Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Ergh, why the hell am I in a forest?!" she yelled, voice raw and every word wrong in her ears.

Sound tore out of her throat and fell away like a stone. It was not the thin, breathy sound she expected. It was a guttural thing, a stamp of noise that vibrated in her ribs and startled her like a stranger speaking in her mouth. The world around her thrummed with that aftertaste of sound and with a migraine that planted a hot, pulsing nail behind her eyes. Light stabbed through the shadow of trees and made the blades of grass glitter like broken glass. The air was dry and tasted of cold metal and something else, a faint, sweet tang she could not name. Everything smelled sharp and foreign, and when she tried to breathe normally she found the ribs around her lungs moving in a rhythm that did not match the rhythm she remembered.

She tried to sit up. Her arms, if they could be called arms, folded beneath a weight that was not her. Muscles protested, bright and unfamiliar, every tendon singing with effort. The world tilted. The attempt ended with her falling backward and striking the back of her head against the grass. Pain flared, bright and white, and for a dizzy moment the sky spun like a wheel. She lay there, face pressed into the cold, brittle blades, and could feel the roughness of the earth against the skin of… not hands. The skin along her cheek was cool and scaly, tiny ridges that scraped with every shallow breath.

She forced her eyes open. The trees were pinpricks of sky through a high, green ceiling. Their trunks rose like spear shafts, and a cold wind threaded through, carrying with it a brittle scent of juniper and old leaves. Somewhere not far off a branch creaked, and something unseen moved with soft, wet steps. Fear flared, immediate and simple, and she tried to stand because the thing she felt in the grass hunting for her could not be allowed to approach. Standing was a bad idea.

Her body failed her in a way that made her bones feel like a child's toys. She toppled forward and hit the ground belly-first, and the impact sent a bouquet of small, stunned noises through her throat. A ripple of something like heat ran along her spine where long, thin shapes—wings, she realized with a strange, detached surprise—lay folded and heavy at her sides. She did not understand them. She had never had wings. She had never had anything like this before. Her face, when she dared to look, was not the pale, familiar oval she kept in mirrors. It was elongated, smooth, darker than night, and the surface caught and held the light like lacquer. Tiny, regular scales, like the overlapping tiles of someone else’s armor, stretched in patterns over her cheek and down her neck.

She blinked with lashes that were longer than before and felt, absurdly, that someone had painted her whole body black while she slept. Black like the inside of a cave, black like wet stone. She flexed where a hand should be and found three broad, padded digits tipped in blunt, sensible things that scratched in the dirt when she tried to curl them. They were strong. They were not hers.

A low sound escaped her chest. It shocked her because it was not a word. It was a series of grunts, an animal’s questioning. She tried to make it into speech, to call for help or to name what had happened. Her throat returned only more of those low, raw noises, like the throat of some huge bird or beast. Panic gnawed at her mouth. She began to laugh then, a small, sharp sound that tasted of iron and fear. The laugh shifted into a whine and then into another sound that felt honest and new.

She scanned the rest of herself in a panic that was half clinical curiosity, half childlike terror. Along the length of her back, away from the center of her vertebrae, ridges rose—thin, blade-like things that ended in smoother, finned edges. A tail unfolded with an awkward, ridiculous deliberateness when she gave it the faintest twitch. The tail was long and powerful, lined with two fans near the tip that caught in the grass. When she curled it once, the movement was fluid and precise, and the sensation of the muscles rolling beneath that black skin was both alien and intoxicating. On each side of her torso were membranes that uncurled slightly as the air brushed them—wings. They folded like enormous sleeping hands. The thought that she might have flown before flickered somewhere at the edges of her mind and then burned out because she did not have a memory to put beneath it. There were no memories of flight. There were no memories of scales or tails or of filling a sky with the beat of great wings.

Great. She thought bleakly that this was a terrible day to become something she did not know.

A shape in the undergrowth made her heart hammer. Wolves, she realized with a cold clarity, though she did not know the word. Creatures with slick coats, yellow eyes. They were moving with the smooth, synchronized hush of hunters. Her head turned of its own accord toward the sound, and the world tightened into a tunnel. Her muscles responded before her brain could tell them to, coiling and preparing in a way she had never practiced. She felt a surge of unfamiliar strength gather in the base of her limbs, the kind of strength that promised sudden, devastating speed.

