Tiu looked at her friend for a long time. She was concerned and relieved at the same time. Anaya was going through something intense and unknown where she could only try to support but not really help if something went wrong. But on the other hand, Anaya looked determined and confident, and she had learned to trust her friend's judgement in difficult situations. She decided to let her rest and instead immerse into some very practical activities to distract her own trepidation. So, she started to dry firewood for the night. That spell wasn't too hard but it required her to focus on the water droplets of a single log at a time.
A few hours went by in silence. Anaya was sleeping in the shadows of the canopy. Kimo was still fishing by the lake, although he already had a remarkable pile of fish on the shore.
"I thought dragons might like fish and then we need lots of it," he had simply said when Tiu had gone to tell they already had enough. Well, she couldn't argue much to that, as the dragon had flown away so they wouldn't know whether Kimo was right before she came back.
The sun was shining bright and warm in the afternoon sky. The place where the dragon had lied during the night was still nice and cool. Madiza was sitting on the spot and writing in a notebook. Her brown hair covered her face, and she seemed to not hear or see the outside world.
Hummingbirds were flying above her beside the flowers in the trees. Their buzz was apparently indignant as they noticed that despite the bright colors the flowers were frozen and no longer gave nectar to them. But the small monkeys were excited when they found this new treat: the flowers themselves were never of any interest, but the frost had added some unexpected flavour, and the feeling of a thawing flower in their mouths made them believe that this was something unique. They jumped up and down on the branches, gorged flowers and babbled to each other, infatuated. When some leaves dropped onto Madiza, she did not even look up, she just brushed them away and continued writing.
Finally, Kimo came from the lake carrying in both hands a pile of fish hooked by a twig through their gills.
"Wow, you really got a fisher's catch," said Tiu, impressed.
"And this is not all," Kimo replied proudly. "I just couldn't carry all of them at once. I'll go get the rest. But then I will go swimming. Who wants to join?"
Madiza finally raised her head from the book. "I will join you. It has been such a warm day." She put the notebook carefully into her breast pocket, took off her trousers and shirt. "Would you join us, Tiu?" she said and started toward the lake.
"Oh, I can clean some fish for supper while you swim. So just go, you two."
Kimo came with the rest of the fish. "I'll put them here in the shadow so they don't get warm."
"Good thinking, Kimo," said Tiu supportively. "You really are a happy camper. And while swimming, take care of Madiza, will you. Remember, you always have to have swimming pairs."
Kimo was a bit surprised of this new task, but he assured: "Yessir, I know how to be a lifeguard." Then he ran after Madiza to make sure that she would not get too far into the water.
When they were gone, Tiu went to Madiza's clothes and pulled out her notebook from the pocket. What was she writing so intensively and why? She hadn't been writing anything before. She noticed that the necklace was there, too. She quickly grabbed them, took a knife and leaned beside the fishes, in case Madiza looked from the lake to see what she was doing. Although she was pretty sure that Kimo's lifeguarding would distract her from paying attention to what happened at the campsite.
First she looked at the necklace. It was a beautiful and clearly old piece of jewellery. Not that she knew much about such things, but she thought that it had more family value rather than price on the market. It had a simple leather string and the stone in the middle looked like those dark stones you could find in the river. When you pick them up from the water, they are like fancy gems, but when they dry, you notice that they are just plain stones. This one was, however, carefully sanded and polished and shaped like an almond or an eye, so it retained the shiny surface and the feeling as if you have just found something very special among ordinary things. The stone was attached to a beautifully decorated metal frame, maybe silver but probably something cheaper. For a second, she thought that the decorations formed letters and a word, but she didn't recognise any of the characters. Maybe it was nothing, or maybe it was the language of the Dadzinkas from the north. She was curious but couldn't ask Madiza. Even Kimo could know but he would without doubt blurt to Madiza that they had been snooping her belongings.
She put the necklace down and opened the notebook instead. It seemed to be some kind of a diary as it had dates and thoughts about events, but it also had todo lists and other practical stuff. She had had this for a while already. But now the critical thing was what she had written today. So Tiu flipped pages forward, and suddenly something dropped out. It was a dragon scale.
Tiu gasped. The color matched their dragon. After a second, she realised that it of course did. What other scales even could exist in their town? She looked at the date on the page that was open. It was the day of the first snow.
She put the scale back and continued. Madiza had written more than ten pages only today. First she noticed the sketches. There were drawings about the dragon, about its head and eyes. About the posture and the curves of its tail.
Then she looked at the notes. Descriptions, colors. Madiza only had a pencil so all colors needed to be written down. She really had an eye for this. She had even distinguished between sky blue and maya blue when describing colors reflecting from the dragon scale.
So Madiza was a dragon enthusiast, to say the least. But she had kept it very well to herself. Of course something like that was to be expected, but this was way beyond. Based on the quality of her drawings, this was clearly not the first time she was making them.
Then Tiu noticed a longer text. It was mostly written in a foreign language. She could only read a few words and they did not make much sense. "Fungecidious," she said aloud. What could that mean?
She felt something tingling in her left hand. She glanced and noticed that the necklace had changed. The stone was glowing a deep blue color. The hue was changing in waves as if the stone was alive.
Tiu yelped and threw the necklace from her hand as if it was burning. She covered her mouth with her hand and then glanced around. Did someone hear or see? But to her relief, Kimo and Madiza were still splashing water in the lake.
The glow had faded away and the stone looked just like before. Tiu closed the book and put it and the necklace carefully back into the pocket. Now she only had to prepare those fishes and no one would know what she had just found out.
She raised her head and saw that Anaya was watching her from the hammock.
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The topic for tomorrow is Plans.
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