The entrance to the Cloud Palace hangs between two trees at the base of the sheer cliffs on which it perches. Everyone calls it a path, but only one with the phoenix mark can open the portal and describe the way. 'Path' is generous.

  It began with a gradual hike that turned impossible so slowly that the shift was almost unremarkable until I was scaling the cliff face, looking for gaps in the rock to cling to as the wind blew in my ears. My arms and legs ached, my fingers scraped against the sharp surface that bruised my body every time I slipped. Just when I thought I must give up or risk falling to my death, my hand found an easy hold and I pulled myself onto a thin ledge.

  There, buffeted by angry winds, I entered a small fissure in the cliff wall. The tunnel was long and winding, with no clear direction and no consistency. At times it felt so wide that I thought I must stumble without the wall to guide me. Then it narrowed so drastically that I had to shuffle sideways to continue. At one point the path was so tiny that I could only crawl, certain I would become stuck at any moment and slowly perish there. It ended abruptly in a sheer drop into a deep spring.

  Fortunately, the water was warm and well-aerated. I floated to the top, and thick seaweed served as a rope to pull myself forward where my feet could not reach the bottom. The waterway filled with moss until it was more vegetation than liquid, and I had to pull the slimy green mess from my arms and legs as I struggled my way through it. The ground rose by degrees until I could step straight out of the water and into a maze of green.

  Three possible paths departed from the pool: one bright, one straight, and one wide. Knowing I could not trust them to stay so, I chose the bright path thinking I could use fire to light my way. That was untrue--the branches were too close, the leaves too dry and the flowers too beautiful to risk. So I walked in the dark, blind to avoid the sharp thorns and stinging nettles, the otherwise minor scrapes burning from the salt encrusted on my skin.

  I emerged from the maze to stand before several statues. Except that the central statue had a bit of flame about it, none of the statues spoke to me. All ten were clearly different elves, yet indistinct and abstract with no colors and no obvious features to distinguish them.

  "The clans," Raziel interrupts my memory to comment.

  "But there are only sev..." My argument dies as I consider the dragon's age and experience. "If we allow Water to be a clan, what were the other two?"

  He looks at me a moment, no doubt flipping through my thoughts to see the seven: Fire, Air, Storm, Bird, Beast, Forest and Earth. "Moon and Sun Clans."

  "Are they..." dead? Gone? Destroyed?

  "I am not in a position to answer that."

  Moon and Sun...I am sure I have never heard of such clans, yet the words evoke a sense of familiarity.

  "It should. They existed when Korinna was phoenix, and for every phoenix before her."

  "Have you been here a hundred years?" Since Korinna was alive, before the Shadowlands-- "Were Moon and Sun in the west?"

  "They were west and east and north and south. There was not such separation between the clans, before."

  The separation has been pretty strong for at least a few centuries. I guess being an ancient, powerful dragon doesn't come with a firm grasp of elven reality.

  A breeze throws my hair into chaos to catch my attention.

  Not complaining, just stating facts. Dragons are cool, impressive, powerful...

  "I have no need for our approval and no use for your appreciation." His expression is patient, but his question is not: "Which statue did you choose?"

  "Mystery statue number three."

  "Do you know nothing of the other clans?" The dragon's sigh shakes the columns.

  I know they don't hold up the water, or anything, but...

  "Even in your memory, the statues share little resemblance with reality," says the dragon, whose appearance is also drifting away from the reality I know and trust as his horns solidify and his scales sharpen.

  Except Thalia, everyone I ever knew was Fire Clan.

  "I can guess which statue was Bird Clan, but one feather does not make a flock." The dragon shakes his head, the air around him switching directions. "Have elves become strangers since they divided the land into clan territories?"

  "Some feathers and wisps live in Fire villages, and some flares in Air and Storm Clans' territory." I don't know about the others, but there is no law or prejudice against moving to another clan's territory. Just the possibility of getting robbed or sacrificed. Or drowned, or burned, or buried, or lost, or falling off a cliff.

  "Was it truly only a century without a phoenix?" The dragon's question carries the weight of disbelief. "Why did you pick that statue? Why not the fire elf?"

  "I liked it." To choose Fire Clan seemed too boring and too obvious, especially after being wrong in the maze twice. "And apparently it was the right choice, because then a door appeared in the stone wall, and I entered the Cloud Palace." I chose the same one both times.

  "You skipped several trials."

  Did I? "I guess I didn't pass through storms or fire."

  The dragon fades into an elf I might call 'Raziel', his wind settling dejectedly on the floor. "Cloud Palace is in Fire Clan territory. Was there not a volcano before the entrance?"

