“Off to the western coast of Ur-Teros lies a group of islands commonly called the Western Isles. The whole region was filled with thousands of islands, for ones so small only a few migratory birds ever perched on them, to the seven main isles, each so large they made the largest island in the Al-Shan Archipelago far in the north look puny.

In these wild, mostly untamed lands, lived hundreds of tribes of therians, orcs, goblins, and merfolk, in relative harmony, even notwithstanding the typical small-scale tribal conflicts that erupted from time to time. Scholars had estimated that the Western Isles were both larger and more populous than the Elmaiya Empire, which was already the largest in Ur-Teros, and the main reason the southern continent never saw a tribal invasion was that the tribes favored their temperate island homes to the hotter mainland as a whole.” - From a Socioeconomy paper by Garth Wainwrought, Dean and formerly Professor of Socioeconomy in the Levain Institute for Higher Learning.

In the end, finding a boat that traveled to the Western Isles and had no issues with accommodating a tamed beast of Lumi’s prodigious size proved to be easier than Cal thought. The second boat she asked was capable of that, and the only reason the first couldn’t was because they were already too full to add her party plus their animal companions.

After a short break of three days on Rostem, where they sampled the local cuisine heavily affected by their frequent trade with the island tribes, the group embarked on the boat. The boat itself was not that large, maybe twenty meters from one end to another, and about a third as wide. Lumi quite naturally couldn’t fit below deck, but there was a large cleared area on the top deck where she could lay comfortably when she wasn’t flying around.

The trip from Rostem’s port - situated right on the shorelines west of the fort city - to the nearest Isle, often just called the Market Isle by the locals, was a short one, merely a single day by boat, and that was mostly because their boat happened to leave at the evening, reaching the island the next morning. A morning boat would have reached the island on the same day.

There they alighted and disembarked on the largest settlement on the island,dubbed Longshore by the Elmaiyans. The local name was a long sentence that basically amounted to “Place where traders come and go by the waters” when translated, though none of the party spoke the local language.

Unlike the tribal settlements most of them expected to see, Longshore was a massive, sprawling port city easily twice as large as Rostem was, with most of the buildings in town being of a notably smaller size, with more normal-sized buildings mostly found in the city’s port and market districts, where most of the inns and taverns which catered to visitors were located.

The inhabitants of Longshore were predominantly of the Long-ear tribe of therians. A small people, smaller than even goblins and mostly topping out at a meter tall not counting their eponymous long ears, they were a mostly docile, peaceful tribe, who simply survived all these centuries by outbreeding and outlasting their antagonists.

A typical Long-ear matron often had as much as fifty children in their short lifetimes - the males of the tribe rarely lived to twenty, while the females reached thirty at most - since they gave birth in litters of up to a dozen at a time and had short gestation period of merely three months. Some revered shamans and matrons were even renowned for having given birth to over a hundred children in their days.

Cal had seen their people reasonably often as traveling merchants in the Elmaiya Empire and other lands, with a few even reaching as far as Al-Shan in her later visits to her homeland. Their prodigious numbers and short lives often inflicted the tribe members with a wanderlust, and those who followed the call usually lived the rest of their lives on the road, never to return.

It was part of the reason why the city never became that overcrowded even with their prodigious rate of breeding.

A fluffle of the small, long-eared tribals welcomed the party when they went to the areas designated for visitors. The separation was less due to discrimination, Kyara had explained, and more of practical and pragmatic reasons.

After all, the majority of the buildings in the city were built to accommodate the small people, and the “tall-folk” of Cal’s party would have difficulties even getting through the doors of such establishments. The visitor’s district on the other hand was built large enough to accommodate even the largest of therians like the pachyderm breeds, even if the sight of several of the small people sitting on each other’s shoulder and forming a tower just to clean the place looked comical at times.

They booked rooms at one of the largest and best inns in town, which had a large stable attached to it where Lumi and Ida also found accommodations for them. Animal companions were commonplace in the western isles, and while the locals in this particular town were mostly small folk, they built their roads wide to accommodate heavy traffic even while large beasts were passing by.

Cal had arranged their itinerary with Kyara’s help and guidance before they left. Her plan was to tour all the seven isles, ending at the northernmost isle to meet up with Arquivaldo by mid-autumn, and from there they would take the ship to Al-Shan. Kyara and Ashani would join them for the trip, since they only intended to visit their village along the way rather than to return home for the long term.

Ashani wanted to see more of the world first, a feeling Cal understood all too well, and one Kyara was also supportive of. That said, many of the isles themselves would be a first time for the younger therian girl, as she had taken a direct route to the Elmaiya Empire when she was on her way out.