by Logan Jacobs
“That’s because my skin is the armor!” I grinned. “Dragonkin scales can take quite a beating without breaking. Also, I’m not talking about just ‘armor.’ I’m talking about stuff that will protect you from the elements, too. As much as I’d love for all my women to walk around naked, it wouldn’t exactly work back on our home island. They’d have their skin burned to a crisp in areas that should never, ever be tender.”
“Point taken.” Holara held up her hand to stop me from going further. “This is a conversation for another time. Tell me… How do you build this ‘waterproof’ roof you are suggesting? What are we looking for?”
“Branches, leaves, small stones… anything we can put in a grid formation,” I replied. “If one of you wants to grab the mud and start patching the cracks, I’ll go ahead and do the first layer.”
So, the three of us then broke off, went our separate ways, and searched for the materials we’d need to get the job done. Without any prompting, Holara dashed off to collect the mud, while Ahwara and I searched for debris we could use.
Eventually, the purple-haired Morpho woman returned to the scene with two giant fistfuls of sloppy, wet sludge, and then she got to work on the cracks in the dwellings.
For the first layer, we only needed slight debris: a few large leaves, some pebbles to weight them down, and the occasional tiny branch. I gathered up as much as my arms could hold before I walked over to the nearest Morpho structure, laid them out on top, and started to organize them into a grid formation. Soon, Ahwara returned with her own armful of goodies, and we created another layer.
“I still think it’s cheating that you got a head start,” Nadir grumbled as she and the other three women returned to the clearing. “We would have beaten you if you didn’t have the extra second on us.”
“We beat you by three whole seconds!” Elzara giggled. “That extra second wouldn’t have done you much good.”
While the Coonag and the Morpho women bantered, I observed what they had brought us. Over their shoulders they carried massive, six-foot wide leaves as well as thick branches, all except Lezan, who was cupping a bunch of liquid.
“What on earth is that?” I asked the multicolor-haired woman.
“Fanpine sap,” Ahwara answered as a smile spread across her face. “You’re a genius, furry-tail woman!”
“The name’s Lezan,” the Coonag chuckled, “but thanks.”
“It’s the stickiest material we have on this island,” Ahwara explained to me. “We often use it to bond hopperskin and bone to make our weapons. If you let it dry properly, it can last for years.”
“Hold on…” Mira spoke up, and by her frown, she was obviously disturbed. “Did you just call the leather on your weapons ‘hopperskin?’ Please tell me it’s not what it sounds like.”
“It is,” Holara confirmed with a wide grin. “You saw first-hand how tough the skin of a hopper is. Why wouldn’t we use it to make our weapons?”
“So… you touch that every time you go into battle… ” Mira cringed at the thought, but she said no more.
“But how long does the sap take to dry?” I asked. “We probably only have another two or three hours before the storm is upon us, and I don’t want all of our hard work to be washed away.”
“I’d also like to know how long it takes to dry,” Lezan chuckled nervously and nodded to her hands. “For more obvious reasons.”
“It takes about an hour,” Ahwara replied. “Even shorter if you have the heat of a dragon’s breath to dry it out.”
I glanced over and saw Tirian, our only fire-breathing dragon, was still hard at work digging the levee, and the little silver creature was walking around the perimeter of the clearing slowly as he used small puffs of his fire breath to clear out any foliage and create a small, charred line in the soil.
Malkey was right behind him, with Arrick still on his back, and the water dragon pushed his head down into the dirt and then walked forward. His elongated, pointy snout acted as a makeshift plow, and soft dirt entrenched his head while he moved forward.
Jemma and Sela were right behind the two dragons, both with a spear in their hands, and they used their weapons to push up the dirt that had been disturbed into a large pile. Jonas took up the rear, and the poor soothsayer was stuck using his hands to even out the work of our other crewmates. The mounds of dirt were not too large at the moment, but I wasn’t worried. This was only the first pass, after all.
