InsaneJournal

Temeraire did not remember being old. He got the impression that he was going to be very impressive in a couple of centuries - no surprise there at all - and rather wished he could have seen himself as well, instead of waking up a week or so after he had gone to sleep having missed all of the excitement.

His older self had left a couple of things behind, including a couple of recipes which Temeraire had thoroughly enjoyed, and some links saved on his touchpad, which were a collection of books and academic papers he was finding most interesting, and, most mysteriously, some instructions given to Laurence, an incantation in a language even Temeraire did not know, which had something to do with the amulet he and Eddie had found in the wreck, only he had not said what, so it was quite impossible to know if the recitations he had been doing each night before sleep were actually doing anything. He would not have bothered, after the third night, except that if he could not trust the word of his own self, hundreds of years into the future, then surely he could not trust anyone at all; he only wished the instructions were not quite so cryptic. He would very much like to be able to do some magic, such as so many of his new friends could do. But after nearly a month of reciting the strange words every evening, without the amulet doing even so much as glowing satisfactorily, he was getting fed up, and wondering disloyally if his old self was starting to get a little senile.

The moon was big and fat, the air pleasantly cool the night he said the words for what he determined would be the last time. As usual, nothing happened. He sighed and curled up in the centre of the heated, carpeted floor of his recently-completed pavilion, disappointed but comfortable, and closed his eyes.

—-

He woke up before dawn, strangely disoriented. He shifted in an attempt to lift himself on his forelegs, and promptly landed flat on his face on the carpet. The carpet which was far too close. When he blinked he could see each individual strand in it, and when he tried to draw back he saw a human hand that was absurdly large. Startled, he tried to get up again, and the hand moved. Then he fell over again, this time on his back. The ceiling was miles and miles away. Something was very wrong.

Also his face hurt.

He lifted his foreleg experimentally, and the pale hand waved in front of his eyes. When he attempted to move it side to side, it obeyed. He stretched his claws, and the fingers spread out wide. Tentatively, mind racing with combined horror and excitement, he carefully lowered the hand to touch his muzzle. There was none. Instead, he outlined the shape of a human nose, of flat human lips, and a human chin.

I am a man.

A high-pitched, strangled sound escaped him, like a man screaming. It did not sound like his voice at all. He sat up, with some experimentation and more difficulty, figuring out how the hands and elbows worked, and looked down at the rest of his body. Definitely human. Very human. He spent quite a long time examining it, counting the fingers and toes, inspecting every inch of too-smooth, too-soft skin. There were no scars, he noticed, and both his eyes seemed to be whole. But he had no wings. He started to feel very vulnerable, being so small and naked. Looking around he saw his breastplate, enormous, the chain sitting in a circle around him as though he had shrunk inside it, the yellow amulet linked into one of the rings. For a moment he thought maybe it was glowing, until the light, real or imagined, winked at him and went out.

Panic threatened him. He had always wondered what it would be like to be a man, like in the old Chinese tale from the book of myths Laurence had read him a dozen times. But in that tale, the dragon had not been able to turn back again. Was he stuck like this? Unable to fly? More helpless than a hatchling? At least hatchlings had claws, even if they could not breathe fire like Iskierka; these little fingers were no use at all.

His first instinct was to find Laurence. Laurence would know what to do.

He scrambled to his new feet, ungainly as a baby horse, and balanced precariously on two legs for a while before attempting a few steps. He found that the body knew how to move, so long as he remembered not to try and use his forelegs. He set off with determination, but after only a few steps outside the pavilion he had to come running back, shivering and rubbing his arms. It was cold. He was sure it had not been nearly so cold the day before, but the icy breeze stabbed into his skin like a thousand knives, the hard ground cut into his bare feet, and he could barely see where he was going in the dark. He retreated into the relative safety of the pavilion. There was an area set aside with a long divan and cushions for visitors. He found a blanket and wrapped himself in it, huddling into the corner of the divan and shivering until the heat from the floor worked its way back into his fragile human bones.

This was not anything like he had imagined at all.

