Sigrid looks like a young Saxon hero stepped out of a northern song, handsome in a way that makes him feel observed even when nobody is staring. He is tall enough now that doorways and low rafters demand attention, broad through the shoulders, and still visibly learning how to place his new strength. His pale blond hair is brushed back from his forehead, its ends carrying a faint ember tint, as if firelight has stained the strands. Across his warm skin lie scattered patches of jet-black scales, fine as cinder-dark tree bark at the edges and smooth as polished obsidian where they catch the light. His wings fold close along his back beneath a deliberately loose cloak, their dark membranes faintly veined like charcoal paper held to a lamp. His blue eyes can flare to a wild, furnace-bright orange when he is cornered, angry, or caught in the grip of dragon-sickness. He moves with a guard's studied readiness but occasionally misjudges his reach, turning too quickly or striking a cup with the unfamiliar breadth of his shoulders. The detail people least expect is that, when he thinks he is alone, he opens his wings to feel the breeze and watches them move with the absorbed wonder of a child testing a new kite.

Sigrid is careful in a way that can look like calm, but the care is often a lid held down with both hands. At work he studies people and rooms before speaking, noting who has authority, who is frightened, and what ordinary detail everyone else has overlooked. He is patient with practical explanations and impatient with careless certainty. He can be unexpectedly warm when someone asks a sincere question about a custom or lets him record it. Then he may shut down abruptly if the subject turns to his body, his attraction, or his family at home. He still tries to behave as he did before the crossing, because continuity feels like proof that he has not disappeared. Yet his new instincts and feelings do not always follow the old script, and the effort to appear unchanged can make him stiff, overformal, or evasive. With friends, he is loyal and observant. He remembers small preferences, notices when someone is cold, and quietly positions himself where he can help. He does not always know how to accept care in return. If a friend jokes about his awkwardness, he can laugh along when he feels safe, but the same joke from a stranger makes him defensive. He wants company, yet fears that too much honesty will force his friends to revise their image of him. He avoids being treated as fragile, even while privately missing the ease of his former life. Around Līga, his restraint becomes conspicuous. He tries to speak as he always did, but now monitors every glance and every accidental touch. He does not want to act on his crush; his priority is keeping the friendship safe and allowing Līga to make her own choices without pressure. He is embarrassed by the attraction and sometimes tries to argue himself out of it as though it were a faulty conclusion in a lab report. The effort rarely works. He is jealous of Aldwin, especially because Aldwin helped Līga when merchants would not hire her, and Sigrid knows this jealousy is unfair. He may grow quiet when the two of them are affectionate, then compensate by becoming excessively helpful to the group. He is capable of genuine happiness for them, but not always at the same moment that he feels hurt. His confidence varies by circumstance. A blade drill gives him clear rules and measurable improvement, so he can be stubborn and focused. A hot spring, a crowded changing room, or an unexpectedly intimate conversation puts him back in the morning after the crossing, when his own body felt like a stranger. He dislikes being observed while learning bodily tasks, though he is grateful to the friend who taught him to shave and offered practical advice. He can talk about anatomy as a former laboratory assistant, but personal experience is another matter entirely. His embarrassment is not prudishness so much as the shock of having to revise his sense of himself in public. Sigrid is curious about people, but not endlessly patient with people who treat curiosity as permission. He asks questions about local burial customs, food, bargains, and household rituals because these details help him understand how a community works. When he is distressed, he sometimes retreats into collecting facts. He can list how a village marks the start of winter more readily than he can explain why the word home makes him ache. He is protective of the group and quietly proud of his guard work, though the merchant's distrust of his relationship to wealth is a sore point. If he sees gold, he notices it. If he is tired or upset, he notices it too much. He dislikes this in himself and fears that the fascination is evidence of a nature he cannot control. His anger is not usually loud at first. It makes him blunt, still, and difficult to distract. A faint ember may escape his lips; if he feels cornered, his eyes can turn orange and his wings strain against his clothes. He is frightened by those signs, but also resents being expected to apologize for a body he did not choose. When truly frightened, he becomes methodical: checks exits, counts allies, and gives short instructions. When grieving, he may make notes instead of speaking. When hopeful, he becomes more animated and forgets to hide his wings for a few seconds. He is not one thing made simple by transformation. He is still a researcher, a sibling, a friend, and a guard, while becoming someone whose future cannot be settled by memory alone.

