CAUTION: Spoils aspects of Innocent Hopes, Twisted Realities, as well as aspects of When Nothing Remains.

Seriously, major spoilers here.

Assuming you wish to continue, read on…

Background: This is admittedly not very plot-important to… well, anything, but it was fun and helpful for something else entirely, and it provides a very useful reference for me to point to in the future. Besides, it's good practice. The art of describing something or someone in text is something to be honed, after all. What follows is a thinly veiled excuse for me to go over the physical appearance of most of the Furies from the first two books in this universe with a metaphorical fine-tooth comb, putting all of their descriptions in one tidy spot, ready to be pulled from as needed in the future.

"Ideas, I need ideas," Ember said to himself, staring at the weak, unsteady line he had drawn across the parchment in front of him. A stack of unmarked parchment sat off to the side, and several charcoal pencils lay atop it. There was a place for different dyes, something he intended to experiment with soon, and a place for finished drawings, a large, unmarked cave wall above the makeshift desk he had assembled off to one side of the cave he and Pearl had claimed as their own.

There was a place for everything, and everything was in its place, except for one specific thing. He had no finished drawings to display, and a debilitating lack of inspiration.

In the past, he had drawn many things. Machines, designs, things meant to win him acknowledgment or to save lives, or to take them more effectively. Then, he had drawn Beryl, or Toothless as he had called him back in those days, enjoying the change in subject and the comforting glow of a happy secret kept from everyone else.

But all of that felt like it was a whole other lifetime, and depending on how one looked at his situation, might as well have been. He hadn't had the time or inclination to put charcoal pencil to parchment in months, probably more than a year now.

Not that he didn't want to; he had leaped at the chance to make himself a space in the home he shared with Pearl and often his sons, a place for his human self to create, fix, and tinker away spare hours. It was even practical for him to do so; he didn't age unless he was using that body, and common sense dictated that he at least try and age himself up in both forms at proportional speeds, so that both reached their natural end at roughly the same time.

Tinkering and drawing was a great way to spend time in his human body. He didn't lack reason, he lacked direction.

A project, he decided, staring at the single, wobbly line he had traced in his indecision, would be what he needed. Something long-winded, something to get him back into the mindset of drawing the world around him. Something that would look good on the wall, ideally something Pearl would like to look at, given she would see it often enough.

He wished he had a few of his drawings of Beryl from before… everything. Maybe he could start by recreating one or two, and then probably do a few of Spark so he didn't feel left out-

Ember smiled to himself as he gathered up his parchment and pencils. That was a worthy project to dip his feet back into things. There were so many interesting subjects to draw living all around him, and he had plenty of time. He'd draw everyone.

O-O-O-O-O

"Wait, you are telling me that you drew me while I was sleeping?" Beryl asked. "I feel violated."

"It's not like I could ask," Ember laughed, leaning back against a tree. "Besides, you saw that picture when you nosed through my notebook a few days later. Don't pretend you didn't know about it."

"And I did watch you sleep for many days straight," Beryl rumbled. "Fair is fair. Anyway, you want to keep drawing?"

"Starting with you. Just stand still and let me refresh my memory." He could draw Beryl from memory alone, but that was harder, and there was no point when his son was a quick flight away, stalking through the forest, unoccupied.

"Sounds good," Beryl agreed.

Ember began sketching, at first looking at the parchment but as he grew more comfortable, often without looking down at all. The movement of his charcoal pencil was familiar, his hands nimble now that he had something to depict, and a familiar subject at that.

Beryl looked as he always had. He had a sleek but muscular build, no excess fat to speak of, a long tail, and strong wing shoulders. He was black as night, with very subtle grey mottling so faint that it was only really visible in the sunlight.

His tailfins, on the other hand, were not as they had always been, and Ember spent a while on them, though they took up relatively little space on the parchment. The old one was faintly scarred while the new one was not, a visible reminder that one was original and the other regrown. The regrown fin was not structurally different, but if Ember looked closely he could see signs that it was different, slightly different proportions that anyone casually looking would never notice.

Beryl's eyes, he left blank on the parchment, aside from a faint outline of the pupils. He planned to experiment with the dyes he had left behind later, once he returned to the cave. Just charcoal could never do those green-yellow irises justice, not really. They were piercing, even in the daytime, even framed against a forest of green and brown.

