Tyrei sped joyfully through the forest in a weird fly-jump-run-gallop, dodging trees and branches as she led her pursuers on a merry chase. She was tottering at the borderline between childhood and adult, at that age when all young dragons were certain that their mothers knew nothing, and she expressed her disregard in a dangerous game that would have resulted in her being grounded to her cave until the stars fell from the sky if her mother ever found out about it.

She called the game "dodge the humans", and it was an incredible thrill. Some days she played against her brother, Gire, but usually she played alone. To play, she skulked around the forests looking for human hunting packs and then playing tricks on them as she fled, keeping close enough to the ground to give them a "sporting chance" until either they became too worn to continue the chase or she grew bored with the game and flew off. It was an incredible challenge, as the humans were every bit as clever as the elders had claimed (making that one of the few points were she and the elders agreed).

In fact, they were so clever that Tyrei sometimes wondered: how could they really be unintelligent? Humans were considered so dangerous that few dragons took the time to observe them closely, but she had become fairly certain that many of their so-called "natural abilities" actually came about through the use of tools. For example, the metal-tipped sticks of wood that they occasionally flung at her had to have been crafted. Oh, sure, the elders spoke of other animals that could fling spikes but wood and metal? It certainly didn’t seem likely!

Tyrei’s breathing quickened as one of those very same sticks came a bit close to comfort, and she veered away to the left, nimbly dodging a tree. Before she got very far in her new direction another group of humans, part of the pack that had broken off from the main earlier, appeared before here, forcing her back to the right. One, two, three more such close calls, and a vague sense of dread began to gnaw at her as a realization dawned: they were herding her!

A surge of fury briefly over-road her dread. How dare they? she thought. Small, pathetic humans, daring to herd a dragon? Who do they think they are? But that was the problem. It didn’t matter what they thought they were, the point is, they thought. There was no longer any question in Tyrei’s mind. And if they thought, that meant it was now time to end this game.

Her muscles tightened as she prepared for the final leap into the sky. Then, just as she began her spring, one of the sticks lodged itself in her left flank, causing everything to go wrong. She yowled in agony and instead of flying up, rushed forward, crashing painfully through the branches in front of her before forcing her way into a clearing, the same clearing where she had sunned herself in the youth, before the humans had happened upon her there.

Another human stood in front of her! It was a trap! Though she didn’t want to kill one of the little creatures (the elders claimed that humans were all sorts of trouble if one of their numbers were killed, and Tyrei suspected they might actually be accurate on that account), it was slay or be slain. She raised her right-front talons and prepared to strike, then stopped suddenly. This one had none of the humans’ "natural" weapons, and what was more, Tyrei recognized it! It- she, actually- was the very same little human she spied not far from here when she was younger, the very first human she had ever seen up-close. Tyrei lowered her foreleg and looked at the creature. Their eyes met. There was no expression of fear on the human’s face, only... curiosity. Tyrei simply nodded once and took off, escaping just as her pursuers burst into the clearing.