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The dragons of High Mountain were the first to delve into the world of finance. During the mid Fifth Age, they opened First Talon Savings and Loan. This was later renamed High Mountain Bank and Trust, and grew into a vast empire.
-Tax Law Through the Ages, Volume IV
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Chapter 6:
Options
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#6.1 – Tuesday, the 10th day of the 9th month…
Early morning sunlight spilled over the horizon, got caught up against some clouds, shoved its way through, said some quick apologies, knocked over a few more clouds, straightened its clothes, retrieved its hat, and then rained right down into Scarlet’s bedroom window. Once inside, the ray of blissful morning sunshine awakened the duck nestled serenely on the stack of Library* books on the desk.
The duck startled the sleeping cat.
The cat jerked and sprang into motion, forming a swirling mass of claws and confused hissing. Much as a suddenly awakened cat is wont to do, he quickly settled on attacking Scarlet’s face.
“JAYCE!!!!!” Scarlet screamed, attempting to swat the swirling ball of fur away before it did any real damage. The cat had settled down on her chest sometime in the night, but Scarlet’s arms were beneath the covers. The duck calmed down, while Jayce simply sat and licked his paw.
Scarlet scratched behind his ears and frowned disapprovingly.
“You really gotta quite doing that,” she growled, pushing the cat off and rolling onto her side. The alarm clock(which she kept bolted to her headboard rather than give up precious space for a bedside table) read five-fifty-seven AM, meaning a little under an hour and a half before she’d have to be out the door for school. Knowing she’d never get satisfactorily back to sleep with the early-morning sun streaming in, Scarlet decided this time could be better spent reading, and kicked the covers back.
Three and a half hours of sleep, probably less.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I go to school on about that much all the time,” Scarlet’s feet touched her thin, worn carpet between two books scattered there the night before. She rubbed the sand from the corner of her eyes and turned toward her window.
That window had been an important part of making Scarlet who she was. It looked out on the side of High Mountain, and a thousand feet above the house, an entrance to the dragon eerie could be seen. Several times a day, dragons the size of jet airliners came and went through it. Dragon-watching† formed one of Arindell’s biggest tourist attractions, but even at the finest hotels you couldn’t get a view much closer than what Scarlet lived with. She’d been watching them for as long as she could remember; the lithe bodies and outstretched wings of the creatures inflamed her imagination.
From the foot of Scarlet’s bed, her pet duck flapped his wings and quaked, startled by the sudden movement of covers. But not enough to make him flee from his temporary roost.
Scarlet kept her room in a most peculiar layout. The bed(a toddler bed she hadn’t quite outgrown at the tender age of just-barely-thirteen) sat in the very center, with a small desk at the foot. This allowed every last inch of wall to be covered in painstakingly fitted book shelves. Even the closet door, complete with an intricate wooden track that let it slide back like a secret passage. The only secret inside was yet another book case and Scarlet’s clothes; most of them dirty.
“Friar!” Scarlet scolded, shooing the duck off her desk. “Oh! Friar! Now look what you’ve done!”
Friar the duck spent the night building a nest. Ducks do not build nests, so, where exactly Friar learned this behavior, was a complete mystery. Much like his inexplicable ability to use the cat’s litter box, just one of many strange feats the little avian creature kept in his bobbing head.
The breath froze in Scarlet’s throat when she saw what Friar used to build his nest. In her delirium the night before, she’d put her bōchōrd in disarray. There were books propped everywhere, and she left her brand new Honorarium open. Upon—and possibly out of—this, Friar chose to build his completely unnecessary duck-nest.
With trembling hands, she set about sifting through the debris, exhaling relievedly when the nest proved to be formed principally of another half-finished math worksheet. The precious Honorarium appeared unscathed. Her math book had not been so lucky, but since it didn’t have anything besides math in it, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Honorariums were a funny thing. The volume was too big to fit on a normal shelf, several inches thick, and richly illustrated in the style of an illuminated manuscript. Every Slayer Dragon got an Honorarium+, and they held an amazing wealth of information on the era in which that individual lived. Since they were contemporary—written in the Slayer Dragon’s lifetime—they were also a primary source.
On her many specially built shelves, Scarlet kept the whole collection. Every Slayer Dragon from the Age of the New Day, and as many as she could find from before the Long Night. They were all reprints, she couldn’t afford anything better on a middle schooler’s salary.
Ok, almost all reprints.