  Has he been? "No birds or beasts. After the statue, I was in the palace, in the throne room. I walked up to the platform, picked up the mantle, and put it on." Now I have only my skinsuit, since the mantle itself dissolved into me and the dress I was wearing was stolen in the Air Clan village, replaced by the death trap they wrapped me in for the ritual drowning. But Raziel is a dragon, and the palace is not as cold now as it felt when I was damp.

  Raziel glances over. "I had not noticed. Everyone else came fully clothed." He looks up at the lake. "I might be able to find your deathtrap, if you want it back."

  "Everyone else?"

  The corpses. How did I forget all the corpses? I shiver and watch him focus on the water.

  His scales and horns return, the air lifting joyfully to spin once more, and I have to gasp quietly to recover the breaths I wasn't taking. A short moment stretches into an eternity until at last the watery ceiling ripples and the dress passes through into the palace. A flurry of wind dries it as it floats down to me.

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Untainted by water, it is not so heavy as I remembered. I pull it over my head and stand to arrange the skirts. It feels almost comfortable without the water weight. It even twirls when I turn.

  "They died of old age."

  If it could withstand flames--"What?" I turn to look at the dragon, who is as elf-like as I have ever seen him. He looks innocent of wrong doing, and they did look old, but elves live for centuries. In times of peace, even the more foolish flares can reach 150 years. How old...

  "They came here young, like you."

  How long.. "Korinna died young, for a phoenix. For an elf, even. How could..."

  "I suppose the Time Dragon thought I needed more of it."

  There is a time dragon, but no time clan?

  "No relation. His domain is time, his power altering the flow of it. Elves cannot touch time."

  But time touches us. I check my hand for wrinkles. "So a day here is..."

  "No idea. That's not my domain."

  Everyone I know could be dead and go--

  "Other way." The dragon's quick answer halts my panic and prevents an chance of relief. "They will hardly move in the time it would take you to die here. Though, as a phoenix you would last longer than the others."

  "There's no food here!" And no facilities, and no--

  "Are you hungry?"

  I take a deep breath and focus on my stomach. "No?" It has been more than a day since I consumed anything, except lake water, but I am neither hungry nor thirsty. The mantle? But I definitely felt hunger and thirsty hiding in the bottom of Thalia's carriage as we rumbled through Fire Clan territory. "Why not?"

  "Cloud Palace is meant to do the same, to sustain life without the necessity of sustenance, and compressing time to give the phoenix more of it." He frowns. "Is it not maintained?"

  "I was not there long enough to know." This Air Palace is life-giving?

  "No, I am." The breeze drifting around him settles on his shoulders like a mantle of air, humming with energy far greater than mine. "I am the breath of life."

  Not an air dragon? I thought they were elemental beings, powerful but like...like elves. Greater elves. "I don't think I understand the nature of dragons."

  "Air Dragon is my title, among elves." He shrugs, stirring up a little wind with his indifference. "It is important that you understand the nature of elves."

  Should I be meditating to increase in phoenixness?

  "Do not inflate meditation. It is not in itself some powerful state but a useful tool. You need something to meditate on to gain wisdom. The knowledge you already have may serve as a base, and the phoenix memories as your guide, but have direction. What do you hope to understand? Begin there."

  "How will I know when I am done, if I don't know how much time is passing?"

  "You will be able to leave. And your problems will still be present and waiting for you when you do."

  It's not a comforting thought. But--"At least I have you to help me." I smile at the dragon. "It was meant to be."

  "There is ego in that--and fatalism. Different paths to the same end, removing the importance of reflecting on your actions by declaring the result the best, or else considering it the only possibility."

  That sounds like a draconic tendency. Our legends all recognize their power and pride as equal, and hold them accountable for massive destruction across the continents.

  I glance at the air dragon. His lip curves into an idea of a smile. "You can trust that I know of what I speak." He leaves me alone, presumably to meditate on that.

  What do I hope to understand? The Cloud Palace has spaces dedicated to each clan, but I never explored them. There is the tower for Air Clan, with a view over the mountains on a clear day. For Bird Clan there is a terraced garden built into the mountain, and from there it is a short walk to the volcanic crater. I only read about them, that each space is designed to allow the phoenix to feel the elements and absorb their energy.

  Sitting on a couch staring up at the murky depths of a suspended lake does not produce any understanding of the elements and energy I lack.

