GLORY! WINDSONG wuthering over Dragon scales! Pip raced for the freedom of the open skies, the boundless night that lay but the laughter of a Dragon’s heart from her grasp. She yearned to shuck burdens that had indeed lain like boulders upon her life. Never had she felt lighter. Freer. Happier. Yet almost at once, she knew enervation. Her Dragoness had not eaten in weeks. She had been wounded and ill-treated. Pip turned quickly about, and saw Silver labouring in her wake, yet he too was laughing that curious variety of Dragonsong which communicated joy born in anguish, laughing so uproariously he could barely fly. Drifting downward upon outspread wings, a miniscule movement near the camp caught her predatory eye. Tawny hide. An involuntary twitch of movement. A short, spiralling horn her Dragon sight picked out even though it was almost perfectly camouflaged in a clump of jiista-berry bushes. Bloodlust blasted through Pip’s mind, as if all mental process suddenly sucked away into her ravenous gullet.
