After a pause, Irin swiveled his neck to look back to Xan with a disappointed countenance and exhaled in a sigh.

"Yes, the dramatic voice was necessary!" Xan huffed as he slid off of Irin's back and gave the dragon a determined stare, then struggled to keep his facade as the dragon released a deep breathy chuckle, "you don't have to laugh...," his mumbled voice raised an octave as he turned away.

Verbena's nostrils flared in her nasal exhalations of withheld chuckles as Celia also dismounted, 'he squeaked!' She flashed a draconic grin that widened slightly as she released a bit more of her amusement.

Celia decided not to snicker and used the awe-inspiring landscape to keep her distracted from the laugh-inducing moments that surrounded her, "is this the forest the map mentioned?"

Xan, who was brought back into focus by the question, shrugged. "Maybe, but I've never heard of a forest."

"This is definitely different than anything else I've ever seen," Celia admitted as she looked at the non-white landscape. "Why is there no snow on the ground here when everything else is blanketed in ice?"

"I never figured that out either, but this is where we wait until we are noticed." Xan adjusted the roped that tied his sack to his back, then looked to Verbena and Irin, "you two should go find a place to stay out of sight, the Ulven might hurt you." After a pause, Xan studied Verbena's harness. Some of the frozen natural oils that coated Verbena's skin had coated the straps of the harness and turned it to an off-white. However, the pale brown saddlebags under her wings on her sides were still extremely visible in contrast to her white camouflage. "We are going to have to bury the harness and the saddlebags in the snow somewhere to keep them hidden."

"What?" Celia took a step back in surprise, "what are you talking about?" She looked to Xan to alleviate her confusion.

"The saddlebags will peg her as a non-wild dragon," Xan explained. "Her straps are fine, since they are much closer to white, but Irin and I only noticed that she was not wild because of the bags," he pauses, "you can remove the harness, right?"

Celia nodded and hesitated, then approached Verbena and gently moved her wing. "I don't want to lose this, so I hope you know of a way we can mark where we have buried this." She untied the saddlebags on Verbena's right side the side she is on, then did the same for Verbena's left side. Once the bags were unsecured, Celia pulled them off of the dragonet's back.

"Wait, you can just take off the saddlebags?" Xan blinked in surprise, "Then we might as well leave it at that," he seemed a bit antsy, "her harness is not all that visible anyway." He glanced to Irin and seemed to send a telepathic message to him.

Irin nodded to his rider, then took off into the clouded sky.

Celia flinched as pellets of clumped snow and dirt flew towards her face and pelted the glass covering her eyes but thankfully did not leave any cracks. "Why did you send him up there?" She faced Xan.

"Lookout," Xan replied as he strolled over to Celia and threw Verbena's saddlebags over his shoulder, "just in case that the Ulven come over here before we are ready for them. This needs to be hidden and Verbena needs to be farther away before they find us if our plan is going to work. So we need to bury this in the snow, mark it, then see about encountering the Ulven." He began to walk into the deeper snow, but each step was harder and harder for him.

Instead of stupidly trudging into the snow, Celia climbed onto Verbena's back an allowed her to take Verbena into the deep snow. Despite the dragonet's size, her large paws allowed her to easily walk on the snow without sinking as much as a human. 'Need help?' Verbena asked Xan once she had taken the few steps needed to catch up to him, but Xan could not hear the dragonet's telepathic message.

"Do you want any help?" Celia repeated Verbena's inquiry as she looked down from her perch.

Xan, in his unwillingness to show that the two females his damaged pride, shook his head as he came up with an excuse, "no, this way I can measure how deep the snow is." He took another step, and his foot collapsed the snow until the undisturbed snow around him reached his knees. "This is deep enough," he looked up to Verbena's face, "Can you dig a hole here for the bags?"

Verbena blinked, then compiled and excavated a pit in the increasingly compressed layers of snow and only stopped she discovered the frozen earth beneath the ice. 'Is this deep enough?' She asked as she backed out of the hole.

Xan did not bother saying anything as he dropped the mostly-water-resistant bags into the hole and began to push the snow over it.

Verbena blinked, then helped and used her tail to push the mound of excavated water crystals and buried the bags.

"So, how are we going to find this later?" Celia's voice wavered as she looked to the disturbed snow that was the only remaining marker of the pit.

"We'll find it using Verbena's scent since it is all over the ground here and in her paw prints," Xan assured, then turned and walked out of the deep snow without asking for assistance.

Verbena walked in a circle around the spot to make sure her footprints properly marked the spot, then casually walked back to where the snow thinned and transitioned into the green and brown forest.

When the white ended into the black ground, Celia slid off of Verbena's back and watched Xan as he finished struggling through the snow. When he reached the snow depth that he could more easily walk, he turned and looked to Verbena, "you should get going before the Ulven show up. Stay with Irin, he will protect you and make sure you won't get lost."

Verbena huffed slightly as she flared her wings for takeoff, 'I need no protection,' she snorted, then looked to Celia. 'Call me if you need me,' she briefly nuzzled her rider, then jumped as she flapped her wings and lifted into the air and joined Irin in the sky. The pair briefly circled over Xan and Celia, the two fire-breathing creatures flew towards the adjacent mountain ridge to the east.

Celia watched the two dragons leave when the scattered snow settled, then walked over to the black land and kneeled down to study the anomaly. Upon closer inspection, the ground was not simply dirt, but instead, it was densely carpeted by short, flexible blade-like structures, that seemed to be shorter, flatter versions of the dark green spikes that protruded from each of the steaming mounds.

