Alika trudged across grasses while the first rays of morning lit up behind her, lighting up the ridge as they climbed. Snow’s tails twirled mesmerizingly as she trotted ahead of the two dragons. How annoying having three of them must be — Alika often wondered how Snow wasn’t constantly tripping over them!

True to her word, the fox hadn’t made any moves at betrayal, and Alika was almost even appreciating having her along. She’d provided a nice distraction for Tarka, and just like him, never seemed to get tired of chatting. Unlike Tarka, however, Snow knew when to quit: Alika didn’t have to worry about late-night attempts to get her to tell stories from her, and having a second voice of (occasional) reason around was pleasant.

Her magic had come in use as well. It turned out that being disguised as a rock made hunting almost trivially easy, so much so that Alika had to ask Snow to stop. She was afraid that she and Tarka could become too reliant on the fox’s magic, and if something ever happened to Snow (or Snow betrayed them), they’d be left unable to hunt for themselves. She’d guided them north and had also managed to get them out of a few tricky situations — not long after leaving the forest, they’d passed through the territory of what Snow termed a ‘three-horned bear’, which Alika had thought looked more like a large, bipedal dragon. Extremely aggressive, they’d only managed to avoid its ire by Snow disguising herself as a short, rotund creature made of snow, supposedly the ‘bear’s’ only natural predator. Fortunately, they’d met none of the latter species.

All in all, having Snow around made their journey almost easy, and Alika had to admit (very begrudgingly) that Tarka had been right. Snow was now a valuable member of ‘the pack’, as Tarka had begun calling it. Still, Alika kept an eye on her. Though nothing Snow had done had indicated that she meant Alika any harm, Alika wouldn’t forget how Snow had tricked and tried to trap her when they’d first met. If she had any harmful motivations hidden in her fur, Alika would be ready for them.

“Alika, I’m hungry,” Tarka groaned, dragging his steps as he climbed after Alika.

“Didn’t we just catch lemmings before setting off?” Alika asked. “I told you that you should’ve eaten more, or else you’d get hungry. We’re not stopping to hunt again until midday.”

“All we’ve had is lemmings for, like, the entire last quarter-season!” Tarka complained. “They’re tiny and I can barely taste the meat and the bones hurt my throat. I want something other than lemmings! Where did all the big prey go? We haven’t seen any in forever!”

“Hey, don’t diss lemmings.” Snow whipped around with a nimbleness that neither of the dragons had, her tails splaying out like a fan above her back. “Lemmings are great! I don’t know what you’re complaining about.”

For once, Alika had a bit of sympathy for Tarka’s situation. “He’s going through a growth spurt,” she explained to Snow. “I got one before I got my flame as well.”

“I am?” Tarka began thumping his tail on the ground, his eyes lighting up. “You mean I’m gonna get my flame soon?” He opened up his jaws, straining and squinting as he tried squeezing the muscles in his throat and chest. Wisps of smoke began to flow from his nostrils, climbing into the air and getting swept away by the wind.

“Hey, keep it down,” Snow warned him. “Well, if you’re about to get our flame, you’re in luck — we’ll be able to catch a ton of delicious, fatty, oily fish soon enough.”

“Fish?” Tarka cocked his head. “I don’t see any water.”

Snow winked, leaping from rock to rock and landing on the crest of the ledge. She tilted her snout up, gesturing to the two dragons to look over.

With a heave, Alika dug her talons into the ground and lifted herself to the top of the ledge. Trees dotted the side of a wide valley beyond it, broken in two by an azure expanse of calm water beneath. The inlet snaked north and south along the winding fjord, cradled between the steep ledges on either side. Small chunks of ice, the first signs of winter, floated down it from the south, gently bumping each other while they slowly melted.

“The path is pretty obvious from here,” Snow said, trotting along the ridge, perilously close to sliding down the slope. “All we have to do is follow the fjord, and we’ll reach the sea in no time. Past the shores? You’re on your own. I mean, not on your own on your own. Just that I don’t know how to get y’all across the ocean. I’ll still be going along with you, of course.” She paused for a moment, twirling her tails before looking at Alika. “Right?”

“Of course!” Tarka said. “Land or sea, you’re part of the pack!”

Snow stared almost pleadingly, as if she’d been holding in this question for a hundred seasons.

“You can stay,” Alika said. Snow had been helpful, though Alika was also worried about what Snow would do if Alika told her that she had to leave when they reached the ocean. ‘Accidentally’ lead them in the wrong direction? Figure out a way to delay their travels indefinitely? Eventually, the dragons would find their real pack, and Alika would have to confront Snow, but that was a future problem. For now, Alika saw no advantage in telling Snow to leave.

“Great!” Snow replied. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but last I remember, the inlet was teeming with fish.”

“And if we have easy-to-catch food, we should be able to make double time.” Alika wasn’t quite so worried anymore about the quickly approaching winter — getting meals had gotten easy, and Snow had explained that the winters were a lot milder this far north.

“Double time?” Tarka let out a loud groan, dramatically collapsing onto his stomach. “But I’m so tired! Alika, I can’t walk any longer!”

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Ignoring his complaints, Alika stepped to the top of the ridge, scanning for a gentle path down the slope. She took a few cautious steps downward, tail-first, checking how loose the soil was.

“Hey, wait!” Snow shouted, nipping one of Alika’s ears and trying to pull her back up by it.

Alika bared her teeth, showing off a mawful of fangs to Snow. “Get off.”

“Look!” Snow took one of her tails and pointed it down the fjord.

