Chapter Text
Time is strange. Being is strange. He is. He is.
Is he?
For a long time—for time—he is. Then, he is but also other things are. Maybe other things were, all along, he just wasn’t enough to know that. To know them. Trees? Yes, trees, but also ground. Leaves. Air—wind—birds—birds?
Birds leads to sky leads to sun leads to warmth. He doesn’t know why warmth matters, but it does. He likes warmth, which means he doesn’t like cold? Maybe? His body—
It shifts again, shuddering and in pain. Pain isn’t good, he doesn’t think, but it is and being is good in itself. So. It shifts again. Unlike being, size doesn’t matter, but some forms feel more natural than others. More comfortable. Not for long, though. Some forms can’t see well, some can’t see at all, and some can see in different ways. He thinks he could, maybe, control it, but doesn’t know why or how or what he should aim towards.
Something with fur? Fur is warm and warm is good and sun and not-cold. But fur means a warm body and a heart that beats too quickly and feels too much. Ears twitch and skin prickles with fear and—
And fear is much worse than cold.
No fur. Scales. Scales are much simpler. It is cool, not cold, especially since he is in the sun. It warms him quickly, quicker than he thought, and to a comfortable point of neutrality. Not too warm where his heart would race and thoughts would slash and spike and cut. Not too cold that would hint at dark and wrong and small-enclosed-pain-fear-alone—
Scales are good. Snake. The form feels broadly correct, but it still shifts. Adjusts. There are many snakes. The small ones are too dependent on sun and warmth. Small—bigger—thicker—leaner—
There is no sun anymore. His form shudders and catches fire. This is—Pleasing. Sun is better, but in its absence, he can make his own flames. Burning is fear but these are his flames. His flames don’t burn. This is right.
He learns how to move after he learns how he could want to do such. His form still changes, eager to please, which makes it easier. He crawls and flies and climbs, but he tends to remain a snake. As beautiful as the sky looks, it brings with it concepts too intense to be endured. Snakes are safe. Snakes fit best. Soon, he learns that some places have more sun than others. Trees, he discovers, aren’t good or bad, but they do make things less warm than they could be.
So he moves and flies and climbs, burning when he needs to, until suddenly there is water and salt and sand and rocks and brightness. It is good. It’s better. The concept of better, now that there are many good things makes his spirit writhe for a while, form flickering helplessly. A useful lesson he learns, however, is that the spirit-hurt will pass, if he lets it. The feelings come and go. He can enjoy the good, but he can endure the bad, and sooner or later both will go away and leave him in the even grey.
It is a very comforting lesson.
Water is engrossing. His body is drawn to it, shifting forms as if to entice him to take advantage of it. Some of his forms are good for basking in shallow puddles, some are good for floating on top. Some are good for swimming and diving. Some are good for killing things that also live in this space. A second useful lesson is that, as they would like to eat him, he can instead eat them. He doesn’t know that he needs to, but he can, so he does. The idea of being more like other living things is—intimidating. He doesn’t know that he should or shouldn’t, or that there is any definitive authority to consult. He knows he is and he knows he changes, therefore he lives. That said, there seems to be a large gap between him and other things that live and change, and he feels like he should acknowledge it. Respect it, somehow.
After some time, he finds himself abandoning the beach. It is nice but his body wants to move more. Once it started eating, it also started breathing and flickering less often. The first form he finds himself inhabiting for a longer period is a large sea serpent. Unlike other types of sea serpents, this one heats the water around it and moves much quicker than what he observes is normal. He likes the convenience of it, he thinks. Warm but also water.
When he reaches the island, he doesn’t think he will end up staying for long. It’s not a bad island, not at all, but it smells and sounds—active. More active than the beach and much more active than the deep sea. At the same time, there is something special in the air. It has a sparkly, tingly taste that makes him think of life and fight and together. Together is a strange one, he doesn’t know he likes or understands it. He knows what not-together is, knows what alone is, but together feels much bigger and more complex than those. He thinks he could be a bit afraid of it, but he respects it, too, for the complexity if nothing else.
