The next day, Aleicree copied more of the farming manual. The next evening, Vrekant brought back a farmergon to introduce to his visitors, just as Aleicree had requested. He was a dusky purple vrash named Farard. Aleicree thought he was quite attractive, well-muscled with a strong but not exaggerated jawline, and wearing a fashionable silver armour that contrasted nicely with his underlying dark colour.
He proceeded to shock Aleicree by greeting Vrekant with a kiss. When the group sat for dinner, zie noticed that the two had twined tails. There couldn’t possibly have been an unmentioned romance all these years, so zir mind went instantly to thinking that the two were in an “it means nothing” kind of relationship, just as Aleicree and Vrekant had been in academy.
Somehow, Aleicree was the one who had changed. Vrekant was just the same.
Farard was interested in visiting Nidrio, though he said, "I'm unlikely to pull up stakes, you understand. I'm doing well enough here and Nidrio sounds like poor farmland."
“So why visit? Are you just interested in attending a feast?” asked Aleicree.
Farard grinned as he said, “No, not for the feast! For Praoziu! I’ve never met a land god incarnate before.”
Farard gradually escalated his affectionate behaviour towards Vrekant, so that the two were sitting hip to hip and nuzzling each other by the time dinner was over. Vrekant had the grace to look embarrassed, but the passion to not resist when Farard led him out of the room after dinner.
When they were gone, Limist burst out laughing. “Well, that was interesting to watch. Guess Vrekant’s got a paramour!”
Aleicree smiled and said, “I think they’re just friends.”
Azosta sighed and said, “So that’s Vrekant’s evening. What about us?”
Fortunately, Aleicree knew from letters with Vrekant that he had a modest collection of board games. Aleicree expected that they were all somewhere near the dining room, because they were group games for entertaining guests with, and after a brief search zie had pulled several boxes out. Each one was a wooden box that folded out into a game board with playing pieces.
One of the boxes was gold-lettered with “Expedition to Axorus”, and that caught Aleicree’s attention most of all. Zie offered the other two boxes to the group to look at (They were “Eternal City” and “Nisky’s Merchants”), but zie pushed “Expedition to Axorus” into the centre of the table and virtually insisted on it.
Axorus was a famed and dangerous place far, far to the north that drew explorers from across Theoma. Aleicree had never been there, but zie’d received a letter from Denziu, who had crossed it earlier that year. From that letter’s description, zie knew it looked like a bunch of different horizon-spanning abandoned cities connected by portals. Denziu had speculated that it was a museum of prior worlds maintained by a reclusive land god. Most expeditions to the real Axorus found nothing, but it remained one of Theoma’s few known sources for relics of prior worlds.
The three spent several hours on a game about exploring Axorus with rope, temporarily valid maps, and hired gargoyles. The game had “lost in Axorus” rules that ate pieces if exploration plans fell apart. It also had dubious returns from the expedition sites that left them risking negative returns if they relied on hired gargoyles. At the end of the game, Azosta had a slight negative score, Aleicree had a slight positive score, and only Limist had made consistent profits.
The fourth day at Vrekant's house, Aleicree finished copying the farming manual zie had brought. Zie finished up with some transmutations of the blank book that zie'd copied it into. The excess pages were sacrificed and the binding transmuted so that it seemed as though the blank book had always had exactly the number of pages in it that the farming manual itself contained. A difficult geomantic meditation saw the cover stamped with the title... and then Aleicree was serenity drained and could not have kept working on something so boring as scribing if the world depended on it. Fortunately, zie was done for the day. Zie danced and ran about the house and explored Vrekant's garden.
Zie was still poor on serenity when zir host and new friends returned from their days at work afield. Vrekant once more brought back a farmergon; Aleicree impulsively greeted zir with a lick to the cheek. To the geomancers in the room, it gave away that a geomantic spell had gone a bit wrong. Limist was the one who looked at zir funny. The farmergon in question was momentarily stunned, but didn’t turn away from joining them at dinner.
“I’m Rettle,” zie said at the table as they waited for Vrekant to finish cooking dinner. Zie was a black-striped green vrash wearing a minimum of armour just across zir shoulders. “Vrekant is a miracle worker who has kept the wild weather off my crops almost every time for years now.”
“Do you want to live somewhere without ‘wild weather’?” asked Aleicree, hopefully. “Maybe try your hand at something other than farming?”
Rettle shook zir head and said, "Oh, I couldn't! I am well-established here. You know, it's a nuisance really, I feel enmeshed in the local community."