Suddenly, a loud crack of thunder echoed through the air from afar, and I knew we were running out of time.
“We’d better get to work,” I sighed, “and fast.”
The plan from there was pretty much straightforward. Holara would go around and spread the patching mud onto the blemishes in the houses. Then Ahwara, Mira, Candara, and I would come by and place a bunch of debris as the first layer. Nadir, Elzara, and Zerandrie came next with the somewhat larger debris, and finally Lezan finished it off with a drizzle of the sticky sap.
Once one dwelling was done, the black-and-white-haired Coonag woman would race back up a nearby tree to grab some more adhesive and then return just as we were finishing up the next one.
The entire process took about two hours total, and we got seven of the ten dwellings done before we started to feel the first spittle of rain against our skin.
“Shit,” I grumbled, “I thought we were going to have more time. I guess this will have to do.”
“We have seven of them waterproofed,” Mira noted, “and there are thirteen of us, plus the dragons. We’ll have to split off into pairs, but I don’t mind sharing a room if it’s the difference between getting soaked or staying dry.”
“What about the dragons?” Nadir questioned. “What did you do for them when it rained?”
“I’m not sure about your infant,” Ahwara chuckled, “but the adult dragons loved to play in the rain. It didn’t bother them one bit, so we never really tried to address the issue.”
“Tirian? Malkey?” I asked the two dragons simultaneously through our bond. “How do you feel about the rain?”
It doesn’t bother me one bit, Malkey admitted. I would honestly be happy if I could live in the rain twenty-four hours a day.
Not surprising. He was a water dragon, after all, and those guys were born and raised to have a love for all things aquatic.
Tirian, on the other hand, wasn’t so keen on the idea.
What do you mean? the silver reptilian gulped. You want me to… sleep out here in the rain? What if it snuffs out my breath forever?
“I’m not sure if that’s a thing that can even happen,” I chuckled, but the dragon wasn’t convinced.
Then there’s hypothermia… I don’t want to freeze to death out here! Tirian pleaded.
It’s alright, my friend, Jemma’s soft voice interjected. You can bunk with me in one of the dwellings. You’re still small enough to fit, so we’d better take advantage of that while we can.
“It looks like Tirian is pairing up with Jemma,” I explained to the Morphos. “Malkey’s just going to hang out here in the rain. That’ll be better, anyways, because it means we can keep an eye on the levee once the floodwaters start.”
“Speaking of floodwaters…” Elzara noted as she looked up at the darkening sky. “We should probably get inside. Very soon, before the torrential downpour.”
I nodded at the blue-haired woman before I turned to my friends working on the levee.
“That’s time, guys!” I called over to my friends and family. “What’s the final measurement on that mound?”
Jemma and Jonas both walked over to the dirt levee, pressed their bodies up as close to it as they could, and tried to measure with their hands.
“I’m only six feet tall,” Jonas answered, “and as you can see it comes up to about my torso…”
“Four and a half feet, maybe?” Jemma sighed. “I know it’s not as high as you wanted, but we’ve got it pretty even around the whole clearing.”
“That should be fine,” I reassured my crew. “It�
�s not like there’s a river or a lake nearby. This is just to keep any rushing water at bay that comes down those hills. I doubt it gets even close to being four foot deep, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
As we continued to talk, the trees began to rustle harder, accompanied by the sound of the rushing winds. The small sprinkles of rain soon turned into a downpour, and we all went looking for shelter.
“This way.” Ahwara motioned to the largest of the dwellings. “This one will hold us all, and it has some supplies we’ll need to make it through the night.”
We followed the pink-winged Morpho woman into the structure, where all thirteen of us just barely fit. Inside was a large table and stools built into the floor and made out of the same stucco-like material that made up the rest of the house. All of it had been cracked from the high fall, but it was still relatively close together and usable. There were a few spots where the table was uneven and the stools had a hand-width gap, but otherwise everything seemed like it was in working order.
