The dream was all her own; no one in her family had ever had it. No one had ever thought of it. Soaring through the air now, she knew that it would never leave her; it was like a fire that kept being fed and would never stop, no matter how hard anyone tried to put it out. Not only was it a dream, but it was also reality; she was a dragon whisperer. At least she thought so. Everyone always told her that it was a phase and that she’d pass through it, but she knew better. They even said dragons didn’t exist. She knew she could talk to dragons, even if she’d never seen one.

It had all started five years ago when she was nine, lost in her thoughts. She had been making up a story to herself and dragons as a school project. She had been at the good bit where she found a dragon egg of marble and gold when… one came in through her open window. She had stared at it in amazement. Where had it come from? Why did it come to her room in particular? She cautiously got up and stepped towards it and noticed a note. She was about to read it when…

“Crack!” a loud sound like a ring masters whip snapped her back into reality. ‘The Jade Eye’, her sky ship, was in the middle of a huge storm. The storm that had been on all of the news channels on her meglaphonian. The storm that she had risked her life by setting off in the direction of.  That storm. As the wind buffeted the ship, Alexie had a stomach sickening realisation. They were going down. And fast. Try as she might, Alexie could do nothing. She was going to die. ‘The Jade Eye’ kept descending into an unknown land. An un-human land. After only a matter of seconds the bottom of her ship collided with the ground with a deafening ‘THWUMP’, sending pillars of sand and soil flying into the bright night sky. That ‘THWUMP’ was so loud it made Alexie dizzy, but that gave her a welcome thought.

She was still alive.