Chapter 39 Bonus: Modern AU Chapter 2

Safraxi’s eyes slowly cracked open as strange noises reached her ears. They sounded like… well, she really wasn’t sure what those sounds were. Birdsong maybe? Stefaial was hardly known for having the most diverse songbird population, but then again, Tifse’s father was rich as shit, and had gardens. Anything was possible.

This wasn’t the same room she’d fallen asleep in. It was far smaller, boxier, and with painted plaster walls, rather than the brick and stonework of the Salifir Palace. The sheets were a bright pastel pink, rather than the white cotton from the previous night, and were far smoother and softer. The topmost layer even had some sort of embroidery or dyed pattern on it of… was that some sort of bipedal dragon? Its proportions were horribly exaggerated, with a head larger than its body, and giant goofy yellow eyes, with its tongue sticking out.

Looking around, there was different furniture as well. Some sort of desk was crammed into the corner, covered in odd painted toys, papers, and… well she didn’t even know what the rest was. In the corner, some sort of large stuffed cushion contained Tifse, though her clothing were completely different. Her dress and armor were gone, rather she was in some sort of jacket, woven from rough blue cotton, with multiple pins over it. One with pink, orange, and white stripes, one that seemed to be a caricature of a black dragon, maybe the same one from the sheets, another of a… cup with a face on it, and foam on top? Beneath the jacket was a simple white cotton top, with a bit of undergarments showing as it sagged down too far. Below those, was a simple black and pink skirt, with a pattern of many perpendicular stripes of varying thickness and color saturation. She also had… hair? Like a human?

She was sitting up, legs crossed, with some sort of box resting on her leg. Was that thing the source of the odd sounds? They seemed to line up with her pressing down on the top of it, and she seemed oddly focused on it. After a moment, she cursed, and tossed it to the side, before standing, and finally noticing her company was awake. “Well it’s about time you woke up. I can’t leave you alone in here, if my dad catches you in my bedroom, both of our asses are grass. We’re just lucky the fire marshal tore him a new one and he had to take the bars off the windows.”

“Your… dad? Tifse, where the fuck are we?” Safraxi sat up further and rubbed her head. It felt stuffy, like she’d slept far too long.

Tifse stopped short of the bed, a shocked look on her face as she looked up at the rat before her. “What… happened to your hair? And did you put contacts in? Your eyes were yellow last night.”

“Uh… yeah, it’s Fraxi right now, so green eyes.” She shifted to let her legs hang off the floor, and stood to stretch. “Where the fuck are we, Pipsqueak?”

“My bedroom?” The fox sat down at her desk, grabbed some sort of… rectangle, and unfolded it to reveal many tiny rectangles on the bottom, with letters, numbers, and other symbols stamped on them, and a mirror at the top. “Issss Fraxi another alter or something? I keep telling you to keep a journal to keep track better… I didn’t even know you were picking names for each other now.” She pressed something on the side, and the mirror on the top lit up with color, revealing an image of a beautiful, vibrant green field, and a blue sky above. The tapped at the little number-stamped rectangles, and the screen responded, changing to another image. “I’m really trying my best to keep up with this D.I.D. stuff, or whatever it is, but research online is only going to go so far for me.”

“D.I.D.?” She skirted around the bed and bent over the shoulder of the fox to view the strange images flashing over the odd flat glass panel. “Pipsqueak, what the fuck is that thing? What- is this some kind of magic?”

“Magic?” The fox whirled around, apparently the chair she was in could swivel, and accidentally kneed Safraxi in the groin. Being a dragon, and not having anything down there anymore, she barely flinched. The fox, though, seemed much more concerned. “Shit! Did I catch your-” she stopped herself, seeming too nervous to finish the sentence.

“Uh… Tifse, I haven’t had anything down there since I became a dragon,” Fraxi chuckled. “You got nothing but thigh.”

“Uh-huh, right. I totally wasn’t playing with that thing all night last night.” The fox rolled her eyes. “And Tifse? What is that? A new nickname?”

“Try the name I’ve been calling you since we met at The Academy?” This was all getting weirder and weirder. “The fuck is that thing? You still haven’t answered me!”

“My laptop? It’s not- fuck me I don’t know how to deal with an episode like this by myself.” She rubbed her face. “Saph, we are at my dad’s house. My name is Tiffany. Should we get Maggie? She seems to have a little more experience with this stuff from her time in the foster system.”

“Maggie?” Safraxi squinted. “Tiffany? Pipsqueak, this ain’t the room I went to sleep in last night. Those aren’t-” she finally noticed the biggest discrepancy of all. The two were speaking with their mouths. She couldn’t feel the fox’s mind at all, through the rider bond. There was no way a bond should be able to break so suddenly. It was supposed to take years. “Tell me about the last two weeks.”

“Okay, okay. That’s a good start. Filling in the gaps,” Tiffany took a few uneven breaths to steady herself. “Last two weeks, last two weeks… you got expelled from university for cheating. You punched Rubis for calling you cold, and after Agatha gave you a lecture about appreciating Amy and Emmie for giving you a place to stay and putting you through college. Does that sound familiar?”

