Here Be Dragons: Book 1 of the Emergence Series

“So brewer clans know how to make alcohol, so other dragons can not attack them?” Pryce asked, making sure he understood the situation.

“Yes and no, they can attack, but if they attack, no trade alcohol.”

“Yes, I understand,” Pryce said absently, bemused by the idea of dragons running a monopoly. How could they keep something like alcohol a secret? It wasn’t hard to figure out by accident. “Why do other dragons not learn how to make alcohol? You only need fruit and wait,” he asked, unable to come up with a sensible answer.

“Fruit is small, and taste not good like apple. Dragons mostly do not eat fruit,” Fathom shifted his wings in a shrug. “Maybe first dragon who make alcohol is strange and like fruit.”

“…I understand,” Pryce said, feeling a little foolish at not considering that possibility. It would be difficult to accidentally make alcohol if one had no reason to store fruit in the first place. There was one more thing that he wanted to ask; “Why does the brewer clan get the south part of the island? Is it…good?”

“Yes, wind is weak, no storms, much food. My old territory…more south than here,” Fathom explained, looking down at the mention of his lost territory. He sulked for a few seconds before looking back at Pryce, who was standing completely still, eyes wide open.

“…haha…hahaHAHA! He was right!” Pryce whooped, pumping both fists into the air.

“Who was right?” Fathom asked, confused and a little wary of this sudden outburst from the normally quiet human.

“Wright – I mean,” Pryce stammered as he calmed himself down, then wondered how to explain that his friend Wright had predicted that there would be little to no storms at the equator due to something he called the Coriolis[1] effect…but to explain that, he needed to explain a lot more things.

“Earth is all of this,” Pryce said, gesturing at the entire map. “Earth spin –” Pryce cut himself off as he looked at Fathom’s confused expression. “Question: You know Earth spin, yes?” Pryce asked warily.

“Spin how?” Fathom asked, tilting his head.

Oh no.

Pryce brought out the globe and lit the lantern, then placed the globe in front of Fathom and the lantern a few meters away. “This is sun, this is Earth,” he gestured at the lantern and the globe respectively. “Move your head here,” he beckoned, and Fathom acquiesced slowly.

Pryce guided Fathom’s head until his eyes were as close to the island as possible. “We are here, sunrise is this,” he explained, rotating the globe and guiding his head until the lantern came into view. “Earth spin, understand?”

Fathom stared, confused, and Pryce’s hopes he would miraculously grasp the unintuitive truth dwindled away with each passing second.

“No feel spin, why you say earth spin?” He asked, more baffled than objecting.

“Because Earth…spins!” Pryce said, at a loss at how to explain it. What could he do to prove that the Earth spun on an axis? It took decades and decades of astronomical observations with sophisticated equipment for humanity to prove that they weren’t at the center of the universe, and that the heavens didn’t revolve around them. That was obviously not an option, so the only thing he could do was explain things that the geocentric model could not.

“Dragons watch stars, name stars, yes?” Pryce asked excitedly.

“…Yes? You know this,” Fathom said, uncertain what Pryce was getting at.

“Question: You see stars that move? Move differently from other stars?”

“Yes, they are called…things that don’t stay in one place, like dragon that no have home.”

“Wanderer!” Pryce cheered, unable to contain his excitement as he realized dragons named planets the same thing that humans did, planet being an old word for ‘wanderer’. He felt an indescribable sort of kinship at that revelation, but did his best to ignore it for now. “Stars that wander are called ‘planets’, ‘planet’ is an old word for ‘wanderer’,” he explained.

“Human name for wanderer is same as dragon word meaning?” Fathom asked, eyes widening a little.

“Yes!”

“Strange, but…good,” Fathom said, looking at Pryce with wings shifting in what Pryce hoped was excitement or happiness. “Humans not very different from dragons.”

“Yes, very, very good!” Pryce affirmed. “Do you know why planets wander?”

“Planets wander…because they wander,” Fathom shrugged.

“No, they wander because they go around the sun, like Earth,” Pryce said, sketching out a diagram of the inner solar system. “This is Earth, this is Venus, Venus is the brightest planet, Jupiter is the second brightest, Mercury is the third brightest, Saturn is the fourth brightest, Mars is the fifth brightest, Uranus is the sixth brightest, and Neptune is the seventh brightest.”

“Eight planets? I only see six planets,” Fathom said.

“Uranus and Neptune are very dim, hard to see with eyes,” Pryce explained.

“How do humans see? Your eyes no good like dragon eyes,” Fathom asked, his tone devoid of any derision.

“Humans use telescopes, telescope is like microscope, but let human see far thing and not small thing,” Pryce explained, already walking back to the ship to retrieve the telescope. The islands were at lower latitudes where never-before-seen stars would be visible, so the ship had two telescopes to allow the crew’s astronomers to conduct observations.

One could use the stars for navigation, but it was an older, more complicated, and less accurate method than the ones Pryce had learned, so there was no real reason to use them unless somehow both chronometers and two radios broke during the expedition.

He also found an astronomy textbook that included a diagram of the solar system, so he brought that out too.

He was so excited to show Fathom the stars that it was only after he had planted the telescope into the sand that he realized it wasn’t even noon yet.

“…you can use telescope at night to see stars and planets,” Pryce said, “and you can use telescope to see things far away in daytime.”

“You forgot you can only use telescope at night?” Fathom asked, seeing through this awkward piece of improvisation.

“N-no…”

The dragon rumbled skeptically, but said nothing more. Pryce cleared his throat and opened the textbook to the page depicting the diagram of the solar system.

