Capora
an excerpt

"Anything New?" She watched his eyes, and could feel him transfer his concern for her health to his current studies and observations. "Not since the incident with the girl. But there is a rumor that there are dragonheads on Ledrecia". "The old fairy-tale again? That's amazing. Did they find a guide?". "I don't know, waiting to hear from Jake or Velton".

Asha thought back to just this morning, she had been telling the old stories to Larissa. The little girl had not yet seen any of the Ledrecian merpeople. She wanted to know if they really had two longs fins/tails that actually doubled as legs when they were on land. She wanted to know what mermaid clothing looked like. And most of all, she wanted to know when she was going to meet one. "Have you met Velton? Then you have met a Ledrecian.". Larissa was stunned. "Velton isn't a merperson. He's a boy.". "He's also Ledrecian. If you were to get him in the water he'd be just as much a merperson as any other." She enjoyed the awestruck silence. It was wonderful to spend time with mainlanders. They were so easy to entertain.

A few years ago the wreckage of an old boat was unearthed on the beach of Capora 2. Legend has it, that the first discoverers of the boat, were young children who were out exploring the island. The story goes, a young Ledrecian mermaidl, Tria found a metal, bottle-shaped container with a waxed stopper, in the wreckage, and decided to take it home to her family. Her mother, apprehensive of the bottle's contents, took it away and later showed it to the local medicine-woman. The woman recognized the shape of the strange item as a container for evil concoctions and made Tria's mother promise she would sail far out to sea and sink the bottle back to the ocean depths, never to reach the surface again. Tria was heartbroken when she heard what her mother intended to do, and entrusted the story to her older male cousins Random and Tylon.

In the middle of the night the three children swam out to an uninhabited island and planned to bury the bottle there until they decided what to do with it. As they marched on to the shore of the new island, Tria reached inside her shirt to pull out her neck pouch and when she went to pull out the bottle, the wax had melted, and she pulled out the stopper instead. The air smelled strong of sulfer and the two youngest children (Tria and her cousin Random), fell unconscious. Tylon watched the dark beach around them fill with a rainbow of light. The cold evening wind vanished and it was as if the many colors engulfed the three of them and removed all harsh elements. Tylon looked down and the surf that had been crashing around him was below him. He had been raised up above the water, as if walking on a suspended, transparent bridge. He tried to reach for his brother, but movement was difficult, there was no matter to push against, or jump from.
The colors glowed brighter and Tylon saw flashes of light very high up in the sky. As if stars were exploding overhead. For the first time he forced himself to acknowlege that he should be scared and tried to scream, but sound was not possible.

Above him the flashing stopped, and the colors around them began to dim. He watched his cousin and brother rise up and sleepily yawn and rub their eyes. "Where are they?!" Random exclaimed as he excitedly scanned the skies. "Are you allright, Randy?", Tylon reached out toward his brother, but Random jumped forward and locked his brother in a bear hug. Tria wanted to be included as well, and wedged herself in to the hug as much as possible. Both Tria and Tylon followed Random's skyward glances. Once they looked up, they couldn't bring themselves to look back down.
There, blocking out the stars where the silhouettes of several dragons. "They're hungry", said Tria.

And so went the legend of the mermaid children and the dragon's of Capora. The Ledrecians were the last of the Caporan people to embrace the old stories, and even some of them dismissed the story's plausibility. There was one group of Ledrecian's left who lived by the old ways. Affectionately (most of the time) nicknamed "Dragonheads", the Ancient Order of Dragon Protection believed the story, and they believed that dragons would be most protected if they were sent back to the realm from which they came. Over the past century dragonheads had been responsible for drugging and trapping dragons. Dragonhead telepaths were especially feared by dragonkind.