It was the dragons that had made the world, or so her mother told her. They had been lonely, up in the sky, with only the rain for company.

Below them had been only clouds, stretching away into forever. There was no end to those clouds, and any dragon who fell into them would drift alone, never to find their way back.

And so, the dragons had created the world. They had taken their magic and used it to Change clouds into sea, and they had used their bodies and Rot to turn themselves into land.

Pigsqueak had been a little upset at that, but her mother had assured her that it was ok. There had been a lot of dragons, and some of them had lived a very, very long time. Returning to earth had been like going to bed for them, a final rest at the end of a long day.

But, even with the seas and the earth below them, the Dragons had still been alone. The land was great and empty, and there was nobody there to tell the young dragons how to find their way back, so those that fell were still lost. The dragons above could see their children below, but they couldn't their call to come home. Some of the parents thought they were staying away out of wilfulness, so they made animals and monsters, to scare them back. When those didn't work, didn't encourage their children to return, they realised they didn't know how to get back, and all the dragons came together, and out of the earth they had formed humans.

"That's me!" shouted Pigsqueak, and her mother had smiled sadly at her, before continuing her tale.

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The humans told the dragons how to get home, and most of them left, but a few had been here too long, had grown up amongst the trees and had become friends with one another. They had become fond of the ground and had no desire to return to their parent's clutches, far above the clouds. To drift forever.

Those dragons, her mother had said, changed themselves to be human, but in doing so, they changed humans to be a little more dragon. And that's why you see people in the streets sometimes with scales or animal features, it's why people have skin of all different colours, because those were the colours of the dragons.

She had asked if there were real dragons out there still, hiding as people, but her mother had shaken her head. They changed themselves to be human, she said, and in doing so they were no longer dragons. Once they had Changed, like all humans, they one day had to return to earth.

Pigsqueak had been sad at this, but taken it all in with absolute faith, and despite her mother's assurances that none remained, had looked out for dragons whenever they travelled to the big town at the edges of summer.

Thinking back on it many years later, living under a different name and in a different part of the world, she considered that it might have all been a story fabricated by her mother, to help them both cope with her grandmother's death a few months prior.

The event had upset their family dynamics greatly, and within a few months, they had gone from a tightly knit family, to scattered remnants, communicating only by distance mail. Like those dragons cast to ground, with no humans to guide them, the death of her grandmother had shattered their family like a mirror, some fragments forever lost.

Still though, as she sat and drank her tea, the fire warming her feet and taking the evening chill out of the air, as she watched the silver-scaled monster circle overhead, and as she heard the welcoming cry of the great beast they kept on the other side of the circus. She smiled.

She had never stopped watching out for dragons.