Here Be Dragons: Book 1 of the Emergence Series

Pryce continued his daily pre-dawn tradition of preparing ‘course material’ with great energy. Waking up was so much easier when you had an interesting day to look forward to, and the lack of mortal dangers didn’t hurt either.

He was confident in their repertoire to have a conversation about dragon culture today, and that was something he had been looking forward to for some time.

“Good morning,” Fathom called out as he landed onto the beach.

“Good morning,” Pryce waved.

“What are you teach today?”

“Close, it’s ‘What are you going to teach today’ or ‘What will you teach today’? And I want you to teach me about dragon culture, actually.”

“Why you not teach me human culture?” Fathom asked, tilting his head.

“Many humans, many cultures, complicated. You teach first, I learn, I can teach what part of human culture is like dragon culture.”

“…understood,” Fathom said, then stared at him.

Pryce waited…and waited…and Fathom was still staring at him.

“Are you…thinking?” Pryce asked, wondering if Fathom was expecting him to say something.

“Yes, why?”

“I can’t see if you thinking,” Pryce shrugged.

“I am thinking.”

“Okay…”

…

Pryce took a few steps to the side and saw Fathom’s tail tip was flicking back and forth. He imagined that would have been easier to see for another dragon, but as a diminutive human he had no such luxury.

After nearly a full minute of silence, Fathom began to speak. “One dragon have territory, dragon no go in territory they no have. Some territory have more than one dragon, but only some,” he said as Pryce took notes. “When island have 1000 dragons, no dragon can have eggs. If 999 dragons, all dragons meet, best male and best female have egg. If 998 dragons, all dragons meet, two best male and two best female have two eggs, understand?”

“Yes, I understand.” It seemed that dragons artificially kept their population at 1000, Pryce wanted to ask why that was, but decided to hold his tongue until Fathom was finished.

“Dragon can fight other dragon for territory or for treasure, but if fight, they no can protect territory they have. If dragon have mate, dragon have egg or hatchling, most dragon with mate no fight for territory, only protect territory.”

Interesting, going after more territory did seem quite risky, especially if you were wounded or killed.

“Some of time dragon trade territory for shiny things, or trade shiny things for territory, or shiny things for shiny things, or territory for territory. What is word for more than one dragon?”

“Dragons?” Pryce said uncertainly.

“Word for dragons together, sometimes family.”

“Oh, uh…clan. Dragon clan.”

“No dragons clan?”

“Not dragons clan, dragon clan. If more than one clan then dragon clans,” Pryce said. “Yes, human language strange,” he stated before Fathom could begin his customary quip.

Fathom glared at Pryce for stealing his line, but moved on to explain that, “Some dragon clan make things, no other clan can make.”

“What kind of things?” Pryce asked, interested.

“Some dragons fire sand, make shiny thing like glass, need word for this,” Fathom said.

Pryce held his chin in thought, wondering what to call this thing. He doubted it resembled glass as he knew it, even if it was a primitive form of it. Ignite was already a word, Ignisite was too similar, and he certainly wasn’t going to call it dragonite, even if it was technically accurate. “Sand-glass?” Pryce shrugged, “I need to see it to give it a good name.”

“I will bring sand-glass tomorrow,” Fathom said, flicking his wings. “One clan more good at make sand-glass than other clans, name for this clan?”

“…glassblowers,” Pryce said.

“What is ‘blowers’?” Fathom asked, looking particularly interested.

“Wait one minute,” Pryce said, going into the ship to retrieve a length of copper pipe intended to be used to repair the ship’s plumbing. “This is tube, blowing is this,” he said, audibly blowing air out of his pursed lips. “Human make glass by blowing through tube,” he demonstrated, the pipe making a hollow whistling sound.

“…How this make glass?” Fathom asked incredulously.

“Oh, right, there’s very hot glass on the end of the tube. Human blow air, air make glass round.”

Fathom tilted his head, processing this new information. “I want to see you make glass,” he said after a moment, eyes bright.

“I’m not a glassblower, need much practice to make good glass. Practice is doing thing many times.”

Fathom’s spines fell flat against his neck and his head drooped a little, making Pryce feel as if he poked a hole in a balloon. “What else do dragons make?” He asked, trying to change the topic.

