You know it too

 My throat hurt. Barbed wired wrapped around my vocal cords.

I couldn't understand how people screamed continuously nor did I want to. Not even with a dragon's unyielding arms around me. I struggled but the strength I once had in my real body seemed to be have been left behind with it. Apparently the memories of this body's previous inhabitant had been left behind too. Because I was pretty sure the little boy in that memory had been Tatsuya, who was nowhere to be seen.

Unless …

“Shizuka!” It was Kohaku who, thankfully, was still holding onto the reins of the griffin thing.

Her worry punched me in the throat but her expression relaxed the second she saw me. Clearly, the wagon had levelled out again and the dragon was now flying alongside it with me pressed against its warm underside like a remora beneath a shark. She didn't seem at all alarmed or surprised by its presence. Which meant that it probably wasn't the reason the wagon had upended in the first place.

She said something else but I couldn't hear her through the air rushing past my ears. She pointed downwards repeatedly and mouthed something I couldn't pick up before snapping the reins. The creature angled its wings like the dragon had and the wagon tipped forward in a dive that was a lot more controlled than mine had been. Yua, Toshi, and Washi were all leaning out of the front but settled back down inside it as their eyes found me.

None of them were bothered by my scaly saviour which could have meant several things in a world as strange as this without Shizuka's nicely timed memory.

“Tatsuya?” I murmured, knocking on the hard silvery-black scales in front of me.

The dragon grunted and the crown of my head heated up. I craned it back and found myself eye to eye with him. He blinked slowly, cat-like, mouth opening slightly in a sharp-toothed smile.

“Oh my god.” I covered my mouth. “If you tell anyone I screamed like that, I'll pull your pretty hair out.”

Several puffs of hot air washed over my head and upper body in waves of amusement. At least one of us was finding this funny. He arranged his grip, holding me tight without crushing me, his claws sliding under the curves of my neck, waist, and the back of my knees.

Now that I wasn't plummeting to the ground of a world that felt a lot realer now or being carried away by a creature that looked like it would enjoy tearing me to pieces, the sensation of floating in the air was actually quite pleasant. Even when he tilted forward to follow the wagon, the beat of his great wings like pulsing of a massive heart. He was probably about the size of an average cargo plane but his wingspan coupled with terror had made him appear a lot bigger against the deep blue sky.

He tilted sideways, slowly circling around a house shaped like a squashed witch's hat atop a small hill with a suspiciously flatted patch of grass right beside it alongside a small brown square of tilled soil occupied by carefully organised bushes and wooden frames possibly bearing plants or vegetables. Kohaku had landed the wagon on the flat grass and was currently driving it closer to the large two storey hut.

The door opened and we were close enough to make out its occupant's expression. Irritated analytical eyes scanned the skies and locked onto Tatsuya almost instantly before he wheeled out of sight. My insides shrivelled under drops of anxious acid. I considered knocking on his scales and asking him to land somewhere far away instead. But then I'd definitely never know how or why I ended up being transported here.

Bits of a conversation between Kohaku and Uchi reached me from beyond the house and the careful sweeps of Tatsuya's wings as he touched down hind legs first, transforming back into a human slowly my feet touched the ground, his hands on my shoulders.

“... talking about?”

“Shizu … message … don't know …”

“Joke … stuff you … pet cat …”

Everyone here was so intense. So colourful. So shameless. So open yet also so secretive. Even the most tropical lands on earth would have looked grey in comparison to the complicated energy of the people in this world and I had only met a handful of them.

“Are you okay?” asked Tatsuya, letting going of my shoulders one hand at a time, his body taut as if he expected me to keel over.

His hair was windswept, most likely from his fall before turning into a dragon.

“Does everyone have powers here?” I asked, dusting non-existent micro scales off my clothes. “And if so, why doesn't Shizuka have any?”

“You do,” he said. “Most of us do but they're not all the same.”

“Know anyone with the power to punch a wagon out of the sky?” I grinned, tucking my unsteady hands into my sleeves.

“Possibly,” he said, grim eyes scanning me all over. “Are you hurt?”

“I don't think so.” I rotated my neck, and flexed my fingers and toes but there was no pain. Only the horrible fatigue associated with acute and repetitive stress. “Are you sure Uchi and Shizuka were close?”

His mouth opened as if he were about to chide me for the implications of my question but then he closed it and shook his head.

“You were,” he replied, guiding me towards the house with a hand hovering close to yet not touching my shoulder blades. “Hopefully you'll remember when you see her again.”

I wanted to ask him what it was exactly that made him so sure I was the person he remembered but we were close enough to the house to hear the complete conversation.

“It's not a joke!” exclaimed Kohaku. “Do you really think I'd joke about something like this?”

“You and Shizu joked about a lot of very odd things, child,” said Uchi, arranging a black and green two toned shawl around her shoulders. “And you never seemed to take time and place into consideration when you spoke. So why wouldn't I think that?”

“This is a very odd thing, it's true” said Shizuka, shoving a hand in her hair. “But it's true. If you can't explain how it happened, who can?”

“What's taking Tatsu so long?” said Uchi, locating him with that same disturbing precision. “I'll believe that child any da-”

Her mouth stopped moving the instantly she looked at me and her face stilled like a mirror with several words written in its condensation. Questions, swear words, demands, and most of all an overwhelming warning. My fingers curled in the back of Tatsuya's haori but I let go of it again even before he glanced at me. His palm grazed my shoulder blade in a silent reminder.

“Shizu, are you all right?” asked Toshi as she materialised beside me, patting my other shoulder blade and stomach until I waved her hands away. “You must've been so scared. If Tatsu wasn't there –”

“I'm okay,” I said, nodding at him so I wouldn't have to look at the silent woman staring at me from the steps of the house. “Because he was.”

He looked away for a second, then nodded back.

“We should go inside,” suggested Yua from the vantage point of Washi's arms. Had she also been freaked out by the fall? Enough to need to be princess carried by Tatsuya's brother? “Sheila's been through a lot and we still have so much to talk about. It would be better to do that someone safe instead of outside like this.”

“Good idea,” said Kohaku.

“Why are you calling her Sheila?” snapped Uchi, looking sharply at Yua and then back at me.

“Because it's my name,” I said wearily. “Like I keep telling you –”

“Nonsense.” She stalked towards me with a lot more energy than expected from someone with so many creases in her skin, her long dark hair flapping like a cloak behind her.

Tatsuya didn't move to block her way and I resisted the understandable but no less mortifying urge to step behind him, swallowing as Uchi stopped before me.

“It's not nonsense,” I murmured.

“Of course it is,” she said, staring at me. “You're not Sheila. You're Shizuka.”

“I'm really not –”

She cut me off with a finger pointed directly at my forehead, as if her silvery eyes could see the memory that had settled within it.

“And you know it too,” she said. “Don't you?”