Transformation

"Hey mom?" the small boy asked in the middle of the day. His mother tried to hide a sigh. It was never a good sign when her son started asking questions. He consistently lead her down uncomfortable paths of questions she did not want to answer, or could not answer, or should not answer. He had a knack for finding the things he shouldn't find, and frequently left her in awkward positions.

"Yes, Brett?" she replied gently, taking care not to let the fatigue show in her voice. She knew that this was a time in his life when he should be learning, but the amount of 'learning' that he did was beginning to wear her thin. "What is it?"

"Is this supposed to happen?" Brett entered the kitchen where his mom had been cooking, his arm held out in front of him, several small blue marks on his arm. His mother at first assumed that they were splotches of paint he had stained himself with while playing with his toys, but upon closer inspection they had more depth and texture to them than paint. "They won't come off," Brett continued, "and I'm not really sure where they came from. They were just there when I looked down at the end of my cartoon."

His mother's brow furrowed and she knelt down beside him, examining the splotches more closely. They were smooth, rounded features, and as she ran her finger over them, they were cold and hard. "Were you doing anything while you were watching tv?" she asked, gently rubbing her fingers against the strange dots, feeling no give as she might something he had accidentally glued to himself. Brett shook his head. "No reading or playing games?"

Brett shook his head again. "I was just thinking about what it would be like to live inside the tv," he explained. "Dragon Tales was on, and I was thinking about how cool it would be to be a dragon, and when the show was over, these were on my arm."

His mother frowned and grabbed a towel, dampening it and rubbing at his arm, to no avail. Whatever the dots were, they simply did not want to be removed. She had only been half paying attention to what her son had been saying, but as she pondered what the things might be, his words slowly dawned on her. "You were thinking about being a dragon?" she asked, unsure that she wanted to hear his answer.

"Yeah."

"Well, honey..." She couldn't believe the words were about to escape from her mouth. She wanted to stop herself, she searched for any answer that made more sense, and as stupid as it seemed, she couldn't think of anything else it might be. She didn't want to imagine it was possible. But it was hard to ignore the smooth, hard scales in front of her. "I think you might be on your way."