In silence I slinked away from the Gären estate and toward my sinkhole of morning shift. Around me the west end was sleeping. The birds didn’t chirp too loudly, there weren’t very many dragons out walking, and even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

That left it easy to hear the soft, stealthy padding that came up behind me.

I said, “Hello again, Adwyn-sofran.” Your tongue caught the scent of eyepaint.

“Greetings, Kinri of Specter.”

A twitching blue frill brushed my headband, and metallic-red eyes caught that. I walked on, forcefully, and left the orange drake trailing behind me. Why here, why now? I’d had enough of this smirking, scheming wraith at breakfast.

“What do you want?” I asked him. “I need to get to work.”

“Just a little chat,” he said. “About⁠ ⁠—⁠ events. They merit reflection, do they not?” The adviser preformed a short, low leap that put him right beside me. He was stretching his wings, rolling his neck, and relaxing into a low-walk. Then he continued, “Their attitude, let’s call it. There’s the same inventive paranoia about both of them, by turns charming and vexsome. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“Okay,” I said, and lifted myself into a high-walk.

He sighed as if denied something. “Simper as ever, I see,” said Adwyn, and he tossed his head. “You heard the alchemist⁠ ⁠—⁠ a plot of another stronghold against us! As if we did not dig up half the bronze in their weapons. As if we did not have the protection of Dyfnder/Geunant in all but paper.” His tone had an kind of negotiated sound to it⁠ ⁠—⁠ like it might have been ironic if it didn’t sound sincere. He gave me a knowing smirk as he strode up to me again.

“It’s not that far-fetched,” I said. “Maybe Ushra made it sound more sinister, but the apes are really creepy. Maybe there is someone behind them, pulling puppet strings.”

Adwyn leapt high.

I jerked to a stop, looking up. Did he expect me fly after him? …I wanted a reply, and he had to know that. Transparent.

I sighed. Mornings made me fly to work anyway. My hindlegs vaulted me into the air and passed off to my wings. When I’d caught up to the orange drake, he must have heard me, because now he was speaking. His voice was a growl or shout, pitched to carry.

“Forgive the tangent; I’d forgotten to tell you,” he said. “The faer wanted you to hear that your Mawla has turned up innocent. At least until Wrang⁠ ⁠— looking to be the true actor in this matter⁠ ⁠—⁠ can be investigated. Something that is hampered by his family’s influence.”

The military adviser was threshing wings lifting him above me; he saw my smile.

Mawla was innocent. Of course she was; I knew it. The stars would keep her away from this mess, wouldn’t they?

Then my smile faded to a frown — why had the adviser changed gears so suddenly? It wasn’t just forgetting, he was too calculated for that. I fanned my frills, listened.

His next words had the rhythm of a consequent. “Tell me, do you know of the Sgrôli ac Neidr? The, ahem, library of snakes?”

“Of course I do. I go there every⁠ ⁠—⁠ most⁠ ⁠—⁠ some days.”

“You know Chwithach?” He saw me nod. “Tell me, how trustworthy is he?”

“I trust him. He’s kept my, uh, interest in alchemy between us.”

“Sightly.” Adwyn nodded. “I know Rhyfel-ann has bright things to say about him —⁠ and I would ask the head guard myself, but I feel as though I ask too much of the drake.”

He glided closer to me, and spoke lower: “When you go to the library again, inquire as to whether anyone has recently checked out scrolls about humans, or the Gorphonic mines. Tell him I asked. I’d like the information⁠ ⁠—⁠ all of it —⁠ on paper. Parchment.”

While I nodded, my frills were working. I asked, putting twist in my voice, “Are you admitting Ushra might’ve been reasonable? That someone is behind the humans?”

Adwyn flapped, and floated a bit higher, and then fell back down. “I will admit, there is, perhaps, some grain of obscured reason in it. Perhaps. We don’t know what was going on out in the lake last night, and I will not speculate on it.” He paused. Then, “With that said, there are groups inside Gwymr/Frina who could see benefit from a conflict with the humans. Groups connected to some other stronghold, who would have us ally with their benefactors.”

“Like you and Dyfnder/Geunant,” I said, and banked closer to catch his reaction.

The drake didn’t even flinch. “Yes,” he said. “Can I have no loyalty? The Dyfnderi are peaceable⁠ ⁠—⁠ we keep to ourselves, we have been friends to the cliffs from the beginning.” As if quoting something, he said, “It was stubborn Dwylla who refused our appeals and Mlaen who continues to trace his foolish footsteps. We can see what’s best for Gwymr/Frina. We always have.”