Celia looked to Xan for guidance, "So what do we do now?"

"We wait for them to find us," Xan stated as he looked out to the vast expanse of green and black.

"Why can't we go find them?" Celia blinked, "or at least find an area where we know they will eventually come out, like on a cart tunnel or whatever they are called when they are above ground."

Xan blinked in surprise and tried to hide his hurt ego as his female companion continued to seem more intelligent than him, despite his experience in the wilderness, "I hadn't thought much about trying to find a road," he reluctantly admitted and rubbed the back of his hooded head, "and I guess that could work better than just sitting here on the edge and waiting for a border patrol to detect us."

Celia nodded, then looked to the sky. "Should we call our dragons back so they can help us find the ... road?" Her voice raised a few notes at the last word.

"No!" Xan jumped a bit in sudden panic. "We'll just draw their attention faster! And not the attention we want, the angry kind of attention!"

Celia blinked, but nodded and glanced between the weathered mountains that flanked the valley, "So, which direction do you think we should go to find the cart tunnel—uh—road?" She corrected herself.

Xan looked between the low mountains laden with clouds created by the warm steam rising from the snowless forest. Farther north, a previous wave of clouds dumped fresh snow onto the taller peaks and maybe into the wastelands beyond the mountains. "Let's go over the western mountain," he announced, then began to march forward on the staggered line where black met white towards the western ridge, where the slight altitudinal advantage may allow them to locate a road.

The moon drifted silently in its high arc across the sky as the two humans clambered up the mountain, but eventually, the pair reached the smoothed peak of the western wall of the valley.

Celia looked out to the foggy forest expanse of dark land but struggled to see hints that signaled the presence of a road through the massive stretch of green mounds on the black land shrouded by mist.

Suddenly, she noticed a path through the scattered mounds. Two parallel trenches wove a careful path between the mounds. Upon seeing the two curving lines, Celia immediately became reminded of the similar patterns worn into the tunnels where small carts frequented. "I think I see the road." She pointed to the worn pattern through the forest in the valley below.

Xan blinked and looked to where she was pointing, but it took him a few extra moments to recognize the same pattern. "Yes!" He grinned, "that's a road." He began to climb down the mountain to reach the route, "I almost did not recognize it since I am so used to seeing trade paths made in the snow."

Celia carefully followed him down the wet shifting slope, then followed the male to the road where it vanished into the snow. When they stopped, Celia glanced to the path where it continued into the snow. The snow-covered section was a single, barely noticeable divot rather than the smoothly worn pattern in the Ulven lands.

"Now we wait," Xan declared as he began to set up a small camp for the two in the snowy side of the border.

As he began to build a mound of snow to create a windbreak, Celia frowned and looked out to the black lands that were devoid of snow and wondered exactly how long they would have to wait, and how long she would have to be without her draconic friend. In her loneliness, she attempted to reach out to Verbena in order to potentially alleviate her desire for the company of her trusted companion. 'Verbena?' She called out to her friend and felt for what remained of the distance-strained mindlink.

'Celia! Are you all right?' Verbena immediately responded in a fervor of pain and worry, 'do I need to come back and rescue you from the strange male?'

'No, no,' Celia assured her friend, 'I am fine, just bored. Can you see anyone coming down the path?'

'No, Irin is trying to show off his hunting skills,' the dragonet mentally snorted, 'he fails. My first hunt went better than this.'

Celia stifled a chuckle so Xan would not grow suspicious of her. 'Why not show him how great of a hunter you are?'

"I will!' Celia could imagine Verbena puffing up her chest with that remark, 'I better hunter than he!'

Celia stifled another laugh, then yelped as a wave of snow suddenly swept over her and buried her. The mass of packed white snow shoved her aside and knocked her off of her feet. Luckily, since she was near the edge where the snowless Ulven lands met the frozen world of snow, the snow was barely a quarter of an arm deep.

'Celia!' Verbena mentally called out.

'I'm fine,' the female human assured as she swiftly unburied herself and looked for the cause of the sudden tsunami of snow that had attacked them.

To her surprise, a path somehow, probably by magic, had been cleared in the snow while she had been distracted with talking with Verbena, and a swift-moving procession of the largest covered carts Celia had ever seen, each one loaded with goods and strange people and led by a strange man with white hair.

The youthful dark-skinned inhuman man radiated power as he held a blue crystal staff for decoration and show rather than for support. His sharp slanted eyes immediately noticed the two half-buried humans on the edge of Ulven lands. In response to the sight of the two humans, the stranger scowled and narrowed his eyes. "Seize them," his smooth voice ordered and he glared at them.

Without hesitation, muscled males stepped out of the line and hauled the two humans out of the snow, then bound them in magic chains they summoned with a simple flick of their wrists.

Celia was frozen in fear and knew Verbena knew her feelings as well, but willed her to stay back in fear of what else the Ulven could potentially do to the dragon. Celia's mind was so confused and filled with panicked thoughts to hear any thoughts Verbena sent via the mindlink.

Suddenly, someone behind Celia dumped a bag over her head and snuffled her senses as she was roughly picked up and thrown onto the uncomfortable back of a cart animal. Celia groaned at the pain of the treatment as the animal beneath her began to move and she dizzyingly rocked up and down, back and forth. Without any known reason to her, she had been captured.

Author Notes:

Celia has been captured! The question is, why? What do you think? Post your theories in the comments!

Also, please feel free to vote if you enjoyed the chapter!