Atro led her along a narrow path almost swallowed by shrubs for nearly an entire day. She followed behind him, clutching a blank botanical specimen notebook, while two faint red welts formed around her ankles inside her boots.
By the time they found the patch of dark moss, evening had fallen. Light slanted through gaps in the canopy, outlining the thumb-high dark green plants with a dull golden edge.
Atro crouched down and carefully separated a small sample with its roots and soil intact, placing it into a breathable clay jar. Beside him, she recorded the collection time, coordinates, soil moisture, and types of surrounding companion plants. Everything was quiet—so quiet that she thought there was nothing else in the forest.
Then the ground shook.
The tremor came from the northwest, beyond the far side of a ridge roughly two hundred meters away. It did not feel like the movement of ordinary weight, but more like the secondary ripples produced when some enormous living creature landed on the ground.
Her master rose twice as fast as usual. He handed her the clay jar and said only one word: "Go."
She did not go. She stood there, watching the shadow rise beyond the ridge.
The shadow stretched long in the twilight, its edges covered in a dark green sheen like light reflecting off scales. It did not move quickly, but that very slowness carried an intense pressure, as though warning an observer who had misjudged the distance: by the time you noticed it, there was nowhere left to run.
What appeared before them was a dragon.
An adult female Welsh Green Dragon. She was larger than an ordinary adult male green dragon by a full size, and her belly was visibly swollen—the sign of late-stage egg-laying.
Her breathing was slower than