Amelie scrambled her way down the path before her, eyes drinking in the yellow and white daisies scattered about the path. A gleam of golden light caught her, glinting brightly in the merry grass. She had found it! Father’s amulet. And now, never would he have it, nor have her. And all the power in North Reach, would not reach her, nor touch her. Made humble, they would be in her might.

She laughed a little then, her laugh high and bright and somehow nervous as it chittered away in the breeze that played with her hair and flung it about her mouth. No longer now could she hold her form, in this stinking world of men. She melted with a sigh, stretching tall; long and sinuous, rippling in the air as she transformed from dwarven peasant to dragon princess.

Her talon hooked the amulet, moonlight captured in the paw of her hand, she considered it curiously in the warm light of the morning day. It looked over so ordinary, laying sweetly, its powers wrapped in the sleep of many years. She wondered the, for a moment, whether she ought dare to rouse its fire, for surely, it was a different fire from hers, and what if she never were to tame it. It could tangle her round and have her caught, fixed within its web of moon and star-light.

Amelie looked closer at the engravings faded into the gold casing set around this tiny sleeping moon, and wondered if her name was listed somewhere in these ancient herioglyphics. She surely, it were her own ancestor what forged such a marvel as this, and perhaps this ancestor had the foresight to know it would one day arrive in her mischevious hands. Certain, was she, that the prophets spoke of her, herself, when they sung their bardsongs of a night.

“She rises, the queen on midnight wings

stretched fine between one kingdom and another twixt about,

her wingtips hands above the others

as they reach for the golden moon.

She falls, and her golden threads do wrap about,

all spun in fine silk to become the fiery sea yawning from deep depths.

She is come! And we seek her.

She is come, and yet she remain hidden.

She be seen and we all do despair,

for her way is secret, like the night.

And her mind is wandering sharp and watchful

not to be caught by the Dragons Nest.

We are of one voice with this song.

We are of one Vision.

The night breaking day has spoken.

Ahhhhh”

A soft sigh echoed through the crowd of listeners in her mind. She must be careful, she thought, to watch her thoughts and not direct them too closely to the throne. Her father might not know she was still alive and that suited her quite well for the moment. His spies had better sport than her, for mighty was the geas surrounding him, a tangle of promises made by ancestors reaching down through the ages to strangle his word and make him yet another figure-head. She would break this tradition and lay it aside, when the way was laid clear before her, but until then, she understood that her time was borrowed from the death-queen herself and that mindful, she must be, to stay hidden. Out here in the Farthest Reaches, she had a freedom of sorts but soon enough she would have to turn and retrace her steps in order to be closer the keystone crystal. Without the mother crystals hum, this pool of moonlight she held upon her talon would never awaken to bless her and claim her.

With a twist of her fore-arm, she swung the chain open over her snout and wriggled her way into her destiny. The pendant sat somehow warm and still so cool over her scale-armoured heart. Low rumble in her chest passed for laughter, rolling and tumbling down the path before her as she ambled her way down the mountains grassy path, suddenly pushing upwards with power, pushing the air down beneath spread wings to raise upon a wind that met her gladly. Lifting her high over old, disused farmlands with weathered, crumbling walls and forgotten thatch, she thought she heard a song. But whether delivered on the winds from memory within her of from a distance outside her, she could not say. Haunting it was. Deeply disturbing and yet fleeting and elusive like it were never there at all. She searched around her an echo of it sound but found nothing and turned her snout west towards the setting sun.