On Clouds of Steam
Twenty-Fourth Day of the Eleventh Month 294 AC
Lem Tannerson had never seen a dragon in his life. Oh, he had heard a lot about dragons in the last few years, from the whispers going around the slave huts about how he was going to burn the masters to ash and raise up the lowly to build a better world by the Light of R'hllor, to the far less viscerally satisfying condition of being released with a signature and a bored clerk from Golgys counting heads and the meager possessions of the freed. Looking back, he was rather glad at the lack of fires, he had heard stories from other plantations where things had not gone as peacefully and dead masters usually means someone was getting hanged under the Dragon's Law. He had heard some say it was because he was the same blood as the masters, but personally he thought it was because a field of ash made poor sowing and worse taxing.
The screech of a whistle like a thousand kettles boiling over interrupted his thoughts. It was coming along the line, like some great crimson beast belching clouds of white steam as it came.
If that ain't the closest thing to a dragon I have ever seen.
Alas, he did not have long to admire the sight. The throng of humanity waiting on the fused stone platform, far outnumbering what the couple of benches could hold, pressed forward like a tide of many faces... and knees and elbows. All manner of extremities that made for good poking really, as well as heavy canvas sacks like Lem himself was toting, though most of the other travelers did not boast the black flame mark of witch-work hardening. His father had called him crazy to spend so many of his hard earned shillings on that thing, but Lem reasoned that if he was going to be traveling that far on this contraption, he wanted to be damn sure all his worldly possessions did not spill out onto the floor. It came with stout hardened rope as well.
Better than a steel lock, it was.
"Standing room this way! Standing room this way!" A man in the bright green of the Imperial Rail Service called, his voice harsh with familiar strain. There were three sorts of passengers on the line Lem had heard, standing, sitting and sleeping. Of course, you could sleep sitting down well enough.
"She's perfectly tame," the words were accompanied with an alarming hiss from up ahead, though nowhere near as alarming as how the voice sounded.
It was all Lem could do not to cup his hands in invocation of the Lord of Light when he saw some kind of strange feathered
thing with a toothy maw and a bright red tongue among razorsharp teeth, perched on the shoulder of a boy wearing foreign robes, fringed with bright blue thread...
a wizard.
"She is perfectly... er... tame." The little beast slashed its claws through the air. "I think he sort of feels the magic in the engine, it is all fire and smoke and..."
Lem was strangely reminded of the sight of an angry rooster dragged into a strange place. He put his hand into his pocket and and took out a piece of salted meat. He always had more liking for beasts than good sense, it was like his father was speaking in his ear. Still, the strange lizard-bird thing sniffed the meat cautiously, then snatched it with short sharp claws and stuffed it into his mouth.
"Thanks," the wizard said. He was Lem's age with wavy black hair and eyes to match, making him think of things he had no business doing. Wizards high in the service of the crown didn't look at freedmen with naught but a sack to their name.
Still, he could not help but asking. "Crown's not paying well enough for sitting room to Myr."
"Eh, a bit of time on my feet won't kill me as long as Sarah here does not do me in for the indignity..." he looked fondly at his pet. "There's better things to be spending marks on than a seat, eh?"
Lem nodded. "So... are you headed to Myr for work?" he ventured. What did wizards actually do besides just vague 'magic and enchantment'?
"Yeah, got a commission for the Guild... the glassblowers, you know. I just call them the Guild since they are the biggest and the most wealthy."
It was a remarkably short two hours to the city and the two did not part when they reached their destination.
OOC: I wanted to show off the trains, the dinosaur familiars and the view of same sex romance among the Essosi lower classes, which is basically no stigma since there is no pressure to produce heirs.
