Aleicree was tied up and blindfolded in a room on the forecastle of a ship, and everything was normal. For zie was one of the three windmages upon the Serene Chordalite, and presently zie loomed over the ship in a diaphanous invisible form larger than any dragon on Theoma. Zir physical body? Merely an oft-recurrent port of call.
Zie was the wind!
The wind that filled the sails was Aleicree, as was the wind that stirred the barbels of the few dragons on deck who had them, and the wind that brushed the fur of the one swaivshon on the crew. The wind that made creak the ropes above the ship, the wind that blew foul scents from the head, and the wind that filled every lung with salt spray ocean air, all of these were Aleicree.
The higher gusts that blew the clouds overhead were not Aleicree, at present. Aleicree did not need to reach that far. For now, zie was only the wind where it touched the ship, which scudded along with zir help, just off the shore, on the Chordal Ocean. Courtesy of perfect wind from the three shifts of windmagery on board, (one of those shifts being provided by Aleicree, who was very confident of zir talent at this work), the Serene Chordalite travelled near its top speeds all day every day. The time it took to carry a full cargo of sailcloth from Rhakanin's industrious farmlands to the shipyards of Griolor was reduced to 28 hours.
Such a guaranteed swift trip meant these two cities became adjacent ports, their prosperity linked. Griolor was a world famous shipyard theome where trading companies headquartered in a massively commercial city. It was led by, an atypical land god who ran his own shipping business and who adored producing ships at good prices for merchants. Rhakanin by contrast was a port servicing a region of farms. Many of the farms grew cash crops, but nevertheless there was no shortage of arable land on Theoma, and so the farming regions, of necessity, borrowed their prosperity from their neighbours.
Aleicree knew the route and that the Serene Chordalite and all the seagons - sea dragons, sailors, seagons - aboard it should be coming up that evening into Zyrine Bay, but zie could not see the land ahead on the horizon. To zir spell-altered senses the ship sailed in an empty void, a bubble of Aleicree. Zie could not see anything save what zir augmented wind touched. Everything else was a fuzzed silhouette.
It was late in the evening, for the sunlight had ceased to warm the air.
Zie pushed at the ship and seeped through its door jambs. Dinner was cooking in the aftcastle, Aleicree noticed with some hunger. They were so close to shore and so confident in their speed that they ate no preserved, salted meat on the Serene Chordalite, rather fresh foods as a matter of course. Tonight, while stewing a simple pottage of vegetables and grain, the ship's cook fried meat for them with a wok in the galley.
The wind flagged not while looking in on the preparations, for zie was everywhere the air travelled and saw the meal cooking that way.
When the ship's cook reached for the dinner bell, Aleicree let the wind taper off. Zie stood down from being the wind to simply be zir physical form again, that great invisible form of air seeping back into zir body through the slit walls of the windmage room. Having rocked unaware for hours spent bound, zie felt the accustomed discomforts. The bindings were meant to be helpful, lest the waves should break zir trance by sending zir rolling across the floor, but they were still uncomfortable.
A moment later, another seagon stepped near to unbind zir so zie could end zir shift. With the blindfold removed, zie saw the face of one of zir shipmates, a vohntrai with fiery scales called Shiowatha, who was the only vohntrai aboard. They were a rare kind of dragon!
"Thank you for unbinding me," Aleicree said. Shiowatha's unbinding and zir gratitude for it were a much-loved bit of daily social ritual.
The two of them went to take the night meal together. Afterwards, Aleicree put on a flight safety harness with its dots aglow and took to the sky for zir regular exercise. Those hours spent bound upon the deck meditating were so bad for zir. Zie needed to fly to stay healthy. Thus, Aleicree saw the ship from far above as it sped along with the night shift windmage an invisible presence around it.
Aleicree watched its swift traverse by the fireless magic lanterns which illuminated its decks. There were other ships likewise illuminated. Magic lanterns were the most common magic item on all of Theoma, produced in great numbers for every kind of home and business. They lit up the sea at point after point all the way to the horizon. Here near Griolor, there was never a scarcity of shipping.
There were other dragons upon the wing in this area. The sky was full of gleaming dots from safety harnesses worn for night flying. Each one had lit patches designed to prevent dragons from flying into one another in the dark. They were a specialised good, so they were not quite as cheap as magic lanterns, but they were common.
Other ships’ off duty windmages took to the air like Aleicree did, most of them shaking off the stress of prolonged immobility, and they were joined by many seagons who were also not on shift, who simply wanted to stretch. To these crowds were added the lookouts of the various ships, who often did their work on the wing. Distant dark shapes flew and swooped around and between the lantern-lit ships upon the near-coastal waters of the Chordalite Ocean.
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The ship below travelled into the famed Zyrine Bay, which served the three cities of Zyrine, Relny, and Griolor. On a clifftop peninsula visible across the bay, Zyrine reared up to dominate the horizon. The city itself shone with countless magic lanterns, but the great flaming sigil that was Raul the land god hung above it, a discomforting and awesome presence that made the night sky bright and ugly with its excess light. He brightened the dark so much that Aleicree thought that they wouldn't have impacted each other in this airspace even if they hadn't been wearing flight safety harnesses. Had they needed the stars to navigate in this place, they could not have them. Raul was supposed to be a land god; Aleicree wondered why it was that he felt the need to so dominate the sky over Zyrine, as though to set into good dragons a fear of flying. Had anyone ever been injured flying too near to the flames?
