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Early one morning, some days later, a young Darter Jracon named Dax gazed along the banks of the stream from the earthy entrance to the small dwelling he shared with his mother, Impera. Watching the hum of Odonata activity over the surface of the Salix and in and out of the many entrances to the Salix within, Dax turned to his mother who was just returning with fresh supplies for the morning meal. "Mae, what is happening at the Citadel?"
Impera sank from the air onto the small root tip that served as their front step, and lowering the full woven-reed basket she was carrying in her fore-tarsi, she turned slightly, her domed eyes bringing the willow tree behind her into view. Returning her gaze to her son, she nodded meaningfully towards the basket, which Dax zipped forward on half-wings to pick up.
"It looks like the rumour mill was spot on for a change," she sighed. "The Rangers have arrived to instigate military rule, and it looks like the Academy will be busy assisting with the transition, so I guess I'll have you under my feet today."
The oranges of Dax's exoskeleton danced with excitement as he leapt into the air, hissing "Yes!", then upsetting the basket with a misguided wingtip and knocking its contents all over the cool sand of the tunnel floor. Spotting his mother's disapproving look, the oranges on Dax's carapace were swiftly mottled with blushing reds. Without thinking, Dax scooped a little Vivo from the substrate around him, before forcing gentle ripples of Terra thauma through the floor which picked up and fussed at the discarded food items, rolling them as one down the sloping tunnel towards the small living chamber at the end.
"Dax!" his mother scolded, her antennae twitching with frustration. Instantly the ripples faded and the foodstuffs rattled to a skidding halt in the centre of the living chamber, bumping against the low table fashioned from a muted grey pebble. Dax lowered his head in shame. "Sorry Mae. I didn't think."
"There will come a time when you might actually need the Vivo that surrounds our home, and if you are wantonly wasting it rather than using your own tarsi then the soils will be scarred and useless. Responsible Thaumaturgy is all about moderation and balance. Surely your tutors must have told you that."
Dax thought back to sunny days last season when he and Sylk, his life-long Skimmer friend, had dodged Thaumaturgy class at the Academy and had gone hunting scatterbrained mosquitoes instead, blasting the flies with balls of Agua that knocked them out of the sky, Dax and Sylk munching down on damp mosquito and laughing together till the warm sun dipped. "Of course, Mae..." his voice wavered with the lie.
Impera noted the dip in his voice, as well as the colours of uncertainty that flickered across his carapace. "Hmmm, right then. Well please tidy up and help put away these things, and then I suggest you fly up to the Academy and see if, against all odds, Lord Haldis has any use of you today. I really don't know what I will do with you here if he doesn't."
Lord Haldis was Dax's Emerald magister, supervising his apprenticeship at the Academy. Dax was following in the footsteps of many Darters before him and training to be a scribe. While Dax would have much rathered be born an Emerald and join the ranks of the Rangers or Magi, his position in Odonata life was pre-ordained by his breeding, and so he was destined to become either a scribe, a medico or a research assistant, and he was too squeamish to become a medico and too impatient to spend his days running endless experiments for some dusty magister. So he had fallen by elimination into scribe training, the least bad of a pretty awful lot as far as Dax was concerned. He struggled with even the most basic of scribe talents, just preparing and mixing the inks invariably ended with him coated in the foul-smelling black stuff, and battling with the Jraconi alphabet with all of its subtleties, the numerous accents and the seemingly incomprehensible effect they had on pronunciation and spelling kept him awake at night. Lord Haldis fussed around Dax constantly, seemingly in a near-permanent cloud of frustration at his apprentice's overwhelming ineptitude, leaving Dax humiliated and too aware of his own worthlessness.
Dax sighed inwardly, he knew if he presented himself before Lord Haldis he would, without doubt, be squared away in a gloomy side chamber within minutes, copying some ancient crumbling text before it faded into much-deserved obscurity, with only the glow of a lonely firefly trapped and suspended in a bubble of Ar to illuminate his inky scratchings on the papier.
"But Mae," he spluttered, "if the Academy is closed then I could help you at home, or..." spotting Impera's exasperation radiating through her skin, Dax changed tack, and opted for a rare bout of honesty, "I could take the day and go watch the Rangers prepare the Salix?" He watched emotion, annoyance, and the desire to have the place to herself wash over his mother in waves of ochre, and knew, this once, he was winning.
Impera's mandibles mashed with indecision, then, "Here's the deal, take the morning, stay out of trouble, and find Lord Haldis after Sun Peak. No arguments..."
Dax knew better than to push any further, and already his morning plans were formulating firmly in his head. Dax sighed, maybe a pinch too disgruntled to be believed, "Deal, I guess. I promise I will keep out of trouble!"
