The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard

What’s going on? Are you all right?’
    ‘That’s ridiculous!’ She started to come to her feet, then sat back, stunned by the sight of a naked woman with long blond hair curled up in a corner not ten feet away, nestled so close to the cavity wall that the tips of leaves half-covered her body and obscured her face.
    ‘Catherine!’ Mauldry shouted. ‘Answer me!’
    ‘I . . . I’m all right! Just a minute!’
    The woman stirred and made a complaining noise.
    ‘Catherine!’
    ‘I said I’m all right!’
    The woman stretched out her legs; on her right hip was a finepink scar, hook-shaped, identical to the scar on Catherine’s hip, evidence of a childhood fall. And on the back of the right knee, a patch of raw, puckered skin, the product of an acid burn she’d suffered the year before. She was astonished by the sight of these markings, but when the woman sat up and Catherine understood that she was staring at her twin – identical not only in feature, but also in expression, wearing a resigned look that she had glimpsed many times in her mirror – her astonishment turned to fright. She could have sworn she felt the muscles of the woman’s face shifting as the expression changed into one of pleased recognition, and in spite of her fear, she had a vague sense of the woman’s emotions, of her burgeoning hope and elation.
    ‘Sister,’ said the woman; she glanced down at her body, and Catherine had a momentary flash of doubled vision, watching the woman’s head decline and seeing as well naked breasts and belly from the perspective of the woman’s eyes. Her vision returned to normal, and she looked at the woman’s face . . .
her
face. Though she had studied herself in the mirror each morning for years, she had never had such a clear perception of the changes that life inside the dragon had wrought upon her. Fine lines bracketed her lips, and the beginnings of crow’s-feet radiated from the corners of her eyes. Her cheeks had hollowed, and this made her cheekbones appear sharper; the set of her mouth seemed harder, more determined. The high gloss and perfection of her youthful beauty had been marred far more than she had thought, and this dismayed her. However, the most remarkable change – the one that most struck her – was not embodied by any one detail but in the overall character of the face, in that it exhibited character, for – she realized – prior to entering the dragon it had displayed very little, and what little it had displayed had been evidence of indulgence. It troubled her to have this knowledge of the fool she had been thrust upon her with such poignancy.
    As if the woman had been listening to her thoughts, she held out her hand and said, ‘Don’t punish yourself, sister. We are all victims of our past.’
    ‘What are you?’ Catherine asked, pulling back. She felt the woman was a danger to her, though she was not sure why.
    ‘I am you.’ Again the woman reached out to touch her, and again Catherine shifted away. The woman’s face was smiling, but Catherine felt the wash of her frustration and noticed that the woman had leaned forward only a few degrees, remaining in contact with the leaves of the vines as if there were some attachment between them that she could not break.
    ‘I doubt that.’ Catherine was fascinated, but she was beginning to be swayed by the intuition that the woman’s touch would harm her.
    ‘But I am!’ the woman insisted. ‘And something more, besides.’
    ‘What more?’
    ‘The plant extracts essences,’ said the woman. ‘Infinitely small constructs of the flesh from which it creates a likeness free of the imperfections of your body. And since the seeds of your future are embodied by these essences, though they are unknown to you, I know them . . . for now.’
    ‘For now?’
    The woman’s tone had become desperate. ‘There’s a connection between us . . . surely you feel it?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘To live, to complete that connection, I must touch you.