Feeling in the dark, Reed untangles her hair with utmost care, then stands herself straight once more. A dream comes to mind, one she always used to have. Her sister stands behind her in her shadow, watching as she puts on a deathly heavy crown. She feels it's wrong for her to be wearing it, but she can't take it off no matter how she tries; all she can do is melt it by fire. Metal trickles down her face, scalding, searing, but the idea of the purple flame bringing her comfort, ice-cold, scares her more. So she makes not a sound. And she recalls two people she met while pursuing the high-speed battleships' tracks a few days ago, ordinary folk. They knew the name of Dublinn—their land showed scars from being razed by fire. They asked Reed point-blank, are you the one who ruined our lives? The Draco, manipulator of the flame of life, fell silent for a while. She was familiar with the fear her sister could leave in people. But in the end, she nodded, for she is the Leader of Dublinn, and the Tarans have no need for two Dublinns. Someone is calling her name. She leaves, through the tight wooden door. —She crosses a threshing floor, filled with hay and cardboard stage props of every color. Her costume's a little cumbersome—everyone wanted to drape their own two sashes over her, in much the manner one nestles two flowers for their beloved in a buttonhole. Surely the Red Dragon didn't take to the battlefield like this a millennium ago. But no matter. They don't have to trouble themselves with the looks of the crown-bearer. Let the wandering minstrels suppose, for the sake of a rhyme, that the Draco hero of legend had hair just as flowing and golden. Reed clears her throat and swishes her tail, a little wary. The Tarans in front of her don't know how each brook of muddy waters tracing through the marsh is the track of a galloping warship. They don't know that the bleak clouds to the north that never blow this way are the fumes of war. They don't know that what Reed grasps is the very flame of the Red Dragon of Tara. They simply know it's important to still have food to eat after their taxes are levied, and it's as important to make sacrifice and perform theater so their farmwork is bountiful and blessed. Sat in the back are the soldiers who've fought all the way alongside her, and they look at her just as expectantly. They've taught Reed that a failure to learn the lines means no good harvest in the coming year. 'I give you land, and I give you the weather to nurture it.' A fire ignites at her speartip in time with her words, and the audience abruptly settles down. At this moment, all could swear they have some vague premonition as to who it is that stands before them. Reed lowers her head. A child places a floral garland on her head of every color under the sun, each flower a symbol of a growing, flourishing crop. It is light, almost weightless. She bows down, and to the village's script, unchanged in all its years, she adds one line. 'I give you peace.'