Ashspring sat on the high wall looking out over the docks and the poor section of the city.  She could just hear the music dancing on the southern winds as the pink reflections of the sunset bathed the whitewashed walls.  She could smell the salt on the air mixed with the rancid bitterness of fish guts rotting on the docks.   She liked the smell not so much because it was pleasant as because she had grown accustomed to its gritty undertaste, a permeating sense of her world that colored even the most pleasant Mediterranean sunset with almost imperceptible ugliness.   This was her home, not some storybook tale she'd once so utterly believed in and now cursed for its deception.    Her father paid dearly for the whitewash he had used to paint over the truth of his house.  He paid even more dearly for the perfume that hid the stench of his misdeeds.   He'd spent his life believing that it was the past, done and forgotten.   Now is all that mattered.   Now he had respect, wealth, pride and honor.    Honor.  Ashspring spat the word out like a fermented fig.  “I was young once, like yourself, and so full of myself,” he'd whispered to her.  The rattling of his lungs betrayed the effort of each breath.    Ashspring had dipped the white muslin in wine sweetened water and wiped the spittle from his lips.  “Am I so full of myself?” “No, not so much,” he'd replied.  “But I, I held the dragon between my legs.  Fire blew across the seas, back then.   Across many seas.”   Ashspring rose from her father's bedside, and carried the bowl to the window.    “Is that what you called me here to tell me?  A story of dragon fire across the sea?  I think I've heard that tale before.”     She poured the water out the window and watched it disperse into droplets carried out to sea by the breeze.  “Not this one.”  Her father's tone had grown suddenly serious.  Ashspring remembered how dark the room had appeared when she turned.  It was not dark as a room when the light has faded from the windows, but dark as if all light had been sucked out of it.  She could barely make out her father's face.  Ashspring picked at a broken tile that framed the mosaic in the wall.  Her anger still simmered as she remembered that chill conversation.    The tile came loose from its grout and she stood up and hurled it across the docks where it bounced twice before plummeting into the sea.   “A whore?  You summoned me here to tell me about your debauchery with a whore?”  Ashspring had tried to leave but her father's hand had grabbed hers.   His hand was cold, but his grip firm.  “Not just any old whore.  A shamaness, one beloved of her God.  The God that has given you your education and status and wealth. “  He had gripped her hand harder pulling him to her.  He was hurting her and she struggled to pull free.   “She bound me to her with a child, my son.”   Her father lightened his grip on her hand then and laid back, wheezing.  The exertion had cost him.   “She gave me a choice,” he'd whispered.  “But such a choice no man should have to make.”  Ashspring's curiosity overpowered her aggravation as her father had known it would.  “What choice?” she asked.  “The life of one child or the death of another.” Ashspring had looked at him then but she no longer saw her father.   He was an old man with sunken eyes and chalky white skin.   Nor did she think he saw her.  Not anymore.  Now he only saw death.  “If I stayed with my son, my seed would dry up and the dragon would never breath again.   Or I could return home, marry the woman my family had chosen for me, and Crom would grant me a wealth, success, and many many children.   But no sons.” “It seems a fair exchange.”  “And so I thought, for many years.  But now I am dying and none will live who bare my name.   I would see my son.  I would give him my name.” “But your bargain....” “I am old, my seed is dry.  There is nothing she can do to me now.” “And us?” “Crom would not deny my son his heritage.”  “You don't know that.”   Her father's casual dismissal pierced her heart with an icy cold. Her father grabbed her hand again and pulled her to him.  “Bring me my son.  Bring him, before I die.” Ashspring had sat on the high wall all day waiting for the sun to warm the icy chill from her bones.  And now the bright orange ball was sinking below the horizons.  It was not safe to remain here at night.  Bands of thieves roamed the streets and she must not be caught among them.   Yet she lingered.    Though she would have preferred the day had never begun, now she feared its end.   Tomorrow she must sail to find her father's folly and bring him home to destroy them all.   Or she could refuse and watch as Mitra cursed them all for defying her dying father's wishes.   A choice no woman should have to make.