Chris sat, as he often sat these days, in the middle of Mac's place in his 'true' form. A small green tinted snake-like form with four limbs and wisps of fur or feathers drifting around his horse-like face. The shape of a young wingless dragon.

His eyes were closed, both his physical eyes and his 'true' eyes, which were both physical and yet created more than a mere physical conduit when open. Normally he would be concentrating on learning his own form, exploring his own shape with his mind and all of his senses, and trying to capture his own essence. However, a different, but arguably related, puzzle was occupying his mind.

'How had Amaru's plane managed to get off the ground?' He couldn't answer it, any more than he could sink through the floor beneath him. It should be completely impossible for even the largest commercial jet to take off with a being whose natural form was larger than a football stadium inside.

The older dragon insisted that if he truly understood his own essence, then he would be able to slide through the spaces that existed within the atoms of all things, without losing his own structure. But even if that were true, and the older dragon had demonstrated it for him more than once, it should still be impossible for Amaru to both compress the space within himself to fit into the human disguise he'd been wearing, and to spread his weight out through the air at the same time. And even if he could perform that impossible feat, how could he do such a thing at the speed the aircraft would be traveling.

Chris had honestly expected Amaru to fall through the floor of the plane as it lifted off the ground, or to see it explode or something before making it farther than the city limits, but it had flown away quite normally.

It was really hard to believe the older dragon's insistence that magic didn't exist, and that dragons were a natural species that had developed gradually in the same way that millions of others had come and gone from the world.

He opened his eyes and stared at his own small clawed hands, and felt the weight of the doubts that whispered that he couldn't possibly be the same species as the elder dragon who was apparently even older than the human race. A monster that could eat even a person's memory as he consumed their life blood, a monster that lived for centuries, a monster that could change his very shape… he was all of these.

But was he truly a dragon? He wanted to be one, to have others of his kind, and yet…

He was no human, that much was certain. He was an immortal who had nearly died a thousand times. He had lived long, lifetime after lifetime. He had been a thief, a hero, a criminal, a helping hand, a brother, a parent, and a child. A servant, a true love, a student, and a teacher, he had been all of these to various people over the centuries. But everything that he had ever learned trembled before concepts that a dragon regarded as simple facts.

Arrogance. The man who had first accepted him as a brother had often warned him against it. Powerful, old, and dangerous, he'd thought of himself in these terms for centuries. But when compared to Amaru he was revealed to be as powerless and ignorant as a small child.

It was a very human expression of frustration that escaped him as he shifted back into his 'usual' shape and protested to the universe at large, "There have to be physical limits to what is really possible!"

Memory itself had physical limits… at least in theory?

--

The child had insisted that he maintain a ridiculous number of small rituals and customs of the tribes while he traveled among them. He had not argued against the advice either, as it served the same purpose that imitating their physical forms did, and let him wander about their territory undisturbed. Many of the rituals were incomprehensible, but they were surprisingly effective.

The girl's fear after seeing him open his true eyes so that he could examine the craft's flight in more detail vanished almost instantly as he explained, "The latest VR glasses."

If the human had actually studied the available technology for vision to the extent that he had, she would have immediately realized how nonsensical the claim was, but instead she nodded and replied, "How cool! I've only heard about them!"

"Can I try them out?" one of the passengers asked eagerly as he leaned over the back of his seat.

"No. Prototype," Amaru responded shortly.

The man looked disappointed, but didn't argue.

Amaru silently surveyed the way the air moved through the tube that sparkled with 'electricity' and the flow across the wing itself. He had misjudged them, the mankind. Their capacity.

He did not share their impatience as they disembarked from the aircraft and made their way through the checkpoints set up for them. He was also in a hurry, but he suspected that he was either far too late, or that a few more hours were unlikely to matter. He seemed to have misjudged many things, the imminent demise of the mankind, the cause of the fragmentation of the strings, and perhaps even the wisdom of the guiding songs.

The youths of two species, Chris and Anne, had viewed the small country that was still accepting travelers as a potential hotbed of suicidal plague victims, but all of the individuals he could see at the moment looked healthy and alert. The technology they were using to examine the passengers was surprisingly advanced as well, they were subtly taking temperatures with lasers, and keeping their distance even as they quickly processed each one's documentation.

There were many interesting things to observe in the small airport. He could see a small double winged aircraft with its side open and much of its interior structure exposed. While it would have been even more interesting to view the craft up close, his experimentation with lense creation had given him a few new tricks and he simply magnified his own vision until he could see the exposed mechanisms in great detail.

He was slow to respond when his turn at the counter came, and the heavily accented English took him a bit of effort to puzzle out. The men moving carts in the background were speaking far more intelligibly, despite the fact that he hadn't heard the tongue of their tribe for most of a millennia. Their words had not changed as much as those of the tribe of the conquerors, perhaps because of their mountainous isolation, but they had changed, and he listened. He calmly accepted the piece of paper that proved that 'George Albright' had entered the small country legally.

The eager child who tried to corner him before he reached the men with carts and cars that displayed the technology of a handful of centuries at once in a colorful display, was startled when he explained in a fair approximation of the modern version of the child's language, "I will not need transportation or lodgings."

The men around them added disbelieving protests, until he held up the curious bag that was bedecked in ties and clips. The young dragon had insisted that since some kind of luggage would be expected, he might as well carry the kind that would lead people to expect that he would be traveling the mountains on foot, and then he wouldn't need to pretend to need a room anywhere.

The brief silence suggested that the odd tactic had worked, but it lasted only a moment, and was followed by shocked and protesting outcries. The references to his obvious age, and impressive girth, made him feel that the young dragon had been mistaken. However, no one actually tried to stop him as he followed the rocky road away from the airport.

Maintaining the form was rather tiring, and he did not intend to waste any more time than necessary. His eyes and ears were not idle as he studied everything from the placement of the stones beneath his feet to the varied buildings along the slope. Their ever changing variety had always been the most interesting thing about them, just as their prolific expansion and ever increasing consumption had been the most terrible.

A group of men accompanied by dogs moved across his path as though they intended to stop him. He did not even threaten to eat the quiet dogs, but when he met their wary gazes, they retreated as though he had. The men looked confused, but after glancing at their dogs, they did not make any move to interfere as he passed.