Here Be Dragons: Book 1 of the Emergence Series

Fathom woke up feeling much better, though he voiced some irritation at Pryce insisting on recording his vital signs.

“I am better, why do you need to do this?” He asked impatiently.

“You are not much better, and I am doing this so I learn how fast you get better, then I know how fast dragons get better after being sick,” Pryce said, not for the first time. He ignored the rest of the dragon’s protests and looked at the data; Fathom was swiftly returning to more reasonable numbers; it seemed his fever was mostly over.

Fathom watched warily as Pryce prepared another dose of medicine.

“I do not need to take medicine, I am better,” he insisted.

“If you stop taking antibiotics after you start feeling better the fever will come back and you will probably die,” Pryce scolded. “Take your medicine.”

Fathom reluctantly obeyed, shuddering as he drank the familiar concoction.

“How much do your wounds hurt?” Pryce asked when Fathom had finished.

“Better, but still hurts.”

“How many days until you think you can climb down to the beach?” Pryce asked. “I want to take things from the ship like food, but I need your help.”

Fathom perked up upon hearing the last part, and Pryce belatedly realized he probably should not have mentioned that.

“Food like soup?” Fathom asked hopefully, confirming his suspicions.

“Yes, food like soup,” Pryce sighed, “But don’t tell me you can go soon like today, or I won’t go until ten days from now.”

Fathom closed his mouth, having evidently been about to do just that. “…Five…days?” He said, looking at Pryce sidelong to see how this answer would be taken.

“Okay, that’s good. I’ll take out your stitches in five days.”

“I can fly in five days?” Fathom asked skeptically, glancing at his chain-bound limb.

“Oh no, sorry, I mean most of the stitches in your body, not wings,” Pryce amended, making Fathom’s spines fall slightly in disappointment. “How long does it take for dragon wing-bones to heal?”

Fathom shrugged awkwardly. “Maybe thirty days for bone to not move, sixty days for bone to be strong? Dragon bones almost never break, only wing bones sometimes break. How long does it take for human bones to heal?” Fathom asked curiously.

“Same, thirty to sixty days, sometimes bad breaks take longer,” Pryce said, then paused. “Do dragons have a word for thirty days? Is it a moon?”

“Yes, word is like word for ‘moon’. What is human word for this?”

“One month,” Pryce answered. It wasn’t surprising that dragons would have the same concept, it was pretty obvious after all. “What do dragons think the moon is?” Pryce asked curiously.

“We don’t know,” Fathom said simply.

“You…don’t know?” That was odd, all sorts of ancient cultures had explanations for what the moon was.

“It glow like weak sun, but look like rock, and sometimes it change color. It is very strange,” Fathom said, then paused. “I am tired, but you can explain this later, yes?” He asked, seemingly excited and drowsy at the same time.

“Yes, of course I can,” Pryce grinned.

Fathom rumbled, pleased. He turned to go take a nap, but abruptly stopped to turnaround and ask, “I forgot to ask, why did you leave your book with chronometer?”

“Oh, that’s my journal, I write things I think about in my journal. I thought maybe if I…die, you can give it to another human, and they can…read it to you?” Pryce explained, realizing Fathom may not appreciate this species of defeatism.

But the dragon only tilted his head at this, “You did not die, so you can read this to me now?”

“…No,” Pryce said, remembering the rather embarrassing contents of his ‘final’ message.

“Why? You want me to hear these words, yes?” Fathom asked, blinking in confusion. “You want other humans to read your words to me, but you do not to read your words to me?”

“…Yes?” Pryce said sheepishly.

“I do not understand,” the dragon huffed. “Read words you write for me, and I will…forgive you?” Fathom said experimentally.

“No, no,” Pryce rebuffed, desperately hoping to nip this in the bud. “I went to ship to save your life, you can’t do that,” he protested weakly.

Fathom made a chuffing noise, his spines slowly flared in what Pryce feared was a smile. “Read it to me,” the dragon cajoled, detecting weakness.

“No,” Pryce tried to say firmly.

“Read it to me.”

“No!”

“Read it to me!”

“I am not reading it to you! And weren’t you tired?!”

“…Fly well. Your friend, A. Pryce,” Pryce read, his ears burning with embarrassment as he finished reading his entry.

“I do not know many of these words,” Fathom said, clearly dissatisfied.

“You didn’t ask me to teach you these words, you only asked me to read it to you,” Pryce said, taking what little refuge he could behind this piece of literalism.

“…Okay, I forgive you,” Fathom rumbled, standing up with some difficulty.

“Great,” Pryce said shamefacedly.

Fathom rumbled in amusement, then turned towards his cave before glancing back and saying, “I go to sleep now, friend.”

“Yes, yes,” Pryce said, waving dismissively as he failed to suppress a twitch of a smile.

[JOURNAL ENTRY]

Day 51,

Fathom’s vital signs continue to improve, though he insisted that I only measure them once per day. He reports that he feels much better, though he is still lethargic. We didn’t do much today, though Fathom has expressed that he wishes to learn what humans know about the moon.

