A whisper of a voice brushed past the edge of his thoughts like a passing cloud over a sea of thirsty blood-red sand and dunes, it was years ago now.

"At the end, it will just be you and I. Two souls, completely and utterly alone. You should take care that you won't have much to answer for, when that time comes. Until then, goodbye."

A flash of searing pain and darkness, a gradual awakening from a black sea of nothing, remembered.

He had been different once, human, specifically, quiet and somber with dark eyes and lofty brows poised above a narrow nose and lips. His hands brushed over files and folders, bitter ledgers of stranger's lives, archives of crime and punishment. Life outside of work was uninspired and resolute, the bustle and thrum of music from parties and bars weren't at all appealing to him, the perfume of bodily musk and beer, foreign like a whisper of a fragrance from a temple, holy incense to a tribe he never felt a particular affinity for.

It was storming in the past, and as he lay upon the barren stone, a ledge perched above a dreary, ebony pond, daydreaming, he could recall a night in which that odd voice had spoken to him:

That crash in the middle of a raging storm, blankets pulled over his head were no protection against a ten ton tree, a broken leg and concussion, gradual healing. Something had left a lingering mark behind however, more profound than scars or nightmares, and he'd found himself alone, wandering, afraid, more than once even after his release from the hospital.

It was past midnight and he was in his bedclothes, lost, and couldn't remember how he'd gotten to the seaside park, to this little bench, and staring up, rather than down at the pale, round face of the petite man in front of him. The stranger had a soft voice and lips naturally turned up at the corners, a calming voice.

"...You see, it's past the point of curing. The changes, that disconnection, mental, physical...You can't hide it anymore. Look at yourself." A loose gesture down, a finger brushing down from his shoulder toward a bright brass-scaled paw.

"Don't ask me how I know, it's just experience, but you need to hide yourself. A dragon is worth its weight in gold you see. And I doubt you want to find yourself in some sterilized white chamber with scientists staring down at you with a magnifying glass either."

The stranger pouted. "There aren't many of us left. I can't answer why this happened to you, either. Maybe some spirit, a demon, possessed you. Corrupted your mortal form, or maybe it was divine intervention? You know the people from old times, their vision of God was that of a soaring golden dragon. You're quite a lot smaller, but they didn't have polaroids back then either, so maybe imagination made their Yahweh much bigger than he really was."

He twitched, claws curled and then loosened, catching on his flannel pants he hadn’t taken off, do much as having slid out of. His clothes were practically a nest underneath him. He focused:

[I just don't understand, I'm...I'm really just fucked, aren't I? I thought it might have been the meds, maybe a psychological break or something after the accident, like a waking nightmare, but the voice in my head, the changes...]

The stranger shook his head and forget-me-not blue eyes gazed on, without much pity, "Just consider yourself lucky I found you first. That you didn't have to wander around in some fever dream until a slayer found you instead. I don't have much power myself, but what I gave you was enough to still your thoughts, settle you into this form, assuage that bodily pain. You were screaming out here by yourself when I found you, tearing at your hair, your face, like some madman. It's finished now. Quiet, serene almost?"

The little thing gazed back up at him, gold-scaled sides rising and falling slowly at first, but suddenly picked up speed as terror siezed it. The wings, jointed and broad like miniature masts flapped and it thrashed.

[I just can’t remember anything clearly, I'm -- I'm shedding pieces of myself like old feathers and I can't catch them fast enough -- ] Panic seized him and a cry broke loose, [...Where am I from? I can't remember where I live!!]

A hush and hands swooped toward him, caught him before he could scuttle away in a new, clumsy reptilian body, swaddled him in his clothes and moved the whole heap onto his lap and whispered a quiet cantrip while his fingers soothed over his leathery sides, his trembling shoulders and lulled him into a shallow sleep.

When he woke someone had taken his pajamas and made a nest of them in a shoebox, perched him and his things on a cluttered kitchen table, like an orphaned kitten along with a teacup saucer of shredded meat and scrambled egg. Something unnatural compelled him to crawl forward and grasp a piece in his mouth, uncoordinated at first, he eventually managed to master the right movements, subtle jerks of his head and neck backward coupled with a gulp to propell the shred of boiled meat into a crop at the base of his throat.

"Ah, so you're figuring it out. It feels good to not be so hungry, right?" A finger loomed toward him and tawny eyes buldged as he inhaled around a greedy mouthful of meat and exhaled with a forceful hiss. "Tut, that's mean. Just listen then, okay?"

"I know it is going to take a long time to get used to, okay? And your memory is going to probably not be so great. Look, I did some research on you, got some information, I couldn't find anything too critical like your address, bank accounts, so you're basically going to have to start over. But you were kind of an asshole before this happened to you. You were some kind of prosecutor or something legal, you were all over the news for some kind of controversial shit you pulled, like really, I'm not entirely sure you didn't piss off some voodoo priest who did this to you or something."

