 'little one'

Fortunately for Beak, Staccato made no sudden moves either. He simply kept his eyes on her. There was a right way to go about this, that much he knew, but he just couldn't recall how. Frankly he was distracted by Beak's voice coming from the inanimate mouth. That... was her voice, wasn't it??

He almost didn't catch what she had said. Almost. Well met-

"Friend?"

But that... That stood out. He knew its meaning. He just knew...

"Are we...?"

A tentative yet palpable hope filled that hoarse voice. Up until now, he'd experienced piercing looks and frowns from this place, besides the lute lady of course.

Until Rena actually came forward, the spider-esque creature had focused mostly on Beak, so when the aviankin lich first spoke, he retreated slightly back into the dark alley. The silhouette then shrunk further down from her hiss.

"Thing? What thing on my face?" he questioned, bringing his hands to his face, "Wha-..."

He trailed off as his claws clinked against the metallic muzzle. He'd almost forgotten about that thing, but now that he remembered it, the dull ache of its tight restraints returned.

"Oh..."

He grabbed onto it, pulling at it. Rena and Beak could both hear effortful grunts alongside the unyielding metal's creak. He strained and strained, but it would not budge. Soon he dropped his arms with heavy resigned sigh.

"It won't come off. It needs..." He paused to reach and feel the back of his head, "Something back here.."

Staccato slowly moved forward, finally coming out into the light. "Little One" wasn't quite right term to describe, as it became clear that he could stand at least 2 feet over the group if he were to come out from his hunched and crouched position.

He squatted further down in front of Rena and bowed his head down, showing the lock to the muzzle. Scratch marks had roughened the metal's texture.

Beak tends to refer to people as "Friend" as a simple matter of polite greeting; it's the gender-neutral way to say "Hello, Good Sir" or "Greetings, Madam." To a creature like Staccato, though, table manners and such... might not be very high on the list of things he knew, was ever taught, given the rather pitiable state in which Beak and her family find the poor creature.

... Beak is tense. Not for any reasons that are Staccato's actual fault, and she knows this, and that only makes her feel worse. She just has such a base, primal, uncontrollable fear of spiders that she is clearly trying with every fiber of her being to repress. It's ironic, given how much she laments everyone always fearing her just because she's a skeleton. And she gets that. That's why she's trying to fight it. Because she knows full well that it wouldn't be fair to treat this poor creature the way random townsfolk treated her for the past fifty years or so. Especially when he seems to have it even worse; no one ever put her in an iron muzzle, after all.

"... Friend. Yes." Her words are measured, but sincere; she really is trying. She is glad that Rena is here to handle lockpicking the muzzle and doesn't seem to share that fear, though, so that she can just... let her wife do it, and be friendly from... over here. Yes. "How did you end up... with this thing on you, if it's not too personal or painful to ask..?"

Rena cracks her neck, a flick of her fingers sending a set of fine lockpicks sliding into her palms as she reaches up, her caustic eye lights sharply focused and slightly jittering as she sets about taking the lock apart one piece at a time…it’s slow going, the lich’s hands moving with a careful, delicate precision, the slender picks eliciting click after click as she works…click…click…click…

…while Rena works, her children swarm about Staccato, all six of them chirping and cheeping curiously as they gently poke at his carapace, their vibrant eyes examining every inch of the spider…

Bell trills softly, the amber eyed specter idly scanning his family’s surroundings, eyeing each stranger that passes by the mouth of the alley as he slowly spins a glittering coin along his knuckles…

…Nev hums softly to themselves, a small smile in the ruffling of the feathers around their beak, the starry wraith’s cobalt eyes dancing as they pull Beak into a hug with a gentle coo…

…and with a final click the lock opens, quickly pulled away so the muzzle can be pried off Staccato’s face, the lich seeming to reel back to hurl the lock and muzzle away…and then she pauses, sighs, and cracks her neck before beginning to examine the items…

By now, he’s notably less tense, keeping his head down while Rena worked. He only reacted to the children’s touches, shifting around slightly. Their fingers brushed against the stiff setae that randomly dotted the back carapace plate, which tickled.