“Here is ‘solar system’, solar system means sun and planets,” Pryce said, gesturing to the entire page. “Planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune,” he said as he tapped on each planet. “Planets look close on paper, but are very very far away from each other, like island on map.”

“Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, all bigger than Earth?” Fathom said doubtfully as he inspected the diagram. “These no look like planets,” he added.

“Yes, much bigger, and they do, I’ll show you at night,” Pryce said as he adjusted the telescope so he could clearly see the distant shores that jutted out to the east a kilometer or two south of his location. “Put eye here, like microscope.”

Fathom did so, then a few seconds later drew his head up to look at the trees Pryce had pointed the telescope at with his own eyes, and Pryce noticed his iris shifting rapidly. Time to test something that he’d been suspecting for some time now.

“Look through telescope again,” Pryce said, and when Fathom did so he turned the dial to adjust the magnification. “Your eyes, can they do this?”

“Yes, but not much like this,” Fathom said, his tone tinged with wonder. Pryce had set the magnification to 200x, with that he should be able to see the bark of those distant trees in great detail.

Pryce turned some knobs and adjusted the telescope down to 2x magnification. “You see better or worse than this?”

“I see much better than this,” Fathom said.

Pryce adjusted it to 4x magnification. “How about this?”

“…I see much better.”

8x magnification. “How about this?”

Fathom looked up and down several times to compare his sight with that of the telescope. “Very close. How telescope do this?”

Pryce, dumbfounded by the dragon’s amazing eyesight, wrote down ‘~8x telescopic vision’ in his notebook before answering. “Telescope use glass, glass bend light, make small thing bigger, like magnifying glass and microscope,” Pryce explained, causing Fathom to nod half-heartedly.

Then he remembered he had a classic science experiment to show Fathom, and pulled the magnifying glass from the day before out of his pocket. “Magnifying glass can make fire,” Pryce said, hoping that would get the dragon’s attention.

Fathom immediately perked upon hearing those words. “How glass make fire?” He asked, dubiously.

Pryce grinned widely, rubbing his hands together in pyromaniacal glee.

“Is hot,” Fathom said.

“You can feel that?” Pryce asked, surprised.

“Feel it here,” Fathom said, tapping the front of his muzzle. Pryce squinted and leaned closer, and was reminded of the tiny snake-like pits he’d seen long ago. This certainly confirmed that they served the same purpose as the organs that they resembled, meaning dragons could sense heat – specifically some range of IR light given off by warm objects.

“Human can feel heat through skin,” Pryce said absently, and focused on holding the magnifying glass steady over a dark knot in the wood. “Not as good as dragon heat-sense, probably,” he elaborated.

A lot of people didn’t know it, but human skin has the ability to sense IR light, which explains why one can feel the heat of a flame when the air wasn’t hot yet – something very obvious if you stand some distance from a plume of fire. Dragons had forward-facing pit-organs, which probably meant they used it to hunt prey, or perhaps they used it for some other purpose Pryce didn’t know of yet.

“What you use heat-sense for?” Pryce asked as the wood began smoking.

“Find…warm things,” Fathom said, sounding evasive.

“What warm things?” Pryce asked, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

“Find…Food…raptors…see egg temperature,” Fathom listed, not quite looking him in the eyes as he did so.

Pryce waited a few more seconds, but Fathom refused to divulge any more information. He was going to ask him to elaborate, but decided to question him later as the wood was catching fire.

“See? Magnifying glass make fire.”

“…yes…but I do not understand.” Fathom looked very confused, his spines twitching uncertainly.

“No understand what?”

“How glass make fire? Life make fire, glass no live.”

“Oh, glass take sun light, bend it, much sunlight in small area, sunlight heat wood, wood burn,” Pryce explained, then blinked. “Wait, what do you mean life make fire?”

“Life make fire,” Fathom said with a shrug of his wings, as if it were obvious.

“…Example?” Pryce asked, very confused.

“Dragons have fire, dragons have life. Sun is big fire, sun have life,” Fathom explained, warily. He’d definitely noticed the trend of Pryce disproving dragonkind’s long-held beliefs.

“Correction: dragons are alive, and raptors are alive, but raptors do not have fire, humans do not have fire. Most animals do not have fire,” Pryce protested.

“Dragon are more alive, have fire. Dead things no have fire.”

Pryce hummed, thinking of ways to dispute this theory. Ancient humans probably had something similar, he’d just have to teach whatever they learned to Fathom.

He excused himself from the dragon to go get a photobook – one of the crew was a biologist named Charles Hawkins who was a hobbyist photographer, and had an album of his favorite pictures. Pryce recalled Charles mentioning lightning bolts as one of his many subjects, and sure enough he found several images of the phenomena. He could have probably explained lightning to Fathom, but having a picture was so much easier, not to mention less ambiguous.

Next, Pryce scoured the ship for some quartz crystals, but he couldn’t find any until he remembered he had a few barbeque lighters. He also grabbed a clear glass cup and some candles for the science experiment.

He rushed back out to the impatient dragon, materials cradled in his arms.

“Sorry, took more minutes than I expected,” he apologized as he set the pile down. “This is lightning, you know lightning, yes?” He asked, holding up the picture of a lightning strike.

“Yes, I know lightning,” Fathom said. “Lightning make big noise.”

“Yes, very big noise, and lightning also make fire,” Pryce said, and Fathom nodded. “Cloud make lightning, lightning make fire, how lightning make fire if cloud not alive?”

“Cloud…make lightning,” Fathom said, as if he were asked to justify the color of the sky.