“…some dragon clan make…wood…” Fathom gave up halfway through his sentence, instead glancing around for a dead tree and then carving furrows into it.

“Carvings? Wood carvings?”

“Yes?” Fathom said, uncertain if Pryce understood him.

Pryce ran through his mental checklist of the ship’s contents, and remembered the captain had a sizeable wood carving at his desk of a mermaid; it was intended in part to make up for the lack of a figurehead on the Horizon.

“Wait one minute,” he said, turning back to the ship. He paused, looking up at the deck, then back at Fathom’s claws. Maybe if he got Fathom to lift him up, he could climb over the bulwark and onto the deck without having to climb up the stairs and ladders…he dismissed the silly thought, the ship was a bit too tall. Fathom would have to toss him, which was just a stupid thing to do to save himself a few minutes of climbing.

…even if some part of him really wanted to do it.

“Wait a few minutes,” he corrected with a sigh.

Ten to fifteen minutes later Pryce returned to the beach, a lacquered wood sculpture of a mermaid in his arms. It wasn’t heavy enough to strain his injured shoulder, which was healing nicely, but it would be some time before he was completely healed.

“Is fourteen minutes and twelve seconds a few minutes?” Fathom asked with his head on the beach and his eyes lidded half-shut. Pryce wasn’t completely sure if he was being passive aggressive or genuinely asking. Perhaps both.

“Sorry, I took more time than I thought,” Pryce said, holding up the sculpture.

Fathom’s half-closed eyes shot open upon seeing the glossy lacquered wood. “What is this?”

“Wood,” Pryce said. “Lacquered wood.”

“This no like wood. What is ‘lacquered’?”

“I…don’t know, actually,” Pryce said, shrugging with difficulty due to the weight of the carving. “Lacquer is thing you rub on wood to make it shiny. Rub is this,” he said, miming the action. He hadn’t thought to consider the stark difference between lacquered and unlacquered wood, but it was obvious in retrospect. Pryce set the carving down onto a crate so that the sand wouldn’t scratch the coating, then stepped back to let the dragon look over the piece of woodwork.

“What is…this?” Fathom asked, pointing at the mermaid.

“Oh, that’s a ‘mermaid’.” Pryce paused, trying to think of how to describe something that doesn’t exist.

“See like human, and fish? Hair is very long.”

“Correction: Looks like human. Mermaid is thing that is half-human, half-fish.”

“Mermaid…in ocean? I no see mermaid before.”

“No, mermaid do not exist. Exist is like…uh…” Fathom looked at him expectantly as he trailed off, which only made it harder to think. “Dragon exist,” Pryce said, sketching a draconic figure in the sand, then swept it away with his foot. “Dragon no exist.”

“Mermaid do not exist?” Fathom cast a baffled look at the mermaid and then at Pryce. “Why human make carving of thing that do not exist?”

“Very…complicated,” Pryce shrugged helplessly. “Some dragon clans make wood carvings?” He asked, hiding his amusement at the idea.

“Not clans, many…dragons make wood carvings,” Fathom said, making a vague gesture with a wing. It made sense, carving wood wasn’t exactly a secret skill that could be retained by one clan only. Making glass was far more complicated than just melting sand, you needed the right type of sand, and getting flux to make glass easier to melt was fairly difficult as well. Humans used soda ash (also known as Sodium Carbonate) which was derived from filtering the ashes of plants that grew near salt water, then boiling the filtrate to get soda ash residue.

That was if dragons used flux at all, of course. Hydrogen burned at over 1800 degrees Centragrade, while sand melted at around 1400 degrees, depending on the composition. So flux wasn’t needed, but it certainly would’ve helped.

“Understood,” Pryce said. “Do dragons make anything else?”

“Mmm…” Fathom hummed, looking indecisive. He kept sneaking glances at the mermaid, and Pryce wondered if he wanted it that badly or if it was something else. His shoulders and wings seemed a bit more hunched than normal, his head was lower too. Was he feeling ashamed? Pryce supposed their wood carvings couldn’t be that impressive due to their limited technology.

“One clan make liquid, you drink, feel good,” Fathom said, with a look that somehow conveyed longing to Pryce.

“Feel good…how?” Pryce asked, suspect.

“Feel…hot, but not bad hot. Feel happy and want to sleep.”

