As the wind whipped across Aria’s body, she hugged the long coat closer to her chest. The fabric rubbed against her arms and irritated her skin. She picked the wrong coat today. Even though her wool coat was best for the winter weather today, she was rather uncomfortable in it. It wasn’t like she could take her jacket off anyways.

Two more blocks, she thought to herself. Only two more blocks before I reach my subway station and then I can take this horrible coat off.

As Aria walked down the sidewalk, she noticed a family – father, mother, and their young daughter who was no more than five years old. The couple held their daughter’s gloved hands and swung her forward. Aria could feel her anger building inside her.

“Pathetic. That’s never gonna last. I bet you two are hypocrites as well,” Aria mumbled. The family reminded her of own parents. The people who claimed, “We’ll love you forever, Aria. Nothing can change that”, but they left out the part about what happens if your daughter turns out to be a 20ft dragon. What then?

Oh yeah. They’ll kick said daughter out onto the street. Aria could feel her blood pulsing through and if she did not calm down now, this part of Manhattan was going to be crushed dragon style. Maybe they deserve it, Aria thought to herself.

Stopping for a second, Aria closed her eyes and breathed. She just needed to calm down. Almost at her subway station. Almost home. Almost time to rip off this wool coat and let her wings be free.

Just as Aria was completely calmed down, someone ran into her from behind hitting her carefully concealed wings. Aria lost it.

“Well excuse me like I’m not here. Watch out where you’re going!” she exploded on the brink of blowing flames in the person’s face.

Amber drew her ropes up closer around her, making sure they covered everything but the slits where here eyes were. It wasn't the cold, that rarely bothered her now days, it was the dangerous rays of the sun. Even as day crept slowly into evening and even with the clouds protecting from its harsher rays, she could still feel it trying to penetrate her skin. It had been a long time since she had been out in this form during the daylight. A long time. In fact, it had been a long time since she had been in this form much in general.

In the past several months Amber had been forced to adapt to a new reality. It was a reality in which she had come to realize just how far from human she truly was. Her flesh had withered around her bones, all liquid sucked from it. A faint decayed smell followed her everywhere whether she was in human form or not. Her naturally pale skin had turned to a dry yellowish-gray and had a papery texture. When shifted, her scales and feathers were patchy and uneven. It was almost as if she straddled the line between life and death, never quite going over and yet no longer fully among the living. She couldn't even eat the same things she used to be able to, at least not all of them.

Then there were the other signs, the beneficial signs that something had shifted in her makeup. Neither cold nor heat effected her the way it used to or the way it did others. It wasn't as if she was immune to such things, it just took more before she flt the changes. When wounded, she bled less and her blood clotted faster and she had found that she didn't have to breath as much as when she had been properly living. The looks she received said she was a monster, an undead and unholy creature, but she knew better. If she was a monster as they suggested then it was a fact to be proud of, not ashamed.

As Amber walked, her gait suggesting that of a hunter for those who knew what they were looking at, her pitch black eyes met the eyes of a woman passing by. The woman jumped and ran from her and Amber couldn't help but smile behind her veil. What must that woman have seen in her void black eyes to startle her so? Watching, the woman collided with the back of another woman not far ahead of her.

“Well excuse me like I’m not here. Watch out where you’re going!”

Well that was certainly a fiery reaction. Amber continued to walk casually forward, her eyes meeting the eyes of the second woman. "The lack of considering of some people, wouldn't you agree?" Her voice was quiet and calm, her eyes unwavering.

The woman Aria exploded at ran away from her. She was this close from expelling fire, and part of Aria wanted to chase after her and teach her a lesson – perhaps in a dark ally. Aria smirked at the thought. The stranger would learn true fear in the face of the dragon.

Glancing up, Aria noticed a woman walking toward her. Aria almost continued to walk on, but she stopped and looked at the stranger. Her face was covered under a veil except for her eyes – pitch black. Perhaps she is one of the elite, Aria thought. It was always refreshing to find other people like her.

