Tyrei looked down at the scene before her with a vague sense of puzzlement. There was the female, still young, although now that Tyrei had a chance to get a good look at things she suspected that she might actually be fully-grown. Tyrei couldn’t be sure; it was so hard to tell with humans! Not too far behind her was another human, a metal-clad male with a wood-spike-slinger in his hands (Bow, Tyrei corrected herself. That is called a bow, and the wood-spikes are arrows) and a long steel-claw (sword) at his belt.

And in front of the female, laying in a pool of dark dragon-blood, was... Tyrei. Tyrei was looking at herself from the outside!

"I had hoped not to see you again so soon, my dear," said an achingly familiar voice from behind Tyrei.

"Mother!" cried Tyrei, and for a moment, nothing else mattered. The younger dragon spun around and happily tackled the elder, nuzzling with her head and using her wings to envelope her loved one in a huge dragon hug. Tyrei’s mother returned her affection until the truth of the situation finally dawned on the smaller reptile, causing Tyrei to pull back in shock. She looked up, wide-eyed. "I’m dead, aren’t I?"

Mother nodded somewhat sadly. "Yes, little one."

"Oh." Tyrei looked back again at her own body, and the little humans still in front of it. They seemed to be... arguing? "Strange... I don’t feel frightened at all."

"Death tends to seem a lot less frightening after the fact."

Tyrei sighed as she watched the mammals. "I had to do it, Momma. I hope you understand. I had to try to save the female, and I’d do it again, even if I knew what would have happened. You... you were wrong about them. They do have souls; you can even see them from this side of life."

"I know, sweet one. I see, and I understand. It is not what I would have done, but you could not have done anything besides that which you did and still be my darling Tyrei."

"But wait, Mother!" Tyrei looked up in alarm. "We have to find some way to tell the others! They have to try to talk to the humans! They know what will happen if they try and chase these humans away; humans breed too fast. And they learn fast, too. I’ve talked with some of the oldest dragons; over time, the humans’ tools have gotten better and better. If we chase these ones away, more will come, until we’re overwhelmed, but even if we leave, eventually we’ll have the same problem. The only solution is to make peace with them!"

Mother sighed. "I fear it is no longer a matter of ‘we’. You and I are not part of things. I think, perhaps, your ‘wild stories’ of the small mammals interested some of the other younglings enough to start them asking questions, and with luck some will eventually start asking the same questions you did, and get the same answers. But even that will do little good if none of the humans can be made to see that we think and feel and love as much as they."

"Is there nothing we can do?"

A bittersweet smile crept onto the corners of the elder dragon’s mouth. "We can hope."

A silence fell as the two ghosts watched the mammals finish their discussion and begin to leave. The female cast one last look back at the huge dragon body and said something softly in her own language before walking off. After she left Tyrei took the time to more carefully examine the world around her. It was the same world, but somehow different, the details sharper and the colors deeper and truer than ever they had seemed before. It was somehow more real. "I feel... I feel new-hatched."

A soft chuckle escaped the elder. "You are. Now come, my dear!" she shouted as she leapt into the air. "It’s time you learned to fly!"

Tyrei grinned and bounded after her. She quickly found that without the encumbrance of her body she could soar faster and higher than ever she had before. Why, I don’t even need my wings anymore! she thought.

And the two dragons flew higher and higher, past the trees, past the birds, before breaking out of the great white clouds themselves, and still they flew higher. They flew so high that the whole great world became a blue and white egg beneath them, and Tyrei knew she would finally touch the very stars that she could only have watched through holes in they sky before.

And a small part in the back of Tyrei’s mind sensed the pattern, and thought, I wonder what world will be beyond this one?