The joys of living in a school during summer. Namely, the fact that it was much quieter. Of course, the Mansion was no ordinary school, which was why Kiva lived there in the first place; those who were left were people who, for the most part, didn't gawk like idiots over her monstrous appearance. Some of the little kids, of which there were fewer simply due to the general timing of mutation expression but that did exist, even thought she was cool.

The lovely school grounds were also a plus. She was happily nestled under a shady tree with a sketchbook and art pencil in her claws. There were some clouds in the sky breaking up the sunlight and it wasn't blisteringly hot out that day, but Kiva was still just wearing her back tank top and black jean shorts, her wings visible behind her and her exposed scales glittering in the places where the sunlight shone through between the leaves.

She also had her water bottle sitting nearby, a couple of slowly-melting ice cubes floating in it that were helping keep it cold. She took keeping herself from overheating very seriously. She kind of had to, what with her condition.

Kiva watched a familiar sleek, black form lope across the grass some distance away. Clover had taken to her new home like a fish to water, like she did pretty much anything. The once stray cat was a thing of beauty after years in Kiva's care: shiny coat, gorgeous green eyes, and a slender form that was not the extreme of a siamese or similarly-built cat, but exuded grace all the same.

Clover eventually paused and laid down in the grass, her back straight and forelegs extended in front of her like a sphinx as she tucked in her back legs and curled her slender tail around her hip. Her stared forward, ear position and gaze equally relaxed. The black cat looked downright regal.

Kiva smiled, and she flipped to a blank page of her sketchbook. Hopefully, she'd be able to capture this moment of beauty before her best feline friend decided that she'd much rather do something else.

Aiden didn't usually sit in trees, and certainly didn't usually draw in trees, but when he was looking for a place to sketch for a while people had just kept wandering past. As such, he eventually gave up and pulled a Persi, so to speak. He chose a very climbable tree, with large low branches spreading almost horizontally, and even if he had had to resort to stuffing his sketchbook under his shirt and then tucking the hem in while he did the actual climbing part, he did make it into the tree and to a reasonably comfortable fork.

It wasn't all that long before movement below caught his eye. The dark patch moving through the grass was far too small to be human, and once it slowed Ai realized that it was just a cat. Well, a cat that was clearly not a stray; it was in far too good a condition, as far as he could judge from the distance (and in a cat. Cats weren't his area of expertise). It was much too shiny and sleek, not bony and mangy like he'd expect of something living hand - er, paw - to mouth without reliable shelter or sustenance. No, this cat belonged to someone.

Whoever's it was, though, there was something about the posture it had just taken up - that sphinx he had been trying to draw the other day! Quickly flipping back through his sketchbook until he found it, he settled it on one knee so he could look between the page and the cat with barely a twitch of his head. That was why it wasn't working! His angles had been all wrong through the neck and shoulders. Clearing the flawed lines with broad strokes of his eraser, within a few minutes Ai had replaced them with more appropriate lines and was beginning to flesh out the sketch with light shading. The sphinx was far more ornate than the cat who had offered itself so politely as a model, but the structure of the head and torso were clearly reminiscent of the flesh-and-blood feline.

Kiva roughed out the position her cat was in, then started on the details, her pencil moving in practiced strokes despite the awkward way she had to hold it in her clawed hand. She didn't go for the kind of dark, heavy shading she'd normally give a black cat, for the most part just focusing on capturing the grace of the pose.

She paused for a second and laid the sketchbook down, once she was sure that she'd drawn enough that she could potentially finish it from memory if required, then grabbed her water bottle. As she gulped down a few mouthfuls of cold water, however, she caught something out of the corner of her eye and paused.

Was something in that tree over there?

Kiva put the cap back on her water bottle and looked over, peering at where she'd thought she'd seen very un-tree-like colours. She blinked a couple of times at what she saw.

Oh. Someone was in the tree. And he was holding a...

Okay, now she was curious. Sketchbook under one arm and water bottle in her free hand, she approached, moving from shady spot to shady spot until she was standing only a few feet away from the tree.

Yup, that was a sketchbook. And judging by the direction this kid was facing, they'd had similar opinions on Clover and her value as a model. Kiva paused there, considering whether she just wanted to outright strike up a conversation with some random artist kid.

Eh, if she startled him and he fell out of the tree, she'd be able to catch him. He didn't look like he weighed that much.

Putting on the friendliest smile her harsh-featured, scaly face would allow, Kiva idly stretched her wings and relaxed them as she called up in her usual rumbling, somewhat masculine voice, "Really is a beauty, isn't she? Her name's Clover."

Aiden was not expecting anyone to talk to him. He hadn't seen anyone around for a bit, which was what he wanted, and he had figured anyone who did come past wouldn't notice him in the tree, which was the whole point of climbing it. That the spoken words were almost certainly referring to the cat he had just been using as a base for his sphinx did simplify things, and even identify the speaker as the cat's owner. Or friend, if the guy was like Liz at all.

Hopefully not.

He scribbled a little more shading into the crook of the sphinx's neck before tucking his pencil and eraser away. He might have been better off leaving the pencil out at least, though, because he very nearly fell out of the tree when he saw who had spoken.

Nearly, mind. He was successful in catching his balance at the last moment, and quickly pulled himself upright again, and then peered down at the strange figure looking up at him. That was a dragon. He thought. Looked like one. Why was there a dragon talking to him?

After a second more consideration, he caught the humanoid lines beneath the scales and horns and wings and a connection clicked. Ooooooh. Mutant. Dragon mutant. With wings. Must be a total pain to go anywhere, but really, a dragon. Despite the obvious complications in going around in public, he found himself feeling a teensy bit of awed jealousy. Dragons were cool in pretty much every incarnation he had come across (well, except the childish ah-nyarm-must-destroy-everything-then-be-brought-down-in-a-single-blow-by-some-dweeb-trying-to-save-some-nitwit-princess).

"Um, hi?" he said, wary of the dragon mutant as of any stranger talking to him out of the blue but a little curious and hardly vicious. "She is. Nice, I mean. Had a picture giving me trouble a while back, but her pose was just perfect." He flicked the sketchbook shut. Explaining why he'd been drawing the cat was one thing, but he still wasn't planning on showing it.

Kiva winced a little when the kid nearly did fall out of the tree, and she almost apologized as she got his balance back. She didn't, however, because she noticed he didn't react to her voice, but to her appearance, and that made a small frown replace her smile. She put the smile back in place as he peered down at her, trying not to let it get to her. At least he hadn't screamed like some people did.

When he let out that little 'um', the smile became a bit less forced but a bit more sheepish. Had she had a free hand, she would have fussed a little with her black ponytail. Why had she decided that random conversation-starting was a good idea, again? It was probably Chloe rubbing off on her, she decided, given that she'd met the butterfly-shifter by being on the receiving end of much the same.

Only neither of them had been in a tree and Kiva wasn't nearly as much of a motormouth as Chloe.

Kiva gave a faint, deep chuckle. As she spoke again, her voice crept up a little in pitch to sound a bit less masculine, but still very androgynous. "Yeah, she's a great model. When she's willing to sit still, anyway." She shifted the arm she had her own sketchbook tucked under, then found herself grasping for something else to say.

Introductions seemed like a good start. "Name's Kiva," she said, "I go by Drake, too, for, uh..." She briefly flapped her small wings. "...Reasons that are probably really obvious."