The air thick with humidity and the stink of sweat and spilled wine, ale, and liquors. The tavern had become quiet as she spoke. The story of Luna telling her story had traveled from person to person, and eventually the music and chatter had all stopped. All those gathered in Reuban’s crowded around her table, and word spread into the refugee camp. People packed into Reuban’s, and those outside heard the story second or third hand. Luna drank and drank as she spoke, gesticulating at times, pounding her fist on the table. Her voice swelled with anger or emotion, then fell low to whispering. But no one else spoke. All ears straining to hear her words.

  Guo sat before her, watching, listening. She drank only one glass of wine. Her expression remained placid throughout the night until the killing of the Deathwalker when she frowned deeply. Ogma had reacted much as everyone else. Gasping, jaw dropping, shaking heads. The night now deep around them.

  The silence that fell when Luna stopped speaking was immense. Heavy, as if her words pulled down the suns, sucked out the soundscape and the breath of everyone gathered there to hear her. But thin as paper, as if even the quietest cough could rip it apart.

  Luna leaned back in her chair, sweat coating her skin, and gazed on her open hands. Her shaking hands. “We were there for weeks. Alone. My mother’s body so hot it kept us warm, even without a fire. We survived by eating the dragon. Its flesh never cooled. That same Deathwalker jawbone, I picked it up with my little hands. Dried blood scorched into it. I took it and scraped meat out of the dragon and ate. To feed my mother, I chewed it, then spit it into her gaping, lipless, tongueless mouth.”

  She looked up, her eyes meeting Guo’s, “The truth is I don’t know how long we survived on dragonmeat. Didn’t even know what made the Wolf Clan return home. But eventually they found us, my mother’s ruined body radiating heat, gasping. And I was dirty and hungry and insane. I carried that jawbone when they found us. They were gathered round us. Their eyes hard and harsh on me, then disgusted when they turned to my mother. Then horrified when they saw the dragon. When they came to scoop me up with their pitying eyes, I tried to stab them with the jawbone. They disarmed me and I wept.

  “They took me to the yurts to be healed, and I was feverish for I don’t know how long. Same with my mother. They didn’t let me see her.”

  The silence fell again. Heavy, like a mountain. Then Luna pushed back from the chair, lifted the wine bottle to her lips, drained what remained inside, slammed it back down, and sighed. Then she walked through the crowd, which pushed and shifted to make room for her as she left. No one touching her.

  And the silence remained.

  Ogma turned to Guo, her mouth hanging open.

  Guo’s voice came like a fresh breeze, “Luna the Dragoneater.”

  Ogma smiled and faint laughter came from the gathered crowd, which broke up and formed their own circles, retold their favorite moments in their own ways.

  Ogma leaned close so Guo could hear, “You thought it was just a story, yeah?”

  Guo smiled with her lips closed. “Few stories turn out to be so literal.”

  Ogma looked around the dark room full of talking and said, “Go for a walk?”

  Guo stood up and Ogma took her bonelute with her as they pushed through the crowd. Outside the air was still thick with humidity but clearer. Fresh with the open space. The smell of grass and river and bonfires. Voices rose, and a single story was shared from Rueban’s door to the far reaches of the refugee camp. That of Luna’s childhood. Her family and clan and the dragon that stole it all away.

  Ogma strummed her bonelute, tuning it to a new key as they walked past women and men sharing and distorting Luna’s story. She said, “There’ll be songs of this by the time she wakes tomorrow.”

  Guo rolled her boneflute through her fingers. “Will you write one?”

  Ogma smirked, “When the story’s through.”

  “Might not be for years.”

  Ogma smiled and stared up at the stars, “She’s right about the sky.”

  Guo watched Ogma.

  “It keeps opening up and up the longer you look at it. Like it’s layered. We see the first layer right away, but as we stare the other layers shine through. The constellations young and new.”

  They walked through the camp, now given new life so late in the night. From the well-aged to the babyfaced, all stayed up to hear the story of Luna the Dragoneater and her mother Vilka the Dragonslayer and even her grandmother, the Blade of God. Old songs were remembered, played again. New songs trickled out from new and old hands. After a time, they reached the edge of the sprawling camp and Guo stopped, sat down.

  Ogma sat, playing a formless melody, “How many versions of her story will exist tomorrow?”

  “How many people are here?” Guo yawned, her sharp teeth revealed.

  “Thousands?”

  “Perhaps twice that.”

  Ogma snorted a laugh, “So how do you keep the story pure?”

  Guo fixed her eyes on Ogma, “No story is pure. Stories are messy and twisted. That is part of their power. By tomorrow there will be a version of Luna’s story in every head that heard it. By the next day each hearer will hold a sloshing mix of what was told and what is believed and what they will remember to tell the next person. As these people march to Luca, the story will take new shape, but a more solid one, depending on how many travel together. But once it reaches Luca, the story will fracture and fragment, shared in pieces halfremembered or wholly distorted by time and drink and audience. The story will reach the merchants and blacktounged bonemen of that great landport and stretch to Lapsa, Yuli, and even back to Bauruk in thousands of variations. But all these stories will end up wrapped around the songs made of it. The songs made by these refugees will be shared, then improved upon by the great singers of Luca, Lapsa, Yuli, and Bauruk. Each singer will twist the story to how they believe it sounds best, and in a century or two, only a handful of versions will exist that will be compiled into one single version.”

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  “And that’s it? Her story becomes whatever they make it?”

  “Listen,” Guo smiled, lips closed, “It already is.”

  “Why do you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Hide your teeth. I know what you are.”

  Guo laughed, “Centuries of habit.”

  Ogma put her bonelute down, “If you’re not here to keep the story pure, why are you here?”

