Bismuth Slab
The Tornan Boldwyrm, some seven generations removed from the "original" primal beast, acts with a lively, noble grace; capricious yet stately, ever-wondrous in its moods. When surrounded by humans, it has been known not to shrink back but rather to determinedly persevere through the unfamiliar environment, taking each challenge in turn and in stride - in distinct contrast to its cousin, the Crossdrake, and more approachable than its predecessor, the Greatwyrm.
Upon seeing the beast, one cannot help but feel a strange sense of fondness. As one, to the next, each being relates; we all are woven in reality together, no matter how majestic and otherworldly the dragons may seem. They have been here all along, after all. What are they but kin? Why,--
Sighing, Minoth rips out the page and crumples it with a fastidious fury soon foiled by the unwillingness of his thick, expensive notebook stationery to acquiesce toward myriad messy folds. This is far from accurate scientific writing, and farther still from what Amalthus will want.
Further, rather. Speak of metaphorical distance. Though, perhaps farther really does serve the same capacity. Minoth's own weakness to pedantry in the most inane of contexts (even though he wrote with words he made up nearly on the daily) is something even Amalthus can't appreciate, detrimental as it is, in its scale, to research progress.
And what more is there to learn, anyway? Sending Minoth out on observational expeditions seems to be little more than Amalthus's droll, calculating way of placating review boards - if someone else brings their findings back into the Indoline office for comparison and standardization, Amalthus can surely keep objective by way of numbers. Implicitly superior to the simple, fallible, time-honored practice of having someone else check one's reports. Never mind the fact that Amalthus doesn't actually read Minoth's.
It doesn't really matter, regardless. Minoth's pet theory is that the only way to truly understand the Tornan breeds to any further (indeed!) degree of note is to interact with them, up close and personally. They know scale colors and shifts, genealogy and strains, mountcalls and mating rituals. They've seen everything there is to see. Literally.
What can't be seen can perhaps be felt. Minoth doesn't know from what Amalthus hopes to eventually profit, with respect to the dragons, but at the very least, if he can support his position, he can do something else with his days beyond scribbling prose and scrabbling it out.
Oh, and one other thing to note about dragons: they don't talk. Not that anyone has yet seen or heard, anyway. They have, instead, apparently, series of multi-pitched chirps paired with abstruse scale shifts that communicate information, and perhaps other things, to other dragons. Body language, pheromones, blink patterns are all indecipherable to a mere human.
Still, Minoth doesn't wish himself transformed, in order that he might witness. The majesty of dragons compels him, has always compelled him. While that same majesty must be at least equal in measure when perceived by a fellow dragon, Minoth has always been humanoid, and it is that breadth of experience against wish he hopes to compare dragonsbreath.
The Tornan Boldwyrm he's been assigned to - his Tornan Boldwyrm - is named Addam.
Do dragons name each other? It's something Minoth will never know until he learns to communicate. But until then, rather than refer to "that one over there" or "my objective" or "the specimen", he thinks of great myths, and nobility, and the origination of all-encompassing sin.
Keeping agnostic would be nice, but organized religion does have some classic tropes.
Minoth hates his work, but Minoth loves Addam.
It takes time to reach the beast. More than just a scene change, much as Minoth would will it. Seven, nine months, maybe closer to a year?
He'd discovered that feeding Amalthus the prose worked well enough anyway, because his supervisor had all but given up on processing the dutifully-produced notes, and so would accept chapter title pages of old information Minoth had wisely kept back buffered by spreads of quasi-romantic waxing. Though it hurts, somewhat, to give up such personal journal, there is an indescribable thrill to it.
He doesn't really care if he loses his job. Or...does, but finds this gambit winning out.
And now, by it, he has reached Addam.
Golden scales, shifting silver. Golden eyes ringed with blue. Powerful appendage muscles surrounding a vulnerable chest and stomach. Low chirps indicating hackled interest, in between deep, curious breaths.
A beautiful creature, beyond all description. Deserving of every bit of reverent research, but not the inevitable end goal the opportunist back in Indol must have in mind.
All Minoth had wanted to do was say hello. Now, he finds even that simple, human word failing him.
Addam doesn't touch the human visitor. Minoth doesn't touch the dragon.
For one thing, he's ridiculously small, in comparison, and even among the tall, not to say statuesque, Indoline, he has always been an eyecatching figurehead. The geometry of his face had been conspicuous, to those at his general scale. Can Addam even discern him? Is Addam even physically capable of seeing that which makes humans find Minoth handsome?
(Of course Addam is.)
For another, he finds it, somehow, possible that he's underestimated the sheer might of the dragons. In all his pontification about kin and kind, about reality and reactions, about what it is that separates the mundane from the mythical and the destitute from the divine, Minoth has...not really considered that the dragon could kill him.
There are no words equal to communication. Minoth doesn't doubt that the beast can, too, see him blink.
He raises a hand, not palm forward, but palm up. After an unthinking moment, he carefully drops the notebook and raises the other.
And then, wonder of wonders, the dragon drops its head two or three meters to hang in the space between.
"Hello, Addam," Minoth says, reveling in the comfort that phrase brings. "If it's alright, I'd like to get to know you better."