Title: like a bird
Fandom: Arrow
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 456
Pairing: Nyssa Al Ghul/Sara Lance
Author's note: dragon au
Summary: Nyssa might ... forget some things. About humans. Not usually an oversight that leaves anything amiss, but now that she's living with one, well ...

After the challenger to her horde, pitiful as he had been, is vanquished by the steep sides of her mountain home, she takes her songbird out into valley between peaks that house her cave. She has been kept from the sun for too long.

Humans, Nyssa recalls vaguely, like nature. Even if they do insist on twisting and shaping it beyond all form of itself, they still like to see it. Why else would she have a collection of fine vases with flowers on them, if it were not so?

And the nature in her valley is, in her own opinion, most fine. She has plant-life sweet smelling and fresh smelling, long soft grasses in the sun and plush moss on shadowed ricks. Her stream flows year round, pooling at the lowest dip, and the cliffs are a perfect perch for surveilling herds on plains beyond. Beyond her hoard, can think of no

She blinks a closer eye at the bundled form of her treasure. The act is harder than it should be, since she is half underneath the dragon's own bulk.

She is wrapped in cloth, almost beyond recognition as a human, but her movement ... she is shivering. Humans don't do that, not from excitement. It is not that cold, surely? The snow does not cover more than the tips of grass and the water runs freely.

And yet, her songbird remains pressed to her side instead of wandering forth, dipping a hand and tasting clarity of snow melt.

… Perhaps the layered silk pictogram that covers her does not protect her body from the elements? It does retain a delightful cool, when she slips from scales to inspect and display the more delicate parts of her horde.

Unacceptable. Nyssa herds her towards the stream, where trees hold the rock and earth back from the dip worn into the earth. As they move, Nyssa's teeth snap to tear down a low hanging branch. Nudge by nudge, they continue along the course until where she finds … there, it is there, where the overhang where springwater flood has worn away softer earth makes a hollow. Shelter, and she can cover all other directions with heat from her scales. Treasure relaxes as wind ceases its assault.

She is cold. Unacceptable. Breaks the branch and spits fire onto pile on the splinters piled between her feet. The warmth catches with a cackle.

Nyssa returns from the village that same evening less one of the smaller, and most dull stones from her hoard, and with a bundle of what the trapper claims to be warm coverings in her claws. If it proves otherwise, she will turn and take sheep - knows their wool keeps out wind and damp.