Breck the blacksmith was standing by her head. They were discussing the possibility of installing a big glass window in the lair she and Kethro had dug out under the northern bluff. An adventurous pair of youngsters were sitting between her folded wings giggling and whispering. Serali suspected that they were going to try and run down her neck and jump off her head, or something similar. One of the pair was her own nephew, though he didn't know it. He was youngest child of her brother Dentol. Serali kept discreet track of her family, though she tried to avoid seeming too interested.

Another one of her nephews dashed out into the square from the direction of her parent's house. He shouted at the younger child, "Come on, quick!"

"What is it?" the younger one called from his perch on her back.

"It's Grandma. She's sick and Papa wants us all to come."

Serali broke off what she was saying to Breck. My mother!

Her nephew slid down her tail and raced off. Serali restrained in impulse to dash after him. She turned to Breck.

"I'm sorry, I need to go. I'll talk with you about this later."

"Of course. What's wrong?"

Serali didn't wait to answer. She stood up. Then with a powerful leap and a thrust of her wings she was in the air and flying away from town. As soon as she was completely out of sight, she shifted into human form. Not caring what her immediate arrival might give away, she jogged back to the village. Her mother had been ill often in the last few years. Each time it got worse, and last time the healer had said the next illness would probably be the last.

Now as Serali drew near her parents' home, she was filled with apprehension. She had known, of course, that she would out-live her entire family, but she didn't want to face it so soon. What would life be like without Mama there? Serali was quite independent, but she still needed to know her mother was there if she needed her. And she knew also that if she'd lived a normal dragon life she would still be considered hardly more than a child.

Dragons can become fully mature and independent as young as twelve years old, but so long as the parents remain near, they stay in childhood, only gradually emerging into maturity after almost a full century. Somehow the lack of parents triggers the physical changes early. No one had been able to explain to Serali exactly how it worked, but she knew it did. That had accounted for how mature she's been even as a human. Apparently human parents couldn't substitute for dragon parents. So when Serali had first become a dragon she'd been fully mature, if small. It was odd to think that if she'd been raised as a dragon she would still be a child, but being raised by humans had actually made her grow up faster than any true human.

But now she was at the door and she had to face the other consequence of being raised by humans. The fact that no matter how long her loved ones lived she would still out-live them. She hesitated, then entered without knocking. There was nobody in the front room, so Serali walked through the room and into the hall. Rella was coming out of Marilla's room with her two sons.

Pushing past her startled sister-in-law, Serali went into the room. Her father, her brothers and her sister were standing around the bed where her mother lay, looking terribly old. Serali came forward and knelt next to the bed. She took her mother's frail hand in hers.

"Mama…" She stooped, not knowing what to say. All of the sudden her secrecy seemed pointless. As if her family wouldn't understand if the told them she was a dragon. Of course they would! They loved her. "Mama, I… I love you, and I've been keeping a secret from you. I wanted to tell you…"

"Ah Serali, I know you love me, I love you too. And don't worry about your secret. I already knew."

Serali was speechless.

"My dearest…" she paused to gasp for breath. "I knew you were different when you were born. I was only a little surprised at how different."

Falio looked puzzled. "Marilla, what are you talking about?"

Marilla shook her head, a barely perceptible motion. "She'll tell you in her town time. But my time is short." She stopped again and coughed.

Serali released her hand and left, her sibling filing out after her. Falio needed to be alone with is wife.

They sat down in the front room. The silence was almost deafening, but nobody could think of anything to say. At last Falio emerged from the room. His expression spoke without words.

She stopped her wandering at the edge of the Great Escarpment. The air beyond it was clear. The sand below stretched off into the distance. Serali looked at the horizon, a think line separating sand and sky. She thought she could see a smudge at the farthest limits of vision. Most days it wasn't visible, but sometimes she could just make it out. It could be anything, a range of mountains, a cloud, or just a trick of the light. But it never rained in the Great Circle Desert, so it probably wasn't a cloud, and Serali didn't think it was just a trick of the light either. She thought it was a mountain range. She had imagined flying out to it and find out someday. Now, lonely and wanting a distraction from grief, she decided to make the trip today.

She shifted into dragon form and winged her way back to her lair.

"Kethro!"

Kethro poked his head out from where he was excavating a new tunnel. "Yes?"

