The two of them sat within the shade of one of the tents, watching the two brothers, Batir and Toghrul ride out of camp.

  "Tell me, sister, are you truly unwell?"

  Turning to face her brother with some annoyance, she said, "Clearly!"

  Letting out a laugh at her response, he said, "But you have enough strength to get mad at me?"

  She only rolled her eyes. A moment passed without either of them speaking before the brother asked, "Should we return home and look for a healer?"

  Frowning, the girl didn’t like the question but couldn’t articulate or rationalize why it was a bad question to ask. She only said, "No. I already feel better than yesterday. I can tell I will feel better tomorrow and be fine the day after."

  Turning to look at his sister, he had some doubts about that. Elves didn’t tend to get sick. Not that they couldn’t, but when close to the world tree, plagues became colds, and colds passed unnoticed. He had to remind himself that they weren’t near the world tree anymore.

  At that thought, he brought it up again. "Should we at least consider going home?"

  Turning his attention down to his fingerless hand, he felt his sister's gaze on him.

  "One day," she said softly.

  He clenched his jaw slightly. 'But not today?' he thought.

  "No," she said decisively, as if reading his mind. Unfortunately, she had the final say here — she knew he wouldn’t leave her alone to venture home. After taking a moment to consider his next words, he said, "Before or after we see the dragon again?" His words broke a peaceful silence that had built up.

  Biting her lip and thinking back on the colossal beast, she said, "Yeah, I am sure I don’t want to meet that thing again." Turning to ask him more directly, she said, "What about its offer?"

  "Can you trust it? A vague offer like, 'If you’re still here when I wake up, I will give you a prize to make staying around worth it,' hardly motivates me with anything more than curiosity." Their was a silence, as she wondered what it could be, in truth she wanted to know just not enough to want to meet the beat again.

  "This dragon doesn’t seem to be like other dragons," she said.

  Her brother, however, wasn’t sure how to respond to his sister suddenly becoming a dragon expert. After all, they had only ever met one, and while yes, he didn’t act in the way they were told of by legends and myths, surely that didn’t mean much. They were intelligent beings, after all. Thinking about the dragon they had met, he voiced the first thought that came to mind as an improper response.

  "Dragons are weakest when young. I guess that’s why this one needs to sleep so much."

  "Is that the reason? I just assumed all dragons slept really long times. Besides, what counts for a long time? For us, this is nothing. For humans, this is excruciating — nearly three full generations now. Easily 40 years," she said, cranky at the winged doom.

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  "...We have lived among the humans for three full generations?" the brother asked, seemingly surprised. Letting out a sigh, he said, "I wonder if we will ever go home."

  Scoffing at his answer, she thought with certainty, 'Of course we will, now stop bringing it up!.' But when she realized her village, her mother, and father wouldn’t be there for them, she wondered — unlike her brother — with some fear, if there even was a place for them to feel like home.

  Turning her attention to the two brothers riding off to go hunting, she got lost in thought.

  Khantur was waiting for them. He waved at the sight of Batir and smirked at the glum and gloomy look on his other brother's face.

  "Certain we are going to die again, Toghrul?" he asked with thinly veiled mockery.

  It had been a few minutes since they were seen leaving by the elves.

  "Most certainly!" Toghrul shouted back, with some humor among his certainty.

  "Enough!" Batir said with exasperation. Then, when the three horses were close by, he added, "I saw some rabbit burrows this way but never found the things. That’s what we’re hunting today."

  "We’re actually going hunting?!" Khantur said with mild surprise.

  But Toghrul merely smiled, thinking it was obvious Batir wouldn’t miss a chance.

  After riding for a bit, Khantur said, "The city of Salman has a river port. That’s how we will get in. There are boats constantly going in and out. We will sneak into one and then sneak into the city through that."

  Looking at his brother dubiously, Toghrul said, "That’s a dumb plan. Let’s just enter the city as traders, snatch our target, and then steal a boat and leave with it, rather than trying to be suspicious sneaking around when we haven’t done anything yet."

  Adding to Toghrul's decision, Batir said, "We also need to get ivory for the dragon. It will be a hard thing to steal both one after the other. Let’s buy the ivory and then steal the healer."

  Rubbing his hand on his neck, Khantur said, "Then we could also steal a boat’s worth of stuff? If so, should we gather warriors to make it a raid?"

  This time it was Batir who said, "No. We aren’t allowed to leave, remember? There’s a difference between us taking warriors away from the tribe and running off on our own. Also, if it’s just three people, we won’t look suspicious since we will be less of a threat. If we bring a war band, what city would be dumb enough to let us in and pretend nothing would go wrong?"

  "Ugh. Then how will we sail the boat? Some of the elders in our tribe can’t ride horses. Can we be sure we can ride a boat? In my plan, we never needed to know how to ride a boat," Khantur said.

  Batir considered the difficulties, saying, "Getting horses in and out of a city by boat seems like a pain, yeah. ."

  "Then we can’t take the horses into the city. We will need to leave them outside, steal a boat, and force a crew with our swords to take us out of the city and then to our horses. Then bolt after we get to them. We won’t be able to rob the boat blind this way, but it will be safer." Toghrul said, after taking some time to consider how to get as much as they could as safely as they could.

  Nodding along, Khantur said, "But if we take some extra horses — even just one or two — I bet we could pack a lot of valuables onto them, no?"

  Clearly liking Khantur's idea, Batir turned to Toghrul in case there was something he wasn’t seeing, but Toghrul nodded. Still, he felt the need to add, "We might need to kill the horses if we are being pursued too strongly. But the loot we stole might even work as a distraction for the settled."

  "Then it’s decided. We will take five horses with us down to the city of Salman, keep them tied up somewhere they can be hidden so we aren’t robbed while robbing others. Venture into the city as traders, buy some ivory for the dragon, during which we figure out where the medicine man is, steal him away, and snatch a boat — getting the crew to take us to the hiding spot for the horses that we use to flee. Hopefully stealing enough stuff to recoup our losses for the ivory!" Batir summarized, making sure that Khantur was following along and saying the plan out loud to make sure it all made sense.

  "While searching for the medicine man, we need to decide which boat we are going to steal beforehand. It needs to be one that is quick at leaving and entering the port. If it takes too long to get out, we could be killed by arrows," Toghrul said.

  Batir let out a sigh. He had to accept that his brother’s cowardice did allow him to see flaws in an otherwise perfect plan.

  Suddenly, however, Khantur snapped his fingers and pointed out behind them. They saw someone riding up behind them