CASIMIRA
dragon-shifting daughter of ashhal and ryatah
She is still standing there, rigid and unmoving, when he begins to shift. She has never seen it happen, it is something that she has only felt. She does not come from a family of dragons – she was an anomaly, and she had to navigate this strange part of herself on her own.
The way he does it seems so effortless, as though he melts from a dragon back into a horse. She doesn’t know if it is so easy for her. Her shifting was always triggered by fear and anger; it was a rapid and almost explosive change, one that left her mind black and void of anything but a predatory drive. Her dragon, it seems, is not like his. It feels like an entirely separate part of her, one that is disconnected from her heart and her soul; one that does things that she would never knowingly do.
He asks her if she is alright, and she can feel her cheeks flush hot with shame. “I’m fine,” she lies to him, the way she does to everyone when they ask her that. She hates when she wears her fear so plainly on her face; she hates when the scales armor her skin without her asking them to, because she hates anything that is beyond her control.
And maybe she hates it just a little bit more when she faces someone that can control what she cannot.
He doesn’t move, and she doesn’t either. She does not move closer, nor does she back away. The spines and scales do not recede, but some of the tension eases from her taut muscles. She watches him with her ice blue eyes, and her fear is replaced by curiosity. “How do you do it?” She asks, skipping over introductions. “How do you make it look so easy? Being a dragon.” She tacks on the last part as a half-way explanation of what she is asking, but she does not reveal much else. Maybe he already knew that she was like him. Maybe he didn’t know all the way, but she is sure the spines and the scales and the way the pupils of her eyes sometimes narrow into reptilian slits are a give away that they are at least, a little bit, some of the same.
@[Santana]