“Uh…” These names weren’t right. She could kind of assume who each one was meant to be, but it all seemed wrong. “Okay, for me I blasted Rubis with cold breath after Aquixi gave me a lecture about not appreciating Amjazel and Emren. This all seems… mixed up.”

“That’s one word for it…” The fox rubbed her forehead and leaned back. “Um… I’ve read fictives are a thing, like, alters that come from stories, but that all sounds too close to real life. You don’t have cold breath, Saph, sorry, Fraxi. You’re a rat, you just… identify as a dragon.”

Fraxi rolled her eyes and grabbed a glass of stale water from the corner of the dresser, before exhaling a thin stream of frigid air over it, freezing the contents solid, before handing it to Tiffany. “Nope, nope, and nope. I’m a dragon. I’m just shapeshifted right now.”

Tiffany’s eyes bulged at the display of magic, and she nearly dropped the glass as it was passed to her. “Fuck me. You’re not Saph.”

“It’s Safraxi, actually.” The dragon sank back down onto the bed and crossed her arms. “I am a dragon. Tifse is my rider. Where the fuck am I?”

“Uh- Salifir, in the south of the United States of Ti’Aval?” Tiffany grimaced. This was even more out of her league than plurality. “I can pull up a map on my laptop?”

“No… no… let’s… fuck me. Let’s just get some food in me. Where can I get a dragon sized breakfast?” She rubbed her face and started for the window. If she wasn’t supposed to be caught in here, she could at least work with that.

“There’s a Waffle House a few miles away. We can take Saph’s… bike…” Tifse glanced at Fraxi’s clothing. “Shit, her keys were in her pockets.”

Saph groaned and rolled over, pushing herself into a sitting position and forcing her eyes open. Tiffany was out of the bed already, it seemed, though- wait. These weren’t the sheets she fell asleep on last night. Her eyes darted around the room with suspicion, it was a completely different one than she had drifted off in. Rather than a cramped suburban bedroom, this looked like some kind of fucking fantasy palace. The ceilings were ludicrously high, the windows were huge and fancy. Even the doors to the room were stupidly ostentatious.

She swung her legs off the bed and stood, fingers twitching at the lump in her jacket where she kept her shotgun. She hadn’t even meant to fall asleep fully clothed the previous night. Her jeans were still unbuttoned and her fly was down after her and Tiffany’s bit of fun, a fact which she quickly corrected. They were only… lightly stained. She wasn’t concerned about that right now, though.

A bit of movement in the corner caught her eye. What she had initially dismissed as some sort of lumpy orange beanbag was uncoiling and stretching out, revealing a- “Holy shit…” she froze completely as she processed the sight before her. A real life, living, breathing dragon was in the room with her right now. And it was looking at her? It seemed docile at least, though smaller than she would have expected.

“About time you woke up,” a familiar voice echoed in her mind. Her knees buckled at the sensation. It felt as if someone had poured a pot of steaming hot water directly into her gray matter, and it was being turned into a stew. She couldn’t even manage a response, she simply clutched at her head and gasped in agony at the unfamiliar and violating sensation as it washed over her entire being. Another consciousness had touched hers, and it hurt.

The dragon seemed to recognize what happened and shot to its feet to aid her. A wing caught her and pulled her against its side, keeping her from slamming her head on the stone floors. The beast’s expressions didn’t seem entirely familiar to her, but she could at least recognize concern from the way it was looking at her. “Was that you? Talking in my- in my fuckin’ brain?” The pain was already abating, at the very least. She’d have a headache, but she’d had worse from hangovers. She’d live.

The beast nodded, concern mixed with confusion. It lead her back to the bed, and gently pressed her to sit back down. She saw no reason to resist. She wasn’t about to argue with something with claws like that. She doubted her shotgun would do much more than piss it off. After a moment it sat down, and seemed to think hard about something.

“Can’t talk with your mouth, can you?” Saph muttered, and the dragon turned back to her to nod again. It wasn’t terribly surprising. Saph had consumed every dragon book in her college library, and plenty more she’d pirated from online, to satiate her insatiable hunger for dragon stories. It helped her with the species dysphoria. Many of those fictional dragons, though, could not speak with their mouths, and had to resort to telepathy instead. It seemed that was the case here.

“Hold on…” she dug around in her pockets until she had found where she put her journal. Tiffany had encouraged her to start keeping one, so she could start figuring out which alters were bouncing around in her head. She wasn’t quite to handing out names yet, the little kid she’d found seemed most keen on that, but she felt hesitant to set things in stone for now.

She tore out a few pages, wrote large block letters on them, and laid them out on the floor before the orange dragon before her in a grid, alphabetical. This would hardly be the most efficient means of communication, but it was quick and dirty, and should work. “Okay, my name’s Saph. What’s yours?”

The dragon seemed… amused, but played along. “I D A.”

“Ida? Heh, that’s my granny’s new adoptive daughter too.”

The dragon snorted, and continued tapping.

“M A.”

“Ida-mi? Idami?” The dragon nodded on the second option. “Okay, Idami, where the fuck am I?”

“S A L I F I R.”