She did not want to be fast. She wanted to be human again. She wanted her thin hands, the scar on her knuckle, the strange chipped tooth that made her smile crookedly. She wanted the ordinary wardrobe of clumsy mornings and cheap coffee. She wanted the voice that had once apologized too quickly and laughed too loud. Instead she had claws that dug into the soil when she scrabbled to her feet and wings that made her shoulder joints ache with their weight.

Tears stung the corners of her eyes. The thought surprised her. Her face, in the smear of morning light, had the hollow look of someone who has not slept properly for nights. She felt ridiculous for mourning the small human things as if they were people lost to the sea. Sorrow came soft and slow, a small, sore place she could press a hand to if hands were hers to press with. It was not a sob that broke from her. It was the tightness in her chest and the way her lips trembled around a sound she could not make proper.

She stepped forward and the grass whispered against scales. Each movement made new sounds, foreign and crisp. When she breathed, the air moved through nostrils set high on an elongated face, and the breath smelled of dust and iron. Her tongue flicked, tasting the sharpness of the morning and the scent of wolf in the distance. The taste made her stomach clench.

The wolves were closer now. She could hear the soft pad of paws and the low, questioning noises they made when deciding whether to press an advantage. There was an instinct—old, old and unnameable—that tightened her tail and lifted her head. Her chest swelled with a pressure she had no name for and then released in a sound that was partly a warning and partly a confession. It rolled out of her throat and shook the dew from the blades of grass.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. The forest held its breath with her. The wolves hesitated on the line between hunger and caution. She held herself like a statue, an unreadable silhouette of something new.

Her mind strove to catch at anything familiar, anything to anchor this spinning world. Her name rose like a bubble from the deep places of memory and popped away before it reached the surface. She tried to picture a mirror and instead saw the pattern of scales along her shoulder, the little notch at the edge of one ear, a smudge of dried blood near her mouth that might have been from the fall. She wanted answers. She wanted to weep until the headache eased. She wanted someone to explain. She wanted, absurdly and with an ache like homesickness, to be small and clumsy and ordinary again.

Instead she was black and vast and silent in a forest that smelled of pine and far-off rain. She was a creature that did not know its name, only that everything inside her had changed its shape. Confusion was hot and sharp in her chest, and beneath it, like a slow, stubborn ember, there sat a loneliness that had no voice.

She tasted the morning air, tasted the sharp promise of a sky she had never climbed, and for the first time since she woke, something else flickered in her. Not joy. Not yet. A small, fierce curiosity, the sort that keeps a creature alive when the rest of the world feels like a threat. It made her tilt her head, to study the way the light moved along her back, the way the dew beaded on a fin. It made her wonder, with the small hopefulness of someone who has lost everything and therefore can lose a little more, whether this body might teach her new ways of breathing and moving and being in the world.

The wolves moved again, and the forest exhaled. She lowered her head, muscles coiled like spring, and waited to see what this first strange morning would ask of her.

She panted until the breath came in ragged little pulls, each one hotter and harder than the last. Her sides heaved beneath the new skin, and the forest seemed to tilt and sway with every inhale. She had been running from that pack for what felt like an eternity. Muscles burned, but the burn was a clear, useful thing, and for a moment she welcomed it because it kept the other kind of hurt—the soft, hollow ache of being lost—from crowding in.

“This is it,” she muttered, though deciding was more like a flare of instinct than a thought.

She planted her feet and let everything inside her gather into one bright, terrible point. Anger came over her like a raw wind, a thing that sharpened and gave back a terrible clarity. Her vision bled red at the edges, the trees swimming in crimson light, and yet she saw more clearly than ever before. Every twig, every paw-step, every breath of wind moving through the grass—she could sense it all.

There. Rustling.

“Bingo,” she hissed, though the sound came out rougher, harsher, not quite her own voice anymore.

She leapt before she had even thought of leaping. Claws met fur with a wet, ripping sound. The first wolf yelped, high and sharp, but she was already upon it, jaws closing, teeth tearing. Blood filled her mouth like hot iron. Her mind reeled at the sensation, but her body moved without hesitation, slashing and biting until the whines stopped and the forest stilled.

She stood trembling, heart hammering, claws dripping red. For a breath she only stared at the creature she had torn apart. Then, to her own shock, laughter bubbled out of her throat, jagged and trembling.

“I… I actually killed it,” she whispered, half horrified, half amazed. “I killed a wolf with my bare—no, not bare—claws.”

