Cold raindrops cascade down from above, landing on my head and disturbing me from labored sleep.

Jostled by the drone of steam propellers, I gaze through the redwood canopy to see another airship passing through the dawn sky on its way to Rhl. I can’t muster the energy to hide myself any more than I already am. Would it really be so bad if they spotted me? Within a few moments the ship glides by and the cold mountainside goes silent again. I lay my tired, feathered head down in front of me against a bed of redwood needles, despondent and defeated.

I’m still a Lithan. Yesterday wasn’t a nightmare.

At some point last night I banked towards the mountains and flew north, discovering the scent trail of the Blue Daemon and retracing it until I rediscovered my mountainside abode. I laid down and sobbed for what seemed like hours, wailing into the night and blaming myself until my eyes could no longer produce tears. Only then did I allow myself to calm down and rest.

But sleep brought little relief. When I lost consciousness, my dreams were disturbing, full of scenes reliving Calypso’s final moments, hypothetical scenarios where I scared Sofl senseless, and other unsettling situations I didn’t understand. It seemed every few minutes I was jolted awake by another terrible nightmare.

It’s early morning, now. Clouds filled the sky in the waning hours of the night and a drizzle fell. It’s cold up here — not cold enough to snow, though it won’t be long before mountaintops like this one are buried under thick snow drifts for the winter.

I close my eyes and think of family back home.

I just want to tell mom I’m safe.

Deprived of sleep, I attempt to doze off, but rest never comes. My thoughts are too chaotic, too upsetting to allow me to relax. Compounding my misery is the reality of only having slept in warm, soft beds my entire life. No matter what position I shift into, my body ends up cold and wet against the damp ground. Resigning myself to exhaustion, I sit up and ruffle my feathers of the morning rain.

A curious sensation overtakes me, surveying myself in my partially puffed state. Dirt and debris have built up under my feathers from everything that happened yesterday. I seem awfully dirty, don’t I? I… I need to preen my feathers, yes! That is what creatures with feathers do to clean themselves! I may not have a beak, but I do have some pretty impressive fangs.

I ruffle my feathers out as far as they’ll go, turning myself into a big ball of blue and white fluff. I stick my face into my chest and run the tips of my fangs through one of my larger, white flight feathers. The barbs straighten out satisfyingly, cleaned of the dirt that had built up on them. I move on to the next one and cleanse it of dirt, then another. Another still.

The simple act of grooming one’s feathers — what an oddly hypnotic and calming chore! Once I clean and straighten a decent amount of chest fluff I find my thoughts wandering again, allowed to relax and contemplate the extraordinary situation I now find myself in.

I’ve somehow become an enormous dragon that can’t talk to anyone, can’t hunt, has only just learned how to fly, and has nowhere to go because I’m a wanted fugitive for the murder of myself.

What am I supposed to do, now?

I… would like to move past where I was mentally last night. My head was a very toxic, unwell place. But through my misery, there was one prevailing thought I kept coming back to. The lodestar that kept me from taking actions I might regret:

I can’t give up.

Not yet, not ever.

I may have been miserable last night, but the pain I felt was paltry compared to the sorrow being felt in the palace.

I was born during the reign of my grandmother, Beatrix. When I was three years old, she passed away suddenly, thrusting mom into the role of Monarch; the youngest Queen in history. She had no time to grieve, as a massive international crisis spawned because of Beatrix’s passing. Twenty years later on the heels of another international crisis, her daughter, the heir to the throne, has seemingly passed away, too.

Oh, mom… she must be delirious right now. For her, history is repeating itself in the cruelest way possible. We never saw eye-to-eye much, me and her. But she doesn’t deserve the pain of thinking her daughter was ripped away from her like her mother was.

I just want to tell her I’m safe.

