Chapter 6-4, Sophia and Ary'Lorn

[secretoracle]

Sophia and Tanis gather their things and board the Endurance.  She is a Dragon Engine paddle ship, the only one of her kind.  After off-loading all the supplies and personnel here they set sail for the coast of the Unexplored Reaches to try to link up with Major Maro.

The Captain tells them it will be about two days to the coast and another four to Ary'Lorn.

[cassbackward]

The Captain tells them it will be about two days to the coast and another four to Ary'Lorn.

Sophia spent weeks on Dragon Home, assisting the archaeologists with their cataloging and diagramming.  The long hours spent fiddling with sifters and brushes seems to have done her some good because, when she rejoins Tanis, she seems to have shed some of the hard-edged intensity she brought with her from the city she calls home.  She wears instead a kind of lazy, easy-going warmth that seems to come from having steeped herself in the history of a city thousands of years old.  She has, if only temporarily, the perspective of the Dracon on the petty machinations of humanity.

"Tanis," she says as she peels an apple, letting its rosy skin drop over the side of the paddle boat and disappear into the churning water, "you're fairly ancient, aren't you?"  Her tone is breezy, and her eyes glitter.  She's glad to be able to banter with him again.

[secretoracle]

"From the point of view of a young woman such as yourself.  Yes."

[cassbackward]

"From the point of view of a young woman such as yourself.  Yes."

She offers him the first cut from her apple once the peeling's done.  "Do you ever wonder what it means that you don't look it?"

[secretoracle]

Tanis takes the apple offered to him and smiles, "My father said that my mother aged well.  I always just thought it was something like that.  The blending of good blood if you will.  I swear my mother never seemed to age a day my whole life.  I always imagine that if they were still alive he'd be a bent over old man from years of archeology and my mother would look exactly the same as she did the day they left home."

[cassbackward]

Tanis takes the apple offered to him and smiles, "My father said that my mother aged well.  I always just thought it was something like that.  The blending of good blood if you will.  I swear my mother never seemed to age a day my whole life.  I always imagine that if they were still alive he'd be a bent over old man from years of archeology and my mother would look exactly the same as she did the day they left home."

Sophia looks thoughtful at that.  When she first met Tanis, she was a gawky twelve-year-old, and now she's in her twenties, full-grown and already a little past due for marriage and respectability by the reckoning of her Corinthian peers.  Meanwhile he hasn't aged a day.  "It suggests you've got something in your blood that none of the rest of us has, that maybe you're not entirely human.  Did you ever think about that?"

[secretoracle]

"Well, a man would have to have inhuman patience to put up with you all these years, so yes.  I used to think my mother was a sea nymph or something like that.  Washed up on shore and all.  Who knows, maybe she came from some other kingdom beyond the Eye of God."

[cassbackward]

"Well, a man would have to have inhuman patience to put up with you all these years, so yes.  I used to think my mother was a sea nymph or something like that.  Washed up on shore and all.  Who knows, maybe she came from some other kingdom beyond the Eye of God."

"Sea nymph?  You're not serious, are you?  Are there such things?"

[secretoracle]

"Well, just in bedtime stories.  Taking into account what you've learned in the last few weeks though, some bedtime stories are starting to look awful promising as real."

[cassbackward]

"Well, just in bedtime stories.  Taking into account what you've learned in the last few weeks though, some bedtime stories are starting to look awful promising as real."

Sophia nods, looking into the water as if she might see some pale, webbed hand sifting apple skin from the waves.  "What's it like to watch people age while you don't?"

[secretoracle]

"I try not to think about it.  That's probably why I spend so much time alone or in the ruins of the last great civilization."

[cassbackward]

"I try not to think about it.  That's probably why I spend so much time alone or in the ruins of the last great civilization."

She nods, looking somber as she thinks about what she's learned about the Dracon.  "I've been thinking about Draco, about what it means to live for hundreds of years and then throw away your chance at enlightenment for the sake of slaves who won't live even half that long.  It'd be like giving everything up for a dog or cat."  She pauses.  "Does time mean less, the more of it you have?"

[secretoracle]

"I'm not sure.  I think the more you have the more you should do with it.  That's what Draco did in the end.  Self sacrafice has to count for something, otherwise why would it ever enter our minds."

[cassbackward]

"I'm not sure.  I think the more you have the more you should do with it.  That's what Draco did in the end.  Self sacrafice has to count for something, otherwise why would it ever enter our minds."

She brings her gaze up off the water.  "How do you measure a life?"  Her smile makes it a rhetorical question.

[secretoracle]

A few days pass and the Endurance runs along the far eastern coast, along the Unexplored Reaches.  They finally stop near the northern edge and send a long boat ashore, returning with Major Maro and the woman he was sent to retreive.

The woman comes to Sophia, giving her some scrolls.  "Ma'am, Tammy Jordan of the Ministry of Intelligence.  These scrolls were to be given to you, I aquired them from a tribe of goblins in the Reaches.  They told me that they hold something they call 'The Last Secret'."

Sophia examines them and finds that they're in a badly executed form of Draconic, a stuttering attempt at formal and Informal.  It will take her sometime to decipher them.