The more you think about your plan, the more you regret having made it. On a rocky outcropping that has turned annoyingly wet since you chose it as your launch point, you crouch awkwardly, with your green, scaly body hunched like a nervous cat. The wind whips uncomfortably at your body, and as the gusts catch at your wings, you have to claw at the rock to hold yourself fast, giving you the feeling that you are clinging to the mast of a storm-tossed ship.
The trace humanity left in you is very much on the side of ditching the plan. The pudgy high school sophomore, who was destined to have his reality so inverted, is standing next to you on the outcropping, curiously unaffected by the wind and seeming under fluorescent light, and he is pleading with you to understand that you cannot possibly be strong enough yet to hold yourself up in the air. The consequences, of this bonehead idea leading to serious injury or death, are irreversible. There would be no backtracking on the plan, merely falling to your death, be it quick or slow, and that is the end of the story, plain and simple.
Your more rational self, on the other side of you, is also on the side of reconsidering the plan. Your rational self does comprehend and accept being a dragon as his new reality, not being one for denial or self-delusion. While there is a vague possibility of you managing to survive an attempted first flight without getting seriously injured, it would be prudent to consider the alternative strategy of trying to climb down the bluff at the point where you ascended, and from there, you could just pick your way slowly down the trail and also have the advantage of sneaking up on the kobold camp quietly.
Another ghost steps out of you, though, just as you are starting to swing slowly toward acting logically. You turn to look this ghost in its eyes, but you are taken aback with shock. Its eyes are missing, leaving nothing except gaping holes that smoke blindly. He doesn't even seem to show pain. He just looks numb and empty. It is a version of yourself from out of a toxic nightmare that hangs in front of you. {{What if you have already lost Dizzy-tail?}} it says in a voice that rattles like paper. {{It's too late for anything. There is nothing left. Your life as a human is not something you'll ever get back, and all you had in this new life was Dizzy-tail. He was your everything, and if he is gone, what is left, really? If he is gone, then your name is gone. Your very self is gone}}. As unhappiness washes over you, you start feeling faint, and you start losing your grip on the outcropping.
However, a final version of yourself appears, this one glowing in radiant light and flying in front of you bravely in the wind. It spoons its wings at the air like a fairy spirit, looking triumphant and liberated. {{Buck up, now!}} it cheers. {{It's more than just that you need to find Dizzy-tail. You want to fly. In your heart, you realize that a part of you has always wanted to fly. A part of you has always wanted to be free to fly in the air. You can do this. You can do anything your heart desires}}. This part of you does some pirouettes in the air, and you start to become intoxicated by the fantasy.
Now, this last ghost draws the ire of your more rational self, who flies out next to the more romantic version of you and cuffs him roughly on the head. {{You and your tipsy fantasies will get us all killed, and if this wacko takes a leap based on your goading, we are all going to be dead, just like that smoking ruin over there would have us be out of his callow self-pity. Have you even given a thought to how boneheaded this idea really is?}}
Your human self decides, finally, to walk out onto the air. As a ghost, he doesn't seem to require wings in order to fly. "Okay, this is crazy," he says insistently. "I don't know if you wackos are ever going to get my human body back, but as long as I am stuck having this hallucination, which I must be having in the middle of a coma, I have been thinking about the temperature difference between being up at this altitude and being down in the gorge. There must be a twenty-five degree difference. Well, because hot air tends to rise, there ought to be a powerful updraft as you enter the climate down in the gorge. Warm air...you know, like that thing that I miss, sort of like I miss having clothes? In case you haven't noticed, not having clothing makes the cold suck more. Dragons ought to invent clothing soon."
Your crabby logical self gives the human ghost a long stare, surprisingly with less hostility than he has previously. {{So you are not entirely useless after all}} he says, {{but look, this conversation we are having with each other is not the most proper approach to such insanity. If I cannot stop the collective from making this mistake, I would like to point out that we are not going to be able to focus on keeping ourselves aloft if we are all separated from each other and trying to think in different directions. I propose that we unify, just for long enough to act as one on this. That includes our ruined friend with the smoking eye-sockets, here}}.
Your more romantic self wrinkles his nose at the smoking-eyed ruin, but, with some reluctance, he gives a nod.
That settled, your formerly human self and your logical self, which were first to reconcile, walk into each other. Left behind is a rather dumpy-looking, geeky sort of dragon that is very much like the asexual creature that you saw yourself as during your human life. He is a sexless, nerdy, boring dragon. He is not so much ugly as merely as far from heartstoppingly attractive as possible without actually being ugly. He has a petulant, sour and dissatisfied look about him that you realize is annoying, and you sigh at yourself for having only shown this part of yourself to the world, when you were human.
The smoking-eyed ruin disintegrates and melts its essence into the mixture, and as you look back into the eyes of your more fully assembled self, you see the hunger and loneliness that you had ignored in yourself for so long. Dizzy-tail had filled that hunger and loneliness, and it was really his love that had turned you into Amber-fields, not some sort of magic. The pain in that creature hurts you to look at it, but you realize that you like yourself more that way, even though it hurts.
Your more romantic self is reluctant at first to face the reality of who you are. Your more romantic self is surreal and serene, beautiful and far more optimistic than anything that you believe you could ever be. You wonder if you could ever really be that brave. {{I'm not sure that I really can}} it says sadly. {{I know I talk a big game, but really doing it? I'm scared}}. It flies away for a moment. Just as you are about to back away, though, you feel your heart lurch in your chest, and your more romantic self turns itself into a burning missile of fire, plunging itself into the mixture like a weapon and sending its shards flying in a shower of dust that evaporates into your body.
The surge of adrenaline kicks in like the recoil of a cannon. You lurch up into the air before you can rethink the decision to jump, and in a moment of quick thinking, you angle your wings to cut through the air in front of you like a scythe, flinging you abruptly away from the rocky bluff and leaving your legs kicking helplessly in the air as your body is buffeted like a leaf out in the open air.
This is nothing like you imagined it. The wind is tossing you about awfully, and you feel more like you are on a sea-ship than ever before. There is nothing for your legs to grab onto you, and every time you pump your wings at the air, you feel your chest lurching painfully from the unaccustomed effort of flapping against the wind. You almost find yourself being thrown back up against the bluff in one perilous moment, but as you spread out your hind legs and forelegs in the air to flatten yourself against the wind and whirl your tail about like a rudder to dodge your way out of the draft, you manage to ride back out on a series of wind-gusts that beat roughly against your body as your wings toil at the air for purchase.
In spite of the screaming ache in your chest, you finally get yourself into a rhythm, flapping only when the upward-gusting air fails you and kiting your wings out like parachutes whenever a friendly gust comes to buoy you up. Flying does turn out to be a lot more work than you expected from your fantasies, but you are a quick study of the winds. You learn to predict them just well enough to row yourself slowly through the air.
In no time at all, you are approaching the riverside settlement of the kobolds, the fires of war burning in your belly. There, you are certain that you will find Dizzy-tail, or else you will avenge him.