I do not know the blue maiden who dances towards me, shells strung in her mane, but I do know that she most immediately has my full attention as soon as I take note of my rather pretty company. Above me, the trees seem to wave their branches to her in greeting, a cool spring breeze sending the loose tassels of my highly tangled mane dancing across the muscles of my raised neck, arched elegantly for her visual pleasure.

Fearlessly, she comes to stand beside me, my heart beating ever so slightly faster at the bold innocence of the young woman. Her horn, pale and curved, rests between oddly pale eyes, similar to ice that has stood for weeks rather than centuries, her features sculpted and delicate as the curvature of the conch shells bound and singing in her mane. Even more delightful than the grace of her being is the breeze of her voice, gentle and pristine in the wind, the sheer awe she feels in the presence of the behemoth wood evident in every dancing syllable.

All the while I watch her with my gilded eyes clinging, tail curving behind me in pleasant delight at the company I have found this afternoon. I find only silence for a while, trying to find in the shadow of the trees the same reverence she does, finding again only the same inquiries as to their strangeness as were there before she arrived.

Her name is Tiamat, she says, and that she is of my land, her graceful neck curving her face about so that her pale eyes look into my own, her blue muzzle reaching out in a request to exchange breath, like family, dear friends, lovers, a gesture which I oblige.

The smell of her warm breath against my own, laced with the sweet green things of Birdsong, framed in the crackling heat of the super heated stone, sends a secondary warmth coursing through me, a youthful eagerness adding tension to each muscle along my figure, tension that is entirely friendly - perhaps too much so.

I am all smiles when we part.

"Beautiful and strange," I answer to her first statement, letting my eyes look away to their far away boughs before I look back to her, a far more pleasant sight than the trees, "but there are a lot of things like that, it seems.”

"I’m Rikyn," I state, and though I make no mention of my rank, I elude to our shared homeland with a quirky smile, "it’s odd we meet here rather than at home."