Danniel walked the halls of school, seeing the people around him only vaguely. He'd gotten sleep last night, which was a rarity. As usual, he'd been plagued by nightmare after nightmare, visions of the ways he could die. He was a seer, an Oracle. He was a witch with the power to look at someone and see their aura, their emotional state reflected in its color along with large aspects of who they were. He was a witch who saw visions of the possible future; and he was depressed as all get out. He glanced around, seeing his friend, Lance, and giving a brief smile. The kid was only around 5'2", barely standing below Daniels shoulders, and he was the most positive, upbeat, understanding little kid Daniel had ever met. He knew telling humans about magic was illegal, but the kid had been persistent in asking him what was wrong, consistently asking him every time he was upset until he'd broken. And he'd understood, and promised to keep his secrets.

It still shocked him that the kid had confirmed what he'd already known. Lance had thought Daniel was close to feeling crazy, and so he'd confided in him, revealing a dark secret from his past that had explained his aura. It was a strange shade of purple, a shade of the color within the range that usually meant some kind of mental illness. Lance had confirmed he was sick, not telling him how, but telling him regardless. That the small kid trusted him so much was a comfort to Daniel, a comfort because it wasn't something he'd seen. Of things could still happen that surprised him, he could still be alive tomorrow.

At lunch, though, he heard that Lance had been sent home because he felt sick; cold chills and an inability to focus along with pain in his ears and nose. The poor kid sounded like he was shifting for the first time, even though the only thing magical about him was his mother; a witch of long standing who's father had been an impressive member of an almost extinct race of shifters. The dire-wolf clan had grown rare, unable to hunt due to increasing tracts of land being taken by the humans. Eventually, the witches had managed to make a realm for the shifters, a massive undertaking that had taken every witch on earth and a dragon to complete, but the dire-wolf clan was still struggling to recover. Many generations of a forced lack of consistent shifting had put their shifting gene or magic or whatever it was, on the fritz. Many children of the clan were born without the ability to shift naturally active in them. It sometimes took years to get their gift alight.

Danny pondered this as he went to school the next day, thinking it over. Amber, another witch that Lance had befriended, one with elvish blood, had been grinning like a pixie who'd played a particularly good prank all week. That, along with lance's increasingly strange behavior and sudden illness yesterday gave him an idea of what the whole thing was about. He cornered her at lunch, determined to get an answer. He acted as usual, sitting in his little group- Nerissa, Tess, Danni, Sariah and Nathan- while he waited. It was interesting how Lance had somehow managed to befriend most of the draconians in the school, almost as though he had intuited What they were and chosen them specifically.

When Amber arrived, Daniel stood and glowered at her. The others all gazed at her levely, Nathan and Sariah doing so even as they cuddled per the norm. "What?" That was her usual response when someone looked at her like that and the pixie-ish grin faded slightly. "Amber, what did you do to Lance? You know we can't spell humans without provocation, it a law." She gazed back at Daniel levely, he r grin returning as she stood there. "Oh, he'll be fine. I fixed a different broken law. His father really shouldn't have hidden his draconian ancestry from him." She sat down, and we stared at her. "Amber... I've met his dad. He isn't draconian, I would've seen one of the signs. Always a crystal dragon somewhere if you're a witch, an image of Lilliana if you're a vampire, images of whatever animal you are throughout your house if you're a were... Amber, his family doesn't have any signs. They're human."

She faltered, then grinned. "That would be expected if the law was really broken as I suspect it was. It's wrong to still shift but never tell your children. Why would you do tha-" she broke off as a silvery white-grey tabby launched itself at her with a yowl. It hissed as it stood on top of her, and Daniel heard Nathan take an sudden sharp breath. Daniel glanced at him in confusion. Sariah glanced at him in interested confusion before her eyes widened and she stared at the tabby. Daniel also looked at the tabby, now locked tightly in Ambers arms as it squirmed. Daniel frowned as he noticed its aura, indicating it was a were. Only... he glanced at Amber with a sneaking suspicion and she grinned. Daniels face grew pale as he watched her carry Lance away. He sat down, hard, and stared at the railing of the staircase across the hall from him.

Lance was a shifter, which meant his father was too. Or his mother, though Daniel knew she was a witch, which left the father. How could Joseph be a were? He showed no signs and hadn't ever looked at Daniel in more than a human way. They sat there in silence as they digested the sudden shift in their world before Amber came back white as a sheet. Daniel stood, glancing around. "Where's Lance? Why don't you have him?" Amber shivered, sitting down and hugging herself. "I may have made a mistake. It seems as though... his father is from a shiftless family." Nathan let out a groan, and the others in the group grew silent and pale. Eventually, Daniel spoke up. "You mean... you forced a family who had chosen the human world... back into draconian society?" Amber nodded, barely showing the motion, and Daniel stumbled back against the wall for support.

"That's... that is one of the most ancient laws we have. How... how could you break it? Why didn't you do research before you just acted?" Nathan spoke up before Amber could. "You forced him to shift. He isn't as he should be. I may be a packless omega, and a snake to boot, but I can still smell. Amber... that was Lance. There is no way on earth even a forced shift can make someone a Luna! There is no way on earth he could be a Luna! What on earth have you done!?" He was breathing heavily, and Sariah pulled him closer before kissing him softly in the cheek to calm him down. He shivered, calming, but the rest of us were only now understanding the impact of what he'd said. Little was known about pack dynamics outside of the were clans themselves, but everyone knew the four basic kinds of were- Luna, Alpha, Beta, Omega- and that only girls could be Lunas. Most of the rest was unknown to the draconian world at large; a fact that drew many witch scholars crazy.

