The winds were strong; my mane jangled wildly as they buffeted me about, but I didn't care. Rain slashed into my eyes, and clear membranes slid down to protect them. The utter joy exploding within me was impossible to contain, and came ripping out of my jaws as a grating, deafening roar of purest triumph.
Higher and higher I soared, my muscular tail steering as my wings slid effortlessly from one updraft to the next. Soon I was grazing the black underbelly of the storm, then I was inside it, the ground lost from view in the driving rain and mist. The clouds boiled about me, keening winds veered and tore in a killing chaos that no man-made thing could have survived, but my wings harnessed and played like some wonderful, deadly instrument. Then, as I swung deliriously from one wild convection cell to the next, something began to happen.
A prickling sensation began atop my skull, quickly spreading down the back of my neck. I glanced back to see the metallic strands of my mane lifting, beginning to stand on end like a porcupine's quills, then starting to shimmer with the blue-black glow of Saint Elmo's Fire. Alarmed, I swung my head up to see the clouds just above me limned with that same deadly light. OH HELL NOT AGAIN--
Before I could so much as flinch, a ravening shaft of solid blue-white power slammed into me . . . and splashed. I winced my eyes open, to see wavelets, ripples and arcs of electricity washing over my body, held harmless by my steel scales. My mane flared, and those waves of energy were drawn up into it. The strands crackled, then began to relax as I felt something soak into me.
It was incredible. It was love and joy and purest power all at the same time as it swept through my shuddering body, a burning, giddy ecstatic wave like God's own moonshine.
It faded quickly, leaving me desperate for more. My mane responded by flaring blackly, and I felt myself somehow pulling the energy from the surrounding clouds. The storm quickly obliged, sending lance after lance of pure destruction spearing into me. My mane drank them all, and I bellowed my joy as waves of ecstasy poured through me.
I can't even begin to describe the next couple of hours. Eventually, though, the storm began to break up around me. The lightning became weaker, more difficult to draw as the clouds dissipated, until finally I found myself in clear air, well out to sea.
As the updrafts faded and the air grew calm, I soon discovered that my broad wings didn't like still air. I began to sink towards the waves. Alarmed, I began flapping my wings, and found my efforts just holding altitude. Vexed by my predicament, I gave vent to a basso profound roar of annoyance and began to labor back to the distant shore, flapping like a damned crow.
I was thoroughly exhausted by the time I reached dry land, and I aimed for the easiest approach into the base, which was via the airstrip. The strip was always shut down for storms, so there was no danger of discovery. I glided silently over the darkened guard shack, easily cleared the perimeter fence--
Suddenly, something grabbed my right hind leg and yanked. An instant as I felt myself flipping forward, then I SLAMMED into the runway pavement, the air going out of me in a vast whoosh. Stunned, I felt myself sliding down the runway, my scales grinding painfully against the concrete, then finally coming to a grating stop.
I laid there for a moment or two as I got my breath back, then levered myself up onto all fours and shook my head. My abused belly plates ached. I ducked my head to check them for damage, and found myself looking down at the runway identification numbers painted on the concrete.
They were . . . small.
Ridiculous! Those numbers were the regulation fifty feet in height!
But they were . . . small.
With a feeling of dread, I looked back over my shoulders to gaze at what had tripped me. Over a hundred feet of perimeter fencing had been ripped out of the ground, several strands of concertina wire still stubbornly wrapped about my right hind leg. It all looked so comically toylike. I looked over to my right, where an enormous KC-135 Stratotanker sat parked on a nearby ramp.
It could have hailed me as a brother!
. . . .Damn.
There was a stirring at the fire station far down the ramp; evidently someone had heard my oh-so graceful landing and was coming to investigate. Time to leave. I disentangled myself, then spread aching wings and clawed my way back up into the air, heading back the way I came, eventually alighting on a stretch of beach a mile or two up the coast.
Once there, I lapsed into a purple funk as I watched my huge forelegs sink into the soft sand up to the wrist. Evidently, eating all that lightning had not been a very good idea. . . .Or was this simply my natural size? Whatever . . . I was desperately tired. I very much wanted to lay down and sleep, but that would be disastrous. It would be dawn soon, so one way or another I had to hash this out right now.
