My head is feeling fuzzy and I feel a bit sore like I just got done with field day at school. My whole body was feeling just a little sore but didn’t really hurt per se. I’m noticing something else all of the sudden. It feels like I’m floating or at least partly. I think I’m lying on my left side. When I try to open my eyes, I get really drowsy and can’t help drifting back into sleep.

>>>

I roused again and I feel a bit better. I’m not as sore but it still feels like I’m floating. I try opening my eyes but they don’t want to respond. I force them to part and looked at the area around me with a little shock. I can see and feel what appears to be a liquid and my eyes shut by instinct. I can feel myself dozing off again. Why am I so… drowsy… suddenly?

>>>

I come back around and can feel the drowsiness trying to suck me back down already. I force my eyes open and ignored the feeling of liquid on them. I want to see what’s going on here! I can feel the lids of my eyes trying to force me to shut them at the stinging burning feeling from exposing them to water but I quickly realize that feeling isn’t present. I look around me in hopes of seeing something before the darkness takes me again. I could feel it clawing for my consciousness since I woke up.

I see a blue murky liquid that seems to be glowing brightly. The liquid appears to be both glowing and sparkling with tiny motes that glow brighter as they swirl around me. I focus quickly and try to look around a bit. Is there a tube around me? I think I’m in… a…

>>>

I awaken again with a start as the remnants of some dream fade. There’s a sound! I realize I can vaguely make out what sounds like voices. There are two of them too! I listen for a bit as the two muffled voices seem to be yelling at one another. There is one that is a little lower but not deep and it's sort of blurry. The other is higher and I’m sure that this one sounds feminine. I can also tell that they sound blurred like they’re in… That’s right, I’m in a liquid in a tube!

I have to fight my eyes open and see what’s going on before I lose consciousness again! I see the blue liquid again but I ignore it and try desperately to focus on the movement I see beyond. At first, it was all very blurry and indistinct but the longer I concentrate the more detail I get.

There is a short figure who looks like ‘he?’ Is wearing a mask or something goldish on the face? I’m pretty sure this is the one I thought was a guy. As I watch, the figure moves about and moves a few indistinct objects near where I’m at. As I keep watching he turns to the other figure that is taller and speaks. I can hear his slightly nasal voice but I can’t make anything out.

The other figure moves a bit closer and the two exchange several heated flurries of words. I can’t make any of the words out but then I finally get a break. The taller, female-sounding figure turns a little into profile and maybe points at something while screaming something. I can see the figure well enough at this point that I can make her general form out.

The woman has long silver hair that perfectly frames a peach-colored face and a long elven ear. She’s an elf or maybe it’s so blurry I can’t tell what that is in her hair but it looks like a long, pointed ear. She’s wearing some kind of tight blue clothing that in profile does just enough to highlight her very female bust through the murky liquid.

The woman turns to the very short man again and they begin exchanging even more heated words. The woman moves to the side above my line of sight where the guy is and starts messing with something on the wall. The short figure goes in the opposite direction and eventually is so far below my line of sight that I can’t see him anymore. I can’t help but drift off back to sleep even as the two continue to yell at one another.

>>>

I am ripped from my slumber by a sudden explosion of noise! What the crap is that sound? It almost sounds like some kind of metal scraping on metal but different somehow. There is another noise that suddenly kicks in and I throw my eyes open as the bubbling, slurping sound of liquid being drained somewhere overhead suddenly begins to deafen me. I want to scream but I can feel something in my mouth and… down my throat!

Now I want to scream in terror more than ever but all I can do is breathe harder and gag a little bit in response. My jaw feels like it’s locked in place and I try my hands but I can’t seem to move them either! I look around in desperation and I see the two figures from before but in a lot more detail!

I can see the shorter one with his back to me as he looks at several other tubes of liquid. One of the tubes has a dimly glowing gemstone suspended in a bracket in the middle of the tube. There seems to be a flow of liquid and what’s coming in from the top is almost clear but with a slight blue to it. The blue liquid leaving past the bottom of the gem looks to be taking a stream of glowing blue sparkles with it. I recognize the blue sparkles as the ones in the now almost clear liquid around me but they are a lot dimmer now than before.

As I watch, he turns to the side and I get a look at a wrinkly old tan face with some kind of big brass contraption on the far eye. And what eyes! His eyes are huge like some of that anime stuff or that group of teenage superheroes. Seriously, his eyes are way too big for him to be human! Is he a gnome? Vrix had described them but I could never get the image of a taller lawn gnome out of my head.

As he comes closer, I can see he’s wearing what looks to be a weird combination of a leather jacket and a set of once-white overalls with the front pockets stuffed full of weird tools and some I recognized too. His hair, tied up in a metal band or crown thing is going wild behind his head to either side. It’s also a strange light bluish-green color and looks very greasy. I see him go to a spot almost too far up for me to see him. He reaches for a complicated brass lever in a set of several that look similar and pulls it down, which is to my left.