I sat silent, and watched the buildings below slowly drift past⁠ ⁠—⁠ just like I would on any other morning, flying alone, dragging my flight to work.

But as I quietly flew on, the drake seemed to be waiting for something. I asked him, “What do you want from me?”

“The Empyrean⁠ ⁠—⁠ excuse me, the Constellation of Houses⁠ ⁠—⁠ hates Dyfnder Geunant, and House Specter most of all.” He spoke slowly.

I tilted my head. Did we? I had only heard of the Dyfnderi from my tutors. They were the defensive, reclusive orange dragons who lived in the deepest canyons, in Dyfnder/Geunant, the stronghold that was a country in itself. They were infamous, I guess, but only in history books, not in life. Why worry about the mudscales when there were rogue skylands and the odd nadir revolt or tantrum?

Adwyn was still talking. “When you arrived at our gates, I had wondered if this was their vengeance come at last, if Specter had sent an agent disguised as a feckless exile. I’d argued you in to keep an eye on you.

“And it seems that your incompetence wasn’t feigned, that you left the sky, an expatriate, not an exile. And you hide your mark of exile⁠ ⁠—⁠ as if it were some embarrassment. What, are you trying to escape your family here? You’re running away?”

“I–I was encouraged to leave, but the decision was mine…”

We continued to fly. I saw the squat black Llygaid Crwydro building pass below us, but I stayed quiet. I was going there. But would it be an insult to point it out? I needed to stay on his good side, at least till I had full citizenship.

When he spoke again, his voice was just loud enough to be heard. “Specter-eti,” —⁠ the canyon-dweller’s voice, sharp and distant, seemed to caress each syllable in a way that might be violating if I had felt any connection to that family name⁠ ⁠—⁠ “you care about technology, about knowledge, correct? Most sky-dwellers do. Or do they still let you have scrolls in the sky?”

“Well, we have books⁠ ⁠—⁠ like little scrolls you flip through.”

A nod. “You may not have learnt⁠ ⁠—⁠ sky loves to forget any history not involving itself⁠ ⁠—⁠ but the inked press is a Dyfnderi device. One we devised to preserve and spread our scripture and ideals, one that’s had something of a life of travel. The sky has its letterpresses, the ridges have gravure presses, and the forests had something of the sort. Or has if any are left in the ashes.”

“So?” I said. “Do you have any point at all, or did you made me late to work to fan your pride?”

“I sought to clear the airs. Give you a more reliable perspective. History distorts, and I wouldn’t trust your⁠ ⁠—⁠ trust sky’s impression of my canyons. And you agree that knowledge is valuable, no? I’d expect you to wonder where presses came from at least once or twice.”

“Inventing stuff doesn’t really make you starly, though. Pteryx invented bronze and telescopes and all of those magical things with scary names. Look at them.”

He grunted. And then he spoke again, and it finally felt as if he’d deigned to make his point. “I’ll be clear. My loyalty is currently to the faer, first and foremost. But middle and last remain for Dyfnder/Geunant and the beautiful caverns and rivers that grow and flow there. I will see this town united under the violet eye of Dyfns. That has been my goal since before I sent to Gwymr/Frina.”

Stars, I hope not, I muttered under my breath. I’d seen that ugly eye of Dyfns⁠ ⁠—⁠ that oversaturated-purple slit eye with a rainbow of even more oversaturated rays squirting out, just like the eyepaint Adwyn always wore.

It was appreciation for their false god, I knew. Dyfns, bearing all sorts of frilly meaningless titles like “the depth beyond depth” or “he of deepest gaze.”

Their obsession with eyes in general was probably more plain weird than it was heretical, but I doubted it was starly, with how far the canyons were from the winds of the Cloud Constructor.

(It had been a sad thing, the priests would always say, to plunge the surface into spiritual darkness, but the Severance had left us no choice. Maybe one day it would be lifted, and I could step into a temple of the stars again.)

Adwyn spoke again, and I’d only just leapt out of my thoughts to hear it. His words fell dramatic and faultless, the coda of a practiced speech. “In time, the faer will see the safety of our gaze and the ridge’s influence here will stop in its tracks.”

I didn’t say anything, and we flew along coiled silence awhile. Then, I suppose he stopped waiting and dropped his last line.

“I would want to see you join me in this, Kinri of Nothing.”

I held my breath for a beat.