He didn’t respond right away to Beak’s question He just furrowed his brow at the ground.

“It’s… hard to say,” he then uncertainly answered, “It’s really hazy, but I definitely woke up in those woods-“

He lifted a hand to point over to the Deadwoods and then gestured to his body.

“And I woke up like this. Had a bad dream, it really scared me…”

His voice wavers and he visibly shivers, but he’s able to continue.

“I woke up and there were people around me. I didn’t know them. I didn’t know who they were or what they wanted. I didn’t know who I was or why was I there-“

The idle arms moved and gesticulated for emphasis, but soon stopped as a hand smacked the hard wall by mistake.
They were quite long after all…

“Nothing was right. None of it. I knew that,” he said with a huff, “I couldn’t be there, and they didn’t leave; I don’t know why-“

He tucked his legs in close to himself. His face scrunched further as he watched the ground in dismay.

“I guess I attacked? I didn’t really think about it. I was going to run away though, but they came at me, and then I woke up again with this stupid thing.”

He jiggles the metal, tempted to pull at again until he heard the click of Rena’s lock picks.
It slid off quite easily after that.

The ache around his head faded right away. Staccato sat upright, feeling around his face and rubbing his head.
Now the two fangs that peeked beneath his upper lip became obvious.

“What are you doing?” He asks Rena, leaning forward to peer at the muzzle, “Did you have a key for that?”

"She does... in a manner of speaking."

Beak let most of the exchange happen while she remained a safe distance behind, simply... steeling herself, trying to push her knee-jerk fear of spiders down in order to accept that this one is very clearly a friend in need. Her attempts to calm herself seem to have worked; by the time the conversation reaches that point, she's much more ready to join in. It... probably doesn't hurt that she finds the act of explaining and summarizing concepts to beginners... oddly soothing, yet stimulating? She'd likely enjoy being a teacher for young children, were her own appearance not every bit as terrifying as Staccato's.

"These...." By now, she's walked forward enough to join the rest of the group, close enough to give her bondmate (bondmate!) a hug, one hand finding its way to one of her spare lockpicks when she does, "can open just about any lock in the land, in the hands of someone who has the skill to use them. It's... cheating, one could say, since the skill is often used for dubious reasons... thieves breaking into people's homes, that sort of thing. But the same skill can just as easily unlock the jail cell to rescue someone unjustly imprisoned... or remove this device from you, as the case may be." A telepathic happy-emotion broadcast; the sort of equivalent of a smile.

Meanwhile, she's pondering the spider-person's tale... troubling, indeed. Slavers? Or... worse? "Were you... always like this? Your form and appearance, I mean." She asks as delicately as she can. She means not to offend if Staccato is simply of a species with which she's not familiar, but his tale brings to her mind the possibility of some cruel experimentation....

Rena tilts her head slightly, caustic white eye lights sharply focused as she examines the muzzle in her hands, “...did you get a good look at the people who did this to you?” there’s an ice to her tone, something cold and sharp and full of hate as she picks the thing apart, expertly prying free the little nails holding it together, and soon enough it’s reduced to a collection of leather straps and bits of metal, each of which she proceeds to carefully inspect, as though the muzzle’s components might somehow contain the secrets of the universe…

…Nev speaks, then, the inky wraith’s voice soft and gentle, “...do you remember the dream?” their cobalt eyes shine gently, full of curiosity as they glance around in a scan for any potential threats…

…Bell idly cracks his neck, the smoky specter’s amber eyes scrutinizing the group’s surroundings, as though expecting some threat to leap out at them…

The chicks pull away from Staccato, six pairs of shining eyes turning to scan the group’s surroundings, the living fledglings readying their weapons as they and their undead siblings form up into a loose cordon…they don’t really know why their mother is so intent on protecting this arachnoid stranger - spiders were food last any of them checked, but…no, no, Aunt Taki had a talking spider, and that was pretty clearly off limits - but they’re fully intent on helping…

With Rena no longer working on him, Staccato finally stands, towering over the rest as he was nearly double the height of the aviankin.
He stretched out a bit and shook off earlier’s tension before leaning forward to peer at the tiny lockpick.