“And this is lighter, lighter make flame,” he said, igniting said flame with a click. “Lighter not alive, but lighter make flame.” Seeing as Fathom still seemed skeptical, Pryce asked, “Spark is small lightning, you see spark when I make flame?” And flicked the flame on and off.

“…yes, very small spark.”

“Good, spark is made from rock, rock type name is ‘quartz’,” Pryce explained. “When you hit rock, it make sparks, you know quartz?”

“…You know rocks that make sparks?” Fathom asked, eyes widening in surprise. “Quartz are alive,”

“No, quartz is rock, rock no alive.”

“Quartz not alive, quartz have life…heat,” Fathom said, shifting in what seemed to be agitation.

Life-heat? Heat was energy, did Fathom mean some kind of life-energy? “Okay, name of life-heat is life-energy. Do dragons think fire is alive, or alive things have fire?”

“…what is difference?”

Seeing as he wasn’t making much progress, Pryce scribbled down what he learned about draconic beliefs regarding life to organize his thoughts:

Dragons believe:

Fire represents (or perhaps is) life force/energy.

Only dragons have strong enough life force to make flame.

Abiotic forms of fire are explained via mythology:

Sun: Believed to be a great source of fire

Lightning: Unknown (Fathom might not have the vocabulary to explain lightning yet)

Quartz/Piezoelectric crystals: Believed to contain life force, which is why they can make sparks.

“Mountain that make fire is ‘Volcano’, are there any volcanoes here on this island?” Pryce asked, curious to see how dragons explained that natural phenomenon.

“Yes, volcano very dangerous. Volcano is also part of Earth, Earth is alive,” Fathom said, answering the question Pryce was going to ask.

Pryce supposed it wasn’t unreasonable as far as primitive theories of reality went, he could at least see how dragons came to such a conclusion.

“Humans think all life is cells, or is many cells,” Pryce told Fathom, deciding to teach the dragon the human theory instead of trying to dispute his. “If something does not have cells, it is not alive.” There were many other traits people considered living things to have, but this was the most important one. “Fire no have cells, and rock no have cells.”

Fathom considered this for a few moments before asking, “…What do humans think is fire?”

Pryce rubbed his neck, “…this is complicated, but I try to teach you. Fire need three things: One: fuel, two: oxygen, three: heat,” he began simply with the names, then tried to explain what each did, “Fuel for dragon fire is the gas you breathe out, then fuels is like food. Oxygen is in air, you can not see it, and fire needs heat to exist.”

“Oxygen in air?” Fathom echoed.

“Yes, air is mostly two types of gasses: air is 86% nitrogen and 13% oxygen[2]."

Fathom scowled at this, spines flattening. “What is gas that is 1%? How do you know this?” He rumbled.

“Remaining 1% is other things, and many humans do much work to find these percentages, and I can prove there is oxygen in air! This is candle,” Pryce said, lighting the candle and covering it with the glass cup. “Fire need fuel, oxygen, and heat. Candle is fuel, I give candle heat, and oxygen is in the air.”

Pryce took a step back, “Now, fire need oxygen like fire need fuel. No fuel, no fire. No oxygen, no fire. So, what happens if fire eat all oxygen in air?” He grinned, just as the candle sputtered and died.

He smiled at Fathom, who stared puzzled at the extinguished candle.

“…fire candle again,” Fathom said stubbornly.

“Correction: Light the candle again,” Pryce said, and repeated the experiment. Same result.

Fathom grumbled, sounding frustrated. “This…I do not know, but you light candle with fire, different from heat.”

“I light candle with lighter, lighter use spark, spark is not fire.”

“Spark is…different type of fire,” Fathom insisted.

“I can prove heat make fire,” Pryce sighed, not looking forward to rubbing sticks together until they started burning.

Pryce initially thought he would have to create a bow-drill from scratch, but realized he only needed to prove that sheer heat could start a fire from scratch, so he simply whittled a stick until it fit into the socket of a speed wrench. The only other thing he needed was a piece of dry wood with a hole drilled into it, and to cut a notch into that hole for the hot wood shavings.

It took him some time to whittle the wood down, but it was not difficult work with the quality tools aboard the ship. All he needed to do was to spin the stick in the hole really fast, and the shavings that built up in the notch would eventually become hot enough to start a fire.

Fathom looked at him like he was crazy while he spun the wrench as fast as possible, but a minute later it started to smolder, and a few minutes after that Pryce was able to get the shavings to ignite a scrap piece of paper.

“See?” Pryce gasped, “Heat…make…flame…”

“Yes…” Fathom said, looking at Pryce as though he were equal parts concerned and impressed.

Pryce stood up, gesturing to the jar over the candle to speak between heaving breaths, “Almost…all fires…eat…”

“You slow down, stop,” Fathom said, pressing a knuckle against his chest to push him back down onto the sand.

“Yes, I…rest…” Pryce said, waving Fathom’s foreclaws away. He took a drink from his water bottle and stood up after a minute. “Better now,” he said, a little embarrassed. Though he felt much better than he had on day 20, it seemed he was still not quite recovered from the voyage if he tired this easily.

“Almost all fires eat oxygen and make carbon dioxide,” Pryce said once he had recovered his breath. “This glass is full of carbon dioxide right now, and you can not see carbon dioxide,” he added since Fathom was peering at the glass very intently. “Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so I can do…this,” he said, flipping the cup upside down and retrieving the candle so as to not disturb the invisible gas inside.

Pryce took his water bottle and poured its contents into another glass. “Moving water like this is called ‘pouring’, what happens if I pour this glass of carbon dioxide onto the candle?”

