A different perspective: The time is around 1924 in earth years, approximately 100 years prior to Reagan’s story.
“My son, the time is come we need to make arrangements for our continued survival. The mineral supply keeping the Crystal of Life flowing is rapidly diminishing. It is likely we will have no more than one to two Tipeons of survival at best,” begins King Tarrune. “I know you are to begin reigning with Princess Sladockra in the next moon cycle, but it must wait.”I have never seen my father so grave looking. His normally vibrant brown scales are now grayish in color, a product of the stress. The spike of hair normally adorning his head is slowly falling out, showing more and more of his shell. His mustard yellow eyes have faded into a pale yellow. He holds his mouth in a grimace as he speaks.
As prince, successor as the ruler of the Harkunians, I have begun to be included in conversations and dealings, I’ve heard the rumblings of the end of our times but I had no idea it could be in my time of life. I have been anticipating the bestowing ceremony with Princess Sladockra for a Tipeon already, to delay is painful to me.
“Your journey will take you away from here possibly forever, though when you find a place suitable to fuel the crystal, we will all join you, of course. I am sending with you 10 of our warriors and our finest ship. You must travel into the galaxy beyond here and find a place we can make our home. Son, our survival is the most important thing, if we must take a place from other inhabitants so be it, they are nothing to us. When our kind came here a two Sparadias ago (believed to be the equivalent of two Millenia), we had a war; we had to fight the inhabitants of this place for our right to rule here. Most traces of those inhabitants are gone, though several domains across our great kingdom maintain generations of slaves we were able to capture, rather than annihilate.”
Two days before departure the Goddess blesses me with a vision. I see a rough terrain, laden with trees of all shapes and sizes. I’ve never seen a terrain such as this, the Goddess supplies me with the name ‘tree’. As I continue through the vision, I see a figure appear before me. The figure stands on two legs, has long red plumage on top. I can only assume it is female based on the plumage, though, the plumage is much different, less elaborate than that of the Princess. I stare at this vision and wonder what it can mean. The brown eyes of the female stare back, as if she is expecting something, but I don’ t know how I know this.
I concentrate on the image before me and will myself to take on the male version of this creature. It takes some time, and is a bit painful in the transformation, I haven’t shifted for some time as there is no reason to shift here on our home planet. In my younger days, the future Knights and I would shift during training purely for the fun of it, taking on a variety of forms for practice. As I look down, I see that my scales on my lower body are no longer present. The spindles that cover my upper half are gone as well. There is a finer coating of these on the very top of my body. Just like us, I have two eyes on the front. The protrusion between my eyes above my opening for speech and food, is new. Again, the Goddess supplies me with a word ‘nose’. It provides a new sense I am not familiar with, smell. My hearing is amplified in this form, though my vision is identical.
I consider this shape for a while. It doesn’t feel bad, in fact I kind of like it. I grow tired of the exploration after a time and change back to myself. I feel more comfortable in this form, though the other was not unappealing to me. I will have to be sure to share with my father these findings tomorrow.
Virginia Tomlinson - Author 