—--

Laurence had seen Lan Xichen off to work with a small breakfast and a kiss, and then had brewed himself another pot of coffee before he bundled up in his jacket and headed outside, coffee steaming in one hand, a satchel of tea leaves in the other, and the morning paper tucked under one arm.

“Good morning, Tem –” Laurence started, once he got to the pavilion, but the words cut off suddenly with a terrible sense of dread, the coffee cup falling from nerveless fingers and shattering on the mosaic, when he spotted the breastplate lying discarded and empty in the middle of the pavilion where Temeraire normally slept.

He should have expected it. He’d been spared, somehow, when Lan Xichen’s family had disappeared en masse and had left Lan Xichen behind; he’d counted his blessings then, that the family they were building had been spared, somehow, but he should have known that he wasn’t nearly so lucky.

It was suddenly hard to catch his breath; he couldn’t seem to draw more than short gasps as his gaze frantically searched the pavilion. Ridiculous, of course, because Temeraire was far too large to hide, and he’d hardly strip himself of his breastplate to do it; Laurence was relatively certain that Temeraire couldn’t take it off himself without snapping the chain. He felt strange, as though he were watching himself from outside of his body, and he was suddenly very certain that if he didn’t seat himself, his legs would no longer be able to hold him.

And then his gaze fell on the Chinese boy huddled in the corner, wrapped in a blanket, and it was so unexpected that Laurence snapped back to himself, body and mind aligning once again. Some part of him recognized the boy, though he was certain that he’d never seen him before in his life.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” he asked, sharper than he’d intended, but not finding it in himself to regret his tone.

Temeraire had been dozing despite the confusion and distress, or perhaps because of it, exhausting emotions which he was used to having for other people, not himself. He started awake at a crashing noise, and stared across the floor of the pavilion at the man standing frozen at its entrance. Of course he would have recognised Laurence anywhere, but it was still very strange to see him so large, and from such a low angle. He swallowed. “Please do not shout at me, Laurence,” he said, his oddly-high voice coming out a bit shaky on his first attempt. “I did not mean to do it. And there is no need to be throwing drinks around either,” he added, almost forgetting his anxiety at the sight of the puddle of coffee and ceramic bits all over his floor. He could only hope it would not stain. “It is only me, although,” he said, wincing as he patted his sore nose and then the top of his head, where there was a thick mop of hair, “I am not myself at all, this morning.”

Only me was hardly an answer at all, and Laurence was about to tell the young man exactly what he thought of it, but there was something of the voice that made Laurence pause. It was missing the deep resonance that Laurence was used to, the echo of the Divine Wind, but the quality otherwise was the same, and if that didn’t sell it, then the startlingly blue eyes, the same colour as his dragon’s – near a match with the sapphires set in his breastplate – would have.

He gaped at him. “Temeraire?”

“It was the amulet, I think,” Temeraire said, while attempting to get up again from a sitting position. He was not nearly so frightened now that Laurence was here to help him work it all out. “Only I do not see what I did differently.” He managed to stand, if a little top heavy and unsteady on his feet still, and dropped the blanket so that he could show Laurence his new body to advantage, speeding his arms wide. “Look, Laurence! I am like the Yellow Emperor, only in reverse, and I do not think I will die any time soon. Unless something eats me,” he caveated, looking down at himself once more, critically.

The amulet. Laurence’s brow furrowed, trying to figure out what Temeraire meant, and then cleared as his gaze swung over to the amulet that was still resetting on the breast plate.

“Well,” Laurence started, prepared to tell Temeraire that they could ask Lan Xichen – no doubt he’d know more about anything magical than either he or Temeraire, and failing that, they could take the question to the Network, when, entirely unexpected, Temeraire dropped his towel and made a show of his body.

“Oh good lord!” Laurence exclaimed, quickly averting his eyes and shielding the view with his hand. He’d seen naked men before, of course – it was ill advised to go to the baths under the covert wearing clothes, and it was impossible to avoid in the close quarters of a ships berth before he’d become an officer, but never quite so unexpectedly and with so much vigor. It was only Temeraire, he reminded himself, and, with a bracing breath, he brought his gaze back to Temeraire.