Plus, it is very pretty, and his scales appreciate the smooth texture of the rocks. After a few nights, his form shifts again; a minute change, this time, that brings with it unprecedented goodness. He sees colour, now, more than his snake-body is used to. As many as a winged-creature, he knows and doesn’t know how because he hasn’t dared claim wings once; hasn’t even come close. Either way, the first time he experiences the brief time between sun and not-sun when the sky turns the gleaming shore blood-red, he learns awe. Every night, the island bleeds, dies and is reborn again in the gentle, orange flickers of the morning. He adores the unflinching brutality of it all.
Some life forms try to eat him, but not as many as had tried when he had first woken up. He is too big, maybe. Other life forms explore him, in their ways. When they discover he isn’t interested in hunting, they relax and immediately stop paying attention. They can’t eat him, he doesn’t care about eating them, and that’s as far as that relationship needs to go.
Most of the time, he is asleep, body woven around the rocks, head resting atop of his coils on the highest, sunniest part. When it is dark, he heats the air and makes it bright. It’s a bit uncomfortable in the beginning—the rocks heat up quickly, and he is a sea serpent—but not for too long, and the pleasant cycle of sun-blood-dark-birth is much too rewarding to pay too much attention to the trivial concerns of the physical.
There are, he learns with curiosity, humans here. People. There is a distinction there. People and humans, humans and people. Not the same, but not-not the same. They aren’t precisely good—like the dolphins—or bad—like the squids and their irritating ink—but familiar. They are even less predictable than other, less excitable animals. Because he is big and calm and sleepy, they don’t try to eat him, like most things don’t, but they try to manipulate the world to harm him. Or at least scare him away.
He doesn’t appreciate it, but the attempt was polite enough not to warrant a counterattack. Instead, his form shifts and shifts again, scales thickening, layering and magnifying until he knows very few things will bother him. It takes some time to wind his suddenly unwieldy body around, and his new shape doesn’t like the water, but the favourite part of the day is about to begin, which makes all thoughts of pushy humans and inconvenient shapes evaporate from his mind.
Humans aren’t as practical as birds and crabs and snakes, most of which have long since learned they can use his body as a soft surface to nap on if they are careful to avoid his head. They try to turn the elements against him a few more times, which is annoying in that it often messes with his basking-rocks, but is silly enough that he can ignore it.
He learns about anger, when a group of humans attacks, actually properly attacks, using their spirits to try and lock him away. Tendrils of spirit-force-energy-power try to hook themselves into him, try to bind and burrow and subjugate. To take him away from the salt and the sea and the bloody sunsets. Unlike most other things, fury comes easily to him. Too easily. It’s next to impossible to remember his lessons about transience in the face of the consuming, howling rage. The shock of it is what helps him return, he’s pretty sure. As natural as it was, as comforting as it was to sink under the force of anger, it is also disconcerting. He never came close to not-being than he did, then. He doesn’t even recall what happened, except that it left the group of humans dead and his immediate surroundings ruined with ash and blood.
He would sigh if snakes could sigh. He should leave. Shift, at least. He doesn’t like the potential for not-being, and it seems the humans are inherently destructive, foolhardy creatures who can’t leave well enough alone.
On the other hand—he just doesn’t want to. He likes it here. It’s nice. Why should he have to leave? They can leave. He is fine where he is, thanks.
But—What if they anger him even more somehow and he loses even more time? How long can these blank states become? Is it possible to get so angry to be lost in it forever? Something tells him that there is, and—
But why should he leave? The animals learned quick, but maybe the humans will learn, too? In any case, he can always leave later. If they make it miserable for him, he will leave then. Why should he lose his sunsets before he has to?
He learns about relief, when humans do, in fact, learn. They aren’t happy with the fact he killed their kin, but they are pleased he doesn’t stop them from recovering their remains, or so he thinks. His form doesn’t hear as some others might, so their attempts at communication fall flat, even if he was interested in cooperating. Which he isn’t.
As soon as they came, they leave, taking their remains and their pain-fear-anger-awe with them. He continues watching the sunset, considering if he could, perhaps, shift his form to like water and be unyielding and impenetrable. It should be possible?
