Chp.2: Brother's advice

Personally, Haku admired humans and beastmen. He thought that they were some of the most successful creatures he knew, and indeed perhaps they were the only newcomers he would approve of taking the place of dragons as the world's new rulers. Humans and beastmen weren't as intelligent, powerful, and strong as dragons, but they compensated for their weaknesses in countless ways.

Unlike ogres and faeries, creatures who waste time in futile diatribes or who seal themselves within the forest, humans and beastmen use their brains to expand their influence and knowledge, waging war on a vast scale while at the same time focusing on improving their quality of life and their understanding of the world and its laws. As far as Haku knew, not other race was so succesfull as them; not even the elves, a race that he had only occasionally heard of from Sarpa and who apparently lived on another continent, and who apparently possessed immense magical knowledge, could match these two races in terms of adaptability.

The first rule of survival wasn't to be strong, cunning, fast, to have a strong bite, large claws, poison, thorns on the back, an armor, a tail ending in thorns or a club, to be able to fly or to swim or to be able to manipulate mana efficiently; these were useful skills, but they didn't allow their owner to get by in every environment. The first rule of survival was to adapt quickly to any place. Turning a dire and debilitating situation into a profitable one. This was the real key to survival.

Not even dragons, with their extraordinary power, had been able to adapt to every change. The arrival of the second sun and the great catastrophe had shown how fragile and vulnerable they were to changes. Even after the disaster was over, they had been unable to change and invent new ways to survive that didn't involve exclusively violence or prevarication. On the contrary, humans and beastmen were both able to do it.

They were able to adapt to any situation... or rather, they adapted their surroundings to meet their needs. Thanks to Sarpa, Haku had discovered extraordinary things about them. They didn't just cut down a few trees and build walls, no: they could do much more. They could alter the course of rivers by building dams and reclaim marshes, turning fetid places into pleasant areas to inhabit. They could cut down entire forests and turn them into cities. They could build wells to extract water from underground and stone walls and chimneys to defend themselves from the cold. They could create solid roofs made of tiles, not wood and full of holes like those of ogres, which could protect them from rain and would not catch fire when struck by lightning. They could build huge structures called castles, capable of withstanding even severe hurricanes, and at the same time they could design weapons strong enough to tear down those fortresses. Humans and beastmen were like shape-shifting creatures that wherever they went they adapted to the environment around them and learned how to exploit it, becoming more and more intelligent and skilled in all kinds of work, from simply placing stones on top of each other to arts more secret than magic.

But what Haku admired most about them was that they had found a way to get food without having to hunt or look for fruit on trees. Ogres and fairies had a primitive form of agriculture, but that was something pathetic: in the case of ogres they just sow a field and wait for something to grow, in the case of fairies their diet was mainly based on the fruits that grew on their trees and whose growth they accelerated through magic. Humans and beastmen, however, had discovered ways to produce food consistently and on a massive scale. Even though this production was still vulnerable to many factors, such as the climate, it was still an extraordinary system when compared to the others.

Humans and beastmen didn't just throw seeds into the ground. Using special machines, they plowed and boned it completely, planted it in an orderly manner, and then tended it for as long as necessary. Furthermore, to rest the soil, they rotated the places where their crops were produced, and they had even discovered that some plants fed on different substances from the others, or even that some protected the others from parasites. Using this knowledge, they could produce enormous quantities of vegetables every year: in fact, they were techniques accessible to all and indeed easy to use, which did not require any magic. Therefore, even those who would have been pointed out as 'weak' in nature could exploit them to produce commestible plants.

But not only that. Since often many more plants were produced than they could eat, humans and beastmen also cultivated a portion to feed to the animals. That's right: humans and beastmen didn't waste time hunting prey, but rather raised large quantities of it so that they could have meat at any time and not even have to work hard to get it. Their pastures grazed the grass of the meadows during the summer and in the winter they obtained feed thanks to those extra quantities of vegetables that their masters had grown. In this way the animals were always fat and could feed entire families at once.

Humans and beastmen raised everything: birds, cows, sheep, pigs, anything they deemed edible and good to eat. And when they killed one of their animals, they didn't just eat it, but they made the most of every part of the animal: the skin was used for clothing, the entrails to make tools, and the bones were used as scarecrows (sort of puppets that they were used to scare away birds to prevent them from ruining the crops). They even used the dung to fertilize their fields and make plants grow more easily. Furthermore, they used the animals not only for eating, but also for transport or for pulling very heavy objects.

