>Aboard U-178, unknown waters._

Korvettenkapitän Klaus Witt had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

Actually, he technically knew what he was doing. He had followed a bunch of actual dragons to some seemingly random point in the ocean. At their behest. After only meeting them, exchanging a series of nonsensical flashes via bioluminescent scales and signal lamp, and then listening to three of the roughly Great White Shark-sized creatures almost… talk with each other?

The real question, Klaus supposed, was why. Why had he agreed to follow after a trio of water dragons? Why did he and his crew take such interest in them? Why were they waiting here for the water dragons to return after they had disappeared back under the waves, departing with what seemed like a hand gesture to wait where they were?

Perhaps they were lost, and had no idea where they were. The compasses were still acting up, and they had been getting nothing but background static for the past few days, so they didn’t have a read on their location. They had no idea what to do, as they had lost contact with both the convoy and obviously with Lorient.

Perhaps… Probably, even, it was just because they were bored. It wasn’t as though there was much to do aboard a U-boat, after all. Other than run crash-dive drills, watch for targets or threats and smell each other’s stench.

He took a draw of interesting submarine coffee from his cheap mug. He supposed he probably should have seen this coming. The water dragons, anyway.

Seaman Hans Fischer had frantically reported seeing a similar creature just after they came through the storm, after they heard that banging noise. Nobody believed him. The Watch Officer had gone up to see what the fuss was about, and came back insisting that he needed to get more sleep.

The rest of the enlisted crew had some fun ribbing him about it, though.

It was just a few nothing-days later that Hans once again called out that he’d seen a water dragon, and this time Witt decided to go up and check it out himself.

It had turned out that Hans was indeed right about the water dragon.

Others from the crew all clambered up onto the sail with them to get a look. The blue-green dragon seemed to take an interest in them and their signal lamp, and flashed the bioluminescent lights it apparently had in a manner weirdly similar to how ships communicate with light signals.

Witt had gotten a little nervous when two more water dragons appeared. They were fairly large, similar in size to a Great White Shark, he thought. He didn’t know if they could jump out of the water at them, but none of the dragons seemed at all hostile. They just seemed… Curious.

The dragons seemed to… converse with each other through a series of growls and guttural sounds, before one of them made a gesture with one of its talons that seemed to denote that it wanted them to follow it. Witt had, for whatever reason (boredom and curiosity, probably), agreed and ordered the boat’s helmsman to follow after them. He had no idea whether or not these water dragons were intelligent, but it was certainly possible; Dragons in mythology were kind of inconsistent between either being just beasts, cunning and intelligent, somewhere in between, or something else entirely. By how the water dragons were interacting with each other, and how the first one looked at them and somehow knew to blink its scales in a way at least reminiscent of Morse Code… Witt and many others aboard were leaning towards the water dragons they found being sapient.

Another, perhaps more pressing question to ask, would be whether the water dragons were benevolent or not.

Harkening back to the dragons-in-mythos example, Witt found himself liking the probable answer to that question much less.

Best-case scenario was the dragons were just like curious and playful dolphins for whatever reason. Worst-case scenario… These things were possibly the Leviathans alluded to in the Bible that he remembered being referenced in a Lutheran church he sometimes attended until it got shut down. He didn't really remember what they got the priest for, it was probably for being a traitor or something along those lines.

Most of the crew did not seem to share his leeriness, as they spent most of the trip debating names for the water dragons and trying to goad Hans into jumping off and trying to ride one of them.

Klaus didn’t step in, because he knew they wouldn’t be dumb enough to actually try. Or at least he hoped they wouldn’t; being trapped in a steel can for weeks sharing bunks and smelling each other’s sweat tended to do things to one’s common sense.

And perhaps because a formal hearing for throwing a fellow sailor to literal dragons would be pretty funny.

That submariner humor really gets to you… He had thought at the time.

They had gotten a signal from one of the swimming dragons to stop, before they submerged again, so they cut the engines to a drifting stop and dropped anchor. They would unfortunately just have to wait and see what the water dragons were up to, and what they wanted.

