Samsara

The Reborn

There comes a time in every dragon's life, no matter how justified the penance, that they believe they've suffered enough. When they choose, whatever happened in their past, to lay down the burden of misery and transition forward into a new life. Even during his time as a nocturne, Samsara never forgot how controlling he'd been in his first life as a Guardian. How he'd taken out his own need to protect on Columbine, beating her down mentally (and later physically) because she wouldn't do what he wanted her to do to keep her safe.

He'd tried to go after her when he discovered she'd taken another mate, and discovered the hard way that her combat capabilities had long since outstripped his own. He thought that turning into a Nocturne was cowardice at the time, after she snapped and nearly tore him apart with Lightning magic. So did everyone else. He'd never had very much intellectual capacity, and the shifting mind of a Nocturne, he'd thought, would allow him to forget.

What it actually did was force him to reflect.

Enchant didn't love her as a Charge. He didn't have the instinct to protect, and loved her anyway. Enchant was her intellectual and emotional equal. She wasn't a bauble in a museum to be kept free of scratches and dents, to be glued to a pedestal. And what kind of a life was that anyway?

He realized how deeply, thoroughly, and royally he'd messed up. And, in a small act of mercy, that at the time he really couldn't have done better. He didn't have the intellectual processing power of a normal dragon, and he was never taught how to act if his Charge was a living person. It didn't justify how he'd acted, and it didn't make it okay by any stretch of the imagination, but it let him understand and forgive himself for his horrid behavior years prior. The instincts fading over time certainly helped.

The male progenitor of Clan AXQU, formerly Critter and then Lethe, decided to lay his burdens down and accept the consequences. After lots of grief and anger and pain and self-pity, he had finally found peace. The apology he gave his ex, who had long since healed from his treatment of her, was a genuine one this time.

This time, instead of the aggression and anger she had every right to express, she chose to forgive.

It was actually her new mate who suggested a new name and appearance for the new chapter of his life, a suggestion that he wholeheartedly agreed to. Being a nocturne felt extremely tiny and confining; a quirk of the early Nocturne scrolls was that some breed-changed dragons ended up smaller than fae, and he'd ended up shrinking from Guardian size all the way to relative gnat size. He wanted something different, just pleaded over and over that he never be turned into a Guardian again.

"Well... besides big, what do you want to be?" Enchant asked. "You want a comfortable perspective, or something completely new?"

It took a lot of time to get used to how clumsy he was on land, and even more to get used to not having limbs to speak of. On the other hand, having gills was an extremely cool experience, and exploring places he couldn't get to even as a semi-aquatic Guardian was even cooler. He took a few years off lair guard duty on a kind of "Search," but this time, it was to rediscover himself unburdened by the baggage of his past. Being an Undertide was a learning curve, but thankfully he'd learned to be patient with himself. He didn't learn as quickly as other dragons, and most complex subjects were always going to be beyond him, but he knew he'd learn simple or emotional stuff eventually with enough practice.

The name he ended up picking at the end of it all was Samsara: the cycle of death and rebirth. A hopeless concept to many, but Sam doesn't see it that way. With each cycle, each breed change he's been through, he's gotten better and wiser than before. In his opinion, spending an eternity or three getting iteratively better doesn't sound like a bad time at all.

His courtship of Miss Luli Anne Marie, the much younger pink-speckled beauty who found him on his travels, shocked him most of all. He was skeptical of her at first, wondering why she wouldn't go after someone more like her, but she just told him "I want to date you. I don't want anyone else. You're just gonna have to deal with it, mister." After a while, she was able to get him to open up with his affection, and now Sam gets to fuss and dote and spoil to his heart's content. He's gone to his friends (and his ex's new partner) many times, worried about falling back into old habits, but Enchant just laughed every single time. "She's asking to be pampered with her words. Do you really think she'd hold back if you crossed a line? You deserve to be happy. Relax." Sam was forced to accept this. Raising children in an environment where both parents adore and want them is a new experience for Sam, but one he's grateful for every day of his life. And being able to give an avalanche of affection to his adoring partner, of course. They're disgustingly cute and lovey dovey all the time. Sam has no idea how he got so lucky.