The heavy hot feeling in my stomach hadn’t gone away and I generally felt as if I’d been driven over several times by a ten ton truck. It was an unusual sensation. I was no stranger to getting hurt or passing out, but I normally started to recover fairly quickly. Even the very first time after I’d inadvertently transformed myself into a dragon hadn’t been quite so physically bad as this. The stress of the last week was clearly getting to me.Dragging my protesting limbs out of bed, I lurched over to the small bathroom and splashed my face with cold water. Then I leaned against the sink and stared at my reflection in the mirror. I poked at the bruise across my cheekbone. At least it didn’t hurt quite as much as it had the day before, although I reckoned it looked considerably worse. The purple was darkening and the shape now looked oddly similar to the outline of Africa, just a rather skewed version. My mouth felt dry and furry and, even though I’d brushed my teeth for at least ten minutes before I’d gone to sleep, I could still taste ash.