Kinri of Nothing. It — it fit. But I almost preferred being Kinri of Specter, the sourcerous, wretched sky-dweller exile. Kinri of “it’s her.”

“Join me, Nothing-eti, and you can escape your past once and forever. You can at last get the recognition you desire.” He gave me one last knowing smirk, the echoes of his words ringing in my ears. Adwyn left in the light of the twin suns.

----------------------------------------

At some point the title stopped echoing in my head, and the silence it left wrung.

I glided down, angled north, at the Llygaid Crwydro. It translated to something like ‘the wandering gaze’ or ‘the roaming eye.’ Such a Geunantic phrase.

With a mutter, I came down through thick ashy clouds that spread out like a floor beneath me. The gray season had only just begun, and it was still cycles before the volcanoes would start puffing out ash. I had flown through ash clouds before, when Tädet/Pimeys had drifted by a ring of volcanoes in the high east. It was worse than flying through snow; ash was so heavy it would drag you out of the sky if you were unprepared⁠ ⁠—⁠ and ‘prepared’ meant not being in the sky in the first place.

The world beneath the clouds still gleamed brightly under the big scattered clouds. It dragged out a frown⁠ ⁠—⁠ I was about to lose four long rings to the shop, and it was sunny out.

As I lighted down in front of the Llygaid Crwydro, I was scowling at it. It looked a squat, unassuming building. The sign had stylized glyphs with those creepy Geunantic slit eyes inside the circles, two of them, and they glared down at me like some night wyvern.

Instead of pitch black scales, this creature had pitch black bricks. And its wide, white doors were the gleaming teeth of an open maw. Rawr, it said, as it readied to swallow me and my energy and happiness. On either side of the door were colorful mounds of ash. Natural piles once, but now they had fragments of stained glass pressed in, colluding into a sort of rainbow mosaic. Claff’s work.

Down in front of the shop lay a drake on a bench, smoking a roll of smoldering fernpaper. Scales a ruddy, almost brownish red, he wore glasses and had a thin, stretched look to his frame; he had muscles, but they seemed to be fighting the long, lanky look his skeleton wanted for him.

Like me, his hornscales were flat, disbudded stubs. He’d been the first I met down on the surface with them. Even Uvidet, in all her feminine beauty, still had hornscales, but they are smaller, entwining into thin coils. Which, I had to admit, looked cool on its own. But not very wiver-like.

As I slinked up, he was glancing at me, and looking more somber than smirking. Hitching his wings in a curt greeting, he said, “Kinri.”

“Sinig,” I replied I smiled at the brownish-red drake who smelt of fernpaper, tart venom and a metallic whiff that might not be blood.

A nod. “Fancy cloak today.”

“I didn’t have anything else.”

He tossed his head. “Fair. You’ll have to sit at the counter today.”

“Oh. Claff is sick again?”

“Yep. It’s worse this time. Papills. He didn’t wake up day before yesterday.” He took another pull of his burning roll. “Was asking about you yesterday. You should go visit him sometimes, show ’em you care.”

“I⁠ ⁠—⁠ uh…”

Claff was… well, he was nice. When we talked, he made me laugh sometimes and I guessed I missed him when he was gone. But… gah.

I should go visit him. He must really feel awful, because he worked so hard when he was here. “I guess I’ll go see him this sometime. Later this evening, maybe. I⁠ ⁠—⁠ thanks for telling me, S.”

“Yea.” He adjusted his glasses and looked up at the passing clouds and skycities above.

Time for work. Sighingly, I started forward. “And here I expected a nice, relaxing day of inventory,” I said as I walked past him.

“You can still do inventory,” he said, not taking his eyes from the clouds. “After the fourth ring. You’ll need to, at any rate. New shipment coming in.”

I glanced back. “What? No help?”

Sinig brought his gaze down to me. “I could say I did my good deed for today by not pointing that you’re late, again. Or speculating on what that smell is.” I looked back and he was smirking now. I glared back. He only rolled his head, continuing, “…Mehbe. Depends on what the crowds look like later. Wait for it.”

“Crowds? Today?”

“You never know.”

I tossed my head. What more could I ask? So I turned and walked into the maw or door of the Llygaid Crwydro.

Like many buildings in Gwymr/Frina, the Llygaid Crwydro had stone doors. They were a light, almost white stone, and did nothing to ease the impression of vicious teeth.

I swallowed and pulled at the handle. The hallow door swung open and smacked me in the face.