"I'm going to go find out what's in the middle of the Great Circle Desert."

"What? Why on earth do you want to do that?"

Serali paused, her grief brought back abruptly. "My human mother died today."

"Oh. Do you want me to come?"

"No, I just thought I should tell you." She glanced around the dusty mess of the lair. "Where's Doran? Wasn't he here this morning?"

"He's gone off to the mountains. He said he wanted to spend some time with a few friends of his."

"I guess I don't get to say goodbye to him then." She turned to go. "I'll be back in a day or two." And with that she was off into the air.

She headed out over the cliffs and into the Great Circle Desert, flying due south. The golden dunes passed beneath her, one after another. The warm air rising off the desert floor was very dry. It lifted her high above the level of the cliffs. She soared on, not needed to exert any effort to remain aloft.

The sun set that evening in a spectacular display of oranges and reds that gradually deepened into purple and then into a velvety black speckled with coolly glittering stars. When it had become too dark to see the dunes below Serali landed. To her surprise she noticed that she had come down a few yards from what seemed to be a towering wall of stone. The moon was not yet up, but the starlight dimly gleamed off of polished stone blocks.

Curious, Serali made her way across the shifting sand to the wall. Standing next to it her head was high enough to see over it easily. For a moment the view puzzled her, but then she realized that the wall wasn't a wall at all. It was the side of a raised roadway. Straight as a ruler the road ran across the desert, going due south. It must start somewhere near Land's End she realized. I wonder where it goes?

With a shrug Serali curled up against the road-wall and went to sleep. She woke in the dim gray light before dawn. She climbed up on the road and watched the sun rise over the dunes. The golden light spilled across the sand and glinted brightly off her polished metallic scales. She waited until everything around her was bright with light and the sun was fully risen in the cloudless blue sky. Then she spread her wings and leapt into the air.

All that day she flew across the sand, following the road below. The dunes had looked all the same from a distance, but swooping low Serali could see that there were barren rocky spots, places covered in gravel, and many different shapes of sand dunes. The wind blew gently, lifting wisps of sand and dust into the air. The sun beat down from above and before long a warm thermal was rising off of the sand. Deciding she'd seen enough of dunes, Serali allowed the thermal to lift her high above the desert floor.

At that height she could see forever across the golden plain of sand below. But ahead she could clearly make out a low dark shape that had to be a range of mountains. All day it drew nearer, but it wasn't until the sun was setting that Serali reached them. From the air she could make out a crossroads. The road met another road running east to west. They formed a strict right angle cross. Then Serali realized that the second road wasn't straight as the first. It seemed to curve. If the curve stays the same all the way, she though, it will form a circle a hundred miles across! There was something else odd about the second road. The dim light made it hard to tell exactly what, but as Serali dropped down to land on the far side of the road she realized what it was. On the north side there was nothing but the drop to the barren rock and sand. But on the south side the ground was level with the road and it was covered in clumps of tough grass.

Serali plopped down on the grass and curled in a ball. She fell asleep almost immediately. As the sun rose the next morning she looked at the mountains. They were tall, capped with traces of snow and cloaked with pine and aspen. Directly ahead of her the north-south road left its ruler-straight course and wound up the mountains to a pass between the peaks.

Serali launched herself into the air and flew toward the pass. As she drew nearer she noticed something odd about the mountainside above the pass. The rocks seemed to form two dragons, one on each side. At first Serali thought it was just a strange coincidence, but as she flew even closer it became obvious that somebody had carved two immense dragons into the mountain. They faced each other across the pass, a female mountain dragon on the right, a male mountain dragon on the left.

Serali landed in the pass and gazed up at the two immense forms. She took a few steps along the road and, distracted by the view above, tripped over something. She picked herself up and looked at what she'd fallen over. It was a skull, unmistakably that of a large dragon. Looking around she saw the rest of the skeleton. Then with a shock she realized that there were several skeletons in the pass. Grass and wildflowers wound around the bones, softening the stark white. A careful count revealed five skeletons. Bending over to get a closer look at the one she'd tripped over Serali noticed that the ground around it was littered with golden scales.

The skull itself bore a set of long horns that marked it as a male. It was the largest of the skeletons. Next to it lay another gold dragon, this one without horns. The bare white arms of the two reached toward each other, their claws locked together. The other three were scattered along the pass. On closer inspection they were revealed as a green a copper and a bronze, all males. Scattered here and there with the green, copper and bronze scales were several other colors, including a handful or coarse blood red scales tipped with gold.

