Sarah Miller crouches in a clump of large ferns, peering out from between the fronds into the forest beyond. A few yards in front of her, a lion’s tail swishes through the grass. Well, not a lion’s tail, exactly. Sure, it looks lionish, as do the paws and hindquarters attached to it. But when the creature lifts its head, it’s clear that it isn’t a lion at all. A long, sharp beak protrudes from beneath keen, intelligent eyes. Feathers ripple down its back as it shakes itself. Sarah gets to her feet, careful to make some soft noises but not sharp ones, enough to alert the griffin to her presence but not enough to scare it. As soon as she moves, its eyes are on her, tufted ears shooting upward to point at the sky. A spike of fear jolts down her spine at the movement, but she grinds her teeth and forces herself to ignore it. Instead, she smiles at the griffin as she extends her hand out, palm up and flat. 
“Hey there, buddy,” she murmurs, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The griffin tilts his head at her and she bites the inside of her cheek. Was that right? Griffin language is full of sharp clicks and low growls, which can be difficult to replicate with a human tongue and vocal box. But Sarah’s one of few people who can speak both dragon and human versions of Gaentuki, and compared to that, Griffin is a piece of cake.
But she still can’t tell if he understood her. Maybe there are dialects, and she doesn’t know the proper one for this region. He stares back at her, clacking his beak, and fear twists in Sarah’s gut. She tries to squash it down. He won’t attack as long as he doesn’t see her as a threat. Griffins are easy to reason with—or so Sarah’s heard. If this one would just talk. 
She stares straight at him, right into his eyes, and takes a slow step forward. A rumble starts in the griffin’s chest, and he bobs his head up and down. Sarah fights down a nervous laugh. Standing her ground against a griffin. Kaylor would be so proud of her. 
He’s two or so feet from her now. Sarah turns her hand sideways and moves it to the side of the griffin’s face. His eyes snap to Sarah’s hand, but he only flinches away a couple of inches, tiny feathers on his neck twitching. Sarah has to hold in another laugh: half out of amusement, half unease. Don’t be frightened, you’ll only scare him. She tries to quiet her squirming stomach as she moves her hand to stroke the griffin’s neck.
A loud crash shakes through the forest around her. The griffin’s beak snaps as he backpedals, letting out a screech and taking off into the forest. Sarah screams as an enormous pair of yellow claws dip out of the canopy and grab her around the waist.
“Nellie!” Sarah yells, grabbing at the talons and trying to pry them off, “I almost had him! Nellie…
“You’ve got to stop fooling around, Sarah. We’re not out here to pester angry griffins.”
“He wasn’t angry. I’m not stupid. I just wanted to see if he could understand me. Put me down, Nellie!”
“No.”
Sarah crosses her arms and glares at the talons clenched around her waist. “Why not?”
“Because it’s time to go home.”
Sarah looks up, trying to study the face of the dragon carrying her. But Nellie’s neck is too long, and Sarah can only see the underside of her chin. “Who’d you offend this time?” she asks. 
Nellie huffs, the breath shaking her entire body as her wings pump against the wind. “That’s none of your business.”
“So you did get kicked out again! For someone who’s supposed to be a diplomat, you sure are good at making other dragons angry.”
“But they’re so uncivilized.” The dragon lets out a thunderous sigh.
Sarah rolls her eyes. “That is the problem right there,” she pokes one of Nellie’s talons, “They’re not really any better or worse than you are, just different. If you would just try to understand their way of life instead of criticizing it whenever you go to visit them, you wouldn’t offend them so much, and you’d be able to convince them to agree to that treaty you’re pushing so hard for.”
Nellie turns her head to the side so she can shoot Sarah a brief, scathing look. “You do have a point, but as long as they expect me to consume the remains of intelligent animals as a part of some ridiculous welcoming ritual, I refuse to cooperate.”
Sarah frowns. “Were they eating griffins?”
“Yes. And humans, too.”
She swallows. She’s been trying not to think about that aspect of wild dragon culture. The wild dragons know not to harm Sarah: Nellie had made that clear as soon as they’d arrived in the Dragonlands three days ago. 
“What are we going to do about the food shortage, then?”
Nellie’s tail swishes through the air, making her bob up and down. “I don’t know, young one. The Court might want us to push South. But that would mean fighting the Mad King, and that’s not really something we want to do again.” 
Sarah pats the side of Nellie’s leg. “We can’t import it? Or…talk to the Mad King about it?”
Nellie’s chest rumbles in a growl. “We have to hunt, Sarah. It’s an important part of our culture. We need more land.”
They fly in silence for a few minutes, until Nellie’s grip around her abdomen starts to bother Sarah.
“Um…Nellie? Can you let me go? I’d much rather sit in the saddle than hang down here…”
The dragon chuckles, the sound vibrating from the base of her neck to the tip of her tail. “Of course, young one, I’m sorry. I forgot that you don’t like to be carried.”
Nellie loosens the grip of her talons to let Sarah wiggle free. ​Like all Gaentuki dragons, Nellie wears a uniform: a padded harness decorated with the colors of her class and equipped with a saddle just behind her shoulder blades. The edges of multicolored streamers and strips of fabric Nellie has wrapped through or sewn to the straps whip and dance through the air as she flies, a particularly unruly strip hitting Sarah in the face as she climbs up the harness. Sarah bats it away with her left hand and scrunches up her nose, the fingers of her right hand gripping the edge of a polished, ornate buckle decorated with a pair of crossed scrolls and a book. Nellie, as a diplomat, belongs to the scholar class of Gaentuki society, one of the more esteemed classes found in the city of Husifi. Sarah, as Nellie's assistant and ward, has a shiny scholar pin too, fastened to her matching leather riding harness. She settles in to the saddle, attaching the leather straps hanging from her harness to the ones on Nellie's.
