When the Weatherdragon climbed from the glacier and opened his wings beneath the wide sky, the wind remembered him.

His scales were the colour of deep storm clouds — dark and layered, like the sky just before a storm. When lightning flickered on the horizon, faint veins of light glimmered beneath his scales, shifting slowly like distant thunder rumbling through stone.

For ages, the wind had moved across the frozen world without him, wandering the empty sky.

Now it seemed to gather again.

For a long moment, the sky seemed to hold its breath.

Then the wind flowed toward him.

Air curved around his wings like water around ancient rock, steady and familiar, as if the winds of the world had known their shape since the first days of the Earth.

And the Weatherdragon rose into the sky once more.

Clouds shifted. Storms turned.

And something else happened as well.

The weather itself seemed to welcome him.

Cold winds came, strengthening his wings. Warm rising air lifted him effortlessly toward the clouds. Rain cooled his scales. Thunder filled his chest with energy, and his scales glowed faintly with distant light.

The sky was not merely something he travelled through.

It gave him strength.

The winds of that young world wandered restlessly, much like the Weatherdragon himself.

After many days roaming the sky, the Weatherdragon saw a towering thunderhead rising before him, its dark crown climbing high into the blue.

The great cloud stood alone along the edge of the melting ice.

Sunlight blazed along its white upper towers while its lower depths darkened into heavy grey.

The Weatherdragon circled cautiously.

Strange currents moved through the air. Warm winds lifted him upward, then sudden cold streams rushed downward past his wings.

The sky was no longer calm. It twisted and flowed like a living thing.

The great cloud continued to rise, growing taller and darker as it climbed into the heavens.

A deep rumble rolled through the storm.

The Weatherdragon paused in the air. The sound was unlike anything he had heard before.

A flash burst through the cloud. For a brief instant, the entire thunderhead glowed from within.

Then thunder cracked across the sky.

The Weatherdragon felt the sound echo through his chest and along his spine. For a moment, the faint light beneath his scales flickered brighter, running down the length of his body to the very tip of his tail before fading again.

Instinctively, the Weatherdragon flew straight into the storm.

Wind roared around him. Rain lashed against his scales.

The towering walls of cloud churned and climbed higher as lightning flashed through their depths.

At first, he fought the storm. He drove against the rushing winds and pushed through the rolling clouds, trying to force the storm aside.

But the more he grappled with it, the stronger it grew.

Thunder boomed louder. The winds rose higher.

The cloud towers swelled and twisted as if the storm itself were pushing back against him.

Finally, the Weatherdragon stopped.

He hovered in the roaring sky listening.

Somewhere beneath the thunder and wind, a quiet thread tugged at his mind.

It was not a voice. It was more like a feeling.

The storm was moving. Slowly and steadily, it travelled past him. East. Out across the endless plains.

And then the Weatherdragon understood something important.

Storms are not enemies.

Storms are travellers.

They wander the sky as he once wandered the world.

They only needed to be shown the way.