Page 31 of Dragon Keeper

It’s not that interesting.

Nonsense. I’m interested. “So you trade with the village here, right, Tyr?” He changed the subject for now.

“Oh, yes. We trade with Pelagos. They give us salts often, and in return, we send honey, many different vegetables, dry goods.”

“I imagine there’s a lot of fish in your diet, Aleana,” Riley teased, and she tossed her head in a laugh.

“Indeed. We do enjoy our fish.” She winked. “I hope you do as well. If you don’t, don’t tell my mate. Fishing is his second great passion.”

Mama’s his first great.Fredda’s giggles filled the air.

As it should be, little one.

“We’re going to love whatever he brings.” Riley waved a hand, the motion expansive and open. “I think that’s wild, that you have all this diversity. So are there dragons who actually live in the sea?”

“Here we can all live where we wish, really. The Majrgygr live in the sea, for the most part. Drekkith like you, are suited to the mountains and the plains. Some dragons are less social than others. The Jaki, for instance. Where they live? One needs to be very careful if one wants to travel there in the land of eternal ice.”

Brayden’s eyes lit up, and Sloan shook his head. “Don’t even think about it.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“It’s probably the last kind of place we’d be called to live,” Sloan pointed out.

Riley ignored him. “So tell me more about the Jaki.”

“Scary,” Fredda murmured. “Big teefs.”

“Maybe we can do that after lunch when it’s grown-up time. We can have long discussions about anything.”

Okay, that was an incredibly clear shut up to you.And he glared at his brothers.

Riley, to his credit, just bowed his head and nodded like he understood. “That sounds like a great plan. I don’t think I’d ever get tired of this view here.”

Brayden nodded, eyes on the waves. “This is such a glorious place. Thank you so much again for inviting us.”

“Yeah.” Riley grinned his best scoundrel grin. “I’m so curious to know if the fish here are like fish back in our world, or if there are whales. Do you have dolphins?”

“What are those?” Fredda asked.

Sloan tried to figure out how to explain. “Well, a whale is a massive creature that looks like a fish, but it breathes air instead of water. And they can sing.”

“Hufagufs!” Aleana’s eyes lit up. “Great Singers.”

Tyr nodded. “Yes, exactly. Here we call them the Great Singers, the hufagufs. We see them rarely, but they make amazing songs, and they’re considered to be incredibly wise. We believe they once took to the skies but decided to come back and grace the oceans. They’re amazing.”

How cool was that concept, that a whale was just a dragon who had decided to go back to the sea? He thought they were pretty magical in the human realm, so why not? And that also explained why everybody had wanted to kill them back in the day, just like they had slain dragons for their magic.

For what they could give.

People were never giving. They were just taking and taking and taking.

But now wasn’t the time for such sadness. Now was the time to get to know Tyr’s sister and her baby girl and make sure everyone understood they were trustworthy.

“That definitely sounds like whales,” he said, looking at his brothers who grinned and nodded.

“It does. So tell me about what else you eat, little one,” Brayden told Fredda.

We eats lots of fishes and lots of vegetables that come from the ocean bed, and we have a garden, and it grows things dat Uncle Tyr can’t grow in his garden, but we can’t grow some of the stuffs he grows…