Jaon was immediately taken aback by this sudden force of wind and the raw power now surging through the atmosphere, both originating from this ancient creature that was eyeing him very cautiously from a short distance. Mere moments after speaking, perhaps prematurely, he found the hood of his worn mossy-colored cloak suddenly thrown back and his hair standing wildly on end from the now very palpable static in the air. He reacted quickly, though, gripping his staff firmly and digging it down into the dusty floor to keep himself from being knocked back entirely.<br/><br/>He almost expected at this point that he may simply vaporized for startling the guardian here and that perhaps his luck and charm had failed him this time, but then the dragon stopped abruptly and backed away ever so slightly to his complete amazement. He thought to himself, "Well, I didn't make it this far on my intelligence."<br/><br/>He didn't move an inch, observing from where he stood, as he was observed himself. He'd dealt with Dragons before. Many of them had wisdom and intelligence far beyond what mere humans could comprehend. Others, sadly, had devolved into beasts of burden or implements of war. This beautiful being before him, though, was still unlike any he'd encountered before. There was no marring from battle or any visible restraints, just a big, bold beast whose scales each glistened individually against the light still emanating from his staff. "Radiant", was the only word that came to mind at that moment.<br/><br/>He could tell that just as he didn't know what to do next, neither did this being before him. He spent all his cleverness on his earlier quip, hoping it would be enough to disarm even a Dragon. He thought earlier that she seemed feminine somehow and her sleek curves, even for a dragon, seemed to reinforce this idea. She did smell nice. She smelled like books and old paper. Not too musty, but just right. He wondered how long she might have been here before he arrived.<br/><br/>Suddenly, she seemed to straighten upright and pierced his gaze with firm glowing eyes. The tension in the air heightened once again and Jaon gripped his staff even more tightly while throwing his right hand down towards the belt concealed beneath his cloak. After a brief, but uncomfortable silence, she spoke. Her voice resonated against the hard stone, but was softened by the rows of books. She responded directly to his question, which seemed inordinately fair considering his unannounced intrusion into the library. "I was waiting for you to enter the library<i>properly</i>," her voice boomed. Jaon quickly had a feeling of intense guilt, as though he had broken some unwritten law that he hadn't even had consideration enough to learn about first. Then she spoke again, declaring plainly, "State your intentions within the Prismia Library."<br/><br/>Jaon wasn't quite sure how to respond to this. The Prismia Library? What about the lost library he had been looking for? Was this another waste of time? He'd never even heard of the Prismia Library. Knowing he had mere moments to reply, he quickly gathered his wits and... began to spill it all with brutal honesty.<br/><br/>"I'm sorry, I didn't know I was supposed to enter through the front gates. I've been searching all manner of repositories for a way to lift this...affliction that I have. Normally, you don't just knock on the front door! No one wants to part willingly with such archaic knowledge, especially as it becomes harder and harder to locate. So I slip in, I try to find what I'm looking for, I might read a little of this or that if the situation allows, and then I move on... because so far, I haven't found a way to break this damned curse." He paused for a moment, then continued, "And pardon me, I'd offer to shake a talon, but I wouldn't be able to!" Jaon began to get a bit excited upon realizing this was likely another dead end, but he calmed himself, and proceeded. "My intentions were merely to find the book containing the knowledge necessary to lift this curse and allow me to once again touch someone... Ugh, it's a long story. It was my understanding that there was a library lost to time that might have held this particular manuscript, and I thought that your... Prismia Library might have been the one I'd been looking for. I sincerely hope that you understand my intentions, while admittedly selfish, were not to do any harm to anyone... And if it helps you feel more comfortable, granting you'd even allow it, I could slip out and come back in...properly and introduce myself."<br/><br/>Jaon lowered his guard for the first time, raising his right hand up from his waist and to his hair, mussing with his frazzled brown locks and smiling sheepishly. "I bet I look like a right hot mess," he said, as he kicked at the dust on the floor and glanced back towards where he had initially entered the Prismia Library.