"You're going to have to tell them sometime, you know." Sarah looked up at the speaker. The young man was tall and broad. His long face looked miserable even through his smile. Sarah gave him a grin.

"Hi, Kieran. Have a seat." He did so, moving with a gracelessness which was not adolescent gawkiness, nor yet the motion of someone fully in control of their body.

"Sorry," he said, looking unrepentant. "It's a bit close to the change for me. Bloody lousy time for me to have an essay due, but what can you do about it? Are you still deep in the closet?"

Sarah sighed. "Why do you keep asking?" she questioned. "You know the answer. I've seen what happens to those folk who come out here. I don't want it for myself."

"I wouldn't say it's so bad," Kieran commented. "I've been okay."

She raised her eyebrows. "So you getting beaten half to death a couple of months ago, that's nonsense? The visit I paid you in hospital with every nurse and doctor in the place wearing a mask and full isolation gear? You can't fool me, Kier."

The grin he gave her was full of self-mocking humour. "All right, so it hasn't been a bed of roses. I'm a lot happier with myself now. There isn't the strain of trying to pretend."

"So the comfort is enough, is it?" Her green eyes met his brown ones. "The comfort of knowing you don't have to hide is enough to outweigh the pain of being looked at as though you've the plague. The comfort of being able to say you are what you are is enough to counterbalance the rejection?"

He met her belligerence with a calm glance. "Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes having to explain to another close-minded fool they can't become what I am through physical contact all becomes frustrating. Sometimes I wish I could walk back into the obscurity of the closet. But then I think about what I've gained, Sarah. I know who my friends are. I know they're true friends who won't walk away just because they don't want to deal with who I am. I know there are going to be people there who'll understand when I have to escape. I know I'm not deceiving people."

"I don't understand, Kier."

"I know. I know you think it'll be different for you. But trust me, Sarah, one day it'll be as acceptable to be what we are as it is to be gay. I came out of the closet about who I am sexually a long time ago. Do you think I don't remember the jeers and gibes about the 'Pansy Pwca'?" Kieran leaned forward. "I faced that, and I can face coming out as being of the Fey among the humans."

Sarah's eyes flashed at him. "Do you think they would accept such as I am?" she asked as she slid into her true form. "We are too strange even for the world of the fey." Her wings were sprouting from her back. Her eyes were still mostly human, although the third eyelid over them gave them a strange iridescence. When the transformation was complete, she stood before him, her crest brushing the ceiling.

With a frightening swiftness she turned, jaws agape. There was nothing human in her eyes, nothing but the dragon. He recalled the stories: why dragonkind were to be feared and avoided; why dragons were not welcome in the courts of the fey. "They live too long, think too strangely," was the consensus. The elvenkin were immortal, but easy to fathom, obsessed with pleasure and feasting. The werefolk walked their precarious balance between the animal mind and all-too-human savagery. Dragons lived forever. Nobody in fey or in humanity knew how many dragons there were - they lived so long, hid so well. Nobody could pick them unless they knew who they were looking for. There were tales of dragons who manipulated humans and fey, working plots of such subtlety as to make the manouverings of the Byzantine court look like the games of children.

Yet this was Sarah, so Kieran reached out his hand. Standing tip-toe, he was able to reach her muzzle, and he gently stroked it.

"I trust you, Sarah. One day you'll understand why."

There was a quiet moment, then Sarah's massive head dipped down toward him. Her forked tongue snaked from between massive jaws, danced over his face, then withdrew. The dragon vanished, replaced by the woman.

"That bloody after-shave of yours. Dragonsbane, isn't it?" She laughed. "It tastes foul."

Kieran gave her a grin. "All part of my charm."