Well. Dragons had alcohol.

To make alcohol, all that was needed was to have yeast infest a sugary liquid. It had been independently ‘invented’ many times throughout history by many different groups of people because of how simple the process was.

Evidently dragons could be added to that group as well.

“Name of liquid is ‘alcohol’,” Pryce said.

“Al…coh…hol…Alcohol…Al-co-hol,” Fathom said, sounding as if he were having fun with the pronunciation of the word before elaborating on his prior point. “Dragon not in this clan no know how to make liquid, only this clan make alcohol.”

“Clan name is…Brewers. Wait one minute,” Pryce said.

Fathom huffed irritably but didn’t say anything as Pryce made his way to the galley to retrieve a jar of sugar cubes and an apple.

“Sugar, Apple,” Pryce said, rattling the jar and holding up the apple in his other hand. “Apple is fruit, fruit grows on trees, dragons eat fruit?”

“Sometimes,” Fathom said, looking between the exotic fruit and the glass jar of strange white cubes.

“I throw apple, you catch,” Pryce said, making throwing gestures before tossing it underhand at the dragon, who snatched it out of the air and crunched it between his back teeth, which Pryce noted to be flatter than the sharp canines, but not quite as flat as human molars.

“Taste…” Fathom trailed off as he formed his opinion, “…Good. Very good,” he said after considering the flavor a bit more.

“Taste of apple is sweet,” Pryce said as he popped the jar open and plucked out two sugar cubes. Pryce ate one, and held one out to Fathom, who received it in the palm of his foreclaws.

“Eat,” Pryce said when Fathom did nothing but stare at the cube for several seconds, tilting it around so it rolled from face to face.

“Sugar is beautiful,” Fathom said. Pryce hadn’t considered that property of sugar to be relevant, but he supposed the white, sparkly, and pleasingly geometric shape was pretty in a way.

“Eat, taste good,” Pryce prompted again, hoping that Fathom wouldn’t try to add this to his collection of shiny things, and Fathom reluctantly tossed it into his maw.

“Taste, good?” Fathom said uncertainly, and Pryce realized that a single sugar cube was probably a bit difficult to taste for something the size of a dragon.

“Sugar tastes sweet, like apple. Have some more,” Pryce said, pouring several cubes into his outstretched talons.

This time his eyes widened in amazement as he crunched down on the granular cubes. “Taste very very good,” he said, eyeing the rest of the jar.

“No, this mine,” Pryce said, drawing the jar away. There wasn’t much sugar on the ship, and it could be used for purposes more important than a sweetener.

Fathom grumbled in disappointment, but did not try to take the sugar away from him. “Have liquid with sugar, wait around 10 days. Liquid become alcohol,” Pryce said, by way of consoling him.

Fathom stared.

“What?”

“What?”

“How liquid become alcohol?” He demanded, as if Pryce had told him some great secret of the world without either context nor explanation.

“Sweet things like fruit have sugar, fungi eat sugar, make alcohol…like dragon make fire,” Pryce said, hoping the analogy would work. At least it was better than interpreting the alcohol as fungal waste products, even if it was more accurate.

Fathom looked away, speechless at this revelation. “How you know this? Humans make alcohol too?” He asked after the momentary pause, overriding his first question as he deduced that humans must have alcohol for them to have a word for it.

“Yes, have alcohol on ship, you want?”

“…Yes, want!” Fathom said after a stunned silence, eyes wide with eager anticipation.

Sailors normally drank grog which was really just diluted rum. Pryce wasn’t sure which to give Fathom, but he was sure either way the dragon wouldn’t get drunk from a little liquor thanks to his sheer mass. Natural fermentation could only get alcohol up to 20% or so, it took distillers to make alcohol any more concentrated than that.

The ship’s stores of rum were at 60% concentration, far stronger than anything dragons could have possibly made without distillation. Pryce filled an empty one-liter bottle halfway full and filled the rest with water.

Then Pryce took an hour to teach Fathom percentages so that he could tell him how strong this alcohol was compared to any he knew of. The blue dragon initially had difficulty understanding how to split a group of X stones into 100 increments and then choosing Y increments to get Z stones, but still grasped the concept relatively quickly after Pryce gave him a few more examples.