“Don’t you have any clothes?” he asked, and then, “No, of course you don’t.” It was warm in the pavilion, at least, using an ingenious heating system rigged up using the warmth of the hot springs which had been half-copied from the Chinese pavilions in their own world. He didn’t wish to think of what might have become of Temeraire had all this occurred before the pavilion had been finished. He’d have frozen to death if he hadn’t been able to make it into the covert.

He calculated the distance, and then factored in the fact that Temeraire seemed unsteady on his feet. The paving stones were still warm, even in this cold, and Laurence could give him his jacket, but it was still a long way to walk unshod and only half clothed, especially if one wasn’t used to walking.

He appraised Temeraire’s new size – Lan Xichen’s robes would be long on him, and Laurence had both height and width on him; he suspected his own boots and Lan Xichen’s shoes would be too big for him, too. But perhaps there was something in one of the rooms left behind by whichever aviator had been occupying it when it had come to Vallo that would fit nicer. Until he could find such a garment, Temeraire would have to make due with Laurence’s own shirts and trousers and a tight belt.

“I’ll be sure nothing eats you, Temeraire,” he promised him. “Will you wait here while I fetch some clothes for you? I’ll fry you up some breakfast once we’re back inside properly, and we’ll see if we can’t find you something that won’t fit better. If not, I suppose we might have to get something tailored for you.”

“Oh, good. I am hungry.” Temeraire said it as he realised it. He rubbed at his stomach instinctively and sat back down, confused as to why Laurence had his eyes covered. You’d think he’d be interested, he thought. He wondered what clothes would even feel like. “Please bring something warm, Laurence, I tried to go outside and it felt like the air was biting me. I don’t know how you stand it.”

With a promise that he’d bring back something warm, Laurence returned to the Covert and up to the room he shared with Lan Xichen. It didn’t take him long to grab a shirt, and after a brief consideration decided to forgo the waistcoat and jacket – there was little sense when Temeraire would be swimming in them. He chose one of the thick pairs of trousers that he wore while he was on patrol in the winter and a leather belt, some thick woollen socks – a second thought had him grab another two pair to perhaps lessen how much room there’d be in the boots he grabbed, and one of his winter coats. All said, probably fifteen minutes had passed since he left Temeraire, and he very nearly jogged, heedless of dignity, to return to him.

“I will help you dress,” he said, when he laid it all out before Temeraire. He could hardly expect the dragon-turned-man to know how to do it himself, and while Laurence was hardly a valet, he thought it couldn’t be too difficult to manage.

Temeraire looked at the pile of clothes. “All right,” he said, nervous and excited all at once. It shouldn’t be that hard, after all people did it every day, but once the shirt was on and Laurence started doing up buttons with what to Temeraire was a dazzling feat of dexterity, he was glad he did not have to manage on his own after all. If anything he felt like all his limbs were getting in the way; he kept putting them in the wrong places. It was not uncomfortable to wear clothes, but neither did it feel entirely right; he stood there trying to move his feet up and down in Laurence’s boots while Laurence tugged a big coat on over his shoulders.

Temeraire looked up at him, seeing Laurence up close afresh, and felt his mouth moving of its own accord into what he hoped was a human smile. The fine lines of Laurence’s face were deeper than he remembered, but it was still a great pleasure to see him so, as he had not since perhaps his first week of life outside the shell. Then he realised he was craning his neck. “You are taller than me,” he said, indignantly.

Laurence smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he looked down at him. It was… well, strange couldn’t begin to cover what it was, having Temeraire standing in front of him, a teenage boy instead of a twenty-ton dragon. He affectionately placed his hand on Temeraire’s head, feeling the softness of his hair.

