But instead of a dry recitation of dates, Professor Dano wove a tale worthy of Pixit’s wish for story time. He told about the founding of Alorria, how it began as a small storm-ravaged country, hemmed in by mountains and the ocean. Crops barely grew in the weak soil, and its people were barely surviving. Many starved to death, until one day, a man found an egg, larger than any he’d seen.

“He would have eaten it right then, fed his young daughter and himself, but the man had foresight: if he waited for the egg to hatch, if he let the creature grow, then they would have a feast!” Professor Dano said. “And so he placed the egg inside his one-room hut beneath his daughter’s bed. Days passed, then months, and the egg did not hatch. The man forgot it was there. But the daughter slept above it, dreaming and thinking and feeling and living, until at last, two years later, it hatched. And from that egg came the first storm beast: a rain beast, bonded to the girl. Together they drove away the storms that pounded their hillside, and instead they brought gentle rain. Crops grew, and word began to spread.”

The funny thing was that the story was different from what Mina had learned from her parents and her teachers in the farmlands. In the story she knew, the farmer didn’t forget about the egg—​he hatched it with the intent to harness its storm powers, a deliberate choice for the good of his country.

“Are you saying it was luck?” Jyx asked, disbelief in her voice. She must have heard the same stories Mina had of the brilliance of the early Alorrians, of their insight and vision.

“Yes, it was chance alone that shaped our future,” Professor Dano said. “Chance and absent-mindedness. And a certain disregard for cleanliness.”

Mina turned that idea over in her mind. If that unknown man hadn’t forgotten he’d stashed an egg under his daughter’s bed, then all of Alorria would have remained like the rest of the world: at the mercy of storms. The way Professor Dano told it, it was pure luck that the power of the storm beasts had been discovered.

Other lectures were the same: a mix of familiar and different.

Each day, as Professor Dano expounded on Alorrian history and storm-beast theory, Mina drank it all in, every word of it, with Pixit beside her. As much as she wanted to learn to fly, she loved this.