Changes

It is September, 1754. You notice that your roommate, Anna, has had a huge improvement in her mood recently. You ask her about it. She just smiles and says she got some good news, without elaboration. You don't press.

It is December, 1754. Anna grabs a tray of cookies out of the oven with her bare hands, looks at you, and yelps in pain. The delay is almost cartoonish, and you resist the urge to laugh at the absurdity of it. She declines your help with the burn. You think nothing of it. She's always been independent like that.

It is January, 1755. Your roommate wears reading glasses now. She says that her eyesight has been changing as she gets older. You wonder if that'll happen to you some day. Your vision has been fine, but everyone in your family wears glasses or contacts.

It is June, 1755. There's something in the news about some breakthrough with shapeshifting magic. You hope it goes well for them. You briefly wonder what it would be like to be a dragon, and you experience a flash of dread when you realize you like that idea.

It is July, 1755. You're pretty sure you'd like to bond, but you'd rather not leave your life here behind, and the laws about shapeshifters here make that difficult. You're also pretty sure that Anna's a draconic, now that you know what to look for. She doesn't seem to notice the temperature outside, nor does she consistently remember to turn on the lights, and she only wears her glasses for reading. You wonder how to bring up the topic. You're friendly, but not friends like that. You figure you'd already have had that discussion if you were.

It is early August, 1755. You have learned how to see through the illusion spell that disguises Anna's slitted eyes. They're yellow and distinctly nonhuman, the iris large enough to completely obscure her sclera. She notices you staring. You tell her. The two of you talk about it. You find out that she hasn't been a draconic for very long. Her one-year anniversary is coming up, and you both know what that means: she'll be able to shift soon. She doesn't tell you what her species is. She says she wants it to be a surprise.

It is late August, 1755. You hear a shout from the kitchen. Anna can shift now. She shows you, in the woods away from the apartment floor that can't take her weight. She's beautiful, a rock-colored, gold-flecked hybrid of Goldback and Sand Wraith. You know, at that moment, that it's what you want too. You ask. It's spur of the moment. Bonding is deeply personal. But it leaves your lips anyway. She doesn't respond with words— she can't, not like this, not that you could hear. Instead, she pushes her nose into your hand, scales on skin. There's a stinging snap, like static electricity but deeper, and you both know what just happened.

It is September, 1755. You and Anna are dating now. You decide to start learning a new language. You choose Norse, for obvious reasons. The bond will make learning easier, at least for six months or so. You're not sure if you plan to leave the country or not. You feel like it might be weird to try and emigrate after you've bonded but before you can shift. Anna, for her part, refuses to leave without you. You're bonded now, and that means something beyond the physical changes you'll experience. You ask about her bond partner, who is apparently just someone she met on the internet. They aren't close, not out of some falling out, but simply because Anna wanted a specific shape and look, and they were happy to share. She introduces you in a chat room. The two of you bonding within minutes of her being able to shift is celebrated, and you experience an emotion you're not sure you've ever felt before.

It is October, 1755. You can hear Anna talk when she's in her scales, now. Dragonspeech is strange, soundless sound that carries through walls and wind. She finally gets a harness together, and you fly for the first time, riding her at sunset when you can still see and anyone down below is unlikely to be looking up. The longing gets better, and also worse at the same time. You'll be up here under your own power soon enough, but ten months feels like a lifetime right now.

It is December, 1755. By sheer coincidence, you do the same thing Anna did: you grab a tray of cookies out of the oven with your bare hand. Your first thought is that the oven didn't heat up, but then you realize the cookies are done, and joy floods through you. You spend the rest of the day cautiously touching heating elements and flames with your bare skin. You let Anna dribble some of her fire breath out onto your palm: molten glass, gooey like caramel and pleasantly warm.

It is January, 1756. You realize one of the reasons you are so eager to have your own scales: dragons have no sexual dimorphism. You're nonbinary now. You would have wondered how to change you human presentation, but it sounds like that big shapeshifting breakthrough last year might help change it for you. Anna is spending more time in her scales, and you worry about what will happen if someone sees her. The law is none too kind to shapeshifters here.

