It wasn't all that long ago that Noram had begun to notice.

There wasn't really a better word for it. The nice lady had explained everything to him more than once, and he just hadn't... noticed. For some reason, every time she looked at him, she seemed sad. She looked vaguely familiar, too. But he could never really place where he knew her, and so he smiled at her happily. She surely just wanted to join him on his adventures!

That was all she talked about, after all. She would tell him about how Fendal was supposed to be a border territory for the kingdom of Elyra, but something strange had happened with their dungeon; how the 'reality' of the residents of Fendal had been taken as fuel for a place called Teque; how they were doing it out of fear, with Helg at the lead of that fear, but there were people that were fighting to free Fendal.

All he really heard was that there were adventures involved. That was exciting! He'd asked about visiting this Teque, but all the nice lady had done was give him a sad smile and hug him.

The hug was nice, at least.

Besides, he would have wanted to join himself on his adventures, too. He was certain they would be great. He had so much he wanted to do. He wanted to explore the ruins, and find out more about magic, and...

Noram's fingers brushed across what he'd begun to think of as The Notebook. Not just A Notebook, but The Notebook. Something flickered within him every time his scales brushed up against the bound leather. There was a flicker of want there, of true desire. For a fraction of a second he would once again understand what it meant to have a passion for something, to want to learn more about magic with every fiber of his being.

For a fraction of a second, he remembered himself. It wasn't the first time it had happened. It wasn't the first time his fingers would graze The Notebook, and he would remember.

And then his scales would leave the notebook, and he would forget again. He would smile happily at the next person that came along, sometimes someone he recognized from Fendal, and sometimes someone he didn't recognize. Sometimes they were weird cockroach-like creatures, or smaller lizardkinlike non-lizardkin things, or little butterfly creatures that would flutter about and giggle at him.

One time there was an otter! And that had been...

That had been different, actually.

The otter made him feel the same way the book did. The same way those pretty little stones that nice lizardkin had given him made him feel sometimes, when he found them in his pocket.

They reminded him of a fullness of being that had been lost to him.

Slowly — too slow for him to notice, but fast enough for Charise to take note, and pass on the message — he began to remember.

Noram couldn't pin down exactly when he'd begun to come into himself again, exactly. He spent more and more time holed up in his room instead of going out and 'adventuring'. The word still had meaning to him, but what he actually did outside seemed empty, compared to what adventuring was supposed to mean. All he did was go around and talk to people about adventuring. And surely that was strange?

Besides, there was so much to explore in the book! Noram didn't know who had given him the book. He remembered very little about the circumstances that had led up to all of this. His days consisted of meeting the nice lady, and sometimes her two friends, and then wandering around town and meeting all the new people there.

The book was far more interesting. There were sketches in there — pictures of those exact ancient magic ruins that he always told himself he would explore, the ones he always told everyone about wanting to explore, but never did, for...

...for some reason.

Why didn't he go out and explore, if he wanted it so badly? Why did he just wander his town, talking about wanting to adventure?

Why did reading this book make something inside him ache?

Noram sat in his room, his vision blurring. The paper in the book was wet, and he hurriedly pushed it away, so that the water rolling down his snout would stop messing up the sketches. He looked around to see if anyone could see him, but his room was empty.

Achingly empty. There were — there were people he spent his time with, people that joined him on his little excursions to the local dungeon, in his quest to get strong enough to really explore —

All his equipment was covered in dust.

Noram slowly got up from his seat, walking over to where he kept his backpack. The steps were familiar, but slow; each step he took kicked up dust that had started to cake on the floor. Noram remembered that sometimes the nice lady would come in and sweep the floor, but she'd spent less and less time doing that, lately. Mostly because she hadn't been around as much...

Charise. Her name was Charise.

Noram's eyes cleared a little. He stared down at his backpack, and saw his hands trembling slightly. Carefully, he unlatched the flap, reaching in to find what he kept inside.

His own little journal. His own little wand, the first thing he'd carved for himself. He never used it. It was something he kept with him as a sentimental little item, along with something he couldn't quite remember. Something he'd... given away? But why had he...

He'd given it away to Vex. He remembered the other lizardkin in a flash of insight. Noram scrambled to his feet, and hurried over to his desk — there on the desk sat The Notebook, half-flopped over in his previous hurry. The pages were slightly crumpled, but it took him very little effort to smooth them out.

These were Vex's notes. Notes on all the ruins he'd been to, all the runes he'd seen and recorded, and little sketches of himself and the various members of his party. There was the human, Sev, smiling on a page. There was Charise's daughter, Misa, drinking a tankard of beer.

There were... altogether too many sketches of Derivan, the tall fellow in armor. A small smile ghosted across his face, and yet a small pit of something yawned open in him, because this was —

— This had been something precious to Vex. Why had he given it to him?

