Saki

  I pursed my lips and said, "Alright, let's do this!" I closed my eyes and counted to ten before turning to Tama, right as she pulled out a rune stone. I paused and looked at the rune stone in confusion. She handed it to me and said, "Lyran said this would make Tama float and fly! But Tama can already fly, so Tama doesn't need it!" She then turned and blinked away, leaving me standing there, mouth agape.

  After a moment, I looked at the rune. It was actually nice craftsmanship. Clearly, whoever made this rune was clearly skilled in mage craft. Where did Tama meet these people?! I pushed my essence into the rune and it lit up.

  I felt myself become weightless and used my tail to push myself off the ground. For a moment, I felt horribly sick as I floated weightlessly over a massive dark ravine. Then I righted myself and, holding my mouth closed to avoid throwing up, I made myself move forward using the float stone as a guidance stone.

  After around thirty minutes of travel, I landed on a small ledge and panted heavily as my stamina recharged. I still had a way to go, but it was much more preferable to Tama's blinks. After a few minutes I was ready, but before I took off again, Tristy came down on her fire feet and crossed her arms.

  "The mistress says you are very slow and she is getting impatient!" she snapped at me.

  I rolled my eyes and said, "Get over it, you overgrown whelp!"

  She glared at me and summoned a fireball. I lengthened my tail and grabbed her before she could react and threw her as hard as I could. Surprisingly, due to her small frame, she was thrown hard across the ravine and hit the other wall.

  She cracked the wall and I questioned my own strength. I then began to panic when she fell forward and didn't respond, landing on a ledge over thirty feet down.

  I paled even more than I already was and looked up to make sure Tama hadn't seen it. I looked back down to Tristy. She wasn't moving and I quickly started thinking of plans. Even as I did, I heard a cracking sound emanate through the ravine and the rocks under Tristy shifted. I jumped without thinking towards her.

  I fell to her level in only a few seconds and activated the stone, pushing myself to reach her. I grabbed her just as the rocks under her gave out. I was now holding her.

  But with the two of us, we weren't light enough to fly and we started to slowly descend into the ravine darkness. I was pumping energy in as hard as I could, but the stone couldn't keep up. Then the red eyes from below appeared and I felt genuine terror.

  I tried to reach my tail to a ledge, but the closest one was too far up. I looked down and for the briefest moment I considered dropping Tristy. She was a horrible and rude person to me anyway.

  Feed her to the horrible dark creature and escape, right? I cursed under my breath as I aimed and fired a ball of void at the red eyes. The eyes shifted insanely fast and my sphere passed through darkness. I clenched my teeth as fear began to eat me alive, rationale slowly losing out to panic.

  Finally, I did the only thing I could think ofI tried to wake Tristy up. If she could just wake up, she could fly with her fire feet and we could get out of this. But Tristy's head lolled back and forth and her eyes were closed.

  Finally, I made a choice. I attached the float stone to Tristy with as much energy I could afford and began to shift into a tiny fox. As I had feared, it didn't help. But I knew that already. Instead, I jumped and Tristy started floating back up as I fell.

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  The eyes shifted forward and I saw something that made my blood run cold. The maw of a dragon made of darkness. It was massive and its open maw awaited me as I fell. I closed my fox eyes and awaited my doom. But it never came.

  I opened my eyes and looked around to see that I had stopped falling. Instead, I was being held. I looked up to see Tama holding on to me. Except... it wasn't her. It felt like her, but something was off.

  Like she was there, but ancient. Like she was the Tama I knew, yet so much older and wiser. Her eyes glowed a golden white and she glared down at the shadow dragon. She held her hand up and a bright light blasted forth. The shadow dragon erased in an instant.

  She then looked down at me and smiled, a smile that stretched past centuries and into millennia. She spoke, but her words were soundless. Then everything went black and I fell unconscious.

  I awoke with the biggest headache ever as I sat up on what felt soft. I looked down and saw green grass under me. I rubbed my temples as I tried to remember how I got here. I remembered... falling... then...

  "Nya! Saki is finally awake! She needs fish!" Tama's voice was like a loudspeaker perched right on my ear and pain resonated through me, causing me to lose my train of thought.

  "Tama, my head hurts, please not right now," I said as I sighed and laid back down, closing my eyes and trying to remember what happened. Was it all a dream?

  A memory surfaced, just one. It was Tama, but... it wasn't? Sure, that was Tama's body, and it felt like Tama, but also foreign... like if someone had been Tama for many lives. It was... disconcerting.

  "Tama, what happened?" I asked, fearing I already knew her answer.

  "Nya! Tama was making fish for everyone and she was getting super worried about you. So she sent Tristy to get you!" I waited for her to continue... but she didn't. After a moment I asked, "What then?"

  There was a long silence before she simply responded, "Tama doesn't remember … S omething about fish ?"

  I considered her words and said simply, "Yeah... about fish." My ears twitched and my tail wrapped around me. I curled into a ball and tried not to cry as I repeated myself. "A fish."

  I felt Anna's form suddenly wrap over me and I heard her voice in my head. "So, I thought she was just the avatar. Turns out Tama is the real deal and I just spent the last three weeks taunting and teasing an actual Goddess.

  If you think you have it bad, I am trying to think of a way not to die right now," she said in my mind. I nodded without speaking or thinking. My brain just didn't feel like working.

  After a moment, Anna continued. "The good news is she genuinely appears to not remember. That means that she is just Tama right now. She must only take that form when she actually needs to, a subconscious act."

  Then Anna cuddled closer to me as she whispered in my head as quietly as she could. "Also, if it makes you feel any better, divine Tama and regular Tama are basically the same. One just doesn't have the trauma."

  I listened and after a very long moment I said two words. "A fish," and closed my eyes as I smelled the very thing Tama remembered. I smiled as I realized just how very Tama that was.