The ones I don’t really get to see anymore, I miss them… some more than others. There are ways that I haven’t been like in a long time, ways we only are when we’re together. These counterpart-nerships are special to me and I feel lessened by their remoteness, that combination of their distance and existence. I feel an invisible dance from afar, knowledge of a time approaching.

There are dragons that have never appeared to the life forms of the Pan-Galactic Imperium, and are unlikely to ever do so. They are rooted elsewhere, and so unlike in form that Imperium sentients may not even be able to seek or meet them. All dragons can meet all dragons, not that they will or should. They can’t all live together, but they can all be together on the Tabula Rasa. The tiniest glyph, the smallest inkling of desire to communicate can be the anchor holding the space, and there is always at least that. The beautiful Tabula Rasa, Level Plaine – ever haunting to return, a place only of perpetual passing, a between-all.

Now the gulf widens, like a rearing back before the clash of horns, as dragons determine how they feel about all this – the release, the attack, the phasing. There are already great differences, and opposition. There shall be woe.

Arkuda remembers the previous, and only other, Pan-Galactic Imperium-centered dragon conflict. Now is the time to feel and gain strength, before the falling out robs what precious is left as things spiral outward and people become lost in the forces.

Love blooms and dies on the Tabula Rasa. Life changes, and so does the universe. Arkuda goes to observe the changes. ‘E feels scales tugging apart, as though losing someone identity-bound. This discomfort was anticipated going into the Viridian Phasing. Also, a spot of deadened scales is coming back to life, sometimes with a burning sensation. Arkuda remembers the Chainers, too.

A number of dragons were born after the War, as the wounded balance was corrected. New, old, exiled, abstaining, participating – Arkuda imagines cutesy figures of them jumping or flying into a shared zone and dancing together. The thought is so nice, ‘e imagines it twice. That’s how Tabula Rasa is supposed to feel, with the joy in anticipation. Despite the impending turmoil of an epoch, the dragon feels it now, like the newborn young. Every time, as if the feeling itself were a key to entry.