CASIMIRA
dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah
There had been a time when she had been bold. When she never would have imagined that someday in the future she would be standing here warily eyeing someone as they approached her rather than facing them, audacious and fearless. There had been a time when she was not afraid of her dragon form, even though she did not fully understand it. Naively, she had been so eager to master that skill. She can remember so vividly sneaking away from her twin brother to practice her shifting, and how she had enjoyed taunting him with it once she had become proficient. It was something he didn’t have – and she had been sure to flaunt it, laughing and teasing as scales rippled across her skin.
That time felt so long ago, and truthfully, it was a lifetime ago. And now, she was alive again and struggling against the current, trying to learn to live with the knowledge of the violence she was capable of.
It had been easy to keep the urges at bay at first. It had been easy to ignore the flickers of rage that swam in her veins whenever she was in her dragon form, but it wasn’t as easy now. Like a dam that had finally broken it was impossible to rein in the raging waters once they had been released, and when she looked into the light-brown eyes of the boy before her she could feel the ice-pricks of fear racing up her spine when she imagined all the what ifs. She has always been able to control her shifting – but she also used to not get angry as a dragon. She didn’t used to attack others, she didn’t use to black-out and turn into something – someone – else entirely.
She is afraid that someday even the shifting itself will be beyond her control.
She watches him, her tongue suddenly feeling too heavy to make words as she works to steady her quickening pulse. She wouldn’t hurt him; she had no reason to, and he wasn’t going to give her one. She tells herself this over and over as he walks closer, a mantra that she is willing herself to believe. The breeze twists and lifts a lengthy veil of forelock from her eyes – those pale blue eyes that are still locked intensely with his. The thundering heartbeat in her ears nearly drowns out his words, and her ribs suddenly still when in her anxiety she forgets to breathe. But the course deepness of his voice reaches through the fog, and when she finally blinks, the breath she had been holding exhales softly between her pale lips.
“Casimira,” she answers his name with her own, the syllables of it rolling easily from a mouth that previously had been frozen in fear. “I’m...I’m alright.” With a smile she attempts to appear more convincing than she feels, and surely more than she sounds. It would be impossible to explain to him all the ways that she wasn’t alright, and it was hardly a conversation she wanted to have with a perfect stranger. Her eyes move past his face and to the places where sweat had begun to dry on his neck, and then to the feathers of his wings that shift in the warmth of the spring wind. “You look like you’ve been traveling for awhile. Are you not from here?” She feels foolish almost immediately for asking, knowing how stupid she must sound, but at the same time she is too desperate to deflect the attention away from herself to care.