After an hour or so of plucking strings, Serali put the lute away, her fingers sore, but her face smiling. Going back downstairs, she found the house empty, her family all at work or play elsewhere. She decided to finish this fine day by going to see Breck. After an uneventful trip through the warm, dusty streets of town, she reached Breck's forge. The big man was hard at work, hammering on a plow share for one of the farmers.

Serali came into the building and sat down in her usual corner. Breck continued hammering without acknowledging her entrance. She waited patiently while he finished with the plough. After it was done, he looked over at her with a grin.

"Are you enjoying yourself, child?"

"Yes," she said though her enthusiasm had been a bit tempered by memory. Patren had called her "child" too.

"Well, I should do my part to help you enjoy your day," he said with a smile.

Serali looked at him quizzically, wondering what he had in mind.

"Wait here a moment," he said. "I have something to show you." He walked through the door that connected the forge to the rest of his house. Serali waited, her excitement and curiosity building up her impatience to an almost intolerable level. Just when she thought that if she had to wait a moment more she would burst, Breck came back through he door, holding a small object that was almost lost in his huge hand. He handed it to her wordlessly. She took it form his hand and examined it. It was a tiny wooden box, carved all over in a pattern of trees and mountains. It had a hinged lid and when she opened it, there was a pendent, perhaps an inch in diameter, made of tin and bronze and iron. The pendant was in the form of an iron circle, divided in half by a curving "s" that was also made of iron. The two, tadpole-shaped halves thus created each held a delicately molded form, one side in reddish copper, the other in silvery tin. Curled together in exact mirror images of each other, a pair of dragons nested, one in each half of the pendant. Serali was stunned. The pendant was, with the exception of her bracelet, the most beautiful thing she had ever even seen, much less dreamed of owning.

"Did you make this?" She queried Breck, surprise showing plainly in her voice.

"Aye, that I did, child. I wasn't always a village blacksmith, you know, and I still remember a few of my old skills form my city days. I've been wanting to do a little fine work, to keep my hand in, and when the idea for this design came to me, I knew who I should gift it to."

"What is it?" she asked.

"It's a Korental luck-charm, or at least that's what it was designed after." he explained. "Folk form Korent think dragon are lucky. I made this little charm after the traditional pattern, only I used the mountain dragons we sometimes see around this country for the models, instead of the snake-dragons that you're likely to find around Korent." He began to get carried away in talking about his work, like he always did when she asked him about it, but she didn't mind. "See this one," he said, pointing at the silver dragon, "is a male mountain dragon, you can tell by the horns and the spikes all over his head, and this one here, that's the female. The two sides stand for all opposing forces. . ." He continued the explanation, but Serali didn't hear the rest of it.

So, that's why I didn't look like the dragons in the stories, she was thinking. It's because they were all boys. What a simple explanation. She looked at the pendant, examining the copper dragon in detail. Yes, there was the same fin-like crest, the same smooth belly, all the same. How amazing! I really did turn into a dragon. A mountain dragon, he said. I need to learn everything that I can about mountain dragons. Her musing was brought to a halt when she realized that Breck had finished his explanation and was looking at her with an amused expression on his face."You haven't heard a word of what I just said, have you?"

"Sorry," she blushed, "I was thinking about something."

"Well, I'll leave you to it then. I need to get back to work on this thing." He gestured toward the plow on the forge. "Otherwise I'll never get it done." But Serali was already back in her own world, thinking.

A great many things have happened today. I've become a year older. I've met a real villain, like in stories, and killed him. I have been given so many amazing gifts, and the gift of flight is the best of them. But I don't know what it really means. I can become a dragon, but I feel like the same person I always have been. How can so much change around me, how can things be so different without making me into a different person? And what am I anyway? I felt so whole, so complete as a dragon, does that mean I am really a dragon accidentally born human? But how can you accidentally be born in another shape? I am human, my parents are human, how can I be a dragon when I feel so ordinary?

She sighed, a huge breath that whistled out of her lungs and was lost, the only trace of it a stirring in the dust that hung suspended in the air. I guess I may never know the truth. Unless someday I find my parents, but... No. I can't live my whole life waiting for that someday. I have to live with what I have. So I guess it doesn't matter if I'm really a dragon or not, so long as I can turn into one and fly.

Serali walked out of the forge, waving a silent farewell to Breck, and headed home into the reddening twilight as the sun sank below the horizon. Her life had been ordinary, and she felt ordinary, but she also had a suspicion that things might get much more interesting in the future.