Xandra tucked the stem of straw between her lips. Idly she began chewing the end of it as she sat on the parapet staring off into the distance.

"You do realize that makes you look like a hayseed, right?"

Large red eyes turned away from the horizon to contemplate the shaggy, orange and black striped charr sitting across from her on the top of one of the many parapets in the Eternal Battlegrounds. "Asura," she said with a voice full of wounded dignity, "never look like hayseeds."

"You're leaning back half asleep, hands plopped happily on your belly, you're wearing baggy, oversized clothes, and you have a piece of straw sticking out of your mouth. If you had a hat it'd be pulled down over your eyes and you'd be asleep." The enormous charr male's snout crinkled in a close-lipped smile. "Hayseed."

"I refuse to dignify your absurd aspersions any further through a continuance of this conversation," Xandra replied. She turned her head back to the horizon. "Besides, you shouldn't be casting stones. I can't help but notice that, leaned back like you are, you look as though you desire belly rubs, Rikbore Warstone. Do you purr like a kitten when your belly is rubbed?"

"Only if the company is pleasurable," Rikbore replied. "I'm fairly certain you don't count as pleasurable, Asura."

Xandra handwaved the comment away, looking out over the parapet and attempting to maintain her interest in watching for rampaging Fergies.

"Speaking of pleasurable company, I noticed a new Asura joined up last night." Rikbore rumbled, a sly grin on his face. "You should check him out."

"Her," Xandra replied idly.

"Her?" Rikbore sat up, surprised. He swung his legs out to dangle in the air beyond the wall with a creak of leather and steel. "I could have sworn that was a he."

Xandra snorted. "It's as plain as day that she's a she."

"You have long black hair. She is bald."

"Like that makes a difference." Xandra sat up and poked Rikbore in the side. "Unlike your hirsute species we have no particular need for hair. Having hair or not having hair on the crowns of our glorious melons is no more a factor of sex than eye color."

"But humans…"

"We are no more human than you are, bookah." Xandra waggled a finger at Rikbore.

"Don't make me eat you," Rikbore rumbled.

A companionable silence fell between the pair as they stared out over the swamplands below the tower they were keeping watch from. The sky began to shift in color from the darks of night to the warmer tones of dawn. Eventually, Rickbore shifted awkwardly.

"Fine," he grumbled. "How do you tell the difference between male and female Asura?"

"Facial features mostly," Xandra replied. "Female faces are far less rhytidal and possess less of a tendency towards periorbital and buccal puffiness. Additionally we tend to have superior orbital expansion."

"What?"

"We don't look like prunes with little eyes."

Rikbore chuckled. "That being the case, you definitely need to hook up with that new asura girl. It sounds like you find girls more attractive."

Xandra shook her head. "I find that each have their virtues and values in both appearance and coital experiences. I do not tend to differentiate between male and female in terms of having a particular preference." She paused, then looked sidelong at her watch companion. "So would you care to explain your sudden interest in my romantic proclivities?"

"You were less subtle than you might have thought about where you were putting your fingers in the barracks last night." Rikbore grinned, this time with a small amount of tooth showing. "May I state that you actually have an adorable little squeak when you get excited?"

Xandra punched him in the bicep, an act about as effective as trying to destroy a large stone using a feather duster. "Where my fingers go is none of your business, bookah."

"Listen, Xandra. You may be an annoying midget with an excessive ego and tendancy to use big words when small ones will do, but we've been fighting side by side in the Mists for a while now. I've grown to actually like you. So take this as coming from a friend." A clawed finger forcefully poked Xandra in the chest. "To use the human vernacular, you need to get laid."

Xandra blinked, idly rubbing her chest. "Vernacular? You just used a big word."

"Don't change the subject," Rikbore growled. "You've been tetchy, squirmy, and an all around git lately. You are highly distractible, even in combat, and that is making you a liability."

"I don't see how that means I need to engage in recreational procreative pleasure."

Rikbore leaned in toward Xandra, looming over her. "Charr also have a very good sense of smell. You've been ruining your undergarments of late with your desire. Ever since we caught those two Norn in the armory two weeks ago. In fact," he inhaled deeply, "you're rather in need of a change right now. You have a serious itch, and it needs scratching before you get yourself killed"

With a squeak, Xandra slammed her thighs tightly together, a hand protectively clamped between them. She glared at Rikbore. "Alright, so perhaps it has been a while."

Rikbore sat back, arms crossed in satisfaction. "So go down there, introduce yourself, and do whatever it is Asuran girls do to one another."

"It doesn't work like that. Relationships between Asura usually result from a mutual fascination on a conjoined project leading to a mutual respect and competitiveness that expresses itself in all aspects of life, including the enjoyable exercise of trying to outdo one another sexually during the duration of the project. I haven't brought anyone in on my project to create a hyperspacial thaumospectral self motivating large siege golem utilizing the disharmonious ectothermal energies of the Mists." Xandra's eyes lit up as she spoke of the pet project Rikbore had yet to make sense of. But then her eyes dulled again and she slumped down to rest her chin on her knees. "Besides, she wouldn't be interested anyway."

"And what makes you so sure of that? You haven't even talked to her, I bet."

