Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77127 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77127 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
I didn’t feel the need to explain that flaw to the welcoming committee, though.
“Alick works a lot of unconventional hours.” The Daddy guy who was wearing jeans and had his pockets stuffed with random tools seemed to think that was a profound secret he’d just confessed.
“I know. I spent several days following him all over the mountain.” Alick was the assistant manager at the local plant nursery and ran what he called a yard business on the side. However, it was definitely more of a landscaping company that occasionally mowed yards. So his being busy was not a surprise. “I’d have found him a lot sooner if the roads would’ve stopped disappearing.”
We were going to have to work on how he explained his career, but that could wait until after we’d finished getting to know one another.
He downplayed his accomplishments on a regular basis and that needed to stop.
Several of the men looked like they wanted to laugh, but the mage rolled his eyes and stepped closer. “May I touch you?”
That got snickers from several of the onlookers, which had me raising an eyebrow at them. “The first thing I’m going to do after you leave is tattle on you. Just to let you know.”
Their groans filled the yard, but the mage must’ve found it funny because his eyes sparkled with barely suppressed laughter. He seemed to like a challenge and appreciated being fucked with. Maybe he wasn’t going to be as annoying as I’d thought.
“Yes, you may touch me.” Closing my eyes so I could focus on the spell, I listened to his quietly mumbled words and tried to follow the magic since the words were confusing.
It was a complicated spell and I lost track of it about halfway through, but with the amount of work that’d been done to hide the community, I wasn’t surprised at how involved the spell was.
When he finally pulled his hand away from my shoulder, I opened my eyes. “That wasn’t English. Our mages use English.”
The mage blinked before answering. “English will work. I use it sometimes on easier stuff, but our spell work is usually done in a mix of Gaelic and what I’ve been told is Old Dragon.”
Because it worked better?
Was it easier to stay focused when it wasn’t English?
The mage kept going but didn’t answer my questions. “I don’t think anyone actually speaks it conversationally today. A few old diaries are written in it, though, so we’re working on getting it back into a spoken language that can be used outside of spellcasting.”
The Daddy guy smiled at that part. “Some of the teachers want to try to use it to satisfy the foreign language requirement but that caused an uproar because half the town got offended at them calling it a foreign language.”
I wasn’t sure which side I fell on in that debate, so I focused on another part.
“Old Dragon?” I thought it was a legitimate question since I’d never heard of it, but they all got distracted by something else.
“He was following the magic.”
“He knew what you were doing.”
“They cast in English?”
The questions were coming over each other and the mage just shrugged and looked at me like I was the strange one.
Bullshit.
But I played along. “I had a great-grandfather that was a pretty powerful mage. The dragon genetics usually come out stronger, but I can do a few basic spells with no problem.”
I wasn’t going to brag about being able to unlock my front door without a key, but it was magic, so I was going to count it.
That had most of them looking dumbfounded but I just focused on the mage because he was nodding slowly. “That’s what we’ve thought, but around here, there’s a very strong separation of dragon and mage. It’s a pain in the ass.”
I’d have to agree with that.
“It might be because our community was so isolated but we’ve never had that kind of division.” For a long time, it’d been a better than just human versus just human thing, but we’d mostly moved past that.
Lately, the biggest issue had been wanting the cheap, fast internet that the rest of the country had.
I wasn’t going to explain that, though, because I was pretty sure they wouldn’t understand.
Something distracted them and had the mage turning to the flat-toned dragon. “We need to make sure the council knows there are more communities we haven’t gotten in touch with. Someone on the Canadian council dropped the ball. He probably doesn’t even have a login on the website.”
There was a website?
There was a Canadian council?
Okay, yeah, it seemed like someone had dropped the ball.
The group shrugged but the frowning dragon who seemed to be part of the local council sighed. “I think they need to move their council out of Quebec.”
Oh.
I was starting to see the problem.
But, not wanting to rehash that drama, I focused on the less political parts. “There’s a website? Oh, and if there’s a basic Paranormal History 101 kind of book, I’d really like a copy. Did you know we came through a stargate? That means we’re aliens, right?”