Limist peered at Rettle. "Surely not," he said. "Can't be anything wrong with having good friends. I wouldn’t be here if I'd made friends in Shibanyet."
"It's not a thing wrong," said Rettle, "So much as it is a thing half-right. I can hardly go a-travelin' without having friends worry where I've gone, much less contemplate a change of career."
Nobody does the same thing for centuries, Aleicree thought. Few dragons, at least. Rettle may have been farming here for too long.
Azosta said, "We'll be here for a month, if that changes your plans any. You can warn your friends that you're going to Nidrio."
Aleicree chimed in, "Invite them along! I'm pretty sure that Taisach would host as many dragons as were interested in a visit. Praoziu would be willing to summon a feast if need be."
"How long is the flight to Nidrio?" asked Rettle.
Aleicree was used to travelling by ship, and was caught out not knowing. Fortunately, Limist came to the rescue. He said, "Nidrio is by Zyrine, right? So the route's the same, or close enough. It'd be three days. One day to Shibanyet, one day to Fathesti, and then to Nidrio itself on the third."
"Oh, Zyrine!" Rettle said with a giggle. "If anyone I know hasn't been to Zyrine, this trip can knock that off the 'someday' list. Maybe I could bring a friend."
Aleicree asked, "Where's Fathesti? And what kind of theome is it?"
Limist said, "It's a missing theome by the Graggle Cliffs, which are west of the river Joylim. There's nothing really in Fathesti but a stopover point for flyers. Still, it does a good business in food and lodgings for travellers."
"I could've flown back myself, but not knowing the optimal route I think it would've taken 4 or 5 days," Aleicree said. "I'll be trusting you to lead us to Fathesti."
"No problem," said Limist with a smile.
They ate with Rettle, and afterwards Vrekant suggested the five of them play board games together. He led them in a game of “Eternal City”, which was a city-building with shapeshifting pieces. The carved vashael pieces took on an outfit characteristic of whichever job they were placed at, but every four turns they’d refuse to work at their job anymore, shapeshifting into a refusal posture when placed on the board tile for that job. This led to a juggling act as new jobs had to be found to keep the pieces employed over time. New jobs in turn had to be unlocked by funding their tiles. Each player had only a few worker pieces and their city evolved as job potentials were used up or opened.
Aleicree played embarrassingly badly, having several of zir pieces unemployed for a lot of the game after overstaffing critical jobs early. Rush productivity had a penalty; a single worker over four turns would produce more than four workers over one turn. Aleicree’s city seemed flush with resources in the early game, but then it stopped being able to produce basic resources, and eventually it used up its stockpile and couldn’t fund the opening of new job tiles.
Limist did a little better, but not a lot better. He had some unemployment in his city, too. Azosta played well for a first time and had his pieces moving fluently so that they kept working throughout.
Rettle and Vrekant were clearly most familiar with the game. They knew how to keep their pieces working steadily and competed with each other over the board’s prestige accomplishments. Their victory point totals rivalled each other. Eventually, in a key turn near the end, Rettle took a small lead and held it.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The game had taken quite a while, so it was dark when they finished. Rather than take a risky flight home in the dark, Rettle asked for (and Vrekant granted) a night in one of Vrekant’s guest rooms. Zie also had a few final questions. “When will we be leaving for Nidrio, and who else is going?”
“26 days from now,” Vrekant said. “It might be a crowded flight. I’ll bring in another dragon every day who might be interested in visiting Nidrio.”
Aleicree sat up straighter. "Praoziu could host all of them," zie said. "And Taisach is eager to meet dragons who take an interest in Nidrio. I'll recruit as many as I can."
Vrekant nodded and held his hands open. "Then let's plan a bit of a feast at my house, too. I'll host a potluck with everyone who joins the trip to Nidrio on your last day here."
Limist cheered. "Hey hey! We'll have a party before we go!"
The fifth day, Aleicree wrote a letter to Denziu boasting of having finished copying a farming manual. Zie guessed a market price and offered it to Denziu without the faintest discount, giving zir sibling the first chance to buy it at the price zie thought zie could get from a scribegon. "I know you're moving on from soil-selling, but you might find this book nostalgic," zie wrote to Denziu. "This book talks of soil with some of your old love for it. It'll remind you of your childhood if you keep it, and you might give it as a gift to one of your beloved farmergons in Denxalue."
