Meya wasn't among the precious few blessed with dreamless sleep. Ever since she could remember, her nights had been plagued with bizarre dreams, usually building up to a failed escape from rolling boulders, bears, hogs, barbarians, or the occasional dragon, depending on what was the trend for puppet shows at the time.

Fluctuating trends notwithstanding, Utlon's Escape was the ultimate go-to for bards suffering from creative roadblocks. Throughout the centuries, the blacksmith's grim account of Nostra's midnight attack on Rutgarth, and his flight for survival, had been heavily exaggerated and embellished upon, to the point some wondered if Utlon ever existed, and was just an amalgam of several survivors' tales lumped into one hero.

Last night, instead of dreaming of being one of the poor miners' wives fleeing torrents of dragon fire, Meya dreamed that she herself was a dragon. Fans and jets of flame shot out of her mouth, now on an elongated jaw. Her back muscles pulsed as her wings beat against her silvery, scaled body.

Down below, in her field of vision tinged with green, men and women and children ran pell-mell from her. Some stood their ground and shot arrows that glanced off her impregnable scales. Then a Lattis-tipped one pierced through. A searing, rapid-spreading, all-consuming pain radiated from her arm, no, front leg. That must have been the melted Lattis coursing through her bloodstream.

Boulders spun through the air from catapults and pummeled her as she fell, screaming and spitting fire. She saw armored yeomen with swords scampering towards her broken form through half-open eyes. The first knight who had approached her lifted his helmet, freeing his dark brown hair. Cold silvery eyes glared at her through a coat of grime and soot...

Meya would have screamed if she hadn't woken with a start first.

She was lying on her bed in Hadrian Castle, her forehead and hands drenched with cold sweat. Through the gap in the magenta curtains, she saw the bedchamber illuminated to a dull gray by the light of dawn. After a moment of heavy breathing, as her senses reattuned themselves to reality, she felt Coris's arm draped over her, his cold hand covering hers in a loose grasp. For once, he was still asleep.

Relieved, yet also unnerved, Meya kept his bony forearm hoisted with her thumb and index, as she slid out from under it. Once free, she laid his arm down on the bed, keeping her eyes on his face. A trickle of drool dangled from Coris's gaping mouth as he drew in ragged, pungent snores. A side-effect of his damaged bowels.

Meya slid her vacated pillow under Coris's to ease his breathing, then slipped silently down the bed. Like a drunken wraith, she treaded her way across the room to her Solar, slow, soundless footsteps lugging the weight of her heavy heart.

Swinging the door carelessly behind her, she stood before the half-body mirror. With unfeeling fingers, she undid the knots on her linen nightdress and slid the collar down her shoulders, then scrutinized her naked body in the grayish light.

She looked just the same as she always had. No different from any other woman. Apart from faint pink sores along her shoulders that Coris had left upon her in happier nights, and a web of blue veins spreading under the taut skin of her strangely itchy, sore breasts.

She wondered why she even had breasts at all. After all, dragons laid eggs. Like snakes. And snake babies don't need to suckle on their mother's non-existent nipples. They just slither out their holes fully-fledged and start scarfing down rats.

Still, apart from the heat your attributes are human, Coris had said. Meya reckoned she'd have to take his word for it, since he'd sent his middle brother in to explore her so-called birth canal multiple times.

So, she may not lay eggs, at least. The knowledge wasn't much consolation.

Meya pinched her arm and felt skin and flesh and pulse. She couldn't tell whether the hard core she felt underneath was made of bone or metal, whether the red blood that had pooled there was a mixture of the same components as everyone else's.

Yet, there on her fingertip, was a ring of scar tissue. On her forearm was the ugly scooped-out scar. In the mirror, her glowing eyes stared back at her from shadow-rimmed, sunken sockets.

She thought over her nightmare. She remembered vividly what she had felt and sensed as a dragon. Had she simply imagined those from melodramatic descriptions of countless storytellers? Or were they forgotten memories seeping in to taint her conscious at its weakest?

The latter theory would require her to believe Coris's tale, which would cement the fact that she was a dragon. Make it permanent. Sure as death. Something she would never be able to run from.

If it were wings, she could have simply sliced them off and move on with her daily life. But how could she get rid of something that was inside and everywhere? Meya had never heard of a Greeneye successfully becoming normal. Suppressing it with Lattis was the furthest they could manage. What should she do if she decided she couldn't live with even that?

