Amaru was disappointed, but unsurprised to learn that the mountain garden's custodian was not one of the few wise among her kind.

He frowned at the new plants that had been added. They were all so small that they weren't having much effect yet, but they were scattered completely randomly across the lines even though they were relatively evenly spaced around the cap stone. The only variation in their spacing was actually due to the position of the ones that he had replanted while he was here before, he realized after a moment.

Sarah saw where he was looking and admitted nervously, "I replanted some of the types of flowers."

"The type of plant is less important than its size and position," Amaru told the gardener disapprovingly.

"Replanted?" Anne asked.

"After it was torn up by…" Sarah hesitated in her explanation.

Amaru shrugged.

"What's wrong with their positions?" Chris asked curiously.

"I have explained this before, living things pull at the strings," Amaru replied. "The longer something lives in one place, the more its pull affects the position of the strings. The strings that pass through this garden are not currently well aligned with the heart, even though most of them are getting close enough to feed it a little power. The alignment has been straightened somewhat, but it will take time to grow to its full capacity again."

"The heart?" Sarah questioned nervously.

Amaru pointed at the cap stone and calmly explained to both humans and the child, "I suspect that the shaping of a heart is something that only those who can see the strings clearly can understand, but basically it stores the power that is carried by the strings into a condensed pool, rather like a battery."

"It's weird to hear you compare something to a battery," Chris commented with amusement, as he opened his true eyes to look at the stone.

Sarah glanced between the two dragons and gasped as she saw the way Chris' eyes had shifted to white. Amaru ignored her alarm, but Anne reached out and placed a hand on Chris' shoulder. Chris turned and raised an eyebrow, breaking Sarah's line of sight.

"Your eyes are scaring her," Anne explained.

Sarah straightened and protested uncomfortably, "I was just surprised!"

"Sorry about that, I was just trying to see," Chris explained to both girls.

"Can you see anything aside from a brighter glow?" Amaru asked Chris.

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"The carved rock isn't glowing, I think, the brighter area is underneath it," Chris told the older dragon seriously. "But… it smells very odd somehow?"

"It smells?" Anne asked.

She and Sarah both turned back to stare at the large stone, as though their eyes could enhance their ability to smell, and Sarah asked, "Is it the mums?"

"I don't think it's a plant," Chris replied uncertainly.

Amaru nodded. "You are correct. The cap stone isn't the heart, it is more like," he sorted through the new human words for things that had never existed before, and found the right one, "a speaker for the scent. It transmits the scent of the power to the surface, so that those who are unfamiliar with the area can find it easily."

"Shouldn't it be singing instead?" Chris questioned doubtfully. "I think I can hear a song humming quietly inside the core of the light?"

Amaru shook his head and explained, "You are hearing traces of the songs the strings carry, where some of their energy is escaping the heart because the flow is not completely aligned. If the cap were transmitting the songs it would always be leaking power in a very inefficient manner."

"Wouldn't making smells use power too?" Anne asked.

"Only a small amount," Amaru explained. "A very small scent can travel much farther than a very small sound."

Both of his students, and the gardener, stared at the rock doubtfully. Anne and Sarah sniffed deeply at the air, while Chris wrinkled his brow in thought.

"I just smell ordinary things, like pine trees, I think," Anne protested. "And how can you claim that making a rock create a smell isn't magic?"

"I kind of agree, unless the smell is from the rock slowly being dissolved by the power," Chris added.

Amaru frowned at them. "There is a complex pattern carved into the stone that shapes the energy of the strings into fragments. It is not magic, it is control of a natural force, like the human use of electricity."

"People thought that electricity was magic a few centuries ago," Chris pointed out.

Amaru could not decide if the statement meant to agree or disagree that the rock was not magical, but Sarah had another question, "Are the strings you keep mentioning something like ley lines?"

Chris and Anne both looked doubtful, and seemed startled when Amaru replied calmly, "Possibly, since the concept is supposed to be linked to the flow of the Earth's energies. However very few of the maps that I examined seem likely to match the strings of the world. On the other hand, some could be based on real locations, since the strings generally move more freely than the continents, although those bent by mountain ranges and such remain somewhat predictable."

"But there are strings or ley lines here?" Sarah questioned with an odd intensity.

"Yes," Amaru agreed.

He opened his true eyes to point one out, and when she saw them, Sarah freaked out. "D, d, dr…"

Amaru met her eyes, and she froze. A moment later, Chris stepped between them, physically breaking their gazes.

Sarah took two steps backwards, but froze again when Anne asked with interest, "How can you tell that he's a dragon just from seeing his eyes?"

Sarah looked at the carved stone at the center of her garden, but she couldn't speak well enough to explain.

"She's seen me before," Amaru explained calmly.

All three of them stared at him for a long moment, before Sarah recovered enough to complain, "I was trying to work my way up to asking what you knew about dragons, I never imagined that you were, were… how?" Her gaze turned toward Chris, who's eyes had gone pale earlier.

"How?" Amaru repeated the question blankly.

"He can change his shape, and yeah, they both are," Anne told Sarah.