#uehe

"...and... there you have it. That's why I'm so obsessed with my jewelry."

Aurelia's voice was quieter than usual as she spoke to the party. An offhand comment from a stranger was all it took – something about how typical it was for a dragon to hoard trinkets and baubles it didn't need. That was all it took for the usually reserved and polite dragonborn to utterly burst into tears in the middle of the quiet street.

She'd told them everything, once they'd gotten somewhere they could all rest – how she, a dragonborn child growing up among human peers, not once ever seeing another like her, always the subject of their hatred. Always told to keep herself small and quiet, to never once make herself stand out lest she become even more of an outcast. To just behave.

"I wear all this jewelry..." Aurelia sighed, tipping her head down, leading the various earrings and cuffs on her crest to jingle slightly, as she idly toyed with a pair of bangles on her wrist, "because it's the best thing I can do to really be me. It... it lets me be myself, when nothing else will let me."

That was last week. Since then, Aurelia had noticed a strange abundance of jewelry in her travel box that she didn't ever recall owning before. A big, thick brass armband that... appeared to have been made from a barrel band, was the first one that appeared. Next was a simple gold ring, inlaid with a small red gem; a plain but beautiful thing, for certain. A few days later, a very obviously stolen bejeweled anklet had found its way into her belongings – and a day after that, a gorgeous dragon-designed lapel pin that seemed to glitter and spark as if touched by magic.

But what stood out the most, however, came much later. It was so plain that it nearly went unnoticed amongst her various affectations in her travel box, but Aurelia found it late one evening as she was removing her earrings and pendants for the night to bed.

She plucked the trinket up with a single clawed finger, and examined it carefully. It was a simple, thin cord, clearly sturdy but rather plain, with a small metal clasp. What truly made her take pause, however, was the charm affixed to it – a single, empty metal casing, hardly the width of her thumbnail, had been knotted to hang from the cord as a small pendant.

Aurelia could feel warmth pooling beneath her scales as she held the bullet pendant as carefully as possible in her hands, and as she removed the rest of her jewelry for the night, that pendant remained on – she even fell asleep wearing it.