Dying was the obvious path. Yet, she didn't want to walk it. Not now. She had a promising future, a lifetime ahead of her. But did she? Anymore?

Coris had said he had no idea, but she knew, that he knew as well as she did, the fate that awaits all dragons. In Latakia, they would be rained with Lattis-plated arrows, skewered with Lattis swords, then butchered for metal. In Nostra, they would be saddled and muzzled and whipped by their riders into fire-spitting warmongering mounts.

Humans had always been the only creature with free will, a purpose undetermined by any other, apart from perhaps celestial beings. To humans, animals were either victual, vermin or villain. It had been the case with all of Meya's dead piglets. And now it was, too, for Meya herself. What's worse, as a dragon she could without doubt be all three, simultaneously. She had taken for granted that she was human. Now, she was paying for it. Dearly.

A series of soft raps on the ajar door roused Meya from her thoughts. Predictably, Coris's voice trickled through the gap.

"Meya? Can I come in?"

Meya didn't budge. She had lost the capacity to care one way or another. Still, she could see the sliver of Coris's face reflected on the mirror, patiently intruding on her sulking session. She sighed in annoyance then nodded.

Coris had probably left his surprise at her unexplained nakedness behind the door. He wordlessly took up the spot beside her, drinking in her reflection with familiar eyes. Then, as if reading her mind, he asked up,

"Anything different, Anya?" He used her pet name, usually reserved for when they were making love, his voice tender. Meya barely cared.

"Do I have to look the same to be treated the same?"

She retorted, voice as dull and lifeless as her gaze, fixed on her image on the polished, iridescent glass. Startled, Coris took a moment to respond.

"No. You shouldn't have to." He said, firm and willful, and Meya's heart couldn't help but lift slightly, "In fact, I'm beginning to question the rules our country has set such great store by."

Meya raised an eyebrow. So did her inverted twin in the mirror. Turning to face her nondescript profile, Coris elaborated.

"It's not just humans versus dragons. Even between humans, there are noble and commoner. Man and woman. Latakian and Nostran and Southern Islander and Tyldornian. Us and Them. How could there ever be true unity, true peace this way? And how should we decide who, or what, should be included?"

Had this been a casual discussion over tea, before he had lambasted her with the truth of this beast within her, Meya would have been fervently interested in a debate. But now, it was all she could do to hitch up a rueful smirk and jam the oar in his ship's helm.

"You've been noble and male and human and Latakian since you were born, Lord Coris. Why question it now?"

Coris's reflection blinked at her, dismayed and guilty by her blunt reminder. Then, he sighed deeply.

"You, obviously." He continued, a wary crease between his eyebrows as he dipped his face, "You're a peasant. A woman. A Greeneye. You have three of the most oppressed bloodlines inside you, and you're the first I have ever become this close to."

Meya remained silent, still unsure where he was going with this. Coris plowed on nevertheless.

"I've always thought I was superior because of what my ancestor did. That I deserved to live in luxury and rule people because of my name." He paused, trailing his long, pale finger absentmindedly on the wood of the dressing table, his gaze lost in the past,

"Then I was kidnapped. By peasants. And you rescued me, protected me, led me to safety. You negotiated with mercenaries. You saved twenty Crossetians and your own Lady and alerted me of Gillian's threat. You performed feats befitting of noble-born knights. Perhaps even better than some. And you would've done it anyway without your powers, too. You, a Greeneye. A peasant. A young girl."

Coris hammered out each word in earnest, admiration and awe streaked with desperation in his beautiful eyes staring at her, then they were consumed by shame.

"I saw your brothers and your sister, dressed in rags, marveling at that room in The Crimson Hog. I saw those old dresses your mother sent you. I saw you struggling to eat the food I deemed mundane. I saw you never knowing how to read and write. The more I talk to you. The more I know you, it...it saddens me."

Coris shook his head as he clung to the dressing table, his eyes downcast as he confessed,

"You're no different from Fione. From Heloise. From Amara. From Mother. How much better Latakia could have become, if more people like you had had the chance we've been given?"

