( ...this is, he supposes, not unlike herding the rabbits of Cloud Recesses, if ever they turned rabid sooner than docile, mean-spirited and hostile. Wrathion trots on, heft of him sending petty quivers across crackled stone, and Lan Wangji does not ask, Might you perhaps briskly saunter? But instead drifts beside him, hand soft when it threatens to cascade over Wrathion's long neck, his spine.

Touch never lands. Fingers curl in, settle away. Wangji has not survived to decades of wander to misconstrue pained, obvious indications. Ownership is expected of paired dragons, this much is certain. And they cannot both linger under the glaring eye of a dumbed, but no doubt soon wakeful crowd.

He lets the silence between them settle, ferment. Wrathion, he has learned, suits haste and offence no better than these people tolerate sickness. Finally, when Wangji has started them on the path guardsmen direct as bleeding into the nests, and they have borrowed something not unlike privacy: )

You do not often claim this shape. You assumed it to shield your identity?

( A dragon in a citadel of such creatures might prove better guarded, if he were of the appropriate colouring. )