Klaus sighed and climbed the ladder from the vessel’s control room up to the sail, taking the coffee with him. Atop it, several seamen and flak personnel were all waiting for the water dragons to show themselves once again.

“Oh, come on… Are you sure you don’t want to go say hello to your new friend, Hans?” he heard one of the seamen say as he was climbing up.

“Seriously, guys. I only asked if the stupid water dragon was friendly once!”

“What kind of thing is that to say about your best friend?”

“Captain on deck!”

Their chuckling was cut off by the announcement, and they all turned to Klaus as he made it up the ladder, standing at attention and saluting him. “At ease.” He promptly said, and they relaxed again. He typically wasn’t as strict about crew discipline as he probably should be, but his crew still cut him respect befitting a ship’s captain and their commanding officer.

“Any sign of the water dragons, yet?” He asked.

“No, sir. They’ve been gone for a few minutes at most, sir.” One of them said.

Witt scratched his scruffy, ill-shaven chin with his free hand. He didn’t really have a good guess for what those things could do to his boat if they tried, or even if they could do anything, but it honestly really was something that he’d rather be left a mystery.

“Hm… Just be ready, in case anything happens.” He said, making a point to look at the 2cm flak personnel. They nodded their understanding.

Witt sighed through his nose and turned his gaze out to the deep blue sea around them. At least it was pleasant weather, there was a gentle breeze, the waves were calm, and it was warmer than usual. It was certainly a nice break from the stuffy, poorly-ventilated interior of the U-boat. Still, the question of just what those water dragons were up to took the forefront of his attention.

It would seem as though he didn't have to wait long to have that question answered, however, as the sounds of splashes coming from the starboard side gave away the reappearance of the water dragon.

“He’s back!”

They turned, and saw the blue-green water dragon that had first showed up. The other two blueish dragons that had also appeared also came up, but more tentatively, it seemed. The first dragon brought a webbed and sharply-clawed out of the water and waved it at them in a similar way that he had earlier. They all waved back.

The other two dragon’s eyes widened briefly, before the first one seemed to take a breath in through its nose and recoiled slightly. Witt grimaced, he knew he and his fellow sailors didn’t exactly smell at their best, but it wasn’t as though there was much clean water aboard to shower, or wash clothes. Right now, he was just rather happy to see the sun after so many days confined in the claustrophobic maritime machination.

The original dragon reached his talon back underwater and brought up… What looked like a big piece of rolled up paper.

Klaus thought his eyes might fall out of his head. These dragons had a scroll. An actual, dragon-sized scroll.

The water dragon promptly unrolled the scroll and presented it to them, revealing strange, runic text scribed with off-blue ink, along with various drawn pictures. This confirmed to the sailors beyond doubt that these water dragons were of the intelligent kind, clearly having their own written language and textual documents. It also meant that they probably weren't spirits. The other two dragons, who also apparently were carrying their own scrolls, brought them forth and presented them as well. While it was of course difficult for the rapt observers to determine what the scrolls were about, as they couldn’t read the written language, they could make out various pictures, no doubt drawn by dragon claws. Some of the pictures depicted dragons similar to the three before them, others seemed to depict crude drawings of… humans. Which was… interesting. Another scroll seemed to have a map of sorts, depicting an alien landmass that the sailors did not recognize.

No one said anything as the dragons showed them the scrolls, as they were too awed to really have anything to say. The water dragons, on the other hand, certainly did have something to say, judging by the near constant growling and guttural vocalizations they were making as they pointed with their sharp claws to different parts of each scroll. Klaus was almost certain the sea lizards were trying to explain their literature to them.

Eventually, the first dragon that had appeared jolted slightly as if remembering something. He dove back underwater briefly, and bright back another paper. This one was not rolled up into a long scroll. On this paper, three sea creatures were depicted. Two of the crude pictures were very similar. One of the objects depicted Witt thought was an oyster, given its roughly foot-shaped shell. The other similar picture appeared to be a clam or muscle of sorts, and the third picture was a… sort of octopus-squid thing.

