The white and gold snake curled up its body into a compact spiral, as it continued staring into Dryth's eyes. "I'm not certain why, but I wasn't expecting a human." He whispered in Dryth's head. "I was imagining an elf, or one of those interesting elemental creatures, not a human. My parents have told me that there are a lot of humans, but you all sounded so sad, living short little lives where you raced to achieve anything."

  "That's incredibly condescending." Dryth blurted out, startling Ewan and Helix.

  "Is it? I'm sorry then." The snake twisted his head to the side. "Mother told me that humans actually have lives worth living, but I've never actually met any before so I didn't know if she was telling me the truth. I'll be able to learn about humans while I'm with you though right? So I can find out if she was telling me the truth." The snake bobbed his head in a motion that was surprisingly like someone happily nodding to an idea they'd just had.

  "Umm..." Dryth looked back at the snake, who was somehow radiating expectation even without recognizable body language. "Today was more about finding someone that might be open to making a contract with me and then getting to know each other. I wasn't planning on making the contract today."

  "Why not? We can always get to know each other after the contract, we'll have a lot of time for that."

  Dryth felt his brows come down into a furrow. "So... anyone that contracts with me ends up soulbound to me and our lives will get tangled together. The summoning circle was supposed to tell anyone that it made the offer to about that. Did you not see that part?"

  "No, I did. Isn't that the whole point of this?"

  Dryth wasn't sure where the miscommunication was from but he was sure one had already happened. "I mean, it is on my end, I guess, but that's not how contracts with Contractors normally work, which is why I'm using the special circle to find anyone that could be interested. Generally people don't bind their lifespans to another person's just like that."

  The snake twisted his head to the side, displaying obvious confusion. "Most people wouldn't, but we already knew about it ahead of time, so it's fine. Right?"

  "I... what? No, I didn't know about any of this before recently. I found out that my twist to my Soul Card added that effect to my contracts during my Reveal, which was only a few weeks ago, and I just found out you would accept my request to get summoned when you showed up!"

  The snake reared back in surprise. After a moment of confused staring his eyes went wide. "Oh. Oh no!" He sank down into his coil, emanating regret. "I forgot. Nobody else has that, only we do." His mental voice was a whisper and it was obvious that he was talking to himself. "Should I bring it up? Mother told me that I should keep it a secret and Father said to only tell people really trust! I should trust him, because we're going to be together for a long long time, right? But he doesn't know that! What do I do?"

  "I can still hear you."

  The snake jerked in shock. "Ah..." He coiled up even tighter. "Oh no, I'm making everything worse!"

  "Hey, hey." Dryth edged closer as he made "calm down" motions with his hands. "Don't freak out. You're not doing anything wrong, so don't worry about it. I'm sorry that this is sudden and confusing to you, you did just get yoinked out of wherever you are to sit in front of me and talk, that can't be calming."

  The snake peaked out from where he'd his his eyes behind his body. "I didn't know it would be today, but I did know something was going to happen eventually," He ventured, "I..." He trailed off as his body started spinning through the coils he'd wrapped himself in, creating an almost hypnotic dance as his moved, his glittering scales flashing in the laboratory's light. "I won't tell you everything yet," He eventually decided, "But I kind of knew that I would meet someone like you and bind myself to them, since a long time ago. So I was ready for you to call me."

  "You knew I would ask you to contract with me someday?"

  "Not you specifically, and not a contract with a Contractor that was made different by something about their Soul Card, but I knew I'd bind myself somehow to someone."

  "Then how do you know I'm the right person?" Dryth asked, a little worried that this obviously young snake person was jumping into things too fast, just in general.

  "I just... do? It's the same way I knew it would happen. It's all one thing that blends into itself, so I knew that it would happen and now that it's happening I know that it's happening."

  Dryth let out a small grunt, not so much in acknowledgment as it was in confusion. He understood the individual words, and the sentence made enough sense that he got the gist of it, but combined with the context Dryth was lost. Could the snake see the future? Or was it something else that was going on?

  "Hey, Dryth? What's going on? Are you talking to them somehow?" Ewan asked, looking a little concerned.

  Dryth had basically forgotten anyone else was there and jerked a little as he looked over. "Huh? Yeah, can you not hear him?"

  "No, if he's communicating with you we can't hear anything." He gestured between himself and Helix. "How are they talking to you?"

