He didn’t know what to make of it, though. Griffen flushed slightly, but didn’t press the question. After all, what was he asking? How dragons are supposed to look? He couldn’t believe he was getting sucked into this bizarre narrative so easily. A worried thought flashed through his mind. Did one inherit madness?

Malcolm nodded and continued. “There was another group, however, who went to their Eastern brethren, seeking the secret of size shifting to augment their own shape-shifting ability. You may not know it, Griffen, but Eastern dragons never had wings. When they needed to fly, they would size shift down to tiny dimensions and ride the wind.”

Griffen leaned back more in his chair, looking nonchalant. He was aware of his uncle watching each reaction, and decided some input was expected. He hesitated, again worried about letting himself slip into his uncle’s delusions, but decided he had little choice but to go along with the flow of the bizarre conversation.

“I don’t pretend to know much about the East, and nothing much at all beyond China and Japan,” Griffen said, trying to keep things sounding normal and make one more attempt at getting the conversation back on the track of why he came here in the first place. After all, he had attended international business classes…once in a while. “But it’s been my impression that they are deadly negotiators. At the very least, it’s not a crowd I would want to deal with when they knew in advance they had something I wanted or needed.”

Griffen stopped again, unsure whether the comment had broken any ice with his uncle. Again Malcolm McCandles’s face showed nothing to give the younger man any relief.

“It was brutal,” Malcolm said. “It is unknown today what promises and powers the European dragons had to surrender, but they achieved their objective and gained the ability to size shift. They used that new skill along with their shape-shifting to infiltrate and blend in with the humans, even to interbreed with them in some instances. Their descendants survive to this day, dwelling unsuspected among the humans.”