The scaly bastard also coerced me to read the last journal entry I wrote before leaving for The Horizon, but in exchange he’s forgiven me for my slight against him. Fair enough, I suppose.

He has since spent the rest of the day napping, and I hunted one of the strange hexapedal deer-like creatures that I saw yesterday; it must have separated from the herd and wandered up the mountain. This animal has strange flaps of skin on its lower back that appears to be capable of opening up, revealing a sort of white tuft; perhaps it’s for attracting a mate or for communicative purposes[2].

I wish I had the globe with me, but I can make do with the things I have on hand.

Vitals signs, sunrise of Day 51:

Respiratory rate: 7 bpm

Temperature: 30.75 degrees[3]

Major HR: 35 bpm

Upper minor HR: 6 bpm

Lower minor HR: 6 bpm

Hydrogen HR: 5 bpm

Pupil dilation: Responsive

[Day 52]

Fathom woke up more easily, and said he was starting to feel much better. Pryce was satisfied with the progression of his health, so he had prepared a long lesson today.

“The moon is round, like the Earth, but the moon goes around the Earth, like the Earth goes around the sun.”

“We know this, one dragon long time ago see rock in sunlight, then she understand that the moon change shape because it is like round rock in sunlight,” Fathom said. “But moon always looks the same. It needs to spin not too fast and not too slow; we do not know why this is.”

“That makes sense,” Pryce nodded. “The answer is very complicated. A long time ago, the moon did spin faster, but Earth’s gravity pulls on moon and slows it down until it spins at the speed it has today. We have much math to prove this, but I do not know it,” he said apologetically. “But I can show you how we calculated the size and distance of the moon.”

“You do this like how you calculate distance of sun?” Fathom guessed, his tail-tip twitching in anticipation.

“Good guess, but no,” Pryce said, laying out a few sticks so that they radiated from a grey rock. He belatedly realized that he had not yet explained the nature of light to Fathom. “What do dragons think light is?”

“Light is…light. Like rock, like water, light is thing that exists,” Fathom shrugged.

Dragons didn’t have a theory on the nature of light? Well, to be fair it was a rather abstract concept. “The word for small things is called ‘particles’, and we call the particles that are light ‘photons’.”

“Light is small things? Like…water and rain?”

“Yes,” Pryce said approvingly, picking up his water bottle to pour some onto his cupped hand. “These are droplets,” he explained, letting the beads of water drip from his fingers.

Fathom stared intently at the liquid, thinking. “I can no see light particles, they must be…very small?”

“Yes, they are very small. I don’t know how small, different photons have different sizes, but they are all very small.”

“I understand.”

Pryce knew that photons are particles that behave as a wave, but that was unlikely to come up for a long time and it would only confuse Fathom. “Photons always move in straight lines, like these sticks,” Pryce gestured to his diagram. “Moon is like this rock, moon is much smaller than sun, so light from moon is not all straight. We call lines that do not touch each other parallel lines.”

“I understand, your math will not work if light is not all straight.”

“Yes, exactly. The moon sometimes becomes red and black for a few minutes, yes?”

“Yes, we do not know what causes this.”

“The Earth is in front of the moon,” Pryce said, bringing a fist over the rock so that it was covered by a partial shadow. “Black part is Earth’s shadow, what do you think causes the red?” He quizzed, curious to see if Fathom could solve this problem.

“I don’t know,” Fathom chuffed, a noise that sounded vague akin to a human scoff.

“I told you things, you have everything you need to find the answer,” Pryce said, crossing his arms.

Fathom was quiet for a minute, and Pryce realized he had perhaps lied without meaning to. “Light goes straight, but it can bend in some things like glass, water, and air,” he hinted.

“Light can bend in air?” Fathom asked, confused. “I do not see light bending.”

“It bends a little bit in air,” Pryce said.

Fathom hummed in thought, then asked, “Light from sunset is red, light from sunset go to moon?”

“Yes!” Pryce grinned. “Light bends in air, some colors bend more, and only red-light bends so much that it can go behind Earth.”

“Why is sky blue-purple and UV? Why is sky at sunset red and less UV?” Fathom asked, his great eyes shining in wonder at having this age-old mystery solved.

“Sky is…blue-purple?” Pryce asked blankly.

“Yes? Sky is purple,” Fathom repeated, confused by his confusion.

“But the sky is just-” Pryce slapped his face, remembering Fathom saw different colors. His eyes were probably more or less sensitive to different colors of light than a human’s eyes, and Pryce knew that human eyes were better at seeing blue than purple; that was half the reason why the sky was ‘blue’. “Your eyes see things differently than my eyes,” Pryce said. “But I know why sky is blue-purple and UV like you see.”

He picked up some pebbles and tossed them at the ground. “When things hit ground like that, they go in many directions, this is called ‘scattering’. Light that is blue and purple is scattered by air. At noon the sun is high up in the sky, so light is scattered and hits your eyes, so you see them as blue-purple. At sunset all the blue-purple light is gone because light goes through much more air, and you see red. Makes sense?”

