They are very graceful-looking, are they not? I should like to meet one, one day: there are people here who say they have died, so I see no reason why dragons who have died might not come here, as well.

Oh, of course I know how to fly naturally, but it is quite another thing to know how to fly in combat: you must stay in formation, even when you are being shot at, for one thing; and my friend Lily is a Longwing, an acid-spitter, so we must make sure she is not targeted by any one else, for another. And there are a great many new formations we must develop, and so on and so forth: it can be very dull, but I suppose we must do it, if we are to win the war.

I should like that, I think, but it will be difficult, if I am the only one here who remembers most of them. Iskierka was not yet hatched when I heard many of his stories, and his stories are largely communal affairs: you chime in with a detail you should like to add whenever you like, you see, and he adds it to the story.