#wbj19

The Tige [Image: a little girl standing in a field, late afternoon]

Humans living in the Ngaelo lowlands in a chain of loosely-allied cities and settlements.

Matrilineal culture that holds water sacred.

Most survive by farming rice and raising large animals. Others turn to hunting or fishing.

Phenotypically diverse, but tend toward dark hair and eyes.

Goblins [Image: a pair of flying squirrels from behind, against a black background]

Arboreal, lightly furred, with a membrane of skin that allows them to glide. Capable of echolocation.

Omnivorous, opportunistic scavengers. Absolutely will steal food or shiny objects from humans.

Live and hunt in large family groups, build villages in treetops or cliffsides.

Basically raccoons with opposable thumbs and near-human intelligence.

Dragons [Image: close-up of blue-gray feathers]

Large carnivores with feathered wings and bodies, four scaled legs and talons, broad blunt muzzles and antlers on both sexes.

Nest in the Shilae Mountains in small family groups.

Innately empathic, capable of both projecting and reading emotions. Many form close lifelong bonds with humans.

The Shidou [Image: The back of a person in leather armor that is decorated with geometric designs and a fur collar]

Humans who live in the mountains with dragons, descendants of the first dragonriders. Very small population compared to the Tige.

Primarily herders, with some limited agriculture.

Clan-based family structure, strong culture of support and interdependence.

Most dragonriders are Shidou, though certainly not exclusively.

Elves [Image: Close-up of an amethyst crystal]

Live on Kiruhinde, and have not been seen in Ngaelo in living memory. This is probably for the best.

Usually human-shaped, but often larger-than-life and unnaturally colored.

Possess magical powers, but no one can agree on what they are... except that they control the war machines that attack human settlements.

Stars [Image: A sun, slightly eclipsed by a planet in the foreground]

At night, rare people can hear the stars singing to each other - some say you can learn to listen for them, with  practice.

The stars may grant your wish, if it suits them.  They will not tell you the cost.

It is not recommended to wish on a star more than once.

Do not look directly at the sun. Yeah, it'll ruin your vision, but - more importantly - you may draw its attention.

The goblins squabbled as they made their way through the trees, moving from branch to branch in hops and short glides. One of them kicked her brother just as he pushed off and sent him gliding directly into a nearby trunk, and the canopy rang with a chorus of delighted cackles, a discordant counterpoint to the ever-present birdsong and insect buzz.

They fell silent, however, as more sunlight broke through the trees ahead, as the jungle gave way to cleared land. One by one, the hunched, lightly furred forms gathered in the upper branches overlooking the city, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder like birds settling in to roost. As the sun sank beyond stone tiers and spires, the dying light caught their eyes and reflected back shining green in the darkening canopy, watching the city winding down with hungry anticipation.

***

The lady pressed herself deeper into her dragon's feathers, trying to shelter a little more from the wind and the clammy mist of the clouds they wheeled through. She'd dressed for the flight, of course, but up here, the moment the sun went down it seemed as if all heat went out of the world all at once.

"You watch," she muttered into her scarf. "We'll get over the hills and we'll find empty air and starlight. Those new lookouts… no sense at all. See a flash of lightning or the sun's handmaidens and they lose their heads every time."

She knew the wind carried her voice away, barely audible even to her own ears, but she felt a sparkling bubble of amusement rise in her chest nevertheless - dragon's emotions, not hers. He thought she was just irked to have her evening with that pretty herder interrupted… and maybe he was right, but there was still no call to laugh at her over it. She huffed and buried her face in feathers, sulking.

She stayed like that until she felt a slight lurch in her stomach, a slight dip as they crested the tallest of the hilltops and glided down the leeward side… and then a sharp spike of alarm that sent the chill of dusk straight to her bones. The knight lifted her head, and her eyes went wide as she took in what her dragon had already seen -- towers of crystal dimly lit from within, shadows of human forms moving inside them, all floating impossibly more than a mile above the earth.

"What…?" she whispered, and was answered only by a dizzying whirl of confusion from the dragon beneath her.

***

The dark elf charted the stars. This was no different from any other night -- this was her purpose, plainly marked by her deep indigo coloration and moon-white hair, her overlarge eyes built to collect the faintest light in the dark, the splinter of pale crystal embedded just under the skin at the outside curve of both of those impossibly round eyes.

She sat cross-legged on the surface of the sea, remaining atop the gently rising and falling waves as surely as if they were solid earth. Out here, she was far enough from crystal lights and nighttime fires that they wouldn't blind her to the most distant points of light -- some lights moved below the waters occasionally, a green flash at the breaking edge of wavelets, but none bright enough or lasting long enough to trouble her.

A dim echo of the night sky spread out over her lap, projected from the crystal strung from a chain around her neck, and her long nimble fingers danced over the projection like a harpist playing a familiar tune. She tapped one pinpoint of light after another, scarcely taking her eyes off the starfield above to watch where her fingers hit; with each contact, a faint chime sounded, varying in pitch and tone according to criteria it would have taken her hours to explain. To anyone else it was just noise, dissonant and unsettling, but to her it was a song, each note marking an old friend whose position and brightness and color she knew by heart.

The song faltered. Her middle finger hovered above one tiny star-image in her lap, so small and faint that someone with less sensitive eyes might not see it at all. Her eyes flicked down at her hands, at the projection, back up into space. She blinked slowly, willing something to change when she opened her eyes. It didn't.

One of her old friends, one of those barely-visible points of light, had vanished. It hadn't dimmed, hadn't been masked by a passing planet or stardust, it was simply gone. Her fingers trembled despite herself.