The child repeated his question several times, attempting to rephrase it as though he had not understood, while he considered how to answer. It had been difficult enough to explain ordinary sight to one who hadn't realized that he was partially blind.

"The wise are individuals of various species who can see as dragons see with their true eyes. They can see the strings of the world, even if they cannot discern the finer patterns," he explained. "But even though we are all looking at the same things, we interpret what we see according to our own structure and experience. What a dragon sees as a string of light, one of the wise among the seafolk sees as a dark current, and the few wise among the mankind seem to see the strings as rivers."

"Then other species can also have true eyes?" the child asked doubtfully. "I have never seen anyone except you. Anne's eyes seem completely ordinary to me."

"I don't know for certain, but I have never seen another species with true eyes, although cats seem to have something similar. The wise among other species are usually blind to physical sight, because they do not have two kinds of vision." He couldn't tell if the child understood, but he nodded after a moment.

--

Anne tried to work up enough courage to leave the dubious safety of the bathroom. Passing out and letting herself be carried back to bed sounded easier. Now that she was aware of it, she could see the ripples that shivered the air even here, with a wall between her and whatever was out there.

Dragon. The word meant flying fire breathing lizard to her. Whatever was in the living room was nothing like her image of a dragon. But she did remember hearing somewhere that to other cultures dragons were revered like gods, and she thought they represented wisdom, or maybe thunderstorms.

The frightening voices… she still didn't know how to describe the sound, but for some reason she couldn't help imagining that a fifty foot parakeet might sound similar. The image almost made her laugh, but really, it would be pretty frightening. Parakeets were vicious little birds in her limited experience. Somehow the sounds grew less frightening with the occasional english word thrown in. Language lessons. Seriously?

When Chris knocked on the door, she jumped, but he only asked, "Are you doing okay?" When she didn't answer right away, he called out, "Excuse me, I'm coming in to check on you."

She didn't know why she jumped forward to push against the door as it started to open, but it made her head spin. "I'm okay," she insisted, even though she wasn't entirely certain that she was. She was going to add something like, 'I just need a few more minutes', but what came out of her mouth was, "Shouldn't a dragon at least have a scaly tail?"

The door thumped shut as she wavered, now that there was no resistance. She stared at it blankly. The low voices of house sized parakeets conferred for a moment on the other side of that small barrier. A moment later it sounded like someone was dragging the furniture around.

She opened the door to see Chris shoving the couch up against the wall, seemingly oblivious to the golden waves that rippled over and through him, making his whole form waver like a mirage. He turned and looked at her and then… he unfolded somehow and a sort of oriental looking dragon tottered on his hind feet in Chris's place.

Anne closed her eyes, but it didn't help, because it just made the waves coming from the golden sea that she didn't dare turn her focus toward more vibrant. She opened her eyes again to find the dragon holding itself steady with one paw on the couch beside it, and watching her with concern. The mirage-like waver hadn't lessened, but something big filled the rest of the room, blocking the view of the other walls.

She wasn't able to prevent her eyes from turning toward the source of the waves. Claws, scales, serpentine coils, and the glowing gold sea filled her vision. And then she met its open eyes, and they opened again.

--

Chris shifted back into his current human form and carried Anne back to her bed, while Amaru announced, "I will stay in this form. Keeping my own shape compressed takes much less 'energy' than holding the shape of 'a human'. What is the word for holding?"

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She opened her eyes as he covered her up, and told him rather firmly, "I'm going to sleep for a while."

He could only smile as she shut her eyes and pulled the blankets up. And then opened them again and pushed the blankets down to sit up and empty the glass of water. He handed her the next doses of her medicines, and she took them silently.

"Don't laugh," she grumbled at him as she scooted back down and pulled the covers back up.

"I won't," he promised.

--

A few hours later, Chris began to wonder again whether or not he and Amaru were really the same species. The older dragon didn't seem to need the repetition that most humans needed. He'd thought that his own memory was quite good, and it was, compared to the average human, but he still forgot things that he didn't use, and he couldn't imagine simply memorizing a dictionary.

They were currently working their way through an old Webster's Dictionary, pulled from Mac's shelves, because Chris had run out of words off the top of his head. He knew a great many more words than he could simply list. Probably everyone knew the word imbued for example, but who would think to mention it before it was needed?

Chris read the next entry and the older dragon pointed out, "You spoke about the meaning of 'immediate' previously."

When they reached the word mediate, Amaru complained that the meaning of immediate did not match the addition of the im prefix to the word mediate.

"It sort of does," Chris tried to argue. "Mediate means in between, and immediate is without anything between? Kind of. I did already mention that English regularly breaks its own rules."

"You did," Amaru conceded.

--

Anne woke up to the sound of Chris reading a dictionary aloud in the other room. At least, that's the only reason she could think of for the string of words beginning with V and their definitions. She felt sorry for the dragon he was teaching. He could at least be using one of the learning apps that presented things in a somewhat reasonable order.

She considered the DRAGON for a moment. Okay, both of them were dragons, if she could believe her unreliable eyes. And her ears, she guessed, although when the other voice responded it didn't sound like a fifty foot parakeet.

"Venerable age, I shall use this term for myself when people ask," a man's voice announced.

The way he spoke sounded slightly old fashioned… like the way Chris spoke, she realized abruptly.

Suddenly she sat up with a jolt of fright, and wondered how long she'd really been asleep. Her head spun, and the sensation combined with the soft waves that rippled everything in her vision made her nauseous.

She threw up.

It was horrible.

The recitation of V words halted abruptly and Chris was beside her with an arm full of towels less than a full minute later. Or at least that's how quickly it felt.

"I need a shower," she said plaintively.

"You can have another bath after your stomach settles enough to keep a bit of fluid down," he assured her.

A bath. She was not going to sit in a tub with vomit floating it in. "A shower," she protested much more weakly than she meant to.

"We'll see," he prevaricated as he pushed a glass of water into her hands. "Spit into this towel," he instructed calmly.

When she finished, he carried away the bundle of bedding and towels. Somehow he had already cleaned up the worst of the mess. She hadn't even managed to apologize. It was like he was used to taking care of sick people.

"Are you really a dragon?" she called out doubtfully.

A flood of golden waves spilled across everything as a head as wide as a man's body moved into the doorway. She couldn't focus on the face enough to make out any details except the eyes. Her back was pressed against the headboard with no more room to retreat.

"He is, I assure you," the dragon told her in the same voice that had declared that he was going to use venerable age to describe himself. His eyes regarded her curiously, but didn't do the horrible thing where they opened up to show the stars within the golden sea shining out of them directly. "As am I," it added the obvious calmly.

"Y'yeah," she agreed weakly. "I'm not wise," she blurted a moment later. The dragon blinked at her. "Before, I heard… I heard Chris ask you what you meant by 'one of the wise'."

"You can see the rivers of life, can you not?" the dragon asked curiously.

Her mouth opened, but she couldn't answer him. The rivers of life. The streams that danced behind her eyelids whenever she closed her eyes, with the unseen branches and sky reflecting in them. The waves that spilled off of the dragon, out of the bright golden sea that made him impossible to look at. Life? Yes.

She looked into the eyes of a dragon while her entire world spun. Chris pushed the large head out of his way and walked through the door. He looked completely human except for the way the ripples and waves prevented her from focusing on his features.

Anne croaked, "I'm not crazy." It wasn't a question.