DRABBLE βββ β the winds shift as seasons change.
Fingers brushed over the ridges carved into the totem, the dragon's long, winding body and rippling scales a sight almost uncomfortably familiar.
Since last autumn, Dan Heng had carried the totem on his person at all times. It had come in handy too-- there were many things the Azure Dragon could accomplish that Dan Heng himself would struggle with, and especially in situations like Ocellus Isle...
It was a little strange, too. Full dragon transformation, while keeping his mind intact, was something that not even his predecessor had managed to achieve. This world had given him a shortcut to accessing the ancestral power he had spent much of his life denying and had only begun to explore... but it had taken its fair share as well.
Autumn had turned to winter, and now winter to spring.
The rescue expedition had ended, heralding a "return to normal."
It was about this time that Dan Heng would have usually stepped back aboard the Astral Express and embarked on a new journey, but... here, that wasn't possible. One by one, the familiar faces he had met in this world had faded away. Sunday was still here, for now-- but the rest, those he knew and those he would have someday known, had he not come here, had vanished just as suddenly as they appeared.
The ever-shifting Aether remained an enigma, and nothing in this world was certain, was stable.
How many more seasons would pass before Dan Heng found his companions again?
He threw himself into his research, spending long hours at the archives, reading every tome on every shelf until his eyes burned and the words on the pages blurred together. He searched through the records to find the traces left behind by those who had come and gone already, and wondered where they went, or if he, too, would vanish one day, only to return later on after who knows how long had passed. In all of this, the only constant he could find was instability and uncertainty...
And the possibility planted in his mind by his discussion with the two scholars, now vanished from this world like so many others.
"Their" existence. Their memories, their identities. The true nature of an "Echo" in this world.
When Dan Heng slept, he dreamed of a future he did not know. A future first reflected in the fog around Arcus Cove, interspersed with distorted and uncertain fragments of the past, and the past before that. Could this unfamiliar future that lay just beyond his reach bring answers? Or would it simply end in more questions?
As the waves lapped against the Lunar Shores, he tilted his gaze upward, toward the distant isles that lay among the starry seas.
Perhaps, there could be some clues still waiting to be uncovered in that forsaken place.
[TXT to: Sunday] I will be away for some time to investigate. If I haven't returned within two weeks, please contact the AIPD.
He shut his eyes and invoked the totem.
Those who looked out their windows toward the Lunar Shores that night might have caught a glimpse of an azure dragon soaring into the starry skies, its scales intermingling with the clouds as it flew off toward Ocellus Isle.