There was a pause. A calculated one. Out of the corner of her eyes, Meya caught Coris sneaking a glimpse at her. Seeing no reaction whatsoever, the sly young man swiftly changed tracks, running a hand through his tousled hair and plastering on a hasty grin,

"Sorry, I was rambling." He said, with just the right amount of sheepishness. Meya suspected he had been rehearsing this conversation all through the night as he held her. But for once, his eloquence wasn't getting through to her.

"My point is, Greeneyes must be treated the same as any Latakian. It's not the eyes that matter, Anya. It's what's behind them. And our work from now is cut out for us; we're going to make Latakia see that."

Despite his fake, strained excitement, Meya grudgingly felt the sincerity behind his words. Being born and bred in Hadrian, Coris was bound to be more forward-thinking than her people back in ol' Crosset, so she wasn't that surprised of his stance on the Greeneye issue. After all, he and his friends hadn't been prejudiced towards her from the start, and it wasn't that she wasn't thankful. Yet, somehow, she was still troubled.

As much as the fear of being persecuted and discriminated against, of the daunting mission that awaited her once she accepted her status as a dragon, she still couldn't bear to accept this abomination inside her.

She didn't know how to make Coris understand what she was feeling, how to put into words why she was so bothered. She felt tainted. Dirty. Ugly. Disgusting. Unworthy of friendship and love from him or Arinel or any of her friends. Undeserving to consider herself the daughter of her virtuous parents, or the sister of her blessedly ordinary, pure, beautiful sisters. The mere thought of metal oozing through her skin and coagulating into scales, of bat-like wings exploding through her back, of her fingernails transforming into scythe-like claws, of fire roaring out of her snout mouth, burning countless lives to ash, was enough to make her retch.

And she almost did.

"You haven't forgotten the resources crisis, have you?" For lack of a way to explain all this to him, Meya chose to steer away, swallowing down the unbidden wave of nausea with a grimace, assuring herself it was definitely not morning sickness. Coris chuckled, undeterred.

"Bishop Riddell isn't the only multitasker here." He boasted with a wink, beside himself with positivity; he was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Besides, we've already established that these two crises are connected, haven't we? We could dissolve the Mining Ban, and secure Greeneye rights while we're at it."

Meya shook her head listlessly. Had last night never happened, those big plans would probably have excited her. And she would have been thrilled that Coris had included her, had trusted her to help. Now, she simply felt numb with nothingness. It was such that she doubted she would ever feel enthusiastic for anything again.

"I don't know, Lord Coris." She muttered, her level voice like a blanket thrown over Coris's glowing embers, and the young lord froze in mid-bounce. He stared, wide-eyed, as Meya hunched her shoulders, her eyes unfocused, almost catatonic,

"I don't know much about anything. Anymore."

Silence fell between them. Despite standing right next to each other, so close they could feel their frozen fire and smoldering ice pulsating against each other, it felt as though a chasm stretched between them, and they both struggled and failed to get the right message across to the other on the opposite cliff.

"Let me off at the first stop outside Hadrian." Meya finally uttered in that same haunting, gormless tone. As Coris stood gaping, paralyzed by her request, she explained,

"All I need is a permit. I'll just live like I've always had. With luck, I might even forget about this someday. I've forgotten it once, after all. Still don't remember, either."

She topped it off with a sardonic quip, which was reminiscent of her old self yet blatantly different, then continued with words she had specifically selected as if to torture both Coris and herself,

"With me out of the way, you could lay with Arinel and get her pregnant. Then you could return to Hadrian and pursue your cause. It's quid pro quo, my liege."

"Anya..."

Coris breathed, speechless. His face was a shade paler than usual, and his hands were clenched as tightly as his jaw. He seemed to be restraining himself from lying. A lie along the lines of how nothing would change between her and anyone, and how she was still the same person that she had always been.

Meya stepped into her nightdress and slipped it back up to her shoulders. She raised her hand and grasped the rope that would ring the bell in the servants' room, closing the opening for Coris to comfort her any further.

"I'm calling Haselle now." She croaked, struggling to still both her hand on the tasseled crimson rope and her voice, pleading when Coris remained rooted,

"Could you leave, please, my liege?"

A defiant look washed over Coris's anguished face. For a while he looked as if to hang back and wait for a masterstroke to come over him, for something to say or a warm embrace that would convince Meya everything would be fine. Yet, in the end, he heaved a heavy sigh and nodded, then retreated from the room, just in time for the door to hide Meya's tearstained face in the mirror from view.