And with that, Dax affectionately touched wingtips briefly with his mother before squeezing past her in the narrow tunnel and leaping out into the morning.
Feeling the sun's glow on his body Dax instantly sensed his heart rate quicken and the blood pulse through his wing veins. He loved the vitality the sunlight afforded him and craved it like a drug after a night's cooling sleep, or a day spent hefting cumbersome volumes around the Academy Library. Swooping down towards the gentle waters below his home he flicked past numerous entrances to other Jraconi homes like his own, dug into the near vertical sandy bank. Some were plain holes in the substrate, others with fancy reedwork probably intended to set the occupant above his neighbours, but all occupied and aflame with Vivo that he could sense through his antennae.
Casting his view back up the bank behind him to make sure his mother was not watching, Dax felt for a strand or two of errant Vivo, snagging them as he dove towards the rapidly approaching water's surface. Feeling the newly-absorbed energies pour through his system he conjured up an image in his mind of a cone of Ar before him, allowing the cone to coalesce and expand into a tube of spinning air molecules that wrapped themselves around his plummeting form.
The tip of the cone hit the water an instant before he himself dove below the surface, the frothing plates of air surrounding him and the stream's waters clashing and fussing at each other, while inside the Ar column Dax breathed freely, savouring for one moment the electric taste of the magically summoned air. A second later, and Dax had arched his body upwards and crested above the surface in a sparkling gleam, a crackle of energies coursing over the surface of his wings, dissipating from the tips.
Spinning drops of water from his body with a single, rapid barrel roll, Dax headed across the stream, away from the Salix. Instead, he aimed for the opposite bank of the stream, grazing the gentle grassy slopes that reached down to the water's edge before dodging past a patch of nodding Celandine.
Here, all along the stream's banks just beyond the reach of the Salix's morning shadow, were the Chacara, the farms and smallholdings where Jraconi Skimmer landowners tended their plantations - vast swathes of cultivated Bur-reeds at the water's edge, with Primrose, Hellebore, Celandine and Meadow Saffron among others tended further up the slopes. Dax had always been warned away from the Saffron fields, higher up on the damp meadows beyond the banks, due to the plants' toxic juices, much sought after by Emerald alchemists.
Following the contours of the banks, Dax skirted over a peculiar little-domed dwelling freshly crafted from reeds and plant stems. That was old Skimmer Vesuvio's latest croft, nearly hidden by the flower heads that stretched overhead. Vesuvio was something of a laughing stock in the Skimmer community as he flatly refused to build his dwelling underground or in the shelter of the roots of the numerous small trees that grew along the bank, like the other Skimmers.
Probably at least twice every moon cycle his croft was crushed or knocked flying by the hefty hooves of the great white and brown beasts, known locally as bovies, that grazed on the grassy meadow above. As a result, he had become quite a skilled, if unschooled reed-mason over time, continually repairing his home. This was much to the chagrin of the Chaser community, the Jracon breed naturally skilled and Council-appointed to build homes, furnishings and fashion for the Odonata from the Bur-reed. Dax remembered the times he and Sylk had cried with laughter watching as Vesuvio was forced to flee on wing from his strange little-domed home once again, narrowly escaping being squashed himself by a stumbling hoof.
However, as far as the Council was concerned, the presence of the bovie grazers was no laughing matter. The enormous creatures had first arrived the previous year, their horned heads rising above the scrubby bushes that dotted the wooded edges of the meadow, and they appeared to have taken up residence in the pastures above the stream. Much time, energy and resource was being expended keeping them away from the delicate Odonata crops. Thankfully, they were easily dispersed if they came too close. A loud buzz of the wings followed by a swift tap on one of their soft wet noses with a passing tarsus and they would lumber off heavily as one.
The Council had set up a side-committee to find ways to keep these dopey leviathans away from the Chacara, and many weird and wonderful contraptions conjured up by the committee lay dotted around the farms, now discarded and useless, many destroyed unwittingly by the waddling beasts themselves.
Dax slowed to a near hover near the discarded remains of one of these devices, a long twine trip wire fashioned from twisted reeds which had been stretched out at the level of the swinging hooves of the giant creatures. The twine, when tugged by a wandering hoof, had been designed to release the stopper on a reed-vial full of a noxious concoction of stinking iris, dead-nettle and garlic, but although the stench had stopped the herd in their hulking tracks it had been deemed too costly and had been shelved in favour of Skimmer wardens who patrolled the perimeter edges of the Chacaras instead.