He listened. Somewhat. His gaze seemed to lose focus the longer she talked despite. At least he understood the function. At the end of her explanation, he straightened again.

“Mm. Definitely sounds handy,” he remarks with a nod, “Can’t believe I haven’t heard of it.”

He then briefly frowned and recoiled a little from Beak’s third person happiness, perplexed to feel an emotion that wasn’t his own. Just a second later, he relaxed again and even gave her a smile. His incisors seemed just as pointy as the fangs, yet his remaining teeth appeared that as a humanoid.
The smile itself appeared sincere though. Too bad said smile immediately waned at the next question. He shook his head.

“No. I wasn’t,” he looked down at his hands, “I don’t… know who I was, but I know this isn’t me.”

He folded his arms close to himself, squinting his eyes as he turned to address Rena.

“Um. Well. Kinda? They were grey people. With the long ears-“ he put his fingers next to his head to imitate,
“I know they’re called something…”

He fell quiet, struggling to recall. He then hears Nev, his face scrunching at the question.

“Eugh… A little. I saw a spider with a woman’s face. She laughed at me, then screamed something. I heard other voices too, angry ones…”

His expression sours further at the thought. A hand grasps the center of his chest as he adds in the mutter.

“It also hurt…”

The elder skeleton's demeanor changes when she notices Staccato's attention waning, turning from enthusiastic in her explanation to more sheepish and reserved. "Ehehe... sorry. I get carried away, at times." Maybe she wouldn't be such a great teacher, after all. She has the passion, but the far more important thing is whether her would-be students do.

Once embarrassed into submission, she remains quiet and listens to the rest of Staccato's answers, pondering the situation. So this wasn't his original form... all the more reason not to let her instinctive fears get the better of her. He didn't choose to look like this any more than she did.

Taking in the rest of the stranger's tale, her bony tail gives an idle flick as she turns to her bondmates. "I'm afraid I don't know much about the spider connection, nor the geography of where one would or wouldn't expect to find them, but... gray skin, long ears? Istirii¹, it sounds like we have a group of dark elves causing... problems for the local populace." She turns back to Staccato with what one can only assume is a quizzical stare in context, though her skull does her no favors. "Do you recall anything about how they were dressed?" It might make a difference if they were soldiers, cultists, or anything in between. "... Or roughly how many of them there were?"

---

¹ - "Beloveds"

The silver eyed lich lets out a soft hiss as she reassembles the muzzle, carefully inspecting it before nodding, “...certainly sounds like dark elves…not sure about the spider woman, though...could be part of a curse…” she stiffens, shining eyes widening as she turns toward Staccato, “...do you remember what her eyes looked like?” it can’t be. The Hag’s never displayed any interest in the world outside the Valley of Crows, nor any ability to reach out past the borders of the Valley…but…what if she could? what if she could, and she’s just been tricking them into a false sense of security so she could…could…

“...you’re spiraling, love,” Bell interrupts Rena’s thoughts with a gentle murmur, the amber eyed crow letting out a soft trill as he softly hugs her, “...we’ll figure out what to do. we always do. It’ll be alright, to’bi¹…” the specter sighs, softly squeezing the silver eyed crow in his embrace before pulling away and watching her for a moment as she takes a few seconds to collect herself…

…when she speaks again, her voice is soft and gentle, with only the slightest quiver of anxiety at the thought of those shifting, kaleidoscopic eyes as she speaks, "...what did the spider woman’s eyes look like?”

---

1 - Ravenstongue - love/dear/heart