A Most Refined Dragon
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stewroot – Tubers like potatoes.
sweetroot – A root that tastes like licorice.
tearfruit – A citrus fruit more sour than lemon that makes you tear. Also, a name for a former lover whom you thought was sweet until they broke your heart.
Thedarra – The second best cook, artist and weaver among the hands, after Shorassa, her best friend. However, at singing she has no equal.
Tomax – A jummax who is dumber than usual.
Tongaroi – A Brown Lissai and hlissak over Menagerie Klatch.
Torbu – Thedarra's quagga.
torby – A five-foot wide, spherical, stubby-legged, scaly, spike-covered, fire-breathing terror. If you crossed an armadillo with a dragon, you'd get this beast. The male's propensity for damage derives from its puppy-like playfulness and loyal attachment to anything that feeds it or plays with it. Only three things will tear it from your side: the Census Stone, a female torby, or death. (By the way, stabbing it with a spear or shooting it with an arrow is considered playing with it.)
torryx – A feathered tyrannosuarus rex, coming in all sizes.
unicoin – A coin made by slicing a disk from a unicorn's horn and pouring in molten silver or gold. Unicoins are sentient, but not very bright. They like their freedom, so make sure your purse is tied shut. It is suspected that unicorns are in frequent communion with the pieces of their old horns, hence know the character and habits of all who possess these coins. For this reason, the Intima Dating Service contracts out all background checks on Kibota to the unicorns.
utter-fly – It floats like a butterfly, but stings like a telepathic pest, injecting false memories into its victim. The hallucinations can be controlled by fly wardens, who whisper (utter) to them while they are memora worms, before their metamorphosis. Commonly used as love charms.
Vedarran – Thedarra's father, a farmer and retired lawyer.
walloroak – Tree with a trunk that is narrow in one direction and very wide in the other, like a wall. Four planted in a square will grow up to form the walls of a tree house. Grind its acorns into powder, add zizza sap and curdled fan-fan milk and you get something that still doens't taste like chocolate.
wandermutt – Green-tufted wandermutts are wild and dangerous, while the brown-tufted variety could be domesticated, but no one wants to. They vaguely resemble Saint Bernards (at three times the size and ten times the slobber) and have a habit of rescuing lost children.
wing – A group of seven Claws on a peaceful mission. Any multiple of seven Claws also constitutes a wing, except if it is also a multiple of six.
zaff-berries – Tart berries like cranberries. If you eat some, they makes you say, “Zaff!” Zaff is a Kibotan word which also means “You're cute. I'm available and interested.” The etymology is suspect. This word was most likely coined by a ten-year-old girl who was having no luck training her utter-flies.
zizza – A bee. Zizza sap is honey. Zizza zap is not.
Zocrita – Lead judicartist and prosecutor in Four Rivers. She interprets artwork created by the accused to discover motive. She is equally good at interpreting the patterns left on a half-eaten dinner plate. Intima Dating rejected her application. Nobody wants to marry her.
About the Author
Paul Anton Chernoch lives in a suburb of Boston with his wife and three daughters, one of whom freaks out around butterflies. He studied physics at MIT, where he took his first programming course from Professor Joseph Licklider, who (unlike a certain boastful politician) really did invent the internet. He has programmed in over twenty-five different computer languages but has to fight tooth-and-nail to win a game of Scrabble against his wife.
After growing up on a farm with ducks, geese, chickens, horses, a pony, a llama, finches, an alligator, turtles, a hamster, cats, a dog and a tank of goldfish, he would never think of rescuing a dinosaur. It was bad enough when the llama (ironically named Sweetheart) knocked his uncle Wally down and sat on him, forcing his father Joe to chase it off with a baseball bat. Uncle Wally worked on the the Apollo Lunar lander program and has his name on a plaque on the moon, while his dad holds the patent on the face-pumped laser and was the first person to cut a hole through a diamond with a laser. The image of two prominent American engineers at the mercy of a poison-spitting mammal was enough to put the fear of untamed nature in this writer.
While he once enjoyed experiences like touring Romania as a singer in a Christian band or working at a Church food pantry, writing is his passion. You can find these other works of his on Amazon.com:
Flight After Death – A fastasy about Kemp Paxson, a process server in the afterlife who tries to escape from purgatory and finds himself fighting against heaven and hell. When his lawyer (dead and desparate like him) proves negligent, he does the unexpected: he kidnaps a living lawyer to defend him.
Fighting Extradition – Sequel to Flight After Death where Judge Daniel Lidgate is called to negotiate a peace treaty between two warring factions among the courts of the afterlife, each led by a close friend. He discovers more is at stake than legal turf when someone steals the four horses of the apocalypse.
The Endless Hunt - Or If I've Found God, Why am I Still Looking? – A nonfiction spiritual treasure hunt, where every chapter ends with a riddle. This book of Christian worship explores twelve aching spiritual needs that all people possess and the spiritual treasures God offers to satisfy those needs: Feeling Dead
Lonely
Aimless
Barren
Ignorant
Neglected
Defenseless
Destitute
Despairing
Enslaved
Afraid
Insignificant