The days were a blur to him, and the nights were spent unconscious. A week might have passed, or a lifetime. He knew not how much time passed and cared even less. Over time more and more of his mind began to return to him. Always flashes. Never anything specific and detailed.

Throughout those days of starvation, his body slowly changed. He grew larger in stature. His claws grew sharper and he became far more deadly.

Early morning came as it always did, with a burning hunger in his belly. He rose from his slumber, a small child no longer. Now he wore the form of a young teen. Hair had grown where hair had not existed before. His grunts and random attempts at vocalization were deeper, more resonant.

However, it was not those things that occupied his mind. The dragon, instead, stared at a suspiciously empty spot in the corner of the cavern.

It had taken a while, but he had begun to remember something important that he had lost. Vague memories, mere shadows of thought, tried to crowd their way upwards into the forefront of his mind. Unfortunately, he was not quite capable of understanding the situation with any great depth. Instead, he saw things in simplistic terms. His pickled meat was gone.

His thoughts did not reference the food he acquired in the wilds. No, he recalled that there was a time before his current hunger. There was a time when he could eat without end and never starve. It was a good thing, too. At the time he was far too weak to hunt. His body was changing, becoming something else or trying to do so at least. Sometimes it was all that he could do to eat his fill.

A trickle of memory tickled his brain. The pickled meat, a special food source that held the strong taste of alcohol, had always renewed itself. He had gorged on it, reveled in it, but there came a morning when the pickled meat had left. He did not know where it went. It was merely gone.

Without his meat, he weakened. He could not even leave the cavern as he was asleep when the meat disappeared. Starved after a night of rest, he was too weak to hunt.

The dragon tilted his head slightly to the side as a few more memories unfurled inside his mind. Unable to complete whatever was happening, he instinctively dived into the earth and then everything went dark.

He did not know what any of it meant, not really. Yet, it was something. Briefly in those moments between hunger and sleep, he had begun to have thoughts that pertained to something other than either of those states of being.

That blissful time where he could think of anything other than the gnawing hunger, and the pain that racked his body when he did not eat for too long drove him from the cavern. As he stepped outside a strange scent accosted his nostrils and he sneezed with incredible violence.

Many things had happened to him in a short amount of time, and during those scant few weeks his body underwent many changes. A lot of them were things he was unaware of to any great degree.

He had been stuck in his humanoid form, albeit one further learning toward being a dragon than before. The sneeze had happened at just the right time and in the right frame of mind for his body to explode into a shadowy mass.

The dragon tween was briefly at a loss. How could he eat, if he had no mouth!

His change of body status brought with it instinctual knowledge that soon made itself known. His mass shifted downwards and soon took on the form of a small black dragon.

Quadrupedal, and sleek just as before, the dragon had finally remembered his basic form. Immediately, some of the gnawing hunger died down. He still needed to eat, but he was no longer draining his life force constantly to maintain a perfectly balanced state between his three natures.

The little dragon, now barely larger than a great dane if measured rear to snout and without his tail, rushed off into the forest. The hunt was long, tortuous, his constant feeding had depleted the local wildlife and monsters.

During his first growth spurt, he was driven into the earth and feasted on the massive number of creatures in the dark world below the grassland. This area of the world had reasonable hunting grounds, but it was nothing in comparison to the underground caverns from the dream.

Left perpetually hungry, it was all he could do to keep from losing what little of his mind he had regained. Most of the day passed before he stumbled upon something decidedly interesting.

Crouched in the shadows, the dragon gazed hungrily at a pair of creatures that reminded him of his pickled meat. Just like any other meat, they wore no coverings. Only the pickled meat had such things, it seemed.

“Harder!” cried the woman.

Her lover took her request and began to pound away at her with wild abandon. The dragon tilted his head to the side. The looked like the pickled meat, but there was a strange disinterest inside of him. He did not wish to eat this meat.

As he watched them vigorously attempt to populate the world, the little dragon began to sense a strangeness in the air. There was something tasty nearby!

It took him a moment, but he came to realize that there was a certain indefinable something that radiated outward from the loud meat. Instinctively, he reached out for that something and it flowed into him.

The plants nearby began to lose some of their luster, meanwhile the lovers began to tire quickly. Sweat pouring from their plump and sparsely furred bodies, they soon dropped to their knees for altogether unsexy reasons.

“That was amazing,” said the woman between panted breaths.

“Y-yeah…” whispered the man. His slipped down to the ground and began to pant as well. He had never been so tired after having a go before, but for some reason it was like he’d lost all the strength that he had.

The certain something that the dragon was drawing on began to lessen. Somewhere in the depths of his rattled brain he began to realize that he was hurting the mean that he did not wish to eat. His hunger was sated to some degree at last, though he did not understand why that might be.

No matter how many dozens of meats he ate throughout his day, it was never enough. Yet, brief contact with the moaning meat had sustained him more than a full day’s hunt!

Was this what he needed? Was meat not the only thing that could satisfy the hunger?