After a quick trip to post the letter, zie started on Sea Gods' Laws. The introduction was just as it was, but Aleicree suffered through reading it again. Zie had decided that this was also an important book deserving of being copied. Copying books was an excellent excuse for staying inside all day and not exploring Sorjek. Aleicree thought that vacations might be a poor fit for zir nature; zie did not want to go to new and unfamiliar places.
Limist and Azosta returned that evening with a tale of an actual work contract being ordered. One of the more successful farmergons had taken them up on building an irrigation system in the fields. “This is exactly the kind of pipework we wanted to be doing with the farmergons,” Limist boasted. “The rain here is reliable enough that we had to offer a pretty cut-rate deal on our labour, but just putting up something new like this is exciting. Maybe this farmer wants to switch to growing rice or something.”
The farmergon of the fifth day was named Saranz. He was a bronze vrash with a brown metallic sheen even under his armour. Despite his metallic scales, the most memorable thing about him was that he was invasive of Aleicree’s bubble. He tried to greet Aleicree with a nuzzle, didn’t immediately back off when zie dodged it, and brushed against zir side as they went towards the dinner table. He sat next to zir and tried to touch tails with zir. Aleicree wished that he’d been touchy with one of the others instead of zirself. He seemed to get the message when Aleicree wouldn’t tolerate their tails in proximity, and Aleicree let it go as the conversation around the table turned to Nidrio. Zie extended the invitation to Nidrio and he accepted it. As Saranz specifically requested it, they played “Eternal City” again, and this time Limist made terrible errors and withdrew early, while Aleicree did much better and played quite competitively. Zie kept up with the more experienced players all the way to the end-game, though Saranz ultimately won.
The farmergon of the sixth day started out as a repeat of Saranz. Zie went right in for a nuzzle, and Aleicree backed off even more sharply this time, saying, “Stop! Why are you trying to touch my face?”
“A friend of Vrekant’s is a friend of mine,” rumbled the blue-striped white vrash. “Pardon, we’re pretty affectionate here. My name is Relevar. What’s yours?”
“I’m Aleicree. I’m not used to affection, so please keep a fair distance.”
“Sure,” said Relevar, but as Aleicree turned to lead in towards the dining room, Relevar sniffed audibly at Aleicree’s tail. Aleicree’s entire body froze at that moment, the blue vashael caught grimacing. Relevar looked up and then stepped back a pace. “Uh… Sorry.”
Cringing, Aleicree shook zirself out and hurried to the dinner table. Zie made sure that Azosta and Limist were sitting to either side of zirself this time rather than letting Relevar sit next to zir.
When the topic of Nidrio came up, it wasn’t because Aleicree had broached it, but zie still extended the invitation to Nidrio. Relevar was excited by the idea of both the potluck at the end of the month and the subsequent feast at Nidrio, and agreed to join up.
There was another round of board games that night, another wooden board and pouch of game pieces fetched from Vrekant's chest of games. They played “Nisky’s Merchants”, a simple dice game based on merchants racing to get goods to market ahead of each other. Aleicree’s thoughts weren’t really on the game. Zie chose poor routes and zir score matched the attention zie was putting into the game. Zie just didn’t care about the board game with Relevar.
Zie was thinking instead about the seagons of the Serene Chordalite.
None of them were affectionate with zir. Zie had lived without affection of any kind for decades. Only Shiowatha challenged this perspective. Heavily built by the slighter standards of the vohntrai, Shiowatha nevertheless had a gentle touch. The daily unbinding had been a ritual between them for a long time, and when Aleicree ate at the galley, it was usually with Shiowatha.
Shiowatha’s stories had changed over the years. They were all of places that Shiowatha had visited on naval journeys four centuries prior. Vohntrai were truly unkillable, but they had limited memories: four hundred years of memory was their limit. So Shiowatha had talked about the memories of four hundred years prior, memorialising in conversations with Aleicree the things that zie was about to lose. Zie claimed to be a dedicated journaler, too.
The years on the Serene Chordalite were wearing away Shiowatha’s memories without contributing much novelty, but Shiowatha had a plan. Zie was accumulating funds to take a journey around all of Theoma. Along the way, zie would hit up a bunch of places zie had visited centuries ago, and zie would write a new journal to compare the places across a span of so many centuries. It would be the vacation of four centuries, to give Shiowatha fresh memories to dwell on.
