They soared through the air at such speed that Hawk’s face had gone numb in the first ten minutes.

They flew high above the sea that separated Avion from the mainland and after a dozen hours of being shaken around by the dragon’s tail, she finally began to see land again through her spinning vision.

Hawk had passed out a couple times from the fact that it was past the normal time for her to sleep, the effort it took her to keep her neck from bending at an unnatural angle, and partly from lack of air.

On one such occasion, she woke to the sudden plumet of the dragon carrying her into some dense fog.

She screamed and braced for impact, but before they hit any sort of ground, the dragon swept back up and landed on the ground safely.

Hawk had a quiet moment of thanks before she was thrown out of the dragon’s curled tail and onto the ground, which no doubt bruised her ribs.

“Where did you take me?” She groaned, trying to get her bearings as best she could, but her vision still spun.

“To a place you will never leave and never be harmed.” The dragon said with a puff of smoke from his nostrils. “Go meet your new village, and forget your old home. It is for the best.”

Hawk shouted at him to explain, but was promptly knocked back on her behind as he beat his wings once more and rose back into the air, leaving her alone in the lush field of grass.

Scowling, she picked herself back up again, and looked for the village that the dragon had mentioned before. She noticed it right away, as it was only just over the next low, grassy hill.

She walked towards the little stone houses with flower-boxes in the windows, and her feet found a well-paved road made with the smoothest cobbling she had ever seen. Everything was quaint, clean, and fairly quiet. Some children played in the field beyond with a large herd of sheep, teasing them and pulling on their wool to startle them.

Hawk felt a prickling at the back of her neck; she didn’t like this place. It was too quaint, too clean, too quiet.

“Never seen you around here before.” A woman’s voice startled Hawk out of her thoughts. She jumped up and yelped, spinning around as quickly as she could.

“Didn’t mean to startle you, dear.” A friendly-looking woman in her mid-forties wearing a prettily embroidered apron gave her a gap-toothed smile. “You must be very out of sorts, most questers are when they get brought here.”

“‘Quester’,” Hawk repeated, “What’s that?”

The woman looked surprised, then her expression warmed again, “Your name was spoken in a prophecy, dear, you were to go on a quest.” She clicked her tongue and shook her head, “The path of a quester is dangerous, you could have died young.”

She held her hand out for me to take, and hesitantly, I did.

“But now, you’re here with us. We only die of old age here, after living full, happy lives! Oh, you’ll love it here!”

She lead her to one of the sweet little houses that lined the village’s main road and took a freshly baked loaf of bread from the windowsill and wrapped it in an embroidered cheesecloth she pulled out of her pressed apron pocket.

She passed it to Hawk and said, “I’m Tilly, young lady. And you are?”

“Hawk.” She replied with a nod.

“Hawk,” Tilly sighed happily and patted Hawk’s hands that were now wrapped around the loaf of bread.

“Be a dear and take this to the shepherds on the hill to the east, just over there. They haven’t had lunch yet, and I’m sure it’s been a long journey for you too. Go and join them, and get to know each other. Welcome to Valiville.”

Hawk nodded, feeling awkward at the mix of kindness after sudden abduction. “I’ll go do that. Thanks, Tilly.”

The woman smiled and waved her off as Hawk trotted to the eastern hill to find the shepherds.

…

Hawk found the two shepherds sitting at the edge of a small copse of trees on a log, looking out over the flock feasting on the grass just a few yards away.

“Uh,” Hawk called out to them, “Hello, I’m Hawk, a… ‘quester’?” She ended the last part as a question, because she wasn’t too sure about how to use that term yet.

They looked to her in sudden interest and beckoned her to come sit with them.

She passed the bread out in torn chunks and they all began to eat greedily.

“My name is Norn,” The young man said with a smile that took over his whole sun-kissed face, “Welcome to Valiville!”

“Thanks?”

“And my name is Piper!” The blond girl added.

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“You sound uncertain about what you’re doing here.” Norn guessed.

Hawk nodded while looking at him and tore off another piece of bread with her teeth.

“You were meant to go on a quest, you see. A prophecy must have named you, so the dragon Neutrum took you away to spare you a horrible fate… or so they say.” Norn said with a dubious snap at the end.

Hawk got the feeling that he didn’t believe why he was here in the first place.

“Piper and I are the descendants of the questing people, many of us have never left this valley and seen the world beyond. There hasn’t been a new quester in… how long, Piper?”

“I don’t even have the foggiest idea, maybe about… five years before I was born?”

“How old are you?” asked Hawk.

“Fourteen, and Norn is fifteen.” She said, jerking a thumb over in Norn’s direction.

“Fifteen years, and I’ve never seen the outside of this valley. I’ve always wanted to see other lands.” Norn sighed, then looked up with the sparkle of curiosity in his eye,

“Can you tell us about the world outside?” He leaned close to Hawk until she fell off the log to avoid his face pressing too close to hers.

