"Eve! Eve!" Cain shouted, a wide grin across his face.

"What is it, dear one?" she asked, plastering a matching grin on her face. She had been shielding her eyes, watching a gull flap frantically until it gave way to exhaustion and fell with a sickening thud onto the solid sea below, its final cry echoing in the wind. It was the first bird she had seen in the past week, and it was likely to be the last. She'd need to retrieve that, if the boys were going to eat today.

"We think we found others!" Abel exclaimed, finishing his younger brother's sentence.

Eve swallowed, uncertain how to take this news. She knew she could give nothing away.

"Oh really?" she said. "What makes you think that?"

"Cain and I were wandering through the woods, trying to gather wood for the fire, when we saw smoke coming out of a cave in the cliffs," Abel said, practically bubbling over with enthusiasm and excitement.

"Hmm," Eve said, trying to think on her feet of what best to continue. "Did you explore the cave further?"

"We couldn't, Eve. It's in the middle of a cliff," Cain said, his voice gently mocking. "Can we go try to see it? Will you come with us?"

"What if it's our tribe?" Abel said. Abel was usually the quiet one, but now he looked positively ecstatic. He kept waving his arms about, his dirty blond hair flopping over his face.

Eve looked down at the boys' muddy feet. She had been certain for months now that there were no other humans left. But where else could the smoke have come from? She bounced back and forth between keeping their hope alive and telling them the truth.

"It's certainly possible," she said, deciding to go with her heart and covering her doubts with what she hoped was an optimistic voice.

"So can we go explore?" Cain squealed. He swung his arms, dancing about her.

"Sure," Eve replied. She thought with a sudden clarity of the gull on the ocean surface.

"But wait a few minutes until I get back, boys. I have a surprise for you," she said, starting off.

"Ooh, what is it?" Cain cried.

"I'm not telling, but I will give you a hint!" she shouted over her shoulder. "We'll be having meat for dinner!" Leaving the boys behind, she carefully made her way down the cliff and walked over the sand-which was one of the few things left that was still soft and in its natural state. She revealed in the feeling of it beneath her toes. It'd be covered with snow soon, though. Just like everything else.

Beyond the sand was an icy tundra that had once been the ocean. She walked out onto it without hesitation. Being over a thousand years old, she understood the planet's elements intimately and knew that the water was solid enough to hold her insubstantial weight. She looked down and thought she could see fish swimming under the surface and bumping against the murky ocean top. They would survive, she thought, though she couldn't tell for how long.

Eve reached the gull and picked it up with one hand. It was heavier than she expected, a good thing for the children. It had been days since they had had anything resembling warm food to eat, and their thin faces were getting more and more skeletal.

The bird's beak was open, and she spotted its pale pink tongue beginning to develop a layer of frost. She checked it over quickly, but it seemed free from disease and infestation; exhaustion had killed it, nothing more dire.

Eve turned around and began to walk back towards the beach. Looking to the cliffs above, she noticed that the boys were missing. Well, missing was a strong word. They had probably retreated further from the edge. It was a sensible move, and nothing to be concerned about.

Eve climbed up the rocks, careful not to slip on her dress's hem. At the top, she surveyed the rocks. But her supposition had been wrong, and the brothers were nowhere to be seen.

"Boys?" she called, then cleared her throat and tried again a little more loudly. "Cain? Abel? Where are you guys?"

Nothing but the wind rustling through the trees answered her.

With growing alarm, Eve hurried towards the woods, frost crunching beneath her feet. She listened carefully, using her acute senses to their fullest. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Calling upon her excellent sense of smell, she inhaled deeply, trying to locate the boys. Dust, ice, and plant life. The scent of the boys was there but faded, not current.

After a minute or two, the smell of blood, faint yet distinct, trickled in front of her nose and wove its way up her nostrils. She flinched as if she had been slapped. She opened her mind further and tried to see beyond her eyelids, beyond the dense cover of the forest. She could not let herself lose these boys. She followed the shallow depressions in the forest floor, eyes still closed, twigs snapping like breadcrumbs beneath her feet. At last, she opened her eyes again; she had found them. They were by the cliffs, looking up at the cave where they had seen smoke earlier.

It was not that far away. Eve marched toward them until instinct made her break into a frantic run. She grasped the gull tighter. She couldn't lose the boys. She couldn't.

