“Here be dragons,” her map says, but all there is is water, as far as the eye can see. She’s been sailing for over a month now, sure that she would find land. Dragons live on land after all.
Not that she has seen no wonders on her way. A row of tall towers of rock gave her a fright, when she thought it’s the fingers of some monster rising out of water. She could swear they hadn’t been there a second before that, but they stood where they were, as unmoving as any piece of rock she’d ever seen.
Then there was a school of bright green fish. Each as small as a fingernail, all shining in the night. There were millions of them traveling to the east, and for a few hours, the sea shone green in the middle of the night.
She also saw a black shadow lurking around her boat for a few days. It was so big that at first she was sure a monster fish was about to attack her. But the shadow only kept her company, never breaking out of the water for her to see what it looked like, and as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared one day.
She hears a splashing sound coming from behind her. She turns her head and sees something red darting towards the sky. Then other things of the same shape, but of different colors dart out of the water. She follows their path. They go up and up and up, and then start flying in a large circle. They look like small birds, none larger than a dove. She sees flashes of light in their flight path. They continue circling but come lower and lower until finally she can see them clearly.
They do seem like birds, but their bodies are not covered with feather but with glittering scales. There is another flash of light. It’s fire, coming from the mouth of one of the birds. These are dragons! And she’d heard dragons are huge!
She watches in fascination as the circle of the dragons comes lower and lower, until suddenly, the dragons leap into the water in unison, and disappear.
Apparitions 