Nihra stretched out her hands; her fingers moved in intricate patterns in the wind. The sunlight was caught in the red-gold scales on the backs of her hands, making them glitter. It was almost as if she was playing with the light itself.

It was beautiful. Downright enchanting.

I smiled because I could see how focused she was. How much she wanted to be able to really feel something there. Yet I thought it was, well, unlikely that it was possible.

A sixth sense? Magic? They were fairy tales, legends. She knew that I thought so, but she also knew that I didn't want to offend her. I just didn't have her faith, but I respected the way she saw the world.

The view of the country from up here was breathtaking. For me, literally. I always stayed a few steps away from the steep slope so that I didn't have to look down into the several hundred meter drop. Just thinking about it made my hands sweat and gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach.

Nihra was sitting right at the front, her legs dangling over the abyss. She didn't even seem to notice it. I could see just enough from back here: the sun's fingers brushing across the meadows and fields. The forests in the background, their leaves blurring into a yellow billow; impossible to make out individual trees.

"There is something. A call. A... push." Nihra's voice sounded dreamy and full of anticipation at the same time. I laughed softly. It was infectious how much she believed in the old stories.

She turned slightly towards me, her eyes still half closed. Warmth spread through me, chasing away any nagging and nauseating pressure that reliably set in near the escarpment. I loved the way the light refracted off the short horns on her forehead. How her copper-colored hair, wildly tousled because she was simply indifferent to any order, resembled flickering flames in the light wind.

She was so much that I was not. Enthusiastic. Wild. Full of joy and curiosity.

I lowered my gaze, embarrassed, as her golden eyes met mine. My scales and horns showed a washed out brown that, like everything about me, was boring. She wasn't afraid of the deep, or of anything. I, on the other hand, was full of worry and restraint.

Well, at least I could sometimes bring her back down to earth when her imagination took her too far from the real world.

"You don't believe me." She wasn't even indignant, just let herself fall backwards onto the cool, damp grass with a disappointed sound.

"Here, at least put a blanket underneath you." After all, that's what we'd brought it for. I tossed her the colorful piece of fabric, unable to bring myself to move closer to her. "And it's not about whether I believe you. Of course I believe that you feel something. But it's the wind, plain and simple. No magic."

She rolled over onto her stomach, willfully ignoring the blanket.

"No, Toki, it's different this time."

I winked at her and pulled my blanket a little tighter around me.

"Just because it's colder?"
"It hasn't just gotten a little colder. It's gotten cold." Her gaze was calm and serious. "I may be younger than you, but the change is clear. There's ice in the wind."

Ice. Just as much a word from legends as snow or magic.

Of course the world was changing. Every world is. Always. It's the natural course of things. Three generations ago, the last of us had been born with sunny yellow and deep green scales. Two generations ago, the last of us with these colors had died. Today our scales were brown, or if you were as lucky as Nihra, orange, even reddish. Our ancestors had called themselves Summerborn and had given us the name Autumnborn. That was the way it was with change.

"If that's true," I resumed our conversation from a moment ago, "you should finally listen to your big brother and wrap yourself up tight."

First she glared at me, then she laughed.

"Why do you always have to be so serious?"

She stood up and grabbed the previously unnoticed blanket. She was with me in just a few steps, sat down next to me and wrapped the colorful fabric around us both.

I pulled her close to me, just like when we were children. I had always wanted to protect her. She was wonderful, clever and beautiful. But also different; some people didn't like that.

The first time she came home, her clothes filthy, her face a rigid mask, our mother hadn't been able to get out of her what had happened.

The second time, her bag was missing.

The third time, her curls had been cut off and red marks on her wrists were evidence of rough treatment.

Our parents were furious and demanded that the village school find out what had happened. But the teachers remained silent. The other children remained silent. Nihra remained silent.

At night she crawled into my bed, thinking that I was asleep because I had been ill for a few days. She cried, whispered. Told me about voices in the wind, the shadowy images she saw. Of the important times that were coming.

That she had assumed that everyone her age could see and hear it.

The other children hadn't taken it well when she talked about it. They had called her crazy, a savage, a witch. She had tried to convince them by making the wind dance, just a little. At least she said she could. No one else saw it.

When I asked her later why she hadn't told our parents, why she hadn't confided in me, she just shrugged her shoulders. She had known that we didn't see it.

We moved away, first our whole family, later just Nihra and me. I hated the heights, but I knew that she loved the wind, the vastness that this steep slope offered. So we built something here.

I was good with animals, Nihra made beautiful jewelry out of wire and natural materials. We had our hut, our peace and quiet, but a small town nearby where we could offer our services and goods. And we got what we needed there, apart from what the forest and our small garden gave us.

It was a simple life, with its own difficulties. But at least Nihra was safe from the hostility of those who didn't understand her. I didn't believe in magic myself, or even the shadows of it, but she was so happy when she talked about it. She wasn't harming anyone. Why couldn't they have just left her alone?

Together we watched as clouds gathered in the distance. They grew thicker and darker, moving ponderously towards us.

Nihra was right about one thing: it had become cold. A little more every day over the last few years. At first it had hardly been noticeable, but now the wind regularly made us shiver. We had had to get extra clothes and used more firewood. The days when we could enjoy warm, golden light were becoming increasingly rare. The light itself had changed color, becoming more garish, whiter.

If I believed in the legends, I would have to agree with Nihra. It really seemed as if some of the stories were coming true. The temperature dropped, the light became pale. I had heard rumors that children had been born with gray scales.