“Salifir? Okay, but like… where in Salifir? I don’t remember seeing a place this ritzy on the drive through.” She gestured around with her pen. “This like… some old manor or something? Last I checked dragons weren’t real, too.”

It tilted its head in confusion at the last comment, but continued trying to tap out another message. “T I F S E S D A D S P A L A C E.”

“Tifse’s dad’s palace? Who the fuck is Tifse?”

That seemed to alarm the dragon, and it stepped over the many slips of loose paper to reach the door. It clawed awkwardly at the handle, seemingly growing more and more frustrated as it went, until Saph got up and opened the door for it. It huffed in thanks, bumped its nose against her forehead, and then stepped through. Saph made to follow, but it brought its finned tail up to block her, and shook its head.

Okay, that rubbed her the wrong way. She wasn’t a fan of being told to stay put in a strange room by anyone, even a dragon. But… what the fuck else would she do right now? “Yeah, fine. I’ll sit tight.” She was already mentally cataloging the sights beyond the doorway in her brief view of the outside. The room seemed to go straight out onto a balcony, overlooking some kind of garden. The outside was just as luxurious and over the top as the room she’d woken up in. It looked like a fucking fairy tale.

She kinda dug it.

Once the dragon was gone, she moved to the windows, intending to open it up andlight up one of her remaining pre-rolls, but it was barred up, sealed tight. “Fuck me. Am I supposed to be some sort of prisoner?” She stuffed the pre-rolls back in her pocket and checked the door. Unlocked. Someone had even jammed it open from the outside so it couldn’t even latch. So no one was locking her in. That was a start.

“Safraxi!” A familiar voice called, and her head snapped up to meet it. Tiffany was jogging over, wearing some sort of ridiculous green and gold dress, straight out of a ren fair. She slowed down a few steps away, and looked up and down at the clothes of the rat before her with equal confusion. “That’s uh… an interesting look. Idami said you were acting weird, and couldn’t do mental communication? Now I can’t sense you through the bond. What’s going on?”

So Tiffany could communicate psychically? That… didn’t seem right. The girl could barely talk about her feelings. Opening up her very mind to others seemed unlikely. “Uh… yeah. Idami’s the dragon, right?”

“Yeah?” she ushered the rat inside the room, a growing look of concern on her own face. “She’s your aunt, Safraxi?”

“Safraxi?” the rat scoffed. “What kind of fantasy bullshit name is that?”

“Uh… yours?” the fox seemed to be growing progressively more nervous as the conversation went on.

“Hell no. My name’s Saph. Has been for a while. You were one of the first people to know when I came out at college. Don’t tell me you’re having memory issues now, too,” she groaned and rubbed her face. “Me having them is bad enough…”

“Idami seemed to want me to come back here, what’s going on?” another familiar voice butted in, and as Saph glanced up she spotted Maggie slipping into the room, Idami not far behind.

“Maggie, can you talk some sense into Tiffany?” Saph gestured at the fox sitting across from her, exasperated. “She’s making less sense than… well a dragon being here. How the fuck is there a dragon here?”

The fox and moose exchanged confused looks, “My name’s Magli, and she’s Tifse.”

“Tifse?? Magli??? That’s- that’s!” she grit her teeth and squeezed her hands around her belt. Something about this was wrong. Had she finally lost her mind? Was there something to those drug PSA’s she’d been subjected to for years in the foster system? She’d only smoked half a joint last night before sex. There was no way that was enough to fry her brain, and she stayed clear of the hard stuff.

“Hey, hey, it’s ok.” Tifse took her hand, and gently rubbed her wrist in an attempt at comfort. “Do you mind if I… peak in your head? I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on here.”

“Fuck no!” She jumped up and ripped her hand away. “That shit hurt! And- and I still don’t get how there’s a dragon here! Like- not a dragon otherkin like me, like an actual fucking dragon!”

“S-Safra- Saph, I mean. You- you are a dragon. Did you forget?” Tifse looked up at her in horror. “You flew me all the way out here.”

“Hold on, hold on.” Magli patted her shoulder, and approached. Saph almost raised her fists, expecting the moose to take another swing at her as she had a few days ago in the police station. But instead she looked her up and down to take in every detail. “I’ve never seen clothes like these before. Tifse, did she have anything like them in her bag?”

The fox shook her head ears splayed back.

“Right, and Idami, Tifse, did she ever have a chance to leave the room after she went to sleep last night?”

“No,” Tifse shook her head again, apprehension continuing to grow.

“And she doesn’t have the bond with you, Tifse. Is that an easy thing to break?” She began to pace slightly, rubbing her chin.

“No, it should take years,” the little fox muttered as her head followed the moose back and forth in the room. “… Idami says she doesn’t smell like Safraxi either.”

“Then… I don’t think she’s Safraxi. She’s just… someone who looks, and talks a lot like her.”

“Okay, are we done talking like I’m not here?” Saph crossed her arms. “Yeah, I’m not Safraxi. Great fucking observation. You’re a real credit to your craft. What now?”

The other three exchanged looks. Tifse gulped. “I think I have to try and contact Safraxi’s grandmother…”