It doesn’t take more than an hour or two for them to get to the city. Sarah leans over the side of Nellie’s neck as the dragon glides over the mountains, peering down at the outlines of other dragons flying far below them. The enormous staircases up and down the sides of the canyon, the only part of Husifi not covered by overhanging rock shelves or tall trees, bustle with other dragons and people. It’s four hours after noon—the city is coming to life again after the three hour break at midday. On most days, it gets so hot in Husifi that staying out and working past noon is as good as a death sentence. 
Nellie soars into an enormous crevice packed with dwellings, people, dragons, and smoke. They glide over the tops of buildings until they reach a ground-level cave dug into the rock in one of the back corners. Other cave entrances dot the solid wall of rock around them, several with a dragon or two lounging at their fronts. Sarah leaps off Nellie’s back just before the dragon lumbers through the entrance to their home. “I’m hungry, I’m going to go get some food. You want to come?” she asks, staring after Nellie. 
“No, thank you. I ate before we left. I need a nap. My wings are killing me.”
“Okay. Suit yourself.”
Sarah forces herself to swallow her nerves as she makes her way down the cobblestones, passing through several quiet streets before she hits the market. She still isn’t comfortable walking around the city by herself, even though she’s been here for over a year. But that’s kind of how she’s always been, even when she was back in Colorado. The crowds and the noise make her nervous. 
The smell of cooked meat permeates the air, wafting from the multitude of stone and wooden stalls set up and down the length of the street, making her mouth water. Despite her nerves, she can’t help but smile a little as she takes in the bright colors and people around her. 
Sometimes, she’s convinced that she’s still in a dream, that the life she lived before is going to nudge her back awake at any moment. That her mother will wander into her room and shake her shoulder gently, tell her that she’s late for school and she needs to get up and out of bed. That she’ll roll out from under the covers and back into the bleak little house in Aurora, and Nellie and the griffins and this market will be gone. Sure, she misses her parents and her two older siblings sometimes, but…he’s been so busy this past year, she hasn’t had time to dwell on it. Her life here is so much better, the rules vastly different than the ones her parents had in place for her back home. Here, she’s free to do as she wants: no curfew, no restrictions, no pressure to be anything she doesn’t want to be, no people telling her what to do or policing her every move. And there are dragons: dragons and griffins in the mountains and tree nymphs down at the bottom of the canyon, new wonders and adventures around every corner. She belongs here now, not there, and she doesn’t want to go back. 
A sign swings in the slight breeze not far from her, and Sarah picks up her pace, heading straight for it. The Four-Eyed Griffin. It’s the inn where she stayed when she first got here, and where she first met Nellie. She also knows most of the people who work there, so she’ll have someone to talk to. 
She ducks her head into the inn and smiles at the man behind the counter—Jash. He waves back. It’s full tonight—eight or so dragons have their heads stuck through the row of windows in the back wall, helping themselves to bowls full of meat as they grumble to each other with their mouths full. Three humans sit around one of the dragons, laughing and talking. All six of the other tables are full, and five or six people sit along the bar. A group of strangers—set apart by their light, sun-burnt skin and pale eyes—crowd into a back corner. The people of Husifi are all dark skinned, with straight black hair and dark eyes. Sarah has no problem blending in here, but these people certainly do. Jash beckons her forward. 
“The usual?” He asks. Sarah nods. Jash stares for a minute at the strangers, and then turns to her, “Will you watch them for me while I tell Mira what you want?” She frowns at him, but nods. She doesn’t know how much help she’d really be if the pirates decide to try and rob the store or make a spectacle of themselves: Jash would be better off asking one of the dragons. Still, she guesses she can scream if anything happens, and then Jash can come and help. 
While Jash heads into the back to tell the cook—Mira—what to make, Sarah turns around and looks at the door, all the while watching the strangers out the corner of her eye. Their voices have hushed into a whisper, and they’re looking back at her: or rather, at her and then at something else across the room. One or two of them are staring. Sarah shifts her weight from her right leg to her left, crossing her arms protectively in front of her chest. She keeps her gaze fixed on the door. 
She’s relieved when Jash gets back with her food. She takes it and sits at the bar, right by where Jash will be for the rest of the night. He smiles warmly at her, grabbing a rag to wipe down part of the counter.
“Thanks, Sarah,” he whispers, “I think they mean trouble.”
She purses her lips. “Well…they wouldn’t try anything with the dragons around, would they?”
Jash shakes his head and laughs. “You can’t ever really trust pirates, no matter how scary the dragons can be.”
At that moment, one of the men, a smaller, younger one with a sharp nose and greasy-looking hair, leans against the bar right next to Sarah. 
“Another two pints of ale, please,” he says, his speech already slurred. 
While Jash turns to go and get the drinks, the pirate leans over to her. 
“There’s a man just came in here,” he says in Sarenian, under his breath, nodding toward the back of the inn. He reeks, and so does his breath. Sarah tries not to wrinkle her nose. “He hasn’t stopped watching you. Can’t reckon why, unless he wants to bother you. Just thought I’d let you know.”
She tenses up, getting ready to bolt. Like this guy and his friends have been doing any different. But still, it’s good to have a head’s up. 
“Thank you,” she says back, just as quietly. 
She glances over her shoulder after the pirate rejoins the others, and there issomeone back there, in a small nook hidden from the front door. He looks out of place here, even worse than the pirates, with thick furs draped over his shoulders and dirty, pale skin. Invisible spiders crawl up the nape of her neck, forcing her nerves on alert while she tries to finish her dinner. She'll tell Jash about the stranger before she leaves. Maybe he'll be able to spare one of the staff to walk her home. But she'll eat first. She’s still hungry, after all.