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The silent humid inky darkness closed in on Arona as she chose her path. She could not see the way but it did not matter. She trusted the darkness and the silence. She knew the way and yet could not have explained that even to herself..

She felt the music before she heard it. She did not know where it came from but the sound grew in intensity until it filled the whole space. She heard voices singing and could not understand the words and yet she felt her spirit soar and fly though her body did not move. The music was achingly beautiful and Arona felt her face wet with tears of happiness that something so beautiful existed.

Arona did not know how long she stood like that listening, but even after it ended she could still hear the music softly in her mind.

As she moved forward on her journey Arona saw a faint glimmer of light up ahead and moved towards it. The source of light was a burning candle, valiantly offering some respite from the darkness, and illuminating a door at the end of the tunnel.

Sanso was used to travelling alone. He’d been exploring this cave on his own for several years now, and it suited him, on the whole. No need to confer, or compromise, or rush to keep up, or slow down to let others catch up. He could follow his own impulses without hindrance. He did meet others on his travels, but only at the cave entrances, or rather, the times and places that the cave entrances revealed. He never felt an urge to settle though at any of these places, always compelled to return to the caves mysterious and ever changing labyrinthine tunnels.

The disembodied voices and coloured wispies were always with him in the tunnels. Sometimes one would be louder than another for awhile, then another would assume prominence. The bleakest coldest times were when he wasn’t noticing them; that’s when he found himself going round and round in circles, lost in the maze.

The electric blue wispy had been around alot lately, comforting him with little explosions of pinprick blue lights, and a golden mustard yellow one. English, not French mustard, he reminded himself, although he didn’t think it mattered and wondered why he’d thought it.

Sanso had been almost crawling for some time in a particuarly cramped and difficult tunnel; bent double for most of the time, his back was aching and he longed to stretch out. The thought of going back, retracing his steps, was unbearable, so he continued, and tried not to be discouraged.
‘Find something to appreciate, Appreciation is the key’ the voice of the blue wispy sounded amused, but in a kindly and endearing sort of way. Harumph, muttered Sanso, easy to say! It would help if there was something to appreciate!

Just then Sanso heard another voice, muttering something over and over again. ‘… dragon egg dragon… egg dog egg … dragon dog egg…’ What the heck was that all about?

Illi woke up and groaned. Her back was aching and she felt like she’d fallen down a hill, or plummeted into a hole. I thought sleep was supposed to be relaxing, she grumbled as she shuffled off to make coffee. Ten pairs of eyes followered her every movement, assessing her mood. Some of the eyes winked at the other eyes, and nodded…yes, let’s remind her, she’s useless at these clues, ok guys, everyone ready…steady…GO!

Illi jolted unpleasantly and painfully as a dreadful cacophany of dog barking erupted around her, and warm squirming bodies tumbled everywhere.

How can I possibly focus on SELF, you stupid creatures, when you keep barking like that! Illi sighed, she knew she was getting it backwards, but her whole world was topsy turvey, nothing was as it seemed anymore. Which comes first, the dragon, or the egg?

dragon or the egg, hhmm, egg before the dragon? or the dragon before the egg….irritated because the dogs barked? or dogs barked because I was irritated? eggs, dragons, eggs, dragons, dogs, eggs dragons eggs…..

Illi sighed, and made another cup of coffee.

And then as if by magic an extraordinary thing happened….

Hells Bells muttered Arona to herself , this had better not be some sort of a test that dragon is putting me through

As she stepped forward into the darkness of the chosen path, she had a sudden sense she was walking off the edge of a cliff.

Arona had been practising quietness for a long time. The journey had been lonely at times and offered her many opportunities to practise her skills. There were so many parts of her wanting to have a say, discuss, analyse her every move, so that she would become paralysed and unable to move at all. In desperation almost she had learned to still the voices and find that part of herself she most believed herself to be. The part which believed in the existence of magic.

Well done, and shall you fly?

Arona hesitated. It was that voice again. She was not sure if this new voice came from her own thoughts, but she felt not.

Great, she thought, perfect time to finally lose it. Stuck in a dark cave with a troublesome dragon.

Shrugging her shoulders she went still inside and moved her body forward.

Leormn (with two little dots above the “o”) felt deeply humbled when he saw the extraordinary bravery of Arona.

It was hard for the proud dragon to consider, but he did wonder if sometimes he went too far with his joking. After all for him the cave was a playground, clay he could mould at will, or at a whim. Perhaps one could even call it a work of art, he thought proudly.

