It was before time that we came to the mountains, flying until we could fly no more, and then spiraling gently to the stone. When we landed, we realized the sharpness of the stone under our talons, its solidity, was a strong thing, a good thing. These were nests where we could live, high above the world, and see danger coming and stars appearing. And we could dwell in caves when we tired of watching the sky.
It did not take our people long to discover the utility of ledges, the marvel of mountain streams, the vast high meadows where game ran and our people could hunt at their leisure. We lived in the mountains because they were the best place. We lived in the air, too, but our wings could not bear us forever, and when we sank from tiredness the mountains were waiting like parents, like friends.
Over time, we had children, and there were eggs hatched and young wyverns born to the Clans. One day, a wyvernling by the name of Haaliddit- a male with scales the color of fire, and breath of it too- decided that he would like to leave the mountains, and see what lay beyond the horizon. He said he was tired of gray stone, and that he had glimpsed green beyond on some of his higher flights. He wanted to see more green, he said.
We were not tired of gray, we said.
Haaliddit replied that he was tired, and he spread his wings and soared into the sky. A young female who would have mated with him if he asked, Soraaliy, decided to accompany him. Her scales were the color of clear water, and she breathed it, too. They shone in the sun for a long time as they flew just to the left of the rising sun.
We watched them, and then we went back to playing and hunting and singing among the mountains.
In a year's time, when the sunlight made the mountains shine as if they were covered with gold, Haaliddit and Soraaliy returned, with a clutch of full-grown wyvernlings behind them. And Haaliddit exalted the hunting in the forests, and the deep quiet in them, and the beautiful green of their leaves, until at last several other young wyvernlings decided to go. So they flew, to the left of the rising sun, and Haaliddit and Soraaliy and their children went with them.
Two years passed, and then, on a day when the mountain streams sparkled like diamonds, Soraaliy flew back to the mountains. Her wings were tattered, and there was a terrible expression in her eyes. Her mate and children were dead, she said, and so were the other young wyvernlings who had gone with them.
We said that we did not understand.
She replied that there were creatures in the forest, creatures who walked on two legs but had no wings, or scales, or tails. They had soft fur on their heads, and talons more clever than ours. They had fashioned strange weapons, and with them they had killed Haaliddit and her children and the others, breaking their wings and shooting them from the air. They wanted the forest, because they wanted to live in it.
We said that she should not go back.
But Soraaliy was determined to avenge her mate, and make the forest her home in his memory. She persuaded Tyulva, a young female with green scales and breath of thorns, to go with her, and together they flew just to the left of the rising sun.
Tyulva returned a month later, on a day when the autumn leaves enclouded the mountains with colors, and said that Soraaliy was dead. The creatures had killed her, calling her ugly, and said that they were coming.
We said we would meet them.
They came.
We met them.
The creatures had clever weapons that could shoot us from the air. They had keen eyes that could see us flying far overhead. They even had magic that could resist our fire and our water and our thorns. We seemed doomed to lose to them.
But Tyulva was determined we would not lose. She thought, and thought, and then she decided that she needed a weapon of her own. So she took a rock into her talons, and dropped it into the middle of the creatures' camp.
Many of them were crushed to death.
Exulting, Tyulva took another rock and tried again. But this time, they were ready for her and they shot her wings. She fell to the ground, but she still had the rock, and she gripped it in her tail and hammered many of them to death before they killed her.
We were watching, and we called to the mountains and asked for their help when we saw that, the union of wyvern with stone.
The mountains answered.
We had many stones, and we flew at the creatures, and dropped rocks, and hammered them with the stones we held in our tails, until they fled. When we went to drop the stones, we found we could not; they had bonded to our tails, and we had great weapons there now, great hard fists of stone. It was a gift of the mountains, and to this day we can still use our tails to club our prey to death, can we but get close enough.
The mountains answered our call. They shelter us still, with high peaks that keep us beyond the reach of the eyes of other races, and winds that send the arrows astray, and deep caves where we can hide and rear our wyvernlings in comfort. There are still ledges on which we can perch in the sun, and mountain streams in which we dip our wings, and vast meadows where the animals we hunt run.
Though we have lived in many other places now, in the vast deserts of sand and ice, in the forests and the jungles, in the foothills and the lakelands and the coasts of the mighty oceans, no home has ever answered our call as the stones did. We sought sanctuary, and we have never found it, but in the mountains alone.
