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Summer Rain
Spring gave way to summer. The ships came more and more frequently, bringing new goods and services and people with them. Sharona took to hanging out in the customs house, perched on one of the cabinets through the cunning use of "look cute at Tren until he picks you up and puts you somewhere." There, she sat and listened to everyone's stories as they came into the islands.
She was picking up languages, too. She was pretty good with the pijin the people of Dendrinla put together. However, she had a lot to learn about the languages of the Godly Empire and the continent that formerly housed Weldox. She was picking up more and more words from people every day, using them as frequently as she wanted, which was often fairly frequently.
She made several friends with the people through the customs house, too. There were librarians from Gettan and sailors from the Godly Empire. There were seamstresses who had enjoyed the trip so much last year, that they were insistant on coming again. So many people were coming in from parts unknown, Sandrylene put up sanctions about the islands.
She set ten of them aside for the uses of sentient creatures with no desire to join the city. Strange horses went to those islands, and other creatures as well. Then, fifteen of the remaining islands were set aside for farmland. Besides the farms directly outside the city, which would eventually be swallowed up by it, these new farming islands would guarentee the city would survive and have extra produce with which to barter.
That left the remaining islands to the people. And the people certainly came, in droves. Twos and fours, and sixes and eights. Sharona had never seen so many people in the islands, and they all spoke different languages. Her own father spoke something she and Daddy didn't know. It was strange, sort of disquieting, not to be able to talk to everyone, because they knew words that she didn't.
That was about the time she met the priests.
Father Mikholai and Mother Serrenti wore brown sackcloth robes over warm and colorful cotten travelling clothes with heavy embroidery and gilding. The father introduced the two of them with a sweeping bow to the little dragon in the customs house.
"Travelling Missionaries of the Sacred Shrine of The Rabbit," he said, sweeping off his hood of sackcloth. "It certainly is raining hard here. We get nothing like this down in the Empire."
*You're from the empire?* Sharona asked, puzzling over them. *You speak our pijin perfectly, though.*
The two of them laughed and the father shrugged. Mother Serrenti, on the other hand, winked at her. "We have our ways," she told the little dragon.
*Tell me!* Sharona insisted, her eyes wide.
"We are the priests of The Rabbit," she said easily. "We worship her, keep her alive and well, for she's the one that makes this world go round."
*Don't be silly,* Sharona said. *If that were so, I'd know about it. Our world is guided by Gratira and Aritarg and Col d'tilla and Kynadtuli. No others but they and Life and Death and Chaos are present in our lives.*
"That may be true where you're from," the father said, "but here we're worshippers of The Rabbit. Well, some of us, anyway."
*Only some?*
"Very few," the mother said, beaming impishly. "The Rabbit can not stand to have a cult the size of one of these islands. She keeps roughly one hundred of us safe and secure in a compoud in the South of the Godly Empire. And she sends us out, every now and again, when she has missions for us."
Sharona eyed the two of them suspiciously. *Tor says that priests are sworn to a life of cellibacy and poverty,* she said critically.
They laughed. "Tor's a funny one," Father Mikholai said.
*How do you know Tor?* Sharona asked, staring.
"He's part of our canon," Mother Serrenti said with a touch of grace.
*But he's never been off the islands!*
"Neither have you, Sharona, but we know about you, too." She winked at the little dragon.
*How do you know my name?!* Sharona demanded.
Just then, the priests were called in to the line. "We'll talk on this later," the father told her. They bowed deeply to her, and then the two of them shuffled their way to Tren, who was serving on the counters today.
Sharona stared at them, wondering just what this Rabbit was like. No, she decided. Not this Rabbit. The Rabbit. The article and spoken capitalization was important, somehow, she figured. The priests had made very certain to use both at all times mentioning her. Sharona stared at them, and then glanced out the window for a moment to see the heavy rain pouring out of the sky. She glanced back towards the priests, but they weren't there, and obviously they hadn't left yet.
