"Up there, do you see it?" Miko pointed to the peak of Silver Mountain, its silhouette standing out black against the deep blue night.

Adira nodded without lifting her head from his shoulder. "Yes, very clearly," she whispered, as if a word spoken too loudly might scare the dragon away.

"Isn't it true, it seems to get bigger every night," replied Miko.

"That's because it's getting closer to us every day," Adira said quietly. Her hand lay warm on his chest, rising and falling with each of his breaths. Was she counting how many times the night air flowed into his body and back out again? Miko hadn't known his wife long enough to answer that question.

"A year ago," she continued, "I wouldn't have believed that dragons really existed in this world. And now he's here, not far from us, and I might not even have noticed him if you hadn't shown him to me."

"But no," Miko disagreed, "you would have sensed it just as I did. Even though the dragons left our world long ago, the blood of our ancestors who lived alongside the dragons in this land still flows in our veins. And just as the ancients always knew when the dragons were nearby, we too sense when one of these creatures pauses on its journey to linger in our land for a while."

"Aren't you afraid of the dragon?" Adira asked, not for the first time that night, but he always tried to answer her conscientiously.

"In ancient times," he replied, "people may indeed have feared dragons. The songs of our ancestors often speak of the most powerful of all animals with fear, but the last verse of all songs tells of how humans turned the dragons out of this land. Our ancestors must have seemed so terrifying to the dragons that they fled up to the shining eye of the night. How could we possibly fear dragons?"

"Why do you think he came back?" whispered Adira, looking up at the silver mountain until sleep smoothed her brow.

Then Miko always carried her back to her house, laid Adira on her bed, and arranged the blankets and pillows that surrounded her sleep.

In later nights, she no longer spoke of fear.

"Surely this world is more beautiful since the dragons have returned," she said quietly.

When he looked at her, her head raised slightly, her eyes wide open, gazing up at the peak of Silver Mountain, it always seemed as if she could actually see the dragons up there. Yet he knew that Adira was staring into the darkness of the night in vain.

"Shall I tell you about the dragons?" he would ask, to shake off these thoughts, and every evening she would nod and hold his hand tightly.

"After looking down on our land from their cold refuge for many generations," he began that night, "one of them decided to return to this world. But even though our ancestors tried to live side by side with the dragons again, they did not succeed; the fear of the mighty creatures was too deeply rooted in their minds. So the dragons began to retreat again, this time slowly, one by one and almost imperceptibly, while the humans willingly forgot them a second time. It is said that they found an island beyond the end of the world, where no human had ever set foot, where they could live in peace. And sometimes one of these dragons returns to our land to observe the people and later report to his brothers how he fared in this world."

"It's good to know that the dragons are so close again," Adira murmured.

Then she looked up at the peak of Silver Mountain until her hand slipped softly from his and Miko brought her into the warmth of their home.

When winter sent the first storms across the land, he didn't want to let Adira go out in the evenings anymore.

"The cold of the night …" murmured Miko, but his wife shook her head.

"How am I supposed to see the dragon here?" she replied, and then she said no more until Miko had wrapped her in the warmest blanket and carried her out to the hill next to their house, where they had sat every night and looked up at Silver Mountain.

"Up there on the peak," he began, as he had done every day for many moons, "can you see it, the dragon?" The night was already penetrating his clothes and making his hand tremble on Adira's back.

"How beautiful it is," she whispered. "I never noticed how wonderful this creature looks … And how its wings shine … Can you see it too?"

"Yes, of course I see his wings," replied Miko, staring up at the peak of Silver Mountain, which seemed even darker than the sky around it in the pale light of the stars.

"And how easily he flies," Adira continued quietly, "I would never have believed that a dragon could glide so gently through the air … But now that I see his wings shimmering like a sea of stars, I am no longer surprised that the sky carries him effortlessly."

"Yes, indeed," said Miko. In the cold of the night, the words found their way out of his mouth with difficulty.

"Isn't he wonderful to look at?" murmured Adira. "Even now that he has landed, the glow of his wings still envelops him …"

"Wonderful, yes," whispered Miko, nodding in agreement, even though she had already closed her eyes.

"Now it doesn't hurt anymore," whispered Adira, smiling for the first time since the slow death had begun to consume her from within. "Have you ever seen such a beautiful animal? How it shines …"

"Yes," Miko murmured, "yes, I see it …" And for a moment, he actually believed he could see the dragon taking Adira away to another land. But that might also have been the glow of the stars, refracted many times in Miko's tears.

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