Soleil didn’t inform Rosy Glow of any intention. She just checked in to see if they should be doing anything about Dragon Food. Rosy’s response was, “We always hope he’s going to be okay!”

The Princess had let slip to Derringer that she was going to go her own way, just not when or how. She speedwalked through the halls to the isolated corner that the Dragons had agreed on in the mid-levels of the Arch. It was as quiet and deserted as they would like it, for the moment they had it. She rounded the edge of the space, finding Arkuda and Acamar each meditating in er own corner. The timeframes of their emanations were aligned, and Soleil synchronized her movements as she joined them.

“We have discussed what we are able to accomplish with the two of us, and yourself,” said Arkuda, opening one eye.

“Can we go?” Soleil asked, controlling her breathing. This was the kind of window in time that was more recognizable to people who’ve had Dragon contact, when sound dampens and attention is drawn towards what draws it. They had spoken of this and of that; whatever it was, it was time, and Soleil was ready.

“We can,” Acamar rumbled. “There is a way to bring you out with us both and then to a place of utility. You will become as light in the void, while remaining yourself. Neither of us has done exactly this before, but together and with you as our passenger, we know how. Are you feeling courageous?”

“There is hardly a moment with you that doesn’t demand it, but I could scarcely find you if I weren’t.” Dragons appreciate honesty.

Arkuda chortled. “I, at least, am a familiar element to which you are better accustomed.”

“The rarest of privileges.” Soleil dipped her head to them in courtly fashion. She was wearing the versatile Vedani control suit again, with its impact armor paneling and optional chameleon camouflaging. “So, what must I do, how shall we begin?”

In this corner there was a little bit of the sunstrip wiring that Arjun Woollibee had recently installed, throwing a soft midafternoon glow. “Touch the sunstrip,” Arkuda prompted, “relax, soften your vision, and breathe deeply.”

A smile crossed Soleil’s face as she prepared thusly, extending the open palm of her other hand into the space in front of her. Arkuda, brightness, and Acamar, darkness, both placed their large scaled hands into her Human one. The two Dragons then dissolved steadily into their elements, swirling around Soleil, lifting her loose hair in a soft wind. Her being transmuted into these forces, now a swirl of light and dark herself. The Princess vaporized into a translucent evanescence that was then gone with a surge of sunlight through the Arch’s system, as their linked atomic information shot upward through the channel.

Dragon Food rode a wave of sound on its sudden slide toward the central maelstrom. The sound began to transform a little, a response to the nearness of its other part. The rider transformed with it, taking on the music’s new morphing differentials. Sliding between the waveforms, he became the scintillation in the visualizations, whatever that really meant in the equation of form meeting form. The balancing waveforms met in the fractally opposing space between the two Dragons, if not the technical spatial dimension as usually known. Dragon Food was somewhere inside the concept that was being enacted, like a bole in the wood. He was looking for the eye, the eye, he had to catch the eye of the Dragon in another dimension. He had to be seen.

He rode the music to its howling center, and jumped off into the eye of the storm, where he formed an apparition of his best contextual self, pure expression of all constituting this momentary environment. It was balance, it was introduction, it was newness and selfhood, comprehension and execution, boldness of knowledge; the right ingredients in the right amounts. His self existed, altered and moreso, in a space part of other spaces, connecting to other versions of selves in other dimensions, such as time. Both Dragons became aware of him.

“I am Akralnar. You are Acamar. We have sameness.” With this declarative thought expression of identity, Akralnar’s face emerged in more detail. Without much ado, ‘e ingested the morsel of Dragon Food in the music that belonged as much to er dimension as it did to er twin’s. There was a form of gulp, as full realization developed momentarily, of the delicious and unexpected nature of this happening. Acamar also blinked, fractally. “It was good to be us, my sameness. Now me to mine, and you to yours.” The great sound wound toward its completion.

“Agreed. We really are always us, whatever and wherever we are. I am glad to know us better. Until you.” Everything separated as the music disappeared.

When Dragon Food goes full tilt toward his inevitable doom, he begins to see reality differently – a little more the way the intended consumptor sees it, so as to become knowingly distinct, in order to really shine. Since Dragon Food is intended for Dragons, that’s incredibly different every time. He’ll see things more like the way of the Dragon that he wants to eat him – but this other thing also happens where the forces of nature at work between the two of them become symbolized in his awareness, so that he understands how to use them in order to ideally entice this Dragon. That part is also never the same. It thrills him to the core of his existence, not actually knowing what’s going to happen, and wanting it to happen.

He’s always been exhaled eventually, after a unique and bizarre micro-eternity, discovering that he is himself again outside the Dragon. He’s always known, though, that any time might be his last. Still, it was everything.

There was music all around. The music was important – he could tell because he was able to see it now, here in the waterspace. He knew it hadn’t been visible before, so this was one of those things. The music was traveling towards a strange attractor in smooth spirals. That strange attractor was occurring around the two Dragons – the one Acamar, which he, as Dragon Food, could see perfectly well now, and the enigma twin.

The musical vibrations looked tangible enough, to Dragon Food’s current embodiment. He grabbed on, and the music took him through the edge of the torrential slip field, streaming through a microhole, and out into the unsheltered, unending ocean.

The music and the Dragons were forming along a dimensional membrane that Dragon Food could see between depths of worlds on either side. Were they eating the music, becoming the music, speaking the music? Were the Dragons the part of the music that connected the sound from one world to another? They were the same, but they were not the same.