He exited, leaving the dragon with me in the room, alone. I looked at it, and a thought occurred to me.

"You know," I said to the dragon. "You are going to be meeting more of my kind now. I'm going to visit my kin, and you could stay and fly with them instead of following me around."

"I am content with you," it told me. "I do not want to fly with your kin."

"Why not?" I asked.

"I was listening to you and your husband talk," it said. "And I realized that you are different than your kin. I wish to fly with one like you, and not a normal one of your kind."

"But..." I said, but it immediately responded.

"You said you would fly with me," it said. "Are you now backing out on your word?"

"No, that's not it," I said. "I just thought that you would be more happy with untamed ones of my kind."

"No," it said. "I will fly with you, and you only."

Then, I heard footsteps at the door coming from the bedrooms. I whirled around to find Iri standing there, watching me. She had a puzzled look on her face, and she was holding her belly as if in pain.

"Mama?" she asked. "Oh, Mama, help me! I feel as if I'm on fire!"

"Iri!" I exclaimed. "Iri, what's wrong?"

"I don't know Mama!" she said. "But it hurts so much!"

"Where does it hurt Iri?" I asked. "Is it just your belly?"

"No Mama," she said. "But that's where it hurts the most."

Then she gave a yell and clutched her head. She fell to the ground and started sobbing. I ran to her side and held her hand tightly. She clenched her teeth and tried to speak.

"Mama, my head," she said. "I feel as if I had lightning running through my head! Mama, it hurts!"

As she said the word lightning, I remembered a time when I had gone through the same thing. It was so long ago that I almost didn't remember it at all, but her words triggered my memory. In that instant, I knew what was wrong, and I knew that I could do nothing to help.

"Iri, listen to me," I said. " I know it's hard to concentrate right now, but I know what is happening, and I know that it will get better. This is natural, at least for one of my kind it is, and you are half of my kind. It's all right Iri, this is your initiation into the elemental magics."

"Why does it hurt so much Mama?" she asked. "And why is it happening to me? I don't want to do elemental magic."

"You have no choice Iri," I said. "Just be strong. It will go away eventually, and then you will be done with the pain forever. This pain will never come back, unless you burn yourself out, and I doubt you will ever do that. I've been through it Iri, and I'll be here for you. That I can assure you."

"Thank you Mama," she said.

I sat with her for ten minutes that felt like an eternity. I just held her hand and stroked her head. I remembered my own initiation, and how I had had no one to hold my hand, or explain things. After ten minutes were up, I could feel the elemental magic running through her body start to fade, and she sighed in relief.

"Oh Mama that was horrible!" she said after the pain was all gone. "Does that really happen to all of your kind?"

"Yes it does Iri," I said. "And now that it has happened to you, you will be able to do my magic. It takes a while to learn, but you are powerful Iri." Then I got an idea. "Iri, how would you like to learn some magic right now?"

"Now?" she asked.

"Yes now," I said. "You see, I was planning on going to visit my kin tonight. I want to see them one last time before I start to learn the human magics. If you want, I could take you with me."

"How?" she asked.

"You have the magic now," I said. "And I can easily teach you the trick of flying. It's not very hard at all, and I think you should come meet all of my relatives. It's part of you that you have to learn about some time."

"If you say so Mama," she said.

"Okay, then it's settled," I said. "Well, the trick of flying is like this…" I then proceeded to teach Iri the little mental twist necessary to convince the wind to let my kind fly. It wasn't hard, and Iri was always a fast learner, so within five minutes we were on our way to visit my kin. The dragon came with us.

"Mama, is that dragon of Mila's following us?" Iri asked me when she looked back behind us.

"Yes it is," I said.

"Why?" she asked. "I know that it's afraid of Mila, but it's still her dragon."

"No it isn't Iri," I said. "It's its own creature, and when Mila made it good, she terrified it. It won't have anything to do with her, but it likes me."

"You?" Iri asked. "Why you?"

"Well," I said. "The dragons it seems have to fly with one of their kind to survive, but this dragon cannot fly with any of its kind because it's different. The dragons used to be much like my people, so it chose me to fly with."

"Mila is not going to be happy when she finds this out," she said.

"She already has," I said. "But the dragon doesn't understand it. In that sense it is very much like my kind."

"How?" Iri asked.

"Distrustful, wild," I said.

"But you aren't anything like that Mama," she said.

