The first thing I had to do was stand.


    I was still lying where I had hatched


    and had eaten my shell.


    So standing was the next step of the plan


    That should have been simple.


    It wasn’t.


    I lay sprawled on the icy cavern floor, limbs splayed beneath me like some broken marionette. Cold seeped into my bones—no, not bones, not the way I remembered them. These were heavier, denser, shaped for something other than standing upright. Every time I tried to rise, my weight shifted in strange directions, my limbs buckling and skidding across the frost-slick stone.


    I grunted. Or tried to. The sound that came out was closer to a guttural growl, low and sharp and alien in my throat. My breath came in ragged bursts, fogging in the chill air like smoke from a dragon’s nostrils.


    Which, I supposed, was appropriate.


    I tried again, this time planting what I thought were my forelimbs beneath me, pushing upward the way I might rise from a fall—knees under, hands down, spine straight. But the movement felt wrong. My hindquarters lifted too far, my front limbs wobbled, and I collapsed with a heavy thud, chin smacking into the frozen ground.


    A frustrated snarl ripped from my throat. It echoed in the cavern like the roar of something much larger. I startled myself.


    This wasn’t working.


    I had to stop thinking like a human. That was the problem. My instincts screamed at me to stand like I always had—on two legs, upright, balanced on feet—but this body wasn’t made for that. I couldn’t even feel my toes the same way. My limbs weren’t even limbs in the human sense. They were longer, more jointed, loaded with muscle in unfamiliar places.


    I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, the icy air burning down my throat. I needed a different perspective. I needed to imagine what a dragon would do.


    Four legs. Low center of gravity. A long, flexible tail. A neck that didn’t stop at the shoulders but curved and balanced like a whip.


    I exhaled, opened my eyes again, and tried something different.


    I let my belly rest against the ice, spine horizontal. I planted all four limbs carefully, spreading my weight evenly between them. This time, when I pushed up, I didn’t fight my posture—I followed it. My body rose in one steady motion. Wobbling, yes, but not collapsing. My tail lashed behind me, instinctively adjusting my balance. I held still, breathing hard.


    I was standing.


    Not well. Not confidently. But I was up.


    The ground felt too far away.


    It wasn’t, of course, not compared to standing upright as a human. But something about the new perspective made the floor feel... distant. My body was longer, lower, and yet heavier in every way. My limbs shook beneath me, not from weakness but from inexperience. My muscles weren''t tuned to this. They were new. All of me was new.


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    "Okay," I muttered—or tried to. The vocalization came out as a soft rumble, almost like a purr, oddly comforting. I took a step.


    Or I meant to.


    I lifted my right forelimb, tried to shift forward—and my whole body pitched sideways. My claws scraped helplessly against the ice as I stumbled, hind legs skidding out behind me. My tail whipped around wildly to counterbalance, but too late. I went down.


    Again.


    I groaned. Even the groan didn’t sound right.


    This was going to take longer than I thought.


    After a few more attempts—each more graceless than the last—I stopped trying to walk like a human. I watched myself instead, or rather, felt what my body wanted to do.


    The key wasn’t thinking about each leg individually. That just made them trip over each other. Instead, I tried to move with rhythm—right foreleg with left hind leg, then the opposite. It was clumsy at first, but when I stopped overthinking, the motion became almost natural. My hips swayed. My spine shifted with each step. My neck and tail moved in tandem, like ropes catching a wind I couldn’t feel.


    Progress.


    For a few glorious seconds, I walked.


    Then I made the mistake of looking around. when i was still on the ground I didn''t think of what i saw, but now


    The cavern exploded around me in impossible detail. My vision stretched too wide—far wider than it had any right to. Without moving my head, I could see the entire breadth of the cavern, from glittering ice walls on the left to jagged stone shelves on the right.


    It was like my brain had been shoved into a fish-eye lens.


    I staggered. The sudden influx of visual data overwhelmed me. My tail lashed wildly, my claws scrabbled for purchase. Too late.


    Crash.


    I slammed into the ground, ribs aching.


    But what stuck with me wasn’t the fall—it was what I’d seen as I went down.


    My tail.


    I’d seen it flick past my face, scales glinting like frosted glass, the delicate frills along its sides shifting with the motion.


    That shouldn’t have been possible.


    I was looking forward. It should’ve been behind me. But somehow, just before I hit the ground, my vision had focused—as if I’d turned invisible binoculars on my own tail and zoomed in.


    I stared now, deliberately, at the long spade-tipped limb lying behind me. Nothing happened.


    I blinked. Tried again.


    This time, something shifted. My peripheral blurred slightly. My tail snapped into crisp clarity. I could see each individual scale, the way they overlapped, the subtle pulse of breath fogging against the cold.


    The moment I lost focus, the zoom broke.


    I laughed. It was breathless, disbelieving.


    Zoom vision. Of course. Why not? I was a predator now. Predators needed precise vision. Needed to track prey across distances.


    I experimented, though my head pounded from the effort. The zoom wasn’t something I could trigger mechanically.. Trying to force it made me dizzy. Letting it happen? That worked. Sometimes.


    When I finally flopped onto my side, exhausted, my whole body throbbed. My legs trembled with the effort of staying upright. My chest heaved with unfamiliar weight.


    Still— Progress


    Standing (mostly)


    Walking (barely)


    Not vomiting from visual overload (could I even?)


    Zooming my vision (sometimes with enough focus)


    It wasn’t much. But it was something.


    I curled into a rough coil, the motion awkward but comforting. My tail curled close to my body, and I nosed at a patch of ice, licking at the moisture for some small relief. My throat burned with thirst, and the faint taste of clean, mineral-rich water soothed the worst of it.


    Lying there, I stared at my forelimb—paw? claw?—and flexed the black, curved talons that tipped it. They moved easily, retracting slightly like a cat’s but not fully just enough that they where still there and visible but wouldn''t hinder movement. I could feel the muscles in them, strong and precise.


    This body wasn’t clumsy. I was.


    And that terrified me.


    Because now that the adrenaline was fading, I could feel it: the creeping dread that I was losing myself.


    How much of my struggle came from my mind trying to impose human solutions onto a dragon’s body? And if I let go of those frameworks—those instincts, reflexes, mental shortcuts—what would be left of me afterward?


    Who would I be, once I fully adapted?


    The thought sent a shiver through me, and not from the cold.


    I had to survive. That much I knew. But surviving meant adapting.


    Outside the cavern, the wind howled like a distant chorus. Somewhere out there, beyond these icy walls, was a world I didn’t understand, filled with creatures and dangers I couldn’t yet name.


    I didn’t know what awaited me.


    But I knew this much:


    I would meet it. One shaky step at a time.