Startide awoke the next morning with Ivan curled tightly around his neck. After loosening his pet, the dragon stood up, shook the sand from his scales, and began to walk.

Since his mother had left, Startide had been a wanderer. He spent his days mostly pillaging scavenger dens and searching for treasure. So far, he was only lucky in the pillaging. Startide's only treasure was a simple ring firmly clamped on his left horn. His mother said the beautiful jade band was studded with polished skyfire, so Startide would be able to protect his thoughts from ill-tiding mind-readers.

After leaving the beach and cold, salty sea stenchiness, Startide began to hear the echoing cries of dragons from Jade Mountain. They were mostly happy screeches, but others were cries of pain and anguish; possibly from skirmishes between siblings or friends. He sighed, normal dragons.

Ivan clung to Startide's neck like wet vines, he was still sleeping. Soft palettes of light blue and green waved slowly across the snake's skin. Startide had enchanted his skin to shift like a RainWing's. He found it comforting to watch the colors as Ivan slept, and it acted as a means of communication between the two.

As Startide walked, still to groggy to fly, something round and hard and loud hit him in the back of the head, pitching the hybrid straight forward into the dirt. He looked down, a ball. He looked up. Dragonets were searching the hillside far above him' undoubtedly for the ball.

He thought for a moment. Should he really bring this ball back? He could just kick it back up there, no doubt with a tail so SeaWing as his. Plus, then he wouldn't have to socialize with the dragonets, which would just be mostly one-sided oggling at him, a freak among dragons.

Startide swallowed his fear. If he was going to unite the world like he'd told himself so many times, there'd be no better time to start then now. Startide picked up the ball in his front talons, and lifted steadily into the air.

As he flew, his mind wandered.

Should he be doing this?

Yes, no better way to make friends.

But what if they thought he stole the ball?

Nonsense, it sailed over the peak and hit you in the head.

He sighed again, as he most oten did, and the little hybrid flew to the center of the group of dragonets.

"H-hello..."he said quietly. As he figured, most of the dragonets gave him puzzled looks, the others gave him scrunched faces of disgust. They knew what he was. He felt the hot stares bore into his scales, an how ugly those scales were...

Startide fidgeted with the ball in his talons. "I...I found this. Did anyone, l-lose a b-ball?"

A chorus of hushed whispers grew steadily, each word impossible to hear individually, but put together was the tidal wave of undoubted hateful words, spoken just low enough for him not to hear.

"Freak."

The chorus cut short. The one word had been spoken. What they were all thinking, someone had said it. Startide's eyes welled. He placed the ball gently and stilly on the ground.

"Y-yeah. Get out of here. You don't belong here."

He turned on his heel, and walked toward the crowd of dragons that had come to watch this new circus freak that had appeared on their doorstep. The dragons parted like the Red Sea, and he walked suddenly through them, and began walking slowly down the mountainside.

No dragon stopped him.