  Energy, I do not lack? When I slept earlier, I did so out of mental and physical exhaustion. But since waking up, I seem to not be losing energy, although I have neither food nor water to replenish myself. Raziel was not wrong, I am not hungry or thirsty and I seem to be maintaining-- "What?"

  "I heard my name." The dragon makes a curiously shy expression. "It is a small space."

  Three floors and a crypt, twelve towers, more rooms than I can count.. The lake was not small, and the palace seems to fill it.

  "It is small, for a dragon. It's like breathing. I would have to be deliberately not doing it to not do it, and eventually I would forget."

  So, all of my thoughts are just...

  "It's not that...No. But if my name is there, I will notice it."

  Truly, dragons are unbearable.

  He frowns and mumbles, "That's harsh," looking away. He seems naked without his wind around him.

  "What were you doing?"

  "Trying to find Moon and Sun Clans." He snorts at whatever he extracts from the tangled mess of thoughts I have at that and shakes his head. "Come and see." He turns on his heel and strides away.

  By the time my brain reacts, I have to run to catch up. His journey ends in a room of mirrors and little else--nothing that could conceivably be an exit--and returns to a chair that remembers his presence. "Look."

  Instead of reflecting the room, the mirror is opaquely dark. "At what?"

  Appreciating my lack of understanding he directs me to examine the others.

  They are not mirrors, as they first seemed, but images carved in glass and color, as lifelike as looking through a window. Walking around, each shows some place I have never seen and cannot imagine, the appearance too strange to comprehend--are those strangely arranged crystals meant to be furniture? They must be terribly uncomfortable. I touch the glass, surprised to find that it is real.

  The air dragon makes a strange whimpering sound, and I turn to find an elfin man in his place.

  "Ah!" What? Who? "Raziel?" It looks like him, but it doesn't also.

  "Your thoughts were too..." He frowns. "Anyway, that is Earth Palace. Those are Earth elves. Look again."

  Unmoving, they look like statues, like crystal formations, their colors sparkling at me through the glass. "Really?" But they do have features--they do have eyes and mouths and limbs. They are frozen in a meeting, an effect of the time distortion between here and there. "This is Earth Palace?" Apart from the crystals, it looks quite drab. More like a quarry than a room.

  "Have you never seen one?"

  I have not, had not.

  Several around the room are dull, but many are bright with life, if not activity. One is familiar: the throne room in the Cloud Palace looks back at me, just as I left it. It feels emptier without the mantle on the throne. The dragon returns, walking from one to the next. "The Storm and Shadow Dragons made these, each crafted with a twin." He needs only to glance at the images to understand them, pointing out the different palaces and landmarks where the mirrors' twins are placed. "Too many have been destroyed." He stops in front of his, still dark and lifeless. "I didn't ask what happened." He shakes his head, and the mirrors all tremble against the walls. "This was Moon Palace." He touches the surface gently. "Is that where..."

  Even if he finished his question, I wouldn't be able to answer it. "When did it break?"

  "Those that broke did so outside of my watch." He walks to another broken one and sighs again, but the mirrors resist the lesser force. "My perspective on the present is limited to the mirrors that are still functional."

  Returning to the Earth Palace, after several minutes I find one ripple of difference from before--one crystal has been turning slightly and now her eye is visible. "I think I would go mad, trying to learn from these." Has Raziel...

  I refocus on the image. I did not know Earth Clan was so varied. They have much more diversity than Fire or Air Clans, their colors spanning the whole spectrum and their builds ranging from sharply tiny to softly giant.

  "The patience to watch a minute pass for a week is not something elves need."

  Thank God. "How much longer will you.."

  He returns to the broken Moon mirror. "I will go when you do."

  After staying for a least a century. "Why?"

  "Do you have an enemy?"

  My sisters come to mind first. "Sprites. The thunderbird, and his water kingdom."

  "Death is mine." He offers his hand. "We won't risk your mind mirror-watching today. Come away, and I will tell you of the beauty of the Moon elves.

  ------

  Moon Clan: beams

  Moon Beams, or Moon elves, are characterized by cool, dark skin tones and crescent eyes in deep shades of blue, purple and silver and hair so dark it is black in most lighting but shimmers faintly with purple, blue or silver accents in the moonlight. Colors and features have no bearing on individual strength.

  Every beam has dark/shadow magic, used for mysterious purposes including the creation of interdimensional doors and moon manipulation. They can see in complete darkness, and tend to prefer it. They fear water, and will avoid it at all costs, and are the only clan capable of passing for another clan--in daylight they can imitate Sun Clan.

  Moon Clan is no longer part of the Dominion of the Phoenix. For more information, see 'Cursed Twins'.