Like many buildings in Gwymr/Frina, the Llygaid Crwydro had stone doors that tended lighter than they looked; and I still hadn’t gotten used to it. Behind me there was a clicking, but when I turned. Sinig regarded me solemnly, inclining his head. I snapped my tongue, and left it at that.

As I stepped into the shop, good-humored Sinig lay behind me and lonely counter lay in front. That was as good a statement of the day ahead of me as any.

----------------------------------------

The innards of the shop greeted me, as they always did, lifeless and still, and smelling of some sweet fruity scent floating over dust and strange old plants. The line from the door split the shop proper down the middle; two counters were on either side stretching only a few strides long. Beyond that, the shop was shelves and tables, and some support beams.

Four rings, Kinri. It was only four rings.

I walked further in. My sandals gritted on a floor like sandstone, and my gaze avoided the strangely high ceiling. Unlike a lot of the north end, this shop rose up only a single story, without an attic; the owner’s quarters squatted down in the basement.

This time of morning he would be minding the hatchlings, and his mate busy in the guard. From all I’d heard, the family he’d brought to the cliffs all worked cushy administration jobs and left him alone to take care of the new hatches. (If you listened, you could sometimes hear the squeaks and laughing or crying, and so many thumps.)

You could kinda see why I’d been hired, despite being, well, me. With the hatchlings taking up most of his attention, I filled in some of the less important duties: taking inventory, tracking and balancing finances, or even more boring things, like sorting and organizing the shelves.

I glanced over to those sanded pumice shelves and tables. They stretched or spread along walls wide enough you could leap from one to the other. On them crowded the piles of clothes and tools and books, and I told myself they wouldn’t need organizing for a few more days.

Murmuring, I told Kinri that there really wouldn’t be that many customers because the east market was crowding, that the inventory Sinig alluded to would only be a couple of boxes, and mostly, that all the moil was small today.

At the very least, a certain plain-dweller was sitting behind one of the two counters. Arall, a long, tall wiver with a generous wingspan almost as wide as mine, short by only a few clawspans. She was wiping down some dusty plate inlaid with bright metal, and regarding me with a mask of mere civility, not waving or really acknowledging me until she asked, “Sinig told you to take the other counter today?” She spoke fast enough a beat passed before I untangled the words.

I nodded, meeting her eyes just once for politeness then letting them eye the shelves again.

“Good,” said she, and went going back to wiping the plate.

At that, I slipped behind the other counter. The wiver always needled me with how brusque and abrasive she acted⁠ ⁠—⁠ like Hinte, but not in a good way. And yet, she seemed more approachable than me, with so many more customers buying from her. It suited me, but still vaguely stung.

As I slipped behind the counter and its little wooden flap entrance slid to a close behind me, my gaze wandered, avoiding Arall and falling on where Sinig lay outside the shop, then on my bag, then on the board games Claff had left under this counter, with a dozen again pieces and rules only he tasted.

With the plain-dweller drake coming down with all kinds of awful diseases, I was working the counter more and more. It was rings of mind-numbing waiting and hallux-twiddling, punctuated by bargaining and bartering and brokering.

And it all twisted my tongue and stuttered my words in that same way anything reeking of the same maneuvering and manipulation from back home would. That still was an act, but a comfortable act, an authentic act.

I looked up, adjusting my headband. The molten heat had left my face with a stripe of unsinged scales where my headband had been last night. I could never set the headband in the exact same position, so it brushed against the singed scales and smarted a little every now and again.

Sighing only once, I lay on the raised stone rest behind the counter. It spread like it was designed for bigger dragons, and it only underscored how little I was. I hugged my wings closer body, and it made me smaller.

Without getting up, I reached out for the soapy water and rag hid underneath the counter. Setting both on the counter, I unlidded the water with my wings, the rag dusted off with my forelegs⁠ ⁠—⁠ all done for want of something to do with myself, really.

I took the rag, wetted it soapily and wiped the counter. In here it would dust overnight, because the air stayed dry and sooty. I wiped with slow slowness. If I finished too soon, I would need to find something else to do. Wipe down, wipe up. I could try starting one of the stories in Gronte’s book, labor through the translating. Wipe left, wipe right. But I did need to clean this counter, so I’ll finish this first.

Sometimes, cleaning this counter, it wouldn’t be enough to sate me, and I’d look over to the other counter, where now Arall had moved from her dust plate to the countertop itself, like me. I’d see this, and I would try to fledge it into a competition of who could clean their counter the cleanest first.

