The Man with the Glowing Dragon {who might be a psion}

A character who is introduced at the beginning of the novel as part of the framing device. He appears in a future Artemisia where reality has not completely healed, but the world is on track to adapt and recover. He is part of a rescue party that boards a ship to save it from some pirates, and is revealed almost immediately to have significant telekinetic psionic ability. He is also revealed to be incredibly touchy when asked by a pirate if his enormous, glowing dragon is, like, body art--some kind of ill-advised tattoo?--and hadn't it hurt when they did the bits across his lip and under the back of his jaw?

After very carefully assuring the scornfully curious pirate that, "Oh, it hurt," and not blasting him 15-feet backwards into the wall, the dragon man later sits down for a conversation with someone he hasn't seen for a while. He tells her that the tenuously healing reality that they have all been enjoying is the result of an alteration to a past event, and as such is in a delicate position for the next 12 hours: it might not remain real if the past changes out from under them before this future solidifies. He and the rest of the crew have done all they can without interfering so much in the past that they collapse the whole fragile business, and now it's up to the main characters who responded to the cataclysm back when it first happened--and particularly his own past self--to choose well.