Yvet had been having a bad time of it. It – in this case – being life.

First of all, and most importantly, she was starving. Not peckish or hungry. Starving. The bottom of her stomach bubbled and growled like a boiling cauldron, and every pang of pain it sent out hit her square in the gut.

It was all she could think about, really.

Not that she was ever a very thoughtful individual, to begin with.

But still, when she slept, she dreamt of food. When Bo spoke to her, she thought of food. When the fight raged on outside her tent, she couldn't even muster the strength to lift her head.

Food.

Fooooddd.

The more she thought about it, the more detached the word became from the concept. Could she eat the word if she tried hard enough? Could an abstract thought be consumed?

She would have to try if none of such food made itself available soon.

It was strange, really. Despite the grievous wounds in her wing and shattered ribcage, the thing that hurt the most and ached and groaned and scaped was her stomach. Perhaps, if she had been more present of mind, Yvet may have correlated hunger with her ability to heal and noticed the importance of such things.

Perhaps, she might even have looked back on her lack of hunger before getting injured – in spite of travelling great distances and expending a lot of energy – and come to the conclusion that there was, indeed, something she did not know about herself.

But, she had no such epiphany.

All she did was sit and wallow in the gnawing famine.

The tent flap opened shortly after the noise outside died down, but she paid it no heed.

"Yvet?" It was Bo's voice… She wondered if she could eat sound… "Guess what I got?"

"Lost?"

"…What?"

"You were gone for such a long time, so…"

"So you thought I got lost?"

Yvet did the dragon equivalent of a shrug, which was far less subtle than the human version, involving a sight more wing movement.

"Well, I didn't get lost. I got dinner."

Her head perked up as she ran her suddenly burning gaze down from his sweaty face and along his arms to… food.

She tried to get up and crumpled like wet paper. Her knees buckled, and she ended up teetering sideways, falling onto her injured wing. Hissing and spitting like an injured snake, she writhed on the ground in abject agony, twisting and grunting in a visceral expression of pain.

Cold hands reached out and touched her head, stroking it. They were soft and calming, the motion bringing her a modicum of peace.

"Food?" she asked weakly.

"Yeah, I managed to take down a Sarpa, so there's plenty of meat to go around." She glanced up at the slab of bloody flesh in Bo's hand. The meat itself was white, almost translucent, and roughly the size of a human head. It had been carved into a square chunk with a layer of black scales on one side. The scales glittered in the soft lantern light of their tent.

The second her eyes set upon the meat, her stomach turned.

It bubbled and spat, but not in the usual way, not with hunger. This was… disgust. She… looked at the meat and felt ill. It was wrong, rancid... it couldn't be eaten. The smell was rotten and wafted from the chunk of flesh in putrid waves that crawled up her nostrils and died there. It hung in the air like thick smog, choking her.

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"Come on, eat something," Bo said. He was out of breath and sweating. He held a section of the Sarpa's tail in his other hand. It was about the length of his forearm, and the curved tip still dripped with unreleased venom.

Yvet tried to back away as Bo came forward, but her chest burned, and her wing screamed at her to stop.

"N-NO!" She yelled. "I WON'T EAT IT!"

Bo paused. "What?" He had been saying that a lot recently.

"I-I can't. It's, it's poison. It's putrid."

He glanced down at the bloody lump of meat and frowned. "It doesn't look great; I'll give you that. But I've eaten Sarpa enough times to know that it's edible. I even got you the best part."

"No."

"No? What do you mean no?" Bo asked in disbelief. "You're on death's door, and you're too good to eat some perfectly edible meat?"

Yvet's stomach growled in discontent, but that wasn't how Bo saw it. To him, she must have sounded hungry.

"See, you're starving!" He exclaimed. "Look, I know Sarpa's not the most appetising thing in the world. Hell, I'll be the first to tell you it's tough as an old boot, but dying rather than eating it is not an option."

She could feel it in her bones. Some sort of visceral disgust vibrated along every inch of her being, as though her very foundations shook at the idea of consuming the Sarpa. "Please listen, Bo. I can't eat that. I just can't."

He stopped moving forward and frowned. "Is it a similar situation to the Horus shoots?" He asked.

Yvet shifted uncomfortably. "No… I don't think so."

"But you still won't eat it?" He asked.

"I won't," she said firmly.

Bo licked his lips and bent down towards Yvet. "But you're hurt..." His gaze grew concerned. "And you're not getting any better."

She stared back up at him unwaveringly. "I would rather die than eat that." There wasn't a hint of hesitation in her voice.

"I see…" Bo stood up straight and took a deep breath. He pulled at the chunk of meat in his hand, tearing a little sliver off. His hand was caked in blue blood, but he didn't seem to notice, staring intensely down at Yvet.

"Bo?"

"I'm sorry," he said, slowly moving towards her. "But I won't let you die over this."

She tried to move back, tried to run. But she couldn't. She never even had a chance.

His hand covered the heavens and loomed towards her with the sliver of meat in it. Her stomach churned as every fibre of her being told her not to eat it or go near it, even.

She lashed out, biting onto his forearm and clamping down hard, but Bo didn't notice the blood flowing from his arm, or if he did, he didn't care. He reached down and pried open her jaw, stuffing the flesh inside.

Yvet tried desperately to spit it out, but Bo held his hands on either side of her snout, forcing her mouth to stay closed. He was pinning her jaw closed with his whole body weight, and as the slimy, disgusting meat sat in her mouth, Yvet felt like she was committing some sort of crime of the highest, most fundamental calibre.

He was just staring at her as veins stood out on his face and neck. His face was twisted into a monstrous caricature of cruel indifference. She wanted to fight back, to do something, anything. But the strength just wasn't there. The injuries were too severe, and she had no reserves to tap into.

"Swallow it," he shouted.

"Please!!" she squealed desperately.

"I won't let you die over this," Bo said, his voice quavering with desperation. "Why won't you just let me help you?"

Yvet looked into his face. She looked past the mask of indifference and saw a frightened little boy who didn't want to lose his friend. She saw a boy not unlike her. Alone in the world. Lost. Adrift.

Maybe... maybe she should just... eat it. If not to stop herself from dying, she could do it for him.

She swallowed.

Nothing happened.

It had tasted fine, not great, but fine. There were no fireworks as the Sarpa meat hit her stomach, and she didn't combust or implode in a rain of hellfire. Everything was as it was. She even felt her wounds begin to heal at a blistering pace.

So… why did she feel so wretched? So utterly debased.

Why was she crying? Dragons didn't cry... What did she know about dragons?

Yvet looked up at Bo, and he looked down at her, tears cutting branches down the dirt that caked his face. "I'm sorry," he whispered hoarsely. "I just…"

She turned away from him and curled up in a ball, desperately trying to escape everything.

Bo backed away and grabbed the star map before running out of the tent.

In the quiet that followed, what hurt Yvet the most was the fact that the remaining Sarpa flesh looked rather appetising. Her stomach no longer gurgled at the idea of eating it and welcomed the meal wholeheartedly.

Something had irreversibly changed within her. Some tether had snapped, and it couldn't be mended.

She was different now. Changed forever.

She just didn't know why.

Yet.