Gudrun lingered on that blissful place between waking and sleeping after a long night’s rest when the awareness plays on the edges of the dreamscape. There, barriers between the real and imagined are thin. The deep rumble of Siegyrd’s thoughtful breathing made coins clink and the air hum. His exhale filled the whole cavern with frost lily scent that Gudrun had grown to love. She had snuck out of her chambers in the night to sleep in the gallery near him for fear of loneliness.

  “Hhmmm” another humming breath made the crystalline floor structures vibrate beneath Gudrun, and in her dream she felt the floor quake and muttered something inaudible under her shallow breaths.

  “Ahem” Siegyrd cleared his throat, and the low vibrations became a quick, jerky shake and Gudrun sat straight up.

  “Father!” Gudrun’s eyes were wide and limned with crystal tears.

  “What was your dream, daughter of snow?” Siegyrd’s oceanic voice was ineffably gentle.

  Gudrun blinked, and a pair of tears streaked down her face, one from each eye, “I…” She paused and reached a hand wonderingly to her face to touch the tears, “don’t know.”

  “Hmmm.” Siegyrd hummed again. “As you say, daughter of would-be winds.” He laughed, or what Gudrun learned was a laugh, deep and quaking through the cavern.

  She wiped away the tears and smiled, “You could make me daughter of winds. You carried me once, and so I flew.”

  “Oh hum, I could. I could.” He breathed out again, but this time shaped his giant maw to blow a ring of the frost lily icesmoke towards her, “But why should I, little daughter?”

  She stood up from beneath her furs, and her hair fell in tousled drapes around her shoulders and down her back. She wore a nightgown of warm velvet and fur lined slippers on her feet. She walked toward the dragon’s pile, climbed up the treasure pile and hugged the dragon’s giant nose. A shock of cold went through her where her skin touched his, but she held closer anyway and spoke, “Because it would make me happy.”

  “Always happy, happy, with you humans.” He spoke out of the side of his mouth. He twitched his nose which forced her to move away, and then he sighed again sending a blast of cold breath.

  “What’s wrong with happy?” Gudrun crossed her arm and stared into one of the dragon’s giant eyes.

  His small chuckle almost shook her off her feet as the treasure shifted beneath her. She caught herself on the side of his long snout, and then there was nothing next to her. As the air gave way under her hand where the dragon once was. Siegyrd, in human form, caught her other hand and pulled her into a standing position in front of him. As a human he was of medium height, maybe a hand taller than she was. He carried himself with a regal bearing much larger than his stature, though. She tilted her head upward to look into his silvered eyes.

  Siegyrd spoke, “So, you wish to be a daughter of the winds. Perhaps we can make it so, as a gift before I have to depart for a short while. There must be rules, however.”

  “What rules could possibly be needed? You will carry me. I cannot escape you.”

  “The rules are simple: First, stay within sight, which is quite far amidst the clouds you could imagine.”

  Gudrun tilted her head slightly and furrowed her brow, “But…”

  “Second, be careful of the ravens. The eagles will not bother you, but ravens are the tricksters of the skies.”

  Gudrun’s brow furrowed, and her head tilted as Siegyrd continued speaking while walking out toward the cave’s exit.

  “Third, wear your warmest garments, the high winds are heavy with the truest essence of the cold. Which I much enjoy.” He breathed in deeply through his nose and smiled broadly.

  “Siegyrd, what are you talking about?” Gudrun said, still standing on the pile of treasures.

  Siegyrd stood at the exit of the cavern and looked backward. He raised his voice a little to carry across the space and said, “You haven’t yet followed rule three. Make it quick, and I will tell you the final rule outside.” He stepped out through the mist at the cave’s entrance and was gone.

  Gudrun’s confusion stayed her for a moment, but she gathered all her warmest clothing and selected what she liked best. She layered up, and fitted everything snugly. Her heart beat fast, and she trembled as she walked toward the exit, but not from the cold.

  #

  She stepped out onto the ledge where Siegyrd stood in his dark black trousers only, bare silver scaled skin open to the elements. The winds were a gentle breeze of frost, and the dawning light cast long shadows between the peaks and valleys. Where the sunlight struck the brilliant white there were flashes like glittering diamonds dancing in the deeps below them. Puffs of cloud drifted above and below and around the peak on which they stood backdropped by a glowing sapphire sky touched with hints of yellow-gold. Gudrun’s breath caught for awe.

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  “Rule four,” Siegyrd said, as he smiled at her, “enjoy the bliss of the skies, and thank the great maker of all things.”

  “Siegyrd, will you carry me?”

  “In a sense.” He put out his left hand toward her as he stood on the very edge of the precipice. “Take my hand.”

  Months she had been with him, yet still she hesitated. That hesitation made his face fall, the slightest flicker of sadness, a drop of sorrow in a beautiful morning made for joy. Yet, somehow the joy increased all the more in Gudrun’s heart, and she reached out and grasped his hand. He pulled her hard and leaped backward off the cliff. She tried to lean back, but his strength, his weight, was a mountain. She closed her eyes as she went careening over the edge and felt the wind rush up to howl terror in her ears and sting her face.