Suddenly, I hear a clinking pop sound and the gurgle of liquid draining sounds even louder and in my more immediate area. I can now see a thin layer of air forming at the top, to my right, of the tank. Now the elven woman from before is coming through a door in the far wall to the right of the tubes and this time she’s talking in a more reasonable tone to the maybe-gnome, which means I can’t hear her at all.

Now that she’s facing straight at me, I can tell that she’s very pretty in the face and her proportions are very nice too! I feel that I should appreciate that for some reason but I can’t place why. She’s approaching the tube thing I’m in and now she’s turned around to the wall next to the door and has started turning some kind of big valve that’s painted green or possibly just corroded to that color.

The two of them are conversing back and forth but all I can hear is the roar of the liquid draining from the enclosure I’m in. I can see the level of the liquid is steadily approaching from my right. Then it passes in front of my eyes and I can feel my body becoming heavier without the support the fluid has provided till now.

After what seemed like an eternity but was likely only a few seconds, I’m free of the liquid and the awful racket from the machine and the drainage isn’t as bad anymore. Once it stops completely, both of the people out there come right up to the tube or enclosure. As they approach, I notice they keep getting bigger and bigger! A moment later and the gnome is looking into the glass enclosure I’m in and the elf woman is leaning over beside him to also place her face in front of the glass. They’re so close, I can see the ridges in his green and her blue irises. Also, that monocle makes his eye seem huge compared to the other. You know, I don’t think that these two are actually huge. I think I’m the one that’s tiny!

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I can feel my heart going into overdrive. I… I’m a baby? Wait, could I be some sort of animal? Just what’s going on here? A sudden ringing bell starts blaring behind the two of them and they look at each other and then stare more intently at my eyes. As I flick my eyes back and forth between the two of them, I’m wondering just what the two of them have in mind to do to me?

As if they’ve come to some unspoken consensus, they both reach for spots to the bottom, my left, of the tube thing and I hear clicking. The next moment they pull the hatch of this tube thing open and I can suddenly feel a cold draft. It’s as if I’m suddenly naked in the arctic! I’m freezing and I can feel my body begin to shiver. It’s weird, there seem to be things I can feel that I really shouldn’t.

Oh hey! The elf lady has gone and gotten a towel while I wasn’t paying attention! She’s come close and is talking to the gnome guy with the crazy blue-green hair. Now he’s reaching into the tube thing and I feel a pressure release from my hands and then my legs and finally my head. Then I see his huge hand reaching for my face. He has ahold of something… oh god, it’s the thing that’s down my throat and he’s pulling it out! Damnit that hurts! I scream at him mentally as the thing sticks to the sides of my throat, pulling and scraping. It feels like my entire throat is being ripped out and I begin gagging really bad.

I have to squeeze my eyes shut due to the pain as this thing is roughly ripped out of my throat. I can feel the tears trying to form in my eyes but they won’t for some reason. I am retching so bad that my muscles are spasming and I can feel the blood vessels in my face and back popping from the effort as I try to retch this stupid tube or whatever out of my throat. There is a sudden pop as the last of the flesh in my throat either releases it or is torn loose, one and I can feel the damn thing sliding out across my gums and lips.

With it out, I’m finally able to retch and a little bile comes out before I’m able to breathe again. As I am here gasping for air, I realize, it seems like forever since I could last breathe! When I open my eyes, the elf woman is close and leaning in with the towel and I feel her picking me up. she does a little bit of rubbing to dry me off but mostly just wraps me up in this wonderfully warm tan towel. I want to say something but with my body warm and the exertion I spent puking that tube up, I can feel the damn blackness of sleep clawing at my consciousness. I try to get out a word but I realize that my throat feels terrible from the ordeal and I let sleep have me.

>>>

A sudden coughing fit brings me out of my slumber and I try to jerk upright with little success. I can feel my muscles responding but they feel really weak like that time I had covid and had to stay in bed for a week and a half. I could barely move then and I feel even weaker than that now. Oh yeah, it’s because I’m a baby, isn’t it?

In a sudden panic, I throw my eyes open and look around. I’m on my right side in the tan towel but there is something beyond. I try for a bit and finally get my eyes to strain into focus on the things I was seeing. Bars? Am I in a prison? Wait, no. When I look up, I can see the top of the bars are open and there is some kind of ornate rail at the top of these brass bars. Brass, why?

I try moving again and I can feel that part of the problem is the towel is wrapped around me. I struggle a bit and as I do I burp. There is a weird creamy taste with an odd aftertaste in my mouth now. It kind of tastes like milk but not exactly. Wait a damn minute! Is this the taste of breastmilk? Did I get to… and I wasn’t even… “Damn you sleep, You betrayed me!”

