Unlike the slow passage through autumn towards winter, the arrival of spring upon the steppe comes as a rushing, raging, torrent. Nakiet brings forth the warmth of the sun and the cold blanket of snow, laid upon the ground for many months, melts away as the dominion of Ukit surrenders primacy with great swiftness. Within mere days the white mass vanishes from the land. In the same interval it rushes across the surface and beneath the soil to fill surging rivers and birth streams in dry washes. Ice cracks from below, and huge blocks are wrenched loose and carried south and east, flowing across the grasslands. The Great Gorge transforms into a lake, and flooding covers vast low-lying expanses of land until the surplus deluge finds paths to drain away thereafter as the warmth deepens.
After the snow surrenders there is a brief pause where mud and dead grass untouched from the year before are all that exists upon the steppe, but green shoots poke through the debris swiftly as the waters recede and shrubs send forth their leaves to drink in the growing brightness of rapidly lengthening days. Tippipaku shivers, wakes, and extends growth in the clear knowledge that the season of plenty to come will not last long and every day must be utilized. Animals too, know this truth. Birds return, filling the skies with their mating calls. The frogs join them shortly after, as soon as the ice clears away from atop pond and marsh. Calving proliferates across the steppe, a wave of birth that moves north day by day and fills the vast herds of the land with fresh faces.
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It is a bright time, and peaceful, for the coming of spring impels the peoples of the steppe to a rush of swarming, surging labor. Every hand is turned to work as the precious days of growth and bounty cannot be neglected. None go to war, save perhaps the wolves, but even they find sufficient sustenance to eat their fill from among the mass of calves who fail to survive their first hours.
The turn from white to brown to green is truly dramatic in such a wide and open landscape. None can miss the changing patterns. Yet subtle tension undergirds it all. The summer, and the fearsome heat unleashed by endless sunny days, is not far away. All scramble to gather what they can from this rush of prosperity before being forced into a state of endurance once more. Whether it be calving, planting, or any other need, all were exerted to their utmost.
No exception was made for the Dragon Expedition. Now in its second year of activity, all were gathered together and assembled for departure as soon as the mud had dried sufficiently to render trails usable. The dragon waited to the north, but none believed it would be there forever. Time could not be wasted.