Serali lay on her side in the town square while people walked all around her. It seemed like only yesterday that she'd first come here as a dragon, but counting back she realized it was more than ten years since the day she had walked into the center of the village to greet a fearful and uncertain group of humans who shied away from her timidly. Now they walked around her golden bulk without even thinking about it. Children would sometimes dare each other to jump over her huge tail, or even climb up it onto her back. She always held perfectly still when they did, she didn't want to cause any injuries.
But that was the least of the changes that had taken place during those years. Land's End was no longer the small, homogeneous, insular place it had once been. It was still, perhaps, quite small by the standards of cities, but you could no longer call it a village, it was a town now. And while the dark-skinned people who had founded the village long ago were still slightly in the majority, people of nearly every color and of nearly every race lived there now.
It had started with the smith. Not Breck, but Darielothras. Serali had been very confused when she'd first met him. He looked almost human, but his ears were long and pointed, quite obviously elven. And yet half elves tended to not have facial hair, and he had a rather impressive beard. His name was definitely elven. But elves are almost never smiths, and he introduced himself as "Darielothras the Smith." When Serali ventured to ask, he explained. He was indeed a half elf, but his other half was not human, it was dwarven. Dwarves generally don't approve of half-breeds, so his training had been in human-style smithing, he could get no dwarf to teach him. But he had learned from the best, and above all else he was an expert at the art of forging dragonsteel.
Which was what brought him to Land's End. He had noticed an increase in the always slender supply of dragon scale, and had traced it to the town. He wanted to set up his smithy at the source and export the things he made from there. "And," he had added, "any town where dragons are welcome is probably a town where an elf-dwarf won't be spit on." And he hadn't been. The villagers had, by and large, been very impressed by him. He made swords for kings! And he paid in gold and silver for the scales that they got from the dragons in trade or found sometimes around the town. They weren't going to object to his presence, and he and Breck had hit it off immediately.
Darielothras was only the first. Slowly others trickled in, and most of them said more or less the same thing. They were, in various ways, regarded as outsiders among humans, and had come to Land's End to see if a town that welcomed dragons would welcome them too. Half-breeds, largely, but also other oddities, like the young man whose eyes were two different colors, or the woman, hardly more than a girl really, who said her parents had thrown her out as a baby for having a strange birthmark on her face. They had all come, and though at first the villagers had been nearly as uneasy about the strangers as they had been about the dragons, Serali had said it to them often, and Jerda, having come very far from his childhood ways of thinking, had agreed. "You all have benefited from having a dragon here. These people are far less strange than I am. And having them here may benefit you as well." And between the two of them they had brought more or less all the villagers around to their way of thinking. And steadily more people trickled in, and the village grew, and soon nobody looked twice at someone with fair skin or pointed ears or blue eyes or any of the other countless differences among them.
More dragons had come too, though only a handful. All mountain dragons, they had fled Skrissish, and on learning that Serali, who some of them were beginning to regard as the rightful ruler of the dragons, was living among humans at Land's End they had braved the presence of a human village to come live near her. The broken land just north of the plateau where the cattle now grazed in great numbers held nearly a dozen of them, some alone and some living in mated pairs. They all insisted that they weren't living together, they weren't plains dragons! They just happened to have their lairs not too terribly far apart, that was all. Serali refrained from pointing out their faulty logic and welcomed them all.
They sometimes hunted, but they more often traded their scales to Serali, who was the owner of the herd, for cows they didn't have to hunt down. She in turn used them to pay the villagers who tended the cows, and to buy fodder for them during the winter, and gave a certain number of them to Jerda, as a sort of "putting up with dragons tax," for the benefit of the town. Already a proper town hall, which they'd never had before, had been raised using those funds, and Jerda got bright-eyed whenever he talked about the other possible improvements he could build.
Breck the blacksmith was standing by Serali's head as she lounged in the center of town. 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 landed and 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 wanted to know her mother was there if she needed her.
But now she was at the door and she had to face the worst of the consequences of being raised by humans, the fact that no matter how long her loved ones lived she would still outlive 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 sisters 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 would reject her if she told them she was a dragon. Of course they wouldn't! 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…" her voice was thin and weak, but still carried the warmth of her love. "I knew you were different when you were born. I was only a little surprised when I realized 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 own 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.
