Dragons 'n things

Concept I mentioned to Mek last night. I finished the chapter of Dollface I was working on, so took a break and jotted it down.
Now to feed the dogs and then myself.
Enjoie.

In 1967, a breakthrough was made in multidimensional technology. A team of scientists from around the world brought together on a remote island in the Atlantic to breach the theoretical "other side" of the fabric of existence was successful in their attempts. They opened a very small hole, no wider than a pencil, in the universe. In /their/ universe.
However, the science was not as simple as tearing a hole, which this league of brilliant men and women failed to comprehend. The fabric of the universe is not really like fabric at all. It's like dominoes, rows and rows of dominoes balanced perfectly on their ends, stretching away into eternity in a higher-contrived order of existence.
When these scientists poked a hole, they poked a domino, and set off a cataclysmic chain reaction.
The hole grew, and grew, and grew. For days on end it gradually expanded in diameter, until it sliced the island neatly in half and continued to the rest of the world. Somewhat fortunately, after it breached a perimeter of twenty miles around, its perfectly circular shape shattered, so that our world was not completely halved and destroyed. The hole fragmented and the wall between our world and their world collapsed, disintegrated, evaporated, dissipated, whichever you like to call it.
The scientists had predicted that our worlds existed in something closer than parallel, that is, they formulated a principle they called symmetrical overlay. Our worlds were not merely reflected and mirrored, but occupied roughly the exact same place in the universe. Luckily for us, it is not exactly the same, or the results could have been even worse--our planets merely seem to share a half of themselves with each other. This meant that our worlds did not collide, like a meteorite with another, but, over several months, /fused/.
The results were devastating and horrifying. Massive geographical upheaval, so extensive and catalclysmic it is not worth attempting to describe in words. The most major events were that our magnetic poles clashed and turned the planets' magnetic fields into something akin to a massive, tangled ball of string, continents snapped, sunk, and were remade, our North Pole became a scene out of a prehistoric documentary, full of volcanoes and molten lava, and the Halo was formed.
Our atmospheres do not mix. This was something we discovered relatively early on. While gases of similar constitution normally intermix, our atmospheres seem to repel each other. While we crossed over to their side and they over to ours with little difficulty and certainly no major issues, thus implying their atmosphere constitutes of gases akin to our oxygen and nitrogen, the gas particles themselves refuse to occupy the same spaces. Instead, there is now a faintly yellowish haze where they meet, a vague glow, if you will, that completely encircles where Earth ends and Yrth begins.
The Halo is created only by the gas particles themselves, and nothing else. Nonetheless, the transformations are associated with the Halo, probably because it marks the exact division between our planets.
It didn't happen at first, and we speculate this is because while their world was still settling back into order--and it has, miraculously, returned to almost its exact state of existence prior to the event, with hardly any geographical changes--the--I hesitate to say "magic"--forces at work there were too unsettled themselves to affect us in a way they would have normally.
If "normal" is a word that can be associated with Yrth in any way.
It started with the third ambassadorial visit. Our world does not change the people of theirs in any way--no "magic" I suppose--but their world is so thickly integrated with it in every fiber that we can not help but be affected.
We are still not sure what factors affect the outcome of the transformation. Some speculate that the human body is distorted to reflect their "true self". There are many theories, though that is the most popular. However, there are also many that simply change into one of Yrth's many races, such as the ehllvs, the delvers, the goblins, the dragons--the list goes on. Yet again some also argue that some of the changes are simply so completely incredible and fantastical that they could not possibly bear any relevance to the individual's mind or personality. Personally, I would speculate that this other planet, this Yrth, finding us to be living beings lacking its vital energy, like a rush of water coming across a hole in the ground, instinctively fills us with its energy immediately upon our crossing its border. As our bodies are overwhelmed with this energy, our forms become much more malleable, like clay. Yrth seeks to shape us according to what it knows, to what it recognizes as acceptable life, and so many become shaped according to what races already exist in it. However, some bodies simply do not handle the energy or Yrth's attempts well, and in this case the outcome is random, a conglomeration of traits--and in this state, who knows--perhaps personality is powerful enough to have an affect on the outcome.
All we know for sure is that every human, regardless any age, gender, ethnicity, and whathaveyou, that crosses the Halo is changed. There is no reversing this change, no way to undo it that we have yet discovered. And it is not a great concern, as most of our people avoid the Halo like the plague. Humans, since the beginning of time, have feared what they do not understand.
/

