The Dragoneer Manual

Chapter 3 - The Shipment

At 7am sharp Rory was at the store, ready to receive the shipment. She hadn't slept deeply the night before, and from the little she did dream, she recalled some weird imagery of planting seeds in soil, which still stuck with her quite vividly.

The morning felt a bit hazy, as if she was maybe still in bed and maybe just dreaming of work. And the subsequent events of that morning made her actually question her reality several times.

A man arrived from a delivery company with a large box. He rang the bell at the front door, and Rory held it open for him to wheel in the package. He kindly asked her to sign a paper acknowledging the delivery, and seemed oddly enthusiastic, as if it was the store's lucky day or something.

Rory was slightly bewildered by this, but too tired to really think about it. Her hot coffee from the expensive Italian shop next door was sitting behind the counter, still way too hot to drink. She shrugged off the weird feeling she was having and decided that perhaps this man was just one of those 'morning people' she struggled to understand.

When he'd left the store, Rory took out a pair of sharp scissors and cut along the top of the box. It was filled with a ridiculous amount of packing peanuts of varying pastel colors, some of which burst out when she opened the first flap of cardboard.

Rory sighed, dragging the trash can over by the box. Diligently, she began to remove the packing peanuts, but it proved to be too slow to do by hand, so she instead tipped the box slightly on its side, and pushed a waterfall of colors into the trash with her forearm.

On a second look, the colors of the packing peanuts were quite pretty, and Rory wondered why the vendor had bothered to cough up the extra money to include these. How eccentric.

When the bottom finally began to clear, Rory was quite surprised to see only a small stack of books in the box. She pulled out a packing slip from the sea of peanuts still remaining. It read:

Special Delivery from Arthur Wood, LLC.

Thank you for your order. Although we do not attempt to, and at any rate cannot control the hands of fate, we humbly request that you follow three simple instructions regarding the distribution of our books.

1. We have included five copies. Please place the books on the least visible shelf in the store, where it will NOT be easy for a customer to find.

2. If a customer is to come across a copy and attempt to buy one, do not charge them for the book. We will reimburse you at a generous rate.

3. If the person reading this feels compelled to take a book for themselves, then the very fact of you working at this bookstore is fated, and you should feel more than welcome to do so.

Rory furrowed her brow at this note. Boy, was she right about the vendor being eccentric. It was a good thing that she worked at this store, since there was no way giving a customer a book free of charge would fly with her Uncle Phil. In fact, if he saw this note, he'd probably charge the customer and the publisher.

Rory dug through the last few peanuts to reveal the box's contents. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the covers of the books.

Each cover had a different colored dragon on it, with illustrations that had metallic sheens and which glistened brightly, even under the weak store lights. What most caught Rory's attention, however, was the title of the novels. Along the top of the cover, they read: The Dragoneer Manual II, and the sight of the very name sent her spinning into her childhood memories.

She had a vision of sitting on her pink bedroom carpet, paging through the many instructions and illustrations of The Dragoneer Manual, and dreaming of all the adventures she would one day brave. The manual used to be her only solace and place of safety in the otherwise turbulent household she grew up in.