Fathom stared at the glass, then at him. “This glass?” He asked in disbelief, pointing at the seemingly empty container.

“Yes.”

“…There is nothing in glass,” Fathom said.

“No, there is carbon dioxide in the glass,” Pryce said, lighting the candle and then slowly lifting the cup over the flame. His eyes flicked up to Fathom watching the flame warily, and poured.

One second later, the candle died.

“See? Because no oxygen in here, only carbon dioxide, so fire no have oxygen. Fire die,” Pryce said, certain that this would convince the dragon.

Fathom grumbled again, but begrudgingly admitted, “…you maybe not wrong.”

Pryce pumped his fist.

“But this no…prove fire no alive,” Fathom said, and Pryce faltered, realizing he was technically correct.

“But lighter no alive, lighter is dead, dead thing no make living thing,” Pryce protested, ignoring the abiogenesis theory for now.

“Lighter have life-energy.”

Pryce made a frustrated noise and turned to pace along the beach.

“…where you going?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Why you move when you thinking?”

“I like it,” Pryce said, a little crossly.

“You strange.”

Pryce grumbled, and continued thinking. Any argument he could bring to bear would be countered with ‘it has life-energy’, so…he’d have to ask Fathom to justify his beliefs.

“What is life-energy?” Pryce asked.

“Energy that life has,” Fathom said obviously.

“But you say some dead things have life-energy,”

“Yes,” Fathom said.

“Why?”

Fathom blinked in surprise. “Why why?”

“Why do dead things have life-energy?”

“…dead things have life-energy. Why wind blow? Why things go down?” Fathom asked by way of answering.

Convection and gravity, Pryce thought, but didn’t bother saying out loud; that would just lead them down a different path.

Maybe he was approaching this incorrectly. If he considered ‘life-heat as a sort of ‘potential-energy’, or ‘energy’ in general, things made a bit more sense.

“I can explain those things, but those are complicated. Life-energy does not explain why fire die when no oxygen, and does not explain why fire die when I pour carbon dioxide on it.”

“…Yes,” Fathom said reluctantly.

“I think we need word that is more good than ‘life-energy, you explain ‘life-energy’ more, I give new name,” Pryce tried, maybe a compromise would help Fathom accept it if this were a matter of pride.

“Life-energy is like…thing that can make things happen,” Fathom said, slowly.

“Let's just call it energy,” Pryce said. There would be plenty of time to iron out the details later.

“Energy,” Fathom echoed, nodding

“There are many types of energy,” Pryce said. “Kinetic energy is energy of moving things, Thermal energy is energy of heat, Chemical energy is energy in things, like fire. There are more types, but they are more complicated.” Pryce explained.

“Thermal energy is heat, but fire is not thermal energy?” Fathom asked.

“Good question, thermal energy is heat, but wood has chemical energy that turns into thermal energy when it is on fire,” Pryce explained. “Wood have high chemical energy, ash have low chemical energy.”

“…understand, is some like life-heat,” Fathom said.

“Good,” Pryce said, nodding. “You know that warm air goes up, yes?”

“Yes, how you know that? You no fly,” Fathom said, surprised.

Pryce explained to Fathom the concept of density, using rocks and water as an example. He already knew mass and surface area, so Pryce simply taught him volume and from there he was able to understand density. He then told Fathom that hot air was less dense than cold air, which made Fathom tilt his head.

“Hot air go up, but not less dense,” he said, skeptical of this claim.

“I can prove it,” Pryce said, setting up another science experiment. All of these experiments made him nostalgic, remembering the times where he himself watched these experiments with wide eyes…as well as the times where he taught them to little John as well.

Pryce set up yet another experiment, this time with a plate that had a thin layer of water on it while a few lit candles sat in the middle of the plate. Then he dropped a coin onto the plate where it immediately sank to the bottom.

Pryce placed an empty glass cup next to the plate, and said, “If you can take coin without touching water, you can have the coin.”

“Without?”

“Without means ‘no’,” Pryce said, a little apologetically.

Fathom didn’t do his customary snort at the redundancy of human language, instead focusing on the plate with the coin. A second later, he flipped the plate over, spilling water over the crate and picking up the coin that had fallen onto the sand.

Pryce tilted his head, conceding the point. “Clever, but this time do it without touching the plate or the water,” he said as he reset the puzzle.

Fathom then pushed the crate onto its side, picked up the second coin and looked at Pryce expectantly.

Pryce took a deep breath. “Very clever, my mistake,” he admitted, resetting the puzzle for a third time. “This time pick up the coin without moving the crate, or the plate, or touching the water.”

Fathom looked around for a few seconds, then picked up a twig – though for a human it would’ve been a branch – and pushed the coin out of the water to earn his fourth coin.

Pryce clicked his tongue, impressed but a little irritated now. Ignoring the happily smug look on Fathom’s face, Pryce reset the puzzle for the fifth and what he intended to be the final time. He could have just done the demonstration himself, but this was a point of pride now.

He was going to say, ‘This time pick up the coin without moving the crate, or the plate, or touching the water, only using the things on the crate,’ but realized the dragon would probably push the coin out of the water with the cup.

“Move water away from coin without moving crate, plate, candles, or coin.”

Fathom thought for a few seconds before asking, “I use fire?”

“…No, you may not use fire,” Pryce answered, glad that Fathom had bothered to ask. “No blowing either,” he said, seeing Fathom open his mouth again.

“I wait, water go away.”

“You have sixty seconds.”

“You do not say this before,” Fathom grumbled, and stared pouting at the coin until the minute mark passed. “You can not do this,” Fathom declared when Pryce told him a minute had elapsed.