  "I can hear him in my head."

  "Interesting," Helix muttered, "There are only two forms of serpents with wings that are sapient, and neither of them are natural telepaths. Excuse me, how are you using telepathy to communicate with young Dryth here?"

  The snake twisted in place to look at Helix. "He's talking to me, right?"

  "Yeah, he's talking to you." Dryth answered.

  "My mom used a card to let me speak to whoever I ended up meeting, in case I couldn't speak to them normally! It should wear off in a couple of hours, but the circle thing that told me all about what was happening when I got summoned said I'd be able to talk to you somehow after we made our contract!" He said happily, turning and addressing Dryth partway through.

  Dryth relayed all of that adding, "You get that I'm not going to contract to you today, right?" To the snake.

  "What, why?" He whined back. "Then we won't be able to talk after a few hours. How are we supposed to get to know each other if we aren't able to talk to each other?"

  "I mean, can't you get your mom to use the card that let's us talk on you again?"

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "How am I supposed to do that?"

  Dryth slowly put his face into his hands. "I would assume that you'd ask her to."

  "How? She's back on a different plane, I don't know any way to talk to her."

  At that point Dryth decided to spell it all out in an attempt to figure out where the new disconnect was. "I mean after we end the summons and send you home, you can get her to use the card again when we call you back, and then we'll talk a bit and get to know each other more, and then eventually if we both like each other enough we'll make the contract after taking that time."

  "How would I go back? I'm here now."

  "So, when we end the summoning that the circle used to call you here," Dryth explained after taking a deep breath, "It'll send you back to where you came from."

  "That's not how that works!"

  Dryth looked up from his hands to talk to Helix. "He said 'that's not how that works'."

  "Ah." The demon's eyes widened slightly. "Would you happen to be one of the people that are commonly referred to as coatl?"

  "I think he's taking to me again. Yeah, father told me that some people call us that."

  "He said yes."

  "Then, it in fact does not work like that for him. Certain species, including coatl, are... how do I put this...? Shall we say, magically dense. Once they arrive in another plane, whether through summoning or through various rifts of passages, they always land fully in the new plane, they don't arrive partially like most summons usually do. There's no way for him to go back home unless someone over their summons him back."

  "So, he's stuck here."

  "Indeed."

  "Yeah! That's why we should make the contract, so we can talk to each other and get to know each other! I don't want to be stuck here and not be able to understand anyone!" The snake exclaimed unhappily.

  "I... Arrgh!" Dryth groaned and buried his face in his hands again. "We just met!"

  Ewan stepped in close and rested his hand on Dryth's shoulder. "I think I get the gist of it from hearing your side of the conversation. Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith. Helix's company is the best in the business, don't preen Helix this isn't the time for it, and the card they use is an extraordinary one. I've never had anyone I met through using it be anything less than exactly who I needed in the moment. You needed a partner to be with you for as long as you have. This coatl is apparently a match to be that partner."

  "Yeah! The old guy's right! You and me are meant to be together and we're gonna be awesome!"

  "You have to bind yourself to someone eventually," Ewan added, unable to hear the snake's proclamation. "He appears to be your best shot at this time." He patted Dryth's shoulder again reassuringly. "As your teacher, I won't let this ruin your life in any way. I say take the leap, but even if you don't I can make sure our visitor isn't living a terrible life while you get to know one another."

  "Don't do that!" The coatl pleaded. "I came here to bond with you, because the time was now! Spread your wings and fly! Jump for that frog! Glide on that thermal! Sleep on that rock! Chase that bird! Bite that juicy looking rabbit! Glide over those monkeys and scare them! Swallow those eggs!"

  Dryth couldn't help it, he burst out laughing. He laughed hard enough that he actually bent over laughing for the first time that he could remember in years.

  Ewan pulled back, surprised. "What'd he say?"

  "He's shouting encouraging phrases at me," Dryth managed to choke out between guffaws, "But they're all so specific to snakes that can fly! It's hilariously out of tune."

  "Hey! It's not my fault I don't know any human phrases!"

  "True, true." Dryth waved off the coatl's protests and sulky bobbing through the air. "Let's do it. I'll make a contract with you."