"Your father changed me," I said. "I never tell any of you children about it, but I was one of the wildest before I met your father."

"You mean you really were wild before?" she asked.

"Of course I was," I said. "Iri, I'm not human, and we follow different rules than humans do. But after a while it gets to be boring, so I gave your father a chance, and he managed to tame me."

"I just can't picture you as wild Mama," she said. "It just…"

She trailed off then, because we had arrived just over my former home, where my kin still lived. It still looked just as impressive as it always had, even to me, who had lived there for hundreds of years. Iri seemed to be just as awestruck by it as Arek had the one time I had managed to get him inside without my kin stopping me. She hung there in the air, watching it, her eyes wide but instinctively keeping herself aloft on the wind's wings.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" I whispered to her, and she nodded, still speechless.

It was still night, and so the whole enclave was alight with light elementals. Someone had freed a few of them, and so Iri and I found ourselves greeted by a few of the wispy things, which to an unknowing eye could be mistaken for the witch fire that human magicians can summon. One of them nudged itself curiously at Iri, sensing the elemental magic running in her, but also sensing her human blood and not sure what to make of her.

I was about to send the elementals off when someone came up to see just who had lured the wisps so high into the air. Of course, she took one look at me and she knew who I was. She went fleeing back to the ground to find my mother, and I commented to Iri that we should get ourselves down to the ground soon. She followed me, still staring about her in wonder.

My mother was not long in finding us, and she did not look happy. She was the only one in sight, besides the wisps, so I guessed that everyone else had fled at the first sign of "strangers." As Mother approached she eyed Iri distastefully. Oddly enough, the dragon seemed to have stayed up in the air, and so she did not notice it.

"So, you have returned," she said coldly. "And you bring another human with you?"

"Well, Mother," I said, stressing the word Mother so that she would remember that we were blood-kin. "Perhaps if you would look farther than the traces of human, you would notice that Iri is also of our kind. She is my daughter, and I thought it wise that she meet this side of her heritage."

"You need not have bothered," she said. "We don't want anymore human stink here. That time you brought that man was plenty for an eternity."

"Well then," I said. "I suppose you will be happy. You see, I was just coming to say goodbye. I won't be coming back. I'm going to learn human magics"

"Oh, so now you will not only deny us, but you will deny the things that make you who you are?" she asked archly. "I knew you were weak."

"Weak?" I raged. "Since when am I weak? If you can even remember, there was a time when I outshone all of our kind, even you, Mother. You must be getting old if you can have forgotten that."

"You are no daughter of mine," she said. "None of mine would run with humans. And none of mine would ever dirty herself with human magics."

"Good," I said. "I'm glad we could agree on that." Then I turned to Iri, rage at the arrogance of my mother still running through me like the fire of initiation. "Iri, I am sorry you had to see that. Let's go."

I then rose on the wind's wings again, and Iri followed me. As I rose into the air, the dragon came down to meet me, and I felt the eyes of my kin, who had been watching from hiding places, on me. I heard their whispers of astonishment at one who could fly with an evil creature such as a dragon. I ignored them and flew off, almost forgetting Iri in my haste.

"Mama, wait for me!" Iri cried as I sped away. Then I remembered her, and I slowed my pace to match hers, which was impressive for a beginner.

"Now I am glad I chose you," the dragon said to me. "Those ones are not the ones I would wish to fly with."

"Not that they would ever let you fly with them," I muttered.

I felt someone watching me from behind, and, with an instinct that I thought I had gotten rid of when I had been tamed by Arek, I whirled around to face the person. It was just Iri though, and she was staring at me, wide eyed with fright. I fought back the irrational urge to snap at her, reminding myself that I loved her very much and that she was very important to me. Deep inside I was surprised that my old self could have been lurking so close to the surface.

"Mama?" she asked, and she continued to stare at me, as if she was looking to find someone she recognized in me. "That's still you, isn't it?" She sounded so afraid that all of a sudden my anger faded and I was back to the me that I was used to.

"Oh Iri," I said. "I'm so sorry about that. Seeing my mother again…it just brought out the worst in me. And then you were nearby, so I almost took it out on you."

"I've never seen you like that before Mama," she said. "It's frightening. Is that what you were like before you met Papa?"

"Only partially," I said. "If I had regressed completely you might not have survived it." I said that reluctantly, not wanting to scare her, but very aware that it was something she needed to know.