I would say, “Arall, bet you can’t finish your counter before me.”

And Arall would roll her head, and stop cleaning her counter. I’d droop my frills, and wouldn’t lift my gaze from my counter.

Left and right, left and right, I cleaned. Then up and down, then up and down. Then left and down, then right and up. Then a circle! Then a spiral! A smiling face. The glyph for ‘Kinri.’ Under it, the glyph for ‘Digrif.’ Around them, a curling tail. Wait. Blood rushed to my frills, and I rushed to rub that out.

Right and left. Down and up. Ugh. My tail patted my bag, feeling the book Gronte gave me. Down and ugh. Left and pat. With a long-building sigh, I doubled my pace, and finishing the counter in a single jerk of a movement, some rag-dulled swipe of my claws. I ripped the book from my bag with a huff.

The book of nothing, she’d called it. It greeted me with pages of old laid paper that smell of sweet wax. Inside, the colorful letters danced across pages with a vibrance that spoke of a claw-inked scrolls. I flipped all throughout the book until I came across something that looked like The Confusion of Underbrush in Drachenzunge.

I peered at the slender symbols, fangs dewing salty as my familiarity dribbled back to me.

“My syllabus demands…” I murmured, translating.

THE CONFUSION OF UNDERBRUSH

¶ My syllabus demands that multipart essays be individually numbered, that liminal parts be footed with “To be continued…” & that the form & function of every part be exhaustingly stated in the subtitle of said part. ¶ Every so often, a student will come to me & ask why I demand their multipart essays be labeled so sillily; “Any one of these seems quite sufficient,” they would say, “but the ensemble together seems quite redundant.” In reply, I tell them tale of how the War of Underbrush was started, just as I will now tell you.

¶ There once lived a queen who ruled over a large city with a great & terrible army. She had a great many stupid advisers, & one smart one whom she trusted. The stupid advisers meted out what they thought would keep the large city happy, & sometimes the smart one countered this. ¶ Nearby to the large city, some of a certain race of dragons with spiny-frills had taken up residence in a dark damp clump of forest which no-one wanted. Till one day, the bigots of the large city demanded the queen do something, anything, about them. ¶ (This was an unenlightened age, & so a great many tongueless ideas were quite unfortunately in vogue: that spiny-frills would invoke the venom of the gods, that their witches would cook up unhatched eggs, even that they were plotting a takeover of the large city.) ¶ It came that the stupid advisers echoed the will of those bigots, & the matter was brought up at every meeting thereafter.

◯

The shop’s door opened and a little bell jingled, jostling me from my glazed-eye reading, and I was almost smiling for it. The door opened to a brown, rugged dragon stepping in, naked save the cloth band wrapped around the base of his tail and a sack on his back. His name escaped me; but maybe I’d never heard it.

Anyway, he was a hunter and tanner who dropped by with hides every other cycle. Today’s would be the last haul he would bring in before the gray season arrived in full and all of the game in the cliffs would wane scarce. Even the skinhounds would grow lethargic and sedentary.

The drake wasted no time going directly to Arall. I licked my fangs. It wasn’t anything about me, maybe she was just more familiar, having worked here longer than I had. My frills were drooping anyway, and I returned to the story dryer than the shop. The meaning tucked away in those slender symbols seemed to come a little easier now.

◯

¶ There once lived also, in a different city, a famous, if trenchant, philophager, & a master of language renown for much, most of all her treatises in & of her mastery of backward branch. Call her Halhalje. ¶ They say her mother’s mother was spiny-frilled, but she ever denied these accusations & no records remain to be quite sure. Yet in spite of these suspicions, she had risen high to prominence, commanding respect from the learnéd across the land. It was all very impressive at the time.

¶ Halhalje had a particular delivery of lectures that was alternately the sweetened poison tone of those words said before some long-anticipated murder, or the bombast of such that might inflict those killings. All the while, her phrasing rarely strayed from that rarefied verbosity of academics, but it didn’t quite suffer from it. It was a contrast.

¶ You will know that the forest’s poetry spat out its philosophy, began her first lectures of the gyra. Even its name is poetry: know a ‘philophager’ is, in the literal, a love-eater; for a good poet should strip the world to its skeleton) . Halhalje would say this with some bite & a particular snap, & the sounds would fill the lecture hall. ¶ & know that a number far too large of schools of poetry had flourished, as is their wont, & that all but the most mercilessly abstract eventually spat out their own little school of exposition or argumentation. But you are fledglings, you won’t care about that. Let’s talk about two: the fair backward branch & the slimy long vine.