“Thing no person can do is ‘impossible’,” Pryce said, picking up the glass. “But this…” he placed the cup over the candles, and air began bubbling through water at the bottom of the glass, until the candles died from the lack of oxygen. “…is not impossible,” he finished, just as the water was quickly sucked up into the glass, causing Fathom to draw his head back in surprise.[3]

“What? What is this? How do you do this?!” Fathom hissed, eyes darting back and forth from the puzzle to Pryce as the human picked up the coin.

“When air is hot, it gets bigger. You see when air go away from inside of glass to outside of glass? Air go away because it has more volume.”

Fathom rumbled as he chewed on this piece of information, then asked, “But how water go into glass?”

Pryce considered making him think about it some more, but decided to simply tell him. “Water go up because when fire go out, air not getting warmer, air get colder. When air get cold it shrink, pulls water up. When air hot, it push air out, when air cold, it pull air in,” he explained.

Fathom stared at the upside-down cup that still had water inside of it, thinking about what Pryce said. “Anything hot, expand?”

“Yes, but some things expand very little. Hot water does not expand much, for example.”

“Understand…”

“This is what causes wind,” Pryce added, causing Fathom to snap his attention back at him.

“You…know what make wind?” He asked softly, almost…reverently?

“Uh…yes,” Pryce said, surprised by this sudden change in attitude. “Hot air go up, cold air go down. Hot air go up, high up into sky where air is cold, hot air become cold, hot air is now cold air and goes down.” Pryce grabbed a fistful of sand and scattered it onto the surface of the crate, then blew down on it from above, scattering sand everywhere.

“Air come down, become wind. Wind is very very complicated, but this is what make wind. Air going up and down because of temperature is called ‘convection’,” he summarized, then asked, “Question: Why you so…surprised?” He asked. He hadn’t taught the word ‘surprised’ to Fathom yet, but it was obvious that was what the dragon was feeling.

“…dragons do not know…where wind come from,” Fathom began, choosing his words carefully. “Wind is strong, dragon no fly if wind is…wrong direction. Dragon can only find good wind, fly with wind direction. If wind very strong dragon fall,” he said, a shudder running along the great length of his spine.

Pryce nodded, understanding. To dragons, the wind was a mysterious invisible force that you couldn’t fight. They didn’t know where it came from or where it went, but they knew it was strong.

“Understand. North of island have more storms than south of island, yes?”

“Yes…you sound like you know this, how you know this?”

Pryce smiled, finally having arrived full circle at the topic that started all of today’s conversation. “My friend, Wright, he said that there were no storms at equator, very few people believe him, very few people think he was right.”

“Your friend name is Wright…same as right like right and wrong?” Fathom asked, flattening his spines.

“It’s written differently, but…yes, pronounced same,” Pryce said sheepishly. “Human have first name and second name, first name is name for person, second name is family name. All persons in family have same family name.”

“Strange,” Fathom noted. “Dragon name no meaning, but if dragon is…very very good, dragon name can become meaning.”

“Interesting,” Pryce said, jotting that down. “Anyway, what I was saying was Wright’s first name was Maximilian, but that name is long, so many people call him Max.”

“Wait, your name, ‘Pryce’ is first name or family name?”

“Pryce is family name.”

“What is your first name? Why you not give me first name?” He asked, sounding a little wounded.

Pryce shrugged apologetically, “My first name is Alexander, or Alex. I work as healer, most people call healers by family name, so most people call me Pryce. I wanted to say that I’m going to use Wright’s first name, ‘Max’, so we won’t confuse wright and right.”

“What is confuse?”

“This,” Pryce said drily, unable to resist the low-hanging fruit.

“What?”

“Not knowing is confuse,” he elaborated.

“…understand. Human language confuse me.”

“Exactly. Now as I was saying,” Pryce said, annoyed at getting derailed so many times, “Max was right –”

“Wright was…right?” Fathom said, eyes glinting with amusement.

“…yes, Max was right,” Pryce said through gritted teeth, hoping that the dragon wasn’t going to start making puns all day. “And as I was saying, Max guessed right – that there would be no storms at the equator.”

“How he know this if he not here?” Fathom asked, tone filed with skepticism.

“Because humans know Earth spins,” Pryce said. “I said earlier convection make wind, but other things make wind go faster or slower. Wind can make wind go faster, ground can make wind go faster or slower.”

“Ground no make wind go faster,” Fathom said, sounding more exasperated by the notion.

“Circumference is length of distance around equator. Earth circumference is 40,080 kilometers at equator, Earth spin once in a day, so Earth is spinning very fast at equator, ground is moving very fast. Ground move at 464 meters in one second.”

Fathom looked at the ground, and then at the Pryce as if he were insane. “How you know Earth circumference?” He asked incredulously.

“I explain later. Ground is moving. You can not see it move because you are moving very fast too,” he explained, trying to come up with a more intuitive explanation. “See this rock?” Pryce asked, tossing a small rock up and catching it. “If you catch rock, you feel rock’s weight, yes?” Seeing Fathom nod reluctantly, he continued, “Now if you fly and someone throw rock at you, it hurt because rock is moving in different direction than you, but if you fly while holding rock, rock no hurt, why?” He stared expectantly at Fathom.

“Rock no hurt…because rock has speed like me,” the dragon said in realization.

“Yes! When things are not different, they are the same, rock has same speed as you!” Pryce cheered, “Rock does not feel like it move fast, even if you fly very very fast, because it has same speed as you.” He tapped the sandy beach beneath him. “No feel Earth move, because you move. Earth is like dragon, you are like rock.”

