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Valley of Smoke

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. In my grandfather's boyhood -- or so he likes to tell it when my brother and I can catch him sitting by the hearth in between supper and bedtime, the fire making shadows dance on the wall and visions dance in his eyes -- our valley, the longest between the Grayfish Mountains in the south and the northern seaside city of Hamplun, was a main thoroughfare from the mines. The farms along the way made their living shipping what they could up to the coast alongside the dallic from the mountains, on wagons that seems to never end; an endless line going north with the ore and our crops, south with provisions for the miners, plus dried fish and other trinkets that sold in the villages along the way.