Matthias slowly drifted into wakefulness in a very uncomfortable position. He felt himself pressing against a surface that surrounded him in all directions, like someone had tightly cocooned him in blankets. still groggy and only half aware, he tried to untangle himself only to find that his mental picture was correct. Confused then, he tried to open his eyes but shut them quickly when some wet film touched them.

  Confusion morphed into concern as he quickly pushed and strained, his head was racing as fast as it could in his disoriented state.

  Where am I? Why am I stuck?

  Suddenly his sheets cracked, and a strangled exclamation was voiced into the enclosed space. Now outside, his left hand felt soaked and was gently chilled by the cool air washing over it. His hand felt strange, insensitive and stiff, like he was wearing thick gloves that restricted his articulation and dulled sensation.

  Given the point of reference he noticed that all his limbs felt similarly, he was squeezed so tight on himself that he hadn't noticed anything, besides their complaints from being compressed.

  He needed out. NOW. He pushed with his other arm and his legs and Matthias was rewarded with numerous Cracking and crunching noises not unlike a mixture of wrapping paper crinkling and ceramic shattering.

  His right foot made contact with a cold hard floor on its way out rotating him and whatever he was trapped in, His two arms flailed against cool air, and he guessed himself to be roughly on his back now, the sudden change in orientation caused him to twist fragmenting the rest of his prison and ungracefully plopping him onto his side against the hard, shard covered floor.

  His immediate impression from the now discernable signals of his freed body were simply wrong, his neck was long, his arms were pulled close to his chest and oriented directly forward of it, much the same with his ribs, He had two large things that felt like arms holding a blanket between each of the fingers of a FREAKISHLY large hand, and an appendage stretched far beyond where his rear used to terminate.

  He lay there for a minute, soaked in a sticky something and pressed into a cold stone floor, before mustering the courage to open his eyes.

  The place he was in was dark, he could feel it was dark but he could see it well.

  It was a cave made up of gray brown stone with a few stalagmites, or stalactites, he wasn't sure which was which. He was surrounded by and lying on the numerous red-brown shards of his prison, and as his gaze wandered to himself his breath hitched, and he jumped.

  He was covered in scarlet scales with sandy colors on his underside and the bottoms of his hands and feet. He felt his face then, running clawed hands carefully across a muzzle and pointed head with strange frills on the sides, one each where he guessed where ears would be, and a small one and running down the length of his spine between two short blunt horns. It all undeniably screamed dragon to him, with the question of what answered his mind wandered then to the question of why.

  He had returned to his dorm last night after a party on new years eve and put on some earbuds to drown out the sound of fireworks outside.

  Went to bed there, woke up here…

  Human…

  Dragon…

  Did someone trick me into taking something? Was it something I ate?

  No it couldn't be that, I was the driver.

  Went to bed- This is a dream!

  Excited, Matthias loosed an involuntary squawk from his awkward alien muzzle. He had read about lucid dreaming and how you could do just about anything you could imagine in one; Matthias had been wanting to try, but hadn’t had any luck using the techniques he had read about.

  Matthias had always wanted to fly although he was unsettled by heights, not a phobia really (At least he refused to label it as one), but he could reliably be found standing farthest from a ledge, or holding his seat tightly during aircraft landings.

  No, he wasn't scared of heights, he was scared of falling, falling and being powerless to stop.

  But with these he could fly, HE COULD FLY! He moved his wings through their surprisingly large range of motion. Anywhere he wanted, this dream was HIS, nothing could stop him, he stumbled to his feet then with some instinctive intuition helping him along, and he scrabbled slowly and clumsily across the stone floor.

  He could feel the impression of ambient light getting stronger past the twists and turns of the cave, he passed entrances to rooms unexplored, and his confidence grew with in each step, limbs tangleing less with each passing motion, and his footfalls landing surely and solidly. He found the mouth of the cave drinking deeply from great beams of sunlight and he sped out and past the trees that girdled the cave's mouth, and he tearing through a thicket of shrubs and brush that DARED to impede his path, he shot into a clearing and he… He let out a yelp of alarm as he ground to an abrupt stop at the edge of a cliff, the mossy dirt under his tread ripping as he dug his claws to slow himself..

