A Self-Study Within A Broken Mind

Weeks later, away from Lila and the untethered space, I felt distant. It started with editing, hopeful of the brutal story of death thanks to a suffering writer, but that idea relied on the deaths of characters. Soon enough into writing, I started thinking just how much I did not want them to die, and while some could enjoy the struggle, many would not enjoy this endless killing of the main characters in various strange circumstances. It was an idea, like many which lived in the void, sourced exactly there for both the portraits and the stories Harry wrote. After that drive to edit and complete that dark story faded, I disappeared into work unrelated to writing. I was not sure how many days had passed since I left the three of them, but I missed their happiness. I wanted to recharge. I entered the untethered space through the little room below the library again, creating a spiral staircase near the windows connecting the two. While I could just float up and through the divide, I decide...

NILVIIVLIN It was a dragon. A baby, but still a dragon. Nilvi was looking at it hatching before her very eyes. The stranger thing was that this creature of myth and legends was emerging from what she believed to be a farm-fresh chicken egg. She got it from the chicken coop and rather than cook it, Nil decided to hatch the poor creature only to be heartily surprised. The process took no extreme measures, no blazing pyre like in the books. One heating blub and time was all it took. The creature was almost entirely out of the shell, but a few bits still stuck to surprisingly smooth lavender skin. In the books, dragons were said to be scaly and reptilian in nature, but here was an example of a different outcome. It had a pair of horns already atop a rather reptilian head, but the eyes were as those of a mammal. “You need a name,” Nil said as the little dragon turned to her as if she didn’t even exist before. The little maw opened to produce a tiny squeak. “Oh, but are you a boy dragon or...