Fathom closed his eyes for a moment and opened them again. “Complicated.”

“Yes, but this is right,” Pryce said. “Because air touches ground, air at equator is moving very fast, distance traveled in one second is called ‘meters per second’, and air at Earth’s equator is traveling 464 meters per second faster than air at the poles, which are here,” he said, tapping at said location on the globe.

“Air move fast, make storm…?” Fathom asked.

“Good guess, almost right,” Pryce said. “Ground move fast, so ground make air move fast. Storm happens when air from equator move north or south.” Here Pryce paused, realizing he needed to explain something else.

“If you throw rock straight up, what happens?” Pryce asked.

“…rock go up, then down?” Fathom asked uncertainly, as if Pryce was about to prove that the rock would go flying off into the stars.

“Yes,” Pryce said, visibly relieving the dragon. “Now what happens if you are flying and you throw rock up?”

“Rock go up, then down,” Fathom said, more confidently this time.

“But down where? If you fly at same speed, can you catch rock?”

“Yes, rock will fall down to me.”

“Exactly!” Pryce said, sketching out a diagram in the sand. “If you throw rock when not flying, rock go up and down,” he said, sketching a line that doubled back on itself. “But if you throw rock up while flying, rock go up and then down like this,” he sketched a parabolic arch to show how the rock would have to move horizontally to fall where the dragon would be by the time it descended.

“I understand this,” Fathom said. “But how this make storm?”

“Because wind is like rock in this example,” he said, pointing at the diagram. “Wind at equator is moving fast, when wind go north, it still moving fast east, so it goes like this,” he traced an arch on the globe just like the stone had, without the second half.

“How this make storm?” Fathom asked again, a little impatiently.

“I’m getting to that, remember when I tell you hot air rise? When hot air rise, it makes air around the area to go under it,” he did his best to sketch this effect into the sand, drawing a mushroom shape.

“…Like candle in glass, make water go up,” Fathom noted.

“Yes, very good!” Pryce said, pointing a finger at the dragon without looking at him. “This is called a low-pressure system, because it makes air around it go into it. Now, because Earth is spinning, the air from north pole also goes the other way, because it is slower,” he explained, drawing an arch that opposed the wind coming from the equator. “When this wind and this wind meet at a low-pressure system, it makes a hurricane, a big storm,” he finished.

“…that is storm?” Fathom asked dubiously.

“Yes, hurricane is big storm, hurricanes are very very big, many hundreds of kilometers, I have photo,” he added, rushing into the ship and back out within a minute.

He showed Fathom the low-resolution image of a hurricane, though the eye was still clear.

[4]

“Hurricane have…thing in it?” Fathom asked, digging a hole in the sand.

“Thing is hole, and yes. This is called the ‘eye of the storm’, is at the center of a hurricane,” Pryce explained, then asked, “Have you heard of dragons seeing storm, then storm stops, then storm starts again?”

“…yes, is dangerous. Some dragon go fly after hurricane…then hurricane start again,” Fathom said slowly, “is because of…the eye of the storm?”

“Yes, exactly,” Pryce said solemnly. “See this? This is spin clockwise, this is spin counterclockwise,” he said, sketching circles in the sand. Then he went on to explain, “Hurricanes north of equator always spin counterclockwise. Humans guess hurricanes south of equator always spin clockwise, but we no see this yet.”

Fathom considered this new piece of knowledge, then asked, “Hurricane almost always come from east, go west…why?”

“I don’t know,” Pryce admitted, surprising Fathom. “I do know the counterclockwise spin makes hurricane go north, but not why they go east to west. Someone who knows much about something is an expert, and I am not an expert about hurricanes, I am an expert about cells and healing. I not sure if other humans know, but this is some of why we come here, to learn about many things, things like this.”

“Humans…understand this…without be here…” Fathom said, not a question. “…what is word for very, very, good?” Fathom asked.

“Word is ‘Amazing’, why?” Pryce asked, looking up at Fathom curiously.

“Humans very small, not strong, but…amazing.”

Pryce looked away, rubbing his neck.

“Thanks.”

“See stars now?” The dragon asked, for the fifth time.

Pryce gave the response he had given the last four times, “Soon.”

Fathom grumbled and sat back down, muttering something either too low to be heard or not in English.

Pryce wanted his first look of a planet to be as ideal as possible given the current position of the planets; mars was quite far, but Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn were reasonably close. He looked up to the sky again; It was twilight now, so the haze of the sun would be disappearing over the horizon soon. Many stars were already visible, even a band of white that was the milky way, but it wouldn’t be as good as if the night sky were completely dark.

First, he aimed the telescope at the moon, starting at 40x magnification to locate the natural satellite more easily. Once he located the moon, he zeroed in on it, increasing the magnification until the natural satellite took up the entire span of the eyepiece.

“Look,” Pryce called out to Fathom, who padded over eagerly. “Slowly, don’t move the telescope,” Pryce warned, and sighed as the dragon’s foreclaws accidentally shifted the sand beneath the telescope, completely misaligning it.

“Wait,” he said, looking through the eyepiece and re-adjusted the instrument while an impatient Fathom grumbled over his shoulder.

“…if you slowed down, I would not need to do this,” Pryce chided, stepping aside once he had the moon in view again. Just as he did so, Fathom immediately brought his head to the eyepiece, copying Pryce. He went still as he peered into the lens with rapt attention.

[5]

“Telescope let you see small things called ‘details’, moon much more detailed if you use telescope than if you use eyes, yes?”

