He flew through the air on his dragon?s back, feeling the rush of excitement as he was thrust back into his saddle by the vertical acceleration. On either side he saw the great wings, outstretched now as the great lizard soared lazily on a thermal, riding from one column of air to another with ease. Below him, the land was like a patchwork quilt of fields and trees, occasionally broken with the blue of a lake or the white of a village. To his left was the ocean, an expanse of blue on which low clouds rode, looking like floating ice blocks on the surface of the sea. The horizon was a brilliant white line that divided the ocean from the blue of the sky, in which now clouds hung this high up. Now they left the land behind them and began to move over the sea. Now the dragon flapped his wings slowly, almost lazily, yet to an observer on the ground they moved with great speed.
Now below him stretched a great continent of cloud, and one could imagine it was land, so clearly he could see mountains, valleys and flat plains. A person blessed with a strong imagination might easily think that the tall spirals were lofty towers perched precariously on the tips of mountains, and that the lumps in the deep valleys were the houses of cloud dwellers. The fine fingers on the edges of the cloud bank appeared like the jetties of a quay, where strange vessels of the same colour rode in the harbour. Here was an island, there where the ocean broke through an inland sea. As he watched, a great rift slowly broke through the continent, and what was one land became two smaller islands, slowly drifting apart on the endless sea.
Through the rift he saw that the sea had ended, and now the continent of cloud gave way to land. As the mighty dragon once more spread his wings and soared, the rider looked down and was amazed to see the land slip by so slowly, almost as if they were not moving. Ahead he thought he saw mountains, then decided they were clouds. And as he drew nearer, they became mountains again, and then once more they were clouds, piled up in high ranges, rather than spread out like the clouds over the ocean. Directly below, dark rivers looked like spilt ink across the tapestry of browns and greens. Once again the rider was struck by the awesomeness of nature, as they rivers wound their way across the landscape like snakes. Ahead within the clouds a sky bridge appeared, a thin wisp of white spread between two mighty pillars of cloud. Behind it, the sky was the palest of blues, while above the bridge it darkened to a deep sapphire hue. Now below him mountains appeared, and as he flew over them it appeared that they were full of jewels, as the flash of emerald, sapphire and even ruby of hidden lakes flashed once and were gone, hidden deep within their secret valleys.