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He played their first meeting over and over again in his mind. A year had passed since then. He had been so close then, so close they had touched. He cursed his need for oxygen, wishing he could have held his breath a moment longer.

But that one time had been enough to burn her form into his mind, the image of her light coating of fur drifting soundlessly in the water, her eyes glistening in the clear water, taking in her surroundings, so beautiful, but cautious.

He pondered when she didn't emerge that day if she had drowned, and he had came back to the lake several hours later, searching it for her body. Again, he could find no trace of her, elusive little creature that she was. Each time a situation like that arose, the idea of her being an immortal dragon danced through his thoughts, and enticed him ever further.

For one, it gave him hope that no matter how long it would take, he could eventually gain her trust. She was as long lived as he and that could very well help him gain her trust as well, if he lived long enough to gain her trust perhaps she could find kinship in him, one who knows what it is to live countless centuries and millennia without end.

He also played with the idea that she could be one of the daughters of Tiamat, Goddess of chaos. There was so much he could learn from her if she was, but as it was he had no way to ask her nor the knowledge that she would even understand him if he spoke to her.

He rubbed his paws to his muzzle and face in frustration, hoping this wasn't going to be as hard as he was seeing it in his mind. He laid his head down to sleep, letting rest come down upon him in his cavernous home in the mountain.

Floating through space has it's pro's and con's, she thought as she drifted, seeing nothing but the open blackness of space around her, No nasty fleshies to hurt you here, no gravity to hold you down. But it does get so lonely out here...

She opened her wings, her body motionless as she did so, waiting for the nearest asteroid to rush by her. She would grab hold of it as it sped it's progress through the seamless void, and let it take her along it's path, the icy debris sticking in her fur. Her fur flowed only because of that debris, the windless void of space leaving no margin for sound, her nerveless lungs crushed to almost nothing as she and her driver flew along. She needed no air, but to speak with a voice that none could hear or understand anyways.

When she found a likable spot to disembark, she whispered her farewells silently to her icy companion. She believed that all the comets and asteroids and meteors had souls, for they, like her, were ever searching for their destination and their purpose in the universe.

She then prepared herself, gazing off to a distant star, waited just the right moment and launched herself, as she had so many times before, straight towards her destination, wings spread pointlessly. They did nothing to direct her trajectory, but she loved to imagine that she was truly flying through space, weightless and free.

But her trajectory had been off. Yet another con of floating through space.

She was flying at the star itself, not the system the star was in. At the speed she had launched herself, it wouldn't be a long trip, but she still had plenty of time to curse herself, knowing she was in for a very painful death.

As the light from the star got brighter, she had to cover her eyes. She had experienced this death before, but it didn't make it any less painful or torturous. Her fur began to grow hot, and her skin grew warmer as a result. By the time she couldn't look at the star anymore, she could feel her flesh growing drier, shrinking and ripping. If she could have screamed, she would have. She looked at her hands and her wings. Her wings lit, and the fire consumed them before going out in an instant, the vacuum of space only allowing her to burn as long as there was something TO burn.

Finally, she couldn't hold back, and she looked into the face of her slayer, and her eyes bled and burnt as she stared it down. She was only a mile away from it now. She could feel her blood boiling and evaporating.

She awoke from her nightmare just as she was wasting away in the sun, turned into a husk of her former self to rot upon the gaseous surface until the being of space died and she could be reborn without dying again.

She shook her head heartily. She had ran into a star once. It was the most excruciating experience she had ever endured. It lasted several millennia before the star, which had already been old, finally burnt out, leaving the surface just cool enough for her to be reborn and escape her burning prison.

Ironic it was that she would escape a flaming inferno and end up on a frozen tundra. She shook herself again and pulled herself up, awake once more. Dreams had finally returned to her, but only one good one had truly remained, though she was loathe to recall it.

Or shy, rather... She thought to herself. It involved her and that large being she had come across at the lake a year ago.

The dream involved her partaking in his company in the skies of this planet, flying among the clouds and weaving about one another. He would lead her and show her all that there was to see upon the surface of the planet. He would show her everything there was to see and more, delving deep into the mountains, gliding through caverns that he knew, the she trusted him to know. One mistake would send the spiraling into the ground. She would be reborn from the crash, but she could not know for him.

But make a mistake, he would not. He would float with such finesse unseen in a creature of his size, avoiding stalagmites and weaving through stalactites, until the tunnel they flew through would open up unto the beautiful world that was emerging from the snow and ice. And then, in time, they would come to stop at his lair, where he would invite her warmly into, a place to rest and hold his company a while longer.

She shook the memory from her head, though. It was ridiculous of her to have such thoughts, no matter how much she longed to quell the loneliness that had accompanied her from the stars even to this planet full of life. She sighed longingly then scolded herself once more in her head, telling herself she had to be careful if she wished to avoid the pain of death again.