[I...I think I just did my job. Like I did it really well. I can’t remember having any friends. But what does that have to do with this?] He moved over toward a piece of egg, sniffed, gobbled it down and after cleared his lips with a flick of a black, forked tongue. His voice was muddled, slow, but it helped to focus on something else while he ate.

"Ugh, look, what I'm trying to say is maybe it's for the best you don't remember everything, and that you don't have a crowd of people who adored you looking for you now. I know this is really heavy talk considering you just woke up, but you need to face a couple really important things here. One: you can't stay here forever. I did you a huge kindness helping you. But I'm not looking for a pet.

Two: you're a hot commodity now. I had not one, but two people trailing me on my way back here. Yes, I lost them, but it was still pretty scary for a few minutes.

Three: you're going to need to figure out how to control this, this whatever-you-are pretty fast. I did some additional research and I think you might have really...hurt some people before I found you." He scratched at his flax-blonde mop of hair and pouted, debating how much and what he should disclose.

Beady eyes stared up at him from the table. [I think I was hurt. Like a natural disaster or something happened and I was in the hospital. It's kind of impossible to do much if you're laid up in a hospital for a couple of weeks.]

"Uh, I'm not sure how accurate that is... I'm pretty sure you were actually caught before. There are groups out there who strive to identify supernatural beings such as you and I, and... well, to paraphrase 'kill it before it grows'. I think you might have gotten loose, and maybe they found you after your accident in the hospital, or maybe it started there, but I made some calls, quietly, thank you, but I'm nearly positive you might have --"

He blinked, fidgeted nervously. There were news articles about an oversize 'monitor lizard' that were pretty obviously doctored to hide a much more unpleasant reality.

[Quit stalling!]

"You might have eaten someone's kid. Probably some cats and dogs considering the bunch of missing pet articles that came up around the same time, but I think you were caught and someone decided to play a little doctor with that scrambled-up brain of yours, maybe a little frankenstein, and somehow you got loose, or ran away. The fact your memory is so foggy is pretty telling, but you also have something else a little more sinister in that head of yours besides, well, you."

He stopped eating and the proud collection of morsels jutting from the purse at his throat felt suddenly like it was stuffed with lead. The voice. The rag-tagged jumble of memories of the past, the quiet promise of judgment upon a lonely outcrop of nothing, scorched earth barren of life, of promise besides the omnipotent voice in his head and a veiled threat whispered from nothing directly into his thoughts.

"You know it talks when you're asleep, right? For being what it is, it's pretty lucid. Pretty mean, too. I got lucky and it just managed to get one good swipe at me before I talked it down and we had a little chat."

He held up an arm, he saw now it was bandaged with a thick, long white woven piece of gauze. "I think you might have been going through this for a while. The last articles I could find on you were from a couple years ago. A missing person article without any update was about three years old. I found a phone on you when I found you in the park. Got your name. Here, I'll show you."

He moved slowly to lift up a battered cell phone, tapped the screen and turned the screen toward the dragon. He saw his face, a selfie in front of a corn maze, the stranger then pulled down a settings menu to show a name, the activated number. "I can't unlock it, but it was enough for me to do some digging. But that thing you're riding shotgun with in that body has quite a bit of control you don't seem to have figured out yet. It flipped out once I was back here, grew, like man-sized, and pinned me up against a wall. It's big enough to do some damage. But hey, look at the plus side. You're not behind bars, you have at least some control, and we have your name. It isn't everything but it is a start."

He stared at the phone. Years. He couldn't remember. What had happened? What had he done? Had it been this fiend that stole his body, his memories, or someone else?

Who was to say this moment of clarity he found himself now in, wasn't some desperate gasp of air at the surface before the claws of his affliction tore him down again?

His mind was clear, for now at least, and without a solid recollection of the past, the only thing he could do now was to focus on the present.

...

That might have been an eternity ago.

Looking back on the days of his with the stranger, it was hard to believe but they were almost pleasant. Compared to now at least, after war and annihilation to which he had only been a spectator: born too late into it to have fought and made a difference. His escape had been one of many, and in a last ditch effort to keep those spilled secrets contained, there had been a weapon deployed, nuclear.

One, then many. Misinterpretations of the facts between several nations, a handful at first, then many.

"It's lonely, isn't it?"

He shuddered, drew his tail around himself and sighed. [I'm hungry but there isn't anything left to eat. You have to know something, right? Have some suggestion? About what to do?]

The voice he'd once feared, loomed back into his brain, his only conpany. "Pray. Make penance. We're bound to this empty place a little longer yet. You can't let some moral compass tear you apart in the dark. I can tell it weighs you down. Don't let it. You may just be some stranded witness to a grander design, a passenger in this body, but we are one in the same. If you hold us back, death, here, on this rock will be inevitable."