Blossombud 16th

7:00 am

(The following was written in invisible ink.)

After some deliberation, I concluded that the most effective way to circumvent Giorsail’s ability to perceive magic was to become something she would not think to question.

When I was a wyrmling of 10 to 12 years, I would sometimes wander into villages around Mistress Ozimaev’s tower, and the villagers would not bat an eye at my presence; they considered me little more than a typical 5-year-old then, albeit a rather large one. My own children have had similar experiences with backwoods villages when they went off on their first adventures away from home

All it would take is a bad enough injury for the villagers to label me as a completely harmless child lost in the woods.

I hate some of the lengths I sometimes go to for research.

I have the tools to reduce and restore my age at will. I should also have a proliferation of clothing and spare equipment in my daughter’s bottomless bag to craft the disguise with.

7:15 am

It’s so strange to be this small again. I must look like portraits of my daughters from when they were about 10 to 12 years old.

I found a tiny pink bottomless backpack in my bottom bag, undoubtedly one of my daughters’ from when they were this young. I have moved everything out of my bottomless bag and into the little pink backpack with the things I will need to sell the young she dragon’s first-adventure narrative to the villagers at the top. A pink bandana around my neck with the Kupferthal arms and a few too many messy bows on my horns complete the little thinking she-dragon look.

I am currently working on an enchantment that will hopefully help me act convincingly childish enough to the casual viewer.

(The following was translated from the crayon drawings that dominate Jaspera’s remaining notes for the sake of the reader.)

My disguise is working well.

To any but the most knowledgeable and persistent observer, I have the intelligence of a smarter-than-average 5-year-old human with the emotional control and attention span to match.

I have put a mental construct in my mind that gives me a mental ‘bite of the tail’ when I am about to break character and makes subconscious suggestions about how to act convincingly like the draconic equivalent of a 5 year old.

Among the things it gently discourages me from doing is writing, which should be well beyond my apparent mental abilities. I will have to make all my notes in the form of children’s crayon drawings from here on out.

When I landed hard against the ground after tumbling from camp (purely accidentally), I started to wail for my help without conscious thought. The response was immediate and total. I had not expected that.

The landing broke my back legs and my tail.

This is good, as it was the goal.

It still hurt more than I anticipated

And it also complicates matters more than I had planned.

After a few minutes of crying for help, one of the firewood collectors found me. I made appropriately childish pleas, and he helped me back to the village using his hand cart to carry my pony-sized self.

At the village, I was given a warm welcome as expected. All the women and girls of the village came out to fuss over me—touching, cooing, and speaking in softened tones. Women’s response to a cute little she-dragon appears to be instinctive across species.

The woodsman brought me to the druids, and they bandaged my tail and legs and gave me pain-killing herbs to chew. 

The druids then brought me to Sir Labhruinn so that he could determine what to do with me. After some effort with my artificially limited vocabulary and the drowsiness induced by the herbs, I convinced him that I was Garnette von Kupferthal, Jaspera’s 10-year-old daughter.

I am mentioned by name in The Errantry of Fredrick Von Mountainheart as Fredrick’s dragon ally, so it was trivial to convince him to let me stay with his family. In fact, he was overjoyed to have met a real noble from the court of Frederick von Mountainheart. He was so overjoyed that he introduced me to his entire family and household as Princess Garnette von Kupferthal.

As for Giorsail, she did not bat an eye.

His daughters, however, took it upon themselves to be my caretakers.

I was whisked off to 8-year-old Teafa’s room (that’s 8 in fey years), where they promptly forced me to play make-believe with them.

I have to admit, it was fun playing with dolls again. I never had a chance when I was little, and my youngest daughter has mostly grown out of such things. It’s strange how I missed playing make-believe with them.

But I was not simply having fun.

Children learn how to be adults by reenacting what they observe—often with more clarity than the adults themselves.

The three youngest girls all role-played the social situations they had seen at their father’s court, as well as scenes from stories in the library and the local bard’s tales. When I asked to clarify what each member of the court did, they explained it to me with enough details that I could get the message despite the babying language. The Eochaids possess a highly distorted understanding of courtly roles. Titles are assigned based on narrative importance rather than function.

