We were camping in the shell of some old keep—half-fallen, moss-ridden, and probably haunted by the ghosts of constipated barons. The Dragon wouldn’t fit through the door, of course, so he was curled on the crumbling outer platform, tail twitching like an annoyed cat. I was inside, cross-legged on a rug that probably used to be a tapestry, trying to write.

  No. Trying to to write. Again.

  “Wrong grip,” the Dragon said, flicking his claw like a disapproving tutor. “You’re holding the quill like it’s a fork at a brothel banquet.”

  “I brothel banquets,” I muttered.

  “Then eat off them. Don’t write with them. Adjust your fingers—no, not like that. Gods, girl, has no one taught you how to scribe?”

  “Yes,” I snapped. “A very educated cock once scribbled on my back with honey. Count as tutoring?”

  He didn’t rise to the bait. Just narrowed his eyes and gestured toward the parchment. “Write your name.”

  I glared at the parchment like it insulted my lineage. Then, with what I thought was theatrical flair, I scrawled:

  ????????

  Misaligned. The rune was mirrored. The final stroke curled into a messy blob like it had given up on life halfway through.

  “There,” I said. “Masterpiece.”

  The Dragon leaned closer, one elegant brow arched like a scimitar. “Your looks like a bowel movement in a snowstorm.”

  “Bite me.”

  He ignored that too. “We begin again. High Draconic. This—” he drew a jagged symbol with a talon in the dirt “—is the glyph for , the concept of radiant flame. It’s also the root for , which means both ‘birth’ and ‘destruction.’”

  “Great,” I said. “Useful for breakfast menus.”

  “You’ll start by copying it ten times.”

  “I’ll start by stabbing you in your smug face.”

  But I did it. Bent over that parchment, sweat trickling down my neck despite the breeze coming through the arrow slits, tongue poking out like a half-witted child. I copied the rune once. Twice. On the third try my quill snapped.

  I threw it across the room.

  “I hate this.”

  “You hate being wrong,” the Dragon replied.

  “No, I hate .” I picked up a splinter of quill and stabbed the parchment with it. “My body’s a goddamn temple, and that temple doesn’t need runes to survive.”

  “It needs them to evolve.”

  “I evolved just fine by sucking cock and climbing rooftops.”

  He sighed. A real sigh this time. The kind with centuries behind it.

  “I’m trying to give you something permanent, Saya.”

  “I permanent. You should see the scars.”

  He was silent a moment. Then, very softly: “Scars are not the same as runes.”

  I hated him a little for that. For being right. For making this harder. For making me want to do it just to prove I could.

  I picked up another quill. Dipped it. Looked at the rune again.

  Then began.

  The lines wobbled. The ink blotted. My hand cramped. My pride cracked.

  But I wrote.

  One rune. Then another.

  And another.

  Sweating. Cursing. Muttering insults in three languages and half a moan.

  The Dragon watched, silent now. I don’t know if he was impressed or just restraining a laugh.

  “Oh, and mind your cases.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Upper and lower,” he said like it was self-explanatory. “Capital and minor glyphs. High Draconic is very particular about case.”

  I stared at him. Then at the parchment. Then back at him.

  “What the do you mean ‘cases’? There’s alphabets?”

  “Not alphabets,” he corrected, insufferably calm. “Just letter forms. Same runes. Different presentation depending on function. Capitals for formal names, beginnings of sentences, declarations of divine mandate, epic titles—”

  “—and lower case for ? Apologies and shopping lists?”

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  He gave me that long-suffering look. “Syntax. It’s about clarity.”

  “Clarity my sweaty tits! Who decided this? No really, I want names. I want . Why the hell would anyone do that? Why not just set of symbols? What demented bureaucratic toad thought this was a good idea?”

  “Standardization committees,” he muttered. “Never trust a dragon with a desk.”

  I stood up so fast my parchment flew off my lap. “So let me get this straight. All this time— this time—I thought the top line in a scroll was in some ancient sacred tongue and the rest was translation.”

  He blinked. “You thought titles and body text were in different ?”

  “Yes!” I threw my arms up. “Like, I thought it was like… Seebulban and Tenagran. Or churchy-speak and market-speak. I thought ‘By Decree of the Great Temple’ was one dialect and ‘please don’t shit in the fountain’ was another!”

  He was silent for a long moment. Then he let out a sigh so deep I swear it came from the bottom of the sea. “No. It’s all one language. That’s just... grammar.”

  I sat back down, seething.

  He picked up a charcoal stub and wrote two words: Saya in tall, looping, formal glyphs—majestic and sweeping—and then again in tiny squished curves.

  “There,” he said. “Upper and lower.”

  I squinted.

  “Nope,” I said. “Second one’s wrong.”

  “It’s the same word.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “It .”

  “No it isn’t. Look at it. The first one says Saya. say Saya. That second one says... saaaya or something. Like a nervous hiccup. Or the sound a sheep makes when it’s been punched in the gut.”

  He pinched the bridge of his snout. “They’re both valid.”

  “ am valid. That second thing is a lie. That’s not my name.”

  He gestured to the text again. “This is how the world writes.”

  “Well the world’s a moron,” I snapped. “You don’t go carving a glorious name in stone with toddler scribbles. I want the big ones. All the time. Every time.”

  “You can’t just use all capitals for everything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then it looks like you’re .”

  “I yelling.”

  He sighed. Again. Gods, the sighs this lizard produces.

