Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Seven - A Poet, and Also a Dragon

“We should go visit Booksie together!” I declared. The grenoil exploration team looked confused for a moment, so I hastened to fill them in. “She’s a friend of ours, a really nice bun that needed a bit of help. She should be in the East side of Port Royal.”

“Ah, yes,” Emeric said. “I suppose we could follow you zere. By ze way... I noticed ze ears earlier... zey weren’t zere when we saw you last, right?”

I reached up and squeezed both ears at the base, the part that had a bunch of white fluff. “Nah, these are brand new. I got them when my first class evolved.”

“Zat’s unusual,” Arianne said. “Not entirely unheard of, but unusual. I suppose you’re lucky zat ze evolution was towards somezing so innocent. Buns are generally well-liked.”

“I guess so!” I said. I tugged my ears down, then let them go so that they sprang back up. “Anyway! Do you guys want to do lunch? We could go see Booksie, then find a nice place to eat and catch up.”

“I have some letters to send,” Amaryllis said.

“And we can give Amaryllis time to send her letters.”

Emeric looked to his friends. Valerie was nodding quite seriously, Arianne shrugged while leaning against her staff and Pierre’s tummy growled. Donat was the only one that really didn’t seem certain. “You know what? Why not.”

“Brilliant!” I cheered. “We should go check on Booksie first, and then maybe she can point us to a nice place for dinner.”

“A bit of a walk won’t do any harm,” Emeric said.

We took off, heading downhill towards the main streets of the city, then off towards the East end. I walked next to Emeric and listened with all four ears to him talking about their last adventure and how tricky it was to survive in the snow.

I kinda knew all about that, but he was eager to talk, so I didn’t interrupt or anything.

I did notice Amaryllis walking next to a quiet Pierre, keeping to herself, and a bit further back, Awen was making a piece of glass float above her hand next to Arianne who seemed to be giving her some advice.

“Hey, Emeric,” I asked when there was a bit of a lull in the conversation. We were making good time. People had a habit of getting out of our path. I guess a group of armed and armoured people in adventuring gear made most pedestrians move, which was okay I guess. “Your team is pretty strong, right?”

“Well, all of us are at least in our second tier, except for Donat. Arianne and I are just about to hit our second class evolution and neither of us are more zan twenty-five years old. We’re a bit ahead of ze curve.”

“That’s cool! I was wondering, maybe after lunch you could teach us some things?”

The grenoil looked at me quizzically. “What sorts of zings?” he asked.

“Ah, well...” I tapped the tips of my fingers together. “We tend to get into some trouble sometimes, and while we’ve won every fight that counted, some of them were really close. And I guess I’m sort of our party’s leader? Kinda? We never voted on it or anything, but Awen and Amaryllis and Orange all tend to follow along with my ideas. And I don’t want them to get hurt because I wanted to try something dumb.”

“You already sound like you’d make a good party leader,” Emeric said.

I beamed up at him. “Thanks!”

“As for training, we probably won’t stay in Port Royal past ze night and maybe into ze morning, but I can give you a few tips, I’m sure. Maybe a bit of sparring wiz Pierre? He’s quite good at fighting wizout injuring anyone. Don’t tell him, but Donat has been improving by leaps and bounds under Pierre’s tutelage.”

“That would be really nice,” I said. “Maybe after lunch we can pick out an inn or something with a big yard and you could give us tips? Oh, we’ll pay, of course, it wouldn’t be nice otherwise.”

“Maybe you can pay for Valerie’s portion of lunch and we’ll call it a fair deal,” he said. The glimmer of a smile in his eyes suggested that it was a bit of a trap, but I doubted Valerie could eat that much.

“Deal!”

We crossed the gate into the Eastern section without the guards doing anything more than glancing at all of our Exploration Guild pins. Awen didn’t have one, but maybe they thought it was under the lapel of her jacket.

There weren’t that many guards by the gate, and the reason why became obvious a few blocks down where we ran into a cordon of guards blocking off the road leading down to Booksie’s shop.

“Sorry folks, can’t go zat way,” one of the older guards said.

“Ah, but my friends are over there,” I said.

“Zere’s a dragon zere too,” the guard replied.

“Yeah, he’s one of my friends.”

The guard didn’t seem to believe me, but fortunately Emeric stepped in. “Ah, forgive me, sir, zis is Exploration Guild business. We need to scout ze area and ensure zat it is safe. Maybe you would like to go spy on ze dragon yourself?”

“Oh, I see,” the guard said. “In zat case you’re free to go ahead.”

“Thank you!” I said before hopping over the little wooden barrier they put up, then I pulled it aside for the rest of my friends who might not be so good at jumping.

We moved along until, finally, we reached the street with Booksie’s shop. I looked around, taking in the quaint homes and little shops, and most importantly, the complete lack of dragons in the area. “I’m going to go check inside,” I told the others while pointing to the bookstore.

“Do be careful,” Awen said.

“No problem!” I gave her a thumbs-up and tried the front door. It was unlocked.