I was in dire straits. Far too big to hide, I was going to be in serious trouble as soon as it became light enough for humans to see, and I could just imagine what my vast metal-covered body looked like on radar.
I had to dump all that energy I'd absorbed. I didn't know if it was possible, or even if it was the cause of my situation, but it was the only thing I knew to try. I sat there while I concentrated on my mane for several long minutes, trying to tell it to reverse what it had done in the storm, but that simply gave me a headache. I tried envisioning the charge draining out of me, into the salt water lapping about my feet . . . nothing. I tried picturing my tissues being pressed out like a sponge. . . .
That worked; though not in the way that I'd expected. I didn't dump any energy, but suddenly there was this sensation of compression, and the beach sand seemed to zoom up at me. Within moments I was back to my initial size.
I stared down at myself in wonder, thoughts racing: Wasn't there anything this body couldn't do?!? I experimented briefly with this new-found ability, found that I could vary my dimensions anywhere from mouse-size up to more than triple my "normal" tonnage.
A little more of this, then I returned to about human size and thought some more. If I could change size so easily, could I also change shape? Up to this point, I'd basically assumed that my career as a human being had been Terminated With Extreme Prejudice. But now I began trying to figure out a way back.
I was just getting ready for my first try when a sobering thought hit me: What if this was a one-shot deal? What if, assuming I actually could turn back into a human, I would never be able to find my way back to dragon? I thought about the last several hours, looked over my shoulders at those incredible wings of mine. . . .
It was very nearly a risk I wasn't willing to take: I almost said to hell with it and walked off into the jungle. Almost, but not quite. To this day I'll be damned if I know why I didn't.
Screw it; I'd be a dragon again if I had to stand on the hangar roof with my foot in a bucket and a lightning rod in my teeth. I crouched down on the sand and concentrated, my size-changing success showing the way. There was resistance, like I was trying to push through some barrier. I pushed harder, and that barrier suddenly gave way.
PAIN.
For several long moments it felt as if every muscle in my body was trying to tear itself apart. Then it was gone, and I found myself gasping for breath on my hands and knees in the wet sand.
Completely human.
I hung onto the beach until the world stopped trying to throw me off, then slowly got to my two feet. I looked down at the fragile skin covering the arms, then at the useless fingernails that had replaced my talons. Finally, with a feeling of utter dread, I looked over my shoulder.
Gone.
I may have just thrown away one of the few things that I had ever really wanted from life.
I felt my heart pounding like a triple-hammer as a wave of revulsion and loss washed through me. I felt maimed. I couldn't have taken three breaths as a human before I was crouching on the sand again, concentrating with all my might.
I could have kissed that barrier when I felt myself come up against it once more; then I was throwing everything I had at it, feeling it give more easily this time. Again there was searing pain as bones bent and muscles rearranged, but not so much now, and welcome anyway.
Several moments, and it was over. The curious numbness of armor wrapped me again. I felt massive wings stir restlessly across my back, and a muscular tail flexed and coiled. A blissful feeling of expansion washed over me, and I felt myself rapidly growing to my initial size. My eyes still closed, I laid my head upon the cool sand and sent a silent prayer of thanks.
Dawn was just starting to tint the sky when a robin-sized creature fluttered by overhead, unnoticed by the crash crew as they tried to figure out just what the hell had trashed the threshold of Runway 36. I alighted on my window sill again and hopped inside, expanding to collie-size and hooking the window closed.
Black waves of sleep were trying to pull me under, but I resisted just a little while longer as I padded back to my mirror and sat before it, catlike, my long tail wound about my feet. I gazed into the glass, and this time loved everything I saw. My blue-gray-silver scales glinted like gunmetal, my talons like diamonds as I slowly nodded to my image, and I felt a deep sense of satisfaction as I turned and tottered to my bed, not bothering to change form as I coiled atop the sheets and let my exhaustion take me.