The Chained Watcher

Funny Little Teethies

~~~

Grian lays on his side, watching Scar clamber up the tree bearing his blueberry crumble fruits with an amused smile on his face. There are plenty of low-hanging fruits, of course, but Scar seems to have his eyes set on an especially large one hanging near the top of the tree's crown, and won't settle for less.

Idly, he asks, "Do you think I should make another taste-alike fruit? Not that there's anything wrong with this one," definitely nothing wrong with the taste of this one, "but variety is supposedly the spice of life, right? Maybe some kind of berry bush this time instead. It'd be a bit too small for me to appreciate at full size, but it'd be nice to have something more snackable than the blueberry fruit."

Scar pauses his ascent, tilting his head. "A new dessert fruit? Like what?"

"Like... I don't know, marshmallows? Shouldn't be too hard to encourage a plant to grow little bite-sized marshmallow berries. That's not really speaking to me though..."

"Ooh! What about strawberry shortcake!"

"Mmm?"

"You can grow strawberries that taste like strawberry shortcake! Or maybe something that tastes like a mini apple pie!"

"That does sound pretty good, I must admit. I'll have to think on it. Not everything is equally easy to make a plant mimic, after all."

"Eh, I'm sure you could manage it."

Scar resumes climbing, finally reaching the big fruit. He tugs at it. It takes him a few seconds, but he realizes that you just need to twist it to detach the stem, letting him heft the crumble-coated fruit appreciatively. Quite appreciatively.

Scar turns his gaze towards him.

Maybe a little too appreciatively.

Grinning ear to ear, Scar lobs the fruit at his face, calling out, "Catch!"

Though he could have batted it away easily, or simply erased it with magic, Grian chooses the slightly harder option. Not that precision movements are hard for someone who's an enchanter by profession, but it still takes a tiny bit of focus to avoid crushing the fruit.

Without any fanfare, Grian catches the fruit with his teeth. He barely moves, the fruit having been on track to hit his cheekbone, and the fruit doesn't even squish, though the crumble coating definitely took a hit from the sudden stop. He meets Scar's surprise with a toothy grin. Yeah, you're not aiming for the back of his head this time, buddy. He can react to any edible projectiles aiming for him now.

Point made, he lets the fruit drop onto his tongue, savoring the flavor with nearly closed eyes. Not actually closed, since Scar has a tendency to capitalize on such unguarded moments, but still closed enough to smugly show how futile the attempted prank was.

"Hold on, did I just see-" Scar shimmies down the tree. The little fruit-lobbing wizard walks up to him, staring at his face with an odd flavor of confusion. Grian doesn't have to wonder about the cause for long though. "Lift up your lip like this," Scar demands, hooking a finger into his mouth and lifting the side of his upper lip to expose his teeth.

...Okay? He complies, still not quite sure where this is going.

Scar leans closer. He exclaims incredulously, "You have fangs?! Since when did you have fangs!?"

He withdraws his hand so he can talk. "Oh, that? Yeah, that's pretty normal for Watchers. Plenty of species have some level of fangs, so it's not like it's a Watcher-exclusive. It's just obvious since I'm scaled up so much."