She surely was a dream. Is a dream. Every slender serpentine curve of her body is honed to perfection by whatever force created her form. Her pectoral ridge was deceptively tightly bound, forming a pert, perky, supple, yielding shelf of her beautiful, smoother-than-silk slate-gray scales now that it’s unleashed. It’s always her eyes though. Her eyes like vials of liquid mercury swirling in a lab to create some powerful alchemical reaction send a shiver through my core as I gaze into their silvery depths.

Every entrancing flick of her glorious, tapered, smooth, wildly expressive, whip-like tail draws my gaze like a hypnotist’s watch. I can trace her tail with my eyes up to the nape of her back, where the delicate curve meets the firm, finely honed curves of her gluts, and the—.

The voiceless voice commands, “Stop.”

I feel ashamed, horrid, I want to apologize—.

The voiceless voice commands again, “Stop. You’ve told me about me. Now tell me about you, and do it while I’m doing this.”

Oh, oh. Oh! Erm, right. It, koff, could prove difficult to focus while your teeth are grazing, and my ear is there where your ton--, erm, well, yes, but, koff, I’ll try. Where do I begin? The voiceless text suggests the beginning cheekily, and I can’t fight the smirk and eyeroll that occur. Still, if she really wishes to get to know all of me, I suppose I can show her my most vulnerable spot, my beginning, Day One.

As I tumble into terror, reliving my worst nightmares, the feelings of being lost, alone, I was incapable of comprehending how I was even supposed to survive. In my meatspace, my vision tunnels away to nothingness, my tinnitus rings loud and true until it’s drown out by the hammering of my heart In pure terror. I’m sent hurtling into the past, to the beginning of it all. When the only thing that I’d run into, seemed innocent but then opened wide its fore into a jelly-like approximation of a fanged maw. Its stark-red, pupil-less eyes sought me hungrily as I fled with large chunks raked, gouged from my arm. Seeking shelter, I fled until I could flee no more within this seemingly endless jungle of homogenous, nearly identical trees. Finding a way to hide myself in a tiny concaveness, I did, and cried myself to sleep, and that’s when the true terror found me. The events of the day hammered their way into a permanent region of my psyche, and flooded every thought, every object with the same prospect, being able to split and crack in a jagged line, in the approximation of a fanged maw. Being able to open wide to draw me in, chew me, and spit me out into every other object that could, couldn’t, should, or shouldn’t have a cavernous—.

Huff, huff. How, what. Where was I? Where am I? Someone’s wiping my forehead. I was sweating. Words appear in my mind, without a voice, but not my words, they state and ask, “Was not expecting that for the beginning. Can you even go on?”

Go on? Forward. Move forward. Yes. Always forward. Never back, not without my time travel skill. Can send the messages back to my past self. Was this a time? Should I send a message back now? Or should I send one here, from the future? There’s a being above me whose muscles suddenly become stiff, rigid, tense. Oh, wait, different world. Harder to time travel.

My eyes are swimming. Hard to focus. Went blind after the Night of High Water too. Recovered. Almost die, a lot, always recovered. Fought hydras, cragbeasts, humanoid beavers, lava vultures, a humanoid lava monster, a kraken, squads of human mages while showing off while holding back. Swam through a god, blew a hole out his non existent rear end. Fought tentacle-vine plants. Fought hordes of monstrously giant insects, hordes of mite-hulks, their queen, repeatedly. Fought floating, toothy, enormously giant spermatozoa, fought a dragon-lich, and its necromaster. Took meteors to the face on separate occasions. Lost people, good people.

Killed people, many, many, many, many people. Perhaps not as many killed as left to die, by taking mastery over time, and deciding that my family was the most important. Had to let horrible, terrible events occur in order for everything to play out as it did. Family has a chance. We were building a shield, but it needed power. To get that power, we had to die. So we did. It was worth it. I’m pretty sure.

Now on Rayileklia, dragons, angry dwarves, kobolds, stone elementals, mite-hulk-adjacents, necromancers, cultists, infiltrators, more freakin’ hydras, so many things to fight, in my short life. Lost people here too. Failed to save a whole country, failed to even save a single town from the Felgre horde, just bought them half a day to evacuate.

The voice orders, “Stop. You said you fell in love a lot, fast, hard. Talk—think about love, not loss.”

I met her on a beach, and shared fish with her and her family. She took my hand after bashing my shoulder, and she smiled into my eyes. She ran, dragging me along, excited to show me her home. She’s been running and dragging me to every new joy, every excitement, every discovery since. She protects me, and I her in turn. We’ve saved each other so very many times. Even if we almost died that first night. She’s athletic, toned, perky, joyous. Everything she does is magic. She’s my everything, my world, My Wings.

