Thunder rumbled gently overhead as the rain began to fall, washing the island clean.
Mason and Nick sat beneath a half-dead tree that was offering them at least some protection from the fat drops of cold water. They were quiet as they studied the scene before them -both giving a little shiver now and then.
It was a dragon's nest. Mason hadn't recognized it at first. The ones he had seen before were packed together in a field of scorched earth. There had been hundreds of them then. He had never seen a single nest on its own.
There was no mistaking what it was, however. It was a sort of shallow bowl worn into the earth. At one time, vegetation might have grown in this place, but it was long dead. The dragon's heavy body had crushed anything living in this place. It had crushed the very earth into submission beneath it, shaping it into a place for the dragon to return to after it had been out on a hunt.