“Welcome to our dining hall,” Ahwara said as she gestured around the small room. “Or, at least, what’s left of our dining hall…”
The orange-haired pixie woman headed to the back of the structure, where there was a small nook in the wall with several shelves. A few containers laid strewn on the shelves, but several of them, along with their contents, were spread out across the ground. Ahwara bent down to scoop up the fallen jars, and her new position put her small, round ass on full display.
I tried not to obviously ogle at the woman’s toned butt cheeks, but they were incredibly tight and delicious looking, so it was very hard not to. Ahwara might have been slender and petite, but her ass was nearly double the width of her waist.
All of my excitement went out the window, though, when I noticed Arrick was staring, too.
I cleared my throat, and the boy jumped about a foot into the air, turned beet red, and overcorrected his gaze up to the ceiling. And then back to the floor, and then back to the ceiling.
He may be the future king of the dragonkin, but he was still just a child. He didn’t need to be getting into that sort of thing quite yet.
Finally, Ahwara turned around with a large sack in one hand and a small, cracked wooden container on the other.
“Take a seat, everyone,” she ordered with a smile. “You’re all in for a treat… Many of our provisions have survived the fall.”
“Dare I ask what these ‘provisions’ are?” Mira asked as she narrowed her golden eyes skeptically. “Please don’t tell me it’s a bunch of hopper meat.”
“Don’t be silly,” Candara giggled. “Hopper meat has to be eaten right away, or else it spoils. We don’t have any way to preserve it for longer than a day or two.”
I needed to teach these women a thing or two about preservation techniques. I’d never done frog meat before, but surely it couldn’t be much harder than fish or alligator or any other sort of aquatic creature. Perhaps that could be lesson number one, should we make it back to our home island in one piece.
We all took our seats at the table, as uncomfortable as they might be. My stool was cracked straight down the middle, and I could feel the crevice riding up against my ass as I tried to get comfortable. Finally, I figured out that, if I shifted back and forth every few minutes, I didn’t feel so bad.
Ahwara licked her lips as she took the lid off the wooden container and then dumped its contents onto the middle of the table, and out of the medium-sized wood jar poured dozens of small, quarter-sized brown balls. The circular objects were covered in a small amount of fuzz, with deep lines of indentation running vertically along their body, and as they rolled closer, I realized what they were.
Nuts. Giant seeds probably taken from one of the oversized trees in the surrounding area.
“Yeeeees!” Elzara practically moaned as she threw back her blue head and bounced up and down. “Roasted canopy fignuts are my favorite.”
“It looks like a small coconut,” my son observed as he picked up one of the nuts and examined it in his hand.
“I’ve never had a ‘coconut’ before.” Zerandrie smiled at the boy, “But trust me when I say these make sap pudding taste like dirtcrawler casserole.”
“I have no idea what any of that means.” Arrick shrugged. “I’ll take your word on it, though.”
Without another second of hesitation, Arrick popped the canopy fignut into his mouth and bit down, hard. There was an eardrum-shattering crunch as his teeth grinded against its rock-solid shell, and my son’s eyes went wide as he yelped with pain, jumped a foot out of his stool, and spat the nut out onto the table. He then proceeded to stick out his tongue and brush it like he was trying to get all of the flavor off.
“You have to open it first,” Holara explained with an amused laugh. “Like this.”
The purple-haired morpho grabbed one of the nuts before her, held it firmly, and then slammed it against the table as hard as she could. It didn’t break the first time, so she smashed it against the stucco-like piece of furniture twice more. It broke the third time it hit the table, when it splintered into two and revealed the pure white innards of the nut.
Holara used her finger to scoop out the meat of the morsel, which seemed to have a similar consistency to a soft cheese. Then she popped the nut into her mouth, swallowed it in a single gulp, and smiled.
“Oh.” Arrick slapped himself on the forehead. “Let me try that again.”
This time, my son slammed the nut into the table with such force the whole thing shook. The pod split open instantly, and the boy lit up as he shoved one of the halves up to his mouth and practically inhaled it down in a single gulp.
