"Ogden's beard," murmured Aggy, "what on earth is that?"

Terri paused for a second to collect her thoughts before replying. "That my friend, is a lizardman............or possibly a lizardwoman, I've no idea how to tell them apart."

The lizardperson strode through the silent common room and up to the ornate walnut bar that occupied the far end of the tavern.

"I wish to drink a glass of sugar water."

The voice was throaty, hissing and made the sentence a command not a request. Silence followed as every patron in the common room waited for the barkeep's response.

"Of course, and shall I put that on your account?"

"Yesssss." The hissing sound at the end of the word was so drawn out that it was almost comical, but no one in the bar thought about laughing. Most were still struggling to believe their eyes while others seemed mesmerised by the lizardperson's long blue tongue as it flicked in and out to taste the air.

If dwarves were a rarity in Providence then by comparison the lizardpeople were rarer than rare, almost to the point of nonexistence. The reptilian tribesmen were fiercely territorial and almost never left their homes in the swamps far to the east of the lands where Terri had grown up. To see one in a town, or indeed in any populated area was mind bogglingly unusual and for one to be enrolled at Gravenhall was beyond incredible. The entire population of the tavern continued to watch in awe as the lizardperson received their drink, downed it in one, and then strode back through the common room and out into the corridor beyond, leaving the door standing open behind them.

Silence turned to cacophony as soon as the lizardperson's scaly tail disappeared from view. Aggy appeared dumbfounded. "How did I manage to get to seventy four years old without knowing something like that existed? Can you imagine the set of boots you could make out of them?"

Terri looked shocked for a second but then laughed when she noticed the twinkle in her new friend's eyes.

"Based on the stories I've heard about the lizardpeople Aggy, I think it's far more likely they'd end up making boots out of you," Terri remarked wryly.

"Aye, and let there be no doubt that I'd make the finest set of boots the world had ever seen," Aggy replied with a smile. "So tell me, what do you know of these creatures, and how do you know it?"

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Terri's face grew a little sad. "I first heard about them as the kind of nightmare that children get threatened with, something along the lines of; 'If you don't go to bed this instant I'll call the lizardpeople to eat you’. They lived close enough that we believed in their existence but far enough away that nobody had any actual experience with them, or so I thought. If you asked almost anyone from my village about them you'd be told that they are the spawn of demons and regularly crept out of the swamp to steal human children and eat them raw and wriggling.

"That was certainly what I believed until the day my father caught me singing one of the many rhymes we'd made up about them as children. He cuffed me around the ear and told me not to be such a fool, but it wasn't until later that he explained why. I was too young to remember it but I wasn't actually born on the estate where I grew up. My father and I travelled there when I was about two years old, but before that we lived further east, in a village much closer to the swamps. He told me that there had been peace between humans and lizardpeople in that region for almost a century and that while the stories of them eating humans were true, it only happened when we first encroached on their lands and they didn't know we were intelligent lifeforms like them. He told me that they once saved my mother's life when she got lost in the swamps as a child."

Noticing Terri's somber tone Aggy responded gently, "Well lass, given that you probably don't have a particularly strong attachment to our crocodile cousins, I'm guessing it's your Ma and Pa that you're missing."

Terri smiled sadly. "Right on target Aggs. My mother died when I was a baby, I think that's why my dad left the village where I was born, and then he died about a year ago from the coughing sickness."

"Ah," replied Aggy, "now I’m beginning to understand why you chose Avandar as your patron deity instead of one of the others. I think they'd both be very proud of you."

"I hope so," said Terri, sounding somewhat uncertain. "I thought about going with one of the other gods, Aganthe the trickster or maybe even Ogden the stubborn, but I kept coming back to Avandar; the god of empathy and kindness. What I do know for sure is that I'm going to work damn hard to make certain I graduate at the end of the year. I know Dad would have been tickled pink to have a Cleric of Avandar in the family. He always said that Avandar was the only god worth following because he was the one that looked out for the little guys, the downtrodden and the peasants. And when I graduate that's exactly what I intend to do."

"I have no doubt that you'll make your parents very proud," Aggy replied kindly. "You've a good heart Terri Tillerson, and from what I've heard that's what Avandar values most."

Terri and Aggy spent the rest of the night drinking, laughing and learning more about each other's history. Aggy had the distinct advantage here simply because she had so much more history to choose from, but Terri managed to hold her own with stories of her life as a peasant. It was a topic that seemed to fascinate the middle aged dwarf. By the time they finally left the common room and stumbled back to the initiates' quarters they were both very drunk, and when they woke the next morning much of what they'd talked about was lost in a furry, blurry haze. Despite this, they never forgot about the giant lizard who had invaded the Drunkard's Cup and often recalled the event when they were sitting in the tavern together. However it was not until twelve months later that they actually saw the lizardperson again, on the day after Terri completed her initiation test and became a fully fledged Cleric of Gravenhall.