  “You know,” I said, eyeing the stub of charcoal like a murder weapon, “maybe the reason I never learned to read wasn’t because I’m dumb. Maybe it’s because no one explained that the world’s scribbles for no damn reason like some shapeshifting goblin code.”

  The Dragon didn’t disagree.

  Which meant I was right.

  Which meant I could never forgive the alphabet. Not ever.

  I stared at the parchment, then picked up the quill again. Wrote in big, beautiful, slightly crooked runes.

  Then underlined it. Twice.

  “Lowercase me again,” I warned, “and I will shit in your ink pot.”

  He didn’t even blink. “Uppercase threats. How appropriate.”

  I grinned.

  Back to work.

  The Dragon tapped his claw thoughtfully against the stone, eyes half-lidded like a tutor regretting his life choices.

  “In High Draconic,” he began, “each rune corresponds to one sound. One. Clear. Clean. Elegant.”

  I nodded. “Good. That actually makes sense.”

  “It does. Same with Lipontic. Old merchant tongue. Precise. Functional. You see a rune, you know the sound. No surprises. No silent letters. No ten ways to spell the same grunt.”

  “Alright,” I said, eyeing the parchment. “For once, the world isn’t entirely stupid.”

  He nodded sagely. “But then… there’s .”

  I stiffened. “What about it?”

  “Spelling,” he said with the same tone one might use to describe an incurable rash. “In Seebulban, a single sound can be written six different ways, and a single rune can mean three entirely unrelated sounds depending on context.”

  I blinked. “That’s… dumb.”

  He smiled without mirth. “It’s because Seebulban is in adopted Lipontic runes.”

  “No it’s not,” I said, immediate and firm. “It’s written in Seebulban.”

  He tilted his head. “Yes. Spoken in Seebulban. Written in Lipontic script, poorly adapted.”

  “No,” I said again. “We have our own runes. I’ve seen them. On the tavern signs. The brothel menus. The price lists for cabbages and cooch.”

  “Those,” he said dryly, “are Lipontic characters mangled by generations of dockside scribes who thought ink should flow like wine and grammar was a kind of venereal disease.”

  I stared. “Are you saying,” I said slowly, dangerously, “that , Queen of the Inner Sea, Mistress of Spice and Sin, the Grand Whore of the Sapphire Coast—?”

  He looked at me for a long moment.

  Then sighed.

  “Oh my gods,” I said, horrified. “We’re scriptless.”

  “Script-adjacent,” he offered.

  “Script-stolen,” I corrected, indignant. “We’re a pirate dialect!”

  “More of a creole,” he mused.

  I clutched the quill like a dagger. “Next you’ll tell me we import our obscenities from Thalveth.”

  “Actually, your word for ‘dick’ is derived from an old Thalvethan word for ‘rudder.’”

  I screamed into the sky.

  Somewhere, a loose stone fell off the tower. Possibly out of embarrassment.

  “Why,” I growled, “why did no one me this?”

  “Because Seebulbans consider literacy an optional inconvenience. And because your scholars tend to be drunk poets or retired courtesans.”

  I stood. Paced. Pointed at my parchment. “So I’m trying to learn to write a language that writes perfectly. While I’ve spent my whole life failing to read a language that writes ”

  “Correct.”

  “And people looked at like I was stupid.”

  He shrugged. “You were simply misinformed.”

  “Oh, I was ”

  Another long sigh from him. “Seebulban culture is… oral.”

  I made a rude gesture. “So am I, but I still like ”

  “You’re improving.”

  “I’m revolting.”

  “Also accurate.”

  I sat back down, glowering.

  Then dipped the quill.

  And, with great care, wrote my name again—this time in proper High Draconic runes. Sharp. Clear. Capitalized like it was carved in goddamn marble.

  “Saya,” I said, and underlined it three times.

  He nodded approvingly.

  Then added, “You misspelled it.”

  I threw the inkwell at him.

  ***

  Later that day, after what felt like the longest war ever waged between a girl, a quill, and the entire concept of written language, we called a truce.

  Two quills lay snapped in half. One had teeth marks.

  Three sheets of parchment were so smeared with ink and sweat and profanity-laced doodles they looked like a crow had tried to compose a breakup letter in a thunderstorm.

  My hands were cramped, my pride wounded, my last nerve frayed like an old thong, and the Dragon had made so many sighing noises he sounded like a sentient wind tunnel.

  I dropped the latest sheet with a theatrical groan. “Fine. I surrender. I’m not a scholar. I’m not a scribe. I’m a very bendy, occasionally violent sex goblin with above-average legs and patience for silent consonants.”

  The Dragon, curled like a great smug cat on the ruined tower ledge, regarded me over the rim of his reading spectacles—yes, he had spectacles now. Big ones. Polished obsidian with gold rims. He looked like a jewelled bat.

  “Then let us make a pact,” he said solemnly. “You shall continue to write only your name— in capital High Draconic glyphs—and I shall refrain from expecting anything resembling grammatical discipline from you.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Can I mirror the S?”

  “You already do.”

  “Then it’s art.”

  He inclined his head.

  “And I,” I added with a deep breath, placing a palm over my ink-stained chest, “do solemnly swear not to have another apocalyptic tantrum over grammar.”

  “Until next time.”

  “There be a next time,” I snapped.

  He just raised a brow. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t to.

  I wiped my fingers on my thigh and admired my last attempt. Crooked. Mirrored. Slightly tilted like it was trying to escape the page.

  But it said .

  In capital runes. My way.

  And that, as far as I was concerned, was the only literacy that mattered.