I also witnessed one of the fights between Sìonag, Saraid, and Giorsail. It was at dinner. While Teafa spoon-fed me (much to my protests that I was big enough to feed myself), Sìonag began hurling accusations at Giorsail, and Saraid came to Sìonag’s defense when Giorsail retorted. It appears that Sìonag is a traditionalist who objects to Giorsail supplanting the druids as her son’s primary advisor, while Saraid’s concerns are more immediate—specifically Giorsail’s influence on Luthais. The argument went round and round, with the other members of the household making comments and quips where they could.

I am very tired. The potion the druids have given me induces a heavy drowsiness, and I find it increasingly difficult to maintain focus.

Blossombug 23nd

I must reassess my assumption that the Eochaids are simple country folk, ignorant of life beyond their village. The day after my arrival in town, Teafa, Ealga, and Cathach decided to use the things in my bottomless backpack to set up a little lair in the guest room where I was staying, which was positively adorable of them.

However, they found something that they did not remember packing, nor would have wanted them to find. It was one of the magic collars I used on my daughters when they were babies to make them more size-appropriate for playdates with the gentry’s children back home. (They are also used by dragon parents among the mortals to keep their baby dragons small and easily handled.)

They knew what it was immediately. I did not have time to object. Before I could protest, it was placed around my neck and shrunk me down to the size of a human 2-year-old.

The collars are designed for dragons under nine years old. The thing should not have even fit on my neck, even when I was originally 11 years old. To my horror, I learned firsthand that these collars are designed to prevent the wearer from removing them by themselves.

Seeing that I was now reduced to the size of a large doll or a pet, they proved entirely incapable of resisting what came next.

Note to self: I really need to clean out my bottomless bag.

The first thing they did was take me, cradled in their arms like I was a cat, to the great hall where Samthann and Saraid were spinning wool. Saraid was bemused by her daughter’s play, but Samthann was besotted by my appearance. It seems to be a universal truth that young women are attracted to a tiny body and a childish face. She handled me with great care, but also with a kind of delighted curiosity usually reserved for particularly charming animals.

It was not entirely displeasurable, though I suspect this says more about draconic temperament and my mispent childhood than anything else.

But having a gaggle of girls show me to people in this form was the perfect solution to my mobility problem. I had told the Eochaids the day before that I was on my first adventure exploring new places and making new friends, just like my “mother,” the rather infamous amateur academic. Samthann and her younger siblings decided this was a perfect excuse to show me off to all their friends, and in a village this small, that effectively meant every girl and woman.

So I spent the next few days being carried here and there in the village, being introduced to almost everyone, and playing with even single girls under ten years old.

However, it did also mean that Eochaid’s girls each wanted to sleep with me as though I were some sort of shared doll, passed between them at night. It is also why this is my first journal entry in a week.

I was able to observe most aspects of village life, except for the druid rituals, which have not yet occurred, and the trading post, which has remained closed since my arrival.

This is a very typical village in the backcountry of the Silver Highlands, not just typical for a Fey village, but typical for any village in the highlands.

Sure, there are the typical feyisms I am familiar with from back home. 

My escorts and I were victims of several pranks by the local boys.

Everybody, men and women, young and old, showed a general tendency toward nosiness, gossip, and mischief once their labors were done. 

Almost everybody in the village showed the sort of swingy emotions that the fey are famous for and were prone to bouts of irrationality and “going with one’s gut.”

There is the general vegetarianism common to most fey, but strangely, I did smell something like jerky by one of the men-at-arms’ brughs.

But that just made what the fey were doing differently and not doing hit all the harder.

The pranks were the sort of basic stuff that all boys revel in: rude noises, thrown mudballs, and marbles on the pavement to cause slippage.

The bouts of irrationality were just that, bouts, with bouts of what appeared to be rationality between them.

The villagers appear unusually industrious for fey. Spinning, weaving, and textile work dominate daily life, particularly among women and girls. There is definitely something more going on here, but I am not sure what.

However, most strangely, the villagers seem to abstain from using their innate magical abilities in everyday life. Even the resident pixies show little inclination toward invisible mischief as they do back home. 

It is not merely a restraint—it is as though the habit itself has faded. Nor have I seen them conversing with animals or vegetation of any sort, which, according to some of the manuscripts about the fey written by the Fey of Faerie, should be fairly common.

They are more inclined to drive off deer, mice, and birds, and to kill wolves on sight—behavior far more typical of mortal settlements.

Hypothesis: Without true fey exemplars to imitate or plentiful magic to tap, the half fey of the backcountry may be undergoing gradual cultural and behavioral convergence with mortal populations. If this trend continues, the distinction may become largely superficial within a few centuries, people with strange body plans and quicker tempers, but still recognizably people.

