"It argues with me. I want a place that doesn't argue with me."

"Very reasonable." Ze holds out a hand.

He smiles and takes it.

And they're elsewhere.

Tyrant is even less person-shaped, here. Still fundamentally a being which can hold hands, but ze's more, wings spreading into the nothingness.

Oh.

That's a good way to be.

He would like to be more that way.

And -

He wants a place that won't argue with him, a place that's his from the start. Gold on black glass, high vaulted ceilings, intricately patterned floors.

It takes a lot of stubbornness, a lot of holding it in his mind - 

But the scintillating nothing slowly takes solid shape, at first as an increasingly real hallucination and then as the world.

His supply of stubbornness is more than up to the task.

He grins.

"You have interesting aesthetics."

"Do I? I don't really know what other people's aesthetics are like."

"There is more division between parts in yours. Most demesnes do not have clearly defined sections."

"I think I've... been in places that worked like that, before I woke up? Memory is weird."

"I have no memories prior to my conscious awareness, so I would not know."

"It's really weird. It's like... I was there, but... I wasn't? Things happened but I didn't have... thoughts about them?"

"I don't think I can quite imagine that. I have had thoughts for everything I have seen, and I know every thought I have ever had."

"...I was going to say 'imagine if all your senses were working but you weren't there to look at things with them', but that's not quite right 'cause I don't think my senses worked as well before I woke up as they did after..."

"My senses do not work if I am not interpreting things. I suspect our cognition may be fundamentally different. Interesting. I wonder what the inside of you looks like."

"Is there even a way to do that at all? For one person to find out how someone else sees things?"

"Some people know how to share vision. It is something I find difficult."

"Oh. It'd be nice to know how to do that. I think I'd really like being able to - show people things."

Ze nods, then: "You said earlier, that the other person kept you from being the shape you want. Was it something she was doing, actively?"

"I - don't really know. I think maybe... swords can't be our other shape unless somebody helps? But maybe it's something else."

"Interesting. I haven't heard of magic that requires two."

"I don't like it. I want to be able to be the shape I want by myself."

"My kind of being can craft new shapes for ourselves. Perhaps you could too, with practice."

"That'd be really nice."