Xandra turned her back to Rikbore, her head bouncing up and down on her knees as they pushed her around. "Just trust me," she grumped. "She wouldn't."

"Uh huh. Did Captain Ego, lady of the excessively verbose boastage and overconfident engineer with courage bordering on a death wish in battle suddenly become bashful? I'm not buying it." He sniffed again. "The idea definitely interests you or my nose has gone wonky."

"Bastard," Xandra muttered.

"So what's holding you back?" the charr pressed.

Xandra hunched over her knees. "I'm homely."

"What?" Rikbore's voice was startled. He cocked his head a bit to the side as he contemplated the back of the little Asura woman in front of him.

"Homely. Plain. Unatractive. Has no luck."

"I know what homely means," Rikbore growled. "I just don't get it. You look pretty cute to me, at least for a hairless cave dwelling monkey. I mean, sure, you have no dugs, but those only matter to humans and norn anyway, right? Isn't that what they mean by 'luck'?"

"Asura do too have breasts. We just don't waste energy filling our mammaries with fatty deposits until we actually have progeny, and then only until they get teeth. Then we repurpose all that flesh to more important things."

"You're changing the subject again."

Xandra dropped her chin onto her knees, back still to the giant charr. "Ears," she muttered.

"Ears?"

"I have pathetic ears."

"Well, aside from only having two of them, they seem fine to me."

Xandra spun around to pierce Rikbore with intense red eyes. "What is the general length and girth of your penis?"

Rikbore sat back, jaw slack in shock. "My… what?"

"How big is your dick?"

"Uh… it's uh…" he shook his head. "That's none of your… um… What's this got to do with your ears?"

"Everything."

Rikbore shifted uncomfortably.

"Are you trying to tell me that Asura view their ears the way we view muscles and the humans view their dugs?"

"That's exactly what I am saying."

Rikbore raised clawed fingers to his chin, contemplating Xandra. "So even though you have very cute, large eyes…"

"I suppose."

"And pretty, moist lips…"

"They've been described as pouty before."

"And soft, white skin with almost no blemishes…"

"Only on my face, I'm spotted where it counts."

"And the sort of brain that guarantees I will be terrified of letting any cubs you whelp near a chemistry set…"

"Flatterer."

"You think that your ears will pretty much shut down any chance to get any Asuran's between your legs?"

"Well, when you put it like that it does seem to be a relatively minor statistical aberration, but you have no idea how much store we put into ear size. I used to get teased about them in the creche. Then, as I got old enough to be procreatively needy I'd ask my mother how long until they got bigger. She stated that statistically the odds were that I'd always be of rather diminutive lobic endowment and I'd just have to accept that. I'm just plain not very visually stimulating to other asura, much to the dismay of my rather difficult to control hormonal expression."

"So are you telling me that, because of your cute little ears you've never knocked boots with another Asuran?"

"Well, no…"

"So you have."

Xandra squirmed. "Yes."

"How many?"

"Of my recreational procreative entertainment partners asuran males have formed twenty five percent, females forty-two percent, human males…"

"Any charr?"

"No. I've never attempted such a…" Xandra blinked. "Wait… Are you coming on to me?"

Rikbore laughed. "Maybe a little."

"Biologically speaking I estimate that any attempts to accommodate the typical charr male reproductive organ within my vaginal capacity would exceed its expansion capabilities by a factor of…"

"I get the idea," Rikbore chuckled. "Female asura and male charr are pretty much always just going to be the subjects of drawings sold under the counter in Lion's Gate because you people are so tiny."

"Well, there are certain esoteric practices discussed by certain rarely talked about members of the School of Synergetics that, at least theoretically, can train biological systems to exceed usual constraints, including the elasticity of… Uh…" Xandra blinked. "Yeah. It's pretty much just going to be pictures."

Rikbore chuckled and sat back. "Color me disappointed," he said with a smile.

Xandra fixed him with a quizzical look. "I wouldn't think a charr would be interested in an asura anyway. Isn't sex all about producing more warriors for you?"

Rikbore snorted. "Now who's the bookah? We enjoy recreational sex just as much as any other species. In fact, it can often be a way to further tighten the bonds between members of a warband. When it may well be the last night you have on this world, spending some time in a nice hot and heavy furball with people you trust intimately can be one of the best ways to spend it."

"But non-charr?"

"What, do you think we can't trust a warrior we've fought side by side with for a while with enough to want to further bond with her?"

Xandra gaped, open mouthed. "You're serious."

Rikbore shrugged. "The attempts to fit my charr member into your asuran vaginal cavity would exceed the…"

"Oh, shut it, bookah" Xandra snapped. But then she smiled. "There are other things that can be done."

"Uh, Xandra, I'm pretty sure that if I'm too big to fit in the usual way, your rectum would be even worse."

"No no no," Xandra shook her head. "But tell me, is it true that charr tongues are rough like a cat's?"

Rikbore looked down at the tiny asura with surprise, then threw his head back and guffawed. "Want to find out?" he held out his hand to Xandra.

"I'm Asura," Xandra replied, Placing her own hand in Rikbore's. "I always want to find things out."

Rikbore grinned. "What about the Ferg?"

"As the humans say, fuck'em."

"I told you that you've been distractible."

"Bite me."

"With pleasure."