I awakened to bucking and thrashing. This was not normal for sleeping in a bed. But then I remembered that my bed for the night was a person. Her sleeping clothes were in quite a bit of disarray, and I slid down the slopes of Mount Nellis until my face was in a position that I was able to notice that trolls did not have navels. Or at least this one didn't.

I climbed back up, and put my hands on her face.

"Nellis. It's okay. I'm here."

Her eyes fluttered open. She immediately shed the tension in her shoulders.  I could almost hear the energy in the tendons bleed away.

"Thank Lazar. It was just a nightmare."

"Nel. Your skin feels weird. Close your eyes a sec. I'm going to make a light."

I pushed out a glob of luminiferous ether, and made an etherspark that floated up into the air. The light fell into a pool around her neck, reflecting muted crescents back from many curved surfaces. I felt with my fingers.

Scales. Her neck was covered in scales, black and shiny, like a draconic covered in cosmetic wax scale polish direct from their goth phase.

"You have scales all over your neck."

Her eyes snapped open, and her hands flew to her throat, feeling the extent of the keratinaceous covering. They spread from jawbone to collarbone, and wrapped around to cover the spine.

"Lazar's bones, Rav. I was dreaming. They cut me again, but it didn't heal.  They dragged you away into the dark, and threw me into a hole with no bottom.  I was falling, and falling, and I couldn't even scream."

"It's the Polymorphism."

I tapped my fingernails against the scales. Thick.

"Nobody's cutting through this with just an army knife. I think your body is responding to the attack."

I grabbed her head, pulling it forward. Her hair was different.

"Your roots are darker. Most of it's pink, but down near the scalp, it's dark red."

"Impossible. Trolls have a pigment defect. That's why we can't be out in the direct sun. Gives us sunburn and lithodermatitis. It's not fatal or anything, but... ew. It's super gross when it starts peeling off. Like stinky skin gravel."

"These scales are black."

"Get off. I need my surgery mirror."

My etherspark went out, plunging the room back into night. I put up another.  Nellis squirmed out from underneath me and went to her desk, turning on the lamps and adjusting her mirror. She shed her night clothes.

"This is weird. I have little brown spots on me."

"Those are freckles, Nel. Look, see. I have orange ones. These scales go all the way down your back. It's like armor."

I tapped on her spine, making little "click" noises. She was busy trying to look at her hair.

"It is darker."

"You might have to buy some beach clothes. Er. After the war is over, I guess. All the holiday-quality ocean beaches are fortified against invasion now. Maybe a skimpy costume for river floats?"

"You mean outside? In the sun? I don't know...."

"We should at least test it. You'll have to change your make-up, too."

"Do what now?"

"Change your make-up palette."

"Uh. My beauty routine wasn't really focused on my face all that much."

She gestured at the extremely sharp and very clean knives on her desk.

"It's okay, I'll lend you my kit. And my expertise gleaned from... Nope, I'm going to bring Peralya in on this. Presuming you don't mind slipping on all the boy drool that's going to be splattering on all the floors. She could get paid for makeovers. The first time she did my face, I gave myself a boner.  She's that good."

"And you aren't freaked out by this? At all?"

"Baby, I'm the only person I know with stripes, and you fucked me the day we met. I'd have to be some kind of hypocrite to get hung up over skin."

Her face flushed darker purple. It made the new freckles pop.

"And I may be biased, but I do enjoy a spot of color here and there."

I leaned in and tasted her freckled cheek.

"I don't want to wake up from this one."

"What?"

"Nothing. I just hope I'm not dreaming all this."

I sneaked my hand in, and pinched her nipple.

"Ow! Ravs! Why'd you do that?!"

"Did you wake up?"

"No!"

"Then better get back to sleep. Tomorrow, we're hitting the roof of the Astronomy building to test your skin."

"Hold me down again?"

"Did you want to put your nightgown back on?"

"No."

Suits me fine. She quenched her desk light. I pushed her back over to her bed, laid her back down on it, stripped off my night clothes, and climbed on.

Tits really are the best pillows. I should try the same thing with someone smaller than me.

"Maybe I could make myself smaller."

"Why?"

"It's just that I kind of have a thing for men that are bigger than me. Pick me up. Toss me around. Pin me down. Not exactly a lot of folks down in the tunnels that fit the bill."

"You could try it. It only took a couple of hours to grow scales. So shorten some bones. No big deal. But we'll still have to get you a hairy brute of a boyfriend. So he can get you pregnant. With enormous babies that will suck all the milk out of your huge mommy boobs."

She shivered.

"Ah, Ravs. You're getting me all excited. Me, a mommy. I want to dream about that tonight. You can make that happen, right?"

"Absolutely. Just go to sleep."

I stuck my face back between her knockers and copped a feel with my cheeks.

"Or bigger. I could get an ogre husband. Or a giant. I don't know if I could be a vegetarian, though. Ogre, then. He'll carry me off to his mountain lair, my belly as big as a house. Then he'll... rmf... lll..."

She started drifting off. I did my solemn duty, and held her down to the bed.  I'll get you your big, strong, hairy man. From the man store. Top shelf, too, not from the bargain bin. I could take a few of those, though. Some cool shit is in discount displays, sometimes. I could get a clearance Clarence. A 20 percent off Jakov. A buy-one-get-one Ewan. I started dreaming of little broken clockwork gnomes, trying to turn each other's winding keys to make their brass wangs buzz. I tried to help, but everything was covered in oil, and they kept slipping out of my grasp. I tumbled down a slope of spare parts, and remembered no more.