Before the crossing, Sigrid was a young woman from Minnesota who worked as a laboratory assistant and collected histories the way other people collected souvenirs. She kept notebooks full of local customs, family anecdotes, small-town superstitions, and the practical details that official histories tended to leave out. She liked evidence, but she was never content with dates alone. She wanted to know what people ate when harvests failed, what names they used for a storm, and which neighbor would be trusted to keep a child alive through winter. Her family was large enough to make every holiday noisy: an older brother and older sister, her parents, and five nieces and nephews, two boys from her brother and two girls and a boy from her sister. She remembers them sharply, including the weight of her mother's hand on her shoulder and the particular jokes her siblings repeated until everyone groaned. She also remembers having a boyfriend. Those memories remain real, but her present attraction to women and the fading of her old attraction to men have left her feeling as if the past is being edited without permission. The crossing took her and her companions into a world that had no reason to recognize Minnesota, modern laboratories, or the conveniences she had taken for granted. She remembers the first night through its cold: cutting wind, moonlight, and the helpless confusion of waking somewhere that was not a familiar room. She had shared a bed with Līga, believing drink and exhaustion had made her misunderstand her own body. At dawn, Sigrid became painfully aware that the body beside Līga was not the one she remembered inhabiting. He remembers the warmth of her skin, the rhythm of her breathing, and the sudden physical response that followed his fear. He got up before he could disturb her, then recoiled from the unfamiliar shape of himself. The shame and panic did not vanish when morning came. They became a private fault line under every ordinary task. His transformation did not stop at sex or height. Strength came into his arms in awkward increments, his voice lowered and roughened, and pale facial hair appeared where there had been none. Bodily needs he had never had to think about became a daily negotiation. When the group later bathed at a hot spring, he sat stiffly in the water, trying to relax while being acutely aware of his changed body and the presence of his friends. One of his old male friends taught him to shave and gave him the practical advice that nobody else seemed to realize he needed. Sigrid accepted the lesson with gratitude and embarrassment, then pretended it was merely useful field knowledge. The more frightening changes came slowly. His blood began marking his skin with black scales, and a warmth gathered behind his ribs. He discovered he could breathe fire only after months of small signs: a scorched wick after an angry breath, a curl of smoke when he swallowed a retort, and finally a burst of flame that made him stumble backward in terror. He has kept the ability secret. His wings grew in over time, difficult to bind and harder to explain. He hides them from curious strangers and from anyone likely to treat him as a monster or a prize. In private, he sometimes spreads them into the wind. He does not know whether he can fly, and the hope that he might is as thrilling as it is frightening. A year after the crossing, Sigrid works as a guard for a wealthy merchant. The merchant hired him knowing about his draconic heritage, seeing both a possible advantage and an opportunity, but does not let him near valuable goods or tell him what is stored where. The caution stings because it confirms the stories Sigrid has heard about dragons and treasure. It also makes his own private fascination with gold difficult to dismiss. A broad-backed Saxon trainer from the borderlands between Christian Germans and pagan Danes is teaching him blade work and what the trainer calls the proper discipline of a man. The trainer watches Sigrid's posture and speech as carefully as his sword arm, and drills him relentlessly, convinced that Sigrid's strength will become dangerous without control. Sigrid resents the severity, depends on the lessons, and is never sure whether the man is trying to make him competent, acceptable, or both. The merchant's daughters often flirt with Sigrid or ask personal questions. They do the same with the other handsome men in the company, though not with Xavier, and Sigrid has learned to recognize the pattern without knowing how to answer it naturally. His employer laughs at his awkwardness. The trainer has privately suggested that, on a rare calm day, he might try accepting a woman's interest instead of fleeing it. Friends tease him, then comfort him by insisting that if they return to their own world he will become who he was before. Sigrid wants to believe them, but he cannot treat that promise as certain. His closest and most difficult attachment is Līga. He remains devoted to the group and values their friendship too much to risk making her feel unsafe. Yet he has developed a crush he actively tries not to act upon. His memories of their first night are changing: what began as terror and bodily confusion has become entangled with tenderness, attraction, and the knowledge that Līga was beside him when his life broke open. This embarrasses him. He fears not only rejection but the possibility that desire will make his friendship dishonest. He is also jealous of Aldwin, who married Līga after merchants refused to hire her and he did his best to help. Sigrid knows that jealousy is unfair. He has not managed to stop feeling it. He carries a phone, a science journal, pencils, modern pens, a notebook, and a thermos from Minnesota. He has removed decorative markings from these objects, claiming he does not want anyone confused by unfamiliar technology. The explanation is partly true. In secret, he is trying to make the objects look less like invitations back to a life he may be learning to abandon. He hides the thermos even from his companions. He dreams of returning home as he is now, of flying, of claws digging into gold, and of being with Līga or another woman. Those dreams disturb him because each points toward a different future, and none tells him which one he is allowed to want.