Watching the full moon over the garden, she heard the call of a night bird and smiled.  The warmth flowed through her, surrounding her, and as the halo of gold faded, a hawk swooped unnoticed from Soifra’s bedroom window, streaking across the garden and into the forest, following the cold breeze back towards its source in the Crystal Mountains.  Once she was sure she was well enough away from the small homes that fanned out from the manor, she rose above the trees in her favorite form: the black dragon.  In her elation, she began to sing, and somewhere ahead of her, something answered back.At first there was just one call off in the distance, and she wasn’t quite sure if she had heard it, or imagined it, or if it was an echo in the breeze, but then it came again, strong and sure, and it seemed closer.  Soifra flew higher, calling out again, and this time she was sure she heard more than one song.  The songs called to her, pulled her, filling her with elation, and she followed them higher and farther. She knew she had to see them, the real dragonkin, the guardian children.  If she just saw them, she could go back and tell her grandmother the Guardians were real.  They simply had to go to the mountains to find them.

She reached a height where the clouds were thick, and her world went grey, consumed by the cold mists around her.  After trying to follow the songs for a short while, twisting and turning as different voices called from different places, she could no longer tell left from right, up from down, and she began to feel afraid.  Heart racing, she could no longer think clearly, and in her panic she picked one call and began to follow it, faster and faster, desperate to leave the clouds, to be able to see.  The calls suddenly stopped. She had begun to turn her head this way and that, straining to hear any sound, when she slammed into the side of the mountain with a bone crushing thud, and fell unconscious to the cold, crystal ledge far below.