It is February, 1756. You wake up to the worst headache of your life, as if someone has grabbed your brain and twisted. There is no way to treat the pain, and you don't want to. Your eyes are coming in; the pain is the magic forcing your optic nerve to grow. Four hours later, your vision clears, and you can see. You rush to the mirror and watch your slitted pupils widen with shock and joy, and then realize that you never turned on the light. You can see, even in near-total darkness. Your infrared comes in only minutes later, and you spend the rest of the day watching birds with your girlfriend, almost quivering with excitement with how much detail you can see from so far away.

It is March, 1756. You and Anna are accosted by three men who see through the illusion that hides your true eyes. She puts them in the hospital, but they've seen your face. Your indecision is resolved for you, and the two of you flee the country, skimming over the treetops to cross the border into the HRE, and then Free Copenhagen. You fail to resist the urge to joke about the anarchist border checkpoint, and the man at the kiosk patiently explains that the checkpoint is here because people keep coming here, and that you were always welcome to ignore it. You apologize, and he gives the two of you directions to a place to stay and eat.

It is April, 1756. You've noticed that you eat a lot more than you used to. It's normal. Your other body is growing somewhere in an extradimensional pocket, and it needs the calories. You do some reading on exactly what those dimensions are, and learn that while you exist in x, y, z, and a little bit of t, your other form is slightly up and over in v and u. You're not sure what happened to w. You wonder if you should have taken Thaumaturgy 2 instead of Statistics your senior year.

It is May, 1756. You have a new, more permanent home and a new job on a construction crew. You've become increasingly accustomed to cuddling up against Anna's scales each evening, but you'd much rather be the big spoon. Or at least an equally-sized spoon; your dragon form will be an near-perfect duplicate of hers. You worry about being a burden at work, but the rest of the crew doesn't mind your lack of wings. Your one-year anniversary remains a lifetime away.

It is July, 1756. You curse the fact that you took statistics and know exactly what the distribution of bonding progress looks like. Mean time to development of shifting: one solar year. Standard deviation: five point eight days. Probability that you will be able to shift before the end of the month: one in three point four million. Waiting feels like death.

It is August, 1756. You notice halfway through breakfast that there's a new little bump sitting in the back of your mind, and you nearly choke on your eggs. You manage to get far enough away from the table to not break it when you shift for the first time. You feel your body twist, and suddenly you are shaped much differently. For the first time in your life, you feel right. You're eager to show everyone you know, but your coworkers force you to take the week off to go exploring. Anna takes you north, over the border to the Union, and you spend the week in your scales, soaring over snowcapped mountains and tearing down valleys.

It is September, 1756. The first Hodgson rituals become available to the general public. You're the general public. You see a woman online post a selfie with a vibrant purple tongue as long as her forearm. You wonder about changing your name, and perhaps the body you were born with to go along with it.

It is December, 1756. You have a pair of new bodies: a human one built more to your liking, and an extra dragon form more suited to swimming and tunneling. The Rockwyrm hybrid you ended up with is excellent for construction work, especially for the huge shipyard expansion project you're working on. It helps that tunneling is fun, as is coiling your snakelike form around Anna like an oversized scaly pillow. You're thinking of getting married.

It is February, 1757. You and Anna are engaged, and you're no longer the newbie on the construction crew. A crew of serious-looking people visit the soon-to-be shipyard, and ask the foreman lot of questions about security and possible defenses. You wonder if they are from the military, or somewhere else.

It is April, 1757. Anna's parents come to visit, and the two of them meet you at the airport. They flinch when you show them your dragon form, and you notice that they avoid eye contact with both of you, but they are otherwise polite. Your family doesn't talk to you anymore. You're not sure whether you or Anna has the better arrangement.

It is July, 1757. You realize that you're increasingly at home here, in this strange nation-that-isn't. You start to enjoy speaking your mind, which terrifies the remnants of the old you that still bounce around in your brain from time to time.

It is August, 1757. You and Anna are married now, on the anniversary of your bond. You think you might be addicted to the feeling of your scales rubbing against hers when you curl up together to sleep.

It is February, 1758. You're in charge of your own crew now. You've been asked to help construct a series of deep bunkers. You wonder use what the tiny state-that-isn't of Free Copenhagen could have for missile launch bunkers. You understand a week later when you see a news report about the essentialist military treaty.

It is August, 1758. You celebrate your first anniversary. You and Anna fly over the Appalachians together, and fall asleep snuggled together under nothing but the stars and your own wings. You hope things stay this good forever.