And then there’s Sofl. I… can’t even imagine what he’s going through right now. Fourteen years old, dreadfully unprepared for the title of the heir apparent, to say nothing of the sorrow he must feel at my passing. If the loss of his cat caused him to grieve for days, then losing the big sister that was his crutch…

No. I don’t want to revisit this feeling. This misery. I won’t return to the place I was last night. The fact of the matter is: I’m not dead! I’m still right here, the same ol’ quirky Princess Asha that everyone in the palace knows and sometimes hates! She just, um, looks a little different. A lot different.

My mentor taught me that unexpected events in life are inevitable. We can choose to dwell on them, letting the negatives grow to define us. Or we can choose to overcome them, embracing the positive aspects we have control over.

There is always a choice.

I could choose to wallow in the sheer insanity of everything that’s happened to me. A simple errand to help my brother led to me becoming a Dragon and the entire kingdom believing I’m dead. Or I could choose to do something about it. I could choose to push forward and find out what’s happened to me and find a way to reverse it. If there’s a way I could become a Dragon, then there must be a way to undo it and turn me back into a Lemur.

Right? Right.

I can still find a way out of this mess. I have to. As long as I live and breathe, I will work towards finding a way to let them know I’m safe or to turn back to normal entirely. For mom, Sofl, Calypso, the Kingdom… as their Princess, I owe them this much.

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…Wait a second.

Don’t Avians have some sort of… thing they use to preen their feathers with?

I pull my head away from my wing in confusion. A large flight feather remains stubbornly attached to a fang.

Whenever we visit the Crimson District in Varecia we always pass by the Avian specialty shop, the one that sells perches and personal care items. They’re always advertising some sort of cream, or oil, that avians massage into their feathers. It’s a part of their daily preening routine that helps to keep their feathers free and clean of dirt.

But! Avians also have something on their body that naturally secretes oil. Most avians prefer to use artificial stuff, but… I should have something like that now too, right? Something that makes the natural stuff. If that’s the case, where is it?

I unhook the feather from my fang and run my head over the rest of my body. Under my stomach, over my flank, across my back. Eventually, I stretch my neck down to the base of my tail and muzzle against something… oily. I puff and push my feathers out of the way and there, sitting on my pale skin is… well, quite frankly, it looks like a nipple.

Asha ruffles into a ball of fluff and looks embarrassed, spotting something she wasn't expecting [https://www.sarlain.net/img/m1/ch21-0.png]

What a funny word, oily nipple. I’m definitely calling it that from now on.

I work some oil from the oily nipple into my muzzle and get to work preening some down feathers in the immediate area. They straighten out smoother than ever, giving off a pleasing shine like a freshly waxed steam carriage. I resume my efforts to groom myself, allowing my thoughts to wander again.

Let’s go over it one more time. I’m a Lithan now; a huge Dragon. I can’t talk to anyone I used to know, and I can’t understand anything they say back to me. I don’t know how to hunt, I only just learned how to fly, and I’m a wanted fugitive. Seems hopeless, right?

What are the aspects of this situation I still have control over?

I know how to fly, so I can go wherever I want, whenever I want to go there. I’ve never had freedom like this before in my entire life, the freedom to just… decide to go somewhere, and then leave. That’s very liberating to think about.

Obviously, there are some limits: I can’t return to civilization or any of the places animals might live. The mere sight of me causes a hysteric panic, and if anyone from the armed forces sees me, they could attack on sight. I’ll have to stay far away from people, sticking to areas of Ellyntide that are remote and unpopulated.

The hunting problem is a much bigger issue, though. I was super fortunate there happened to be a free meal near the scene of my transformation. But even an entire gray bear only partially filled me up. And after all the flying I did last night, I’m feeling pretty peckish this morning. Tracing the scents of carrion isn’t going to be enough, I need to learn how to actually stalk ferals and kill them.

The other part of the problem is, even if I teach myself how to hunt, are bears and moose going to be enough to sustain me long-term? I’ll need a lot of food to survive, as big as I am. Over a long enough period, I think I could deplete a population of ferals living in an area. That bear we found was down in the weald looking for food to bulk up on before hibernating for the winter. So, in another month or two, I’ll lose an important source of food.

