One step at a time, Caius approached the trunk of the burning tree. He kept half-expecting his hair to catch on fire or something, but happily that did not happen. It wasn't like the forty or so paces were much of a journey, and soon he was standing by the trunk of the tree.

  Pausing, he pressed his palm against the trunk. It was warm, naturally. Nothing dramatic happened. Picking two flowers was as simple as bending down and pulling on their stems until they snapped off in his hands.

  Whatever was so attractive about the flowers, it was ten times worse this close up. The only thing that kept him from scarfing one down was his desire to share the moment. So he walked back to where Idunnir was sitting.

  Her eyes were glued to the flower he held out to her, and she took it with great care. Caius sat down again and the two examined their flowers. "It occurs to me that eating these might be a bad idea?" he said, dimly worried that the flowers might be poisonous or something.

  Idunnir restrained herself, visibly, as she considered the implications and took her helmet off. "Do you have an idea?" she asked. Caius shrugged, then addressed the flowers. "Hey... flowers... please glow briefly if you're safe to eat?"

  They didn't glow.

  Which was a problem, because he still really wanted to eat the thing. Then again, some foods were only safe in small quantities. He decided to lower the bar: "Uhm... can you two flowers glow briefly if... eating you isn't going to harm us?"

  That time they did glow for a few seconds. Both Idunnir and Caius let out simultaneous sighs of relief. After checking that there weren't any insects or similar unwelcome additions hiding anywhere on the flowers, both of them yielded to temptation.

  Caius plucked one of the oddly-shaped petals and stuck it in his mouth. There was something odd about the taste. On one level it tasted pretty much exactly how he expected a flower petal to taste, sort of green. But there was something else about it.

  The closest comparison he could think of were some spicy potato chips he had once eaten that basically tasted like nothing, but the spiciness added enough sensation to justify eating them. Except this wasn't spiciness, it was something he had no words for. Like it was triggering some weird sixth sense he didn't know he had before this exact moment.

  Caius abandoned dignity and just stuffed the whole flower in his mouth. That odd sensation built, and it was glorious. He felt alert and energized. "This is great! Is this what drinking your tea feels like?"

  Idunnir had wide eyes and was nodding vigorously. "Yes, sort of!"

  "I'll get us some more!" Caius got up and took his first step back towards the tree. But then something changed. Reality went sort of runny around the edges. Colors sort of smeared themselves around, and colors brightened until everything was cartoonishly oversaturated.

  His voice was a lot steadier than he expected as he asked "Uhm... Idunnir, is everything starting to look strange to you?" She responded with "No, why?"

  All the colors were making Caius dizzy, and he fell on his backside rather painfully. "Something isn't right, everything is sort of... strange?" He closed his eyes but nothing changed, the same smeared image remained.

  Idunnir was, understandably, concerned. "Caius! Are you well? I thought the flowers were alright to eat!" He tried reassuring her. "The glow said they weren't harmful. Hopefully that means this will pass. You're sure you don't see anything different?"

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  She was by his side in an instant, picking him up like like a princess and carrying him back to the grass where she laid him down on his back. Everything spun when she did, but he was left staring at a completely different smeared picture. With some difficulty he could identify the mountains and the sky overhead, but every time Idunnir passed by she left a distorted blue trail across his vision.

  Caius frowned. Opening and closing his eyes did nothing, the picture was the same either way. But clearly he was still sort of seeing. He reached up a hand to the sky, and roughly where he felt he should see the arm there was a golden shape in his vision. His other arm looked the same when he raised that one.

  "Caius, you're worrying me. What can I do to help?" Idunnir said, and she sounded very concerned. That snapped Caius partially back to reality. Everything looked the same, but he could think again.

  "Right. Sorry for worrying you. I don't think this is too bad. Everything looks very strange, but that's all. As long as I stay still, it isn't too bad." Caius tried to make his voice as calm as possible, which seemed to reassure Idunnir. She let out a sigh of relief.

  After a while, Caius' messed up vision changed a bit. Everything was still extremely colorful, but the colors started to have more gradients to them. He held his arm up again and, as he held it there, it slowly came into something resembling focus. It was all in shades of glowing gold, like the light things gave off when he used his power.

  His arm got tired. "Idunnir, can you do me a favor and hold your hand out over my face?" He motioned at the height he wanted. She obliged without comment, and her hand was rock steady. That helped a lot. Fascinated, Caius watched as the blue blob in his vision resolved into a hand. It got more and more detailed as time went on, and more shades of blue appeared to add definition.

  It looked somewhat like a timelapse of a painting.

  Actually, it wasn't all blue. Some faint streaks of gold, the same color as his arm, were being added to the blue of Idunnir's hand. "Is this helping?" She asked after a bit. "Yes, actually. This is very interesting. If I sit up, would you be willing to stand still so I can take a good look at you?"

  "Sure..." She didn't sound hesitant or eager. Caius assumed she just thought it was a strange request.

  They had to change positions once or twice so that there weren't too many things in Caius' field of view. The mountainsides were a relatively calm mass of grey in his vision that didn't make him dizzy.

  Idunnir slowly faded into detail as a sort of androgenous blue form only vaguely human-shaped, which was good because her clothes didn't appear. Caius watched with interest as the picture became more and more clear.

  Not all of her was blue, the streaks of gold light were spread throughout her body somewhat at random. But there was a greater concentration of them in the middle of her torso. That wasn't the only thing Caius could see, there were a few faint strands of orange in there. Unlike the gold, the orange was blending into the blue and seemed to be dissolving.

  He double checked, and the gold light inside Idunnir was identical to the light inside him. He wasn't sure what the significance of that was, yet. After a while the orange was all gone, dissolved into the blue without a trace.

  Idunnir spoke, snapping him out of his contemplation. "We can't travel like this, so I think I'll set up camp. Can you see whatever you were looking for?"

  Feeling a bit guilty about making her stand there like a mannequin for him to stare at, Caius thanked her and she went about getting camp set up. That was an interesting visual spectacle. Slowly he was getting used to his new perspective. Most things appeared only faintly, no matter how long he looked at them.

  When she set up the tent, Caius noticed that the bottom of it was glowing slightly gold. And was there... there was! A thin strand of gold led from the base of the tent toward him and...

  Caius stared down at himself, waiting for his glowing form to grow clearer. He didn't have the best angle of view, but he could see where the golden thread connected to him. There was another thing he noticed, looking down. His clothes weren't visible, just like Idunnir's, and also like her he looked androgenous.

  His amulet, on the other hand, stood out clearly. It had been a near constant presence since he had awkwardly carved it days ago and asked it to protect him from harm. It had sharply defined edges and detail, and he could see a thick golden cord connecting it to him.

  Fascinating. He could... see his ability? Amongst other things, apparently. He turned his attention back towards Idunnir. She was inside the tent unrolling their bedding. Only two paces away from him.

  Caius squinted, trying to see... There! As her hand brushed the golden bottom of the tent, a curl of gold separated from it and got sucked into her arm to join the other wisps of gold.

  That was a clue. He had a hypothesis, all he had to do was test it. And ask Idunnir a question. Or several.