Serali walked out of the house. She wanted to be alone for a while. Without really thinking about it, she wandered out of the village along a trail she'd followed often as a child. She thought about her life as she walked along. Sometimes I wish I was just like everyone else. Then she sighed. But which everyone else wold I be like? Would it be better to have been born a dragon, or a normal human? What would it be like to have a normal childhood? But I don't really want to give up anything I have. To be only human, to never fly… No. And to be only a dragon, to not have my magic... to not know all the interesting and wonderful humans I've met? No again. Still, I can't help but wonder.
She stopped her wandering at the edge of the Great Escarpment. She shifted into dragon form and sat on the edge of the cliff, looking out into the desert. The air was crystal clear, with no hint of a breeze to lift the desert dust into the sky. The sand below stretched off into the distance. Serali looked at the horizon, a thin line separating sand and sky. She thought she could see a smudge at the farthest limits of vision. Most days it wasn't visible, and in human form it was much too faint for her eyes to catch, 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, heartsick and wanting a distraction from grief, she decided to make the trip today.
She launched herself off the cliff and circled around back to her lair.
"Serali!" Kethro was sunning himself in front of it when she came in and landed. He noticed her expression. "Is something wrong?"
She sat down next to him. "Yes. My mother... she's died. I always knew I would outlive her, and my father, and my siblings, and their children too, but... I'm not sure I'm ready to face it."
He put one arm around her and nuzzled her softly. "I'm sorry."
"I think I want to be alone, to go somewhere else for a while. I always meant to see what was at the center of the Circle Desert. Do you mind if I go?"
"No, I don't mind at all."
"I don't know how long it will take. At least a few days. But I'm sure you can manage things here without me for a while."
"Probably." He smiled. "You're better at dealing with touchy humans than I am, but I'll try." He hugged her again. She hugged him back, then rose and took to the air.
The sun was warm and a slight cool breeze had sprung up. It was spring, the best time of the year in the high desert. Not too cold, but not yet scorchingly hot as it would be in a few weeks. The spring weather never lasted very long. And once Serali was out over the circle desert the breeze warmed. Down there there was no water at all, and it never rained. The storms that sometimes rolled over Land's End never dropped so much as a single drop onto the lower desert. Nobody knew why, but it had always been that way. The gullies and dry washes might pour water down the cliffs when it rained above, but no rain ever actually fell in the whole barren expanse.
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 needing 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 smooth 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.
She slept again by the side of the road and flew on once the sun rose. For humans it would probably be best to cross the sands at night, but the heat didn't bother her, and she could go for a very long time without food and water if she must, and the hot air that rose from the sands made her flight utterly effortless. She let it lift her now, as high as it could, so far up that she felt the air begin to thin.
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 they 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 perfect right angle cross. Then Serali realized that the second road wasn't as perfectly straight as the first. It seemed to curve, though the curve was only just barely visible from where she hung high above it. If the curve stays the same all the way, she thought, it will form a circle a hundred miles or more 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 settled 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, though nothing compared to the mountains of the far north. They were 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. She landed between them and stared up at them. They gazed down at her, their heads carved so that they were looking at the highest point of the pass, where she now stood.
She was so distracted by the sight that she almost didn't notice the skeleton lying only a few yards further along. When she did she nearly jumped. It was unmistakably the skeleton of a dragon, one perhaps half again her size. The skull was crowned with horns, so it was probably a male mountain dragon. She stepped a little closer, and something crunched oddly under her foot. She looked down to see that the ground was littered with golden scales. Golden scales. It went through her like a shock. The skeleton wasn't old enough to be some distant ancestor of hers, the bones were bleached but not decomposed and hardly scattered at all. And then she saw the second skeleton, lying just beyond the first. She circled around to look at it. It was about the same size, though it bore no horns. The ground beneath it was also littered with gold and... the skeleton's bare white arm reached out to the first, which reached out as well, their claws locked together.
She sat down hard. There could be no other explanation. These were her parents. Pain and relief shocked through her together. They were dead, and she would never know them. But... they were dead. They had not abandoned her because they didn't want her, or because she wasn't good enough. If they had lived they might well have come back for her. Tears gathered in her eyes as she sat there between the two skulls.