I have accumulated a great deal of material and very little time in which to organize it. Tomorrow, my legs will have healed enough for me to walk around on my own, which means I can start exploring.

(What follows were several dozen pages of notes on every person in the village she had met in a frankly intrusive level of detail, despite being in children’s drawings. For the sake of the dignity of the people of Brugh na Ciorcal, they will not be repeated here.)

Blossombud 25th

I was not expecting what I saw today.

Today started with a trip to the druids to have the binding on my back legs removed. They gave me the typical doctorly advice to be more careful and not exert myself unduly. I played the good girl for them, agreeing to everything with appropriate enthusiasm.

I expected my little hostesses to take me to play in the fields today, but something unexpected happened.

A goblin flimflammer arrived today, leading a small caravan. There was much excitement in the villages as the feyfolk ran out to greet the visitor. The Fòlais’ family was especially excited to see the flimflammer.

The family patriarch, Tomag, and his wife, Beitidh, and their gaggle of children were the first in the crowd. Tomag traded the typical goblin embrace—half shove, reserved for good friends and family. Beitidh gave the trader a hug, and the children begged for attention.

I did not get a chance to ask, but I suspect there is a familial connection.

In short order, Tomag and company got the trading post opened and stocked it with goods from the caravan.

The villagers formed a line, each carrying a basket or a sack. They sold their goods to the flimflammer for New Mountainheart marks, then immediately spent those marks at the trading post.

Most of the goods sold were bolts of cloth and lengths of yarn.

That explains the relentless spinning and weaving I have observed over the past several days.

Even Sir Labhruinn and his family joined the line. I watched from an old hawthorn bush growing by the hedge as he traded a basket of items collected as tribute for a brand new steel greatsword and a little purse of guildenmarks. The sword was entirely mundane—plain steel, in a style not commonly seen in New Mountainheart for centuries, except in imitation of King Fredrick himself. The flimflammer even confirmed that it was mundane steel.

But the fact that a fey bought a steel longsword is surprising. Fey are usually terrified by the sight of even the most mundane iron or steel item. Cold iron is toxic to fey and burns at the slightest touch, and to most fey, cold iron is indistinguishable from normal iron. To see Sir Labhruinn buy a steel weapon raises two possibilities.

1. He is committed to imitating Fredrick in whatever small ways he can, including buying a sword in the style of Fredrick’s sword Rosethorn.
2. The people of the village are completely nonplused by the presence of steel and iron in their midst.

I am inclined toward the first explanation, though neither accounts for the villagers’ complete lack of concern at the sight of iron.

The last one in the line gave me even more reason for pause. It was a big bugbear, and one of Sir Labhruinn’s men-at-arms, whom I learned during the last few days, was named Fineus. He was leading, with the help of his shepherdess daughters, maybe a dozen or so older sheep and goats, and was dressed like a butcher, with the requisite knives and cleavers.

After some haggling with the flimflammer, he collected some barrels of salt and went into a shed beside the trading post.

Then the butchering started.

The animals were handled efficiently—no ceremony, no hesitation. Blood was collected, flesh divided, and everything reduced to process.

He then packed the meat into the barrels, took them back to the cart, and collected a sum of silver from the flimflammer.

I found myself trembling beneath the bush, unable to look away. This should not happen.  Most fey would not even kill a flea if they found it crawling upon its skin. It might be explainable if Fineus went to the next town over and sold the sheep to be slaughtered. But he did it himself in the middle of town with multiple witnesses. Moreover, none of those witnesses was bothered by it. These specific fey are acting much more humanly than I originally thought.

Witnessing a civilized feyfolk do something as unfeylike as butcher an animal for its meat left me trembling under that bush until Teafa picked me up and cuddled me for a few minutes.

It did the trick, but was the first of many “incidents” today where I behaved far more like a wyrmling than I would have preferred. After the butchering incident, the girls took me out to play in the fields and dressed me up in some satin ribbons they had bought with their allowance. I was unable to make any further observations today because I was too busy having fun with my new friends.

I am wondering if the mental construct is having too much of an effect on me, or if this is something older that I have not properly examined.

I did not have a traditional childhood, even by the standards of thinking dragons.

It is not unpleasant. That, perhaps, is part of the problem.

(The rest of the notebook was filled with a continuation of last week’s observations)