For her thirteenth birthday, Scarlet got the latest edition of Rebecca Jusenkyou’sSS book. Sure, Becca wasn’t quite as exciting as her brother or her husband(who held the distinction of being both a Slayer Dragon and an actual dragon), but in many ways, that made her book even more important. Hers didn’t have as much about conquest or valor; mostly just life. Places she went, people she met. Contemporary names for things long lost to the sands of time. For her book, conquest and valor provided only the backdrop. Rebecca kicked titanic amounts of ass.
“Friar, why can’t you be a normal duck?” Scarlet complained while assessing the damage. “Hmmm? Why?”
After fluttering down from the desk, Friar looked up at her and quacked. He’d picked up a lot of cat mannerisms from Jayce, while Jayce displayed absolutely no duck-like behavior aside from the occasional head-bob.
Scarlet adopted the cat and the duck three years earlier as a school science fair project, when they were a duckling and a kitten respectively. Her theory had been that by raising them together, they’d become best friends, and the normally predatory cat would not eat the normally tasty duck.
The project got a B-.
“I know you guys do this on purpose,” Scarlet chided as she swept the remnants of her homework into a small trashcan. Jayce let out a trilled meow and settled into the carpet.
“Don’t take that tone with me!” Scarlet scolded. She headed into the bathroom and turned the tap on the sink to hot. While waiting for the water to warm up enough to brush her teeth, she also filled the tub a few inches. Scarlet reached down and scooped up Friar. She eyed him for a moment, then plunked him down on the side of the tub. He glared at the water, then at her, then jumped to the floor and waddled away.
“Ducks like water!” Scarlet called after him.
Jayce leapt up onto the counter and sniffed at the stream of water pouring from the faucet. Scarlet reached out to pet him with one hand while using the other to sort out her hair, staring at her own reflection on the mirror.
Her green eyes caught her again, and for just a moment, she felt as though she could peer through them into the secrets of her own lineage. Scarlet wasn’t just interested in history, she was obsessed with it. She wanted to know what made those eyes so great, why they’d had such an impact. You couldn’t find that in any lay book. You needed books with titles like An Account of the Standards and Practices of Slayer Dragon Training During the Latter Half of the First Part of the Third Age, Volume XXII, Extended. Annotations by Paul Genidardo, Fifth Age, Revised. Third Edition. Which, of course, required the reader to carry around three or four other books with similarly lengthy and boring titles to truly appreciate. Paired with classmates gossiping about the latest popular fantasy novel, Scarlet found it very difficult to reach common ground.
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* #6.2 (Tuesday, 20/9) *
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“That is, like, the one thing everyone knows.”
“Right. But it’s wrong.”
Jeremy appeared clearly more interested in the bespoke paper airplane being meticulously crafted in his hands than in Scarlet’s attempts to re-write(or rather re-spell) history. But he at least listened with half an ear, which was twice as much as most people gave her. “The one thing everyone knows is his name: ‘Lieber’. Like half the city is named after him.”
“Well—” Scarlet paused in mid-sentence as a large stack of papers landed with an unceremonious plop on her school desk. It was the remedial assignment given to her at the end of the previous year, when she failed seventh grade history. That’s right: Scarlet Amiko Jusenkyou, girl history-expert extraordinaire, esquire, got an ‘F’ in the class. As such, she chose to do a remedial assignment to raise the grade, figuring she only needed a few points to break that coveted D- barrier.
But today, the returned assignment sat on the desk before her, a large red ‘F’ prominently scrawled across the title page.
Timid as the little bird her mother always called, Scarlet approached Mrs. Winkledorff.
Being the one subject she enjoyed, one would think Scarlet would have a great relationship with the teacher.
As with many aspects of young Scarlet’s life, that assumption would be wrong.
“Uhmm… Mrs. Winkledorff?” Scarlet asked in a small voice.
“Yes, Scarlet?” Winkledorff replied tersely without looking up.
“I—I want to talk to you about my grade?” Scarlet managed.
Teaching was a noble and respected profession in New Arindell*, with quality educators being highly-prized members of society.
Scarlet’s history teacher was not one of those.
The previous year, when Scarlet landed in her class, the young girl quickly got off on to a bad start with the old croon. Maybe because Scarlet was smarter than Mrs. Winkledorff? At least that’s what Scarlet liked to think. The reality seemed more like the teacher just hated everyone. So, at the end of seventh grade, Scarlet felt complete and utter mortification when she failed the class.