Her sister. Her sister started off loving Lil, only, I think. Eventually, when I learned I had entrusted her with the secrets of the future, it turned out she and I were madly in love, I think, in some future, where I sent her mind back to her past selves. She died, that first night, the Night of High Water. Lil and I saved her, together. She fought so hard to get me to notice her love for me. Playful, beautiful, teasing, voluptuous. She’s my everything, my world, My Anchor.

Lil, in another timeline, spending millions of years together overall, we fell in love. This Lil never experienced that though. That’s okay. Lil is still wonderful, not every relationship must be romantic. Kind, courageous, naive, supportive. He’s my everything, my world, My Heart.

Linti, Lightning Hunter, she resented me for holding back, almost hated me for it, couldn’t trust me. One day, it came to a head, it was a duel seemingly to the death, and I ended it instantly. I took her life— almost. She’s one of the most powerful beings I know, but it took only an instant, essentially a single activation of my powers to finish her. When I resuscitated her, returning her breath to her, she shared passion and joy with me. She was proud to have lost to someone as powerful as she thought me to be, and wanted my tutelage, my protection for her family, my mind, and my body. Lin was special to me, and I’d have gladly kept her in my heart until the end of time, like My Wings, My Anchor, and My Heart, but she wasn’t the same. It wasn’t in-love on her end. I was powerful, and fun, maybe endlessly, but she wasn’t in love.

Those were the loves of my lifetime on Can’Z’aas. On Rayileklia, I had begun to become smitten by a Changeling Fae in the Enochian Enclave who showed me my true inner self, literally. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful in those soft, compact ways. We only knew each other for a week, and I left. We’d both wanted more, but Dawn was dying, I was dying.

I wasn’t in love with Dawn, but having them nearly erased from history nearly broke me all the same. Their title in my heart was My Friend. Her title, by the end. She’d wanted to be considered a woman again in those last weeks. It was friendship, platonic, but it was strong, and I failed to prevent her curse from rending her to dust. I failed. I failed. I failed.

Difficult though it was to move on, I tried, we tried. We met another short, sexy Fae lady as we were trying to grieve, trying to recover from the loss of Dawn. That lady is My Kitten. She’s in love with one single woman, neither of us, but we shared a bond regardless. She wasn’t recovering from the injuries she sustained fighting the Felgre horde, she’s with the refugees, protecting them from hydras. We weren’t, and aren’t in love, but My Kitten is always welcome in our hearts.

Our Lady radiates perfection, she—.

The voice orders, “Hold up. I’m not even sure I want to know what kind of love that is. Someone else.”

There are only two more. One is supple, lithe, gray-scaled, slender, athletic, her eyes caught me and mine, but her curiosity, her quirks, and her kindness ensnared my heart. She’s a master of spies, and so much more, and she definitely knows it.

Our Lady’s daughter and I have—.

Once again, the voiceless voice interrupts, “Woah, woah, Lady Kinzul, and Iylynila? Unless you mean Astridus. Lord I hope you don’t. You don’t, right?”

No, no definitely not. I would flay the scales from Astridus and sic balefire upon her myself if our Lady weren’t the one insisting to do it herself. Astridus’s mate Olashax nearly took My Wings from me, and for that I will set him alight in a neverending flame. Astridus’s devotion to him and his horrid evil is enough reason for me to cast forth that same fire at her, but I won’t interfere with our Lady.

My vision’s beginning to return. Everything’s fuzzy. My tummy rumbles, but my vision is slowly coming into focus, and I see, oh. Errissa. That smile is so very pretty. Yes, yours. There’s no one else here. Your expressiveness, your little joys, you are enrapturing to interact with, even if I have to fight an obsessiveness to be able to interact with you at all. I will. I would even give myself over to it, if you might enjoy it.

Words appear in that voiceless voice, “Maybe in a little while. Do you think you can fight it a bit longer?”

I nod, gladly willing to try, for the opportunity to experience more time with Errissa. I have to lick my lips and swallow thick, sticky, dusty mucus. Have I just been lying here, breathing hard for a long while?

Errissa’s nodding is a simple enough indication, but the subtle roll of her eyebrow as if to say, “It’s fine,” in an elongated manner brings me joy. I truly, even without the power affecting me, truly enjoy the expressiveness of every last bit of Errissa, of you. The casual flicks of your wrist or tail, the pointing observantly, poignantly, every subtle twitch or tic of your face, your scaled brows, the corners of your lips or corners of your eyes.

Errissa’s telepathy, perhaps, hopefully, jokingly, chides, “You were basically unconscious for most of it, and this likely ended up being the most coherent conversation we will ever have.”

My smile hurts my face, and my laughing reminds me of my rumbling belly, and yes, I see the look on your face. How do I have a rumbling belly if I don’t have most of my guts? It’s one of those things that pisses me off and vexes me about the inconsistency in my nature. Basically, I’m unsure.

Her voiceless words reach me with a query, “How long do you think you can fight it while I’m doing *this*?”