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Keon settled down in a very large dragon-loaf, complete with crossed front claws and tail curled around his side. “Do it until it’s boring.”
Mahon sat down, crossed his legs, and pulled out a tablet. Keon patiently watched, steady and still as a stone statue while my brain kept trying to chase down all the new sensations while I focused on doing crunches.
After an hour of me attempting to master the fine art of breathing, Mahon stood up, dusted off his shendyt, and said, “Shift back.”
I broke out of my crunch-trance and realized I had no idea how to shift.
Panic crackled through my scales. Little magenta jolts of angry cosmic ribbons lashed the air as I flailed, trying to untangle the knots around my proverbial wrists. I thrashed in my cocoon and my scales ignited, and the angry void raced towards me like a tsunami and my mind splintered as I tumbled intonothing.
I screamed. Or tried to. I shot ribbons into the void, trying to lash onto someone,anything, as I tumbled. I fell further and further away, through stars and memories and souls and dust andnothing, the vastness ofnothing, formless, endlessdark, the space between particles.
Ribbons whipped through the void. Through thenothing.
STOP PANICKING AND THINK, YOU STUPID EARTHLING!
Helena, I am Helena of EARTH!
The darkness took on a shape.
My brain supplied something to help me understand:firmament.
I flailed, wrapped in endless cosmic ribbons, andreached. Something came into view. A tiny, tiny point of light. Vast and far away,so distant, butthere.
I reached towards it with the ribbons. I floundered as thefirmamenttossed me around on its currents, but I crawled/flew/flapped/floundered/fell upwards towards the distant point of light.
Something brushed against me in the nothing. Orpulledme towards it. Every sensation was a non-specific mess. But the thingcaughtme, like a net, and pulled me as I fought towards the pinpoint.
Keep going forward. Don’t scream. Keep going.
The firmament tumbled and shifted and tore itself apart and reformed as I crawled over, through, under it. I flew, I swam, I flapped, I shrimped, I squirmed.
Don’t scream.
The pinpoint of light became a burning star, roaring and churning in the distance.
Keon! And... Auryn?
The nothing became currents, carrying me towards the shore. Everything came into focus as I drifted on the ocean, safe above the ocean floor, until I bumped into the stone and used the last of my strength to haul myself onto it.
Four
Iflopped onto Keon, panting for breath.
Oh, wait, no I wasn’t. I was still in amphiptere form and my brainwantedto pant, but my body had no idea how to do that still.
“Helena,” Mahon was saying, shoving his big hands into my collapsed serpent body, “breathe. You’ve got to breathe, you overgrown chaos worm.”
Indignantly, I raised my too-heavy head to indulge in profanity, which made my abs crunch, and my brain hit the button to inhale, and air rushed into my lung. The world spun again, and I flopped into the grass for a nice view of the cavern ceiling.
Keon nibbled my throat/neck/body with his stony lips, blue eyes like discs of aquamarine or solidified ocean. Magenta/white ribbons pulsing with my heartbeat sank deep into his thick scales.
Mahon shoved my belly again. “Breathe.”
Mahon seemed slightly singed and had a luminescent glow all over his dark skin in a lattice pattern. There was a strange smell in the air when I inhaled. Sort of like the smell of welding, but very sweet. Almost like... roses and raspberry ice cream? The cavern ceiling above me looked odd and was missing some of its big fans.
Another shove. Another obedient breath and a comforting nibble from Keon.
Keon told me, “I’m going to shift back to human form.”