"You're awake," someone said, and Noram started, jumping out of his seat. His brain scrambled to catch up as he tried to put sense to the ridiculous sight of an otter, standing in his room, juxtaposed against everything he'd been trying to remember; against the slow realization of the situation he was in.

Noram narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean, awake?" he said. His voice still didn't sound his own; it was entirely too chipper. "What happened? Who are you?"

"That... is going to take some explaining." The otter sighed, a strange guilt flashing across his features. "Hello, Noram. I am... you. In a manner of speaking."

Noram stared blankly at the otter. "You're going to have to explain that one to me," he said after a moment.

"I would have expected nothing different," the otter said with a small, self-deprecating smile. "Where to begin... I suppose we can start with as much as we understand."

The otter closed his eyes for a moment. "Fendal and Teque are linked by the system," he began, and then he paused. "Do you... know about Teque? I'm not sure how much you remember."

"I know about Teque," Noram said. His voice was colder, now. "I know what you've been doing."

The otter winced, then seemed to deflate; his shoulders slumped, and he looked for all the world like a tiny, sad otter. Noram did his best not to sympathize with the little guy.

...It was a little difficult.

"Not of our choosing, and yet, perhaps it is our fault regardless..." Otter-Noram said softly. "If I had only fought against Helg's actions, instead of bending to her whim..."

"Explain what you meant when you said that you're me."

"The system cannot sustain the people of both Fendal and Teque," the otter said simply. "There is only room for a limited number of people within this region, as far as we have been able to determine; we might get a greater cap outside this region, but... Helg has locked us in with her barrier."

Right. The barrier. Noram glanced outside the window; it was still there, a shimmering beacon of magic that layered itself over the sky, so thick he doubted even the strongest spells could break through. He wondered how this Helg person had managed a spell this powerful.

"For someone in Teque to come into themselves," Otter-Noram said, "they have to drain someone in Fendal of an equivalent amount of... I don't know. You have to understand, a lot of how your system works is entirely new to us."

It's not like I know anything about the system acting like this, Noram thought to himself. This is new to us, too.

But he said nothing. He waited for the otter — he refused to think of him as just 'Noram' — to continue.

"It's a bit of an oversimplification, of course," the otter continued, oblivious to Noram's internal thoughts. "No one in Teque is doing it on purpose; everything happens sort of behind the scenes and chosen by the system, as far as we can tell, and Helg isn't doing anything to accelerate it."

"But there are implications," Noram said. The otter winced and nodded.

"The process isn't perfectly clean," he said. "Other things get swept up in the process. The transfer doesn't make the person in Teque their own person; it makes the person in Teque more like whoever their reflection is in Fendal. Little things carry over. Favorite foods, hobbies, sometimes a song..."

"Or a name," Noram said.

"Or a name," the otter said, looking away. "I don't know what my original name was. I don't know if I ever had one."

Dammit, he wasn't supposed to be feeling bad for this guy. If what he was saying was true, then the whole reason he'd lost so much of himself — and he was trying not to think too hard about it — was the otter in front of him.

Or, you know, it's because of the system, a traitorous little voice whispered in his head, and Noram almost growled to himself. He couldn't even let himself be angry, about something he had every right to be angry over.

"...So," Noram said. "What does all this mean? For me. Or for you. Or for our respective towns."

"We're working on it," Noram said softly. "Or... they're working on it. They have to work around Helg. I... have been hiding."

"...You've been hiding." Noram repeated the words, half in disbelief, and the otter winced again. It took effort to control the anger that was rising in his voice. "Why were you hiding?"

"I was scared," the otter version of him said, the words emerging in a small whisper, and those words — his tone of voice — it struck him like a hammer.

He'd said those words himself. It was years ago. He'd long since grown past it. But he'd said it in the exact same tone of voice, the exact same way, the one time he'd been with his best friend, playing in the forest.

The one time a monster had appeared, claws and teeth and terrifying size, and he had run.

Beza hadn't. His best friend had leapt ahead, expecting him to be by her side—

She hadn't died. But he'd been wracked with guilt for so long afterwards, and she'd never spoken to him again. She'd asked him, once, that very same question.

Why?

I was scared.

The answer hadn't been good enough for her, back then.

Maybe it could be good enough for him. Noram was here, after all.

"Okay," Noram said softly. "That's okay. We all get scared."

He felt a little absurd, saying those words. He was pretty sure the otter was older than he was. But he saw the way those shoulders sagged, this time in relief; he saw the way the whiskers twitched and the otter leaning forward —

—and suddenly they were hugging?

They were hugging.

This was fine. Other-Noram was soft and fuzzy and cute. And, he had to admit, he could use a hug.

Something within him seemed to tug and unravel; in front of him, the otter-Noram jerked slightly, and stared into the air. Noram pulled back, bemused, as the otter stared at what was clearly a system screen...

...that was slowly fading into sight for him.

It was a system screen they could both see. The otter version of him seemed to realize he could see it at the same time, and his eyes widened; he stared at Noram, and then back to the newly-opened box.

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