//------------------------------//
// The Play Ain't the Thing 
// Story: Odds 'n' Ends 
// by TheAncientPolitzanian 
//------------------------------//

"I can tell you're only pretending to care about this," Thorax remarked.

Ember sighed in defeat. "Look, don't get me wrong, Thorax, we dragons do know how to appreciate a good story—" her Feast of Fire gems back home were proof enough of that, she mused— "but all this mushy 'soliloquizing'? Not my thing.

"I mean, if this Hooflet guy's uncle is such a jerk," the Dragon Lord continued, gesturing at the changeling performers on stage, "why can't he just shut up and stab him already‽"

"I don't know, lady, I'm not the Bard!" Hooflet's actor—exasperated by the visitor's vocal deconstruction of his character—abruptly asided.

Taken aback by the sudden obliteration of the fourth wall, the two royals fell into a stunned silence. They'd forgotten the actors were well within earshot.

"...If it makes you feel any better," Thorax eventually murmured, "everyone dies in Act 5."