“Lan Huan is even taller than I am,” Laurence told him; he couldn’t imagine a difference of four or five inches would even register to Temeraire at his regular size. “I don’t know how the magic of the amulet will work, but you may grow more still, even if you’ve reached your full growth as a dragon.” He wasn’t entirely sure how that would work: Temeraire was unlikely to remain human long enough to hit another growth spurt, and once he reverted back to his dragon form, he wasn’t likely to continue to grow. And even if some men continued to grow into their twenties – and Laurence placed Temeraire as somewhere in his late teens or early twenties – the vast majority of his growth would have been finished by now. Still, he thought it might help keep Temeraire from focusing too much on it; he knew how proud Temeraire could be of his size compared to other dragons.

“I can cook you just about anything for breakfast now that you’re this size now, though,” he added, changing the subject as he went to retrieve the amulet from Temeraire’s breastplate. He slipped it into his coat pocket. “Do you have any requests?”

Laurence’s hand on his head was comforting, even if it felt rather alien to be touched at all; a sensation quite different from skin-to-scale contact; it felt closer, somehow. “Oh,” Temeraire breathed, entirely distracted by the thought of food. “I would like to try anything I have not had before. I have always wondered what eggs are like, since everyone seems to like them so much, and bacon, and black pudding, and…” he began a list of coveted breakfast items which, were he to eat them all in one sitting, would no doubt result in his new stomach reaching bursting point. “I could have coffee…” he said, just as they reached the steps, where he hesitated. The outdoors was suddenly a worrying place to be.

“I will brew up a fresh pot,” Laurence said, thinking with a touch of loss of his favourite coffee mug, now irreparably broken, and the coffee on the tiles. He would have to come back to clean it up, once he had a sufficient spread laid out in front of Temeraire. “I don’t have the ingredients just now for a black pudding, but I’ll make you a full English breakfast, if you would like.”

Laurence nearly told him that he’d make the other breakfast foods at a later date, if Temeraire remained like this, but held his tongue; he thought that would undoubtedly distress him more than if he said nothing at all.

He took a couple more steps outside before he realized that Temeraire was no longer with him, and he stopped and turned, frowning. It was difficult to imagine that Temeraire was frightened, though that was what the expression on his face suggested. It could like as be that walking upright was new and difficult, doubly so in boots that were several sizes too large, but whatever the problem, they could all be helped in the same way. He walked back to Temeraire’s side, and offered him his elbow. “Would you like to take my arm?” he asked, gently.

Temeraire considered his new limbs, and the strangeness of all the clothing hung on his body, the looseness of the boots. At least the air did not sting quite so much. “I can do it,” he said, sounding about as sure as he felt. After a couple of steps, though, he stumbled into Laurence’s side, clinging instinctively to his sleeve. He made a face; he had not been nearly so clumsy on his first day out of the shell. Laurence felt very strong and solid and reliable, which was comforting, at least.

Laurence was more than happy to help shore Temeraire up as they made their way to the covert. “You know, Temeraire, I’m quite certain if I woke up one day with wings, I’d not be able to get off the ground at all,” he mused. He wondered how different it must be to walk on two legs than four; likely about as strange as doing the opposite.

He made sure to match his pace with Temeraire, a leisurely stroll more than the brisk walk he wanted to, and then they were inside, and he rattled off directions – the hall there led to the stairs up to the bedchambers, and down to the baths; Temeraire, he was sure, would enjoy the hot springs below the covert, if they turned here, they’d make it to the parlour – and then they were in the kitchens, and here, at least, Laurence could make himself useful.

“I will ask Lan Huan his opinion; I’m sure he has at least some experience with magical artefacts. I’m sure all of this must be very strange; are you well, dear heart?”

Temeraire’s eerily blue eyes were wide as he stared around the inside of the castle, where he had never been. Walking on the stone floors was different than it was in the pavilion, which was different to the soft grass outside. There were so many rooms, he couldn’t imagine how anyone could keep track. Now he stood somewhat awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, looking around. “I think so,” he said, looking down at his hands again. “At least, I am not hurt, but it is strange. Everything is so big.” He looked up nervously at the ceiling, which seemed uncomfortably close. He was all too aware that there were several tons of stone above his head. Knowing that the castle had stood perfectly well for hundreds of years somehow didn’t stop the feeling that any minute the whole thing could collapse in on him.

