Anyone walking in then would probably have panicked, for insubstantial deep blue wings were extending out of her back and a deep blue tail flicked back and forth, the sheet passing through it.
Suddenly, with a muffled gasp, she snapped back to normal, her head aching fiercely. Trying to break the laws of reality wasn’t something to be done easily by a teen, by anyone really. A great majority of the population of the Earth believed that dragons didn’t exist, and it was that that she had to fight against when she tried to shift. Tried to force herself to shift, really, since she had no talent as a shapeshifter. There were no legends of werewolves in her family, no matter how far back the records went. Will alone should have been strong enough to force her form to change, but against the massed disbelief of the entire Earth, her will was as nothing.
Maybe the Sceares could help her tomorrow, channel their willpower into believing in dragons, many of which already did believe, and then she could strengthen her own willpower with the help of theirs. That might work.
Her lips form into a small smile as she lays down on her bed and sprawls out, her left arm falling over the edge of the bed. She drifts into a half sleep almost immediately, kept only from deep sleep by her headache.
The fingers of her left hand start flicking in a rapid way almost, but not quite, the sign language that the deaf people learn. It was similar, but only because this rapid-fire movement involved her hand. Outsiders, those not of the Sceares, refer to it jokingly as the Sears Sign, since it is only Sceares that learned it, and Sceares is pronounced See-ares, close enough to sears for many people.
She yawns and rolls over onto her side, almost an inch from rolling onto the floor, but her body balances there as she drifts deeper into sleep. Muttering something sounding almost like a chant, her fingers start flickering even more rapidly, tracing outlines of something in the air that blur and seem to stay there long after her finger has passed.
Maybe the world plains were lined up perfectly, or something added strength to her will, but suddenly a small blue rip appeared on the floor beside her bed. Still yawning, she rolls over again, forgetting in her sleep that she was already on the edge. With a small squeak she falls off of her bed and into the blue rip, closing her eyes at the sudden brilliance.
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She lands on the very solid floor, the very solid floor. In fact, it felt so solid it had to be rock. The breath escapes her lungs as she lands on her back, and she lays there for a bit, pulling her breath back into her body.
With a slight groan she pulls herself to her feet, looking around and trying to figure out where she is. It looked like a tunnel of some sort… strange, but it didn’t have the general feel of an Earth cave.
Looking around, she sees a dark skinned and tall woman watching her with interest, a blue….
“Uhm… hi. Where is this and what’s that?” she asks, pointing at the blue... winged lizard thing.
“You’re in the Healing Den, and this is Striker, my blue flit. My name is Baeris, what’s yours?”
“I’m Selena. Where exactly is the Healing Den?” she asks as she stares at her left hand, which is flicking in the Sears Sign again, then suddenly stops, her fingers frozen in a particularly difficult looking position. Selena stares at it, her eyes narrowing with thought, then shakes her hand out of the position and starts again, slower this time.
“In the Nexus,” is the reply she gets.
“So that’s what that bit meant,” Selena mutters, annoyed. Traveling out of Earth was all well and good, but seriously, it got a little out of hand when she started traveling because she was muttering in her sleep and using the Sears Sign.
“Do you have a place I could stay for a time? I don’t exactly fancy trying to get myself back right now,” she asks, an amused look on her face, her pale blue eyes reflecting it.
Baeris shows her to a room, then goes off back to whatever she was doing before Selena rather abruptly fell through a hole in the air.
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She settles in quickly, almost instantly taking to this strange place they called the Healing Den. For one, it had dragons. Dragons, all sizes and forms, in all colors that existed, or so it seemed.
Another thing it had in its favor was a clutch of dragon eggs on the sands. When she learned that, she went off to see Baeris about that, and to ask if she could become a candidate, to which Baeris agreed.
She was, compared to many other candidates, fairly normal, with pale blue eyes, sun bleached hair, and sun browned skin. All except for her left arm and hand, which was an almost angry red brown up to about the elbow, and then snakes of angry red brown reach all the way up to her shoulder. It was the result, she said, of a young pyromaniac child being left to her own devices and involved several dozen matches, a pile of extremely dry wood, and a child who thought she was immune to fire.