The inside of Booksie’s shop looked a bit rough. Some of the displays had been broken, and there was a fine layer of dust over everything that had my nose scrunching up until I let loose with my Cleaning aura. That cleared up the dust around me, and also made the air smell a little fresher. I should have left it up the entire time.

My ears perked as I heard a deep rumbly voice from the back of the shop. It was a bit rude, but I decided to walk past all the shelves and into the area at the back of the store. There was a little kitchenette there, with a rune-stove and a tiny table with one one chair next to it. A door led to the backyard where the voices were coming from.

I poked my head out, then slapped a hand over my mouth to hold in an ‘aww.’

Rhawrexdee was sitting coiled up in as small a ball as he could, and even then he was pushing up against the fences all around him. His forearms were folded up before him and under his chin. Booksie was sitting there, a big book held up on her lap so that the dragon’s eye could read the text on it from between her ears. Ears that were bobbing from side to side as if they were happy.

The little bit of a flush on her face spoke volumes.

“Ah, yes, the word can mean that, but see, in that context it’s conjugated in the past tense. That means it’s an entirely different word,” Rhawrexdee was saying.

“Oh, it’s a homonym, two words that are spelled the same?”

“That’s right. That’s what had you confused, I think.”

Booksie nodded hard, her ears smacked Rhawrexdee. “I see, I see. Did you want to continue? Please?”

“Certainly.” The dragon cleared his throat. “My only love sprung from my greatest adversary, my teeth shone, and my heart was at the ready. And yet her gaze melted my reservations, oh, to be free of these expectations! To have a heart which beats steady, under the regard of a beauty that evokes such--”

The dragon looked up, a single eye locked onto me.

I froze like a rabbit meeting a wolf, then I remembered that these were my friends. “Ah, hi guys, sorry for interrupting.”

Booksie jumped to her feet, patted down her pants, and slammed her book shut with a thump. “It was nothing,” she said.

“Of course not,” I agreed.

“So, you’re back,” Rhawrexdee said. “Is my sister with you?” His eyes narrowed.

“Nope! She’s decided to take over the local mob, so now you shouldn’t have any more problems with them, Booksie! Ah, but we discovered this great big conspiracy that might lead to a big war, so we’re going to stick our noses into that and see what we can do,” I said.

“Are the others with you?” Booksie asked.

“Uh-huh. And I found some old friends too! They’re a grenoil party from the Exploration Guild. They’re nice.”

“Well, let’s go meet with them, then,” Booksie said.

Rhawrexdee sighed and got to his feet, his tail swiping through the fence behind him and the clothes line behind that, but he didn’t seem to care much. “I’ll leap over your little shop,” he said a moment before taking to the air.

When the dust settled, I turned to Booksie with a big smile. “So, reading romances while sitting on your friend?” I asked.

“Oh, shush you,” she said past her flush. “Rhawrexdee was just helping me with some of the translations. I agreed to teach him the other languages I know in exchange.”

“Won’t that take a long time?” I asked.

The bun smiled a small, knowing sort of smile. “Yes, yes I think it will.”

I giggled as I followed her into the shop. “You’re going to start the store up again?”

“I think so. As much as I... enjoy Rhawrexdee’s company, I am an independent woman. I’m not going to move into my... my maybe-boyfriend’s mom’s cave just like that. I’ll see about buying some of the lots out back so he has a place to land and sit around in, and then, ah, I suppose I’ll have to look for a loan to get everything started again.”

“Do you think people will come if there’s a dragon around?” I hoped that the people around here weren’t so speciest as to boycott a shop just because the owner was friends with a few dragons.

“It might actually help. It’ll at least make for a good deal of advertising,” she said. “What was that about a war?”

“Oh, right. Amaryllis can give you the important details, but we think someone is trying to start a big war between all the big countries around here. It sounds really nasty, so we’ll see what we can do to stop that from happening.”

“I wish you the best, truly.”

I stepped out onto the street to find the Exploration Guild party staring up at Rhawrexdee as if he was going to eat them at any moment. Which reminded me...

“Hey, Rhawrexdee, we’re going out for lunch, did you want to come?”

“Lunch? Certainly. I’m quite hungry. And also a dragon.”

I grinned. “Awesome! So, do any of you know of a good place to eat? The only place I know is the Rock Inn and Roll Inn. They do have a nice courtyard, so that might work.”

“Sounds good enough,” Amaryllis said. “I need a place to write some things, any place with tables would do.”

“Likewise.” Booksie said. “Let me just lock things up.”

Emeric moved over to me while Booksie was off closing up the shop. “Ah, when you said zat you were friends wiz ze dragon, I, ah, didn’t zink you were being zat literal.”

“Well, we’re not super-best friends or anything, not yet, but Rhawrexdee is a nice guy under all the arrogance and the desire to eat people and take their gold. I think there’s a good chance that him and Booksie will work out!”

The older grenoil looked at me for a long moment. “You are one strange person, Broccoli Bunch.”

“Thank you!”

***