“…yes,” Fathom rumbled absently. “How see moon like this, telescope is point up?”

“There is a mirror in the telescope,” Pryce explained, realizing it was odd to look down into the eyepiece and see something up in the sky.

“…Understand – !” Fathom cut himself off with a hiss; he had bumped his eye into the eyepiece as he tried to look more closely at the telescope. He blinked rapidly as he shook his head, and soon tried to look at the moon again. “Where is moon?”

“You moved the telescope, telescope not pointing at moon anymore,” Pryce said. “Let me fix it.”

“Telescope can go closer?”

“Telescope can go closer,” Pryce confirmed, finding the moon again and turning the knob to the maximum 200x magnification.

[5]

“Tell me if you want telescope to go left, right, up, or down,” Pryce told the dragon, crouching down so he could adjust the telescope while allowing Fathom to see the moon.

“…Right…down…down,” the dragon said as soon as he resumed his position. “Why is some of moon not light?”

“Not light is dark,” Pryce said, “and we don’t know why some of moon is dark, humans long time ago think dark spots on the moon were oceans, but they are not.”

“Not oceans? How do you know?” Fathom asked without looking away from the telescope.

“Humans have stronger telescopes, much stronger than this one, we see oceans are just dark rocks.”

“…understand,” Fathom said.

“Moon very far away, so high that there is no air,” Pryce explained.

“…understand, dragon fly up and can not blow air,” Fathom said after a few seconds.

“’Blow air’ is breathing, and yes, that makes sense.”

“What is ‘sense’? How that ‘make’ sense?”

“Uh, ‘make sense’ is like saying you can understand something, or something is understandable.”

“…Makes sense?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“…wait, how humans know there no air high up? You can not fly,” Fathom asked, looking away from the telescope for the first time.

“Mainland have mountains,” Pryce said simply. “Human go up mountains, go up mountain is ‘climb’.”

“Makes sense.”

“Also, humans can fly.”

“What? How?!” Fathom reeled about, knocking over the telescope.

“Hey, telescope is fragile!” Pryce scolded.

Fathom had the grace to duck his head a little in a shamefaced way, but that did not stop him from asking, “How humans fly?!”

“Humans make machine, like chronometer and ship, ship fly with human on it,” he explained.

Fathom mulled over this for a few seconds, then asked, “…like machine you use to make photo of island?”

“Yes, like that,” Pryce answered, though the vast majority of planes used propellors for thrust. Jets were used to provide thrust for airplanes, but they were inefficient compared to propeller planes. As such, commercial jet aircraft were solely used for time-sensitive shipments or by very rich individuals. The handful of non-military jet planes in existence were owned by the largest companies or the richest people on the island.

“You have fly machine here?”

“No, I don’t have a flying machine here,” Pryce shook his head.

“You have photo of flying machine?” Fathom pressed.

“…I think so, I find tomorrow, I can’t see good in dark.”

“I can,” Fathom said, completely unpersuaded.

“I show you photos tomorrow,” Pryce promised, and aimed the telescope somewhere else. “We see planets tonight.”

Fathom rumbled, not entirely placated. “Planet is light, like star, not new thing like flying machine.”

Pryce grinned and continued to calibrate the telescope for another few minutes before stepping aside, “Remember how you see details on moon?”

Fathom’s head snaked forward to look into the eyepiece and stilled. “What…what is this?”

“This is Venus, can’t see the orange with your eyes, can you?” Pryce asked.

Fathom didn’t answer, only continued to stare at that little orange dot through the telescope, and periodically looked away to see the dot with his own eyes.

“Here, let me show you Jupiter,” Pryce said, but Fathom wordlessly refused to budge. He sighed, and stood waiting until Fathom pulled his head away a few minutes later.

The dragon did not talk while he worked, and soon he located Jupiter. Astronomy was his hobby many years ago, and he was feeling quite nostalgic as he remembered things he had not thought of in many years. In the past decade he had spent so much time looking down at his work that he hadn’t really looked up in a very long time; the complete lack of light or chemical pollution resulted in a night sky that was more beautiful than any he had ever seen.

“Done,” Pryce said, and Fathom quickly returned to looking through the eyepiece with scarcely any less enthusiasm than before, though he was careful to not disturb the telescope this time.

[6]

“Small lights are…stars?” Fathom asked, confused by the anomaly.

“Those are moons,” Pryce said. “Remember I showed you the diagram of the solar system earlier. Some other planets have moons too,” he said, repositioning the telescope to his next target. “Mercury and Venus don’t have moon, Earth has one big moon, Mars has two small moons, and Jupiter has at least ten moons, humans are still finding more. Some are much smaller than the four you see here.”

“Planets have…moon - moons?” Fathom asked faintly.

“Yes, but look here, I saved the best for last.”

“What does this mean?”

Pryce shook his head. “Look,” he said simply.

Fathom peered through the lens, and Pryce knew he saw the rings when his eyes widened saucer-like.

[6]

“Why does it look like…this?” Fathom asked.

“Saturn has rings,” Pryce said. “Rings are like…” he trailed off and he looked around, and briefly wished he was wearing a ring. “Rings are the outside of a circle. I show you better pictures from better telescopes tomorrow,” he yawned, feeling excitement wearing off and exhaustion beginning to take it’s place.

Fathom looked at him and looked up at the sky. “…you point telescope at…sky shiny things?”

“Sky shiny things? You mean the stars?” Pryce asked, puzzled. He already knew the words for stars, so why would he call it something roundabout like that?

“Yes stars, but…like river,” Fathom tried, grasping for words.

A stick of stars? Like a band?