Alika followed Snow’s tail to a point further north along the fjord’s banks. Wisps of smoke rose up from a collection of wooden structures, nestled together at the base of the slope and lining the water. Rectangular planks of flat wood jutted out into the water, while a few elongated pieces of wood floated next to it, with what looked like leafless trees jutting up out of them. A few more of the odd elongated pieces bobbed up and down in the center of the water, but these ones’ trees had one huge leaf each, flapping in the wind.

“Ruins?” Alika asked, squinting as she stared at them. “So what?”

“They’re not ruins,” Snow said. “Look closer. There are humans in them.”

Alika squinted at the wooden blocks. Sure enough, there was movement all around them. Strange animals on two legs walked in and out of the blocks, many carrying things in their forepaws. Fur covered their bodies, but their faces were pale and snoutless. They reminded Alika a bit of the snow monkeys that had attacked Tarka, except taller, more upright, and tailless.

“There are humans in the ruins?” Alika cocked her head. “Mom always said that humans didn’t have fur.”

“Well, no, they’re not ruins if they have humans living in them,” Snow replied with a hint of exasperation on her tongue. “But yes, there are humans. They don’t actually have fur. I mean, these ones do, but it’s not theirs — they wear the fur of other animals to keep warm.”

“Ew.” Alika stuck her tongue out.

“Humans???” Tarka squealed. His energy seemed to have returned, and he scrambled up the ledge, getting on his hindlegs and looking down the fjord. “Where? I don’t see them! Alika, tell me where!”

“Down there,” Alika said, pointing a talon at the not-ruins. “In their dens.”

“Nigel’s eyes, they’re actually real humans!” Tarka shouted, his tail thumping rapidly on the ground. “I’ve always wanted to meet a human! Alika, we can ask them about all the funny human things they do! Like, why do they build their dens above the ground instead of under the ground? And how do they walk on two legs and not have a tail without falling over? C’mon, let’s go say hello!”

Before Tarka could rush down the side of the fjord, Alika pinned his tail down with a paw. “Tarka, wait. We can’t just go down there. They could be dangerous.”

“Your sister is right,” Snow stated. “They are. The humans here aren’t used to dragons, and they’d probably attack on sight. You wanna know why all the big prey is gone around here? Humans.”

“You mean like those mammoths did?” Tarka asked. “But we weren’t even going to hunt them! Humans are supposed to be smart, so we could just tell them we’re here to make friends and won’t eat any of them.”

“More like snow monkeys,” Alika murmured, watching a human get off the floating wood, carrying a huge net of fish with him. “Tarka, do you remember what Mom told us about humans?”

“Um.” Tarka’s ears twitched. “Not really.”

“While a human on their own can be dealt with fangs or words, humans live in huge packs of packs that are as deadly as many dragons. If something goes wrong, we could be in big trouble.”

“Serka was wise,” Snow commented. “There will be more settlements the further north we go. While I’m normally all for messing with them, the two of you aren’t quite so charming, with your fangs and claws so large and sharp, and your tragic lack of magical abilities. We should stay clear of any humans, and only walk at night from here on until we get to the sea.”

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Tarka groaned, clicking his tongue. “Hey, what’s that? It’s like a ruin and a tree, but it floats.”

“I was wondering that too,” Alika said, staring at it. There were quite a few of them in the water, and now that she was looking closely, she could see that there was at least one human in each one with the huge white leaf on the tree. A few smaller ones without the trees in the middle were out on the water, and there were even a couple with two trees. “What are they, Snow?”

“The canoes?” Snow replied. “Oh, they’re just boats.”

Alika stared at her blankly.

Snow let out an exhale of breath, creating a white cloud around her snout. “So, humans get cold a lot quicker than dragons, right? No fur, none of your weird internal heat source. Well, it means that they’d freeze if they swam, but they still like fish, so they use boats to get out on the water, as well as get up and down the fjord faster.”

“I want to try one!” Tarka exclaimed. “Please? We could go faster if we were on a boat, and we wouldn’t have to walk anymore! We could fish from it too!”

Snow chuckled awkwardly. “Tarka, sorry, but that’s a terrible idea. We can’t just get on a boat. Right, Alika?”

Alika stared at the canoes. One of the humans was letting loose the white leaf. The wind seemed to work with the current, pushing the boat downstream.

“Alika? Right, Alika? Right?” Snow twirled her tails.

“Snow, do you think a dragon could move one of those?” Alika asked.

Snow’s ears lowered. “Oh, no. You cannot actually be considering this.”

“We need to cross the ocean somehow, and it seems good enough for the humans,” Alika replied. She lifted her paw from Tarka’s tail as it began thumping once more. “Unless you have any other tricks on you, of course. Can you walk on water or freeze the oceans?”

“Not yet,” Snow admitted, “but we can’t just make one of those ourselves. It’s not that easy.”

“Then we’ll just have to steal one,” Alika said.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Snow put her cream snout down to the ground, and covered it with her paws. “Remember how we were just talking about how dangerous humans are? If they see a dragon stealing one of their boats, they won’t be nice about it. See, even though they don’t have fire or claws, they have these long sharp things called spears they can throw from afar. Do you want to be skewered through your neck? I bet you don’t, right?”

“Maybe they don’t have to see a dragon. Don’t you have some sort of shapeshifting illusion thing?”

Snow dug her claws deeper into her fur. “On my tails, you’re serious about this.”

“Deadly serious,” Alika said. Maybe having Snow around was making her overconfident, but this could be the passage across the ocean they’d been looking for. What other option did they have? Swimming across?

“I believe in you, Snow!” Tarka said. “Your magic is so cool, you can definitely steal us a boat!”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Snow grumbled. “Fine. Since it’s two against one, and my paws are getting tired, I’ll entertain this foolish idea. But when something goes wrong, it’s on you.”

“Deal,” Alika said. “Now explain what you can do.”