Her chest swelled suddenly with a strange pressure, heat building like fire trapped beneath stone. Before she could question it, it burst from her throat in a dense, searing sphere that rocketed forward. The fireball struck the creeping shapes between the trees. A thunderous explosion rolled through the air. Wolves screamed, then silence, smoke curling in the aftermath.

She blinked at the scorched earth, panting. “Did I just… spit fire?” she asked herself, astonished. A grin split her face before she could stop it. “Holy hell. I actually breathed fire.”

She flexed her claws and looked down at the black sheen of her body, at the wings half-folded along her sides. The reality should have terrified her, yet something else slipped through—pride. “Wow. I sure am a lot better as… whatever I am,” she admitted, voice lowering. “Speaking of what I am… fire? Really? What kind of reptile shoots fire and flies?”

The question echoed stupidly in her own ears, and she gave a bitter laugh. “Dragons…? Do they even exist?”

For a moment she let herself imagine it—others like her, black shapes gliding across the sky, laughter in the wind instead of silence. The thought warmed her even as the loneliness crept in around the edges. “If I’m stuck like this, I really don’t want to be alone,” she whispered, tail curling tighter around the dirt.

She let her mind wander back to the life she had left behind. Faces. Names. The heavy rooms. The endless noise. The bitterness of being unseen. Her mouth curled into something small and wry. “I didn’t like it,” she said aloud, voice firmer. “Actually, I hated it.”

The words hung in the air like a confession.

“Maybe this isn’t so bad then. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise.” Her voice cracked a little, but her chest swelled anyway. She tested her new gift again, loosing another fireball at a moss-covered log. The blast rocked the earth and showered her with ash. She laughed breathlessly. “Perfect!”

Exhaustion finally pressed into her bones. She scrambled up into the branches of a sturdy tree, claws digging deep into the bark. Her tail coiled instinctively around the branch, her wings folding in around her like a cocoon. She shifted until the branch cradled her belly, and the forest below seemed very far away.

She chuckled softly. “Strange. This feels… natural. More natural than any bed I’ve ever slept in. How was lying flat on a mattress ever comfortable?”

The night folded around her. She let her eyes close, and for the first time in years, she felt a strange, careful peace settle over her. Her wings tucked tighter. Her breathing steadied. Sleep came creeping fast.

And as the silence claimed her, one thing slipped quietly beneath her dreams. Every hour she lingered in this new skin, the parts of her that were human—memories, voices, faces—slipped further and further away.

Chapter Text

I woke to the murmur of voices, low and steady, carrying across the trees like the rumble of distant thunder. They weren’t the rustling of wolves or the whisper of wind this time. No, these were deeper, deliberate. Human.

My eyes snapped open. The forest around me was thick with shadows and birdsong, yet that sound cut through everything. My heart thudded in my chest. Instinct clawed its way up my spine.

“Huh… wonder what that noise is,” I muttered, though my voice came out as a low growl that vibrated in my throat. I dropped silently from the branch where I had slept, my claws digging into the bark, and landed with a heavy thud that made the ground shiver. My tail swished like a blade behind me as I crouched low, head down, wings half-furled around me in defense. Teeth bared, every muscle poised, I crept forward.

The voices grew clearer, accompanied by another sound—deep, rhythmic footfalls and the faint scrape of claws on stone.

Then I saw them.

The sight tore the air from my lungs. I froze, eyes wide, and a sharp, involuntary shriek slipped from my throat. For the first time since my transformation, I wasn’t staring into empty forest or faceless wolves. For the first time… I saw another like me.

Through the tangle of shrubs stood a sleek, black shape that mirrored my own. My heart leapt so hard it hurt. His scales gleamed like polished obsidian beneath the daylight, each line of his body smooth, powerful, perfect. My tail twitched as I tried to breathe. He was… beautiful. Far more beautiful than anything I had ever seen.

Except—he wasn’t entirely like me. A strip of leather was strapped across his body, forming a saddle. A bright red tail-fin extended from the tip of his tail, mismatched against the rest of his sleek frame. And on his back… a boy. Who had armour? Weird. He looked in his teens, maybe 17?

My stomach lurched. A human. Riding him? Like he was nothing more than a horse?

The thought made something cold stir inside me. How dare they? To put reins and straps on a creature so striking, to sit atop him as though his power existed only to serve. I crouched lower, a hiss rising in my throat, but I swallowed it down.