Yet there are some individuals that embrace the change, such as Allen Strauss. For most of her life she has been afflicted with fibromyalgia, an enduring, constant pain that affects her entire body. Allen has gotten by until now with her pills, taking each day at a time, enduring.
Allen was born after the clash and its aftershock. She has grown up in a world of fear and unknown. Yet Allen does not know what the world was like before. She has never known what it is to be completely safe. Perhaps that is why she has so little regard for danger.
Allen views the Halo not as a danger, but as a possibility. They say every human that has ever crossed it has changed. Most avoid it now, but some still go--the desperate. Fugitives, the suicidal, those inflicted with incurable disease. And those that have crossed--cancer patients, the manic depressive, mentally unstable--they've changed for the better. Most have been cured. Most have been set free of their pains.
Despite her parents' insistence, Allen is going to go. She's never felt at home in her own skin, she's never felt at home among her own kind--humans, that is--why shouldn't she at least try to fix it?

Allen crosses and becomes a dragon. This means she is capable of shapeshifting, so she's able to switch back and forth between scaly shape and what she views as her human body v 2.0. While Yrth is even bigger than Earth, and there is plenty of room for dragons, Allen knows her life will be easier if she joins one of the dragon civilizations. So she does. The mountain country of...uh. Jagar. Yeah, that sounds good. So she goes there and learns a lot about dragons, while hiding the truth about her past. She takes the name Aratharn and goes by "Tharn." While in Jagar she learns a lot about her kind. Dragons classify themselves according to build. There's peasants, middle class, and royalty. Royalty have very long, slim, delicate builds with frills, whippy tails, and bright colours. Basically they're very pretty. They also live the longest of the dragon races and are called "Ahaguin" which means "elegant." Middle class are normally proportioned dragons, average bodies, average height, average build, that sort of thing. However, as dragons grow and mature, their bodies are actually affected by their personalities. Mind over matter is a theory in Earth, but on Yrth, it's one of their laws of physics. Middle class is the most maleable race and has the most potential for change over the period of their lifetime. They're called Garhuilin, "like clay." Then there's lower class, the "peasants" who are saddled with most of the heavy physical labour. Their bodies are short, their backs slope down so their hind legs are noticeably shorter than the front, and their snouts are short--a typically nickname for them is "stub" while their traditional name is "Graguahil" or "like the animal". They are most similar to the dragon's primitive ancestors and are thus considered to be primitive themselves, like actual pack animals.
Allen wanders around for a while, hunting when she needs food as she tries to figure out what she wants to do with herself. As she learns more about the military, she discovers she really wants to learn to fight and even use magic, if possible. So she signs up to be a soldier. The palace is where you see enslaved stubs the most, so she's uncomfortable with that, but she tries to do her part by being nice to them.
But Allen soon discovers she needs to know more about her new world and culture if she really wants to fit in and convince them she's a real dragon--Allen doesn't know what they'll do if they find out she used to be a human, but she suspects it won't be a happy ending.
Allen has noticed for a while now a certain dragon called Essaglix--he's one of the palace scholars. She finds him very attractive--he has a pale creamy white colouring covered in deep mahogany flecks, but she's noticed his lower lip is black, like stubs. However, a stub could never reach such a high position, so she's curious about him. She asks around and discovers he's a halfbreed, born of middle class and peasantry. He's also a maned dragon, which is extremely rare, so everyone knows he's the bastard son of Mortiari, one of the top generals in the army. Glix prefers to stay in humanoid form most of the time because he's ashamed of his dragon body's "mismatched" traits.
Hoping to find a common ground with him--that being "questionable" heritage--Tharn approaches Glix alone in the palace library, tells him what she is, and asks him to teach her more about Yrth. He reluctantly agrees, and in exchange, Tharn will share with him everything she can think of about Earth. Tharn visits him every day after that for lessons on Yrth, and they become close friends.