  His grip was icy and firm, but she dared not release. Yet they were falling. She could not see that they were falling, and she dared not open her eyes to see. Her blood was all fear, her mind all blank fear. Everything was a mad scramble, but she heard his voice in her head. Breathe out hard, and then open your eyes. She forced the air out of her lungs and felt the sky refill her lungs in a fraction of a second, and then she opened her eyes. They were indeed falling, her hand in his, though he was falling back toward the ground looking up at her lazily. The cliff face darted past them, and her whole body felt strange in the resistance non-resistance of air. The only thing that kept her steady was her hand in his. She felt a strange burning sensation in her hand, and then in both hands, and across her chest and back. Open your wings. She heard his voice in her head.

  She tried to shout against the onrush of wind, the terror of the rising earth widening her eyes. “I have no wings!” Siegyrd’s grip ripped from her, and he twisted away. She began to tumble head over heel over ankle over shoulder through the sky. Open your wings, daughter of would-be winds.

  “I DON’T HAVE WINGS.” She shouted in her terror.

  Have you not? Hmm. Embrace the sky.

  Gudrun’s mind went blank, her terror reaching proportions she had not known, but she tried to obey. She threw her arms outward, and arched her back as if to embrace the sky. She felt a strong tug upon her shoulders and back and suddenly the sound of the rushing wind stopped. Everything was quiet, still, and she looked below her in wonder, then looked at the hand which had held Siegyrd’s moments before. It was gone. Her arms were wings with great plumed feathers of beautiful rainbow raiment edged with downy white. She hovered on a current of air which played between her plumes, and everything felt buoyant and light. She looked around for Siegyrd remembering his first rule, and then looked up where he seemed simply to be standing upon the sky, his arms crossed and his smile broad.

  “It is not polite to lie, daughter of the winds. Such beautiful wings as yours should not be denied.”

  “I will never doubt again.”

  His laughter was loud against the rocky cliff face nearby and reverberated into her soul. “Not polite. Now, shall we fly, infant daughter of the winds?”

  He stepped off what seemed an invisible ledge and transformed himself in midair into his dragon form, rocketing past her like a colossal arrow, nose to the earth, and spun like a child’s top as he did. He flattened his stomach facing the cliff wall and opened wide his wings to catch the air and pulled up in a smooth arc as he skimmed the ground beneath him, lightly pressing his giant claws through the thick stacks of soft snow sending sprays of white in his wake.

  Gudrun flapped her wings once and felt them grasp the air and send her upward, and then she turned her body forward and flexed her wings backward as if to push off the wall. She shot away from the cliff with such speed she held her breath and then leaned back, trying to stop herself. Her wings sensed her hesitation, and she slowed and then lost her grip upon the sky. She began tumbling backward. She was far enough from the cliff that she had no danger of striking it, but her wings felt useless to her as she began to fall again. Then she remembered what she just saw, and she tucked her wings next to her body and faced straight down at the rising earth, arched her back once she had gained speed and then tried again to embrace the sky. As her wings spread, she caught the air again and felt its solid flows beneath her. Her smile ached across her cheeks, and she looked forward toward where the strange dragon was twirling and whirling in the morning sky like a gargantuan airborne puppy. Her fear fled, and she flew to him. As she drew near, he steadied his play and leveled his flight. She tucked herself beneath the shadow of his wing, and they flew together to welcome the rising sun.

  #

  Siegyrd and Gudrun strode back across the long courtyard leading to the cavern’s entrance. Gudrun stared at her arms as, with a rippling wave of power, the feathers burned away and revealed her natural hands. The joy of the sky was written all over her face in the light of a high, pale moon.

  “Have I always had this power?” Gudrun wondered aloud.

  Siegyrd laughed, and replied, “No power is ours.” As he entered the mist at the entrance and disappeared.

  Gudrun paused and looked back out over the courtyard to the edge. She leaned that way, eyes looking out over the vast evening sky. She sighed, and turned to enter the cave.

  #

  “Not a quest a RE quest.” A tall, ancient man, lanky and ill-dressed to make a scarecrow jealous stood in the Dragon's gallery absent-mindedly stroking a nearby shelf like it was a dog.

  “What, he’s already done it?” An equally ancient man, though shorter and a little stockier than a skeleton replied as he sat cross-legged on the floor in a dust brown burlap robe gnawing on a small chunk of carrot.

  “Of course not, E. Else we wouldn’t be here.”

  Siegyrd stood just inside the entrance his arms crossed and a wary smile plastered on his human face, eyebrow raised.

  “We’re here? Why didn’t you say so, E?”

  “I’m V.”

  “What?”

  “Nevermind he’s here. Old Frosty.”

  “Sounds delicious.” The man on the floor looked up and caught Gudrun’s eyes. His jaw dropped, carrot lolling out and rolling into his lap.

  Gudrun looked back and forth between the two strange men and then to Siegyrd whose back was turned half toward her. She moved closer, shielding herself behind him.

  “Brothers Yovel,” Siegyrd’s voice was the depth of his draconic form, though he remained human, “What brings you?”

  “He remembers!” E and V spoke in almost unison. Both stood up stock straight, the taller fixing his stringy beard, and the shorter man rubbing his half a head of hair to one side.

  Siegyrd sighed as he looked back at Gudrun, “New-found daughter of the winds, fly to your chambers for a spell. I will have your supper delivered after I’ve entertained my guests.”

  Gudrun noticed an air of unease, and her stomach felt queasy. She nodded and followed as Siegyrd walked forward toward the two men at an angle, letting Gudrun shadow behind him until she could move to the portal wall unhindered.