Emerson Cole & The Wayward Souls

- 3 -

This is who Aurelius called the 'most grand of grand dragons in all the land? Fellow Waymark thought, I'd assume he'd look less like a walking ashtray. More impressive. Perhaps own a cravat. It took a surprising amount of effort not to curl his lip in distaste at the man—dragon—slouching across from him. Or more accurately, them. Describing his, really their body, was always a slightly dysphoric experience. It didn't matter that it could wear his face, that it bore his scars and imperfections in the places he knew instinctually they belonged. Or that this form could express and verbalize his thoughts and feelings. Even after nearly twenty years of living with this new...identity—stuck in a shape that made him feel more like a passenger in a body that was comparable to a change of clothes—the experience was still shadowed with a tint of inky black anxiety. There was no regret. No anger either. It was more...

How was he meant to feel when the skin he shared with his twin sister was tantamount to clay, a temporary fleshy case for the two of them to rest their Shades in? Was he not meant to feel anxious when the meat on their bones shifted from one form to another like some two-bit Skinwalker? How was he to feel when he was forced to give up the reins and pushed to the sidelines?

They were both just interlopers in a borrowed form and it was a conclusion neither twin could escape. One Fell couldn't help but dwell on. He tried not to. It wasn't fair to Ashe. Their time together had blended many aspects of themselves, their thoughts and feelings, hopes, and desires. It was an...unavoidable side-effect of their...mutual accommodations. He knew she knew how he felt, just as he knew that she felt the same on some level. But...it was the lack of autonomy, he supposed. The weight of constant responsibility, not just for himself but for the other presence he mentally roomed with—his sister. The compromises and concessions. His/their/her form was an illusion, sand between fingers—ephemeral. Meaningless.

Fell sighed, feeling distinctly and suddenly maudlin. The handcuffs 'round his wrists tinkled softly with the movement, the iron in them making him nauseous even with the wards blocking access to his magic. Belatedly he realized he was probably being rude to their current..."company"—the dragon Emerson Cole—(though why exactly Fell cared was a mystery to him, however, if he were to guess it was probably those years of infernal Waymark etiquette lessons) and that he was being much too existential for a Tuesday morning (thank you, Ashe). He tried playing it all off with a cough.

"Excuse me," Fell said, his intonation crisp and deliberate. He cleared his throat, "there must be something in the air."

The Mage let the words hang for a moment, settling like a blanket over the room, the remnants of his voice fading into obscurity while Fell waited for a response. Thirty seconds. A minute. Two. They passed, the silence quickly shifting from moderately tolerable to incredibly awkward. Emerson simply grunted like the ill-mannered Neanderthal the dragon apparently was and continued organizing his papers. Fell resisted the urge to clench his teeth and made himself as comfortable as possible in his restraints—spine straight, shoulders back, chin parallel to the ground. It wasn't very. Emerson shuffled through his files again, the sound starting to grate. Fell made a faint noise of irritation. How many times could a man fiddle with the same ten sheets of paper?