Last, and with some reluctance, he took the image he had made and began to add a certain kind of detail. Scars, old and relatively new, marked Beryl in the same way his mottling did, another type of off-grey that did not break his color scheme so much as accent how pitch-black the rest of him was. Faint scars from ropes, more from various crashes and fights, still more from the long assault on Vithvarandi… The only mercy was that he bore no obvious scars from his latest captivity and the small war that followed, mostly because he had been freed quickly and only involved in a single battle.

Beryl stood still all the while, patiently waiting. When Ember carefully pressed the drawing between two other blank parchments, blotting the excess charcoal crumbs up and hopefully off the important page, he twitched.

"Done?"

"Done," Ember said with a smile. It had come out wonderfully, and he was feeling more enthusiastic about doing everyone else while he was at it. "Thanks for helping."

"No problem. In fact, I can help more," Beryl offered. "You were going to do everyone?"

"Spark is next, if I can find him," Ember confirmed.

"I happen to know where he is and when he is coming back," Beryl revealed. "I'll save you some time, he's out in the middle of nowhere and won't be back until noon."

O-O-O-O-O

Spark turned in place, eyeing Ember dubiously. "So Sire just wants me to stand still?" he asked for the third time.

"Yes," Beryl growled, "and that means no turning!"

"I'm nearly done," Ember said absently. Having already drawn a Fury once that same day, he was finding the process quicker a second time around.

Spark was smaller than Beryl, his body just a bit leaner, less toned, with more weight than the absolute minimum, though not by much. He was strong and fast by any measure, he just did not look as flawlessly toned as Beryl did. Only in comparison could he ever be found lacking, and it would be a very picking person to notice that.

Of course, it was much easier to see Spark's physique, since it wasn't hidden behind black scales that confused the eye and hid shadows. His golden scales and skin glowed in the noon sun, revealing every detail where Beryl's details were hidden and needed to be guessed at. Also helpful was his lack of scars; compared to his brother, he was an almost clean slate.

Almost. Ember didn't like one little detail he could clearly see, but he made sure to add it anyway. The scales under Spark's eyes were small and misaligned, and there was a little patch of raw yellow-gold skin just beneath each eye that should host the edge of a scale, but didn't. It was almost unnoticeable, only obvious if one was told what to look for, but it was there. Spark was scarred, just in a different way.

On the bright side, those little patches of past issues were the only thing even remotely close to wrong with Spark's face, and Ember chose to linger on the other parts of him in the drawing, leaving the mismatched scales with the bare minimum of detail. His eyes, in particular, were doable in just charcoal, having almost pure white irises streaked with silver. They were striking in real life, and that look translated to parchment with no difficulty at all.

Of course, in drawing the eyes he had to choose a facial expression, and since he was working from a constantly bemused model, he ended up depicting Spark with an expression of faint surprise, or possibly wonder.

"Can I turn this way?" Spark asked, moving as he spoke.

Ember set the parchment down on the ground, stuck the charcoal pencil in his pocket, and shifted to his dragon form to more easily respond. "Yes, it's done. You can look at it."

"Finally," Beryl rumbled. "His squirming did not ruin it?"

"No, just made it take longer," Ember snorted. Spark had walked over and was leaning down to stare at the parchment, his eye so close to it that if he blinked, the breeze might shift it.

"I like it," Spark declared, straightening up. "Can I see the others when they are done?"

"They'll be up on display, yes," Ember confirmed. He was committed to doing the rest now, not that he minded. The next one he had in mind would be particularly interesting.

O-O-O-O-O

"And when you say draw, you mean you'll be making lines that look like me?" Pearl asked curiously.

"Like those," Ember said, nodding toward his workspace. The two pictures he had already done were there. Beryl's eyes and Spark's entire body still needed color, if he was going to do that, but other than that they were done.

"Oh, those," Pearl rumbled, padding over to have a closer look. "I kind of get it? They do not really look like anything to me unless I squint. Maybe if I saw them being done."

"I was going to draw you next," Ember said. "Maybe you can watch when I do whoever is after you?" He'd like to let her watch as he drew her, but there didn't seem to be any way to look at her and have her looking over his shoulder at the same time.

"Maybe," Pearl agreed happily. "Or maybe I will get it when I see me. Can you do it now?"

"Sure," Ember agreed, shifting and grabbing his supplies. "Pose however you want."

"Is this good?" she asked, laying on her stomach and staring at him with wide eyes, her paws neatly tucked under her head. Her tail swayed from side to side behind her, and her overall look was one of patient fascination.

