Dragon Kin

28

Alicja

He's out on the balcony when I wake. It's still early. I can smell 5:00 AM out there through the open door. It's a glass door. It slides.

It's so odd.

Wrapping a sheet around me, I go out and sit next to him on the garden wall, which of course is made of stone. The whole hill, from the bottom to the top is paved in stone of various height and size. It is just a massive dome now with varying roof levels. Gardens are entombed in stone.

Electric lights glow out there among the oil lamps and more common gas lamps down in the river district with its manufacturing and shipping traffic.

He told me the Sidhe cities are much larger. They are spread out across great forests, making use of trees and lumber and suspension engineering. Uncle Max was quite informative about the engineering they have been able to achieve. Which bored poor Victor to tears, so I vowed to stop asking questions after an hour.

"With this new material they are using, their innovation has exploded in the last seven years," Uncle Max told me.

"Do you know what the material is?" I asked, my interest piqued.

"I asked, but they gave me such a silly answer, I'm not sure they weren't just joking me off, if you know what I mean. It would serve me right, asking in such a direct manner. A bit rude, they might feel."

"Well, what did they say?" I asked.

He took a drink of his wine and then described how they made this new stuff out of one layer of graphite molecules. This made a two-dimensional sheet of these molecules, and I recognized the substance from my studies. We called it Graphene. It was the strongest substance in the world. Perhaps two worlds.

"Graphene, you say?" Uncle Max asked, blinking at me. "That's really the way you make it? That's astounding. I honestly believed they were having a joke of me. I feel like I owe a few apologies. But let me tell you this part as well. They've learned how to mesh this ...graphene... into spider webs. And they are making their clothing from this weave."

My hands were covering my lips. The idea was pure genius. If they were able to make a decent combination, that clothing could be bulletproof. The bullet would still break your bones, because of its speed, but it wouldn't go through that material. That material could hold tons of weight in a single hammock.

"Spider silk?" I wondered... it was perfect... but ... "How are they able to harvest enough spider silk? Spiders are very territorial and they eat each other on sight."

He shrugged, "Who knows? Elves?..." If it wasn't engineering with the world's bones: stone, clay, iron and steel, he wasn't interested. I sighed.

He gave me a smile, and then he laughed.

Was he playing with me?

Then his laugh became a barking. He stood up, and backed away from the table, pulling his chair over. His barking became louder, and slower, and lower. Flames shown around his eyes and nostrils when they flared.

"Oh, no," I whimpered, getting up from the table, spilling my red wine across the white linen. "Is it? Is it the Madness?"

Uncle Max's wings unfurled, shredding his jacket and shirt, and swiping our table and several other furniture items, away.

The scent of cured leather and sandalwood waifs past me, when his wings buffet the air in the room. The wind pushes me backward.

He locks eyes with me, "I can smell your fear!" he roars.