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Earendil shook his head, his eyes fixed on the majestic creatures. "No, not snakes," he murmured to Senka. "They have arms ... claws ... definitely dragons."

He had never seen a dragon before ...

The dragons kept diving for a while, but eventually they slipped beneath the surface of the ocean, and once again everything became calm.

Roydon suddenly appeared behind everyone. "Good news," he told them. "There was no damage, and they didn't change our course. If all goes well, we should arrive within a week or two."

"Arrive?" Earendil blinked at his cousin. "Arrive where? I wasn't aware that we knew of any other land."

Roydon smiled and winked at Lin. "Feanaro," he told them all. "The place where Serenity is from."

Roydon smiled. "We'll sail around it, scout it out," he told her warmly, "and if it seems safe we might venture ashore. If there's any sign of danger though, we won't be stopping. We have more than enough supplies left to last us a good long time. We don't need to stock up on food or anything. Safety first. We've a fine crew on board this ship, and the last thing we need is to lose any one of them."

"Well said," Earendil smiled back. "And quite understandable."

Earendil watched Lin curiously. "Did Nako ever tell you about that place?" he asked her. "Or her parents? I think you visited them a time or two ..."

He himself knew only the very basics: that they had been chased away by the demons who had taken over the land.

Earendil nodded. "Then you know about as much as I do. As much as anyone, really, except Ninako and Nineko. And they don't like to talk about it much ... which is understandable."

He looked around for Shiro, but the neko had disappeared. "I wonder how Shiro feels about going near demons that are so different from him," he murmured.

Earendil smiled and tapped the end of Lin's nose teasingly. "You're forgetting," he winked, "that we do not have angels in our world. In your world, that may be the history of your kind, but in this world, the history is far different."

He looked out over the ocean, leaning his elbows on the rail. "I ... do not know all of the history of the demons of our world," he murmured, "so I do not know of their origins ... though with how much Shiro read of Sir Valdemar's work, and how much time Rhea spent in the palace library, I am certain that one of them must know."

He looked around. Rhea was talking with Leyenda again, with Celeb chasing after them, but Shiro seemed to have gone below deck - most likely to make that journal entry about the sea dragons.

"Perhaps we could ask, if you're interested," he suggested, turning back to Lin.

Earendil blinked at Lin, and there was hurt in his eyes. He had never heard her speak so flatly, so decisively, so negatively, before. Ever. To anyone. For a moment he wondered if somehow he had offended her (though he had no idea how he might have done that), but then she explained herself, and he relaxed slightly.

"Oh," he said softly, staring at her blankly. "I ... see ..."

Though it was clear from his tone that he didn't.

Earendil's eyes grew dark. "Then there truly is no hope for them," he murmured sadly, his eyes fixed on the ocean in the distance. He sighed heavily. "Then let us hope that we do not find any of them," he said quietly, "because it would not be well to come against them."

The water remained calm, the ocean's surface completely unbroken. The sea dragons, it seemed, had vanished, at least for the moment. It was a strangely deceptive calm, Earendil thought. He knew that beneath the surface, there was a flurry of activity. Sea dragons, whales, fish ... and who knew what else.

Earendil smiled. "I have no idea," he admitted with a chuckle. "All my education, decades and decades of education, and I'm afraid I can't name a single fish, other than the bass that Arwen fed us at Namonuito."

He chuckled again softly. Somehow, the thought amused him.


The sea dragons did not appear again for the next two weeks, and just when Earendil was beginning to doubt the coordinates that they had received from Rigel, Serenity's father, the call came from on deck:

"Land ho!"

The prince was in his quarters, studying a map that he was working on, when the call came, and he dropped his quill and ran from the room, racing up on deck to see the land that had been sighted.

"There!" Leyenda pointed excitedly from the bowsprit as he joined her there. "Look!"

Just ahead of them, that was, to the southeast, a speck of black could be seen in the distance.