“Is that supposed to be a cuttlefish?” One of the seamen asked.

Ah, that’s probably it.

The dragon holding the new sheet pointed to the rough depiction of the cuttlefish, then to himself, and said some unknown phrase in their dragon language, and repeated the process a couple of times.

The befuddled crew exchanged glances.

“Is he saying that he’s a cuttlefish?”

“I have no idea.”

“Maybe he’s saying that his name is Cuttlefish?”

“...That’s weird.”

“Well, I didn’t name him.”

The water dragon interrupted them by repeating the process, only this time pronouncing only one growl-y word.

“Grrahckt’lliu.”

No one said anything for a dense minute, until Hans decided to do what they were all no doubt thinking about doing.

“Grrahckt’lliu.” He carefully uttered back, clearly trying his best to exactly mimic the vocalizations used by the dragon, which thankfully weren’t that much different than the Germanic sounds they were all used to, albeit these dragon sounds were much deeper and more… guttural.

Now it was the dragon’s turn to look shocked, as his eyes went wide and round as saucers and he floundered back a couple of meters, staring at the humans as though they had suddenly become spirits. The other two dragons had similar reactions.

Despite themselves, The sailors atop the conning tower shared an amused laugh at their obviously flabbergasted reactions towards Hans repeating their word back to them.

Out of what they had, the submarine, the signal lamps, and everything else, that is what the water dragons were most surprised about?

Said dragons then descended into a rather frantic-sounding conversation amongst themselves, turning their direct attention away from the humans. Who, for their part, all exchanged glances containing mixed emotions. Ranging from amusement, concern, to general confusion.

Before any of them could say anything, however, their own attention was grabbed by the appearance of another water dragon head, surfacing just behind the trio that had led them here. The new dragon appeared a good bit larger than the three, suggesting it was of older age. The water dragon stared at the small collection of people and the U-boat they were atop of with an expression that certainly represented dumbfoundment. The three smaller dragons stopped their conversation and turned to the new dragon.

Before their very eyes, more heads belonging to more water dragons began to appear from the waves. Some of them communicate with each other, some cough up water, all of them stare right at them. They were all clearly interested in the appearance of their submarine, and had come to investigate.

Klaus found himself growing more nervous; There were a lot of water dragons, at least a dozen. More were gradually appearing. The way that some of them stared at him and his crew made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Normally, when a sub encountered danger, the procedure was to dive underwater to escape, but that was where these dragons were obviously coming from. The only weapons on the boat, other than the torpedoes and handful of pistols, were the 2cm flak guns mounted on the sail, as well as the 10,5cm and 3,7cm deck guns fore and aft of the conning tower respectively. He didn’t really feel comfortable ordering the deck gun crews to man those guns either, as they were positioned a little close to the waterline for his liking in this situation. The boat’s sail wasn’t that much higher, and it probably wouldn’t help if one of those water dragons tried to grab one of them, but still.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Nonetheless, he ordered the 2cm flak gunners to be ready. He found himself wishing that he was the one in charge of a depth-charge wielding sub chaser frigate rather than a submarine, but there was nothing he could do to help that.

If things started to go south, Witt supposed the only thing they could really do against all these dragons would be to evacuate everyone off the sail, hole up within the pressure hull and gun the engines as fast as they can for as long as they can in a hope to escape.

He had no idea how such a scenario would play out, given the water dragon’s unknown strength and physical capabilities. Can they keep up with the sub at full ahead? Can they seriously damage her? How long can they swim at speed? Will they even try to pursue them? They had no way to know.

Despite his growing wariness, none of the water dragons seemed interested in making a move yet. They just continued to stare at them or the submarine or converse amongst themselves in their growly, guttural tongue. The original trio were as chatty as ever, seemingly now paying little mind to the growing crowd. Although many of the gathered probable older water dragons appeared to be beginning to pay them more attention, judging by the stares and throaty remarks, many with audible inflections, being thrown at them.

