PLANET MAGAZINE

My code name is Iron Feather, and I am writing this to honor an old request from my father, the former Earth Ambassador to the Confederation, the recently departed and much-admired Langford Joh. I refer to a conversation we had once in which he chided me on my poor ability to select a proper mate. Naturally, he brought up my mother and his own superlative traits as an example for me to emulate. Of course, he was thinking pure Earth at the time. Neither of us were contemplating an interspecies romance, certainly not an intergalactic one. I’ll let the reader decide if I was hasty or foolish.

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“And that’s when Asyan understood that he not only lost his wealth. He lost his family, his reputation, and his dignity. Left with nothing, he spent the rest of his years seeking, obsessed with the treasure he had lost, and died a lonely man.”

The two-dozen people who had gathered around Thomas Grayweed at the Drunken Wolf, a pub in the Lower House District of the City of the Windy Mountain, applauded. As usual, Thomas’ story did not disappoint and his audience rewarded him with admiration and a few coins. It was no average accomplishment for a four-foot-tall rat living in a land of humans. His fatherly manner, his value as an oddity, and his knack as an entertainer had done much to promote his acceptance.

“Another, Master Storyteller!” a few begged.

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