She said it with laughter in her voice, even though she was almost always running a hand lightly over it, or letting a few drops of cool water fall onto it. She laughs off all offers to look at it, remarking that since it’s so old, its doubtful that anything could be done.
Or at least she was fairly normal until she got it into her head to try to force shift herself again.
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It was what passed for night in the Healing Den, and she was definitely ready to try again. Selena lays down on her bed and redraws the dragon in her head, focusing on everything down to the tiniest details. This place was so full of belief for the dragons, because of how many people had bonded the lovely creatures, that it was easy to focus her will onto it.
Selena draws upon the belief in the air without even realizing it, weaving it into a beautifully intricate web around herself. Carefully, ever so carefully, she remolds her body to fit the image in her head, acknowledging and setting aside the pain that this brings, just like she sets aside the dull ache of her burn every day.
With a final sigh, she collapses in exhaustion down on her bed, curling up and going to sleep almost instantly.
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She rises a bit later than usual, but stops and stares when she sees herself in the mirror. She had done it!
Instead of her sun bleached hair and browned skin, she has deep blue hide with undercurrents of gold! Everywhere she had been burned was now a brilliant golden color with a slight hint of pale red.
Her face is elongated, dragon like. She bares her teeth, her eyes widening at the very sharp arsenal she now has. Long, slightly wolf like ears come out of the top of her head, moving every now and again. Two horns curve down her head and neck, one on each side, starting in the space between her eyes and her ears, then curving back and behind her ears and then flowing down and ending with an upward curl about halfway down her neck. They, too, were a brilliant gold, but without the reddish tint.
Most of the rest of her body stayed the same shape, except all over covered in deep blue hide. Her fingers are a bit longer and apparently even more agile than they were before, as she tries some Sears Sign messages, and is stunned by the speed that she uses, and by the fact that the few phrases that she normally stumbled over she has no trouble with at all.
Each finger is tipped with a small, but sharp, claw, and her toes are tipped with longer, but just as sharp, claws.
Then she notices the final things that make her new form an anthro dragon form, wings and a tail. She spreads her wings, marveling at their size and color, a slightly paler blue, like her eyes, but still with a gold undercurrent.
She smiles, not exposing her teeth this time, the turns and walks out of her room and towards the food. As she had expected, many of the other candidates, and even a few of the drudges, stared at her.
“Who are you?” one of them asks.
“I’m Selena, of course!”
“I didn’t think you were a shapeshifter.”
“Nonononono, its not an inborn talent like shapeshifting, I changed my shape with my will.”
“With your will? Isn’t that a tad bit farfetched? I’ve never seen or met a person who had a strong enough will to do that.”
Selena laughs and grabs some food then sits down, “You’ve probably never met a Sceares member before, have you?” she knew it was worthless to ask these candidates, because most of them had never been on Earth
“Sceares?” exactly the response she had expected.
“Sceares is a group of people, many of them having belonged to it since they were five, that train themselves to the point where nothing is impossible, because their willpower just generally makes them believe in themselves so much that they can turn their hand to anything and succeed.”
That left the group of candidates in silence, and Selena quickly finishes her food, the rises to wander around the Den some more, exploring.
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That night she focused her will again and changed back to human, almost instantly regretting it as the ache starts up in her left arm again. She hadn’t even noticed that it was gone, so its return was rather shocking. Somehow the changing of shapes removed it, but how or why she didn’t know.
With a shrug she focuses again, finding it easier to slide back into her new draconic form than it was the first time.
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The rest of her idle time she spent wandering around. Most of her time, though, was taken up with learning all sorts of strange and interesting things about dragons, the Healing Den, and many other subjects, none of which were taught in normal Earth schools, which is why she found it so interesting, it was new.
She waited for the hatching with anticipation. Again, because it was something new and different to her, but also because, well, there were going to be dragons hatching and choosing their bonds for life.
And dragons were the most interesting beings Selena had ever seen, much more interesting than dull, boring old Earth, where everything had been explored, discovered, and generally known about except for the occasional new insect species or something similar. And what insects could speak into your mind? None that she knew off.