Where had they gone?
She waited for an hour, but they didn't turn up again. It didn't make sense. People didn't just ... vanish into thin air. Did they?
When they still weren't there in an hour, Sharona decided to leave. Spending too much time in the customs house made her antsy, anyway. It made her want to leave, to travel, to run amok through the world and have no one stop her. She wanted to learn the stories of the world, truly, and to share them with everyone she could.
Not that that was going to happen at this rate, but whatever. To do that, she'd need money, or at least a helping hand, and if she knew her fathers, she wasn't going to get an ounce of gold to pay for passage away from them any time soon.
So, while she was waiting for someone to pass by and notice her so she could get off the cabinet, she started scheming. Somehow, some way, she was going to get enough money to be able to buy passage on a ship -- frightening as that very concept was -- to one of the mainlands, so she could begin to tell the stories of her people, and learn new ones.
Finally, someone passed the cabinet she was sitting on. *Hey, you,* she said. They looked at her. *Can you set me on the floor, please?*
Pale-faced, they nodded and put her down before running away.
*Geez. You'd think they'd never seen a dragon before. Weirdos.* She slithered out the door, which was opening to admit people running in from the street.
Outside, the rain was just dumping onto the cobblestone streets. She slithered out into it, not really caring that she was getting wet, considering that she spent most of her time on the ground anyway getting dirty. She needed something to do, and she was bored as all git.
She flailed through the puddles, which wasn't as much fun as people had hopping in the puddles. She'd seen Clet and Rudie hopping through the puddles, and it looked like they were having a grand old time. She, however, could only make a sufficient splash if she were falling off a sufficiently high building.
*Note to self,* she said bitterly. *Grow legs.*
It was about then that she realized that she really wanted to play with Havelock again. He was in the western part of the city, fulfilling his second apprenticeship, the one to the blacksmith, Pent. Pent was married when he came to the islands, to a grey-skinned woman named Esthalia and her glenn dragon, Osman.
Thankfully, Lia and Ozzie were nowhere around Pent and Havelock when she slithered into the former's shop.
*Hello!* she said brightly, chirping giddily and curling up by the furnace.
"Hello, Sharona," Havelock laughed.
Sharona liked that about Havelock. He was always laughing. He wasn't overly serious, like a lot of people here were. She would have to get a mate that laughed a lot, or at least made her laugh a lot, when she got one. She couldn't stand the idea of living forever with someone who drove her mad, just because they were a pretty face.
The two men were striking iron to make horseshoes. This reminded her...
*Havelock,* she said, *or Pent. How much does it cost to buy a ticket to the mainland?*
"Costs a lot, doesn't it?" Havelock asked Pent.
"Well, from Valnasssh, which is where we boarded, it cost three hundred gold Devlins," Pent explained.
Sharona had been talking to enough people to know that this was a lot of money.
"Each," Pent added.
*ACK!* Sharona said, her brain snapping at the very thought of that much money.
"Why do you ask?" Havelock wanted to know. "You're not leaving, are you?"
*Not anymore,* Sharona sighed, staring glumly down at the floor.
"What was that?" Havelock said, stopping striking his horseshoe long enough to blink at her.
*Nothing!* she said with a cheery grin. *I'm late, though, so I'll see you later!*
Outside in the rain again, her smile faded quickly. She couldn't go anywhere as a wyrm, obviously. Maybe she should start small. She could travel the outer islands. Surely there were people there she hadn't met. She'd visit them, and then maybe she'd scrounge a few coins here and there and be able to pay for passage to the mainland when she was older.
That might work. Maybe.
She'd probably be miserable doing that for years, trying to get life to fall into place for her.
And the rain was showing no signs of stopping. She sighed bitterly at it, and she started to head home. If she had to face the facts that it was just too expensive to go to the mainland right now, fine. She would. But she'd rather do it by the fireplace.
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