Eventually she picked herself up and went a little further along the pass. She was a little startled to find a third skeleton only a bit beyond those of her parents. It was a male mountain dragon too, a little smaller but still much larger than she. The scales scattered around it were green. A few moment's inspection turned up two more skeletons, both also large male mountain dragons. One was a bronze, the other a copper. She inspected the ground, looking for any other clue to what had happened. There were scales all over the ground here. Most were golden, and of course many were green, copper and bronze, but she found here and there scales of other colors. Brass, blue, red and... she found one large red scale that was edged with gold. She hunted further and managed to turn up three more such. She would have to ask, but as far as she knew there were no other royal red dragons currently living. And even if there were, she was sure of the owner of those few scales. She had no doubt. She thought of her parents again, and of the story of her birth. They had been fleeing something, had come here hoping that they wouldn't be found, but they had been. Skrissish had come after them, with his bullies, and had killed them.
She stood there for a long time before continuing on. She flew out of the mountains and over rolling foothills. 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 road ran across the valley to end there on the shore. The valley floor was covered in green grass and dotted with clumps of trees. It looked like paradise. Then she turned her head and gazed at the skeleton strewn pass. Finding paradise hasn't saved her parents. 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. I suppose if I did that, then I wouldn't have to outlive my family. But somehow I don't think that's the best solution to that problem. There really isn't any solution to it. I can't stop them from aging, and I can't learn to age myself. I'm not sure I would if I could. I feel like there's so much I still need to do. Land's End is starting to become what I always dreamed of. Humans and dragons, living together, not hating or fearing each other. But it's small yet, so very small. Most of humanity and most of dragon kind don't even know about it. It will take a dragon's lifetime to try and change the whole world they way I want to change it.
She landed by the shore of the lake. The water was blue, and she saw a fish jump some distance out. She sat down and continued her thoughts. Changing the world... and I guess it's because of my parents, my dragon parents for making me human to save my life, my human parents for raising and loving me even though I wasn't really theirs, that I want to change it. I suppose that whatever I do will be their legacy. Even after they're all dead, that will live on. It may live on after I am gone as well. I suppose that's not really so bad. Most children lose their parents eventually. I've had many loving years with mine, and I know now that my dragon parents loved me too.
She slept that night by the shore of the lake. In the morning she woke, feeling refreshed. Sadness still lingered in her. It always would. But she had hope too. Hope for the future. Hope for her own future children, that they might be raised without hearing the word "monster."
She also woke with a sense of decision. If she really was going to unite dragon and human there was one great step she could take, one step she had been avoiding most of her life. She had put it off because she was afraid. Afraid of rejection. Afraid of that word, "monster." But... her mother had known all along. Had known... how long? Serali didn't know. But almost certainly for many years, and she had never shown Serali anything but love. And she had said that Serali would tell her father in her own time. It was time.
She set off back the way she had come, following the road. When the Great Escarpment loomed up before her she continued, curious about where the road would come out. The road led into a massive 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 ended in a tumble of stone. She was within only a few miles of Land's End, she recognized the western edge of the very same bluffs that her lair was dug into. And it seemed that a huge section of those bluffs had fallen some time long past and blocked the end of the canyon thoroughly. Which explained why nobody had ever found the road. From above it was hard to tell it was a road, and no one could get down into the canyon to see with the upper end blocked as it was. She shrugged and wheeled around to the east.
Mere minutes later she was at her own lair, hugging Kethro and trying to settle 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?"
"I'll explain. But I need to talk to you outside, please."
Falio looked as if he was about to say something, then he shrugged and walked around the bar. "Certainly." Standing out in the square 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 was afraid 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?" He was puzzled, his daughter and the dragon so far apart in his mind that the very idea of them being one and the same was confusing.
"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?" he asked.
"Yes Papa. It's me."
"My Serali... I never dreamed such a thing! How is it possible?"
She smiled softly at him, not showing her teeth. "I can tell you the whole story. I have been hiding it for so long, it is a relief to be able to tell you at last. I wish I had long ago."
As she told her father her story, and as her siblings and their children, and others from the village gathered around, she felt finally that she really was home. For so long she'd looked for a place where she belonged, but she realized now why she'd never found one. She belonged to both worlds. She couldn't belong among humans when she was pretending she wasn't a dragon, but she couldn't belong among dragons either, pretending she wasn't at all human. She was both, and now, in this place that had always been home, she had made for herself what she had always needed without knowing it, a place where she could be both, without secrets, without pretense.
She was home.
The End