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  Matthias could only stare slack jawed at the sight before him; Beautifull, bountiful forest stretched on and on, farther than he believed he could have seen in the waking world where the oh so cruel limitations of reality applied. Jagged snow-crested mountains semi-circled a veritable ocean of green where a clean river flowed from the mountains into a blue lake, and there by the far end of the lake and stretching down the smaller river that flowed out of it, a town of several dozen buildings.

  He could smell wood stoked fires and cooked meat despite the distance; His head tilted happily as he practically drank the smell from the air, and he sat on his stomach feeling the sun on his scales, basking in the wondrous warmth and feeling a gentle summer breeze brush his unfamiliar face.

  He was practically purring with contentment and…

  Wait what?

  He brought a clawed hand to his chest and despite its muffled sense of touch he felt that he was definitely emitting a slight rumbling. It quickly stopped after he wanted it to and started again when he didn’t actively suppress it. It felt weird, like suddenly being able to semi-consciously shiver.

  He felt a sense of unease at the alien sensation but brushed it off quickly, it was interesting but unimportant, he didn’t know how long he had till he woke up. He was not going to squander his time.

  Matthias surveyed the land from the edge of the cliff then.

  The sun was low in the sky and slowly falling behind the mountains in the west, painting their white toothy peaks in orange and gold, and in the east rose a silvery half moon. The mountain's shadow crept over the green valley blanketing forest and field in an early nightfall.

  He snaked his neck over the edge of the cliff and looked down at the stony face and sheer drop before stepping back several paces. He gave his wings a few experimental beats, “I can do this” he whispered, crouching low with his belly almost touching the ground.

  Here goes nothing

  He sprung forward then in a bounding sprint with his claws tearing furrows in the soil. The seconds moved like tar, those instants between steps where none of his limbs touched the earth taunted him, they tugged at his wings and fanned a flame in his chest, they beckoned him to move faster, to kick his legs and leave the ground. With each bound he lept a little farther and faster, and on the last springing step Matthias beat his wings, cupping the air and slamming it behind and below him, propelling himself into the growing wind as he sprung off the edge of the cliff and soared above the green waves of the land below.

  Freedom. Matthias felt weightless in the wind, drowned in childish joy from a daydream fulfilled as he sailed through the cool air, unburdened by the worries of the waking world as it washed over and carressed his form.

  He felt like he could fly forever as he rose above the lush green world below him, the trees that towered over him moments before didn’t seem so mighty from here, they could never hope to reach as high. The trees were like saplings and shrubs from his view, he almost felt he could reach down and pluck them out of the ground. It was a good feeling, he felt like he could hold the world in his hand; a feeling that the land below him was all a treasure that belonged to him and to him alone.

  Matthias hesitated slightly at the last thought, it wasn’t like him to think that way, but then again this was objectively his dream, no one else would ever even see this place. He mulled over it as he dipped and rose in the wind, and after some time he accepted it as truth, this was his and only his.

  Matthias spent the daylight remaining roaring and screeching joyously as he flew ever higher, thundering his newfound wings to race the sun and stay in the warming light as it fell behind th- HIS mountains. He inevitably lost that race, and circled above the darkening world as stars peeked through the blackish-blue of the dimmer eastern sky.

  As he glided the the gnawing hunger he had ignored in his excitement redoubled its protest. He had ignored it for fear that he would wake soon. But now? He was still here, and the smell of wood-fired cooking called to him with promises of honey smoked delights.

  He dove and twisted his body, picking up speed and making the tips of his wings whistle in the air, only seconds later he pulled out of the dive; aligning himself towards the town by the lake.

  It looked so far away, but Matthias didn’t mind; he loved to fly.