Chapter 86: Dear Ashring: You Have Mail
We’d just finished reattaching the last roof tile (which Splitjaw swore was going to stay up this time, despite the entire right side being propped with a broom and a questionable chunk of resin) when the kid appeared. I say "kid," but he was maybe fourteen, the kind of age where you think a good pair of boots means you’ll never trip again and then immediately do just that, face-first, in front of the entire Ashring team.
He landed at my feet. Dust everywhere. The roof tile wobbled. Embergleam caught it without looking. The rest of the village stopped pretending to work and stared.
I peered down. "You alright?"
He spat out a pebble. "Yeah! Yes. Sorry, um... are you—the Ashring?"
Splitjaw loomed behind me, arms folded. "Depends. Are you here to join, or are you selling potatoes?"
The kid went pink. "Neither! I mean, both? I mean—I have a bag for you. From Elm Hollow. And maybe from Maplebend too. And, uh, somewhere called Bent Row. Everyone said you’d want it."
He hauled a canvas sack from his back. It was almost as big as him and twice as lumpy. He shoved it at me like it was about to bite. I took it. The sack made a suspicious clinking sound.
Embergleam stepped in. "What is it?"
"Letters!" the kid said. "And notes. And, uh... drawings. And a charm bracelet but that might actually belong to my cousin." He shrugged, sheepish.
Splitjaw grinned. "Fan mail? Never got that before."
Quicktongue had already sidled up, claws twitching with curiosity. "Wait, wait—people actually wrote to us? That’s a first. I thought they mostly threw rocks."
Chaos plucked a note from the top and squinted at the loopy handwriting. "No rocks. But possibly rocks painted like us. This one’s titled ’To The Mighty Fire Lizard and Her Friends, from Brackenvale’s Third Best Scribe.’" He read it aloud, and I had to bite back a laugh when it turned out to be a request for help retrieving a missing pig. With a diagram.