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A splitting pain runs down her spine. It erupts outwards to every inch of her body, screaming out. She gasps and drops, grabbing at her own body. She doesn’t understand. She can’t figure out what’s happening.
The confusion is gone quickly, replaced by rage. Her vision, blurry, is stained bright red. Her teeth grit, her hands clench. She can’t focus, but she smells the blood of the battle around her, and the rage grows.
Her skin seems to shift, bubbling and pulling as something expands outwards. Her bones move, her muscles grow. It’s similar to when she transforms, except it hurts. It hurts so much, and there’s none of the control that she’s used to. It’s gone in the face of the growing fury and even though her head feels like it’s splitting open, she can’t find it in her to care.
She hears voices shouting. She thinks it’s her name their calling, but she ignores it. She is large now, too large to concern herself with that as she towers over the battlefield. The fighting seems to have stopped in the face of her anger, as if her fury has called all the attention to her. Good. She welcomes it.
On the battlefield stained with her comrades’ blood she throws her head back, and the dragon roars.
When Selkie wakes, her head throbs in protest. She groans and lifts her hand to shade herself from the light, but the pain doesn’t subside. She feels like she was run over by a horse and with Avel around, it wouldn’t surprise her if it was true.
“Selkie!” She pulls her hand away to see her brother running to her side. Tears stain Kana’s cheeks and though her instincts scream at her to jump to her brother’s side, she can’t find the strength in her to move. She settles for reaching a hand out and tangling it in his mess of hair. He sobs in relief anyway, and crawls in the bed to sit next to her. “Are you feeling alright?”
She feels anything but, but she doesn’t have it in her to admit that to him. “I’m okay.” She mumbles, wincing at her cracked throat. Kana immediately hands her a glass of water from a side table nearby, and she thanks him before taking a sip. “What happened?”
They’re in their parents’ treehouse, lying in their parents’ bed. While the children weren’t banned from it, it was unusual to be there without them, and Selkie couldn’t imagine it had changed for a happy reason. Kana confirmed her suspicions when he hesitated, eyes dropping before returning to meet her gaze. “You...do you remember anything?”
She frowned. Battle. She remembered they were in a battle. It wasn’t anything special; another batch of Faceless sent after them by Nohr. But...but there had been more than usual. Too many in fact, and though they tried to fight them, people were starting to fall and...
Pain. Anger. A dragon.
Selkie didn’t realize she was shaking until something was pushed into her hands. “Here, you gotta hold this or you might...you might hurt again!” Kana told her. She clasped her hand around the object before opening them again to see what it was. Her eyes widened.
“Kana...this is-”
“A dragonstone.” Kana confirmed, frowning at said stone. “Aunty Azura went and found one when she heard what happened...Mama was scared, so she said to make sure you got it as soon as you wake up. She didn’t want you...turning again.”
A dragonstone. Selkie gawked at it for a moment, rolling it around in her palm. It was similar to her own beaststone. She could feel the same kind of energy from it, but different. It felt stronger with this stone, an ancient kind of power. “But...but I thought I couldn’t...”
“Mama thought so too!” Kana said. He watched the stone as well. “So did Papa. They said I turned when I was real young, and Mama because of her Mama, so they said they thought you couldn’t turn into a dragon.”
She hadn’t. She had always been able to turn into her fox form, even when she was young. It was instinctive, and so she assumed turning into a dragon was too. She used to be jealous, she mused, that Kana and Mama shared something she could never. But Kana couldn’t turn into a fox either, so she had just thought that was how things were. She never imagined...
“Where are they?” She asked, looking back to Kana. “Mama and Papa?”
Kana frowned, eyes flicking over to the door. “Papa...Papa was really mad about what happened. He thought Mama should’ve been more careful about you. That we should’ve known.” He watched the door a little longer. They must have left, she realized, not wanting to argue in front of their young son. “I’ve never seen Papa so mad.”
Selkie sighed. She shifted before opening her arms wide. Kana immediately moved forward, settling himself comfortably against her chest. She wrapped her arms around him, fingers running through his hair as she gently shushed her sniffling brother. The two stayed like that for a long time, comfortable in the silence of each other’s company. Slowly, Kana lifted his head to look at his sister. “Are you okay?”
She was quiet. Finally, she sighed again. “It was scary.” She admitted. “You’re really brave, you know? Handling something like that.”
Kana grinned at her and returned his head to rest on her chest. “I love you, sis.” He mumbled quietly.
She smiled and pressed a kiss against the top of his head. “I love you too.”