Book One: Onnu and Pannu

A New World

Nothing is the same.
   The words permeated the fog of sleep, soft yet insistent. They seemed to imprint on her DNA, as silly as that sounded. It both echoed and didn't. It was quiet, but booming. It demanded attention, yet lulled her into a calm.
   The voice made no sense.
   She woke up slowly. Perhaps it was because her bed was so very soft. Or maybe it was because for once, nothing ached, or hurt.
   She rolled onto her stomach and pushed up with her hands. Strangely, the tip of her nose touched something soft and fluffy, despite her arms being straight. Her eyes creaked open, thinking it was her cat's fur.
   His fur isn't green, her sleepy brain murmured.
   She tucked her legs under her, straightened them, and... Didn't touch the floor. Still the soft green fur. Nor did she end up in downward dog pose.
   More like "saggy dog" pose. What the..?
   Her eyes opened all the way, then. She lifted her head, and it felt odd. Her whole body felt odd. It didn't hurt, or crack, or pop, but it felt disjointed. Out of place? Out of order? She couldn't quite pinpoint the problem. Her back was straight, but strangely heavy.
   She mentally facepalmed. Duh! It's the blanket, ya ninny! Dunno what I'd be doing with a blanket on a camping trip, instead of a sleeping bag. Wait, my butt feels heavy, too. Yeah, probably sleeping bag.
   Then she remembered that, although she'd wanted to, she'd never been camping. Not even in her backyard. She didn't even have a backyard, now that she thought of it.
   The world around her slowly filtered into her hazy brain. The grass was far softer than any she'd encountered. The trees weren't any she'd seen; the trunks faintly lavender, the leaves bluish green. The boughs drooped like weeping willows, though they sprouted from the trunk like most other trees. She'd seen similar ones in European photos, though they'd been the usual colors.
   She sat down, but the sleeping bag, as she had assumed it must be, didn't slide off. The part across her back shifted a little toward the ground, and the backside part rumpled around her, but it didn't budge.
   She braced herself, with a "one, two, three, hup!" and stood up for a better look at the forest. Now, at last, she felt muscles strain and pull awkwardly. Oh yeah, I forgot to do my stretches first. Her hamstrings knotted uncomfortably, but held firm. Her spine grew warm and taut, and her shoulderblades ached horribly. She absently rolled them to loosen the knots, coming to grips with the fact that her neck was quite a bit longer than it used to be.
   What the man saw, when he looked out into the clearing, was a dragon, standing like a meerkat, flopping her wings awkwardly while her tail lay coiled on the ground as an afterthought that accidentally balanced her upright.
   A sudden swoosh in the trees startled her, and she lost her tenuous balance. She flailed her arms and, consequently, her wings, and managed to fall forward and to one side.
   He had no thought for his own safety. When he saw her start to fall, he rushed out to try and break her fall.
   "Whoa, hey, it's okay. I got--oh, I don't got! I don't got!"
   He hadn't realized just how big his friend had grown! Where once she was a full head shorter than he, now she could easily carry a bus aloft!
   "Where..?" she groaned, craning her neck around nearly three hundred and sixty degrees.
   "Down here heh. Wow, that's what I call a growth spurt!"
   She eventually located him, at her left... foot? Was that her foot? She wiggled the, um... talons. How did I..? What? Where are we? Her mind whirled as fast as her new eyes did, not that she'd know that was why her friend was suddenly highlighted in a nauseating ochre display.
   He patted her cheek where it lay on her talons. It tickled. Her scales twitched away from his hand--paw?
   He barely noticed the movement of chitin under his large, meaty, paw-like hand. It wasn't the same shade of green as her scales. If you'd ever done a mud mask that was green, his skin--hide?--was the shade of a dried mud mask. The texture was a mix between dragon scales and cement, if he could make that make sense in his head. His nails, which were always as sturdy as the rest of him, now came to a slight point. Not quite claws, not quite fingernails. They hadn't changed size, as he'd already possessed thick fingers and a wide palm. Good, strong hands, they were.
   He also didn't have any of his usual aches and pains. When he looked down, his body was no longer misshapen. It was straight and true, and looked as strong as it always had been.
   He was also naked, but did that really matter when you were in an alien forest with a dragon?
   It dawned on him, as he looked at his own tough hide, that she wouldn't really feel a pat on the cheek. He steeled himself and slapped that massive cheek like it was a horse's shoulder.
   The windows to her soul were easily large enough to be literal windows. When the pupil focused on him, he could see himself reflected in the ebon slice. His face hadn't changed much. Craggier, new tusks, and pointy ears, but you could still make out his human face if you squinted. Which she did.
   "I don't know where we are, but..." he paused with a smile, "did you know that you're a dragon?"
   Her head shot up, which stretched out the neck that was longer than some apartment buildings were tall. She wasn't used to that yet. Her head wobbled from the disorientation, but she focused her attention on the rest of her body. The fact that she could look at her own back was strong evidence toward his words being true, but she had to see it with her own eyes.
   Sure enough, the "sleeping bag" was actually a pair of wings, awkwardly draped to the sides, and a tail that didn't look attached, it hung so limply.
   She focused on the wings and tried to tell them to tuck up the way bird wings do. Since she didn't know how to do that from the inside, it took a lot of trial and error to get right. When she did, the vague wrongness of her spine faded away.
   She sent her thoughts along her spine to the long, muscular appendage with its whiplike tip. She tried to lift it straight up, like a dog or cat, but it seemed she wasn't designed to do that. I suppose if I need to look bigger, I've got wings for that. It did lift a bit, but not much. Enough to poop, she'd guess, and no more.
   Next was side to side, which worked a treat. She wanted to test the whip at the end, but there wasn't enough room for it. She didn't want to break her new tail on a tree. That would be embarrassing.
   She looked down at her friend. He was right, in that he was still recognizable as himself. "I'm gonna stand up now."
   He backed up a step. Not far enough, to her thinking, but he was a big boy. He could make his own decisions.
   "Go 'head. I'll move if I gotta."
   She nodded, and really focused on how her body wanted to stand. She'd never fully gotten the hang of a human body, so she wanted to treat this one better. No sense pulling a muscle on day one.
   She tried lifting the front end first, back end first, and straight up with all four legs. None seemed better than the other. It seemed she had far more leeway than she did as a biped. Wait, was she a quadruped, or was it optional? She'd stood before; and while her form may not have been ideal, she needed to know if she could walk while carrying something--or someone. She'd studied dinosaurs, and some could switch between the two forms as needed. True, those were herbivores, and at best, a dragon is an omnivore, but it was worth a try. After all, bears could stand on two legs, and they were omnivores. Humans can crawl too. Why did I jump straight to an animal? Is my mind becoming less human already?
   Slowly, again testing her muscles, she rose up on her hind legs. She remembered how uncomfortable her legs and back had been, the last--err first time. She figured it was safe enough to lift to half-mast, like a dinosaur, and use her tail for leverage. Maybe her wings could be used for balance, too. Nope, nope, not yet anyway. Best keep 'em tucked until I know how to use them.
   As soon as her forelegs touched earth--um... what did they call it now? Whatever it was, when she touched it, her head swung to the right. She didn't think about it, it just happened. It felt like some sort of magnetic pull... or a quest objective marker, she giggled to herself.