But he did realise that for the girl, who was newer to the ways of magic (although showed the most tremendous potential he grudgingly had to admit), he realised it represented something far deeper, a dual potential, the hope of light, but also the possibility of the deepest darkness.

For a moment he even considered revealing his whereabouts.

She is fine , Malvina answered his thoughts, she loves the challenge. It is what drew her here.

Yann had been having these strange dreams and impressions since he’d been in that cave during his last trip to Scotland. In the cave he had that strange impression of a dragon roaring, but he’d rationalized that with the noise of the falls, it was quite deafening. It’d been raining for so much time that the amount of water streaming through that cave was amazing… the visits had been suspended because they feared floods and they couldn’t really explore the cave then. All he could do then was picking up a pebble for Fiona, a pebble he had still to send her

After that, he’d had the weirdest impression to be observed by dragons… they felt quite big, and event though he tried to tell himself it was some effect of his imagination, he was still uneasy about that.

The imagery of dragons had continued with his discussion with Quintin, who told him he had drawn that very cave… in which there were dragon eggs and their keeper. A strange harper woman. When he’d been shown the painting, Yann had that feeling of déjà vu, and the kid attending the newborn dragon on the upper right of the picture had aroused an intense desire to do that very action.

“The tunnels had been changed again”, he thought first.

That weird thought made him laugh and he couldn’t tell to Quintin why… yet.

And last week there was his friend Anastasia who was coming back from a trip to Budapest where she had seen so many dragons in the hotel, in the museums, and there was that parade, they were calling that the dragon’s parade, and it was music and parties all the Saturday night. She enjoyed that tremendously. She even told him she had the impression of being a dragon when looking in the mirror right after that night.

Moving along the wet and mossy tunnels was not as easy as he had first thought. The way the power of the dragon worked was not just like creating new tunnels and filling the old ones… he was just recreating the whole cave keeping some stuffs he liked and rearranging others. He’d been keeping the sandy rookery for Malvina all along as she had convinced him to do so. But was it only for Leörnm, the eggs would have been lost with all these reconfigurations.

“It is not a matter of importance to a dragon”, he said to Malvina once.

“That’s why you’re here for, I’ve created you to keep some of them and allow them to hatch.”

Since his arrival in the cave, Írtak was fascinated with all these galleries… he had the dim impression that it was not only the expression of the dragon fantasy but was expressing much more of his being… He’d been busy trying to find any sense but nothing yet.

An unusual noise.

He stopped and listen to the sounds of the cave… there was clearly a human voice, swearing it seemed, and quite grumpy… who could that be?

Illi set off at a brisk trot in search of the cave. A deafening clap of thunder made her flinch and lose her footing. She slipped, and slid down a steep slippery wet bank, tumbling and rolling out of control. Arrgghh! How embarrassing, she thought, I hope no-one is watching….OUCH! She banged her head on a strangely perfect long oblong stone, which catapulted her into the air and into a cork oak tree. Lordy! She clung onto the knobbly grey bark, trembling and gasping.

Well, I may as well have a smoke and catch my breath, she thought, at least it’s fairly dry here in this tree. She inched upwards until she found a comfortable fork in the branches and leaned her back against the trunk, fishing in the pockets of her tartan jacket for her Camels and her lighter.

Ahhhh….that’s better! Now, where are we? Illi felt more optimistic, and surveyed the terrain. AHA! In a little dip behind the tree was a dark hole in the ground. That will lead to a cave, I’m sure of it! Illi lit another smoke, musing that she might never have found the cave entrance had she not banged her head on the strange oblong stone, and hurtled into the tree.

Feeling much more enthusiastic, Illi climbed down out of the tree and went to investigate the dark hole in the ground. HHmmmm…no sign of a rope, or steps, no light, she wondered what to do next. A voice boomed in her head TRUST! Trust is the key!

Suddenly feeling very devil-may-care and adventurous, Illi dived into the hole head first… wwwwhhhheeeeeee HOOOOO…… the free-fall was exhilarating, exciting, wildly fun….and then a little voice of doubt crept in, Are you stark raving MAD?

Whallop! Illi landed on something soft, something sodden and smelling a bit of mold. Momentarily stunned, she just lay there, in a heap on the soft wet lump.

“Holy MOLY” the soft wet lump shouted “Get OFF me! How incredibly RUDE to land on me like that without so much as an introduction!”

Illi trembled.

For a moment Arona panicked, then she stood completely still while the strange flying creatures settled back down, and tried to think.