Laurence had known something of that feeling, running through the sewers of Turkey with Tharkay, but it didn’t occur to him now that Temeraire could be feeling the same; he might have, if he’d given more than a passing thought to the idea that this was Temeraire’s first time inside a building, properly, and one that had multiple stories, instead of the pavilions that he’d stayed in in China and now here.

“Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing toward the small table; when he and Lan Xichen didn’t dine out in the courtyard with Temeraire, they usually ate in the dining room proper, but the kitchen, sometimes, was nice for a quick meal or a snack. He put on a fresh pot of coffee, and then began cooking breakfast; hopefully the smell of fried eggs and bacon would help put Temeraire more at ease.

“I hope that it will not take long for you to adjust to the size differences. I suppose you must not even have your days as a hatchling to reference, since you spent them shipboard.” He wondered if they’d have helped anyway; if he tried to think of his days as a child, he thought he could remember some of them – peering up at his mother, or wishing he stood as tall and straight as his father, reaching for a bit of pastry on the counter and needing to stretch for it – but it was more a wisp of a memory than something he could reference back to. But then, ten years wasn’t nearly as far back as his own childhood, and he was not ashamed to admit that Temeraire’s memory was keener than his.

Temeraire considered the table and chairs. Gingerly he eased himself onto one of them, telling himself it could not be so difficult; he had after all watched people do it all his life, though never while considering exactly how it was done. He tried to do it while Laurence was not watching. He was warm now in the enclosed kitchen, and with the stove burning, but there was no way he was going to attempt to remove any layers. “I think I am vexed with myself,” he muttered, examining his hands again and pulling back the coat sleeves to see his arms. “My older self, I mean. I could have been more clear, instead of leaving riddles behind. What if something had come to attack us in the night, and I was not able to fight it off because I was like this?”

“I’m sure he thought this some sort of grand joke,” Laurence said, a little dryly; he, too, was a little annoyed at the future Temeraire. It had been an unpleasant shock, to come out and think that Temeraire had disappeared in the night, and even now he wasn’t sure how to deal with the reality of the situation. He supposed he’d have to take some time off patrol, until Temeraire were normal again, or, at the very least, until he were more comfortable in his new skin. “But, I suppose that it means that at some point in the future, you’ll look back at this and laugh. I’m sure that you would not have been so cryptic about it, were there any true risk of danger.”

Temeraire considered this. “I suppose that is true,” he said finally, “I am sure I am very wise in the future, after all, so I would not do anything dangerous.

“You seemed very wise indeed,” Laurence assured him, though he suspected that some of Temeraire’s reckless spirit had persevered into his old age. “And while your elder self may have only given us the first piece of the puzzle, I suspect that we’ll be better off learning for ourselves how to work the amulet, rather to rely only on his second-hand instructions; if he’d given me more information than what he had, then I’m sure at some point the instructions would have been less clear, and discovering the rest of its secrets can only lead to giving us a greater understanding of its use. I’m sure that between you and Lan Huan, you’ll be able to figure out its secrets sooner, rather than later, and be better off for having come to the solutions yourself.”

Temeraire sighed and made another annoyed face, not practised enough with his expressions to hide his emotions as someone else might have. “I suppose,” he admitted, grudgingly, consoled only a little by the idea of research. He perked up a bit at the smells ensnaring from Laurence’s cooking, although he found the scents not nearly as strong as he would have liked; he found he was practically having to heave air through his nostrils to get the full effect. “If you wore it,” he hypothesised aloud, “do you think you could turn into a dragon, then?”

“Oh,” Laurence said. He never had thought much of becoming a dragon, never being prone to flights of fantasy, but he recalled Temeraire asking about it once, years ago; he’d not thought of it since. “I suppose it would stand to reason that it would work in reverse,” he answered, hesitantly.