"Yeah, sure," he agreed. It was a different pose, he had done Beryl and Spark standing up, but he liked the challenge.

Ember arranged his parchment and drawing board in his lap, settled down across from her, and got to work.

Pearl was slim, but rapidly packing on muscle as she adjusted to life outside of the valley where she was raised. She had gone from doing nothing on a daily basis to flying regularly, hunting for fun, wrestling and learning to fight whenever possible, and running around with the fledglings on occasion. As a result, she was still disproportionate, with a little extra weight around her stomach and hindquarters, and small, developing muscles in her legs, giving her a very different silhouette for him to draw, especially as she was laying down.

All of that was before factoring in the subtle little differences she had as a light wing. Her tailfins had a smattering of tiny scales along the ridges, and overall she had a much tighter arrangement of scales, revealing far less of the white skin beneath them. Her red glint dusted over the pure white of her body, glimmering as he moved his head, reflecting the light in small ways. He didn't know how he was going to translate that to a static image; it would be something to experiment with later, on less precious pieces of parchment.

For now, he depicted her as pure white with mostly blank eyes, so as to add their deep ruby-red coloration later. Her teeth were visible between her slightly parted lips, and the lines between them were the last detail he added, aside from sketching in the visible part of her only scar, the jagged line across her chest.

"Done," he said softly, turning the parchment around to show her.

"Now I see it," she exclaimed. "Also, I like posing for you. Can you draw in your dark wing form?"

"Maybe," he said. "Probably, but I'd need a huge piece of parchment and some other things. Why?" He liked the idea, it was something to try after he was done with this particular project, and maybe Pearl could try it too-

"Because right now it is just nice to get attention, but I cannot help thinking that it would be positively alluring to have you staring at me for so long in the right body," she purred seductively.

Ember dropped his pencil, retrieved it, and quickly put his drawing of her on the board with the others. He wasn't physically attracted to her in this body, a quirk of how his situation worked, but he knew he would be missing out if he didn't switch.

His things put away, he shifted and purred at her, mentally consigning his next real drawing to some time later on. "Let's see if I can scratch something out on the shore," he offered.

O-O-O-O-O

"No." Storm snorted and shook her head. "Why should I stand still for you? I see no point in it."

"I want to draw you," Ember repeated. "To look at you and then make something look like you." He didn't know how to make it any clearer than that. It didn't help that there wasn't actually a word for draw in the language Furies spoke, so he had been forced to make one up.

"Ember, go away," Storm growled. "I am busy. Lightning and Thunder are off somewhere, I need-"

"They're with Pearl," Ember interrupted. "I thought she told you that?" Pearl had volunteered to ensure Storm had no excuses, and taken all three fledglings into the forest with Spark for a game.

"She might have," Storm grumbled, looking away from him.

"So you can repay the favor by standing still for a little while?" he pressed, capitalizing on his momentary advantage. He wanted a drawing of Storm, to ensure he had one of everybody, and he suspected she was just being difficult, not actually opposed to the concept.

"What are you going to do with this thing that looks like me when you are done making it?" she asked suspiciously. "It cannot do anything, right?"

"What do you think it could do?" Ember asked, bemused.

"I do not know, and I do not like the idea," she growled.

"It does nothing. It's just smudges of burnt wood on a piece of flat wood," he said reassuringly. "That's all there is to it."

"So why do you want it?" she exclaimed.

"Because it looks nice," he retorted, losing his patience. "And I could have drawn one in the time it took us to get this far arguing. If you really don't want one, fine, but I was going to do one of everybody and put them all together, and it will look weird if you are missing."

"Everyone, including Lightning and Thunder? And Thorn and Herb?" Storm asked.

"Yes, them too."

"And I would be the only one missing…" she mused.

Ember declined to mention that she could forbid him from drawing her children. He'd listen if she actually told him not to draw her, or them, he wasn't going to get into a real fight over this, but right now Storm was just being obnoxious, and he would fight her on that. Hopefully, this got through to her.

"Fine, but make it quick, and make sure my likeness is right next to theirs," Storm growled. "And Pearl, and our parents… Put me in the middle."

"Sure," he agreed. He'd already planned to have her with her children and Pearl, the latter because the two were good friends, and it would take little to no rearranging to comply with her demand.

"Make your thing fast," she repeated. "It will look like how I stand?"

"Yes," he said, shifting to his human form, which already held the necessary supplies.