Surprise and disbelief come hand in hand, when, for some reason, humans once again start visiting him. Except they’re tiny, now, and filled with excitement-thrill-shock-awe. It’s a game. They’re playing a game, daring each other who can come closest. He wouldn’t move either way, but he finds himself consciously strangling the little, unthinking movements a body as big as his makes. He—doesn’t want to scare them.
They don’t come every day, but each time they do, they come closer and closer. All too quickly—far too quickly, they’re smaller than his fangs—he feels a tiny mammal-warm hand touch his scales. If he wasn’t already careful to keep still, he’d have flinched. It’s so warm and happy-laughing-curious-thrilled. Tomorrow, he decides. Tomorrow he will move his head to see the children properly.
The shift, when it happens, isn’t surprising. He has come to expect that his body knows more than he does. So, when he can suddenly hear and not just taste and see, he learns gratitude. It’s that strange familiarity again, he thinks, basking in the sound of whispers and giggles, of incomprehensible gibberish that is possibly their spoken language. He doesn’t feel this way about birds singing or hedgehogs wheezing. Somehow, the children fill him with—lightness. Like the sun and the warmth and together.
He doesn’t blame the adult humans for the racket they make when they discover what their young are doing. It is beyond reckless. They have graduated to fully climbing his folds, giggling and competing who can climb and slide the furthest down his body without pitching sideways. He isn’t interested in hurting them—the idea of hurting them hurts him—but they don’t know that. That said, he doubts this will be the end of their visits. If their young had any sense, they wouldn’t have come here at all.
He is patient, now that he has something to look forward to.
The more they keep the children away, the more determined they are to come, and the more of them there are. It began with five. Now hundreds of them come sneaking through the forests, scaling the cliffside, digging underneath the earth, through rock if necessary. He doesn’t know how long it took for their numbers to grow this large; the bubble of warm-dry-cosy-safe he keeps around him keeps the wind and rain away. He thinks it’s not more than two seasons if they measure time in seasons at all. He is so much of an attraction that there are beaten paths to his cliff, started by excited little steps and finished by stressed, adult ones. That said, even the adults don’t smell of panic these days, just weary caution, increasingly laced with humour.
The seasons change, and he starts counting them in fours. It takes two such cycles for him to break his pattern of enjoy-bask-soak when the younglings are around. He’s learned about them, too. Most of the humans on this island have red hair that matches the sunsets. The adults all have—spiritual power of some sort, but not all children do. Most, but not all, and the mundane children are typically escorted by an enhanced one. Looking back, it’s shocking it took that long for the first accident to occur. This is not to say that the sight of a youngling—one of the smallest varieties, too young to even walk properly--goes and pitches off the cliff, without even having enough sense to scream and alert its caretakers.
Stillness is good but dead-youngling is more and worse. He catches the kid by launching his upper body and carefully catching it on the widest, softest part of his snout. It’s not a test, he knows, but depositing the youngling into the shaking hands of her elders feels like an accomplishment. Like pride.
He moves more, after. They know he can so he might as well. Not a lot, because they are still small and easily spooked, but more. After the adults gave up on the pretence, his cliff became something of a playground. Oddly, the fact he can move means he sleeps more, since he doesn’t worry so much about his tail flinching and damaging the air of happy-bright-warm the children bring with them. Sometimes, when the urge strikes him, he winds himself into a tight spiral for the younglings to climb. With their magic, it would be easy, but they don’t dare use magic on his body, which is understandable after the debacle with the spirit-chains. Left with only their wits and strength, they come up with all sorts of amusing solutions, from standing on each other to a complicated system of ropes they wind around his body.
Seasons pass in calm, weightless contentment. He is beginning to lose track of time and change. Other than his sight and hearing, he hasn’t shifted in years, comfortable in the haze of being the monster pet kept around as an attraction for the children.
Change does come. He isn’t ready for it, but he would lie if he said he wasn’t made to handle it.
—pain—fear—rage—wrath—no—please—avenge--kill—
He jerks. What—Where are—No children?