I forced my eyes away from the rider and back to the dragon himself. The male’s muscles rippled with every step, his head held high, wings tucked close in a way that radiated strength. I had never seen another dragon before, never imagined I could, and the sudden rush of not being alone was almost too much. Yet tangled within it was something hotter, heavier. Attraction. My gaze kept lingering on him, tracing the curve of his neck, the gleam of his scales, the way his tail moved in smooth precision. My chest tightened. Instinct whispered that he was everything I was not yet, everything I longed to understand.

And then I noticed the others.

Four dragons walked beside him, each stranger than the last. A two-headed creature with green scales, constantly snapping at itself as though the two minds could never agree. Another covered in jagged plates like boulders glued to a brown body, heavy and lumbering. Then a spindly blue thing, its body awkward and birdlike, with spikes jutting in all directions—it almost made me laugh. And finally, a red dragon with a body that screamed “dragon” more than the rest, though its neck was far too thin, stretching out awkwardly as though it had no right to hold its own head up.

None of them compared to the black one. None of them glowed with that kind of presence.

My claws dug into the earth. I should have revealed myself. I should have spoken, asked, begged—anything. But fear held me back. The humans. The saddles. The smell of them made my lips curl. I had no love for Vikings. Even before this new life, I knew of them—violent, loud, greedy. And now, every instinct screamed louder. Do not trust them. Do not let them close.

So I chose silence. I trailed them from a distance, slipping through the shadows. My eyes never left the black dragon. My chest ached with the need to go to him, to prove I wasn’t alone. He was handsome, more than handsome. Something in him drew me like the pull of the moon to the sea.

Then it happened.

A careless step. The crack of a branch beneath my weight shattered the quiet.

The black dragon’s head snapped around instantly, his yellow-green eyes locking on me. They glowed like lanterns in the dark, piercing straight into mine. My heart stopped. My body froze. I could see myself reflected in his gaze—scales of deep violet-black, and eyes, my eyes, gleaming purple.

For one impossible moment, we stared.

Then he lunged.

I yelped and spun, instincts flooding me in a rush of panic. My paws tore at the ground as I bolted, trees whipping past me in a blur. My chest heaved, my wings flared instinctively for balance. Behind me, I heard his pursuit—the thunder of his claws, the snap of branches. His growl rolled like a storm.

The human’s voice echoed, strained with confusion. “What are you chasing, bud?!”

Bud. They called him bud. As if he were a pet.

The thought stung, twisted. But I couldn’t dwell on it. My lungs burned, my legs screamed. Somewhere deep in my chest, instinct roared. Wings. Use them.

And I did.

My body moved before thought. I threw my wings wide, powerful muscles unfurling, and with one tremendous beat I was airborne. The wind caught me and hurled me upward, trees shrinking beneath my claws. The ground fell away, and I was flying.

The black dragon skidded to a halt below, staring up with a cry that tore through the forest. A sound both furious and desperate. He couldn’t follow. His wings twitched, one dragging against the ground as though broken. My chest clenched, but my instincts screamed louder—flee!

So I fled.

The boy’s voice called again, higher now, panic in it. “What was that?! Was that another—” He never finished, too small against the sky to matter.

I darted higher, away from their island, away from the voices of men, away from the gleam of saddles and reins.

My heart was still racing, but relief flooded me, too. Relief, and regret. I longed to turn back, to look once more at the black dragon with eyes that had held me still. But I couldn’t. Humans ruined everything. No amount of beauty, no amount of attraction, could silence the instincts screaming that I would rather burn than let myself fall into their hands.

“Great,” I muttered bitterly as the sea opened wide beneath me. “Can I get one break?”

The wind swallowed my words, but I spoke them anyway. My wings carried me far from the island, far from him, but the ache of leaving him behind gnawed in my chest long after the land was a memory.

The wind was sharp against my wings as I soared across the open ocean, the salty air filling my lungs in a way that felt strangely natural, like I had always belonged up here. Still, my thoughts were tangled in knots, circling back again and again to that black dragon with the glowing eyes. The memory of him staring at me, as if he could see through my very soul, made my chest ache with a strange pull I couldn’t explain. Part fear, part… something else. Something warm. Something I hadn’t felt in my human life.

I tried to shake it off with a growl, but it lingered like a thorn in my heart.

And in my distraction, I failed to notice the danger below.

The ocean’s surface glittered with light, but beneath that shine lurked shapes—shapes of ships, massive and bristling with weapons. Rows upon rows of sharpened spears, chains, nets, harpoons… all gleaming with cruel intent. My stomach dropped.

I barely had time to hiss before something whistled through the air.