Just beyond the coils of twine, sprinkled with morning dew, was a small out-cropping of smooth sandstone, jutting out of the stream bank, the dull yellow stone contrasting with the fertile greens and yellows of the surrounding Celandine farmland. At the base of the rock was a raised area of bare dirt, sculpted to create a flat landing surface, its perimeter demarcated by small pale stones. Where the bare earth met the stone a wide tunnel led below the rock. Two ornaments, the magical symbols of Agua and Terra, the elements favoured by the Skimmers, hung from the rock ceiling in the entrance, spinning in the gentle breeze. This was the family home of his closest friend Sylk, the Skimmer co-author in many of his wildest tales and exploits. Dax alighted neatly on the soil and opened his mind in order to sense the occupants. Unsurprisingly at this time of the morning, the dwelling was empty, so Dax leapt back into the air, rising high enough in order to be able to scan the surrounding Celandine fields. His ability to sense Vivo limited to quite a short range, Dax instead brought his exceptional Jraconi eyesight to bear, quickly spotting his friend at work on a bright yellow flowerhead a short distance inland, smoothing the petals of the flower before leaning inside the petal cup itself to harvest a little of the pollen from the stamen. He watched as Sylk then placed the yellowed dust in a small pouch around his neck before flitting on to a neighbouring flower, intent on assisting fertilisation, his tarsus and head liberally dusted with pollen. Dax knew that this was no random act, the donor and recipient flowers would have been carefully chosen to bring out the best in the crop, be it a brighter ultraviolet colouration to attract bees, or a stronger stem to withstand winds and, most urgently at that time, the ponderous hooves of the new bovie arrivals to the region.
Dax called out to Sylk who, with a quick dip of his wings, swooped up out of the flowerbeds and up to Dax's elevated position. With his striking black and white striped wings a blur, and his pale blue body rippling over with waves of darker bands of indigo indicating his welcome, Sylk rose into a near vertical position for an instant. Dax joined him in this position and facing each other they momentarily clasped fore-tarsi in a youthful affectation of the formal Emerald Ranger greeting.
Letting go of Dax's tarsus, Sylk looked confused, "Hey Dax, What's up? Shouldn't you be helping old Haldis up the Academy today?"
A call from across the Celandine field broke their conversation before it had started, "Sylk, don't you be slacking! We gotta get all them new matures pollinated proper before nightfall..."
Dax turned in the air and saw the source of the voice; Sylk's father, Heptorus, a fair distance away, and similarly coated in yellow pollen, already dipping down and turning back to his wing-aching work. Sylk yelled back, "Alright, Pa, be there in a sec!", turning back to Dax, he shrugged, "What gives?"
Dax kept his voice conspiratorially low, "Haven't you heard? The Military has arrived to deal with the Hawker troubles and so the whole Salix is in total pandemonium. It looked like a burning ants' nest from my place. My mum gave me the morning off as long as I promised to find Haldis later on!
Dax could barely maintain a hover, his plans for the day nipping at his heels. "How about you and me head over to the Salix and see the Rangers setting up shop over there. I've heard they are sending out troops to strengthen the border garrisons, we might get lucky and see them taking off in formation." Seeing Sylk's apparent indecision, Dax pressed on, "Well, I'm going whether you come or not, but I bet Ranger Yslana will be there!" Knowing he had scored with his last comment Dax buzzed back a notch, waiting for this to sink in.
"I dunno," said Sylk, "Me da needs these bloody flowers sorted today if we have got a gnat's chance of surviving the winter, it's bin so hard with Lucio gone..." Lucio was Dax's older brother and had always been the workhorse of the farm. Strong, keen, single-minded, Lucio had helped keep the struggling farm afloat but he had died the autumn just past in the claws of a bat, having stayed out well into dusk one rainy night in order to bring the harvest in before it perished in the rain.
Dax persisted, "Two words, Ranger...Yslana...".
Despite himself, Sylk grinned, "OK, OK, I reckon I can convince me da to let me do a supply run into the Salix, just so long as I promise to be back after Sun's Peak..."
Dax laughed, his wings lifting him into the air inadvertently, "Deal! Go have a word...Go! We don't want to miss the action!"
Sylk arced around and sped off to speak with his father. Across the field, Dax could hear the raised tones of the conversation, the implorations, the initial refusal, followed by the acquiescence and the promises made. Sylk's dad was a tough Skimmer, sun-blasted and earth-hardened, but he loved his son with a deep-seated passion, all the more so since Lucio's death, and would do anything to make him happy.
Within minutes, Sylk was back by Dax's side, a large pouch laden with dried flower parts to be sold to the Emerald alchemists and botanists, the Darter medicos, anyone who asked a fair price. Neither Sylk nor Dax could hide the wide grins clearly visible on their mandibles.
Together they jetted across the rippling stream, laughing and joking, jostling and trailing their tarsi in the cooling waters as they flew over the surface towards the mighty Salix that was still awash with activity, Jracon and Zyg flitting to and fro amongst the branches and up and down the weather-beaten surface of the tree.
The Rangers were in the Salix!