Where are the younglings? It is nearly—What is that noise? The typical shimmering that he knows now is their, human magic is tight with protect-alarm-defend. What—Attack?
He moves, leaving his cliffside for the first time since he found it. His body isn’t meant to move through the trees, but the air around him is thick with his energy. The trees fall before and around him as he all but flies through space, heading for the—
His sight is too delicate for this. His body is too unwieldy, his sight too sensitive. He can’t make out what is happening in the chaos except that there is a city and things are attacking it. Beings like him, except different. He—
The city smells like his humans, and it’s under attack. They’re killing his younglings, or they’re going to after the creatures and other humans finish breaking the magic protecting it. They’re already killing his adults with steel and magic and—
He shifts, climbing up-up-up, body shrinking and growing and changing—It doesn’t hurt, shifting never does, but it takes a moment to understand his shape, feel his legs—Four legs, tail, round barrel chest—Wings—
The cat wouldn’t have stood a chance against a dragon, and he is more than just a dragon. She tries to fight, sort of, except—Except he can taste her frustration, feel her helplessness and fear and rage. She doesn’t want to be here and—something is making her. Because it’s not a cat, like he isn’t a dragon. They’re whatever they want to be, only she isn’t free. The spirit chains, he thinks as his claws rip into her body and jaws close around her throat.
Unfortunately, slave or not, she attacked his younglings. His neck twists up, his front legs twist down, claws shredding what little was left. With her shape ripped to pieces, her energy dissipates into the air, and all he has to show for his efforts is a pile of ruined human.
The tide of fighting changes, because as quick as he was—and he was as quick as a dragon fighting a cat needs to be—the humans are quicker. Elemental attacks batter his body. Fire and water and lightning—He snarls, anger slowly rising. It’s not painful, mere pin-pricks, but there’s a lot and he can’t fight properly, not when they all look the same to him—
An octopus-like creature barrels into him. The final hold on his fury snaps; he can almost hear the sound of it ripping in the air. He doesn’t bother with even pretending to give the enslaved creature a chance to fight. Instead, he grabs it by the throat, slams it to the ground and breathes out—
It would have been kinder to rip it apart, because, unlike his fellow slave-monster, fire consumes, or at least his does. Once the shape is destroyed, which is almost instantaneous, the octopus doesn’t get to dissolve in the air. Parts of it immolate, energy steadily drawn into his flames, which only makes it burn brighter, which means more of it is consumed.
He lets it go before it burns up completely, but not before more than half of it is gone. Whatever the monsters are, they should be able to recover from it, should they have the good sense to hide and not be chained down by humans and forced into suicide combat.
There was one more monster, he’s pretty sure. A slug-thing. Except it’s not there anymore. It was probably put back wherever it is humans keep their chained monsters, while its Master retreats. It’s a good strategy. Whoever these humans were, they realised fighting a dragon is a complicated undertaking, especially a dragon like him who is only nominally bound by the physical.
Shifting again would be wise. He is enormous, easily four times taller than the tallest building, and human attackers are small and difficult to pinpoint. He should shift so he can pursue. A smaller dragon could see, it could burn them with flames so hot it won’t even leave ashes behind. He could vaporise them, how dare they—
Except—Except his humans are right here and they’re screaming and dying and—And he can’t help, because what does he know of healing—Except his wings are wide and impenetrable and some of his humans are pursuing but most aren’t; most are safe behind walls of magic and power. The younglings are safe, for now, and what if he leaves to kill and the slug creature re-appears to tear down the magic and slaughter the children? What then?
So he stands, turns his back to the sounds of battle, hunched over the injured and the dying, sheltering them from further violence. There is—relief, now, winding through the hate-pain-fear-cold-please-no. Faint sense of victory, which is appropriate. The battle, such as it was, is won. It would take a lot of doing to get through his wings, even if he is too much of a coward to use them for anything other than shields.
The sudden eruption of emotion leaves him dizzy and breathless, but he needs to last it out. He plops down on his hind legs, winds his tail around himself so it doesn’t hurt anybody and settles down to wait.