Would this day ever end? This entire adventure had passed in one day, in one evening. Yet, in my mind, in my aching legs, and in my relationship with Hinte, a whole cycle might have passed. More had happened today than in any other cycle of my life.
forget!) not on the purportedly-sacred crestdays and troughdays. Hope Cthwithach-sofran has time to teach you anything, else you’ll have nothing else to show the day wasn’t waste. Let Uvidet-gyfar drag you out to play cards at the Moyo-Makao every other day. Check by the courtiers again, you never know. If you grow bored of things???—??when you grow bored of things???—??you can beg the guards at the south gate to let you out, and fly some laps in the pretty red ravines south of town. Then sneak out at night and look at the endless stars.
serious on my wings. My mindeye aimed searching, longing glances to the silly side of things. But the gyras spent in the courts and parties of sky, of my family dragging me to act just like them, obscured my sight, and all I felt were old instincts returning.
Keep your frills by your neck. No one wants to see them.
Flick your tongue if you must, but do not wave it. Nothing smells that good.
And hide your fangs, you are not some dewy-fanged slut or farm-wiver.
<hr style="margin-top: 2ex; margin-bottom: 2ex">
Your father knew Ushra. Your tongue slipped.”
If it’s still a clinic when you got to wait ’til the stars align with both moons on the crestday ’fore he deigns to overcharge you for an examination.”
<hr style="margin-top: 2ex; margin-bottom: 2ex">
wave my tongue, but I flicked it out just a little more. Try as I did, there wasn’t much more than that???—??maybe a lingering lunch, maybe some tasteful colonge. I did a little frown. Mlaen didn’t smell like much.
felt like a long time. Maybe it was a matter of course, sitting here and twiddling my halluxes like I did, but it was a moment extended like there’d been a shortage of them.
up for traveling by the Berwem? In chain and leather?”
Yes. I almost said it aloud.
The humans had armies? He nudged Adwyn, and glanced the faer and Cynfe. “You all know what happened to Banti/Gorphon. It ain’t there anymore.”
<hr style="margin-top: 2ex; margin-bottom: 2ex">
are missing angle, here. Our cliffs are dangerous???—??would these silly apes not just see that these explorers perished from their own foolishness?” He turned his gaze from me, regarding the nails of his forefoot held.
confidence, rather than resting on our bellies and breathing for ignorance to save us.”
stung. After all we’d gone through, and she didn’t even wave?
* * *