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There are certain things you don’t tell people. There are rules and decorum to maintain. There is a reason polite society is called as such.
Hamid is well aware of his roots. Perhaps his current profession and the company he keeps did not call for the specific level of propriety he insisted on maintaining, but Hamid is anything but unintelligent. Hamid knows where he comes from. He knows who he used to be, even if nowadays he doesn’t quite feel like that younger Hamid matches up with who he is now. The world will always see him a certain way, and therefore, Hamid will always be beholden to the role of a representative. The world will never know him deeper than surface level, but it will know his name and the importance of it. So by extension, every single thing he has done or will do will reflect on his family, whether good or bad. Maybe it is the gods’ way of balancing out his privilege, to have everything he does scrutinized through a looking glass. To know that we will always be held to certain expectations would be a hilarious, karmic joke.
Hamid quickly discovered, much to his dismay, that this balancing act of etiquette is even more precarious to maintain with his current traveling companions. With lords and ladies, rich merchants, nobility, politicians, even the press it is so easy to tell them exactly what they want to hear. They are as predictable as a moth drawn to a flame. Things are very different when you know you hold the life of somebody in your hands, and they, in turn, hold yours. Any possible sign of weakness, of being not quite up to snuff, would allow a creeping seed of doubt to take root in their minds. Doubt like that could get some, or all, of them killed.
It is for this reason that Hamid began keeping secrets. He already knew he was the weakest link in their company, hardly what anyone would call battle hardened and not at all accustomed to the mercenary lifestyle. Everyone around him is just so very capable. Tuned in body and mind to the realities of this job. Meanwhile, Hamid was only just starting to notice the youth starting to fade away from his features. He hardly had a chance to miss its absence when it was so quickly replaced by something else.
The secrets started out small. Little white lies of dismissal that tumbled so easily from Hamid’s lips with the practiced ease of someone well accustomed to the art of rug sweeping. Your hands manifesting into claws and your skin developing scales are not something to be talked about, let alone acknowledged. It does not matter if every time it happens his nail beds split into shards to make room for talons and he could feel his bones shifting and rearranging themselves beneath his skin and the scales on his skin itched and burned as they appeared and they restricted his movement by pulling his skin taut. It does not matter. It will not matter. Hamid refuses to let it matter. There is nothing that will stop him from being there to help his friends.
So things continued on in this manner for a time. A moment of panic or anger, blood under his fingernails, sneaking a health potion, never talking about it. He knows they know. He sees the looks of concern on his friends’ faces. But everything was fine, stable, if so very fragile. This tense silence would not last forever, Hamid knew. At some point things would progress beyond his control. A mistake he made that would cost somewhere between too much and everything was on the horizon. Maybe it would be his hands fumbling through somatic components as they were slicked with blood. Or maybe a fatal moment of hesitation caused by the pain of his bones breaking and reforming under his skin. Or maybe, maybe, he would lose his himself forever to whatever the ultimate result of these changes will be. But for now, there was a sick thrill in the power it gave him, and it would last as long as it was never acknowledged.
Hamid could release the fire that burned inside him directly at anything that threatened those he loved, and if the fire burned his throat and lips on its way out, it was decidedly worth it.