Oh, yeah! This is all assuming I won’t be chased around by airships trying to murder me every time I leave my nest.

A realization is dawning on me, putting it all together: I need to learn how to hunt. I need a population of food that can support a Lithan. I need to be somewhere I can feel safe.

I need help from others who are like me.

I need to fly to the Northern Continent and find other Lithans.

I pull my head out of my other wing in shock at this realization. Fly to the Northern Continent? Could that even work? Putting aside the dangers of flying such a long distance to get there, would other Lithans recognize me as one of their own? Would we even be able to communicate with each other?

It’s rumored that Lithans have their own language, but that’s just a rumor. Nobody knows for certain if it’s true. The holy book, which is where we get most of our knowledge about the Northern Continent, mentions nothing about Lithans receiving the gift of speech. Only those species that ascended were given this gift by Azurrel, The God of Creation.

“And yet here I am, using the gift of speech to talk to myself. If I’m not speaking the Goddess language right now, then what language is it?”

Was I speaking the Lithan tongue to those airwomen down in Rhl last night? Is that why nobody could understand me?

I don’t know… flying to the Northern Continent seems like a big gamble. What if I get there and the Lithans I find think that I’m an enemy? Or if they’re simply witless beasts that attack on sight? To say nothing of just how utterly different their continent is from ours. It may as well be a whole different world compared to Ellyntide.

Something Duncan said to me yesterday resurfaces in my head.

‘—Because they have no other choice. And neither do you or Sofl. You must sacrifice these parts of yourself for the good of the Kingdom.’

No other choice, huh? Is this what sacrificing myself for the Kingdom means? Somehow, I doubt getting turned into a Lithan and flying to the Northern Continent was one of the scenarios Duncan had in mind.

He had a point, though; if there’s any chance at all my plan could work, then for the Kingdom, and everyone I’ve ever known, I have to take it. I’ll fight and search my way through every nook and cranny of this moon. I’ll scream until the gods themselves are forced to pay attention to me. And I will not falter until I find a way to turn back to normal.

‘You’re our future, Princess.’

So, I will. I’ll be their Princess — their future.

I’ll fly to the Northern Continent.

I finish preening my coat of feathers and flatten them against myself. Outside my nest, the sky is stale, overcast, and gray. I step out and feel the chilled breeze from the north gusting over a nearby ridge, carrying with it the damp scents of bunchgrass and alpine lichens. It heralds the direction I’ll travel to reach my far-off destination.

I’m miffed I didn’t wake up to a stunning alpine sunrise, but this low cloud layer gives me an advantage. I can fly above the clouds, away from the prying eyes of airships as I make my way north. As long as I drop below the cloud deck every so often, I should be able to navigate by the ground features I recognize from maps.

I say goodbye to my temporary home and take off to the north from a craggy ridge, rising in altitude until I reach the bottom of the cloud base. A tinge of anxiousness grows in me about flying through clouds, but I quickly shake it off and continue ascending. The interior is dark, and my wings feel weighted against the hazy surroundings. But soon the light begins to increase until suddenly I break through the top layer of clouds like they were the crust on a warm loaf of bread. The sun warms my feathers, greeting me to a sight more terrific than any alpine sunrise.

Asha soars above the clouds as the sun rises. [https://www.sarlain.net/img/m1/ch21-1b.png]

Oh, wow.

I’ve been up in the clouds plenty of times before, but those experiences were all in the cramped compartment of an airship. A single, two-dimensional perspective behind the safety of a pane of glass. Nothing I’ve ever seen, ever felt, compares to this; the vastness of the unhindered sky, everywhere the light touches, all mine to experience. Total, unadulterated freedom.

SKREEERAA!

I can’t help but cry a giddy little call. This tremendous sight has raised my spirits considerably. Feeling rejuvenated, I catch the fair winds of an updraft and glide through the open sky with effortless grace.

A trip to the Northern Continent, alone, with no guarantee of safety or survival. I don’t know what troubles the skies ahead of me will bring, or if I’ll be successful. But I can at least cherish this indelible moment.