As was standard in Arindell public schools, students who failed were given the choice between summer school or a punitive assignment. Scarlet chose the latter. It should have taken, at best, a few weeks to complete. Or one frantic weekend, for the typical seventh-going-on-eighth-grader. With no distractions(save two weeks to attend Dragoon Lancer Fantasy Day-Camp), Scarlet spent her entire summer on it. Day and night, she sat hunched over her desk, arriving at school for the first day pale and thin.
Dutifully, Scarlet handed the assignment in, expecting at least a month for a proper grade.
And here she was, an F in front of her face, and Mrs. Winkledorff staring down at her with the blood-rage of a thousand suns behind her horn-rimmed glasses.
Scarlet forced herself to swallow past the lump in her throat. “I… um… I don’t think that… maybe… it’s fair?”
Mrs. Manilla Winkledorff was a cagey old codger. A kind of blunt, jaded caricature of what a terrible teacher could be. No student knew or cared for the truth of her life story, though the rumor mill overflowed with much speculation. According to a few sources, she’d been fired from a high-paying private school job for eating children. Deeply in debt and out of options, circumstances forced her to move in with her adult daughter. Said daughter then made her pay rent and refused her kitchen privileges. Scarlet suspected the child-eating part to be a half-truth at best, but obviously the woman hated her job a lot and her students even worse.
Mrs. Winkledorff looked at Scarlet, fixing a rather grizzly snarl across her lips.
Most adults Scarlet could talk to. She spoke with Emmerich like an equal and in general did the same with others. There were a few who threw her off, like that horrific moment with the Light Bearer. And then there was Mrs. Winkledorff
“It’s… umm… I worked really hard,” Scarlet stammered. “A-and I only needed a little bit.”
Exactly how Scarlet managed to fail Winkledorff’s class was a deep mystery. Unlike math, where missing homework and general laziness explained the grade, in history Scarlet turned in every single assignment. She’d taken every test, every quiz, even two makeup tests. The makeup tests were an even deeper mystery, since she’d taken the originals the day they were initially given. Far be it from Scarlet, a humble student, to accuse a mighty teacher of impropriety.
Scarlet shuddered. “S-s-so… w-what are—”
Mrs. Winkledorff held up a finger for silence and returned to the work at her desk. The bell rang, and tense minutes ticked by while the rest of the class filed out. The next class trickled in, and still Scarlet waited. When the bell for the next class rang, Mrs. Winkledorff looked up at Scarlet and glared.
“Life isn’t fair, young lady,” she said. “The grade you got is the grade you earned. Now get out of my classroom.”
“Uh… I… could I get a note, since… you made me late?” Scarlet asked in a small voice.
She didn’t really need to hear the response, but it hurt anyway.
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* #6.3 *
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#6.3 – Thursday, the 12th day of the 9th month…
If Scarlet were to pick a favorite place in the entire world, it would have to be The Great Library of Arindell. Impossibly ancient, immeasurably huge, the whole thing sat wrapped in a powerful permanent enchantment which made books indestructible.
It was also located a convenient short walk from both Scarlet’s home and school.
She went there nearly every day, except Sundays when they were closed. Not even Scarlet could guess at the full extent of the structure; the five-story façade sat against a cliff-face, with the building itself said to have been constructed in a dry valley intersecting the Stormreaver*. Only a very small section of the front actually opened to the public, but Scarlet knew it like the back of her hand.
“According to legend, when the first Atayans† arrived in the valley during the Age of Darkness, the Library was already standing,” Scarlet said the words to no one in particular, just feeling the need to cover the empty silence.
“And the card catalogue already filled.”
Scarlet slammed her back into one of the cabinets and gasped. “Jeez, Carlton! Snuck up on me!”
The kindly old librarian tipped his hat to Scarlet and continued to push his wheeled cart full of books. “It is a library after all, being quiet is generally recommended.”
Scarlet held her breath to slow her racing heartbeat, then turned around and ran her hands over the precious card catalogue. “Why do they even keep this thing, anyway? Aren’t ninety percent of the books listed in here lost somewhere in the cavernous depths?”
Carlton paused and leaned casually on his cart. “To be honest, I don’t rightly know. Tradition, like as not. Every iteration, every refresh, the books are added to the catalogue. All I really know is for some reason the Craftsmen up under the hill get very pissy when it’s not updated.”
“Thanks,” Scarlet forced a smile. Of all the employees of the great Library, only Carlton ever had a kind word for her. Most of the librarians found Scarlet’s flagrant, systemic abuses most displeasing—and as everyone knows, no one gets displeased quite like a librarian.
“Scarlet.”