Pain. White-hot, searing pain exploded along my side as a heavy, barbed harpoon slammed into my scales. The force ripped through me, tearing the wind from my wings. My cry tore from my throat in a sound that was no longer human, no longer anything I could control—it was the scream of a beast in agony.

The weight of the weapon dragged me down. My wings faltered. I thrashed, desperate, but my body betrayed me. The world spun violently as I plummeted, helpless, into the waiting deck of one of the ships.

The impact shattered everything. Wood splintered beneath me, men shouted, chains rattled. I felt blood dripping warm down my scales, heard the scramble of boots as the humans rushed toward me. My vision blurred, darkness seeping into the edges, but in that haze I caught the reek of tar, smoke, and steel. The smell of war. The smell of death.

My instincts screamed at me to fight, to rise, to claw and burn and tear them apart. But my body wouldn’t obey. My limbs shook, wings pinned awkwardly beneath me, my tail twitching uselessly. The agony of the harpoon tore through every nerve, dragging me deeper into weakness.

I thought of that black dragon again, of the strange safety I’d felt staring into his eyes. For a heartbeat, I longed for him to be here, to drive these humans away, to stand over me and snarl until the world itself trembled. But he wasn’t here. No one was.

And the last thought before the darkness claimed me was bitter and sharp.

So this is it. My first day as… whatever I am. And already, I’ve fallen into the hands of the very creatures I swore I’d never let near me.

The world tilted. My breath shuddered. Then everything went black...

Chapter Text

I stare out at the sunset, the sky bleeding orange and bruised purple, and the bars around me taste of cold iron in the dying light. The cage rocks with the slow motion of the ship beneath me. Salt dust coats my scales like a fine, gritty ash. Time slips here differently. Seasons fold over one another and I keep counting them by the scars on my flank and the number of times I have tried to bend bars with my snout.

It has been cycles, enough to blur months into one long ache. I am tired all the way through. Resignation lives in my bones now. I used to think I would claw my way out of anything. Now I curl, tail wrapped around my haunches, and let the world press flat against me. The sky is pretty tonight. The colors stain my scales. I do not bother to care much which color is which.

Language has become a costume I wear to keep from being eaten alive. After three years of living among kins I learned to shape my mouth the way they expect, to spit their names and sounds without stumbling. I learned their words until I could wear them smooth like a hide. Now those words sit in me like old feathers, useful but not me. It is easier to growl and snarl and let the simple sounds do the work. Names are windows. Names are the easiest things to remember.

So yes, I am an everyday dragon now. I eat what they give me if they give me anything at all. I sleep when I can. I pretend to listen when they talk about spoils and suns and swords. I have learned what a human face looks like when it looks at me and decides whether I am worth a coin. Mostly they do not keep looking for long.

I learned something else too. Time is not straight. It curls. I have been sent back, twisted into a world of longboats and raw iron and songs that smell like old blood. That used to bother me. It used to make me stomp and rage and try to bite the sky itself. Now it is another fact. It sits next to the fact that I am black and I am large and my voice is a low thing that men do not always want to hear.

Important things have slipped away quietly, like leaves down a river. I remember that I was once human. I remember the shape of my hand and the small bad tooth I used to have and a city that smelled like frying oil and too many people. But those memories feel thick and far. They do not prick me like they used to. I could try to fetch them, hold them up to the light, but they crumble and fall back into a pile of unbothered ash. There is a relief in that. Relief that tastes a little like guilt and a lot like freedom.

I have tried to run. I have tried to wedge my head between bars and push and press until my nose bled and the metal bent like a promise. I have torn at ropes and launched myself from decks and tasted sea on the wind so sharp I thought it would crack me open. Each time they found me, dragged me back, and called me names. They laughed like it was sport. That is how I learned the faces of mercy here are only ways to lead a beast to the slaughter.

This last time I was captured by a man named Erik. He smells of smoke and sour bread and a cold that does not belong to the sun. He has a slow nod and fingers that enjoy the feel of rope. They have not fed me properly in two weeks. Hunger hollows my gut into a low hollow that rattles when I breathe. It makes me weak. That is how they catch me. Weakness is a smell they can track.

I curl into myself and the bars press into my shoulders, leaving pale lines where metal bites. I close my eyes and let the memory of the sky fill me, the stretch of it, the long wind that used to sing between my wings. Even that memory is frayed now, like a tapestry that has been folded and unfolded too many times. I do not reach for who I was. Why would I? The person I left behind was small, crowded, always apologizing. There is a faraway cruelty in remembering how easy it was to be ignored. I do not miss those cramped rooms. I do not miss the way people spoke over me. I love the wide cold sky more than I miss their faces.