Aleicree thought about these things as zie flew back down to the Serene Chordalite and landed on the deck. Zie doffed zir safety harness, stowing it in a chest on deck, and then went below, into the crew quarters to zir own sleeping place.
Zie woke with the ship having put into port on the Griolor side of the bay. To wake the next morning after flying the prior night was to get an inadequate amount of sleep, but Aleicree woke with excitement. It was ‘market day’ in Griolor and though there was no great attraction in the city itself, zie could fly home to visit zir parents Taisach and Praoziu in another nearby theome: Nidrio.
There were few dragons in Nidrio, but Praoziu was a land god!
Before Aleicree could leave, however, zie first had a vital stop: the local post office. Zie had letters to post and hopefully letters to receive. Here where the Serene Chordalite was nearest to Nidrio, Aleicree's most-used post office box held the promise of new letters to read. This was zir 'permanent address'.
Aleicree sent letters from all over, as zie knew where the post offices were at every port. Those zie received arrived along the route of zir travels, requiring zir regular correspondents to be familiar with the schedule of the Serene Chordalite. Dragons who weren't sure where the ship was in its circuit sent mail to Griolor, so that Aleicree often had a small pile to pick up here from irregular correspondents.
Unfortunately, only one dragon had used it this time. The lack of letters made Aleicree feel a bit forgotten. The postage received consisted solely of one letter from Vrekant the Raincaller.
Aleicree put it away lovingly into zir pouch, for Vrekant was zir best friend from the wind magic academy. They lettered each other constantly. Every bit of shipyard gossip went to Vrekant, along with a new poem every time. So many letters had run dry the well of ways to speak of sailing the same route ad nauseum, so Aleicree had turned to poetry. Zie loved the exercise. Vrekant told zir everything about smoothing out the weather for farmergons in Sorjek. Sorjek was famous for two things: farmergons and necromancers. Fighting with necrotic decay of the wind itself, Vrekant claimed, was far more interesting and challenging than guiding ships. One of his neighbours was a literal ghost! Yes, it was disappointing to receive only one letter, but at least zie had gotten a letter from the correspondent zie liked best.
The postage sent started with one in turn to Vrekant, and then there was a letter to Taltios to post as well. Taltios was one of Aleicree's two siblings. This second letter carried a little bit of the accounting of seaboard life, but it was mostly bland family well-wishes. It would probably become fireplace tinder, but it had to be sent.
Taltios lived in Tekagol, which was adjacent to Griolor. In theory Aleicree could evade the fee by flying there to hand-deliver this letter, but Aleicree had refused many invitations to visit Taltios' house. With grimacing superstition zie had only once stepped foot in Tekagol: the day when in ritual fervour zie had smashed a ceramic representation of zirself upon the ground! Zie had broken zir connection with Tekagol’s fate beacon, because that beacon broadcast BAD LUCK. It was unfathomable to Aleicree that Taltios chose to live in an actively unlucky theome, so they met only when both of them visited Nidrio at the same time. They were otherwise in contact only by letters.
Two further letters Aleicree posted. One of these was to a geomancer who had written a book that Aleicree had read. Writing such "fan mail" was a little embarrassing; Aleicree didn't expect to see a reply. The other was to correspond with a minor friend from the academy who had lately written to boast of taking a merchant journey to a deep-under theome. Ekis had never made it as a windmage. It was unusual for an izerah to make any attempt, lacking the natural gift as they were. Still, Aleicree and Ekis had kept in touch with occasional letters since then, and now she had met Aleicree's other sibling Denziu while on a northward caravan. The two were hoping to be trading food and lanterns in underground communities.
When zie had heard such strange news, zie couldn't resist writing back. How strange to think of wind magic in the deep-under theomes! What was the wind, in closed spaces far from the light? Would an amicus breeze of a vashael become a superbia of clean air? Perhaps wind magic freshened the air down there and would be greatly appreciated.
Of course, zie wasn't sure Ekis still thought of herself as a windmage. It hadn't worked out, after all. Letters with Ekis tended to focus more on her current profession as a merchant rather than her prior failure to master the archetypally vashael magic. Maybe there wouldn't be any summoned breezes in the deep-under as a result. Still, Denziu would bring the amicus breeze on their journey. Aleicree had made a point in zir reply to ask how wind magic worked underground.
All of these letters to send were made possible because Praoziu had gifted lev-i-quills to the whole family. They were levitating quill pens of preternatural durability that wrote swiftly at their owner's will. They kept in touch with a steady stream of letters. Aleicree was proud to be part of such a literate family… and the lev-i-quills were fun to use, too!
Two letters were withheld from the post: One to zir dad Taisach, who dwelled with Praoziu in Nidrio, and one to zir sibling Denziu, who had so befriended the farmergons in the region that zie spent the nights in every home but zir own. As Aleicree would fly home to deliver Taisach’s letter, giving the letter to Denziu to their dad too meant it should arrive more swiftly.
With zir business with the post office concluded, nothing kept Aleicree in this coastal city, and zie was eager to fly the hour it would take to arrive home in Nidrio.