Again, Scarlet nearly jumped right out of her skin and shouted her reply reflexively. “You can’t prove a thing!” Breathing a bit, she saw who addressed her. “Mom! What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“You always go to the card catalogue to hide,” Ann replied. “Come along, little bird, your father is waiting in the car. You have a doctor’s appointment.”
“I don’t—” Scarlet glanced over at Carlton and felt her face flush red. “I don’t need that kind of ‘doctor’.”
The old librarian tipped his hat at Ann and then continued on his way. Ann took Scarlet’s hand and started dragging her towards the entrance. “You know Dr. Flowers has helped you, young lady. You’ve had a very bad week.”
While the car delivered her to the therapist’s office, Scarlet used the time to think.
Although she was definitely too young to have an opinion on many things, she felt positive she hated psychologists. She’d been seeing one every other week for about three months now, and reasoned this made her an authority on the subject.
She hated every visit.
The whole thing started at the end of the last school year, when final grades came out. While she never claimed to be a particularly good student, the F in math was a problem.
But the F in history was worse.
The grade caused a sort of meltdown, an incident she couldn’t even remember. All they told her was a neighbor drove her home and she couldn’t speak for hours. Being responsible, caring parents, Roy and Ann got Scarlet professional help. Also being frugal parents, it proved not to be very good help.
The office stuck in Scarlet’s mind as a cold, lonely place. The hum of the white noise generator meant to give their conversations some measure of privacy always made her heart sink. No matter how Scarlet guarded herself, the woman always found a way to ferret out some information. Everything Scarlet said would be carefully notated, twisted, and spun back to her parents in a negative fashion.
Fortunately, as with a truly staggering majority of the problems in her life, Scarlet found the answer to this problem in a book. More specifically her great ancestor’s laughably terrible treatise on military tactics. Hunter Jusenkyou had been many things, but a great writer was not one of them. Still, he taught her one thing: wherever you can, turn your enemy’s strength against them.
With a deep breath to steel herself, Scarlet went in.
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* #6.4 (Thursday, 12/9) *
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Scarlet sat outside the office while her mother and father went through the usual debrief. Until her dying day, Scarlet would remember and loathe the incessant drone of Dr. Flowers’ white-noise machine. Before each session it filled her with dread, after it brought about deep regret. No matter what she said, the good “doctor” managed to twist it against her.
When the door opened, Scarlet hopped to her feet, trying to make hopeful eye contact with her mother or father, without attracting Dr. Flowers’ gaze. Scarlet already crumbled her “prescription” into a tiny ball and stuffed it somewhere.
As usual there were smiles and thank yous, but Scarlet knew as soon as she got her Mother’s attention that things were not well. The instant Ann’s eyes met Scarlet’s, her smile turned to a worried frown.
They piled into the family car without conversation. Scarlet got in the back and made quite a complex effort of putting on her seatbelt, in the hopes she could somehow use the activity to delay any conversation until she turned thirty.
“Your school called this afternoon,” Ann said.
“I didn’t do it!” Scarlet replied reflexively.
“They said you failed your remedial summer assignment for history.”
Scarlet froze and felt her face go white.
Roy, who’d been preparing to start the car, stopped in mid movement. His head did not swivel towards Scarlet, but stopped at Ann instead. “…in the name of the One King: HOW?!”
“They said they sent the paper home with Scarlet,” Ann replied. “That’s all I know.”
“That’s completely ludicrous,” Roy shook his head. “I watched Scarlet work all summer on that assignment. Our tiny antiquarian barely left the house—except those two weeks at Dragoon Lancer Fantasy Day Camp—something is not right, here.”
“Something wasn’t right when she failed her ‘favorite’ subject,” Ann’s voice sounded stiff, but tempered. “The math grade I can understand, she’s never been good at math.”
Roy squinted and raised his voice an octave. “Scarlet is fine at math.”
“Well she still flunked it last year, and did not turn in the remedial summer assignment for that course,” Ann turned her attention from Roy back to Scarlet. “Child, you know this is serious, yes? You may be held back over this.”
“No, we’re going to deal with it,” Roy got the car started and spun the tires backing out of the space. “Scarlet, you have the history assignment?”
Unable to speak, Scarlet caught her father’s eyes in the rear-view mirror and nodded to him.
“What about the math one?”
Scarlet nodded again.
“Ok, we are solving this tonight,” Roy’s hit the accelerator and hugged the turns a little too fast for Scarlet’s liking. “There is or will be a solution and we will find it.”
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End:
Chapter Six
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