Strange Visions

"I haven't the slightest idea how I got here," he said honestly. He'd never been much of a liar. "I... may have gone a bit overboard, last thing I remember, but then I was just.... here."

Even as his new companion, Nicolas, began to relax, Coete remained awkwardly stiff. The emptiness and dully stabbing pain that had been born so shortly before his transportation here were far too fresh to fade away quite yet, and so many little things reminded him of what was lost, of who was lost.

....Dragon? Coete was distracted from his dark musings enough to run his hands over the ridges and bumps he was growing. "I guess," he hesitantly agreed. "My teacher might have known, but me... I don't know." He sighed heavily, face twisted from simply mentioning Lest. "I suppose I'll find out when its done."

@"Thoth"

@"Thoth"

Coete was entirely unaware of the misunderstanding; when he said 'overboard,' he had been referring to his major mental break and introduction of a minor local ice age and the construction of a new glacier. Being unaware of the break in communication, though, he continued on blithely.

"Why would I have a concussion? I don't remember falling." Well, maybe to his knees. Thinking about it made his heart ache too much, really. "The 'fogginess' is more of a hole in logic. I simply cannot think of a way for me to have travelled here."

Telling him that he looked like a dragon really didn't help Coete much. He knew the shape of a dragon, or at least one particular pollen dragon, but all he could say for himself was that his shape was more human than dragon. His height certainly was.

The summary of the transition was as accurate as he knew his own understanding to be, at least. "Yes. More powerful magic in particular, although the small-scale magic I use nearly constantly now probably has some effect as well."

@"Thoth"

.........."Boat? What are you talking about?" Now Coete was really confused. Was there some sort of major language error? Did boat mean something than a sea-faring vessel where Nicolas was from?

He rubbed his head. At any rate, he didn't seem to have any particular bruises or injuries that would explain a concussion, and anyway he was fairly sure he didn't have a concussion. He had just been there and now he was here.

"Something like that," Coete agreed. He'd never really kept track of his age, after all. What would the point have been? "It's been less than a year anyway. Since I started using magic." What he wouldn't give for Lest to see him using magic properly this winter...

@"Thoth"

.............

"Overboard as in overdid. Overextended. Used too much magic. Wore myself out. There were no literal boats involved. The nearest boat was probably a few thousand kilometres away." This was not the time or place to be thinking about the geography of his homeworld - a subject that desperately appreciated eyesight.

A student? Coete knew of schools, but they were for more elevated youth than kennelboys of foreign ex-slave descent. Besides, reading and writing wouldn't exactly serve him all that well.

"I had been a student, though not in a school, at least before... other things intervened. I was more recently a soldier." Of sorts. He wore the uniform and followed the schedule, but orders were strange when mages were involved. "Are you a student of anything?"

@"Thoth"

Coete knew a huff when he heard one; he was blind, not either deaf or clueless. Well, he'd been incredible naïve, once upon a dreamy time. Before reality had crashed in with its frozen, fragile glory to rip his heart and soul into shreds over and over and over.

The thought that they had both been soldiers was... strange. Difficult to process, in a way. Coete was used to there being the side he fought with and the side that fought to strike back against a cruel, idiotic prince's insults. He had never really considered anyone an enemy, not as a nation. He was too aware of his birth nation's crown prince's failings to really blame someone else for war.

He didn't know how Nicolas perceived conflicts. He didn't know if he was used to there being a true "them." Honestly, Coete shared more blood with those he had directly fought against than those he had fought to protect.

"It's the only thing I can think of. I was simply there, and now I am here. I don't need to see this place to know it's impossibly different."