“Then why would you pull out my chair?”
“I meant… I can’t think of the word. Your muscles are smaller than mine.”
“I’m physically weaker.”
“Yes, but that’s not always the case with Sárkány. Our women are frequently as big as the men. Those women are usually highly sought after, though, and have their pick of suitors.”
Sounded good to me. I’d always been big. “Were they muscular?”
“Usually by choice. It was a point of pride for everyone on Galdiart to be strong, and able to battle. Before the wars, we had many competitions.” He lowered his head. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to make you feel like I thought badly of you in any way.”
I twisted my lips, not truly angry with him. “I suppose I’ll let it go… this one time.”
Alexander strode forward, entering Doryu’s line of sight. “Doryu, thank you for stopping by today to help Jen with her transition.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you. You’ve answered so many of my questions.” Like how did pregnant women go through pregnancy on Galdiart, where they lived in their scales? They didn’t have humanoid skin there, the portal magic changed them. He said new scales grew to expand the stomach, then as it shrank after, they sort of molted off. I was thankful I’d never need to go through a pregnancy in my scales. Sounded kinda gross.Although, it might be better than stretch marks.
Roan walked in from the door to the kitchens with the main course, followed by one of the live-in staff members. The castle employed a host of Dannan. Many of them lived in the main part of the castle in the old servants’ quarters. The Dannan living in the converted apartments weren’t considered a part of the main castle and didn’t reap the benefits of the staff.
Dinners in the castle never ceased to amaze me. One night we’d sit down to the finest aged steak and lobster; the next would be something called cottage pie, which was a bit like shepherd’s pie. I never knew how fancy or simple the fare would be, and I loved it. I figured in such a place they’d serve fancy food and I’d be starving all the time. I hated froufrou food.
That night, we had simple chicken and vegetables. “This is good,” I commented. Alexander and Roan nodded and Doryu grinned around a huge mouthful of chicken. “We need to figure out a way to find people like me and help them.”
Alexander wiped his mouth. “I’ve been thinking about that. We have to start with your mom and work backwards through your family tree and find distant cousins you may not even know. Other than that all we can do is send out information through the Unseen channels about the new species and that they need to keep their eyes on the news for instances of spontaneous combustion, publicity stunts—like yours—and other strange things happening to regular people.”
“We need to subscribe to the tabloids. They report on fantastical happenings, and are always written off as crazy, but often the people they interview swear they’re telling the truth,” Roan said.
“Tabloids?” Doryu asked. “What is that?”
“It’s a newspaper of sorts,” I answered. “They report stories that are ludicrous, so outlandish nobody believes them. They used to report on things like what happened to me, but nowadays they mostly report rumors about celebrities and royalty and such. I think our time would be better spent telling people to watch their hometown newspapers. I know the paper in my hometown ran a story about me, something about Knoxville’s newest street performer.”
“Hmm. Good point.” He pulled a smart phone out of his pocket and tapped away at it as he chewed. “I sent an email off to my assistant. He’s already working on composing something to go out over the Unseen email wire.”
“How in the world do we have an email chain? That’s got to be the most unsafe practice. What if they’re hacked?”
Roan chuckled. “Nobody would want to hack them. We covered ourselves well. Have you ever heard of Anne Rice?”
“Of course. She’s one of my favorite authors. She’s a genius.”
“Indeed. One of her books involves a vampire that writes a tell-all memoir about him and his species.”
“Yeah…”
“We’ve done the same. Sort of. The facts are skewed greatly, and the books are romances. One of the Dannan loves to write, and she writes them for us under the moniker Becca Boyce. As a part of her marketing she has an email list that fans can sign up for. She has quite a following and writes books not related to our world as well. She loves it.”
“So how do our emails get covered up?” I asked.
“We send out an email just to our list, and it will have a synopsis for an upcoming book. The synopsis will cover whatever information we need them to know,” Roan replied.
It was pretty ingenious, all in all. They were at least making strides to join the information age. “So how’d you get elected as leader?” I asked Alexander
“The previous leader was an old Supay. Talk about stuck in the Stone Age. But, people loved him. He died in the Aljan war—”
“What are Aljans?” Doryu asked.
“Sort of like demons,” said Roan. “Incredibly ugly.”
“When he died, I guess there were enough Unseen that were ready to move into the modern age, and my nomination won.”