  Guo took slow breaths and closed her eyes. Ogma waited, sighing and shifting her weight, rolling her shoulders, crossing and uncrossing her legs. Guo opened her eyes and said, “There is no pure story. History is not one story riding out the centuries. It is the tangle of thousands and thousands of stories. Stories told by kings and emperors. Stories told by beggars and merchants. By warriors. By children. By the conquered and the conquerors. All these stories wind and twist and are changed by time and place. By every single person who tells it.

  “Even if Luna’s story could remain pure, how would I do that? Would I silence the singers and storytellers?”

  “Write it down,” Ogma’s voice rose. “Songs and stories told only last so long, but once it’s put to ink and vellum, it lasts forever.”

  Guo raised an eyebrow, “How many here can read? How many in Luca? In Bauruk? In Lapsa? In Yuli? How many in all those combined? What if those who can read do not like the story? What if they rewrite it when they translate it? What if all stories were only held by those who could read and write? What would ye know of this land or any other?

  “Lapsa, Bauruk, and Yuli all tell stories of themselves for themselves. None of them are true, but all of them sound true enough. In Lapsa, they call themselves a Federation. Their origin stories tell of the thirteen clans that chose to work together and give a voice to all who lived in them.

  “In Yuli, they believe the King is a god constantly reincarnated. They believe his word has lasted unchanged since the beginning of time.

  “The Bauruken believe they are the sons and daughters of dragons. Luna told the story of the Dragon Empress and her dragon lover. But none of these stories are true, and the truth of them does not matter. They give shape to these people and how they see themselves. How they see everything else. How they live and breathe and trade and speak and even think. Ye are new to this land, but have ye ever wondered how such different looking people came to live so close together?”

  Ogma rubbed her eyes, “Where I’m from that’s not so uncommon.”

  Guo nodded, “Nor is it uncommon here, but a thousand years ago it would have been. People push and pull across the land. Across every land. Every people, from the Ren Shen to the Rocan, have wandered over Saol’s skin, claiming new lands as their home, telling stories and writing songs to make it true.”

  Ogma yawned, “Then what is the truth?”

  Guo shrugged, “There is no truth.”

  “Cynical.”

  Guo laughed, “This land was all once forest. That much is true. When Ren Shen collapsed, the exodus took our people everywhere. Some became the Soarean people who reigned here for a thousand years. They conquered the indigenous people, who were ancestors of the Bauruken people, and enslaved them, along with dozens of other peoples on this continent. They cleared the forest and shifted the world, creating those great Steppes to the northeast that Luna’s mother told her about. That wind powered their empire, but that’s another tale. Soare built many of the cities and temples throughout the region, with one of their greatest cities being Luca. It now exists on the ruins of what once was.

  “Then the Bauruken rose up in rebellion against the Soarean rule, using the dragons they befriended in the mountains. The Lapsa came south and are the same people as those far northern tribes. The Yuli are another people descended from the Ren Shen who came in from the northeast after thousands of years at sea, though they no longer even have a port. All these things happened more or less at the same time, causing the collapse of the Soarean empire here, though they still exist across the mountains.

  “Those who were once ruled now rule. Those who were once foreign are now native and their stories say they always have been. Those who were once barbarian savages raiding civilization are now civilization itself in this part of the world. And three peoples have become neighbors, all with distinct languages and cultures. That’s history. The story is always changing, but that story does not matter. Not to anyone who lives here.”

  Ogma laughed, “Are you really immortal?”

  “Where did ye get that lute?”

  Ogma smiled, “Have you ever heard that a gift from the gods is really a curse?”

  “I believe I was the first to tell that tale.”

  Ogma threw back her head and laughed from deep in her belly, “Are all Ren Shen like you?”

  Guo smiled, closed lipped, and looked down. “I may be the last alive who ever saw Gu.”

  “They died?”

  Guo shrugged and sighed. “Ye asked if I was immortal. I do not know. I only know I have not died. Not yet. I do not know why. It may be the gods I have known. The gods I have loved and who loved me. It may be something in my blood. It may be the stories themselves that I collect. Perhaps it is like Luna’s father said. Excess Leb. It may be nothing at all. Or perhaps only the wind blowing my ancient bones endlessly. Perhaps I died long ago but the wind carries me.”

  Birds began singing. The suns not yet risen but their dawns approached. The stories circulating through the camp continued, traipsing through Luna’s childhood and even the story of the story began to slide from person to person.

  “Will you stay with her?” Ogma’s voice was low.

  Guo stared off into the trees, seeking the singing birds. “Her story is the story of this land. Or it will be soon. That is why it matters that she tells it. It did not matter that I hear it except that I want to know it. Her story exists now outside of herself and history will rewrite it a thousand times. But only because it now lives. It comes to life with every word she says.”

  Guo brought her gaze back to Ogma, “I shall stay if she allows.”

  Ogma leaned towards Guo and said, “You’re very beautiful.” Ogma’s breath was warm on Guo’s skin and her body pulsed from the heat of Ogma’s warrior body. “You’ve lain with gods, but how many humans?”

  Ogma kissed her neck and Guo’s voice came breathy and thick, “Few. Most are afraid.”

  Ogma gently took off Guo’s faded traveling clothes and laid her in the grass. Guo stared up at Ogma silhouetted in moonlight and Ogma said, “Show me what the Ren Shen know of love.”

  Guo smiled and grabbed Ogma’s hips, “All bodies speak one language.”

  Ogma brought her face close to Guo’s, “You talk too much.” Then they kissed. Their bodies writhing together, falling into one another. Their moaning shook what was left of the night and Ogma’s howling brought the dawns.