I wake looking at the moonless sky

I felt like shit.

No, that's not quite evocative enough. I felt like I got drawn and quartered by a clumsy oaf with rusty knive. I felt like someone kicked my balls up to my throat, and then tore them out through my ribcage.

I sat up, every inch an agony, and looked around. I was in a room, laying on a couch. There was firelight on one side, and starlight from the window.

I touched my face, on the side where no light fell, and traced the lines that led to the ruin of my eye.

I pulled my hand away and looked down at three black talons. I had enough magic to conceal my true form, and I wasnt trying to show it. I turned the talons to fingers, but they remained black and glassy. I followed the line of my arm, ashen white and unmarked, and looked down at my fur-covered legs and obsidian hooves. I still had a tail, though it was thinner and came to a normal end.

It was my true form, and now it seemed that it was as human as I could get.

A hand touched my shoulder.

I swung blindly, forefinger shifting into a daggertalon. I stopped short, my blade slowly starting to redden. If Cuanne was uncomfortable with the proximity of that heat, she didn’t show it.

"It takes awhile to get used to the blind spot." She said, dropping her hand. She indicated her own ruin of an eye.

Questions chased answers in my mind as I looked at the bruised and battered woman. She looked tired, a tightness to her amber eye. She seemed diminished.

"Well, this is a suprise."

"I. . ." She took a step back from the couch, her silver hair unbound and coloured by the fire. She wore a long dress, plain and unadorned, and holding a bejeweled dagger. She slowly fell to her knees in front of me, folding into herself. She put her forehead to the ground, and baffled me with the sudden prostration. "If it is within your power, please save Lochra. You're the only chance we have."

"And if it is?"

"I will swear myself to you. I will give you everything in my power to give. She must live." Her voice remained steady, untouched by emotion, but I could see a slight tremor in her body. "She must live."