When she awoke, it was to the rocking of the ground beneath her. Or, a brief awareness, of the water.
She struggled against the sleepiness, fighting her way through the fog that consumed her thoughts, trying to fly blindly into wakefulness.
Opening her eyes, her worst nightmares were confirmed. They were on one of the Big Floats!
But it was ok, she was probably just still asleep. She dreamt sometimes, she understood dreams, and this was probably just one of them. Maybe, probably, hopefully!
A long keening noise was surrounding her, and after a moment, and at the running thuds of her mother's feet, she realised it was coming from her own throat. She could feel the pressure of her Self building up inside her, but she held it back, she had spent enough lately, when they had been attacked inside the Ink Room. She didn't want to hurt anyone or break the Float.
At least she was outside, she hated waking up inside, in the dark. The fresh air was much better, and as her mother reached down and lifted her up onto her shoulders, she forced her throat to close, for the noise to stop. People were holding their hands over their ears and staring, and anything that caused people to stare was bad.
Her mother was dressed differently than usual, her clothes were those of the Float Workers, and her hair, which had been growing long, was cut almost away. It made their neck colder, but ticked her nose less, so she was in two minds about if it was a good thing or not.
Still struggling to stay aloft above the clouds of sleep, she opened her eyes as wide as she could, and took in the view around them. It was as bad as she had expected. On all sides, there was endless blue water, deep with the reflections of the sky and shimmering in the daylight.
It must have rained the day before, and she could still feel the flecks of Other in the air. With a breath, she claimed some of them as Self, and felt a little better, but it was only a brush, a droplet of water for a dying tree.
She snuggled down to go back to sleep, and then stopped, examining that thought.
Was she a tree? Was she thirsty? She had eaten and drunk, when? A hunt through her disjointed memories told her, this morning. That was ok. Her mother had fed her the meat mush again, but she didn't know if that had happened here on the Float, at home, or in the dusty place, everything was fuzzy with sleep.
She wasn't thirsty, but she was thirsty. A frown, creasing the scales of her brow and causing her paws to clench and her claws to twitch where she had carefully stored them away, so as not to tear up her mother's shoulders as she had in those first few days of life.
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With a sigh, she struggled to her feet, causing her mother to squawk a confused noise, as her posture was suddenly thrown off. The clouds were still below her, but for the moment she could fly above them, as long as she willed it. She was a Dragon, she could do better than this.
Concentrating harder than she ever had before, she dug her claws into the shoulder, wiggled her tail, spread her wings to their full size...
And dove into the sea.
-
Twenty minutes later she sat on the deck of the ship, sneezing the water out of her nose and being dried with a big piece of cloth. Two Float Workers were standing and barking quietly to each other, and her mother was scolding her, the air around her sharp with ageing fear.
She made another conscious effort to push herself above the clouds. She had discovered many things in her short trip, and one of them was that there were fish out there bigger than she was. Another was that she knew how to swim, but she wasn't very good at it. The Float workers were better swimmers than her, in that they didn't panic when they hit the wet. She had also learnt that she couldn't drink seawater, and that what she needed might just be down there.
This was good. She was learning! Now if they'd let her have another go, she was sure she could get it this time!
-
After her second swim, they threatened to tie a rope around her tail, and her mother made it very clear that she would be locked inside the dark-inside if she tried again. If only mother could hear her words, it would make things so much easier! If only she herself could speak!
The Attacker, back in the Ink Room, had almost been able to hear, but she had been too exhausted by the loss of Self to attempt communication, sleepy and drained. Not that she believed it would have worked, nobody she had met thus far in her small life had known how to listen, but the faded memories of her birth had assured her it was possible, how else would they communicate, after all? She had thoughts, there must be some way of showing those thoughts to others, she only had to find it.
She needed to learn the barking language, to twist her brain into the right shapes, to learn to speak as people did, but she was afraid of what that might do to her. She was so small, what if she broke something?
With a huff, she pulled herself above the clouds again, she had been drifting whilst she wasn't paying attention, almost falling back into the fog.
She had to stop being afraid. If something broke, then it broke, and that would be that.
One last glance at the wet, which was passing by at a worrying speed now, her paws on the wooden railing but her body being firmly held by her mother, she decided to go for it.
-
She hadn't known her body could reject changes, that she could fail to form her Self into a desired shape, but apparently, that was the case! Her badly formed thoughts had taken hold for a moment, and then something in the air had snapped, and she was Herself again, small and blue and perfect, staring out at the passing ocean. She had managed to keep a hold of the Self at least, and she was proud to see that the railing beneath her paws was still intact.
The adrenaline was leaving her now, the rush of having made a choice retreating into the past. She would try again tomorrow, but, for now...
With a yawn, she sank back into the clouds of sleep, and let them carry her away.