***

When Eve first saw the boys, they were wandering through the woods, their voices raw and shaky from shouting for their fellow tribesmen. She was resting on the smooth stones above them, watching the clouds go by. Thinking that she had nothing left to tie her to this world, she sang to herself a song her mother had once used to lull her into sleep each night. Wasn't this the ultimate goodnight?

When she heard Cain and Abel's voices, she thought she was hallucinating, thought this was some vision that Amos had sent her to toy with her mind. He knew her sorrow, how she was barren and unable to carry more dragon babies-not that there was any dragon left to pair with, to love.

"Mom!" Cain cried.

Abel followed behind Cain, smaller, but calmer.

"Will we ever find them?" Cain whimpered through sobs, his feelings of mixed abandonment, confusion, and naive optimism stinging her ear.

"Sure we will, Cain," Abel said, though his doubts were easy to hear even from high above.

"Why would they have left us?"

"I don't know. I just don't know. Maybe it was something I did," Abel replied quietly. Eve heard one of them pick up a pebble and throw it at the ground.

"Nah, it couldn't have been. Must've been me," Cain said solemnly. He sounded muffled, like he had his hands resting against his cheek. "What will we do if we can't find them?"

"I overheard Mom and Dad talking the last night they were with us in the cave, before they disappeared. Mom said we were going the wrong way. She said that to find life, to find food, we had to keep going south."

"I thought we were going south?"

"I thought we were, too, but it's hard to navigate from the stars when it's so cloudy at night," Abel replied bitterly.

Cain shrugged, and they walked a minute in silence before he said, "I'm so hungry. I'm surprised you can't hear my stomach growling."

"Who says I can't?"

Cain shut up again, and neither brother said anything for a long time.

"I'm doing the best I can, Cain," Abel said. "I . . . I won't let you starve. I swear to you like I swore to Mom: I'll protect you."

A painful hand clenched Eve's heart. She squeezed her eyes shut, only for them to snap open in realization. The cloud above her was in the shape of a tree. She had the power to turn plants into nourishment, at least for her. Would that power work on humans? These boys . . . she could give them food. She had been too upset to eat for weeks, but, being a dragon, she could survive on few feedings. Not like these young boys. They would need meat, clothing, and warmth to survive.

"Well, let's keep going. It'll be dark soon, and we'll be able to see the stars," Abel said.

"Okay, Abel. I trust you," Cain answered. She heard them walk down the mountain path towards the rocks below. Their footsteps faded into the distance. She knew her mission now. Her own life was useless unless she could use it to help others. Perhaps these young boys were to be her test, her calling. Perhaps this is what the gods had had in mind all along.

***

As Eve raced through the forest, thinking back to the moment when she'd first seen Cain and Abel, she wondered if she had truly helped them. Were they better off? She had been able to toast some holly tree berries and leaves for them and transform the soil to make it more nutritious, but meat was rare and getting rarer. On the other hand, without her they would be wandering alone, subject to the elements or possibly other humans like the ones they were trying to find now.

What of this smoke? Eve could make nothing of it. There was no way it could be Amos's doing. Nor could it be the boys' parents; she had used her powers to probe for answers about Cain and Abel's parents. Knowing their desire to make peace with the dragons had angered the members of their tribe, Jaco and Iris had fled, trusting that the tribe would take care of their innocent children. Instead, their tribe had hunted Jaco and Iris down and slain them and, as soon as the opportunity had presented itself, had abandoned the children to starve or freeze, alone in the wilderness.

Eve stumbled to the edge of a clearing. Her path had twisted around, and she was again near the cliff, not far above the beach. Only here, the beach ended to her right, rising up in a much greater cliff, rocketing hundreds of feet into the air. Midway up the cliff was a trickle of smoke, steady enough that it was from an active fire. The boys were still nowhere in sight, and Eve wracked her brain, wondering if it were possible for them to climb that high. She tuned into her intuitive powers and searched the area, trying to trace the smell of blood that had caught her attention before.

She was now close enough to sense the warmth of the boys' presence. They were in the cave, though she had no idea how they'd gotten up there. She set the gull down carefully beneath a tree and started to crawl down the cliff to the beach. As she hopped from rock to rock she tried to prepare herself for what she might find inside that cave. Fire, yes, and the boys, too. But what other creature was in there with them? Was it a trap of Amos's? Surely not; she would sense him so nearby. Another human? Natural thermal activity?

