Meeting One Val Salr: A Tale of Ruins
#2 of Meeting One Val Salr
Val Salr tells Jason the story of the ruined city.
When Jason woke the following morning, Val Salr was still asleep. More than that, she was sleeping pressed against him; not entirely the most comforting thought since she was almost twice his size.
Squirming carefully, Jason got himself out from under the kramon. Once free, he stretched and discovered he could feel the morning dew on his clothes. He pulled out a new set of clothes from his pack and looked around for somewhere he could change.
The forest was not obliging. The best offering was to stand behind on of the larger trees. After a moment he shrugged and moved behind Val Salr. She was the only person around after all and she was sleeping.
He moved quickly, pulling the old, damp clothes off, dropping them and starting to pull on the fresh, dry ones. He was not quite quick enough, however. Val Salr turned her head around to watch him, demonstrating an amazing flexibility of neck; a flexibility that went largely unnoticed by Jason.
"Is that what you look like under those cloths?" she asked as he scrambled to pull up his pants, not worrying about a shirt for the moment. He could feel his cheeks burning in embarrassment.
"You really don't need to worry about that; I'm certainty not bothered and there isn't exactly a crowd around here." Val Salr rolled onto her back, displaying the fact that she did not, in fact, wear any clothes. She lacked even the rough harness that most of the kramon at the Trade Center wore.
"Er, right." Jason said. "You bring anything for breakfast?"
"Bring? I was planning on finding something fresh. If you give me a few minutes, I'm sure I can find something."
"Go ahead," Jason told her. He did have his own breakfast and, truthfully, he would have been willing to share except that he didn't have nearly enough to feed someone of Val Salr's bulk.
While she was off gathering breakfast, Jason cleared a section of the forest floor, built a ring of rocks and started a small fire with various sticks he dug up in the area.
Val Salr returned, not long after he'd gotten the fire going, holding a pair of animal carcasses in her mouth and waddling along on three legs. At first Jason thought she'd injured herself, but then he realized that she was holding something in her raised forepaw. Fruit as it turned out. Not much, but enough that the meal would not consist solely of meat.
She dropped the carcasses on the ground, then dropped the fruit near them.
"I would have gotten more," she said apologetically, "but I'm afraid I usually eat on the spot rather than carrying my meal around."
"That's not a problem," Jason told her. He was more worried about dragon saliva, which wasn't something he'd have chosen to add to his meal, then the quantity. It was far more than he'd need to eat.
He picked up one of the carcasses. It was fairly small and he was unsure what species it was, not that it mattered. He spent several minutes skinning it and making a considerable mess, both of the carcass and the area, all to Val Salr's clear amusement.
"I really shouldn't," she said, the words escaping between quiet chuckles. "I doubt I could do better."
He didn't reply, having a chilling feeling that she would simply have eaten them raw, hide on and bone in. This not being something he wanted to discuss, he settled for wiping the blood of his hands using her snout, staining that red, then quickly looking away as she licked it off. When he looked back most of the stain was gone. For the rest of his cleaning up he contented himself with water.
Once one of the carcasses was prepared he put it on a spit over the fire, glad that the dragon saliva had mostly been on the creature's hide. As it cooked Jason prepared the other carcass.
Once Jason judged that it was done cooking he removed the meat from the fire and put the next over the fire. He gave this first to Val Salr.
"My," she said, "quite a treat." When Jason raised an eyebrow at this (for it was only unadorned meat) she hastened to explain. "We don't tend to actually cook much of our food; mostly because of the difficulty we have in controlling a fire." She held a forepaw out to Jason and he noted the short digits and lack of a thumb. "Not to mention the difficulty in obtaining wood to burn; not so much transporting it, but rather felling the tree without it landing on somebody and with breaking it up."
As Val Salr ate and the next carcass cooked, Jason munched on one of the fruits. It tasted strange and though not quite unpleasant, it was definitely not something he'd buy.
It was over an hour later that the two of them started on their way to the ruins. Jason dumped dirt over the fire pit, hoping that would be enough to keep it from starting a forest fire, and grabbed his knapsack.
Although they started the journey on foot, Val Salr motioned for him to stop before long.
"Would you like a ride? I could carry you much easier and faster than we can walk."
"You sure? I've always heard that the kramon didn't appreciate people asking for that sort of thing."
Val Salr smiled, her lips forming a very long grin. "There is a difference between someone asking for a ride and being offered one. Most kramon in areas occupied by other species are tired of being expected to act as a taxi service. Besides, who's going to know?" Val Salr bowed downwards and furled her wings tightly against her body. "Just be careful of the wings; they take a long time to heal."
Jason glanced around, although he wasn't sure why he expected someone to jump out of the shadows just because he was getting a kramon-ride. This done, he cautiously put a leg over Val Salr's neck and sat just behind its base. When Val Salr stood he found himself sliding backwards so that he ended up sitting between her wings in the small of her back. Every time he moved even a little, he felt a shiver run through her body. Either giving him a ride was more unpleasant than she made it out to be, or far more pleasant than he wanted to think about.
As she started walking he spent a moment shifting positions so that he was laying on his stomach. He was grateful for this a moment later when she started picking up speed because it meant he could wrap his arms around her neck to keep from sliding off.