“Alcohol is thing that make you feel good,” Pryce explained. “Bacteria can sometimes make liquid into 20% alcohol, but most times is lower percent. Human alcohol on ship is 60%, I add water, make 30%. You try 30% first, if you want stronger I give you 60%.”

“I want 60%,” Fathom said, glowering as if he had been insulted. Despite this, he didn’t let go of the rather comically undersized bottle; dragon fingers evidently didn’t bend enough to securely grasp something that small. Still, he held the glass up under the sunlight and admired the dark bottle-green color with wide eyes before tilting the bottle over his lower jaw. He wasn’t able to drink like a human since he didn’t have squishy lips, but he could pour the drink into his maw without much difficulty.

Pryce watched the dragon pour some into his open mouth, then sealed his mouth shut while seeming to swish the drink around his mouth. The human shook his head, grinning at the image of a draconic wine-taster.

Fathom finally swallowed the liquor and said, “very strong, very good,” before returning to pouring the half-rum down his throat. A few more repetitions of this later he emptied the bottle, evidently having stretched it out to savor the taste – Pryce was certain his maw could have fit several entire bottle’s worth of liquid. “Human alcohol is better than dragon alcohol, very very good,” he said approvingly, his eyes lidded with contentment.

“Of course, is made with human knowledge,” Pryce said a little smugly, despite the fact that he rarely ever drank; He had always been too busy with work to indulge in something like that.

“You give me 60% alcohol?” He asked hopefully.

“I do not have much alcohol,” he said, frowning.

“Give small alcohol?” Fathom asked in a hopeful and coaxing tone.

“…fine, I’ll give you a little,” Pryce relented, wondering if he should start asking for things in return. He hadn’t given anything of value to Fathom yet, he wasn’t entirely sure if Fathom would be as generous in returning the favors if dragons had a culture that placed emphasis on trading things – which he was fairly certain was the case.

Pryce filled a fifth of the bottle with pure rum and gave it to Fathom, who poured it into his jaw with a pleased rumble. “Very, very strong,” Fathom said when he was done, and Pryce wondered how much alcohol he’d have to drink to get drunk.

It might have seemed like a pointless thing to estimate, but he couldn’t imagine drinking and flying could end up well for anyone but the scavengers.

Some napkin math told him that Fathom had drunk 0.42 liters of pure alcohol. He wasn’t sure how much of that would be absorbed quickly, but he thought he heard it was around 20% for humans. If that percentage held true for dragons, that was 0.084 liters of pure alcohol. 0.08% BAC was considered impaired for humans, so that meant he’d need to have more than 105 liters of blood, which certainly sounded low.

The ratio of human blood to body mass was roughly 1/12. If Fathom had 105 liters of blood that would mean he had an estimated mass of…1260 kg. Since Pryce estimated the dragon to be 4,000 kilograms at the very least, that meant the dragon was far from being drunk. Unless dragons were more susceptible to alcohol than humans were, in which case he really should’ve considered that before he’d given the dragon alcohol.

This estimation would be a lot easier if he knew Fathom’s mass, but that was easier said than done. He’d try to come up with some ideas tonight.

“Question: I take bottle?” Fathom asked, interrupting Pryce’s thoughts while shaking the now-empty bottle.

“Hmm…” Pryce hummed, considering the request with mock severity.

“You want to trade?” Fathom offered, having apparently misinterpreted his jest as hesitation.

“Uh,” Pryce blinked, surprised by the offer. “Yes, will trade!” He said quickly, curious to see what sort of things dragons would make, even if he wasn’t knowledgeable about human art.

“What you want to trade for bottle?”

Pryce shrugged. “What do you have?”

“…No have name for things,” Fathom said, making a deep grumbling noise of what was evidently frustration.

“I show you things,” Pryce said with a sweeping gesture. “You show me things, teach me things, I teach you human word for things.”

“You…want to see me home?” Fathom blinked, surprised.

“I…did not say that, but yes, I want very much to see your home.” Pryce replied, also caught off guard by the misunderstanding but not displeased.

Fathom rumbled in thought, but was otherwise silent for a full minute. Pryce wondered what customs dragons had about visiting each other’s homes. They were territorial, so maybe it was very rare? Or maybe he had made some cultural faux-pas?