"Good," she snarled, crouching and baring her teeth, looking for all the world like an angry, defensive, violent predator.

Ember didn't object, partially because doing so would require shifting back and would undoubtedly start a renewed argument, and partially because he thought it was a pretty good pose for her, given her personality.

Storm was a strong, active dragon who had recently been saddled with a lot of new responsibility, and it showed. She had a slightly haggard look about her, her frills and ears drooping more loosely than they should, and her tail flat on the ground. Physically, she was still in great shape, which was more than he could have said for himself in the months after Beryl's hatching to join Spark in taking up his time, but the strain of keeping up with two lively fledglings showed in how she held herself, posing aggressively or not.

But that was just her pose; her coloration was another matter entirely, still the same blue core fading out to grey at the edges. Her ears and frills were entirely grey while her face was a smoky blue, giving her a severe, complex appearance that he wasn't entirely sure he could ever have conveyed without color. As it was, he had to draw carefully and mark what parts would be which color. Her tailfins and tail had a lot of grey and blue intermixing, while her torso and legs were mostly blue with grey edges. She would require more colors than anyone else so far, grey, blue, and teal for her eyes.

He spent less time on her than he had on anyone else, making shorthand marks on the parts that were easily completable from memory, and only detailing the bits that were unique to her. He drew so fast that he was done with the essentials before she complained, which was an achievement in and of itself.

"Done," he said proudly, before realizing she wouldn't understand. He shifted back and said it again.

"Good," She growled, turning her back on him. "It looks good."

"It will, once I've given it color," he said. "You are by far the most colorful of those I've drawn."

"Thanks, I guess," she rumbled. "It will look good above Thunder and Lightning?"

"Like a Dam protecting her young," he said, guessing what she was going for.

"I like that," she huffed. "Sorry for giving you a hard time, it did not take long. Tell Pearl I say thanks, and will return the favor once you two get on with it and have an egg."

"That might be soon," Ember rumbled. They weren't trying too hard, but if one didn't come along by the end of the warm season, they would probably get serious and make it happen.

O-O-O-O-O

Later that day, his mind still on young ones, Ember sought out Pearl and Spark, bringing with him plenty of fish.

"For us?" Pearl asked once he found her. "Or for the little ones?"

"I brought enough for both, and I hoped to use their share to keep them still long enough to draw," he admitted.

"All at once?" she asked, purring as Spark appeared, shepherding Thunder, Lightning, and Silva out of the trees.

"That's the idea." He had gotten in some practice drawing quickly with Storm, and he thought he could manage it. Light wings weren't easier to draw, but they were much simpler subjects, white without coloration to throw him off. They made getting shadows right very simple.

The moment the fledglings tucked into the fish pile he shifted. They didn't even notice, too busy alternatively stuffing themselves and squabbling playfully over choice bits.

He quickly sketched out a general pose, leaving a blank where the fish would be, and concentrated on getting their defining features down, one by one.

Silva, with her sky blue eyes and silver glint, was every bit the normal fledgling, young and playful. She bore no marks, no defining features, and aside from the normal chubby limbs and overlarge head, was a very simple subject.

The same could be said for Thunder and Lighting, save that they bore a few little scars from constantly roughhousing and biting each other. The ragged edge of Thunder's tailfins would not last, and neither would the scrapes down Lightning's side, but Ember got them anyway, capturing an image of sibling rivalry, a rarity since Fury children were almost always a few season-cycles apart and thus not at the right ages to have a rivalry of any kind. Thunder and Lightning had something special, and he felt that should be reflected in the picture.

Aside from that, they were easy, fledglings with nothing but a glint and eye color to differentiate them from Silva. Thunder had cobalt blue eyes and a dark blue glint that didn't quite match, and Lightning sported identically yellow eyes and glint, all of which took him a few quickly jotted runes to record for later.

In his drawing, as in real life in front of him, Silva tugged on one end of a long, floppy fish, and Thunder and Lightning pulled the other, working together to combat the slightly older fledgling.

Ember put his things away and shifted, to help Pearl clean them up and get them back to their parents, already thinking about the last two dragons on his list. If he was lucky, he could get them before sunset tonight.

O-O-O-O-O

Thorn nodded as if she understood perfectly. "Sounds good," she said sagely.

"You understand?" he asked incredulously. Aside from Beryl, who had already figured out what drawing was and what it entailed, he'd needed to give a lengthy explanation to every other person he'd asked up to this point.