Some of the water dragons looked to notice something underwater, as they diverted their attention away from either the boat or the young dragons, pointed their snouts to some location that was below the water, or slipped back under the waves entirely. Klaus thought he could just make out a blur of motion below the sea, before he and the other sailor all shared in a gasp as the original blue-green dragon that they had first seen was abruptly yanked back underwater by an unseen force with hardly a yelp to spare. The other two smaller dragons dove themselves after they seemed to register what happened.

Klaus looked over the sail’s rail down to the water, the flak gunners and seamen did the same. They could just make out a visage of bluish underwater lights blinking and strobing and flashing rapidly and wildly, like a school of manic angler fish. It was difficult to make out, given that the sun was out, but still visible.

“What is going on?” One of the seamen muttered.

“Are they fighting?”

“No idea.”

A good handful of the surfaced water dragons slipped back under, probably to spectate for themselves. Others continued to stare at them or discuss something amongst each other.

After a few thick minutes where the remaining big water dragons and the submarine sailors stared at each other, as in in a standoff, the original cuttlefish dragon reemerged from gently rolling waves, quickly followed by blue-gray, much larger and much more unhappy looking water dragon.

Before… this… Klaus had worked at an elementary school for children. He knew what kids looked like when they knew they were in hot water, and this dragon looked like he had been caught out in the middle of doing something rather dumb, probably by the unhappy looking dragon, and was now in trouble. Further reinforcing in his mind the notion that this dragon was a juvenile.

He would also say that, aside from looking upset, the new blue-gray dragon looked a little… afraid of the submarine. Judging by the way it subtly held its distance and the intensity in which it stared at them. What could have caused this particular water dragon to be even a little afraid of them, when none of the other dragons, including the probable juveniles, didn’t seem to be at all?

The cuttlefish-dragon, somewhat sheepishly, then brought out the map parchment scroll that he had earlier. He then pointed to a specific part of the map, an area that, if conventional cartography logic from human maps applied, looked to be in the ocean off a peninsula unfamiliar to him on a landmass that he did not recognize. It looked somewhat like a warped rendition of the North American continent. The dragon growled and vocalized something unintelligible, and pointed downwards to the water, then back to the same point on the map, then back down.

Is he saying that is our current location? Witt thought to himself.

Cuttlefish-dragon then pointed a claw to some part of land on the weird peninsula, and spoke something significant-sounding, looking from the map directly at the boat and the humans atop it. The water dragon pointed another claw at the sub, and jabbered on, gesturing wildly around with that same claw to the sea around them, as if signifying something rather large, and emphasized the location on the map again. The dragon then turned and pointed again, but this time out towards the horizon, before pointing back to the map location. He repeated the process a couple of times.

Witt was a little confused, to say the least. Does Cuttlefish-dragon want us to go there? Why? What’s over there?

Cuttlefish-dragon gave him a significant look, pointing to the boat, and again out to the horizon. The gray-blue dragon just glared. It seemed they did.

On one hand, this meant they had a chance to leave, which Witt was growing increasingly worried that they might not be able to, if the water dragons turned hostile.

Klaus wondered why he was taking orders from sea lizards so much today, but could it really be helped? It wasn’t as though they had still had contact with ubootwaffe’s HQ in France anymore, so he had no new directives to go off of. He was entirely on his own volition. Right now, motoring off to see whatever it was the water dragon was calling attention to seemed the most logical thing to do. Or at least the most interesting.

He informed the men aboard the tower of his decision to go check out whatever it was that Cuttlefish-dragon was pointing out, which they seemed to have anticipated. They probably would have done the same, if they were in his position.

He made his way back down the ladder to the control room to catch the helm and engine room officers up to speed, and began making the quick preparations to get the vessel moving again. The men atop the conning tower remained where they were, in order to watch for any potential danger from the veritable school of rather large sea dragons that loosely surrounded them.