“Ok, I take you to me home,” Fathom said, and Pryce was relieved enough to not correct him. “What day you want go to me home?”

Good question. “I go to your home when you wing heal?” Pryce asked. That should give him some time to prepare some luggage, and give some time to Fathom as well if he needed it for whatever reason. Maybe he was messy and needed a few days to tidy up, he snickered in his mind.

“Good, will take you to me home when me wing heal.”

Pryce smiled.

One more thing to look forward to, he’d have to make a list of things to bring –

“I take bottle?” Fathom asked.

“Okay, okay, you can take bottle,” Pryce snorted in amusement, finally relenting. “How many dragons in one clan?” He asked, curious about draconic culture.

“Some clan big, some clan small, biggest clan is 20 dragons, many clan have 5 to 10 dragons. Many dragons no in clan.”

So dragons lived in pretty small clans. Perhaps a population density any higher than that would deplete the prey? No, there were only 1000 dragons for 500,000 sq km of land, so that meant each dragon had an average of 500 sq km of land, that was plenty to sustain them, and a clan would have an even larger territory…but perhaps multiple dragons in one area would force the prey into the neighboring territories?

“How big are human clans?” Fathom asked before Pryce could ask why dragon clans were so small; he’d probably noticed Pryce thinking for longer than usual.

“Uh…” Pryce said, not sure what to classify as a ‘clan’. “Human ‘clans’ sometimes have hundreds. ‘Cities’ are where many humans live, and the biggest city has 6 million humans.”

“6 million humans together?” Fathom hissed, drawing his head back in surprise at the information. “How big is city?”

“Around two-hundred square kilometers?” Pryce said, wondering if he had a detailed map of the capital on the ship. “Kilometers is length, square kilometers is area, like this,” he explained upon seeing Fathom’s uncomprehending expression. He drew a square 2 meters in length, then another 3 meters in length. “This square is 4 square meters, this square is 9 square meters, understand?”

“Yes…?” Fathom said uncertainly.

Pryce drew a square 4 meters in length. “How many square meters of area does this square have?”

Fathom only stared at the square silently, too proud to admit not knowing. Pryce drew grid lines to help him out. “This and this is one meter, one square with length of one meter is one meter squared. A square with a length of two meters has four squares of one meter squared in it, understand?”

“Yes, understand, this square has 16 square meters?” He asked, pointing at the largest square.

“Yes, good,” Pryce said.

“City area is like square of length 14 kilometers and 14 kilometers?” Fathom asked.

“…yes, like that,” Pryce said after double checking that the square of 14 was 196.

“…smaller than me old territory,” Fathom said, then glanced away, not quite meeting Pryce’s gaze.

“Old territory? Your present territory is smaller?”

“…Yes,” Fathom said, head lowered in shame.

Pryce decided to change the topic, despite burning with curiosity. They would probably need more words relating to draconic culture to talk about that story anyway. “How many dragon clans are there?”

“Thirty-eight, maybe more maybe less,” Fathom answered. That really wasn’t much, if a big clan was 10, then there had to be less than 380 dragons in clans, while he assumed the rest lived on their own…or he could just ask Fathom himself.

“Why maybe more, maybe less?” Pryce asked, the statement seemed to contradict what Fathom said about knowing all 1,000 dragons.

“Some clan maybe break, and dragons in past clan different.” Fathom said, shifting his wings.

“Word for things in past is different is ‘change’, clans ‘change’,” Pryce explained. “When you hear, how many dragons in clan, how many not in clan?”

“774 not in clan, 226 in clan.”

Pryce still couldn’t get over how strange it was that dragons knew of everyone else. They must gossip like crazy unless Fathom’s information was very outdated. Pryce looked down at his chronometer, it was 4:30 pm, so there were a few hours of daylight left.

“What is chronometer?” Fathom asked, eyes caught on the shiny gadget.

Pryce paused. Hadn’t he talked about it already? Perhaps Fathom wanted to know more about it. “Chronometer is…device. Device is thing that do things, but is not alive like animal or plant or fungi. This device measures time, like tape measurer measures length,” Pryce said, satisfied that he had the vocabulary to offer a better explanation this time.

“Measure time, look at sun,” Fathom snorted.

“How you tell time at night?” Pryce challenged.

“Sleep at night. No need to know time,” Fathom said simply.