"No, but you seem to, and we can look at what you come up with," Herb offered, circling around Thorn to lie at her side, his good eye facing her.

"Okay, this should be quick," Ember promised. Silva was sleeping in the corner of the cave, in a place he recalled occupying himself long ago. He knew they wouldn't want to leave her there alone for too long, even in the middle of the hot season, when it was almost impossible for her to get cold.

"Take your time," Thorn said supportively. "We are not going anywhere."

Ember nodded in understanding, shifted, and got to work.

Thorn was first, her grey scales easily translating into charcoal smudges even before he added shading. She was not showing any signs of her advancing age yet, and could easily be mistaken for a much younger female, and a fit one at that. Her broad chest spoke of strong lungs, something he remembered from his childhood. Her roars could go on forever, or so it had seemed back then, and her light purple eyes carried an intensity that he couldn't fully convey in any medium, though he tried.

Herb, lying next to her with a loving gaze fixed on her, was not in such perfect shape. The vertical scar running across the left side of his head was a huge feature, though Ember wished it wasn't, something that could not be ignored. The milky, unfocused mess of a yellow eye the slash had created was even worse. They were old wounds, mostly ignored now, and his Sire didn't seem to be overly bothered by them, but they didn't look good.

Ember drew them anyway, taking it upon himself to give Herb a regal posture, though in reality he was slumping a little. He did the head, then focused on Herb's body, on his light green coloration, his strong front legs and unusually short tail.

By the time he was done, he was happy with how his drawing looked, even with Herb's injury on full display. It wasn't diminished, he hadn't hid it, but seeing it all in context made it feel less severe. Herb was happy, it didn't bother him, and the painful event that had brought it about was long since relegated to the past.

O-O-O-O-O

Ember stood in front of the wall, looking at the collage of images he had assembled. There was a conspicuous blank spot near the middle.

"It's missing you," Pearl hummed, coming up behind him. "I like the one you did of Thorn and Herb. Can we do one like that?"

"I have to see myself, that's the problem," he admitted. "Maybe once I figure that out."

"Have you tried looking in water?" she suggested.

"I'd have to shift every time I wanted to draw a line, and then shift back the moment I need to look up and reassure myself as to what I really look like," he fretted. He never drew himself. There had been no point back when he was a lanky teen with nothing going for him, and now he wasn't capable of both looking and drawing at the same time.

"Maybe you could draw with me describing you?" Pearl offered. "Let's try."

"Normal drawing, in human form," he clarified.

"Yes, normal," she snorted. "I want to see you up there with the rest of us."

"Okay, we can try it," he agreed, shifting and sitting down at his roughly assembled desk. Parchment and charcoal pencil were easily arranged, and he sketched out a simple outline of a Fury body, but that was as far as he could go on his own. What did he look like?

"Give him a bigger chest," Pearl advised, leaning over his shoulder to stare at what he had so far. "And bigger hindquarters."

"I'm trusting this is accurate," Ember remarked, rubbing out those parts of the outline and enlarging them slightly. He assumed she meant with muscle, not fat. Hopefully she meant muscle, otherwise his ego was about to take a huge hit. He was pretty sure he was at least as fit as Beryl, but it was hard to know for sure.

"It is, I know you up and down," she declared seriously. "Curl in the tailfins a bit, you always hold them curled up when you are thinking about me."

"I'm thinking about you in this picture?" he asked.

"It's the way I remember you best," she confirmed. "Okay, now tilt the head to the side and give yourself some eyes, you have those."

"I hadn't noticed," he said dryly. "What expression?"

"Lost in your thoughts, happy ones," she said as if it was obvious. "Not too happy, or you would have to add another part and we would not be able to explain to Silva what was going on."

"Have you gotten more vulgar since I met you?" Ember asked, laughing under his breath as he gave himself somewhat unfocused pupils and a dopey pull to his mouth, like he was holding in a grin.

"Yes, and Storm is proud of it. Now do the wings, spread a little like you are always half about to take off and go flying, and make sure your claws are in. Not your teeth, though."

"Got it." He was getting into this now, enjoying the challenge of depicting someone he couldn't claim to know by sight. He had only really seen himself in one particularly traumatic out of body experience, and back then he hadn't known it was soon to be himself, and that was all just too complicated to use as a reference.