Laurence wasn’t entirely sure he relished the prospect of being turned into a dragon; if Temeraire was clumsy as a human, Laurence could only be moreso as a dragon, with all the ill-effects that would come from a creature the size of a house not knowing his tail from his wings, and while Laurence no longer placed quite so much emphasis on his dignity as he might have, eight years ago, he did not disdain it so much that he looked forward to the prospect of him stumbling around like a yearling.

He plated Temeraire’s breakfast and laid it in front of him. “But I think for now, we should focus our efforts on returning you to normal.”

Temeraire reached out a hand to his plate, and caught himself just in time in what he thought was practically a masterful display of willpower; the food smelled very nice, even if the smells were strangely dulled as though there were something stuffed up his nostrils. “I should use cutlery,” he said, as though reciting. “That is civilised.” He picked up a fork and considered it. “How is it done?”

Laurence could not remember ever learning how to use utensils properly. He knew he wasn’t born with the knowledge, but he might as well have been, for all the help the learning process did him now. But he could remember learning to eat with chopsticks, and how he’d struggled with them; it had taken him an embarrassingly long time before he could use them with any amount of dignity.

But then, he’d seen the way some people used their cutlery here in Vallo; he suspected that ‘dignity’ held very little sway in the matter.

“If I may,” Laurence said, taking the fork from Temeraire and picking up the knife. “You hold them like so,” he said, and then cut a bit of the bacon, demonstrating how to use the knife to push the food onto the fork before he passed the utensils back to Temeraire.

Temeraire felt like a clumsy hatchling, stabbing at the food as best he could in an attempt to transport it to his mouth, but he soon forgot about it in favour of enjoying his food. The expressions that passed across his face as he ate would certainly have drawn stares at any civilised dinner table, each new taste and texture in his brand new mouth making his eyes narrow or widen, his nose scrunch up. “It is very good!” he exclaimed at last when he could contain himself long enough to swallow and speak. He tried the coffee and coughed rather embarrassingly at the bitter taste. “That is not.”

He looked up into Laurence’s face; now he was no longer so hungry, it was easier to appreciate being so close to the person he loved in a way that was impossible to explain in human terms. Laurence looked well, and happy - if somewhat confused, and somehow older than Temeraire remembered. The lines on his face were clearer, perhaps. “I don’t think I will mind if we don’t work out how to reverse it right away,” he admitted, quietly. “So long as we are not attacked by anything.” He cocked his head slightly, thinking aloud; “maybe I should have a pistol.”

Laurence made a private note to himself that it might be best to keep Temeraire from eating much in public for a little while: at least until he learned the trick of cutlery, but Laurence hoped he might introduce some discipline to his expressions too. For now, he was happy to watch Temeraire eat, especially so to see what pleasure Temeraire seemed to take from his cooking. He could read Lan Xichen’s expression well, even if he wasn’t what one would call expressive, but outside of his nephews and nieces, when they’d been babies trying foods for the first time, he’d never seen it written so plainly.

He managed, somewhat, to keep from looking too uncertain when Temeraire mentioned having a pistol. “Not right away, I think,” he said after a moment. “But I will happily teach you to shoot, should you wish. Perhaps even how to use a blade. But I think we must master the more basic tools,” like cutlery, and buttons, “before we start with the tools of war.”

Temeraire nodded; there was sense in that, no matter how disappointing. “Of course I might simply turn back tomorrow,” he reasoned. “I had better do as much as I can now while I have the chance.”

It was strange. Having Temeraire as a young human man was very strange, all on its own, but it was strange, too, how Laurence hoped he might remain that way a little longer; he wanted to show Temeraire the world from the perspective of a human, show him all the things he’d thought that Temeraire might enjoy, if only he were the proper size for it. Art museums, and operas, high quality restaurants and tasteful clothing (hopefully, his draconic penchant for overly bejewelled and goldwork-embroidered clothing would not pass over to his human form).

“I will be happy to show you as much as I might while I can,” Laurence assured him. And, he hoped, there’d be opportunities in the future, too, and that the amulet would not work only once.