The last day before my week of banishment concluded I spent in the cave. Carefully, I tip toed around the hoard, guessing where to begin. I picked up one of the gold coins, and read its inscription. “The Marvel of the Valley.” A coin from Ludlun. A tiny remnant of a once prosperous town. I had seen the mountains engraved on them before, as we dreams used some, even if we traded nothing for them. A coin is a monetary unit, that’s true enough, yet it is so much more. A coin decides fates small and big by falling onto its heads or its tails. A coin can rest upon a piece of paper to preserve it from the manipulation of wind and breeze. A coin shines if polished enough. A coin, as it was revealed to me in that little moment, was a small mirror, and as sure as dawn it reflected Cirruin’s, instead of Terus’ face. I carried that one coin away from the main pile and placed it onto the floor. Then another, and another, and one more, and another.

For the sake of silence, I could not risk carrying a mound of gold coins and medals at once. A simple yet unfortunate shift would spread the gold onto the cave floor, sending coins rolling and bouncing and clinking everywhere. Waking the dreamer up before my work had concluded. Slow, methodical, minimal. That was how my job had to be, efficiency be forsaken.

Coin by coin I build meaning, crafted a letter after the other laid upon the cold stone. If I knew how to read, I knew how to write simple things. If I knew how to read, so had to know Cirruin. I used the tongue of Zenvo and Ludlun, and in it spelled my latest wish. The one thing I could ask the dreamer when he was awake.

I yearned for a shadow. A permanent shadow, not one that decided when to follow me and when not to. I wanted a shadow that was as mine as men’s are theirs. One day, maybe, I would be even granted a proper reflection. But, for then, a shadow would do.

And, friend, I understand if you don’t understand me. You were born with a shadow and a reflection of yours and yours alone. You need but light and your hands to project funny shapes —I am fond of bunnies and llamas— upon a wall, the ground or any other surface that is less than pitch black. You can see your own face distorted by the ripples on a lake or faithfully recreated into a mirror or even a mundane piece of burnished copper, silver, steel or gold. Coins recognize your existence as an equal. And it’s not the lack of a shadow or a reflection that hurts, but the combination of those and many more facts. My pockets that cannot hold a handful of sand in them, my pain that as soon as it appears it goes away, my death, as meaningless as my life. It was not about the shadow. Yet I had to start somewhere.

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“Shadowgrant me dreamhaver” I managed to spell after hours of carrying coins on end. It made no real sense, but I needed more practice to be able to smith a sentence with proper grammar.

My work in the cave had concluded, but not my period of being. Looking at my hands, they remained solid, shifting positions and some minor details as dream hands are wont to do, but solid. I could hold a real pebble in them for minutes on end, as long as I made sure to move the hands in a way that your kind would deem natural.

And I know some disgraced (in my opinion and with your pardon, were this statement to apply to you) men must envy my ability to cheat death, or to travel to places several leagues apart in a blink. To be able to avoid doors, windows and the bars of any jail. And maybe in there lays the understanding between us: all that we don’t share and that I have, you may want, and all that we don’t share and only you have, I so eagerly desire.

I breathed a bit of fire onto my hand, just to see if it would blister. It didn’t. I struggled to be more like a human every day, yet the more I rejected Cirruin, the more like a dragon I found myself to be, the thinner this patina of humanity that I wished could one day overtake me grew.

I spent the rest of the day alone, staring fruitlessly at my hands, breathing fire into them now and then. They wouldn’t blister, they wouldn’t do me such a small favor. And, friend, how harsh and long-winded are hours when one spends them alone and aware.