[mesolec] Dragons aren't evil, just a pain in the unmentionables.
Let me begin by saying this: the worst piece of advice you may ever receive is "let sleeping dragons lie." I say this not out of any particular desire to bother the damn things, but because while they're asleep is practically the only time you can convince the bastards to tell the truth. Had I known that, it would have taken me almost three years less to get here, and I might not be in this kind of a predicament.
Estune is more or less as I expected it to be, from the reports. That means it's nothing like I remember it. There are some surface-level similarities, of course--the air smells the same; that same scent of kid's magic and recycler vines. The colors are still clean white on verdant green on eye-searing blue with a saturation high enough to make a responsible painter weep. I can still hear The Bell ringing in the wind, just like it's not supposed to do. But you can tell, even from the outskirts, that the life has left the area. The buildings have drawn in, clumped together against the Acrolica--as if the Acrolec would give a damn about them. There isn't any sound.
Well, except the squirrels. It figures that they would stay on. Where else can you get acorns that congregate and bury themselves? It almost figures that this would be the reception I got.
I have a tucker sack slung over one shoulder--got it from a the last tentmaker in Balar, or so he claimed--and over the past week it's become inexplicably heavy. I figure that I should probably find a place to set it down and do a total inventory before I strike out into Estune. It's gotten to the point that I can't remember what's in there any more--I know I don't have half the stuff I packed and it seems like I do have half the stuff I didn't, and you might almost think that was a fair trade if you didn't know the kind of stuff I left behind. Once I woke up with a paper bottle of angst having materialized beneath my lunch--the bottle (of course) had ruptured and was seeping the black stuff through the canvas, over my clothes, and worst of all into my chicken. I had to choose between not eating that day and suffusing myself with a black cloud of despair, and let me tell you that "first one, then the other" is not the wisest thing to pick in that situation.
But anyway. I was telling you about the dragons, wasn't I?
Somewhere on the Nor'Eastern edge of Tay, where the mountains refuse to act like good hunks of stone and grow every year instead of eroding, you'll find a cretch of dragons if you're either unlucky enough to stumble upon them or (as it was in my case) fool enough to go looking. I went after them on reports that they were good oracles, and this is true enough. Whoever told me that they'd give me the answers to all my questions deserves to be dragged out into the street and shot.
It's not that dragons are compulsive liars. It really isn't. That's as unfair to say as "Cats are unmitigatedly lazy." (If you've ever seen a cat, you'll know that they spare no effort in the pursuit of this so-called laziness. It is carefully rehearsed, carefully executed. A cat will spend weeks or even months sampling the very best resting spots available to hir, and will make a final decision with the utmost of gravity. Laziness is a train that belongs to humans, some dogs, and most tritons. And, I suppose, a host of other creatures that I don't care to list right now.) Dragons simply have minds--brilliant ones--that don't work along the same principles as most of the rest of us. "Truth is subordinate to beauty," or some such, which would be all well and good if I was in the market for prime fictional real estate, but helps me not at all when I need to find my way home.
Estune. Dragons have an odd relationship with Estune, and either they'll love it or they'll hate it or they'll quote epic lyric draconic poetry about it for hours, and the latter option generally won't tell you their opinion on it one way or the other. I walked up to one and asked her what I thought would be a simple enough question: "are the beings of Estune still alive?"
She looked me in the eye with the air of one about to impart great wisdom, and said "Surely you don't think that you belong to the land? Or that the land belongs to you? Or that the name you've arbitrarily assigned the land can have any real bearing on your own qualities, certainly not enough to establish allegiance, and barely enough to establish relevancy? Ask me again when you know what you're asking."
So, I tried again. Again she rebuffed me. This went on for quite some time as I twisted my words around, trying to communicate what was to be a vastly important question.
Three days later I had gone through seven pages of terms and definitions and caveats trying to beat specificity into a language that wasn't meant for it in the first place and resented it now, and by the time I had read through the first page the dragon was rolling her eyes at me. "Give it up," she said eventually. "Tooth and fur*. I know what you meant, already."
*Dragons--at least, these--are scaled and not furred. This is a story for another time.
I almost screamed twice, first in exasperation and second in foolish joy. At last, I thought, the dragon is bored, and may be persuaded to give me a straight answer! "So," I asked, "what has happened to the beings of Estune?"
She thought for a moment, scratched idly behind one earhole, and nodded. "All right. I'll tell you, but first you have to get me something from the other room."
"All right," I said. "What?"
"You have to get me a drink from the container by the corner. You can't miss it. It's thrice as tall as you, and made from the talon of a Great Roc."
I walked toward the back of her cave, where the only opening aside from the exit was. I found a crude storeroom of sorts--with a number of smoked whole antelope, a case of charcoal, and a carved-stone issue of Proclamations and Perspectives. Not only was there no container by the corner, there was really nothing that could be charitably called a corner.
I walked back out. "I know you said I couldn't miss it," I began, "but--"
"Not that other room," she told me. "The other other room."
I stared at her for a while.
"The one in Apperu," she prompted.
Apperu was three days away by courier pegasus, and nearly a year by any conventional means. I stared at her bit longer.
"Vintage Apperuvian wine," the dragon sighed with what I believe may have been a feigned note of longing. "I miss it so."
I took my leave of her without saying goodbye.
That, my friends, was only an illustration. Let it be known that I spent a very long time there, and while I did learn the rules to eight international varieties of blackjack and three of parcheesi, nothing remotely resembling the answer I was looking for was ever put forward. Eventually I got one to sleeptalk me through finding the Lóngs, who would probably have the information I needed. They might demand something suitably mythic from me like my firstborn son, but at this point the option was sounding pretty appealing.
But they got off one parting shot before I left--the directions that bull dragon gave me, even asleep, took me the long way around Tay to get to the Lóngjia.
Bastards.
To clear up some unfortunate tales, dragons aren't wildly interested in eating humans. They tend not to yield high-quality meat--or much of it; the clothes are horrid when left on and aggravating to take off, the range of perfumes and colognes and makeups is enough to sour the skin, and in any case dragons tend not to eat things they can have a conversation with. They prefer to torment them with bad jokes and convoluted tricks instead.