He had dreamed of her as well, though his dreams had been slightly more... intimate than hers. He, too, had grown to know what loneliness was, having been so for so long on this unforgiving plain. Unlike her, whom had only arrived near the edge of this time period history would come to know as the Ice Age, he had lived through it and beyond.

Little did he find the company of his kind, finding himself more to coming across the barks of dogs, the screech of raptors in search of their meals from the skies he shared with them, to his own personal encounters with the humans of this world.

Coming across her had been something of a blessing for him, something to cure the insatiable enclosure of his quiet abode. When her scent had first arisen on the wind, he made every effort to find her. His reward was dead flesh, and only a scent on the wind to remember her by. His second encounter with her had been the closest he had been with someone of his kind in eons. And because of his silly lungs and need for air, he had scared her away. He cursed himself for having been so careless, but then sighed it away.

"She is immortal," he would tell himself, "I have all the time in this world and the next to find a key to her trust. I just have to be patient and more careful..."

But his patience with himself would wear thin and he would roar with frustration, taking his anger out on his cave, leaving chunks of rock scattered about.

He must have thought himself covert, but she could hear him even from her hillside home. She feared him, and yet longed to see him again. She gazed off to the mountain side, then a single thought banished her concentration, and she looked away regretfully, leaving her curiosity to the side until another time. It would be many moons before she could take his side in full confidence.

It was later that year, when the cold set back in regardless of the worldly changes that had been set in motion decades ago, that she had taken to the skies to fly among the birds that were taking their leave of these lands for a warmer climate. Though they were leaving, she would not follow them. She had made her home in her hillside cave, choosing not to forsake it for the touch of belonging it had left on her, as well as that she had yet another dream about her strange cousin.

She had convinced herself that his species was similar to hers, and oddly had referred to him as a cousin instead of a total stranger, perhaps to put herself at ease, and hopefully allow herself to one day let herself get close to him. Her instinct told her to stay away from him, though.

See where your trust will get you with something even bigger than the fleshies, it would whisper to her, he looks even MORE dangerous than they do, and you want to put your faith in HIM?

She would shake the thoughts from her head whenever they would rear their ugly head, then she would sigh as she realized it was her own head she was calling ugly. Not that she had ever been very vain. She could not honestly judge within beings like herself beauty or hideousness. She found it even more ridiculous that she was thinking of such a thing as self importance when she knew she was the only one in the universe like herself. At least, that's what she told herself again and again.

She roused from her thoughts when she realized she was hovering circles around the lake where they had met, and she turned sharply from the air, letting the wind carry her down to the waters edge, coming to rest on the bank of the lake, where she dipped her muzzle within the cool, once more icy depths; First to cool her face, then she took a long draught from the clear fluids, letting the cool, crisp water flow down her throat, quenching a thirst that was mostly need. None of it would leave her body, as she had no orifice from which it could vacate her.

Her body used it all to keep her muscles well oiled and working at top efficiency. Nothing she ingested went to waste, and therefore, she had no waste to excrete. Just one of the many odd ways her body had been built.

She had two hearts as well that helped her two sets of wings beat at the speed they did, as well as supply the rest of her muscles with the needed blood flow that was required to keep her body running. The most unique of their purposes, though, lied in their ability to rejuvenate her body over time, revitalize organs, and reconstruct tissue and rebuild bone. Most curious of their functions arose when the hearts themselves were destroyed.

Like a forest after the eruption of a volcano, her hearts left their essence in the land around where they were last resting. Even if completely and utterly ruined and wasted away, from the essence of the world, star, or even the depths of space around her, they would reform. She had points in her memory that would lapse, and in the course of what could only be a nights sleep to her, countless millennia could have passed. It was the worst in space, where little existed, but her essence would remain until the subtle pulsations would arise anew.

Like the phoenix, they would be remade and reborn, and from those hearts so would she. The moment her hearts beat once more, even though her brain and body and limb had not yet been created again, she would feel. Her mind would be reconstructed first, and the rest of her would follow. In the end, as though she had never been vanquished at all, Anahlea, dragoness daughter of the stars, would arise from the proverbial ashes once more.

Her very existence, though it was the only kind she knew, still made her head spin with how even the stars could not outlive her, even if they could be her bane in a moment. She drew another long drink of water to steady her nerves before looking over the crystal reflection of the water, a light chill wind causing little ripples in the enormous pool.

It was once the ripples had cleared that she noticed the reflection in the water. Like before, she was not alone.

"I am sorry I did not announce my approach sooner, but I did not wish to interrupt your musings..." he said calmly, his rich voice carrying to her ears, soft but pleasing.

Though she could not understand any that he said, she was calmed somewhat by his manner, and she raised her eyes from the phantom in the water to it's caster on the opposite bank. Any other creature that would have tried to speak at that distance would have had their voice drowned out by the wind, but his was the voice of a small behemoth, deep and gruff, but smooth.

