Serali headed north-west. Janus had mentioned that there was a dragon community somewhere in the Ocean of Grass. Finding anything on that vast plain was a bit of a gamble, but that was still the best place to start. Janus had said goodbye when she left Land's End, telling her that she needed to go on on her own, and he had his own work to do. So she flew alone over the beautiful but desolate wastelands that bordered the country around Land's End. There huge canyons cut the surface, and high cliffs rose above tumbled expanses of multicolored stone. There were broad plains studded with outcrops of rock that looked eerily like twisted creatures. There was even a great sandstone arch, easily large enough to hold her weight, on which she alighted for a moment to consider a spectacular view of a particularly beautiful valley.

These lands were not devoid of life. Serali often saw hawks and eagles circling, or a group of large-eared and wide-eyed deer winding their way up the side of a seemingly impassable cliff. Once she even glimpsed a griffin soaring in the distance. There were rivers flowing at the bottom of the deep canyons, and springs often sent cascades of water tumbling down the sides of the high cliffs. It is a rule of nature that where there is water, there will be life.

But after only a few days Serali left those lands behind her. Now she flew over a nearly endless expanse of grass. The horizon stretched to infinity as she soared high over the almost perfectly featureless land. She had reached the Ocean of Grass, a plain that stretched without anything to break the level monotony for hundreds upon hundreds of miles. Only the direction of the sun as it rose and fell made navigation possible in this land. On a foggy day trying to travel would be purest folly since the undifferentiated expanse of grass gave no clues as to direction. But for the first few days the weather was clear and bright. On the third day the sky was thick with gathering clouds as Serali wended her way across the plains, but the glow of the sun showed clearly enough to guide her.

She was enjoying her flight, the feel of wind in her face, the glorious freedom of motion as she dipped and dived playfully. There was a storm coming. She could smell it in the wind. The clouds overhead spoke of it. Rain, lighting, thunder. She thought she could hear a distant rumble, indistinct and unsure across the miles. Tonight there would be a furious storm indeed. Serali loved storms. Her mother had told her that she had been born in the middle of one of the fiercest storms that she had ever seen. Perhaps that was a reason, perhaps not, but Serali found no greater thrill than riding on the lighting-filled winds of a storm as thunder crashed around her. She had been struck by lighting more times than she could count, but it seemed that in dragon form at least she took no harm from it. The feel of all that energy coursing over her skin was exhilarating.

She was jolted out of her thoughts by the impact of something that struck her from above like the lightning she so enjoyed. But this was much more solid, not to mention more painful. Serali tumbled from the sky and only just managed to get her wings spread enough to break her fall before she hit the ground. From down here it was evident that the plains were not quite as flat as they looked from above. Serali had landed in a dip between two small rises. Countless other such low hills surrounded her. She looked up but could not see whatever it was that had hit her. Perhaps it was behind one of the hills, or perhaps it was some creature of magic, and thus invisible.

Cautiously Serali climbed to the top of the nearest rise. Her muscles protested at the movement, the impact of the thing and her subsequent fall had left her bruised all over. From her new vantage point, Serali could indeed see her assailant, or rather, assailants, for there were three of them.

At the sight she let out an involuntary gasp of surprise. They were dragons.

They were slightly different from her, being smaller, and having short horns poking from the sides of their heads. They had no cresting or spine ridge, and small horse-like ears stood just below their horns.

At the noise from Serali, the trio turned her way and started up the hill. The largest of them, a somewhat stocky dragon who looked, in the grayish light of the cloud-shrouded day, to be a light blue-green, rushed up the hill ahead of his fellows and threw himself at Serali, yelling, "Hriksha lossithar! Vashli kav ssitha!"