As she advanced up the cliff, Eve heard the boys' low voices murmuring from within the cave. She climbed hand over hand, feet scrabbling for places to rest her weight, until she could throw a hand into the cave itself. She inched her way up, flexing her strength and endurance in the steep upward climb. She was much weaker in human form than in dragon, but nevertheless, it didn't take long for her to pull herself into the mouth of the cave.

"Boys!" she cried.

Cain and Abel turned to look at her, surprise and shame in their eyes.

There would be time to scold them later. Right now, her attention was drawn to the cave's third inhabitant: an old man. He was sitting on the opposite end of the cave and shivered violently, his teeth chattering. It was not that cold, Eve thought; but then again, she was of a different making. It took more than snow and ice to freeze the blood of a fire dragon, even one in human form.

Cain and Abel looked at the old man and then back at Eve.

"Who are you?" Eve asked the man.

"I-I-I am Elijah," the man said, deflating with the effort. He made no move to rise. He stayed seated, back against stone, legs drawn up protectively, hands hidden behind his knees.

"How did you come to this cave? Are you alone?" She was desperate to ask more questions, but she knew that doing so might push him over the edge. Coming closer, she saw his abdomen had been slashed open. He wasn't sitting like that for warmth: he was doing it to hold his insides where they belonged. So that had been the blood she had smelled-and along with it other, less pleasant smells.

She did not step forward or try to save him. Long experience let her know he was past all that, and that it was best to let him die on his own terms.

The man chuckled, although the movement clearly pained him. "There is no world for me out there," he rasped. "There is no one left, nothing left to live for. I do not have long here, as I am sure you can see, my dear." He squinted, and his eyes disappeared in wrinkled skin.

"What tribe are you from? Cain, Abel, did you know this man before you found him here?" Eve demanded.

"No, we did not. He's from a Water Tribe. He tried to fight to support the dragons and did not win. His people, they . . ." Abel trailed off.

"They sliced me open and told me to save myself," Elijah said. "I lived with them all my life, tended to them, loved them, took a wife and bore children among them, and this is how they treated me."

"Where were you headed?" Eve said. She pitied the man, but she needed to know. If he had any idea of where it was safe to go, how to keep the children safe, she had to learn it.

"We were to go north," he said. "They say there are still animals there, that people are building a resistance."

Eve shook her head ever so slightly. Heading north would mean certain death. That was where Amos ruled, and he would never allow humans to survive his quest to kill them off.

Elijah coughed, and a little trickle of blood ran down the corner of his mouth. Despite the dark cave, she could see the vivid shine from the bright red drop as it pooled on his jaw and fell onto his chest. He would be dead soon, but her duty wasn't to him; her duty was to the boys, and if they were to survive, they had to get going.

"Cain, Abel, we have to go now," she said. "We're tiring him."

The boys had both seen death many times before, but never like that. Looking spooked, they nodded and got up to leave.

"Wait . . . wait," Elijah wheezed. "Boys, I was coming to join your parents and their fight to save the dragons. You cannot give up your fight. You have to survive. You have to seek out the remaining dragons for their protection." Here he glanced at Eve and made eye contact with her. Holding her gaze with an intensity that made her stomach turn over, Elijah said, "They are the only ones you can trust."

"The dragons are all dead," Cain informed the old man, not understanding what was going on.

But Eve dipped her head slightly at the old man, in acknowledgement. Then she motioned towards the boys to follow her. "Goodbye, Elijah. And good luck to you," she said. After a moment's hesitation, she crossed the cave and briefly placed on hand on the man's heart, stopping it. It was better to die like that, in an instant, than in drawn-out agony.

And a quick death was all she could do for him.

While she followed closely behind the boys as they made their way gingerly down the rocky cliff's edge, one question ran through her mind: how could this dying man know her secret, that she was the last dragon alive save Amos?

And were Cain and Abel in danger if others knew?

She focused her mind on retrieving the gull and feeding it to the brothers. She had to protect them at any cost, and that meant keeping her true nature a secret. How long she could do that, she did not know. She was in uncharted territory.