In a few minutes, the boat was underway, turning about a hundred or so degrees to port as to line up with the direction cuttlefish-dragon had pointed, and ordered temporary full speed from the engines so they could more quickly get away from the water dragons before they changed their minds on just letting them leave.

Witt climbed back up to the boat’s sail, joining his men in looking back towards the gaggle of scaled sea creatures. Most of them had stayed where they were, watching as they motored away. A few were following loosely behind him, clearly not with any sense of urgency, but seemingly more out of simple curiosity. Nevertheless, the flak gunners stayed at the ready just in case. He dearly hoped that they would not have to open fire.

As they departed, Witt found himself wondering about the supply convoy they had followed into this mess. Surely it made it through the storm as well, though they had found no sign of it so far. Was it possible the water dragons knew about it? Was that why cuttlefish-dragon wanted us to go in this direction? What if we found it?

Klaus didn’t know. The first response of a submarine skipper when locating an enemy convoy is to shadow it, continuously reporting and updating its location and bearing. They were certainly not to attack unless directly given the order from Lorient.

Of course, even that’s without considering the other variables: The water dragons themselves. Between them, the compasses not working right, and the total absence of background radio traffic, it was possible they weren’t in the Atlantic anymore. If that convoy was here too, it was possible they were the only other human beings around. A terrifying thought.

If Korvettenkapitän Klaus Witt was anything, it was pragmatic. It was one of the reasons why he had been promoted to being a submarine skipper in the first place. He may have little idea of what exactly was going on here, but he had his boat, and he had his crew, and they had each other. They would figure things out. If that enemy convoy was the only familiar thing around wherever this is, so be it.

At least they would almost certainly be in the same boat as them, so to speak.

***

>Within a household, Safe Harbor._

If there was one thing that Rosemary could say for sure about the past few days, it was that they had been the most interesting days of her entire life.

Then again, that might not be saying that much. She wasn’t very old, only 24, and most of her life had consisted of staying within the protection of the city she was born in. Nothing exciting had happened to or in Safe Harbor, sans the occasional half-hearted dragon attack, for as long as she could remember. They never had holidays, never laid down new marine vessels, never went out on the water, never had celebrations, never played games other than what could be played indoors. The only time anyone even went beyond the city limits was when they were going out to tend to or harvest from the small, carefully concealed crop fields just outside the settlement proper. Most of her, and every other Safe Harbor resident’s life was almost entirely just a long, attempt to avoid a dragon attack. With the background knowledge that, if there was ever a serious dragon attack, they would all be doomed.

Until one night, the monotony was broken by the appearance of dozens of fantastically huge ships just outside the harbor, and the completely new and strange people that sailed them.

And they certainly were strange. Rosemary had never seen nor heard of anyone like them. For starters, most of the foreigners were taller than any people she knew around here, many of them standing a full head taller than the majority of Safe Harbor residents.

They also had different complexions. Every single human she had ever heard of had skin brown like tree bark, and even darker hair that was a deep brown, and had similar brown eyes. Many of the foreigners she had seen or met had skin the color of sand, some had skin yet paler, while a few others had skin colored more similarly to her own or even the color of rich soil!

There were even more differences found in their hair and eyes, with some having hair that looked like their own, others with hair a pale yellow, and yet others having hair almost pitch-black, and seemingly everything in-between. She even saw one foreigner with hair that was red!

There was a little less variety in eye color, as most of them appeared to have brown eyes like everyone else she knew, but many of them had irises that were either blue or green in color. Rosemary thought they were rather pretty, if a little disconcerting.

But none of that was even the most odd thing about the foreigners, no. Aside from their stupefying technologies, the oddest thing about these new people was the way in which they spoke. They obviously spoke a different language, sure, which was not that surprising given they had come from the sea, but their entire language, and indeed the way that they spoke, was entirely alien. They all spoke in a heavily vocal, almost guttural way. They spoke out, with sounds and syllables both long and drawn out, and short and choppy. Sometimes sounding almost rhythmic and musical at times, but harsh and barking at others. It was very strange, and a little neat, but most of all loud. She had never once heard anyone be so loud in standard conversation.

