"Hey you! Bird boy!"

I twisted my head round, looking for the source of the sound.

"Over here!"

I turned to what I had previously thought was an empty force cell and saw a female, sitting on the floor with her back against the pulsing blue force field that made up the wall of her cell. She winked at me.

"Where'd you come from?" I demanded.

"Interesting philosophical question, that." She replied. Wonderful, I end up in a cell next to a smart arse. She cocked her head to one side and gazed at me quizzically. "You're a Dracian, aren't ya?"

"How observant of you." I answered dryly. "Let me guess, it was the wings, wasn't it?"

"Pretty much."

"It's always the wings that do it." I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. "What about you? You've got a Shazel accent and you act like a townie. Either that or you're some sort of alien, but no one really comes to Shazar anymore."

"Ha! I was a Shazel, originally, for about five months of my life." Her impish grin faded slightly. I took in her appearance.

Of the three native races of Shazar the Shazels were the most numerical, when most people thought about the population of Shazar they thought of the city dwelling Shazels. Shazels tended to be between five to six feet high with blond, silver or white hair and grey or pale violet eyes. Unlike the two other races, the Mu-Zhars and my own people the Dracians, who both have green skin, Shazels all have pale yellow skin. I think it's because they don't get enough sunlight personally.

This girl was about the right height for a young adult female Shazel, five foot three, but that was where the similarity ended. Her hair was a sort of dark blue, it reached down to her shoulders and her eyes were glittering greeny yellow, like the leaves of the flata tree in the dry season. Her skin was far paler than a normal Shazel, a sort of smoky white. This girl really needed to get outside once in a while.

And she needed a few decent meals inside her as well, you'd find more meat on a bare branch, she was far to skinny. Two sets of small horns grew from the top of her head but since they were so tiny and about the same colour of her hair they could be easily missed by the casual observer. These, coupled with the patches of silvery fur on her arms and neck, made me think that she must have some Mu-Zhar blood in her veins.

All in all, she didn't look remotely like a Shazel, but her phrase 'I was a Shazel, originally' told me all I needed to know about her.

"You're a mutant." It wasn't a question, but she answered it.

"Yeah, i'm a mutant." Now it was my turn to look quizzical.

"So what's your power? Do you have one?" I asked. She gave me a wry grin.

"Yup, it's called 'controlled cellular breakdown' or something to that extent."

My brow winkled in confusion. "What dose that mean?"

She shrugged. "Buggered if I know. All I know is that I can turn myself into a kind of mist, oh, and I can make myself as light as air."

"You can fly?"

"I can bounce. Flying is lighter than air."

"So, are you in here-"

"I'm locked up because i'm a mutant, they don't need a reason." She said in a sardonic tone. "They're gonna be shipping me back to the compounds soon."

"Back? You've been there before?" I looked at her with dawning respect. "You're an escapee, aren't you?" It was hard to imagine this thin, pale you woman could get past some of the best defences in the galaxy. But then, if her mutation allowed her to become mist, maybe it wasn't so surprising.

She didn't answer my question, instead she regarded the broken wings that hung from my back. "What happened to you? Fly into a tree?" She asked cheekily. I scowled at her.

" It was a glider, actually."

"Pa-ha!" She rocked back in mirth. "How's you manage to miss a bloody big glider?"

"A plasma grenade went off in mid-air." I told her in a monotone.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"I was flying and it was exploded right behind me."

"Ah."

"The plasma wave burnt off most of my flight feathers as well."

"Ouchie!"

"Indeed."

+-+-+-+

"Hey, bald bird boy."

I snapped out of my regenerative trance. "What!?"

"I don't even know your name."

I tried to get into a more comfortable position, each of the cells were completely bare, all they consisted of was a metallic floor with force field walls and ceiling. I didn't like the force field, when you lent against them it felt like you were leaning against water so I had to squat in the centre of the cell.

"Taur Az'hal."

"Taur Az'hal? And you were named by people who loved you?"

"Taur was an Een'Ka of my clan, his deeds in life where so great that upon death he became one of the Ko'Een of our clan." I informed her somewhat sulkily.

"The Ko'Een? Who believes in them anymore? And it's still a ridiculous name. I prefer 'Bald bird boy'."

"Oh, why don't you go back to looking for a way out?" For the last half an hour she had been drifting in and out of her mist form in an attempt to find a small gap in the cage which she could ooze out from. She had been doing this when I had been imprisoned, this was why she seemed to have appeared out of, as it were, thin air.

"You know, I think I will. My name's Amora Duracal, by the way."

"Amora Dur-rah-cal?" I repeated, sounding out the vowels.

"What about it?"

"Nothing, but I think I've heard the name Duracal before."

Amora shrugged. "Probably, it's a very common name among the Shazels. So, what're you in for?"

I started at the sudden change in conversation. "Eh?"

"Come one, what've you done?" She bounded over to the wall nearest my cage, the way she moved did suggest a sort of airy lightness about her. "Murder? Theft? Terrorism?" She grinned.

I turned my back to her. "Like you said, mutant's don't need a reason to be locked up."