Aria’s brown eyes met the stranger’s black as the stranger softly said, “The lack of considering of some people, wouldn't you agree?"

“I suppose that’s what we get with interaction with them,” Aria said. “Pathetic, dishonest humans.” It was clear in her tone how much she disapproved of them. She hoped that the veiled woman truly was like her. With eyes like hers, there was no way she couldn’t be. And if not, Aria didn’t care. It wasn’t like her distaste for them was hidden.

In the distance, Aria could barely see the woman who ran into her. Clenching and unclenching her fists, she could feel the rage that was so present just a moment ago. Aria pondered, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just get rid of them?” A faint smile crept on her face at the thought. No humans? Aria would be certainly okay with that.

“I suppose that’s what we get with interaction with them. Pathetic, dishonest humans.”

Without even so much as a question on Amber's behalf those words imparted a great deal of information. The woman was a mutant and, by the sounds of it, one who didn't especially like humans. That philosophy was nothing unusual given her life in Sanctuary. She carefully looked the woman over searching for any visible signs of her non-humanity. Was that a slight bulge under her jacket? Perhaps.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just get rid of them?”

"Oh I don't know," Amber replied, a slight smile under her veil. "Are they really so bad?" She searched the woman's face for signs of reaction. It would be interesting to see if this stranger could meet her eerie eyes and even more interesting if she could smell the signs of death that followed her everywhere. Rare was it those who could meet and hold her gaze and those who did were usually worthy of respect. Those who didn't? Lesser creatures.

"Personally, I don't find them worth the effort to hate. They are what they are." She paused, considering her next words. "Prey." There was a time when such a statement would have been abhorrent but that was before coming to the understanding that she was no longer human. She was a lich and she was death, what were humans to her?

“Oh I don’t know. Are they really so bad?”

At the woman’s statement, Aria glared at the pitch black eyes staring at her. Maybe this mutant actually liked humans. Not unusual, but Aria did not understand them – especially for people like her with a visible mutation. No one understands when they see it. One glance at the red, scaly wings attached to her back and people run off in the other direction. And when she does hide her wings, in the middle of summer she gets those weird looks for wearing a long coat when it’s burning up outside.

Still maintaining eye contact with her, Aria replied, “Bad? They’re the reason why I have to hide part of myself from the world. The reason I have to wear this coat all year round. And a couple of them are the reason I was exiled to New York so many years ago. So, yes, I do find them so bad.”

The rage was building up inside Aria again. She turned and began to walk away when she heard, “Personally, I don’t find them worth the effort to hate. They are what they are.” The veiled stranger paused and Aria looked back at her. “Prey.”

A hint of a smile appeared upon Aria’s face. “I don’t see them as prey. I see them as,” Aria trailed off. What did she see them as? “A species that needs to be taught a lesson.” One of these days, Aria believed that people like her, the elite, would rise up and take their rightful place. And all those who hated and despised them would learn their rightful place.

"And one of these days, they will learn it." 

It was fascinating to watch the reactions of other people, human and mutant alike and this woman was no exception. As Amber had become less human physically, her mind had likewise become less human. It was perhaps, less a matter of her mutation developing and more a matter of becoming more at home in her inhuman forms. When she had become a child of death that had been yet another step away from humanity and suddenly they had become more of an intellectual curiosity than anything she could fully and properly relate to as being one of.

"Perhaps you look at them the wrong way," Amber suggested. Her voice remained calm and non-challenging, her eyes unwavering. "Why should they dictate how you live your life? Why should they make you feel shame?" Of course there were other risks to being a mutant. Risks like mobs attacking you simply because you were different than them. They were risks Amber had dealt with in the past and would probably have to deal with in the future. But there were also ways to deal with those risks.

The woman began to turn and walk away before Amber's words brought her back around. "I don't doubt that one day everything they've done to mutants will come back to them with interest. Everything comes back eventually, good or bad."