And Rosemary had heard them talk plenty, as she was fortunate enough to be one of the people who was spearheading the efforts on their end to translate each other’s languages. One of the reasons she was sure that these people had come from some unknown land across the sea, was because they had clearly never encountered Pyrrhian humans before. They had no idea how to speak our language.

The past few days had been difficult, and tiring, but Rosemary certainly felt up to the challenge. It helped that she didn’t really have much to do around the city before this, other than helping out the seasoned teachers where she could at the small school they had for children that had been orphaned by dragons, of which there was a rather large amount, and she was among them. She herself had been pretty good at school as a kid, and her own teachers had told her she was of the ‘academic type.’ Hence why she was working as a teacher’s assistant in the first place. She wasn’t the only person there for the job, however. A consequence of there not really being all that much to do around here unless you were a farmer. That was why she had been able to join in on the translation effort in the first place.

Pronouncing the foreigner’s language had proved a little hard at first, but she felt she had been getting the hang of it, for the most part. Most of their phonic sounds were rather easy and almost… natural to pronounce. However there were plenty of other sounds that had proved themselves a pain to try and master. Nevertheless, she was one of the farthest along out of everyone in terms of how much of the stranger’s language she could understand, which was why she had been the one to explain several key things about them to Lord-Mayor Talem earlier in the day, and she had no doubt that her primary job in the coming weeks or months would likely be that of an interpreter.

At the moment though, she simply sat within the confines of her abode, enjoying the relative peace and quiet after all the activity. Relative being a key term, in this case. The city itself had never once been as quiet as it was before the stranger’s arrival, and the strangers themselves certainly made themselves busy. They had spent the day after docking four of their huge ships with the city’s newly-refurbished piers offloading huge amounts of supplies, various peculiar pieces of equipment and self-propelling… things, but most of all people. She had been told that two of those ships had about a thousand passengers between them, and that all of them were trained, professional soldiers.

She wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. The foreigners had proclaimed again and again that they were not an invading force, and they hadn’t done anything that would, well, constitute an invasion. Unless showing up, mooring their vessels and saying hello counted. The summon sense side of her would have taken some issue with all the noise and almost total lack of concealment attempts made by the newcomers, but they had very clearly demonstrated that dragons to them and their weapons were not the near insurmountable threat that they posed to all other Pyrrhian humans.

Rosemary also didn’t really know what the concept of a ‘professional soldier’ was supposed to look like. She knew all about the Archer Guards that inhabited the Safehold and the various watch positions that surrounded the city, and had heard of similar jobs across other human settlements that served similar purposes; they were certainly professional. It was well known that in order to become an Archer Guard, one had to spend at least a year of instruction and skill building just to qualify, and had to continuously maintain their skills at archery in order to remain a Guard.

The way one of the newcomers had explained it, a soldier sounded something like a warrior, but directly and only tied to a civilian government, rather than being under the pay of a Lord, ruler or some other wealthy individual. Rosemary supposed the idea made sense, when she thought about it, but what kind of government or population would be able to amass the kinds of money that would be required for any meaningful amount of people to take on being a warrior as an entire profession?

The Archer Guards could at least work other jobs when they were not standing around the Safehold, keeping order in the city or watching for dragons and shooting arrows at any that got too close. Organized warriors, or soldiers, on the other hand, would need to work their job of training, fighting, and guarding full-time.

Not only the thousand or so soldiers that were currently setting up a bunch of large tents just outside the city, but the foreigners she had talked to that sailed on their huge ships said that they were also soldiers, but a different kind. The soldiers setting up tents were “ground soldiers,” while the sailors were “marine soldiers.”

Which meant that whatever land these strangers were from had military power more extensive than what she could conceptualize.

Then again, that would explain why everyone on those ships were men.

Rosemary was broken from her thoughts by a knock at her small three-room hut’s door, and she rose from the wooden furniture she was sitting upon to respond.

