Wings of Fire: Dragons, Steel, and Pom-Poms

XVI - A Risk Taken

>Somewhere in the Kingdom of The Sea_

Cuttlefish grunted as he hauled himself out of the water, having already tossed the scrolls and small sealed claypot of ink be brought with him onto the rock outcropping he was clambering onto.

He was here, on some meaningless rock in the middle of nowhere, to do something that he'd never done before, but had wanted to do for a while.

He was going to write a scroll.

A scroll about scavengers.

Well, he was going to try to, anyway.

He brought with him a single blank scroll he'd managed to pester Mako into getting the last time she went with the enclavers to market their deepwater fish to a more mainstream SeaWing settlement.

He brought a small thing of ink to use to mark on the scroll.

And he brought the Scavengers: Everything You Need to Know! scroll so he could use it for reference.

He wanted to make a similar, but shorter, version of it exclusively about the boat-things that he and his friends came across. And that got him into so much trouble.

He flopped onto the sunbaked rock with a sigh. The other reason he came all the way out here, alone, was to catch a break.

His mother had decided that, since he had nothing better to do, it would be best for Cuttlefish to start joining in on the fish hunts more often.

Something that was way, WAY more exhausting and difficult than he would have anticipated.

Since when are those big fish so fast? Or strong?

At least his experience so far had been better than it had been for Clam and Oyster, who had practically begged Barnacle and the usual hunt lead Sailfish to accompany Cuttlefish.

Oyster had already been attacked by a small shark, which she barely warded off with her tail. Clam had already made a right fool of himself when he dove headlong into a giant school of small fish, as if he actually expected to catch some of them doing that, and ended up getting smacked by a sailfish they were actually trying to hunt. And then he got smacked by Sailfish for screwing up.

The only embarrassing thing that happened to Cuttlefish so far was that he got outmaneuvered by a tuna. Something they were apparently pretty good at.

Now though, he had some time to himself. And he was going to try to use it to write.

He unfurled the small blank scroll on a flat part of the above-water rock outcrop and fangled the claypot until he got it open. He set it down and stared at the blank scroll.

Now what?

He'd never written anything like a scroll before. He wasn't sure what to do first.

He knew he wanted to write about the boat-things, which he would be doing entirely from memory, but he didn't know how to start.

He kinda figured scroll-writing would be easy.

Well, kind of easy.

He examined the blank scroll closer. It was made from parchment, nothing unusual there. All dragon scrolls were made from parchment.

Basically dried, treated animal skin. In other words.

A random thought occurred to him. Is this scroll made from scavenger skin?

He'd never read of scavenger skin being used for that purpose, but he supposed it was entirely possible.

Cuttlefish sniffed at the scroll. It didn't really smell like the scavengers he saw and smelled- the ones on that boat-thing.