Jon and Karyn questioned Sylvia some more, but she hadn't been joking; she really had forgotten much of her former life. Even for a creature as long-lived as a dryad, fifty years was a long time, and with nothing to refresh her memories they had slipped away mostly unnoticed.
She did remember that she was from Oregon, but she couldn't remember when; her recognition of the movie reference put her at no earlier than 1986, but beyond that it was anybody's guess. (As Karyn pointed out, this meant that time passed at a minimum of two years here to one Earth year.) Not that her time of origin mattered much, since she couldn't remember practically anything else.
The one other thing Sylvia somewhat remembered, and the one that stuck in Jon's mind, was that she thought she might have originally been male. "Or at least," she said, "there's this boy who's the only other person I can remember besides myself as I am now. So if he wasn't me, he was more important in my mind than the original me. I don't know, I haven't really thought about it in decades."
Jon couldn't stop thinking about it, fist as she helped Sylvia clear and wash the dishes, and then as she helped Nina get comfortable for the night. Had Sylvia really been a guy? It seemed hard to believe. Everything about her was unmistakeably female, if not especially feminine; as a living nature spirit, she was more subtly maternal than bubbly girly-girl. And there seemed to be not only no regret for her possible lost manhood, but no real feelings about the matter at all; she talked about her former self like an entirely different person.
It scared Jon. Being a girl for the past few days - first as a harpy and then as a dragon-kin - hadn't been terrible, but Jon was still a guy inside, and still a human inside, as well; this body was familiar enough to work with, but still alien to her. It wasn't just a change of body, either; whatever Sylvia had been before, Jon doubted that it was anything like what she was now. She was a dryad through and through, physically and mentally. This seeming loss of identity was the really frightening thing; would Jon become a different person too, if she stayed here long enough? Would Jon the displaced teenage boy disappear, replaced by Jen the...whatever it was that female dragonkin were like? Wouldn't that make the old her dead?
Or was she reading too much into it? Maybe Sylvia, even if she had been male, really was like this all along. Maybe becoming a dryad had just brought out her nature over her fifty years here. That wasn't a particularily great prospect either, since Jon would have to either grow comfortable as a woman or face life in an alien body if they couldn't find a way home, but it was a much less terrifying thought than this death-of-the-self idea.
Suddenly a voice interrupted her thoughts. "You're a dragonkin, right?" Nina asked. "Does that mean you can beat a drake?"
Jon stared at her. It was the first thing she'd heard out of the little harpy-girl since she'd told them her name that morning. Now that she'd had some rest and food, Nina's voice was no longer hoarse, and for a little girl it was downright beautiful. The effect of the whole thing was so stunning that it was nearly a minute before Jon actually processed what she'd heard.
"Um, no," she said, shaking her head sadly. "I'm sorry, but I really can't."
Nina sniffled a bit, but if she was holding back tears, she didn't let it show. "Oh," she mumbled. "Is...isn't there anything we can do?"
Jon sighed. "No," she said. "Sylvia thinks someone near its lair might be able to help, but we'd never get there in time. I'm sorry. Did it...was it your parents that it took?"
Nina shook her head. "I don't have any parents," she said. "The priest at the church took care of me, but it carried him off and I'm never going to see him again..." Tears began to well up in her eyes and she started to tremble in spite of herself.
Jon sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulder. The little harpy burst into tears and buried her face in Jon's chest, which was an awkward feeling for Jon, but she kept herself from saying anything; not was definitely not the time. Instead, she hugged Nina tight.
"It was so fast," the little girl sobbed. "He saw it coming and he turned over the cart and made me get under, and then he was gone and the horse was screaming and running away..."
"Shhh, don't talk," Jon whispered. "It'll be all right."
"But what if it's not?" Nina asked. "What if it comes back, or something else does? You're a dragonkin, and even you can't beat one!"
Jon held her firmly, gently stroking her hair. She wasn't sure why she did it, but it seemed to quiet Nina a bit. "I know," she said. "I can't stop a drake. Maybe I can't even beat a bunch of goblins. But I promise you that I'll do everything in my power to protect you."
She loosened her hold and made to stand up, but Nina wrapped a wing around her arm. "Don't go!" she said. "What if something happens in the night?"
"Well," Jon said, "Sylvia can sense with the trees if anything comes our way, so..." She stopped; it wasn't working. Relenting, she laid down next to Nina, who snuggled up next to her, and pulled the blanket over them. Nina was asleep within minutes, and Jon was left staring at the sky and wondering what the future held.
