Kobold Life

Chapter 3: A New Dream

Darkness surrounded me on all sides. I stood in the middle of a black void that seemed to stretch eternally in every direction. I lifted my hand quickly in an attempt to see anything. Instead of seeing a gray scaly hand of a kobold, or a peach fleshy one of my human form, I saw both of them seemingly overlapping moving in unison. The smaller kobold hand sat in the middle, whilst the outline of a human hand surrounded it, fingers curling atop it as I closed my hand into a fist. The rest of my body appeared in a similar fashion, though the proportions of both aspects seemed skewed to fit each other, when I would focus on the details of one the other seemed to fade, and neither disappeared entirely, just looking at it was beginning to make my brain hurt.

"Does your new form please you?" a smooth feminine voice suddenly asked from the void.

I looked up to no effect, the emptiness still surrounded me.

"Who are you?" I asked quickly, surprised to hear two voices instead of one, my human voice was familiar deep but nasally, whereas the voice from the kobold was new to me, I hadn't thought to try it in isolation; it was more highly pitched and contained more wavering almost as if I was shivering as I spoke.

"I am afraid I can't answer" the voice replied calmly.

"And why is that?" I responded, still turning rapidly to locate the voice.

"Because, I don't know," it said, "what of you little one, you are not of this world, you are a stranger, in a body that was not your own."

"How can you not know who you are?" I asked back, my mind swimming with questions.

"If no one had ever named you, would you take the trouble to name yourself, or would you simply know that you are yourself and need not for a name besides 'Me'? I have little company and none who knew who I was. No one has told me who I am, therefore, I do not know beyond Me." The voice explained.

That was somewhat depressing, who or whatever this thing was had no real sense of self, nor enough company to attain one, yet it spoke elegantly. How could something be simultaneously so informed and uninformed? As more questions came to mind none reached my lips before the voice spoke again.

"Our time together is brief, please stop troubling us both with questions about me. I would like to know about you, why did you come here?" it asked.

"I didn't," I said quickly, "I was brought here, someone or thing sent a message on my phone, I ignored it and woke up here," then I added, "I thought at first you might have been the one that brought me."

"No, I do not believe I am," the voice responded, "though I cannot be sure. Aside from that, what is a 'phone'"

I hadn't considered it when I mentioned it, but it would make sense for this entity, among others I encountered to be unfamiliar with it.

"It's like a magic item," I explained, "it allows people to talk to one another from far away, either directly through voice, or through text, among other things."

"Why would one wish to communicate through text if you can speak with another directly," The voice asked curiously.

I chuckled, "You would be surprised how little some people want to talk to each other out loud once it is available all hours of the day."

I was preparing to answer more oncoming questions of this curious being when I felt a familiar buzz from my right pocket. I reached inside and pulled out my smartphone surprised at its presence, it floated strangely held by my ethereal human hand whilst the kobold hand seemed to move through it slightly. A moment later my focus shifted to its now lit screen before I read the notification.