The rest of us proceeded to get to work breaking the nuts as the rain beat down upon our shelter from outside, but I couldn’t stop glancing up at the cracks in the ceiling and hoping our patchwork and waterproofing had worked. I could see a small bit of dampness spreading out from the crack, but it didn’t seem to be anything like a major leak.
So, I turned my attention back to dinner, popped open a nut with my bare hands, scooped out the meat, and then stuck it into my mouth. The white substance had a strange texture, almost like yogurt mixed with warm porridge, and the flavor was very earthy, nutty, and scorched, but it somehow worked.
“Damn, this is good.” I whistled as I finished off my piece and went back for another. “You guys eat this all the time?”
“It’s practically half our diet,” Ahwara replied. “You can find these things all over the forest floor, which makes them an easy meal. They can be eaten raw, of course, but we always like to have one of our dragons toast them if possible. That, or you cook them over a fire for a few minutes until they get that smoky flavor.”
“Imagine what Hali could do with these,” Jemma sighed as she devoured a canopy fignut.
“Hali?” Candara asked as she cocked her head. “Is that one of your friends back home?”
Sela nodded. “She’s our royal cook. Best one in the world.”
“She’s always making us incredible food for our feasts,” Mira agreed, and the gold-scaled warrior was practically drooling. “Wild boar… All sorts of fish… If it is edible, Hali can do wonders with it.”
“So, you all have a dedicated cook?” Elzara frowned like she was puzzled. “Does that mean you have to rely on her to survive?”
“No, no.” I shook my head at the blue-haired pixie. “We all know how to cook our own food. Hali just knows how to make things taste a million times better than any of us do, so she’s in charge of creating the menu whenever we have a feast. Trust me, as good as these nuts are, she’ll find a way to make them a million times better.”
We continued eating the fignuts as we bantered about every topic under the sun. Our two parties exchanged funny stories, talked about how our homes were constructed, and even a few accounts of past battles. Almost all of the Morpho women’s war stories consisted of them fighting off a particularly difficult beast, but they never included any humanoids o
r orcs.
So, when we finally got to talking about our victories over the orcs, wargs, and maldungs, the Morpho women looked completely flabbergasted.
“Wow.” Ahwara shook her head in disbelief. “The Morpho men had told us stories about other humanoid creatures, but we’ve never seen them for ourselves. And we certainly haven’t had to fight against them like you have.”
“What about the Morpho men?” I asked. “Did they ever talk about fighting off orcs?”
“They didn’t mention it.” Ahwara’s rose-colored wings fluttered softly as she mulled over her words. “You have to remember we are a peaceful people. We don’t fight unless we absolutely have to, and we only hunt so we can survive.”
“So, what,” Arrick spoke up with a mouthful of fignuts, “do you guys just hide all the time?”
“If we can.” Candara nodded her golden head. “That’s why you’ve never encountered our species before, you know. There are probably Morpho people on every island you’ve been to. They just do a good job at avoiding you!”
“Are you sure you haven’t seen any other humanoids on this island before?” Mira pressed as she leaned forward. “Because it looked like there was a pretty nasty skirmish on the north beach.”
“A skirmish?” Ahwara raised an eyebrow.
“We saw boot prints,” I explained. “As well as a spot where it looked like a human figure had fallen. There were also bits of weapons out there, too. We found one of your fan-blades buried in the sand.”
All five of the butterfly women went rigid at the comment, and their faces were frozen with grim realization as they looked around at each other solemnly.
“So, then the men did make it here…” Holara trailed off.
“They just were killed before they could make it to their village,” Elzara finished.
“Then where are the bodies?” Ahwara protested, and I could tell she was in a bit of denial. “If they were killed in battle, shouldn’t there be a corpse or at least bones out on the battlefield?”
“I can’t answer that one, unfortunately,” I sighed. “All we know is there was some sort of fight on the beach, and somebody wearing boots came out on the other side alive.”