Serali sat down in the middle of the pass, stunned by her discovery. How many gold dragons are there in the world? Not many, and these bones weren't old enough to be one of her distant ancestors from centuries past. There was only one possibility. These were her parents. Serali tried to imagine what had happened. What she'd heard of her birth made it plain that they had been fleeing something. So they'd gone across the desert, where no one would find them. Only someone did. The other three dragons, along with who knows how many more, had followed them here and attacked them. And the red scales… Only one dragon Serali know of had red and gold scales. Skrissish. She could think of no other solution to the riddle laid out here. Skrissish has come with his bullies and killed her parents.

She got up and walked to where the pass opened out and descended again. A green valley stretched before her. It was ringed by mountains and the ones on the far side were blue and dim in the distance. Near the center of the valley was a sparkling lake and the valley floor was covered in green grass and dotted with clumps of trees. It looked like paradise. Then she turned around and gazed at the skeleton strewn pass. Finding paradise hasn't saved her family. Staying here wouldn't solve any of her problems either. What was she supposed to do? Just fly home and continue like nothing had happened? Or head north and challenge Skrissish? All that would accomplish would be to get her killed. She sighed. At least now she knew that her parents hadn't abandoned her. And her human parents had given her a good enough life. But now her mother was dead too. Her father would die soon after, as dragons count years. And then what? Would she just watch as her brothers and sisters also grew old?

She stood in the pass and stared out at the green valley, thinking until the sun set. Still without any sense of conclusion she curled up near her parents' bare bones and slept. When the sun rose the next morning she awoke feeling refreshed. Apparently her mind had decided for her while she slept. With a final glance at the valley and the dragon bones, she leaped into the air and flew north.

Two days later she was following the road up to the base of the Great Escarpment. The cliff here wasn't sheer like it was below Land's End. Instead there were ledges and great broken places. The road led into a great rift in the cliff wall. The bottom of the narrow canyon that the road followed was dark and shadowed. The road twisted and turned to follow the meandering of a tiny stream that seemed to have carved out the cleft. It sloped steadily upward, crossing the trickle in places on bridges that seemed sized for a great flood. Serali could just barely fly along above the road and was in danger of clipping a wing against a stone wall. The canyon narrowed as it grew shallower and she was soon forced to fly high above the canyon walls. She followed it at last to where it emerged from the canyon, making a sharp right turn and then vanishing when it hit the side of a bluff. Looking around she realized that the bluff it had vanished into was the far western edge of the one that her own lair was dug into.

Mere minutes later she was at her own lair, hugging Kethro and settling back into her life. There was just one more thing she had to do before she settled down entirely. Taking human form she walked into town. Setting a brisk pace she headed straight for the inn. She walked into the dim front room. Her father was standing behind the bar pouring drinks.

"Papa, I need to talk to you."

"Serali! Where have you been?"

"Never mind that. I really need to talk to you outside."

Falio looked as if he was about to say something, then he shrugged and walked around the bar. "Certainly, daughter." Standing out in the street he stopped and asked, "What is all this about?"

"You remember what I wanted to tell Mama? She knew already, but I think everyone else ought to know too. I thought you might not love me if you found out, but that's silly, so…" she paused trying to think of how to say it. "I know it's kind of hard to believe Papa, but that gold dragon that lives outside of town? I'm her."

"What do you mean Serali?"

"Exactly what I said. I'm the dragon, the dragon is me. I always have been. Here, I'll show you."

She took a few steps back, glanced around to make sure no one was in the way, and shifted. Falio took an involuntary step back at the sudden appearance of a dragon in front of him. Bystanders jumped in surprise, and one inebriated man who'd followed Falio out of the inn fell over at the sight.

Serali stood quietly in the middle of the street as people gathered around, whispering the news that Serali and the dragon were one and the same. Falio reached out his hand, an expression of bemusement and wonder on his face, and touched Serali's lowered head, as if he thought she might not be solid.

"Serali… My own daughter…" he shook his head. "You were so beautiful before, but now! Ah… that I should have raised a dragon!" He laughed and smiled, and a tear trickled down his cheek.

"What a wonder!"

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