#werran

She stretched like a cat and rolled her neck from side to side. “Isn’t it funny that I don’t have a real body but I still imagine aches as though I did? Why not just leave that part out, self?”

“You do have a real body,” Lazlo argued. “I can feel it perfectly well,” he said while conscientiously doing so.

“You know what I mean.” Sarai closed her eyes as Lazlo rubbed the imagined soreness from her imagined muscles.

“If you left that part out,” he said, “you’d feel less real, wouldn’t you? Being alive includes aches, as well as pleasure.”

“I wonder...” Sarai mused, dreamy, as waves of imagined pleasure rolled through her.

“What do you wonder?”

“Of all the godspawn out there, in all the worlds, with all their gifts, might there be one who. .. I don’t know.” What would even help her? Her body was gone. How could she possibly live again properly? “Someone who...makes new bodies for souls who need them?” She had to laugh at herself. It was a highly specific and unlikely sounding gift. “What are the chances?”

Lazlo, who had heard from Ruza at dinner all about dragon eggs and Thyon’s theory, said, “Out of hundreds of worlds? It would be stranger if there wasn’t someone like that out there.”

“Well then,” breathed Sarai, wanting to believe it, “I wish to find them, wherever they are, so that I can feel all the aches and all the pleasure that are the privilege of the living. In the meantime, you’ll just have to keep on sharing yours.”

She stretched against him, feline, and Lazlo took her in his arms, his ghost girl, goddess, muse of wonder, and assured her that he took his responsibility very seriously. And as the great metal eagle, the Astral, made its way through night and mist, they lost themselves in each other, the very same place they had each been found.

***

I just finished this book and asdfghjkl

So the Daughter Of Smoke And Bone series and the Strange The Dreamer duology are connected. They can be read and enjoyed in their individual wholesomeness but it would be a richer experience for readers who have read both series as there are many interconnecting mysteries and basically easter eggs throughout the duology for the DoSaB readers.

Asdfghjkl I just want to read Karou and the godstars meeting up with Sarai and the others in Astral and Karou making a body for Sarai. And the godstars(the Astral folk are godstars too! I know there was no outright declaration, but they have to be) will have their destinies fulfilled and we'll see Meliz and the other worlds and other species too and oh it'll be glorious.

Simple Werran sketch

Werran on Touhdee are descendants of wolf-people who have imbued themselves with magical powers and have become deformed due to the amount of power within them. Not many Werran survive to adulthood, and their numbers of few, because of the hazards of becoming living capsules of pure magic. Due to this, however, the ones who do survive are extremely powerful and resilient, and are able to wield the magic within them, although in limited ways. The Werran are unable of using the magic to its full purpose, as their reason for existing is not to propogate magic but to trap it and contain it, for a future time when the original patriarch of their clan is reborn and will once again lead them. 

Some sources believe that the absence of magic on Touhdee in modern times is due to the Werran siphoning it out of the very atmosphere and planet; records indicate that magic was once an everyday thing in the world, but that over time it had disappeared.

Anyways, Werran are nasty beasties that care little for others and will maul anyone who comes near them. They can only be harmed by weapons or items made of pure silver and can only be killed if those weapons pierce the sack of magic within them, causing the Werran to self-destruct.