CASIMIRA
dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah
The river was not a place she frequented, but she had followed the path of it south under the cover of night. She had always enjoyed the illusion of peace that nightfall brought. The land grew quiet, as though the velvet sky above could wrap them in a hushed protection. When the stars glittered it was easy to forget that the world was far from perfect. It was easy to forget that her own universe had been spun on its axis, and she was still struggling to right herself.
Being killed and being reborn did not feel like a fresh start. It felt like a broken, incomplete story. Like the cruelest of interruptions that drug her back to the beginning.
It’s been not quite three years since she was reborn, but she still has never been back to Tephra. Partially because she is afraid. She is afraid that it still bears scars from the war. She is afraid that the smell of smoke from the volcano will welcome back memories that she is doing her best to suppress – memories that she only faces in her nightmares. And, irrationally, she is afraid that the dragon-stallion she had fought would still be there, waiting for her. The logical part of her mind cannot convince herself that that is unlikely. Surely, he had witnessed the star-studded mare shattering her into diamond-scaled dust. She was dead as far as nearly everyone was concerned, and who’s to say he would even recognize her in her equine form?
She has avoided her dragon form since that day. Between the war, and the fight with the xenomorphs, being a vibrantly white dragon with sharp blue eyes was just as good as putting a target on her back. She had not set out to make enemies in her life, and somehow she had.
And so now, as she begins to wind her way back up the riverbank in the warmth of the sun, it is under the unassuming guise of a horse. Still strikingly white – still watching the world with crystal blue eyes. But, she did not garner as much attention as she would have.
She almost doesn’t see him until it’s too late, even though he is not exactly hiding. He is close enough to the edge of the bank that she could have slipped past unnoticed, as she steps herself carefully in the dappled light of the trees that grow here. She wasn’t much for conversation regardless, but a sideways glance allows her eyes to focus on the draconic wings draped lazily across his sides. Immediately she can feel her heart freeze, before resuming at a quick, nervous pace. When she sees the delicate plumes of smoke that twist through the air on an exhale, she begins to back away before he can see her.
The sound of a dry, brittle stick snapping beneath the weight of her hooves may as well have been a grenade going off as far as she is concerned, and she cannot control the way the sudden adrenaline and fear causes a ridge of reptilian-spines to grow along her back, chased by an armor of scales all across her body. It is all she can do to keep from shifting entirely, the ice-blue of her eyes trapped on his resting form, unblinking.
@[Santana]