They arrived at the ruins long before they would have if Jason had simply walked. Val Salr sat, causing him to slid right off her backside, landing on her tail with a thud. His ribs were somewhat sore from the ride, but nothing really bothersome.
"Welcome to the City of Dragon," Val Salr said as twisted her neck around so she could see him. He stood and stepped beside her.
"The city of dragons?" he asked. Although some people did call the kramon dragons, they generally didn't appreciate it and having a creature that large upset with one could be hazardous to one's health.
Even as she started talking, she led him into the city, following the roads towards the center of the city. "No, the City of Dragon. He was an ancient kramon philosopher, although his teachings weren't very popular. That's not actually his name, but his real name has been long forgotten. He would have been totally forgotten if not for his teachings making their way to the sagin. He upset too many people and was executed. This city was build by a bunch of people that thought his teachings were right."
"I think I've heard of him, but nothing specific." Jason looked around the city as he spoke, following as Val Salr led him into the plaza he'd spent the night before last in.
"This," she gestured around the plaza with one forepaw, "is the center of the city. Like all our cities, this would have been the heart of this one. People would set up market tents and pavilions here and this would become a thriving marketplace during the day."
Jason mentally pictured the plaza as described, envisioning the crumbling and cracked buildings as fresh and new, adding in the tents and their kramon occupants with carpets laid out on which merchandise of spread.
His picture of the merchants was based largely on what he'd seen at the Trade Center. It had one of the world's largest marketplaces and counted some kramon among its merchants.
"The large building there is a temple; the sides would have been covered in frescos and murals of the gods and those things sacred to them," she continued.
Jason nodded. He'd seen a few of those on his last trip through. Even now the colors were bright enough that he could only imagine what they must have been like when they were still new. "They're still there, in part at least."
"I'm not surprised. Our inks are very durable and that is a temple."
Jason tossed his knapsack into the ruins of the fountain. "So why's the city abandoned?" he asked.
"They killed each other," she told him. "Many blame Dragon's teachings, but very few have actually read those teachings." Val Salr shook her head. "He did not preach the hatred or violence people believe of him. He just upset the politics of the time. Come."
She started walking down a northern road in the ruins and they passed by numerous buildings, many of which Val Salr was able to identify the purpose of. Sometimes this was because portions of tools remained, or because of the layout inside or, sometimes, because of portions of signage that remained, either dyed into the stone like the frescos or metal plates that had not entirely corroded away.
The walls were, even after centuries of neglect, covered in frescos. Quite often, these were almost totally undecipherable now. Jason had trouble imagining a city were nearly every wall was painted over. The cities of his own people were quite plain and most of the Trade Center was bare wood; easier to rebuild after the frequent storms knocked it down or damaged it.
The pair was studying one particularly confusing fresco-remnant, when Jason realized his arm was across Val Salr's shoulders and that, furthermore, she had a wing around his shoulders like a cloak. He started to remove his arm, but decided that if Val Salr did not like where his arm was, she would certainly have told him. Besides; it was rather pleasant.
It was not long after that when Jason felt a drop of water land on his head. He tried to ignore it, but it was followed by another, and yet another.
Val Salr shook her head free of the increasing rainfall and sniffed the air. Then, taking a good look at the sky, blinking several times to clear her eyes of the water that landed in them, she spoke. "I think its going to rain," she said. "Perhaps we should find some shelter. Let me protect you from the rain." She raised her wing so it formed an umbrella over Jason.
"But I can do nothing for you," he said. He did not, however, step out from under the wing as they walked slowly back down the long, crooked street. Most of the buildings in this part of the city were well weathered; few retained enough structure to keep out the rainfall.
She tucked her head under her wing with him. "Don't worry about that; I'm not going to," she whispered, her lips very near his ear. "Just tell me if I'm about to walk into something." She tucked her head under her wing and wrapped her wing tighter around him, encasing what warmth the rain had not stolen against Jason's body. It also had the effect of bringing him closer to her and he could feel the heat of her own body.
He guided her through the ruined streets, around the fallen buildings and over the rubble that had accumulated over the centuries of abandonment with soft words and the occasional touch of her hide. Her hide was rough under his fingers and he could feel the life beating within her as they walked.
In time they reached the central plaza of the city once more. Jason darted out from under Val Salr's wing long enough to grab the pack he'd tossed in the stone fountain before they resumed walking. Seeing that the temple was mostly intact, Jason guided Val Salr there.
Once they'd reached the stairs at the base she looked forward again, stepping up the massive stone blocks that had served the kramon who'd lived in the city long before as stairs. Val Salr walked up them with an ease that the prior occupants had likely shared, but to Jason they were uncomfortably tall and deep. By the time they reached the top he was both exhausted and drenched by the pouring rain.
Only moments after they stepped inside, Jason saw the flash of lightening and heard the rolling of the thunder.
"I think," Val Salr said, "that this is going to continue for some time." Jason could only agree.
Val Salr didn't stop just inside the building and he realized almost immediately why; wind howled through the central corridor with a ferocity that had spread sticks and dried leaves throughout the central hallway.
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