As the night waxed the dragons harmonized, but Serali felt a sense of wrongness. There was something missing, something not right.

When a silver dragon standing not far away lifted her voice in a different melody, a kind of counterpoint, she realized what it was. All of the dragons were singing the same melody as the red dragon. They were echoing it in a kind of round that build up layers of harmony, and some of them were building chords around it, harmonizing further, but none of them were singing their own melodies. That wasn't how it ought to be! The knowledge of how things should have been was instinctive, she knew that there ought to be a counterpoint, many counterpoints, and there was only the single melody. And she had been singing it too. There was a kind of weight and pressure to the red's song that demanded she echo it. But she resisted, and managed to break off to follow the silver. She harmonized with the silver's new melody, following it but creating her own notes that blended with it. A few other voices joined her, but only a few.

Then the wrongness suddenly became so acute that Serali nearly felt it as a physical sensation. For even as the silver dragon sung counterpoint with all her heart, the red dragon changed his melody and nearly all the others followed him. Serali could feel it still, the force of his song demanding that she move to follow him. Even the song of the stones shifted to match the red's song. But the silver had not shifted with him, and for a few moments dissonance hung in the air, making Serali flatten her crest. The silver fell silent, and the handful of dragons that had followed her shifted back to match the red's song. Serali stopped singing. A few dragons around her glanced at her in surprise.

She listened for a long moment, then came back in. She was singing a counterpoint. She sat up straight and sang strongly, with a voice that she had practiced with and trained to fill a room while in human form. That practice, added to the prodigious lungs of her dragon form, allowed her to be heard across the whole bowl, over all the other dragons. With all her might and with all her energy she sang.

The red dragon heard her. He immediately shifted his singing. But Serali shifted her counterpoint with him, avoiding the jarring of dissonance. He shifted again, and again Serali moved with him. But now other dragons were falling out of the harmony, unable to follow the shifts. Many fell silent, other lingered for a moment in dissonance before shifting into harmony. But several began to follow Serali, first a few, then more and more. Voices swelled in harmony to her song, abandoning the sameness of the red dragon's singing to improvise around her tune. Then the silver dragon again sang, finding a third melody to weave in and out around the tunes that Serali and the red dragon sang. And still Serali matched every shift that the red could make, and the dragons that followed her were somehow able to move with her, the power of the song letting them sense the notes they needed to sing.

A few dragons now harmonized with the silver, then a few more. A fourth dragon somewhere lifted his voice in a new melody, and suddenly the bowl was filled with a complex song, branching into dozens of different parts that wove in around each other. Serali smiled as she sang, knowing that now the wrongness was gone and things were as they should be.

The red dragon stopped singing and glared at her. The song faltered for a moment in shock as all the dragons realized that he had stopped. Then it picked up again without him. The dragons sang until the first rays of sunrise began to light up the sky. One by one they dropped out again until Serali was singing alone. Then she stopped, letting the last note ring out and echo back from the distant peaks.

A few dragons began to leave in ones and twos, launching themselves into the sky and scattering in all directions. Some of the plains dragons made their way to where Serali stood.

"That was beautiful," said Drevass warmly. "Though... I know only a little of mountain dragon politics, but I suspect it was also dangerous as well. I don't know if you had intended to stay here in the mountains when we plains dragons left, but if you do... be careful. Skrissish can't do anything to you here and now, there are too many eyes watching, but I have heard rumors..." Drevass shook his head. "Perhaps they are just rumors, but perhaps they are not, and you are no match for him should he try to fight you."

Serali nodded soberly. The thought had occurred to her as well, particularly given the way the red had glared at her.