I hate them. The word sits heavy and hot in my chest. Not a passing dislike. Not a soft resentment. Hate. It curls and wraps around everything they touch. I do not forgive them for the iron, for the straps, for the way they think to put a saddle across a back that could have been a wing. I do not forgive them for the nets and the harpoons that pierce like thoughtless questions. I will not give them the comfort of my forgiveness.

Personality changes are quiet things. Once I was restless and opinionated, a woman who would rail at bad coffee and argue about little things until she felt heard. Now my thoughts are blunt and economical. I am less interested in chatter. I speak only when a word will move a thing I want moved. I hoard my patience like a winter's fat. I laugh, rarely, but when I do it is sharp and quick and sometimes surprised that my mouth still remembers the shape of human mirth. I am less afraid. I am more direct. I am more of my own tooth and claw.

There are times when the human inside pokes at the surface. Sometimes at night, when the moon is a sliver and the deck creaks like a tired thighbone, a picture will come—a small kitchen, a window with cracked paint, a face that I cannot quite name. My throat tightens and for a breath I am almost tender. Then the picture blinks out like a candle snuffed. The tenderness cools into something practical. I will not ruin myself for what I had. The cost was too high.

I let the sun warm my side and it soothes me in ways nothing else does. Scales heat up like stolen coins. Heat makes me think of flight and of speed and of the first time I felt wind under my chest. I close my eyes and feel the sound of men talking below decks, their words tumbling up through the planks like small stones. They make me small and furious at the same time. The hate is a constant rhythm now. It keeps me honest.

Sometimes I say their names aloud, tasting them like curses. “Erik,” I whisper to the bars. “Drago. Bludthirst? Drago Bludfirst?” The sound rolls around my throat and leaves me empty. Names are talismans. I would rather they break than bind me. I have given up wrestling for answers. Questions take energy I do not have.

I have accepted this life as selling piece and lamp and lesson. I am clever in ways I did not need to be before. I can pick a lock with a talon, loosen a knot with a careful twist of my tail. I observe. I wait. I conserve. I do not make grand plans anymore because plans carry hope and hope makes flesh ache.

At night I dream not of windows but of open air, and when I wake my first thought is always the same: the sea, wide as breath. Then the second thought comes in, softer: the black dragon with the eyes like lanterns. I wonder about him. I wonder if he remembers me or if I am only a shadow in the corner of his mind. Thinking of him is a dangerous thing because it loosens the tether I have wrapped so tight around myself. It makes me small and wanting and human in a way that surprises me. I do not let myself linger there long.

I have given up on a lot, but not on the sky. Not on teeth and the raw, bright pleasure of flame. Those things are mine. They are honest. They do not look at my hands and decide whether I am useful. They do not promise. They do not lie.

I curl tighter until my tail thumps once against the bars, a soft tap that sounds like a clock wound down. The ship rocks. The sunset leaks away. Somewhere below someone laughs and calls a name I do not bother to learn.

I close my eyes and let the dark come. I am half asleep when one clear thought, small and definite, finds me.

I do not want to be human again. Not really. Not the same. If some fragment of that life survives, it is a cold coin I keep for dull times. Mostly I have made myself into something else, something hard and black and warm under the sun. The rest is practice.

I breathe slow, dragon slow, and for once the surrender tastes like peace.

Words swirled around me, gasps and mutters tangled with the creak of wood and the crash of waves.

"I'm so hungry…" I whispered, though it barely came out at all. Hunger was the only thought left. Two weeks without food, nothing but weakness in my bones. Every breath rattled through me like dry leaves.

The ship shuddered beneath me. Shouts rang out above, sharper now, different. Another capture. I didn’t know why humans fought over these floating cages, but they always did.

I forced my eyes open. The world swam, my vision smeared and broken, faces nothing more than shifting shadows. But one shape held steady through the blur—a dark figure, sleek, black, moving with a power I recognized somewhere deep in my chest.

A broken groan slipped past my jaws. “F… foood… H-hellp…”

Then the weight of exhaustion pulled me under, and the dark closed in.

The first thing she felt was strange. No sharp, freezing bite of iron bars against her scales, no chains pulling at her limbs. Instead, there was wood beneath her, rough but warmer, softer than the cold bite of metal she had known for so long.