"Oh dear!" Maelyn laughed as she told Yasmine, "That is my favorite type of humor! And as long as you can take what you're giving out we'll be good!"
"I usually am." Yasmine admitted, "But it's hard when I accidentally press someone's buttons with a joke and they get real mean and degrading when they start retaliating."
"Hey, I understand!" Maelyn shared, "That's why little lazy butt Harmon irking my nerves all day with his petty junk has me always feeding him such heavy sarcasm every time he opens that mouth he can't keep up!"
"My habit of greeting such pettiness with heavy sarcasm is why you haven't met me before." Yasmine confessed, "Cause they usually keep me in the kitchen so I won't offend any customers."
Maelyn then got up as she had finished her meal and made her way to the tent where they kept the samples that had been collected that day and asked Yasmine to follow her. When they got to the other tent she quietly asked her, "Could you ask Kathy to send me an update through you, Joseph, or Angie on any changes to Altinyn's constitution that your Congress or the Alwuzars have made over the centuries since the last Queen fell? Harmon and joseph got into little bit of a spat today over our knowledge of your constitution and so I wanna know what he can and can't do. Cause his petty temper is bound to try and punish us with the laws and we're gonna need to know the law so we can use it against HIM instead of him using it against US!"
"I could come back tomorrow and tell you!" Yasmine offered, "I wanted to be a historian for the Kingdom and was studying it all until mom let me know that Prime Minister Anton wouldn't allow it because if people knew of our kingdom's history and laws him and his family wouldn't be able to still keep their positions as our country's Ministers without doing more for the people instead of doing more for their pockets."
"Thank you! I ALWAYS value people that like to know their history!" Maelyn told her in thankfulness, "Because remembering our history is the only way to keep from repeating it!" She then grinned and told her, "I will warn you though that you'll have to put up with your nephew some more if you do. He's the historian for our crew here and so he would have to be present to update his knowledge too."
Waving her hand dismissively Yasmine informed her with a laugh, "Pfft! He's no problem! In fact he might be an amusing toy I can play with!"
"Umm, I don't know about Altinyn, but in most of the States first cousins and closer can't marry." Maelyn hesitantly told her, 'So if you're thinking of playing with your clothes off..."
"Sorry! But he strikes me as the one and done type and I would rather have one willing to share the pleasure for at least a little while longer." Yasmine laughed as she responded then confided, "Besides, Joseph isn't really my type. I go more for the guys like your Mister Daughtry. Just closer to my age than he appears to be."
"Dave isn't nearly as old as he appears to be!" Maelyn laughed as she got the DNA sampling machine ready, "He's actually only five years older than you are. He's just taken some hard digs out in the desert over the years and, if he wasn't already hitched to Allison, I would recommend him as a prize to go after but she's the only one he allows to keep him straight so I gotta keep my prize mule in top condition you know!"
Easily allowing Maelyn to take a quick blood sample Yasmine acted disappointed as she smiled and said, "Well durn! All the good ones keep getting sold off before I can make a bid! And I always get stuck bidding on the leftovers!"
"Speaking of leftovers," Maelyn told her as she brought forth the high resolution camera she had used to take a lighted visual scan of the palace's roof and showed her as she continued, "Do you know what type of material these scales things on that roof made of? Because I don't want to accidentally touch one and have it fall into dust. Or have it cause all of the ones above it on the palace's roof to come sliding down and fall off!"
"I doubt you will believe me," Yasmine told her with a friendly smile, "But it is made from actual dragon scales that had been shed. And that is also what our kingdom used for currency until their colors finally started to fade too much to easily distinguish about a hundred years ago and Prime Minister Anton's grandfather changed our currency over to metal based scales instead."
"How do you know they were REAL dragon scales though?!" Maelyn asked doubtfully, "I haven't ever seen a dragon and the closest thing to one I've ever seen to these scales is a pangolin that usually lives near here. So are you sure they weren't just colored pangolin scales?"
"I am sure." Yasmine told her with a smile for Madelyn's disbelief, "And I do believe that you will believe too after you are able to unearth the talismans that Angie said you have been finding."
When the DNA sampler machine dinged and showed the results Maelyn looked them over twice before exclaiming to Yasmine, "Well I'll be! You're DEFINITELY Joseph's anunt! In fact, you're so close genetically you could almost be his stepsister! And tell me more about your dad's family! Cause you're a distant relative of the body we found in the hollow of a suspected murder site."
"My father's family is from the village of Mazar that is ten of your miles down the mountain." Yasmine shared, "Our family has always been the caretakers of the livestock that provides the kingdom meat."
"Huh!" Maelyn grunted, "I wonder how a cattle farmer ended up passing the Prime Minister during the lava's flood of the palace grounds without us finding any livestock or even any tools of that trade on the body?"
"That would be because he was my great grandfather's uncle Hankar that left the farm to become a guard for Queen Ielania." Yasmine explained, "He is in fact part of the reason I tried to become a historian. Partly because he became part of our country's history by being the guard that defended the the newborn princess when Joseph's great grandfather tried to murder her claiming that the queen should have honored tradition and not let any girl child survive birth until after she had gave birth to a prince. Knowing his story also gave me the courage to try and reach outside my traditional role and be a historian. Despite the punishment, derision, and hate my family gave me. I kept trying for it until my father, who had reached outside of his role to be a baker told me to talk to mom about it and she told me that the Alwuzar family wouldn't allow it."
"well durn!" Maelyn sympathized and suggested, "I'm pretty sure that Anton and Harmon wouldn't allow it just because of their animosity for Kathy, but what about Abjul? He strikes me as one that would at least give you a fair shot at it when he get's bumped up to Prime Minister."
"I don't know." Yasmine hesitantly replied, "He is usually nicer to his people, but up until recently he has been doing what his father and grandfather have told him to do. Also, he probably won't be able to attain the position for another thirty or forty years at least!"
"I think that he will continue to change. And I'm also thinking that once you are able to name your next ruler that it may happen sooner than that." Maelyn encouraged her, "So don't give up on it."
"Yeah, but our only hope of a REAL new ruler," Yasmine grumbled, "is if the crystal dragon of the throne doesn't light up when Anton or Harmon hold it and it picks a new ruler that actually cares about the people!"
"Speaking of that crystal dragon," Maelyn curiously asked, "What's the deal with it picking the next ruler? I thought the rule oldest child or a male child inherits in kingdom setups like this? And, on top of that, how is something that old supposed to light up? Cause even if they had batteries back then, I don't know of one that'd last for five hundred years!"
"When Altinyn has a ruling King or Queen the throne gets passed to the child they choose to rule after them. But when there isn't a child to pass the throne to, or when their rule is challenged, the crystal dragon will light up when held by the ruler it chooses to rule." Yasmine explained, "And from what I have read, it gets it's power from the energy the ruler it chooses gives off. It has been called magic, but from what I have read about it, it sounded more like a modern AI somehow sent back in time to the early days of this kingdom's first rulers finding out how to transform themselves into dragons and passing the knowledge down from generation to generation so those with acceptable genes could become dragons. Of course I have never myself seen it done, but that is what I have gathered from all of the tales mom was told as a child that she has passed down to me."
"I don't know which one is harder to believe!" Maelyn exclaimed with a laugh, "The insane possibility of magic or the equally insane possibility of the future sending an AI built into a crystal dragon being sent thousands of years back in time!"