"They would give us back flying."

I winced; I had been completely lost in thought.

"Ehm, who?"

"Our ancestors." She didn't wait for my reaction, but began to quote from the fairy tales we had heard from our grandparents. And which our parents never wanted to repeat. "For the mighty ones, the ice-colored ancestors, have wings with which they span entire fields. Their magic allows them growth even in the most numbing cold. Their bodies are protected by their scale armor, their horns weapons against the strongest enemy."

I snorted. "I've listened to the stories, too."

"Have you?" She nudged me with her shoulder.

"Sure."

"Then you must see the signs! Even if you can't hear their voices."

I shook my head deliberately.

"I'm sorry, Nihra. There is no magic, and certainly none that makes plants grow. And there's no one who has scales all over their body, or even wings." The thought of flying didn't evoke any pleasant feelings in me, so I didn't delve into the subject. I tapped my own horns, which grew from my temples but only formed small mounds, dull, far from impressive. "These aren't weapons either. And what's the color of this ice mentioned?"

She closed her eyes, opened them again immediately and answered with palpable conviction: "White."

I leaned a little to one side so that I could look at her better. Her eyes flashed again in that way where I knew I could say whatever I wanted. No argument would dissuade her from seeing the world the way she did.

Sighing, I let myself fall back into place. I loved this side of her, this irrepressibility, even if it made our lives much harder.

"Never mind."

Another gust of wind brought more cold. It slowly crept through the several layers of fabric of the blankets and clothes. In addition, the sun was now completely swallowed up by clouds, casting a kind of penumbra over us.

Rain and even storms were not uncommon, but this felt different. There was no tension in the air, not even the humidity that heralded the imminent release of the clouds. Instead, there was a heaviness, a strange stillness.

I frowned involuntarily, staring across the abyss into the distance. The animals, whose tireless activity and quiet noises had accompanied us the whole time, had fallen silent.

"Worried again, big brother?" Nihra's voice had a teasing undertone.

"No, everything's fine." I forced a smile onto my face. "But what do you say to a warming fire and some hot tea?"

"Sounds good!" She unwrapped herself from the blanket, leaving a cold draft at my side. With just a few movements, she had folded up the fabric and tucked it under her arm. "Come on, sleepyhead. First one down gets the last honey bun!"

Laughing, she shot off down the hill and I hurried to follow her. Sometimes she almost acted like a child. And swept me along with her every time.

We had barely made it a quarter of the way down the hill when she slowed down and let me catch up for good. She knew I wasn't that fast anymore, but she never made an issue of it. To protect my pride, she covered up the fact that my injury hadn't healed as well as it should have.

As soon as I was at her side, she hooked up with me and started chatting. About the pebbles she had found, beautifully rounded by the river, and with which she was planning a series of bracelets. Of the wood and wire she would need from my next purchase. She asked me how my work had been going lately, and if I'd finally asked the woman with the blonde hair I'd talked so much about last time for her name.

I knew she was trying to distract me from the pulling pain in my leg. We had already talked about all of this, our lives were moving at a slow pace. But I appreciated what she wanted to do for me.
Suddenly she stiffened and stopped so abruptly that I almost stumbled.

"What...?" I looked at her; she had put her head back on her neck and was just turning back in the direction we had come from.

"Nihra?"

"They're coming."

It was just a whisper, but it sent a shiver from the back of my neck through my whole body.

"Nihra..." I whispered now too, I couldn't help it. My voice was weak and there was a tremor in it that I had never heard before.

"They're coming!" This time she shouted it, loudly, joyfully. With a jubilant sound, she threw up her arms, threw off the blanket and started dancing on the spot. Her feet drummed, her hands clapped a wild rhythm.

Panic paralyzed me. Had finally happened what I had been afraid of for so long? Was there a madness in my sister after all? Would I lose her to her visions and daydreams?

I wanted to reach out to her, to calm her down, but she suddenly turned to me. The look in her eyes was completely clear and she became calm again.

"Look, Toki." She pointed up the hill. A happy smile lit up her face like a little sun of her own.

With an aching heart, I followed her gesture. I was sure what I would see: Nothing.

My breathing stopped for a moment. My mouth opened as if of its own accord, my hand half-stretched out towards Nihra fell back to my side.

White flakes swirled down the slope like feathers, dancing in the peaceful breeze. The clouds had reached us, but instead of pouring rain over us, these whimsical stars fell from the sky.

I was pulled into a tumultuous embrace.

"Toki! It's snow! Just like in the stories!" I just shook my head in disbelief, unable to say anything. Couldn't understand what was happening. "Winter is here, Toki!"

Nihra grabbed my hands and spun me around in circles. I just stumbled after her willlessly. There was chaos in my head, then complete emptiness again.

My sister noticed that I didn't share her enthusiasm, but that didn't dampen her mood.

"I know you could never see what I saw. Not hear their voices whispering in the wind. But that doesn't matter anymore. Everything will be different now."

She looked up, into the thickening bustle. The flakes were now falling on us, settling on our clothes, sugaring the barren meadow. They melted, leaving little wet patches on my sleeves.

"The ancestors are coming."

And she was right. Huge shadows suddenly broke through the low-hanging clouds. The sound of their wings beating as they regained height broke against the trees. Their roar shook the fading day. The dim light reflected brilliantly off their magnificent scales, beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

White. Silver. Blue.

Winter had returned.

And with it the dragons.