Large though he was, she could not gather much of his details from where she stood, but she gathered that he must stand easily at three times her height. She could run from the end of his tail to the tip of his nose and back track to his wings and lay comfortably between them.

He stood slowly, and her contemplations of height were easily confirmed, though she stood as well, her hackles raised now as she gazed warily towards her unknown companion.

All he wanted was to approach the lady dragon, to show her that he meant her no harm, but he knew she could never understand him, or if she could even speak at all beyond her feral tongue. Her shape was similar, and yet different. Her wings reminded him of his past form, before his heart had been removed by the human that was far after the others' times. He also had taken the form of a four winged beast, and looked far less menacing than he did now.

It was only his past form that made him think of her, for they were so similar in many ways, and yet different in appearance and structure.

He took some steps towards her and let out a lamented whine as she took the same steps back. She wasn't ready for him yet, she told herself again and again. There was no way to tell that he wanted her for anything other than his own sick pleasure; to rape, to torture, to consume, to kill again and again like her captors before now. Something in her said that he wanted to only be friends, and she longed to embrace it, but shook her head, and this time caution was a most relentless ally, causing her to flee once more from his presence.

His legs quivered with the longing to give chase, but in the end, he knew it would not help his cause to make her believe she was hunted like prey.

Her own legs carried her far, farther than her home. Something inside of her was terrified of him, of his red claws(orange to her), his silver mane, his piercing eyes, and terrible markings. It was this terror that would lead her to abandon her home.

It was with a heavy heart, metaphorically speaking, that Synxirazu turned his head away from her, and took to the skies, not following, but instead returning to his home alone once again.

He would not see her again for a long, long time.

It was not that she had forgotten him, that she had not returned to her home in the past five hundred years. The damned flesh creatures that she had learned to call 'Men' from listening to them speak to one another, had begun migrating as much as the birds, and had settled into her old lair and valley. It would have been easy for her to dispatch them, but as time went by, they became more organized and coordinated. Her early attempts to fight them not only caused them to start to amass into a single tribe, but her onslaughts had been countered by new contraptions created by these humans who smelled of the salt and sea. She had observed them once using the 'net' to capture fish in the water.

She also found that many of them were far more intelligent than her first captors, having learned the art of throwing their spears, effectively keeping her at a distance from their camps. It wasn't until they deemed her threat too dangerous that they left her home behind.

Before she had managed to do so, though, she had came across lands that seemed to have surpassed the ice and cold, but had not yielded to the same array of beautiful colors and flora that her valley had. Instead, spiny plants grew where little moisture struck, sucking the land dry of nutrients so they could live on just one more day. And yet, even these vile creations of the earth grew their own beauty in due time when the weather grew warmer and left the cold of the winter months behind.

After that, she had journeyed to the sea itself, which still held much ice. She found the water there to be distasteful, full of the salt the humans before smelled strongly of. But within it also resided a new kind of creature she had never know; It adorned itself with fins and scales, though much weaker than that of any creature she had ever seen. She tried her hand at catching said creatures, and over time perfected her art of diving and snatching the little creatures. Their taste was oily and unique, filled with the same salty essence of the ocean. She would try to swim with them at times, but found her eyes stung viciously with the liquid concoction.

Once she had grown tired of the sea and desert, she found herself longing for her old home. It was then that she made her trek, many years later, to take back her old home.

He had not caught her scent in several centuries. He feared she had gone for good, and had been watching the humans that now dominated the valley and hills. They hunted and gathered everything, and game began to grow scarce. He himself grew tiresome of the herds of dear starting to thin, even though his diet consisted mostly of the ore that he would dig out of his cavernous home.

He would terrorize the humans from time to time, angry at them for ruining the land around them, blaming them for her leaving this place, and leaving him so lonely. Those that fought him received his dark flame, a soul eating power that the shamans of their tribes would claim as dark magic.

It was thanks to his occasional weeding of their numbers that when Anahlea did return, she found less of them to combat her. With the terror of two winged beasts preying upon their encampments, the elders claimed the land as cursed, said to lure man with it's enticing temptations, only to murder them in their sleep. They fled them, in search of god blessed lands that they would be safe from their airborne foes.

When they had left, he had been grateful. When her scent suddenly came with their passing on the winds from the west, he was elated. She had returned! After so long, perhaps now, he would get another chance at the dragoness that had laced his dreams for the past five centuries. So long had he waited, never forgetting her beauty, even as she had stood opposed to him on the opposite of the lake. If only he had given chase then, would he have claimed his prize, but it was this he knew that would destroy the purity of it and thus he had resisted.

It was that memory in her mind as well that let her nose catch the scent of her unseen cousin on a west bound wind one day while she flew. She did not fear it now, though, as she would have so long ago. She not only wished to greet the scent's owner fully, but to finally ease the painful loneliness that ate at her hearts and soul.

But it would not be rushed, her mind would tell her, again and again, and she would wait instead to hold company with the great dragon of the mountains.