"Alright. It's within your capacity, I'm pretty sure; just look inside yourself."

Veron resists the urge to say something sarcastic. It's probably not productive, anyway.

"Right," he says with a small sigh.

He has the creeping feeling that Valen would make some kind of disappointed expression at him for meddling with the fabric of his soul, just because some guy he recently met thought it'd be a good idea. It'd probably be followed up by a lecture on recklessness, which Veron... honestly probably deserves, really. Despite this, he doesn't think this is a bad idea, precisely. If the state of his being would prefer to be in two parts, body and soul, then he'd like to know that. Just sticking with the way he's been because he's always been that is certainly safer, but less of an informed decision. Veron likes making informed decisions. It feels incorrect to base his self on an uninformed one, and just assume that it'll be fine like it is. Like it doesn't matter that a part of him might be quietly screaming on the inside.

Well. Once he puts it in those terms, it's pretty clear where to go from here. He has the logic, it makes sense to him, and the only person he has to convince is himself. Metaphysically. Luckily for him, he has more than read access to his own soul. The syllables (and not-syllables, this is a name that cannot be spoken aloud without intent and a certain degree of power) of his True Name echo through his mind, and there's no need to say it out loud. He knows who he is, even if he sometimes tries not to think about it, because it scares him a little. To be this (Lightbringer) kind of person, to have this kind of power over himself. Greater beings than he have had this power and fallen, twisted themselves into knots and came out lesser for it.

If it were an actual change to his core self, he would flinch away from it. It's not. There is nothing to change. The pieces are all already there, there's nothing to edit. Instead it's like flexing a limb he just noticed for the first time, stretching out the arrangement of himself so it takes up just a little bit more area, into two bodies instead of one.

A warm golden glow fills the car, and then dissipates...

... And a small dragon about the size of a cat sits perched on Veron's lap. Her scales are a dark and subtly shifting violet-black, the membrane of her wings dark and transparent and faintly edged with something that looks like it might be pale blue-white frost, and her eyes burn a brilliant sunlit gold. A small barb sits at the end of her tail.

She wraps her tail around herself so as not to accidentally stab anyone, and considers the nature of her existence.

"I'm not sure I was asleep," she says, thoughtfully. "Once, yes, but he learned how to listen to me in the Plane of Shadow, and has not stopped since."

"Um..."

"Oh, yes, hello. No, thank you for the concern, I'm quite all right. No screaming of immediate importance. I think I'll probably prefer to be an inside soul most of the time, it's really much more convenient, but I don't mind this either."

"Hi. Glad to hear it. You're a dragon?"

She gives him an amused look.

"Veron, no one is surprised that I am a dragon. They," she inclines her head towards Harry and David, "just met you today, and they are not surprised that I am a dragon. You are not even surprised that I am a dragon. Of course I am a dragon."

David smiles at her briefly, but turns back to the road, because he is a responsible driver. (Privately, he is very pleased to have another daemon around. It gets kind of lonely acting like a whole person.)

"A fine dragon you are, too. You don't look much like the ones we've read about, even accounting for the bonsai effect; are you a species from your world?"

"Thank you. I'm not sure, but I think so. All of the dragons we've encountered don't have a barb on their tail." She inspects it, thoughtfully. "My, is that a venom gland? I do believe it is. Well then. I suppose we have always been thorough when decide that we must kill. Oh, one moment, there's something I forgot."

She looks at Veron. "Bag."

Veron blinks. ... He produces the Bag of Holding and holds it out to his daemon?

"I have him so well trained," she says proudly to David, vaguely conspiratorial. "Thank you."

She delicately opens the bag with her front claws, and counts out four coins. Two look like they're made of gold, one is messily stamped like it's from a pre-industrial era, the other is perfectly circular, with a picture of a horned being and a tidy alien script. One is made out of what looks to be some kind of dark metal, and another made out of a shimmery metal that is a strange shade of lavender. All these collected, she flutter-hops into the back seat, landing neatly next to Harry.

"These are coins from four different places." She points with a claw at the messily stamped one. "Toril, our home plane, above ground." She points at the dark metal one. "Toril, from the Underdark, which has a very different culture." Lavender metal gets: "Plane of Shadow," and the final gold coin gets, "Cania, which is a layer of Hell. Is that everything you need for your magic thing?"

"Yeah, sure - I wasn't even talking about a specific magic th-"

Harry blinks slowly.

"Wait. Yes. I'm now thinking of a specific magic thing, and that would be great."

David adjusts the rearview mirror. "You're grinning diabolically, Harry. I hate it when you grin diabolically, that's supposed to be my brand."

"Hush, you. This is going to be great."

He holds out a hand for coinage.

She delicately drops the coins into his hand, then hops back to perch on Veron's shoulder.

"Sorry about that," she says to David. "I didn't want us to forget and wasn't inside to remind him."

"Um." Veron looks at his shoulder daemon. He does not actually know how to phrase his next question, which is something like 'Should I be concerned?'

His tiny dragon nuzzles him affectionately.

"It's fine. Wizards, you know, give them whatever they ask for and then don't ask any questions until they're done thinking." She looks back to David. "How long until we get to our destination?"

David rounds a corner. "About... now."

They pull up to the apartment building, wheels crunching over the snow carpeting the driveway. David hops out, snowflakes instantly insinuating themselves onto his long black coat. "I love this weather," he confides to the tiny dragon as yet unnamed. "Justifies me dressing like this all the time."

"You'll be fine without me, I've got things to do," she informs Veron, and then she hops from his shoulder onto David's, turning insubstantial and flying casually through the car to do so.

"What, being human shaped?" she wonders, a little wryly.

"Um," says Veron, after his dragon hops from his shoulder and flies out of the car. "... I am tempted to say 'what have I unleashed upon the world,' but actually I think I know."

"I'd be more appropriately dressed for the weather if I wasn't human-shaped; my natural form is a wolf. No, I meant the coat and gloves."

"I know the feeling," Harry reassures his human compatriot.

"Ah, I see." She nuzzles him in a friendly manner. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I bet you do." He considers. "So is she about to hit the few feet of—" he makes a face, "ow, yep, there she goes."

"—wait, ow, hold on, one moment, forgot you were separated and I'm not—" she flies back to Veron lightning-quick, poking her head back through the car casually.

"Hi I'm gonna do a thing it'll hurt sorry!"