Whoa! My voice is tiny and really high-pitched! But seriously, I was near a woman’s boobs and I had to sleep through that? I waited years to see one of those that wasn’t on the internet and yet, somehow, I just can’t feel the great sense of longing I had before. Weird.

I wiggle some more and manage to pull my hand free and suddenly things have gone real left, really quick. What the hell is that? I’m looking at a hand that is responding to my commands but it’s all wrong! I look in astonishment at my hand flexing three fingers and a thumb. My fingers are a dull steel grey, covered in tiny scales, and have claws. Freaking claws! I have a set of black curving claws at the end of my fingers!

I finally snap out of it and think to feel of my face, being careful not to stab myself with the blades on the end of my fingers. I think I have scales on my whole face. Worse than that, I can feel horns on my head. Why the hell do I have horns? Oh hey, I remember feeling like I had parts that I shouldn’t.

I spend several minutes worming out of the towel and I lay there breathing hard. Wow, I feel so damn weak but at least I haven’t passed out yet! I think I have enough strength to check myself out finally. I begin feeling behind me and I grab hold of something that definitely shouldn’t be there.

On my butt, there is a tail growing out. I pull on it to see what it looks like and realize that it’s still stuck in the towel and so is the other thing that I shouldn’t be able to feel. I reach over my shoulder and right where I feel the strain, there is something growing from my back. I think I have a tail and wings! What the hell am I now?

After a few more minutes of struggling, I’ve finally managed to free the rest of me from the towel and I struggle to a sitting position. My head feels really heavy like it doesn’t want to stay upright. I ignore that and pull my tail around. I find that it’s long and thin with a big barb-sided spade at the tip. It looks like a spear or something. I can feel it but I can’t seem to move it. It twitches as I try moving it but it’s too heavy for me to move.

I let it be and inspect the next bit of weirdness on my backside. Unlike my tail, I can pretty easily move my new wings but there isn’t too much to them. Either they’re vestigial or they’re going to grow in as I get older. Right now they’re only a little wider than my forearm. It’s so weird being able to move another set of limbs that I shouldn’t have.

I also seem to have something else that I shouldn’t. Why in God’s name do I have spikes growing out of my forearms? No damn wonder it took so long to get loose from the towel! But as I’m looking down at my forearm, I notice something else. I reach between my legs and feel around. It’s not there! In its place, I now have a double row of scales that part, and I feel my claw prick against soft tender flesh beneath. Am I really a girl lizard thing? Hold on, scales, horns, a tail, claws, and wings. I’m a dragon! Oh hell yeah! Score! I hope.

Okay, So I’m reborn the way Vrix said I would be but I’m a dragon girl. If I’m a girl now I guess I should think of a name I might like to be called by. I damn sure don’t want to be Jacob again. It would be all right if I were a boy again but I’m not. I suppose I could be Alisha, Vrix, or Janice like my sisters or mother but that just seemed a bit too cheap. Maybe I’ll take Jacelyn for myself since Vrix didn’t need it or maybe not.

As I crawl over to the bars of the crib and get to my knees so I can look about, I was thinking of names. “Amber? Nah.” The room is hard to focus on and now I remember that babies usually can’t see things more than a couple feet away from them. Hmm, maybe Brittany? Maybe not!

I’m trying to force my eyes to focus outward and it hurts a bit. I’m thinking that if I’m going to be a dragon, I really want to have a cool name. But then, what’s cool back home may not be here. Maybe I should call myself something from one of the cartoons or something.

I wonder if anybody would complain if I called myself SCP 3844 or maybe Tharnock, HAH! Yeah, that’s lame. This room seems to be mostly made of wood with metal bars riveted across the planks. There are some… no a LOT of pipes on the ceiling. Some of the pipes seem to be made of steel but most of them look like they’re made of brass. Now that I look at them, there are a couple that seem to be smoking or maybe steaming?

I flinch as I finally notice movement near the ceiling. Fortunately, it seems to be a simple fan and I relax a bit but then the details register and I pay closer attention. The fan is spinning slowly but there isn’t a cord. It’s hooked up to pipes. Is this thing run on water or steam? It’s blowing away from me and I notice that right in front of it is a simple brass radiator. Now that I think about it, it does seem to be a lot warmer in this room. I can even crawl around naked without freezing. Huh, a hydraulic heater.

My observations and musings are cut short when I hear a thud and then the sound of a bar being drawn from the lock of a door. There is a door on the wall beyond the fan. That’s hard to focus on but I’m staring intently right now. Who’s coming in? Should I cover up? Should I pretend to be asleep? Too late now, the door is slowly swinging open.