Zebra was — or, the world was — or—

Sideways. Everything was sideways, and off-kilter, and — he was on the floor. Crumpled into a tangled heap of borrowed limbs. Of borrowed everything.

Sor was talking to him. He wasn’t listening — couldn’t listen. Not because he didn’t want to — did he? — but he was very distracted. And not just by how it felt like his skin — Sor’s skin — the skin he was in — was inside-out. Backwards. Wrong.

It was the magic. It had knocked him out again, turned everything askew. He’d failed — but part of him wanted to try again. Urged him to try again, to get to his feet and throw himself back into the ring. Everything was wrong, but it could all be fixed.

He was standing. And he was too tall. Sor’s limbs were too long, too skinny, like she’d been in a fight with a taffy puller. And they were green. And rough, with patches of scales and confusing patches of skin, because Sor couldn’t do anything right. It wasn’t bad enough he was back in— that he was stuck i— that he had to put up with all of this, but he had to look like a lizard while he did it.

That could definitely be fixed. He could cut them off — no, wait, that was a bad idea. Right? Probably. There were better solutions. He just had to find them. But first, he had to figure out how to break down the barrier keeping his magic — Sor’s magic — the magic inside.

The room was too bright. The candles lining the walls created pinpoints of light that hurt to look at, but when he looked anywhere else he caught flickering shadows that demanded his attention, turning him first one way and then the other, and then the other, and then—

Sor waved a hand in front of him, drawing his attention for a moment before his train of thought pulled him further down the track.

Fire hadn’t worked. Water hadn’t worked. Nothing he’d tried so far had brought him anything but pain and strife and whatever the hell was going on with his head right then. But maybe the problem wasn’t what he was casting. Maybe it was how he was casting it.

“Maybe it’s the dancing,” he said.

He didn’t like the thought of that. No — the magic didn’t like the thought of that. It recoiled in his stomach and he recoiled with it, flinching away from Sor, who was still trying to get his attention.

“But maybe — something else—”

No.

“You’re being stubborn.”

Sor had his head, suddenly, both hands wrapped around it and forcing him to look at her. He didn’t like that, either, and tried to turn away, tried to shake himself free.

“Focus,” Sor said, and his eyes snapped back to her before drifting away again. She was the distraction, now, and he couldn’t think about the things he wanted to think about, whatever they were.

Dancing. No, not dancing, something else—

“Focus!” She had the wrong face and that made him a little nauseous. Being scolded by himself. Trying to avoid looking into his own eyes. He felt hollow. Fake.

She might leave him alone if he complied. He stopped trying to jerk out of her grip.

“Christ, that did you in good. I shouldn’t have let you do that.”

A wave of contempt boiled out of his stomach, but it curdled into more vague discomfort before it could manifest as a real emotion.

She dropped her hands and he ducked away from her. He didn’t like standing still. Standing still meant wallowing in — god damn. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t have to, if he kept moving.

He wouldn’t have to at all if he fixed it.

He swayed, shifting from one foot to the other. Music started playing, somewhere.

“A deal’s a deal,” Sor was saying, watching him with concerned interest. “Your plan didn’t work, so now we’re going to go find help.”

A discordant mess of instruments, like several songs playing at once. All in the same techno-club-EDM genre, but playing at different speeds. He couldn’t even begin to follow the rhythm.

“Shit, you’re bleeding.”

Try again, he thought. Keep trying, again and again, until it works. Remember what a rush it was the first time? Remember how it felt — the opposite of whatever this was? No dysphoria — only excitement. Enthusiasm. Remember the thrill.

The music shifted, flowed into itself, the ends meeting and dissolving some of the chaos.

It can be like that again, with practice.

“I want to try again.” But he wasn’t sure that he did. He only knew that he wanted everything to stop — and that everything would stop.

“Nope,” Sor said. “I will break my own legs if you try.”

And what would that matter? No, actually, that did matter. Can you dance with broken legs? Only one way to find out.

“Come on. It’ll be okay. You just need to ride this out.”

“I don’t — think — I can.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. The touch was a lot. The weight, the texture. The warmth. The emotion. The symbolic gesture and attempt to connect. It took so much time to process it that he missed what she said, but it was probably an empty platitude. Could he have trusted her even if he did hear it? She had just threatened to break the legs he was using. And it was her fault he was like this.

She pulled her hand back. “It’ll pass soon, I promise. Let’s get some air.”

He was already moving toward the stairs, but was that because he wanted to go outside or was that because standing still was hell? It didn’t matter. They were going up, now, Sor behind him with her hands — his hands! — up, ready to catch him if he fell. He wanted those back, more than anything in that moment, he wanted to look down and see his own hands. He’d never been too fond of them — they were small and delicate, just like the rest of him, but when the alternative was scales and claws and callouses, his own hands were perfect.

Cold morning air crashed around him like seawater.

“That’s better, huh?” Sor asked him. She still looked concerned and the expression made his face look soft. So he didn’t look at her.

But the fresh air did help — the music pounding away in the back of his head had room, out there, and didn’t crowd or suffocate him. He could breathe.

“I know a guy.” Sor nudged him and they started walking, down the empty street.