In embarrassment, Hawk settled herself to sit in the grass and looked away from Norn’s imploring gaze. She fished a stick out of the grass that had broken off of a nearby fallen tree.

“I don’t know much about the world: until now, I’d never been out of my country, either.” Hawk said sadly, picking at the ground with her new stick.

“Oh,” Norn scooted back to his original seat, sounding dejected.

Hawk attempted to salvage his mood by supplying what she knew about geography from her studies, “Well, I’m from Avion. That’s across the sea and surrounded on one side by the ocean, and the other, by a mountain range.”

Norn seemed to perk up a bit at her information, green eyes lifting to look at her again with curiosity.

“Namira, Rodania, and Badrin are all across the sea, near where we are, I think.”

Hawk remembered crossing the sea in the tail of the dragon the day before and seeing land stretch out for a while before landing here in the valley.

Norn looked excited again, “Can you draw it out?”

“What?” Hawk asked.

Norn tumped his hand against the log he sat on impatiently, “A map of the world, of course! With your stick!”

Hawk regarded the grass and began ripping chunks of it out to create a little patch of bare earth to draw in. Shakily, she attempted to draw the continents from memory, and labeled the countries one by one, starting with her home.

“This is the best I can do.”

Norn didn’t seem to care much about how good it was, he drank it all in. Piper peeked curiously over at the dirt-map and Hawk felt equal parts pride and discomfort with her level of education. She felt like mediocre might be a good way to describe her attention to schooling.

They nodded in thoughtfulness at her drawing, then Norn stood up with his hands on his hips.

“Well, we should move the sheep to the river to drink. You should go back into the village and meet all of the neighbors and find someone to live with.” He said, already walking down into the frey of sheep and whistling for their attention.

Hawk did not like the idea of living with strangers. She had lived in the same place all her life, with the same family, the same staff, since forever.

“Can I sleep outside?” She blurted out the question before she had intended to ask it.

Only Piper seemed to hear her, and she shrugged at my question, as if to say, ‘do what you want, no one will stop you.’

Hawk gave her an awkward smile and wave before walking back to the village from where she had originally come.

The idyllic town nestled in the valley below was almost too cute. The brick houses with puffing chimneys and flower boxes began to irritate Hawk as she tromped down the hill.

She had to get out of here, to get back...somehow. But she felt her body tiring. She had been gripping the dragon’s tail so tight the whole way, by her reckoning about a day of flight, and the sun was setting over the mountains.

Her stomach rumbled again. She had split the loaf with Norn and Piper, and it seemingly wasn’t enough. So, she found herself back in front of Tilly’s door, hesitating to knock.

Before she could move, however, the door opened, and Tilly’s kind face appeared.

“Thought you’d be back. You can stay if you’d like, have some supper, and sleep here tonight.”

Hawk meekly thanked her and went inside. There was a family seated at the table in the front room, a father and three little boys all happily digging into some mutton and fresh-baked rolls.

Tilly guided her to her seat, and she pulled up another white-painted chair for herself. They tucked thier chairs in and

“What are you wearing?” One of the boys tugged at her puffed shoulder sleeves.

“This is a gown, why?”

“Remember the old lady down the street? She was a duchess. She came here with a similar gown.” Tilly prompted her family.

“Ah, yes!” Tilly’s husband exclaimed, “Beauty, her name was.”

“Are you a duck-ess?” Asked the boy to her left.

Hawk shook her head, “No, I’m a princess.”

The room went quiet for a moment, the clinking of cutlery on plates stopped, then resumed.

“Here you are, dear.” Tilly said, smile returned to her face as she served Hawk some of the mutton and placed a roll on her plate.

“What is your name?” Tilly’s husband asked with a good-natured lookin his eyes and a smile behind his thick mustache.

“Hawk.” She said through a mouthful of roll. It was so good she missed the next question.

“Sorry?” She snapped back to the present and scanned the table for the person who had asked the question.

“I thought princesses were supposed to have good manners! Are you sure you are a princess?” The third boy asked, leaning over the table to scrutinize Hawk with a wrinkled nose.

“I am!” Hawk cried defensively.

“Pardon, Hawk, dear,” said Tilly, “We have not titles here in Valiville, so no one will be calling you by your title here.”

Hawk laughed, “No one at home does either.”

Tilly and her husband relaxed into their chairs and the meal continued with only a little pestering from the boys.

That night, Hawk settled down onto the rug, piled high with spare pillows and blankets.

“You comfortable?” Tilly asked, holding one more quilt.

Hawk nodded from the nest, “Fine, thank you.”

“Tomorrow you ought to go speak with Baz, he’s the newest of us.”

“The newest?”

“A Quester, not the descendant of one, just like you.”

Hawk snuggled into the blankets and ‘hmm’ed, falling very quickly to sleep.