Chapter Twenty Two - Of the Wilderness

As if waiting for a sign, the dragons took flight together, approached the humans, suddenly picked them up in their sharp claws and held them six or seven feet off the ground to the youngsters’ absolute panic. The humans couldn’t understand this completely unexpected behavior and would have started reflecting on the recklessness of allowing themselves to sit unguarded next to a pack of flying aliens endowed with fangs and claws but all their attention got drawn to the ground below: the sharp edged greenery uprooted itself as if summoned by an unseen force and moved away really fast, leaving the ground completely bare. It waved across the landscape in one sweeping motion and settled down a few hundred feet away where the ‘plants’ extended their tap roots into the ground and unfurled their sharp edged fringes as if the move never happened at all. The dragons put the humans down gently and went back to their circle formation.