[Child of the 7th Age]

Child glanced about her. She could see that Birdland had Mith's laptop firmly tucked under her arm. It had fortunately been recharged and appeared to be acting in a somewhat normal fashion.

Child struggled with the backpack which Mith had given her. What in all of Mandos was this? It appeared to be very lumpy and Child swore she could see something moving inside of it.

"Don't be ridiculous," she told herself. "Even Mith wouldn't pull a trick like this"

Still, she was curious. She emptied out the contents of the backpack on the ground. Much of it seemed pretty regulation for someone going off on an adventure. There was a considerable stack of Lembas which took up a good portion of the backpack.

There were also several maps of Middle-earth. What was perhaps strange was that each map was from a different age.

"First age, second age, third age, fourth age", she counted.

She wasn't sure this was good. Either Mith knew a lot more than any of them, or else, he knew absolutely nothing and had no idea where they would end up. Neither prospect particularly pleased her.

"Let's see, a frying pan, two hobbit size daggers, a magic rope, a portable Elven bow with arrows, instructions for erecting an emergency shelter. Hmm, how long does he expect us to be gone?"

And then, she came to the second compartment and opened it very, very slowly. She looked deep inside it and to her shock saw a very, very small golden dragon. It really was tiny. In fact, the first thing Child thought was, "This must be a hobbit dragon. Even if it gets older and grows, I doubt it will get much bigger than my pony."

Suddenly the bottom of the backpack started to smoke. "Oh, bother," she thought, "This crazy little thing is puffing out smokerings. Who ever heard of a baby dragon with smokerings?"

The tiny dragon emerged from the pack. Its green eyes whirled and glowed. Child tried to place it on her shoulder but it didn't seem that it wanted to be tamed. In fact, it seemed quite independent.

It took off and flew above the heads of Birdland, Pio, and herself. But it stayed quite close to them and seemed to listen as they spoke.

Child turned to her companions. "You know I think we better do what Mith said and go get this REG. Do you want to let some of the others know so they can go with us, or not? Frodo, Sam, whatever. Or we could leave a note and let them follow if they want? What do you think?"

Suddenly from above their heads, the small golden dragon dipped down, laughed, and looked them right in the eye. He chortled, "
Whoever you bring, the important thing is the REG. And once you get it, then you can decide what to do with it."

Child scratched her head. She thought this dragon had belonged to Mith, but what he said made no sense if that was so. Perhaps, he had simply crawled into the pack.

The dragon continued, "By the way, my name is Angara. I come from Falas, but now I live in the Northern Waste."

"Falas," Child scratched her head. "That wis a coastal realm of the Grey-Elves where CCirdan the Shipwright had originally llived. I believe it sank underneath tthe sea with Bereliand several ages ago. Oh, dear, this doesn't sound good."