Maybe it was nothing. Nerra knew there had to be people somewhere else in the woods. Maybe they were charcoal burners or foresters; maybe they were poachers. Whoever they were, if she kept going, Nerra would probably run into them again. She didnt like that idea, didnt like the risk of them seeing more than they should, so she threw herself off in a new direction, almost at random. She could find her way through the woods, so she wasnt worried about getting lost. She just kept going, spotting holly now and birch, celandine, and wild roses.

And something else.

Nerra paused as she caught sight of a clearing that looked as though something large had been in it, branches broken, ground trampled. Had it been a boar, or maybe a pack of them? Was there a bear about somewhere, large enough that maybe the hunt was needed after all? Nerra couldnt see any bear prints among the trees though, or indeed anything at all that suggested something had come through on foot.

She could see an egg though, sitting in the middle of the clearing, rolled onto one side on the grass.

She froze, wondering.

It cant be.

There were stories, of course, and the castles galleries had some petrified versions, devoid of any life.

But this… it couldnt really be…

She made her way closer to it, and now she could start to take in the sheer size of the egg. It was huge, big enough that Nerras arms would barely have fit around it if she had tried to embrace it. Big enough that no bird could have laid it.

It was a rich, deep blue that was almost black, with golden veins running through it like streaks of lightning across a night sky. When Nerra reached out, ever so tentatively, to touch it, she felt that the surface of it was strangely warm in a way that no egg should have been. That, as much as any of the rest of it, confirmed what she had found.

A dragons egg.

That was impossible. How long had it been since someone had seen a dragon? Even those stories were of great winged beasts flying the skies, not of eggs. Dragons were never helpless, small things. They were huge and terrifying and impossible. But Nerra couldnt think what else this could be.

And now the choice is mine.

She knew she couldnt just walk away now that shed seen the egg here, abandoned with no sign of a nest the way a bird would lay its clutch. If she did that, the odds were that something would simply come and eat the egg, destroying the creature within. That, or there would be people, and she had no doubt that they would sell it. Or crush it out of fear. People could be cruel sometimes.