Chapter Text
The first thing that Tarte Tatin noticed about Pitaya Cookie was their tail.
Or, well, no- it wasn’t quite the first thing that she noticed.
Really the very first thing she noticed is that Pitaya was accompanying her old friend and companion, Hollyberry cookie.
Hollyberry did always have a sort of way of distracting Tatin, taking her focus from elsewhere and demanding all of her attention.
So really, the first thing Tatin noticed about Pitaya was that they were sitting next to Hollyberry at the bar of Dragon City’s well-renowned Inn. This was quickly followed by Tatin also noticing the other cookie accompanying Hollyberry on her other side- one who she would eventually learn to be Wildberry Cookie.
Tarte Tatin did not survive all of her years on Earthbread without picking a few traits up. It was a subconscious, instinctual thing- her habit of noticing and categorically storing away any and all information available to her. It was these details that keep her from being crumbled more than once already, so to say that she valued and trusted her instincts would be an understatement.
Yet still, Hollyberry.
Really did she need to elaborate?
The woman’s sheer presence and soul demanded all the attention in whatever room she was in. So, it was only a bit later during a lull in the bar’s activity that Tatin had the chance to actually access Hollyberry’s accompanying entroage.
Wildberry was the less noticeable of the two- which is what drew Tatin’s attention towards him really.
Well, ‘less noticeable’ was a somewhat.. misleading term. With his broad stature and shining armour Wildberry certainly didn’t exactly blend into the shadows, but he was a quiet fellow.
He seemed content to follow the conversation happening around him, only occasionally adding his own interjections and comments. Hollyberry did seem familiar with him- and he with her.
The disagreement he had shown each time Hollyberry reached for her berry juice tankard and his admonishment of her drinking habits was clearly a long practiced and well-trodden argument between the two.
Along with his occasional slips of referring to Hollyberry as ‘Her Majesty” he was clearly a Hollyberrian warrior. His reasonings for accompanying Hollyberry weren’t that hard to deduce from there.
Similarly explainable, Tatin thought, was Pitaya Cookie.
Their attire pointed more toward a fellow adventurer or traveller compared to Wildberry’s shining armour or even Hollyberry’s well-made, well-worn dragonscale armour.
Besides, it had once been Tarte Tatin herself in that very position- an otherwise random vagabond that was somehow roped into some type of quest or adventure by meeting Hollyberry and sticking around.
There was a sense of age to the connection Hollyberry and Pitaya that Tatin did notice, the way the two acted spoke to a familiarity with each other.
They had most definitely known each other prior to this current adventure, but this wasn’t surprising to Tatin. She knew well-enough that Hollyberry was far older than she looked and had experienced countless journeys and adventures that Tatin simply didn’t know about.
Really the tail just told Tatin that wherever Pitaya came from was a long ways away from her usual trotting grounds.
...
What? Perhaps one would expect Tatin to be more shocked or stunned by Pitaya’s very-obviously non-cookie feature?
Why would that be?
Tarte Tatin is an adventurer, first and foremost. She’s passed through countless locations and met a very wide variety of different people during her travels.
Something that became quite clear to her over the years was that no one, no where, is truly ‘normal’. Every cookie has their own personal quirks and traits and to expect any less is simply ignorant.
She’s met aquatic cookies, resistant to the soggy effects of water on their dough and with tales of entire underwater city’s and communities full of other aquatic cookies, never before seen by any ‘land-dwellers’.
Cookies with animal traits like ears or tails or in one case, the entire lower body of a deer, that roamed the forests of Earthbread.
Winged and feathered cookies that held stories of lands resting above the clouds that they travelled down from.
Cookies missing limbs that they had originally baked with- those who had since acquired replacements for them and those who lived without them- or even those who simply hadn’t been baked with them in the first place at all, for just a few examples.
A tail was hardly that strangest feature that Tarte Tatin had ever seen.
She didn’t even ask about it in the end, as Pitaya didn’t bring it up- nor did anyone else among the bar that night. It was just a simple fact really, an observation.
Pitaya had a practical mane of long white hair studded with black seeds, pinkish dough, dark eyes, wore a travellers outfit of worn pants, a loose shirt and a long cloak, spoke with something of a hiss, and had a reptilian tail that poked out from under the end of their cloak.
As simple as how Tatin wore an eyepatch over her scarred eye, or how Wildberry wielded a large gauntlet with him, or how Hollyberry kept her pink hair tied back in two buns with braids and holly leafs.
She did note that the very end of Pitaya’s tail looked damaged, as if they had lost the tip of it somehow. Even then however, Tatin knew that she herself had her fair share of battle scars accumulated over the years. Maybe Pitaya would choose to share the tale behind it, or perhaps not.
She did not make the connection to the one tale of the Knight that Cut off The Red Dragon’s Tail, and really, why would she have anyway?
Legends and tales involving the Red Dragon were always aplenty- a dime a dozen almost.
Tatin knew not to take every one at full face value, but rather with a fair dose of salt.
The sheer amount of them made it hard to phase out the facts from myths sometimes- something she knew from experience herself.
And anyway, Pitaya was very obviously a cookie, nowhere close to anything resembling the notorious draconic beast of the Valley.