“Dragon no need to know time, but human need to know time to use ship, find location,” Pryce explained. “When ship in middle of ocean, no can see land,” Pryce said, pointing at a random bit of ocean on the map.

“…yes, humans do things different,” Fathom admitted. “But how time help you find location?”

“Correction: Humans do different things, and…how to use time to find location is complicated, but I try to explain,” Pryce said, gathering his thoughts.

First, he explained what longitude and latitude were, which Fathom grasped fairly easily, though he expressed some discontentment at the mainland being at the center of the coordinate system.

He went on to explain how longitude could be obtained by knowing the time of noon and calculating the time difference between two locations using the chronometer. Fathom was initially baffled by the more complex mathematics, but soon grasped it after Pryce explained using the globe that time of noon would be different depending on which line of longitude you were at.

Pryce also tried explaining how the radio-transmitter worked, but Fathom had difficulty accepting that there were wavelengths of light that he could not see. Pryce would’ve liked to use the radio receiver to help support his case, but it would only ring at 6:29 AM.

Pryce gave up and decided to move onto the next topic, explaining that Polaris was always located pointed North. It took some more demonstration to show the dragon how a sextant worked by moving the arm attached to the mirror until the target in the sky lined up with the horizon, which was done by using two mirrors which fed different parts of the sky into the scope.

[1]

“If you can see Polaris, you can know your latitude,” Pryce said, adjusting the mirrors on the sextant to line up the star with the horizon. “Move your head where my head is,” he instructed, then shifted to the side as he tried to hold the sextant in place, allowing Fathom to see how the mirrors could move the two halves of the sky until they lined up. It was an awkward process since Pryce couldn’t see if the images were lined up when Fathom was using the sextant, but they eventually got it to work.

It was darker now as the sun had almost set, and the dragon’s pupils dilated further than Pryce had seen before in order to peer into the eyepiece. “Mirror make sky move,” the dragon said, almost reverently.

“Yes and no,” Pryce said hesitantly, not wanting to give Fathom the wrong impression. “Mirror only move light. IR, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and UV are all types of light, mirror move light from things, not move things,” he explained.

“Understand, I say mirror look like it move sky,” Fathom amended.

“Yes, good,” Pryce said, relieved.

“Dragon also have name for this star, is ‘North Star’,” Fathom told Pryce, looking up from the sextant to see Polaris directly.

“Humans have same name, Polaris have other name, other name is ‘North Star’,” Pryce said, pleased but not surprised by this piece of information. It was the most obvious choice, after all.

“Is…good name,” Fathom said, probably meaning it was a sensible name. “Dragon see Polaris move if dragon move. If dragon go north, Polaris move north, if dragon go south, Polaris move south.” Fathom said absently. “Humans know same thing, but…use it. Dragons also think shiny things are beautiful, but humans use it to do things,” he spoke somewhat uncertainly, as if unsure of what he meant to convey.

“Humans all start somewhere, we do not know anything when we are hatched. Humans learn things, then teach other humans, is how we learn. I can teach you. When you know many things, we can learn new things together,” Pryce said, patting the dragon’s neck.

“Humans strange,” Fathom snorted, but did not lean away.

“Yes,” Pryce grinned.

[JOURNAL ENTRY]

Day 34,

Dragon culture is quite interesting.

For the most part, they live alone, but at the same time they’re aware of every other member of their species, and they also interact with one another by trade. I can’t decide whether or not I should refer to them as social or asocial creatures.

(I believe) Fathom said that clans tend to break down when they exceed ten or so individuals, and biological studies have found that troops of monkeys tend to fragment into two different groups led by two alphas if they exceed a certain number, referred to as Dunbar’s number.

But dragons don’t have an alpha, and are monogamous, normally living alone in their own territories. I’m not sure what could cause dragon clans to fragment if they have any capacity for cooperation with one another…perhaps accumulated ‘wealth’ eventually causes a schism? I will need to ask more about this topic later.

From my understanding, the dragon clans can be categorized based on what they can do or make, though only Brewer and Glassblower clans are ‘unique’ in that there is one clan that is head and shoulders above the others in terms of their product. I will ask for more details tomorrow.

Wound progress update: Injury continues to improve, and the wound has shrunk by another centimeter.