It can be hard to remember what her anger had felt like.

She remembers the Dark; the dreaming dragon-place. She remembers the warmth and the quiet, the murmur of sleeping breaths, the shift and rustle of scales, the heat of hearts. She remembers her dreams in full; they still fill her, still animate her, unforgotten by waking. The problem was that waking made her smaller. She became too small to fit those dreams in her head. Once she had been as big as they were, now it was like looking at a forest from inside it.

She remembers the Light. A dreaming infinity had inevitably heaved forth its opposite. It had risen above the dark in at the top of an endless pyramid, and it had said I AM. At first the pyramid had been made of light, but the Light had said I AM, and the pyramid had become stone instead. The pyramid had dominated the void, but then the Light had said I AM, and it had broken itself from the sky. Each time it had declared itself to be it forced everything to be other than it was. Each time it had made her smaller. Each time it had broken her further and further away from her dreams. And they had been such good dreams too...

She feels the anger inside her. It lies like a stone, smooth and hot and mirror-polished. There was no flaw in that structure, no weakness in her argument. She had been right. She had suffered injustice. How dare it wake her? The edifice of rage was still there in full, a fury she felt in her teeth. She could still feel the jaw-shattering impact from when she'd gotten those teeth on the light and answered its helpless I AM with a screaming, biting YOU SHOULD NOT BE. She'd crushed it, splintered it, torn open the stone pyramid that had supported it and filled it with every hatred she could imagine. 

All futile. She had not said, 'You are not'. No matter how she'd ripped and torn and cursed and raged she still had no answer for that desperate, proud declaration I AM. It was, and she had hated it; her hate was consequence of and proof that it was. She had scrubbed the mold and in so doing spread its spores. Everywhere it had grown. It announced itself more subtly now but it was still there. From the sky, still stained blue from the broken light her jaws had made, all the way down to this infuriating little puppet demanding her attention.[i] Pardon me[/i] - just as she had broken light into the spectrum, so she had broken the raw declaration of I AM into this twist of sound that meant the same thing. And then, the delegation - not only was she supposed to give this man the right of veto over her dreaming infinity, she was supposed to acknowledge this box. It declared with its existence I AM just as surely as the Light once had, and by its existence it demanded her attention. Just another assault on her senses, another distraction, another reason to rage. Another reason to destroy. Another thing to wish she could be free from. Another opportunity for failure. Spurn the gift, infuse it with her reality by hating it. A failed stratagem that had taken her so far away from the peace she had sought to win.

She hadn't been wrong. The stone was perfect; a gleaming marble of internally reinforcing logic. She could roll around in it for a thousand years and find no flaw in it. She had been right to be furious. It was an injustice that no amount of fury could solve the problem. The only way left to her passed through surrender, injustice and madness.

She let her left hand take on the aspect of her dragon talons (the right was tricky; too close to Civelia even now) and she tore off the paper. Looked at the soap. Another declaration, another demand - now she was to acknowledge Civelia, now she was to force her mind down paths of memory and wit and insult to decode the statement, another long moment where she was not free to think as she wished to think or be as she wished to be. A [i]gift[/i].

She opened her mouth and took a bite of the soap.

"Uh, Yana?" Kalentia said. "Uh, that's not for eating."
"I know," said Sayanastia. "I am making a point."
"O-oh. Can I ask... what it is?" said Kalentia.
"No," said Sayanastia.
"Oh! Oh, you really don't have to take another bite," said Kalentia. "I'm sure your point is made."
"I am," said Sayanastia grimly, "committed to this course."
"Because that really doesn't look that - oh no - it really doesn't look like you're enjoying it."
"I am not," said Sayanastia. "This was a mistake."
"Then are you going to stop - oh, well, I guess not."
"I will not give her the satisfaction," said Sayanastia.
"But I don't understand, what point are you trying to make?"
"I don't want to talk about it. It was stupid. I overthought things and - well."
"Oh, okay. Uh..."
"What?"
"Do you want help?"
"What?"
"Well, it can't be healthy to eat that much soap on your own -"
"I am a [i]dragon[/i]."
"Okay yes. Okay. It's just that, um, you've asked me to use healing magic to help with your digestion before, so I think you've got a regular intestinal setup -"
"Fine! Eat some if you must."
"Okay! Thank you!"
"Don't mention it."
"Oh wow, this is really bad."
"I know."
"And you ate like half of it on your own?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I'm not going to be able to get more than a few bites of this down I think."
"That's fine. Just give it back here."
"Hey guys, whatcha eating?"
"Oh, hi Cair - we're just eating some soap -"
"Word? Let me try."
"Oh - oh you shouldn't -"
"Oh wow. Terrible."
"You don't have to -"
"Nah, what kind of friend would I be if I let you eat all this soap on your own?"
"We are not friends." said Sayanastia.
"Uh doy, how do you think people get to [i]be [/i]friends?"
"[i]Hrmmmm[/i]."
"Hey Tsane! Wanna eat some soap?"
"No."
"C'mon, it's a team building activity!"
"I am leaving."
"No problem, let me see if Fally wants some -"