Thinking about how Shiowatha had considered the Serene Chordalite to be a drag, Aleicree felt horrible. How had zie kept zir head down and just worked for so many years? How could anyone do that? Zie had resented the party they threw at Hiakoreska, but what madness that was. It should’ve been a break. It should’ve been a chance to build up some kind of rapport with the others.
The next three days saw the return group swell by another two farmergons, by the names of Soltia the Mender and Naburyen the Digger. Soltia was a green-mantled yellow vrash with green eyes; Naburyen was a black-brown vrash with orange eyes. By this point Limist, Azosta, and Vrekant were all in gear as recruiters and looking forward to a feast awaiting them in Nidrio. Vrekant seemed to be enjoying it despite the risk that some of his friends might move out.
Soltia was an avid collector of tailrings who showed up wearing several and dropped them on the table to talk about them. Apparently this was a difficult interest for a farmer owing to the expense of the tailrings, but Soltia worked several jobs to earn enough to keep collecting. “My own plot is so small I’m practically just a gardener,” Soltia claimed, “But I do work with the others when it’s time to bring in the harvest.”
Limist looked up from the tailrings on the table. “With several jobs on the plate, do you actually have time to visit Nidrio?”
Soltia grinned. “Oh, I’m not a contract worker. I take my pay by the job. Nobody will miss me, I’ll just miss out on a few paychecks.”
Azosta hmmed. “Kinda sad to go unmissed, isn’t it?” he asked, touching his chin in thought, his tail curling beside him.
“Nah!” said Soltia brightly. “My friends are all farmers.”
Aleicree was a bit self-conscious on the subject of tailrings, because zir own tail was scrawny with too many skipped meals. A thick tail was considered attractive! Being on vacation might help. Zie wasn’t skipping meals out here.
Naburyen in turn had a question to ask after Aleicree was introduced. “Why are you called The Windlost?” he wanted to know.
Limist and Azosta both perked up. Limist said, “Yeah, I want to know that too.”
Aleicree smiled and started into a familiar story. “When I was young, I loved my amicus breeze. I discovered that I could control it extensively, and if I sat very still and focused very hard, I could make it a big, strong wind. I took to sitting very still and focusing very hard for long periods of time, until I was playing with the clouds. Everyone knew then that I would be a windmage, but they found it disconcerting. I was such a quiet child that they called me Windlost.”
Naburyen asked, “Are you still Windlost?”
That question brought a moment of hesitation. A name that had stuck since childhood didn’t have to last forever. Aleicree thought about it, and said, “Yes, I think so. Why are you The Digger?”
Now it was Naburyen’s turn to regard zir with a smile. “Well, it’s a pretty similar story to yours, except in my case I was a dirty child because I was always digging holes. I loved digging pits and digging up stones. I once dug a tunnel between two pits in a fallow field of my parents’, I was so proud. Now, I didn’t become a miner or anything and this isn’t ordinarily the kind of thing that’d stick to an adult, but I’m not as old as a lot of the farmergons around here and I grew up in Sorjek. Plus, I still do some digging work. Dragons come to me when they need something dug up.”
Naburyen left after dinner without a round of board games, and that evening Aleicree wrote a long letter to Taisach and Praoziu, telling them that zie had found an opportunity to recruit for Nidrio from the farms around Vrekant's house, and started listing the farmergons who had agreed to visit. Zie set about including a sentence from the backstory of each, trying to make them all unique and promising. Not that zie had learned much from them... and for that matter, all zie knew about Farard was that Farard and Vrekant were affectionate with each other. Zie couldn't well talk about Farard's affectionate nature to Taisach. He'd get the wrong idea.
After struggling with this list for half an hour and growing quite embarrassed, Aleicree brought the list to Vrekant and asked for his help. Together, they wrote a second, better letter to Taisach and Praoziu, using Vrekant's familiarity with his customers to fill out the list the way Aleicree had intended for it to be. Hopefully, taking the opportunity to write out all these names would also help Aleicree remember them.
So happy was Aleicree to collaborate on a letter with someone that zie overcame zir shyness enough to rub tails with Vrekant as they worked. He seemed to accept the gesture without pressure, comfortable in closeness with Aleicree.
Zie got a brief letter in reply from Denziu. "It sounds like you've copied a fascinating book and I would have loved to have read it at any point in the last five decades," wrote Denziu, "But I think I'm moving on from that interest now. Bring it back to Denxalue and sell it to a local scribegon, would you? There should be a scribegon somewhere in Denxalue. The theome isn’t entirely illiterate."