“This is complicated…but I think it makes sense,” Fathom rumbled uncertainly.

“It’s okay, this is not important for you to know right now. Remember how the moon can become black?”

“…yes,” Fathom said after a delay, he still seemed distracted by the color of the sky. “Earth’s shadow causes moon to become black.”

“Yes, the shadow is the same size as Earth, and we know the circumference of Earth,” Pryce said, smiling.

“And you can find circumference of moon using Earth’s shadow,” Fathom said in growing realization.

“Exactly!” Pryce confirmed with a grin, bringing out a notepad from his pocket to show Fathom a picture of a circle with a line drawn through it. “This is a circle. The longest straight line you can draw in a circle is this, the diameter. Half of the diameter is the radius. Do dragons know how to get diameter from circumference?” Pryce asked curiously.

“Yes, divide circumference by a number like 3.15 to get diameter, is this right?”

“Mostly yes, but this is closer to 3.1416. It is called pi, and it has never-ending decimal places.”

“Yes, yes, what is diameter of the moon?” Fathom asked impatiently.

“Moon is around 3.5 times smaller than Earth in diameter, and Earth diameter is 12,758 kilometers, so moon diameter is around 3,645 kilometers,” Pryce read off of his notes. These values were a little off the official ones, but they were close enough. Modern day values were obtained via more sophisticated methods, but all of those were far more complicated.

“Amazing, the moon is very big,” the dragon breathed in wonder. “How far away is moon?”

“That’s easier,” Pryce said, flipping the notebook to show a sketch of one isosceles within the other, with the only difference being that one was bigger than the other.

“A triangle is a type of shape, like a square, but it has 3 sides. You can draw a triangle like this from your eyes to the coin, and you can draw another triangle from your eyes to the moon, do you understand this drawing?”

“Yes, but how do you use this to find moon distance?” Fathom asked, looking skeptically at Pryce as if he thought the human might be going on another tangent.

“This circle here,” Pryce said, ignoring the question, “is a round thing like a coin. If you hold a coin close, it looks bigger than the moon, but if you hold it far away it will look smaller than the moon, understand?”

“…yes?” Fathom said, still unsure where Pryce was going with this.

“If you hold a coin where the coin is the same size as the moon, then divide the coin distance by the coin diameter, you get a number called a ratio. If you divide the moon distance by the moon diameter, you get the same ratio. This is because these triangles are the same, one is just bigger than the other,” Pryce explained.

He could almost hear the gears turning in the dragon’s head as he stared intently at the diagram. “We can measure diameter and distance of coin, and if distance divided by diameter is the same for coin and moon, the only number we do not know is…diameter,” Fathom said, sitting up in comprehension and then wincing as he pulled on the stitches somewhere.

“Easy there, sit down and I’ll tell you,” Pryce said placatingly. Even still, he was impressed with the speed the dragon worked out the problem, especially if they didn't have the concept of equations to organize their math. “The moon is around 360,000 kilometers to 400,000 kilometers away.”

“Distance of the moon changes?” Fathom asked, noting the oddly wide range.

“Yes, the moon orbits Earth like this,” Pryce said, doodling an oval around a sphere. “It gets closer here, and further away here,” he pointed at the perigee and apogee[4] respectively.

“Amazing, this math is very easy, but very hard to find. No dragon learn this before,” Fathom sighed in a melancholic manner, looking up at the sky despite the fact that the moon was invisible right now.

“Wait, can you see the moon?” Pryce asked, looking up to see a sky spotted with clouds.

“No, not right now,” Fathom said, a little surprised by the question. “…It is very strange.”

“What is?” Pryce asked.

“Dragons can see farther than humans, can see more colors than humans, but humans can see…more,”

“…We didn’t do it alone,” Pryce said, after a moment. “Things I know are things I learned from other humans, many of these humans lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. We try things, and most of the time we fail, sometimes we succeed, but we always learn. We teach other humans what we learn, and they can succeed without failing.”

“Dragons teach and help hatchlings…but we do not help each other, do not teach each other…we just…fight,” Fathom murmured, sounding a bit self-conscious.

“That’s okay, I teach you, and you can teach other dragons.”

Fathom rumbled doubtfully at this, but did not voice any dissent. Instead he asked, “Is there a word for humans failing, succeeding, and learning?”

“Yes,” Pryce smiled. “It’s called science.”

[JOURNAL ENTRY]

Day 52,

The symptoms of Fathom’s fever have largely dissipated. Currently, his main problems are his injuries, and those will heal with time. His wing-bone is still held in place, so I’m optimistic that it will heal well.

Fathom seems to be pretty amazed at the things humans can do, and while I share these feelings, I don’t think they paint an entirely accurate picture of humans. Perhaps I should go over some history later once he is well enough to escort me to The Horizon.

Vitals signs, sunrise of Day 52:

Respiratory rate: 7 bpm

Temperature: 30.73 degrees[5]

Major HR: 35 bpm

Upper minor HR: 6 bpm

Lower minor HR: 6 bpm

Hydrogen HR: 5 bpm

Pupil dilation: Responsive