The girl scrapes the side of the knife against her plate, letting the warm butter slide up against the potatoes. Her fingers scratch unconsciously at her neck. The mosquito bite is growing itchier.

 “Lyene!" shouts a voice, "Hurry up! I don’t want to wait any longer. I’m not the one who stayed out so long they didn't even eat. Look, it’s 7! We always-“

"I know! I know!" Lyene picks up the plate and hurries into the other room, “I can't even see the timepiece in there."

Her sister grins smugly from her straw cushion but doesn't press. She turns promptly to the figure swaying in his rocking chair, who is lit only by the embers in the fireplace behind him and what moonlight filters through the doorway. Lyene seats herself on the rest of the cushion next to her sister, who nudges her sharply with an elbow.

"Watch the food!" Lyene exclaims, hands tight around the plate. "Don’t be clumsy."

The swaying of the rocking chair stops as their father plants his feet firm against the creaking floorboards. In his lap lies a book and a relic - the covers uncleanably dusty, the binding frayed. But their father is proud of it. It's the only book they own - a recent gift from a friend.

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He breathes deeply and visibly, waving a hand over the book held in the other. His eyebrows rise with mystery. The two sisters hush, one’s retort and the other’s meal interrupted. The book is opened by work-worn hands, past many other pages of twice-told tales.

"Olivier. Lyene. Listen to the Tale of the Serpent-skin and the Wooden Pinik."

What’s a pinik?

But the thought remains unspoken. To speak would break the wonderful spell their father has begun to cast.

Their father smiles.

Then, rusty, shrill, and edged with allergies, his voice begins to ring, a commanding echo fabricated in the sisters' rapt imaginations. Not quite the voice one would expect to carry so epic a tale.

But they don’t care. They’re hungry for the novel. Its adventure presents their heart a rhythm to beat against, a canvas to set their dreams to. Its romanticism gives the house an airy, mystical feel, suspended by fantastical threads spun out from the book by their father’s voice. And simultaneously, the words upon words wash over them, and they feel mundane and refreshed.

Late into the evening, they sit, mouths agape, wide-eyed, even as he shuts the book, a puff of dust dispersing with a narrated finality.