Chris avoided explaining to Sarah that he'd only recently learned that he was a dragon, but he did transform into his dragon shape for her. She didn't seem to be as frightened of him as she was of Amaru, and he asked curiously, "You wanted to ask us about dragons?"

The nervous woman glanced between the small green dragon and the one who looked human, but had lifted and shredded entire trees in his claws on his previous visit. "She," she pointed at Anne, "said that her teacher knew about how my garden was created, and since a dragon… came to it, I thought maybe… but instead you actually are dragons."

"It's harder to ask them to their faces isn't it?" Anne asked sympathetically. "But you can. They won't bite."

Chris refrained from pointing out that he'd actually bitten many people over the years and nodded.

Sarah couldn't meet either dragon's eyes without freezing up, as they talked. It only made Chris realize that Anne could easily meet his eyes now. She seemed to have slowly gained more control over her own vision, and no longer avoided looking at his face as much as possible.

When Sarah finally got up enough courage to ask, Amaru verified that dragons had created the stone in Sarah's garden long before the tribes of the conquerors had come to the continent. And once the conversation was back on the original subject, he explained more about the proper placement of the plantings.

In some ways the elder dragon behaved like an irritated professor. He seemed to take joy in imparting knowledge, and grow impatient with topics that did not relate to factual information. Because neither Chris nor Sarah could actually see where the strings ran, he walked along their paths as he explained the layout around the heart.

Anne reported that she could still only see the strings only as interference in her vision, but she also told them happily, "I think that I'm getting better at tracing the locations, now that I understand what I'm looking for."

Amaru nodded, and had her attempt to follow the last two strings on her own.

--

No one told them to do it, but all across the world other dragons were busy straightening the strings. Some were moved into position to feed old hearts, while where the strings naturally ran together, new hearts were being created.

The songs of the world had already been stronger than they had been for ages when the dragons had woken, and as the strings were gradually aligned, the songs began to flow more clearly for longer distances. Some areas, like the mountains where she had slept in the ice had held as many as a dozen dragons in relatively close proximity, and in those places the songs vibrated with the discussions of dragons.

Only faint echoes of those conversations ran south and east to where the blind emperor was radiating a light that only life itself could sense. He was busy gently pouring the energy of hundreds of years into the cultivated fields of his chosen tribe, but he listened to the songs that were carried into the heart that he could not see with a dragon's true eyes, and heard the distant murmurs of his kind.

Dragons had been fairly solitary by nature for millennia, perhaps in reaction to the freedom they had gained with the distinction of I, and the Emperor was more inclined to be even more solitary than most for similar reasons. For far too long he had been reliant on another dragon for his sustenance, and even though he was still reliant on his tribe of short lived mammals and the vast garden that they still tended unknowingly, he still cherished his independence.

He listened to the traces of distant songs, but he sang only the briefest of replies into the unseen strings of the world. "I am also awake."

--

"You can't tell me why you dragons are suddenly waking up, on an apparently worldwide scale?" he demanded incredulously.

She tilted her head and looked down at him with an eye that was nearly as large as the desk in his office, but he kept his spine straight, and met her sharp gaze. Amusement curved her enormous cheeks as she returned question for question, "How do you know that dragons are waking up all over the world?"

He had been amazed by her return, incredulous even, while she had merely been a little chagrined to have returned so swiftly. But during her absence he had grown less pliable, and he remained more wary, and more suspicious. Wounded, she felt. He had been wounded in some way while she had flown freely, getting a feel for the world's balance, and trading songs with the others.

He glared up at her. "Aren't they?" he asked.

"Perhaps? It seems likely," she agreed.

"We have evidence of probable sightings in locations on every inhabited continent," he informed her bitterly. "Please explain why it seems likely?"

She smiled. "Because the song of spring rising in this hemisphere was very strong this year, but there are certainly many lands that are just beginning to settle into the winter sleep, so perhaps the true answer is that I do not know?"

She looked around the frail, empty, metal building where she had been asked to show her true size. It was a shelter built for the aircraft that they used to fly, and she wished that they had left a few for her to examine more closely. After a moment she readjusted her size and shape to one more convenient to the device that she wished to access.

He watched her shrink, and a hint of his previous wonder reflected in his eyes. If he stepped forward and touched her, his hands would report the same changes that his eyes saw. Magical, and yet even according to her, it was not magic.

She held out her apparently human hand, in an unspoken demand, and even though dozens of people were watching critically, he did not hesitate to offer the device. Her own eyes were greedy as she examined the screen of the extra large tablet that he'd brought as a bribe.

"Did you tell your people about the wonders of the internet that you so admire," he asked a little cooly.

"I sang of my newest knowledge," she said agreeably without looking up.

"How many do you think heard your song?" he asked warily, without glancing at the recording devices.

"Perhaps a handful already," she speculated. "But the strings in the mountains already hum with new things, so there are many distracting songs of interest."

"You use these invisible strings that you say entwine the world like a social media network?" he asked dryly.

"Social media?" she asked.

He could see the search results pop up for her faster than he could form a coherent reply. He replied anyway, "An inefficient system used to share snippets of daily life and interesting pictures or articles of interest to the poster."

She did not respond immediately, but eventually she agreed, "Perhaps, although truly songs are a better description I think. Songs that meld and merge, and generally carry the strongest vibrations farther than the softest. Although a note can be strengthened by the same or similar notes if the source of the vibration is widespread."

Humans had such a wide variety of spoken languages that the concept of information carried by tones was not completely foreign, but it was still a rather mystifying concept for him personally.

The idea that events themselves created vibrations that were communicated through an invisible network across the globe was reaching into mystical territory, but when a dragon-mage told you about it, it was difficult to object that it was unscientific. Especially when the dragon-mage in question learned the scientific method and regarded it as a very logical and concise summary of a tradition.

"Can I collect another sample of your blood?" he asked without explaining.

She looked up from the tablet and then glanced at the recording devices that he had been carefully avoiding looking at. "I will allow it," she agreed. "But I suspect that it will not help your kind in their current battle against the virus that has driven them into their shelters."

"It might," he argued stubbornly, and honestly. "Both the virus and the dragons seem to have appeared in the world at the same time! Immunity doesn't prevent you from being a carrier for a disease, but your living blood might contain a clue to your own resistance."

"We are not rats, or birds, to carry illness into your settlements," she replied with a hint of amusement. "Nor will drinking our blood or tasting our flesh grant anyone immortality."

He glanced at one of the cameras, and grimaced. "No one believes in old legends like that," he said firmly. "We are trying to create a very real vaccine."