Haku was fascinated by those food production techniques, which were so efficient that they could feed entire kingdoms made up of millions of people and still leave a leftover that would be sold to merchants or stored in warehouses. He would have liked to learn those methods in order to be able to produce his own food in the future. Unfortunately, it wasn't an easy task: not only would he have to spend several weeks observing the farmers to learn their techniques in detail, but then he would also have to adapt them for the standard of the dragons, which was almost impossible. Dragons were exclusively carnivores and most of all they ate much more than humans or beastmen. Once he and his siblings reached adulthood, just one of them would eat more than a thousand humans and beastmen combined. Each of them would need at least half a ton of meat every day. The amount of food they would have had to produce would have been disproportionate to say the least. And this just for the first years: since dragons never stopped growing, the more time would pass, the more their need for food would grow exponentially.

Therefore, Haku believed that it would be useful to learn the food production techniques of humans or beastmen, but at the same time he knew that they could hardly be applied to dragons. Unless there was a way to produce over 3,000 tons of meat every year (and remember, that's just for the first few years!), then everything else was useless. Haku doubted that even the total annual production of an entire human or beastmen nation would reach that figure.

In any case, he could afford to be fascinated by them. As he and his brothers crossed the hilly plains, he could glimpse human villages in the distance. Any newcomer would never have been able to spot them from that distance, but Haku with his extraordinary eyesight could clearly see the farmlands. "Winter is coming" he said suddenly.

Darbi, who was next to him, was surprised to hear him say that. "How do you understand that?"

"There are few fields that still grow wheat. On the contrary, I notice an abundance of spinach, radishes, lettuce, carrots, cabbage and turnips, all plants that as far as I know can only be sown in the first days of autumn" Haku replied. "Also, I noticed that the temperature is going down and the rains have become more frequent. The days also got shorter. Do you remember? These are the signs that our mother explained to us when she told us about the seasons"

Neytiri had explained to them how the cycle of the seasons worked and what were the signs that signaled the transition from one season to another; she had told them that when winter arrived, the climate got colder, rainfall increased and the plants began to lose their colour, and even the days became shorter and the sun warmed less. She had even told them that in some colder regions in the deep south or far north it snowed during that time of year, similar to how it did up in the mountains. Of course, the farming part hadn't been explained to him by Neytiri: Haku had learned it from Sarpa, who in turn had heard it from merchants or other ogres who had encountered merchants in their lifetime.

At the mention of their mother, Darbi seemed to bite his tongue. "Brother, listen, I... I think you should seriously apologize to Rhaegal"

Haku snorted. It had seemed strange to him that, even though they had been walking together for a while, Darbi hadn't brought it up. "I've already explained what my reasons were" he said. "I did what I did to protect all of us. I have no reason to apologize to anyone"

"I know you did it to protect us, brother, I understand that. But the others don't see it the same way" Darbi replied. "Especially Rhaegal. He doesn't talk about it, but I can see it, and I'm sure you've noticed it too. He's angry, and I mean really angry. And the others are angry too. And maybe… well… I can't say for sure, but... perhaps they are also..."

Darbi didn't continue his sentence. Haku looked at him sideways. "They are also what?" he asked.

Darbi seemed undecided about what to say, then he shook his head. "It doesn't matter now. What matters is that you should seriously apologize to them. At least for the way you treated Rhaegal. I mean, when you explained your reasons you weren't exactly nice"

Haku wasn't convinced that what Darbi was about to tell him didn't matter. Judging by the way he'd stammered, he must have had a lot. But if his brother didn't want to tell him about it, he wasn't going to force him. "What could be wrong with the way I treated Rhaegal?"

"Oh, come on! You practically attacked him!" Darbi exclaimed. "Don't you think you overdid it a little?"

Haku thought back to the last discussion between him and Rhaegal. Actually, he had been a little too abrupt at the time. "I admit that I could have reacted more calmly" he said. "But you can't deny that Rhaegal practically forced me. He wasn't listening to me. It's his fault I acted like that. He's the one who should be the first to apologize for attacking me with such intensity"

Darbi sighed heartbroken. "You know, it's in this moment that it shows that we are all siblings. You and Rhaegal are equally stubborn" he grumbled. "Seriously, we should be a family! We can't have hatred between us. We already have the whole world against us, do you want us to even start arguing with each other?"

"The important thing is that we stick together. After that everything will be fine" Haku replied. "And I'm not going to hate anyone. When Rhaegal comes to apologize to me, I'll be happy to accept his apology and apologize back"

"What if he doesn't? Haku, for once, couldn't you let it go and apologize first, or at least try to talk to him?" Darbi asked.

"As I told you before, I have no reason to do it. I didn't do anything wrong, and sooner or later Rhaegal and the others will understand that too" Haku said. "They just need time, you'll see"

At that point Darbi gave up. "Okay, do what you want" he grumbled tired of that conversation. "You know what? Kotaru is right about you: you may be a genius, but when it comes to social relationships you're really just an imbecile"

And having said this, he quickened his pace and walked away. Haku felt offended by those words, but he decided that it wasn't worth arguing. Though he couldn't help but wonder what exactly Darbi was referring to, he decided to ignore that words to not ruin that beautiful day.