“Oh, you mean the milky way! Yes, of course,” Pryce said, feeling a little foolish at having forgotten something so important. “Why did you call it sky shiny thing?”

“Dragon word for it, is shiny thing that sky have,” Fathom explained.

“…Do all dragons want shiny things very much?” Pryce asked.

“Very yes,” Fathom said a little wistfully.

“Alright, human word for things you want very much is ‘Treasure’.”

Fathom tilted his head in thought, “Sky Treasure?”

“If sky has treasure, then it would be ‘Sky’s Treasure’,” Pryce corrected.

“Good word for this,” Fathom said. “Some dragon call this Star River,” he added.

“That would be River of Stars, and that would have been easier to understand if you used those words first,” Pryce grumbled.

“I forgot, dragon use River of Stars less than Sky’s Treasure,” Fathom said unapologetically.

“…Hey, didn’t you say English was bad for having many words for same thing?” Pryce asked, casting a sidelong glance at Fathom, who chose at that moment to be deaf.

“Well, here’s the…Sky’s Treasure,” Pryce said, stepping out of the way before Fathom nudged him over to get to the telescope.

[7]

“Amazing,” Fathom rumbled, eyes glued to the telescope. He pulled his head away after a minute, then said quietly, “You show me this island small, very small, then you show me moon, you show me other planets bigger than Earth. I am not small, but this,” he said, waving a wing vaguely at the sky, “make me feel…small,” he said, quietly.

Pryce wasn’t sure what to say to that, but he placed his hand on the dragon’s forearm consolingly; it was the only place he could reach without jumping. Fathom lowered his head further, and Pryce took it as an invitation, patting his muzzle. Fathom rumbled in response, and leaned into the petting; the scales were very warm, and while not soft, were not unpleasant to the touch.

“Humans much smaller than dragons, how do you think we feel?” He asked humorously.

Fathom snorted, ruffling Pryce’s hair. “You are very small,” he agreed.

“Humans feel small too, but that just means there’s so much more to explore. Explore is learning about new places.”

“Like you explore here?” Fathom asked curiously.

“…yes, like that,” Pryce said, glancing away. “The world is big, many things to see, many things to learn,” he pulled his hand away and looked Fathom in the eyes. “And there are worlds other than this one, one day I know we can see them all.”

“How you see planets? Telescope do not see very good.”

“We build better telescopes, and we build machines to go see planets,” Pryce said, eyes glimmering in the moonlight. “One day in the future, we will send humans to the moon!”

Fathom pulled his head away, making a chuffing sort of noise. Pryce stepped back, surprised, until he realized the dragon was laughing.

“You can not go to the moon,” Fathom snorted, still chuckling. He paused when Pryce didn’t respond, and realized he was serious. “How you go to the moon?” He hissed in disbelief.

“Complicated, explain…tomorrow,” Pryce shrugged, looking up at the night sky, “Don’t you want to go to the moon?”

“I…” Fathom stammered, thrown off by the absurdity of the question. Judging by his reaction Pryce may as well have asked if he wanted to swim in the River of Stars. “Can humans do that?” he asked, his glossy pupils full of uncertainty and doubt.

“One day. Maybe ten years, maybe one hundred years, but one day we will go to the moon.”

“How can you know that?”

Pryce tilted his head as he pondered how to answer the question with their limited vocabulary. "Humans in the past could not explore other lands, but I still came here."

Fathom rumbled, mulling over Pryce words. Finally, after half a minute he said, “This island is…big, but everywhere is territory of a dragon. No place is….’new’,” he said, speaking slowly. “Before I see you, I no think of…explore.”

“Maybe we can explore new things together,” Pryce suggested with a smile. “For now, all we can do is watch the stars.”

“…Yes,” Fathom said, and then looked up. “Stars are very beautiful,” he noted distantly.

“Yeah, they really are,” Pryce agreed, yawning. He had to go to sleep soon, but he stayed a little longer to watch the starry sky with the dragon beside him.

[JOURNAL ENTRY]

Day 35,

I hit the first roadblock today.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but Fathom’s preconceived beliefs about the world are getting in the way of what I’m trying to teach him. It’s not bad, I simply need to show him enough proof that our theories explain things better than the draconic system of beliefs.

It helps to remember that many theories we use today are 'wrong'. Classical physics is incredibly precise and accurate, but still 'wrong' because it fails to predict the movements of the stars (among other things). Despite this, no one uses general relativity unless they're a theoretical physicist or a literal rocket scientist.

Why? Because classical physics is simply good enough.

In that regard, it is the same as the draconian theory of Life Force; it is a theory that can adequately describe what dragons needed to explain.

Even without this consideration, obtaining insight into their culture and values is of vital importance for any future negotiations or discussions. (In other words, know how to not piss off the fire breathing dragons)

As for my lessons...Logically, I should ask Fathom things about this island like threats and possible resources. I don’t need to convince him that the Earth spins, or that the planets are not stars, or that they have moons, but…I like it.

Not only is teaching him enjoyable, but doing so reminds me of how far we humans have come as a species. Despite our differences, our conflicts, and even the wars we wage, we’ve still managed to bring our understanding of the world so far.

I wonder what a future of dragons and humans together would look like. I can't even begin to imagine it, but damn if I don’t want to see that. Who knows, maybe they could even help us land on the moon?

The past few days have reminded me of why I chose to do the things I’ve done, and it’s been…soothing for my sense-of-self, for lack of a better term.

Though this may have come at the cost of shattering Fathom's worldview several times.

Wound progress update: The wound has shrunk by another centimeter.