¶ Halhalje paused for a beat, & the crowd of students seated look bored, only a few paying quite rapt attention (for the philophager was a good speaker, but not a miracle-worker). To introduce her next point, the lecturer began breathing loudly, & then continued:

¶ When you talk, you breathe, said Halhalje. Arguments breathe just as well, & being smart dragons we divide them up like this & call the parts breaths. ¶ Know that that backward branch goes is two ‘branches’ in the first two breaths, probably your position & your interlocutor’s, & it’s done with a meeting of the branches that reconciles them, she said, & punched her feet together. The details get elaborate (as does, I add, anything academics find stimulating) but what you fledglings need to care about is the aesthetic: here, two branches subequal yet distinct, & a meeting which privileges neither side; an aesthetic of fairness. Remember this, & you might claw something worth looking at. ¶ Obversely, the long vine goes by persuasion, instead than negotiation, Halhalje started, & her tone had noticeable tarnished. The first breath argues for your interlocutor’s position, the second will show how that weaves into a position partway between the two, & the last breath shows how this liminal position weaves into your own. Halhalje then sat down. This is an aesthetic of gravity, of the inveterate pull of reason⁠ ⁠—⁠ or mere slimy rhetoric, most often. ¶ Regardless, one can see all the common here: both argue for each side & a composite; but the journey of one is the destination of the other. Halhalje was waving her hands around as was the usual gesture of summary. Suffer it to say that the aesthetics of philophagic argumentation determine the form & content.

¶ I could go on, but Halhalje, having yet to publish some book of her own, would scarcely appreciate her lectures begin repeated here. You know what matters for the story, regardless. ¶ It wasn’t long after giving this introductory lecture one year that the philophager returned to her office to find a certain letter there. The aforementioned queen had mailed her.

◯

A bell jingled, jostling again me from my reading. I placed a marker rod in the book, frills crinkling as I looked to the door. It was Sinig, looking the slightest bit disheveled. He waved a wing, and low-walked back to where Mawrion clawed at paperwork and watched his hatchlings.

Why did he have to watch his hatchlings? Ashaine and I could do whatever we wanted as hatches, and we lived in the sky. What was there to worry about on the surface?

I waved back at Sinig, giving the book of nothing another look, frills relaxing as I looked back to the book.

◯

¶ Meanwhile, thing had not grown better in the large city. It came to pass that more & more of the queen’s advisers & the large city’s elite called for, nay, demanded, action against the spiny-frilled dragons. They asked them to be killed, or at least forced from the dark damp clump of forest which no-one wanted. ¶ Sensibly, the smart adviser asked of the queen to claw a latter to enlightened Halhalje, entreat her just what should be done about the spiny frills. Neither of them had read the phager’s works. ¶ After many cycles, the phager did reply back, & with three scrolls. The queen, a patron of the learning herself, & fancying herself philophagic, studied the scrolls. ¶ In them, she read a long vine argument which grew from trusting & accepting the spiny frills, to a measured & sympathetic approach, to starving them economically to coerce them out of the dark damp clump of forest which no-one wanted. ¶ Against her initial judgment, the queen was taken in by this argument, & her treasurers & judges set to work to implement the philophager’s interdicts.

¶ Like you would too, the spiny-frills in that dark damp clump of forest which no-one wanted did not take well to the embargoes. While some starved or were preyed upon, a few took to burglary & vandalism upon the large city which had denied them basic dignities. ¶ One day, a spiny-frilled bandit killed, perhaps accidentally, a visiting noble in a robbery gone artfully wrong. ¶ The large city was in uproar, & the queen, with all her advisers breathing on her frills, had come to a final decision. The great & terrible army was roused & unleashed upon the nestled village in that dark damp clump of forest which no-one wanted. ¶ Just like that, in a single day, the peaceable village in the dark damp clump of forest which no-one wanted was destroyed & its inhabitants were killed, drake, wiver, & hatchling.

¶ When that trenchant philophager Halhalje learnt of this, she was star-crushed; for she hated long vine, seeing it as a slimy, manipulative form.

¶ No, her message had been in backward branch.

◯

I laughed, but it choked after thinking a step father. It was such a depressing piece of history⁠ ⁠—⁠ and it was phrased like a joke’s punchline.

Gronte had wanted me to read this, but why?

* * *