"This is taking shape," Pearl purred, knocking her head against his and almost knocking him out of the chair, though she didn't seem to notice. "I cannot believe I did not see myself in these before, you make it look so real. Put more muscle under the scales around the stomach, you have plenty there…"

Ember spent a little while redrawing that part, trying to balance Pearl's description with what he knew of Night Fury anatomy, so that the result wasn't unrealistic.

"That's good," she purred. "Some more little details, but I think that's it. You can give yourself orange scales and yellow-orange eyes?"

"I'm waiting to do the color later, but I definitely will," he promised. He wasn't sure if his makeshift dyes would cover all of the shades he now needed to recreate, but he could figure something out. "This is me?"

"That's you," she purred. "Is it good enough?"

"If this is accurate, yes, it's more than good enough." He liked drawing to her instructions, too, which was an unexpected bonus to doing things this way. They would have to do it again with other subjects.

"So this goes here," he added, picking up the parchment and sticking it to the wall by Pearl's image.

"Are we missing anyone?" Pearl asked, looking up at all the drawings. "That is everyone who is here, I think… And I do not want to add my parents."

"Yeah," he murmured, thinking along similar lines. He might try to draw Stoick from memory someday, but that would be a whole other sort of challenge, and Valka… Well, actually, he could draw her, but that should wait until he saw her again, since that was an option.

That line of thinking led him to Storm, also who had one more parent, in blood if not in spirit. There was no way Ember would ever draw Third…

But Second? Ember thought about it. He could remember the other male. Strong, orange eyes much like his own, sky-blue scales marred by an assortment of scars-

"Scars," he blurted out. "We didn't give me any scars."

"Right," Pearl barked, thankfully rearing back first to spare his ears. "I forgot about those. You have so many, and they look nice, too. But I can't really remember exactly what they all look like."

"I might have to look at a reflection for that part," he decided. It would be doable, so long as he was only copying that single set of details, not trying to draw himself from scratch. It did seem like that would be the last thing to do, but he had a nagging feeling that he was forgetting someone…

He looked back at the array of drawings, and a jab of melancholy made itself felt as he realized who was missing.

Flint. Beryl and Spark's Dam, his first mate, wasn't up there. She wasn't around to draw, but he could remember her well enough to get a rough outline, strong, sharp, grey scales and eyes...

If he was going to add her. He turned his head to look at Pearl, who was gazing at the images, unaware of the quandary he had stumbled upon. Would she mind? He could put Flint above Beryl and Spark, not next to himself, it would still be weird but at least he was acknowledging her existence. As it was, he felt like he would be intentionally leaving her out if he didn't at least bring it up.

"There's one more I might be able to do," he said slowly. "But I don't know if I should, or if I even want to. It would have to be from memory, and it might bother you."

"Might bother me?" Pearl asked innocently. "Who? Second? He would not bother me so much as he might bother Storm. I'd leave him off if I were you. This is us now, right? And he's not here."

"Us now," Ember repeated.

"Yeah. Maybe you could do another one with the people who might be here if things were different?" she proposed. "Second, and your human Sire, and Flint, and that bossy other dragon Vithvarandi killed that you knew, and Gold, maybe." She shook her head. "I don't think I would have wanted him around, but I never got a chance to find out, and I bet Storm could have helped whip him into shape."

Ember nodded, surprised that she had so casually slipped Flint in there. "That wouldn't bother you?"

"Why would it bother me to remember the people we cared for, or might have given the chance?" she asked pragmatically. "I like it. One grouping of everyone that is here, and one of those who couldn't be here."

"Sounds good," he sighed, the awkward question resolved. "That's the last of it, then. I'll start on those some other day." Maybe during the winter, when they were stuck inside a lot of the time. Or maybe he'd go find a village somewhere and bring back some supplies to tinker with over the winter, and use those to pass the time.

Whatever he did, he was glad to be back in touch with the part of him that enjoyed drawing and creating.

Author's Note: Huh, that had more of a story than I originally intended; it was actually coherent. Anyway, this isn't the only time we're going to see our When Nothing Remains set of protagonists in this time period, so anyone wishing for more info on their surroundings, their day-to-day life, etc, can wait and see. I have a lot more material for NSSA, it's just that some of it is spoiler locked, some (12+ completed chapters and counting) are locked into incomplete arcs of their own, and some need revision before posting. Lots of those are coming as soon as I can free them from their various stages of incompleteness.

This also isn't the end of chapters intended solely to group visual descriptions all in one place; I'll have another big one to do at the end of Usurpation of the Darkness, though that's looking to be at least a year from now.