  The coatl perked up excitedly. "Really? You mean it? Yay!" He pushed up against the invisible wall of the summoning circle. "Let me out of here so we can do it, then!"

  Dryth gestured at the circle for Helix. "Can you let him out?"

  "Of course." Helix made a motion like he was rubbing away a stain with a cloth and the circle vanished.

  The coatl darted forward and climbed up Dryth's body in a flash, coiling around his arm and perching so that they could see eye to eye, his white and golden wings flaring out from his back. "Let's do it, let's do it!"

  "Alright, alright! Calm down." Dryth had practiced pulling out the one card that he could draw from his deck many times over the weeks since his Reveal, and he did it the traditional way that Ewan had demonstrated when he'd summoned Helix, hand to the heart, grip the card, then pull it from your deck, materializing it in the physical world. The Form Magical Contract card solidified in Dryth's grip, with a picture of Dryth in his current body from this life hunched over a glowing piece of paper, slowly writing out the terms to a contract in colored ink. "Form Magical Contract!" He intoned as he activated the card. It glowed, and then Dryth felt like he was somewhere else.

  It was nothing like anyone had ever described forming a contract to him before, and he wondered if his twist had made the process itself different, or if the experience was so out of this world for everyone and they just did their best to describe it to others, but never really got it right. The Contractors who had given talks at during his lessons as a child had spoken of being taken to a magical meeting place inside the combined minds of both parties and hashing out the deal they would both agree to. That happened, but it was combined with so much other stuff happening that that felt like it was just a tiny piece of something much larger, and edge piece of a thousand piece puzzle of a beautiful picture that was so much more than just the one edge.

  He was there in his body, with the coatl wrapped around his arm, he was there in a space made by both their minds touching each other, speaking of what they both wanted from the relationship they would be forming, he was there in every moment of every memory either of them had with the other standing beside them, learning from and experiencing the other's life. There were the early moments before Dryth really had many memories, where things were impressions and feelings, followed by him growing up, dealing with the tumult that was life with twelve, and then thirteen, other siblings under one roof with parents that weren't wealthy, the reoccurring moments that Dryth didn't remember what happened but people began to look at him strangely, the day he learned he was going to be a mage, going off to the chool he'd lived at for years, and then coming to this day.

  Even as they were watching Dryth's entire life play out they were also watching the coatl's life up to this point. They saw him hatch, meet his parents and siblings, grow older and larger, learn to fly, hunt on his own for the first time, get his first card, for his people had their Soul Cards completely revealed since birth and could gain and use cards whenever, learn the ways of his people and the way of the world around them, and then one day he experienced this view that he knew, he knew the moment had come. The shimmering ball of magic he'd been looking forward to all his life appeared before him, made the offer he'd memorized so many years ago, and then he was there, on a new plane, ready to meet the person he'd spend the rest of his life adventuring beside.

  Two gestalts of being, the summation of all these two people were, moved together, merged together, and became something new, something other than they had been as they were added to and grew from the newly forged connection.

  Dryth was suddenly launched out of the magical mental space he'd been. As he moved from one state of being to his regular one, the memories and knowledge he'd seen began to fade into the back of his mind, always there but not accessible, with only bits and pieces remaining in his waking memory. He could feel his new best friend losing chunks of what he'd learned as well but a coatl's brain was different enough from a humans that he lost much less in comparison.

  They both landed fully back in their bodies, the shock blanking out both their minds as they simply stood or sat there in silence, too stunned by their experiences to from thoughts, let alone words.

  After a long time that neither of them counted passed, the coatl shook himself out of the stupor they'd been languishing in. "That was... something else."

  "It... yeah." Dryth managed to say.

  "We can, and we should, talk about what just happened, but there's something else important to cover first." He twisted himself so his nose was just touching Dryth's. "What are you going to call me?"

  Dryth knew the coatl's name, he'd learned it in the metaphysical connection moment they'd just shared. But his name was mostly hissing noises combined with several memories, an anecdote, three colors, and the lineage of his entire family rolled up into one impression, and the shorter nickname he used when the full formal name wasn't necessary was mostly hissing noises. There was one section of noise that sounded almost like a name pronounceable by humans, so Dryth decided to take that and change it just a little.

  "How about Sindri?"

  "Sindri, huh? I like it! Nice to meet you Dryth, I'm Sindri! I look forward to the rest of our lives!"