She opened the thatch door and was met by the unusually tall figure of the man that had become her de facto working partner in the translation efforts, a tall, blue-eyed foreigner she was now familiar with.

“Hello, John Barley.” She said in English, the name of their language, with a small smile.

“Good evening… Miss Rosemary.” He responded in her own language, with some apparent difficulty. Rosemary couldn't help but notice that the newcomers seemed to have more difficulty saying their words then they did theirs. John Barley himself also wasn’t the most adept out of all the foreigners tasked with their end of the translation efforts, but she could tell that he did his best, and could understand far more than he could speak.

Rosemary had offered John Barley could use her hut, which had been built for her near the outside of the settlement by her great uncle and his family as her adulthood gift, as a place to escape the slight chaos the city had become the past few days, and work on what they could getting as many words and phrases they could translated. Though they often got sidetracked whenever John got curious about their writing system, or managed to formulate a question about what life was generally like for them, which was fairly often.

John Barley had been helping out all day with the construction of the foreigners' tent-housing, although Rosemary guessed they could also be called barracks, and was clearly exhausted. The sun was setting, and the moons were already beginning to rise.

She offered to set some tea, to which he agreed, and she made her way into the small kitchen-room to light the ceramic stove and boil some water and prepare some of the necessary herbs. It was a calming tea her teacher had taught her to make.

After about a half-hour, by her reckoning, the tea was ready. She took a small pitcher and a couple of cups with her back out into the hut’s main room, and instantly knew something was wrong.

He was still sitting upon the only piece of sitting furniture in the room, the wooden bench Rosemary herself had been sitting on, and he was staring out a window towards the rising moons. That wasn’t unusual.

What was wrong, however, was clearly the way in which John was staring. His gaze was locked on the two moons that had already risen above the horizon, not giving any response or acknowledgement to her presence. His blue-colored eyes were unfocused and expressionless. It was as if he were not even looking at the moons, but at some point far beyond them. Nothing in particular. His breaths were short and spares, as if he were in shock.

Slowly, he reached a shaking hand towards a fold in his strange attire, and pulled out a small gray picture, which depicted a young-looking woman with an odd hairstyle who was smiling at the viewer, with extreme detail. Rosemary knew not what method of drawing or painting would produce an image of such quality on a small piece of paper like that.

The paper folded slightly as John clutched it tightly, and his unfocused eyes turned glassy, and he took in shuddering breaths.

He fiercely wiped at his eyes and tried to mask his shuddered breathing with coughing, though his attempts to draw breath in through his nose were bubbly, indicating mucus was building up.

As his coughs gave way to pained sobs and he doubled over, tears spilling from his bloodshot eyes. He cried.

Rosemary quickly placed the tea and cups down atop a table and rushed over, placing a small hand on his shoulder in an attempt to counsel him.

He’s homesick, that much is clear. Does he think that he will never be able to get back and see his family ever again? She thought worriedly. She didn’t know what to do.

Safe Harbor was her home, and she never had any real intention of leaving. Her parents had been killed when she was but an infant, and thus had no real memories of them. Her only family were her relatives and the friends she made amongst the other orphans at the school she now worked at. She had no idea what to do for this kind of grief.

Were the other foreigners in the same situation? They’re all presumably stuck here, and also all have some family or home they left behind and now maybe can’t get back to. She worried to herself.

Rosemary was broken from her fretful reverie by a sharp BANG, and she jumped slightly.

John Barley also heard it, but he went rigid.

Quick as a flash, the man jumped up and stared with his bloodshot eyes into her own. A strange sharpness present in his gaze that was absent prior. He took in another shuddering breath.

“Danger. Brothers. Need help. I’m sorry” he said in English with sureness, a dutifulness visible despite his tear-stained face.

He then darted out the door, and Rosemary could hear him sprinting full-pelt in the direction of the tent compound, which was also the direction she realized the loud sound had come from.

She followed after him with hardly a moment’s hesitation, action spurred by a mixture of concern and curiosity.