If Lance had become a Luna... "You made Lance a girl..." she curled up and rocked back and forth, barely holding back tears. A witch crying was a rare thing, and their tears were almost as valuable as dragon... anything. Daniel stood, walking to her and laying a hand on her shoulder. "Look, what's done is done. Draconian law would have you suffer more, but you are crying, you've obviously understood the gravity of the situation and the extremity of your crimes. As a witch, I declare your debt to the society repaid." She stared at him, and then the tears fell. Danni was still calmly knitting, her fingers flying over the yarn and needles with a practiced ease that belied her carpal tunnel. She refused to let a witch cure her of it, strangely enough.

Danni finished her knitting and stood, so abruptly she scared the living daylights out of the group- Amber excluded- before she sighed and held out her knit creation to Amber with shaky fingers. It was a simple, yarn-made, plush little cat. It was adorable, made of silvers and grey's with hints of whites. It was Lance. Daniel stared at it as Amber took it hesitantly before turning to stare at Danni. "What.... how... what?" She smiled through her pain, slipping on the pressure gloves she'd gotten from the doctors office. "Simple, my carpal tunnel helps me work faster and channels my secret little talent. That doll, and my own version I'm gonna make, is gonna be a great help for when she needs to find Shade. That /is/ the name you gave him, isn't it? Lance won't like it, but he'll deal. Mine will have a different quality..." she chuckled before sitting down and sighing as she held her hands.

Daniel stared, shaking his head. He was going to regret what he'd do that night, but he didn't have much choice. He began weaving, his magic so strongly woven it was visible to the other witches. They knew what he was doing. They couldn't stop him either, merely watch on sadly as he spent the rest of the day weaving himself a nightmare.

______linebreak because I figure... why the heck not? X3_______________________

Daniel lay in bed that night, his magical weave almost finished. It had been this way for hours, simply needing one more thread to finish the spell. He sighed, forcing his shaking finger to move. He finished the spell, tying it to himself, then relaxing as it took effect. Immediately, he fell asleep and woke somewhere else. He was a blue man in a vast sea of glowing lights. He shivered, beginning to run. The more lights there were, the less pleasant things would be when they inevitably caught him. He ran until the stars began to thin, vanishing entirely behind him as he entered a greyer, colder place. Men and women, shades of the past- memories that were so strong or emotional they failed to fade- ghosted around the area, threatening to pull him into a memory. He was looking for a specific one, however, one that would be found unless he helped it fade. Many of these were human memories, but the brightest ones were formed by draconians when they broke one of the laws. It was rare, as there were few laws, but... there was Ambers memory. Amber walked with a cat, slowly matching towards a person in a black robe as though in a trance. It was another draconian seer, one who patrolled the realm of the lost for lawbreakers. He would have experience.

Daniel had more.

There was a trick to memories, a nasty secret that only seers knew. If you tried hard enough, or got lost in the memory too completely, it would become your own and leave the realm of the lost. And if you wanted a memory to come to you, you simply tried to remember something related to it. For most, they focused on the image the memory gave until they knew its secret. For people like Daniel, whom had experienced a part of the memory, it was simpler than that. Daniel focused on Lance as he'd been over the week, increasingly strange, desperate, in pain, and even fearful. Amber so pixie-like with her grin as she stalked the halls. The cat as it tackled Amber over before she came back and almost cried her tears of regret.

The memory whipped around and shot towards him like an arrow from a bow. It hit him and he chose to relive the entire memory, a week's worth, in an instant. It faded into him, and he looked at the robes figure. The man was running towards him, glowing fists raised, but Daniel knew he would be too late to capture him. The nightmares were closing in. The man grew closer and Daniel didn't move. The mans dooming finger was a hair away from touching him when the nightmares hit and he was thrust from the realm of the lost into an endless cycle of his deaths, never ending until morning came and sunlight shocked him awake. He glanced around his room, knowing he'd done something almost unheard of. He'd interfered with the draconian laws enforcement, something only a seer could do.

It was rare for a seer to reach his age without being found and apprenticed to one of the other seers, though he guessed that the shiftless family must've been the reason why. Draconians tended to try and avoid those that had left their society. And the government would have known on principle. He sighed, rubbing his face as his body revealed its exhaustion and made manifest its distaste for the nightmarish visions. It wasn't restful at night, but at least sleep helped his body continue to function. He'd cast a memory charm to suppress the memory in his mind that afternoon before the government came for him, as they inevitably would. He'd ask Amber and Nerissa for help with the charm.

A spell cast by the blood of witches, elves, and Merfolk would be almost impossible for anyone to break.

_________________________________(A/N) Hey guys! I've been working on this for a while, it's the reason Amber wasn't punished for breaking draconian law. It also provides some context for why Daniel was shocked in the book and why no one looked for Shade after he left town. The others were either too afraid or not stupid enough to look. Draconian law showed up that afternoon and Daniel had to pretend like what had happened wasn't the breaking of draconian law, but instead the accidental death and rape of a human boy in front of his friend. That satisfied them and what happened with them after that is either simple, or decided by a one-shot. Just send in any requests you have and I'll see what I can do!

Till next time, Sept-mates!

Your poet and scribe,
~ShadeFinder<(0^0)>