Aqua's skin was strange to the touch.

  Not fully human, yet having neither the toughness of scales nor the firmness of hide. She was large in comparison to humans, but even so, she fit entirely within my hand. Her face peeked at me from between my scales as I pinned her down, peering curiously at me, head slightly tilted.

  She seemed to be about as unsure of what I was doing, as I was. Of course, she probably wasn't very familiar with doing it in human form.

  "You should ensure there are no threats around us first. We are vulnerable when we are distracted," she pointed out.

  There weren't. I knew. After the death of the worm, nothing that could legitimately threaten us was anywhere within the vicinity, at least, as far as my senses could stretch, and they could stretch pretty far.

  I didn't know what I was doing, but, I didn't need as many instructions as I'd expected.

  "It's time that you release the restraints upon your power, instead of holding it down, keeping it contained, guide it, coax it... not as an attack, but... as a connection. Let it flow into mine... let our energy combine, just relax, let loose..."

  Controlling my energy came to me as easily as breathing did. I made it that way. I chose for it to be that way.

  But I didn't really understand what it meant to be a Dragon, what it meant to be an expression of power in its living form, what it meant to be a creature that would speak and the world did listen. The power that was normally kept in check was brought together and guided gently into place.

  My wings lifted and spread and raised and beat, purely moving by reflexes, spasms in my muscles originating from the back of my head and traveling like electricity down every extremity, to the tips of each of my claws and the tip of my tail and my wings, I can even feel my horns tingle, and then all the electric impulses travel to the center of my body, between my lungs.

  I can feel it gathering and collecting there, at the core of my being.

  As I relax and feel my power coursing through me and around me and out of me, I can feel something else, her, I can feel her, as the energy that she is sending my way comes into contact with mine. She is...

  Big.

  Our physical forms are but a mere suggestion, an interface to interact with the world around us, what we are, what lays beneath the skin, is power, we are power, we are expressions of it. I think I understand now why she was so insistent that our difference wouldn't be that big a deal.

  "Your power is overwhelming!"

  Her voice echoed in my ears, the roaring voice of a dragon, the weak voice of a human, it was all the same to me, because we connected at a deeper level, a place where the physical had no space, a space of mind and power.

  "Slower, restrain the flow some... I cannot endure such a tremendous pressure all at once."

  Naturally, it wasn't difficult to reduce the flow, but, doing it carefully was more difficult than initially assumed. While I could do it by instinct, that didn't mean I had the precision I needed to have, it was entirely new to me.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Senses I didn't know I had came into play, and as the influence of the physical fell by the wayside, the influence of the spiritual rose.

  "There is... much more of you than I expected, for one so young."

  Of course there was, there were many more of me than just me, I've been here and back before, and even I'm confused trying to make sense of it. Of course, compared to me, there might as well be a complete infinite, there is so much of her that I can't even begin to describe it.

  I can get lost in everything there was, I can just spend my time just... stretching across her infinity, reaching with my own power and my own energy and exploring all of hers, growing by the second as I learn so much more of what we are, just by virtue of getting to experience it.

  But I wasn't content to just experience that, I didn't want to just experience, to be a passenger drifting across the gigantic ocean that was the Water Dragon... So I decided that I wouldn't be.

  Instead I stretched even further, but rather than stretching myself thin, I instead thickened myself everywhere, increasing the flow of my power into hers until I overwhelmed hers once again, I could feel her trying to increase the flow of her own power.

  But there was nothing to it.

  I wasn't about to allow her to overcome me, she didn't seem to have enough.

  The deep blue oceans were tinged with silver, and in our little shared plane of nothingness where only our power existed, the radiant shining silver moon rose over the calm and placid infinite ocean, and with its force the tides turned and changed.

  She was the ocean, but I was all of the sky, pushing and pulling and enforcing the waves of my gravity upon the gently rolling surface, creating currents that raged deep beneath in the darkness beyond sight.

  My eyes opened, and I knew not how long it had been, I knew only that the moon was full and shining high above us, and that the forest was quite a lot soggier than it should've been.

  Whatever had happened...

  Our energy disentangled, and I felt, for a moment, a pang of loss, as I lost her presence within and without, until we were once again individuals separated and apart.

  "I told you to be gentle!" she said, and suddenly clocked me in the jaw, actually knocking me back and almost flat on my tail.

  I caught myself, however, and sat on my own before I fell, as she swam up until we were face to face, crossing her arms and glaring at me.

  "I wasn't prepared for you to go that hard all at once, you're lucky I can take it," she pointed her finger at me as she spoke. "You fool! Idiot! Brute! Imbecile!" she spoke, running out of steam as she said each word. "Did I do it right?" she asked. "I'm trying outrage but I'm not quite sure I'm managing it correctly, the women at the village made it look so easy."

  "Wait you're just-"

  "Yes, I'm... I believe the right term is playing with you," she spoke, putting her arms on her hips. "I would have appreciated a slower build up, but with you being young and stupid," she spoke, "that was to be expected."

  "You don't have to call me stupid you know," I said, turning my face aside, meeting the tips of the longest claws on my front legs, arms, whatever, twiddling them in embarrassment as I realized, I probably totally deserve that. "I'm sorry, I got excited and, well, it felt good so..."

  She put her hand on the tip of my snout.

  Then she used her other arm to hit it, wielding her own arm like a club or hammer. It actually hurt a little, too, and if I hadn't been braced for it she would've hit me to the ground.

  "Next time, be more gentle, build up the pace slowly," she explained, "thanks to you going wild we made a spectacle when it was unnecessary," she said, looking around, frowning. "Though I suppose thanks to that we don't have to worry about the clean up for the fire and the worm," she said, nodding in satisfaction.

  "Okay. Then, I think this should be just about enough fun, we should get back to the humans and see if we can fix everything before things go too far wrong."

  I spread my wings, but she waved me away.

  "You go on ahead, I'll go take a dip in my lake first," she said, "I need a moment to relax and recover after someone went way too wild on me," she said, crossing her arms and glaring at me.

  "Alright, alright, I'll make it up to you later, promise!" I called as I beat my wings and took to the sky.

  I feel a little weird, but also, like a weight's been taken off my shoulders.

  Enough that I would go on to do a lot of work to make sure the harvest festival went off without a hitch despite the worm's revenge. Maybe we should do this more often!