She knew what she had to do, she had to sense which tunnel felt the lightest and then follow that. A perfect test for her intuitive abilities she had been learning to follow.

Look where they have got you so far, whispered a little voice in her head … or she thought it was from her own head … or was it ?…. everything felt so strange all of a sudden.

So she looked at each tunnel in turn, and even looked back the way she had come (but to be honest, she loved an adventure and did not really want to turn back) and she felt the left tunnel beckoning her.

Huh let us hope it is the one leading furtherest away from that dragon, she thought grumpily

You don’t mean that came the little voice again.

No, thought Arona, I don’t mean that really, even his silly dragon face would be better than this aloneness.

She moved quietly forward, not wishing to disturb any more flying things, and entered the tunnel.

Sanso stood at the entrance to the cave, looking out over the valley. He loved the rich orange-red rocky cliffs and towering stone pillars, and recognized them at once. He remembered this place! A vague nostalgia swept over him, he’d loved it here, hadn’t wanted to leave…… A song started playing in his head …… ‘we wept when we remembered Zion’… mmm mmm mmm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……… when we remembered Zion….

What an extraordinary cave it was, Sanso thought, when he’d wiped his eyes and his nose on his indigo blue shawl. Every time I see a light at the end of one of the tunnels and follow it to the cave entrance, it leads me to another time and place.

The rain started to fall, gently at first, and then the valley was filled with the strange pale green light of an approaching thunderstorm. Reluctantly, Sanso made his way back into the cave.

Fiona could feel herself on the verge of doing something radical. In fact she had decided. She was not sure what exactly she had decided, but definitely a decision had been made. She had noticed how often she had been deleting her posts lately on an online blog she kept.

It was clearly a sign.

Fiona enjoyed deleting. Quintin and Dory were rather odd about her deleting. Quintin especially, who apparently never deleted anything. She wondered if this was reflected in other aspects of his life. Maybe he was a hoarder, barely able to move for all the things surrounding him. Dory tended to be a bit of hoarder, she often confessed to this trait. Nothing wrong with hoarding of course, thought Fiona. It is perfectly fine.

Fiona resisted a sudden impulse to go and delete her whole blog, for now anyway.

She was not quite sure what form her decision would take, but realised she felt distinctly peaceful.

Illi didn’t want that smelly old cape anyway.

Well, Illi thought, I could shelter under this heavy cape, but what would be the point of that? It’s smelly and dark under there, at least the rain is light and clean. What I need to find is a cave. I’ll create a cave to find! Wouldn’t be much fun to just create a cave, Illi reasoned, what would be the fun of that? Much more fun to find one, as if by accident! Then I can still play the old chance and fate game, if I’ve a mind to.

Oh bugger it, Illi thought… She was rather an impatient spotted gripshawk.

‘When in doubt, go somewhere else’ was her motto, indeed of her tribe. That was the trouble with her tribe, she grumbled, they’d all wandered off….

She cast her eyes around wondering which way to go, and something caught her eye. It looked like a big soft blue-black rock, but on closer inspection turned out to be a heavy cape, sodden from the rain, and smelling unpleasantly of mold.

Dory was enjoying her holiday. She loved the bambu bungalow with the open sides that allowed the mysterious scents to waft though with the warm breeze, and the wispy images to float right through her. She wriggled on the water bed, and then lay still, and let the ripples smooth her.

Arona was quiet for a long time. The thing was she was not thinking about the riddle.

You know Dragon, she said eventually, I may not look very bright but I am not so stupid I can’t answer your foolish riddle. The truth is though that I don’t want to listen to the music if I am so unwelcome that I have to answer silly questions.

I have been wandering for quite a long time now, since I left the village I was born. I heard the music and I had a feeling of home I had long since forgotten. I thought there may be friendly folk here who would be pleased to welcome me. And I would have been pleased to get to know you too.

Anyway I bid you farewell and wish you all the best.

and Arona turned to leave.

The dragon was kind hearted really, and was sorry to see the girl go, and to see the tear which fell on her cheek.

Wait! Leormn called to her if you are sure you know the answer I will take your word for it. After all it was rather an easy riddle, so you see I did want to welcome you really. Come inside, you will be welcome, for I see your heart is true

Dory yawned and stretched. She was wrapped in a lovely feeling, but as usual couldn’t recall any details of her dream. Lately though, she’d get a phrase, or a snapshot to give her a clue. The Dance of the Lemurs. How silly is that, she thought, whatever does it mean. She popped it into her Clue Box with all the other riddles and clues.