Excerpt ... some Metafiction

 (C) 2023 Kyrinn S. Eis All Rights Reserved

Klare, now dressed in blue trousers and the 'plaid' button-up shirt, still open over her grey sleeveless blouse.  Boots, brown and green, were nearby, but she simply sat around and looked out of sorts for something to do.  Syil looked up from her bed and watched as Klare paced about and then sat by her box of books.

"Do you have a favourite among the Aelvryqh books?"

Klare turned, face wet.
-- "Yeah.  The Belltower of Blackfell.  He and the sorceress Zharozenit's adventure in the Shadow Realm.  Why do you ask?"
"Would you read it to me?"

Klare's very dark hazel eyes wavered in their orbits; she blinked and the shimmer of her almost violet-russet eye shadow was breathtaking.  Klarissa declined her head and parted her lips as she looked elsewhere for the answer to Syil's question.  Klare then fetched a book, one with a yellow spine, and tuned back to face Syil.

     "The ship of silver brass and gold which brought Aelvryqh to the stunted forest of Litchos departed once he and his shadow, Aurien Twinblade, had disembarked.  The thing of artifice rose slowly, hovered and overshadowed them, and then climbed steeply and was naught but a streak of metal blurred and then gone.  Nearby, a great insect busily gathered pollen from gargantuan flowers; its four wings buzzed like a mass cavalry charge as it skittered about the dark brown tessellated face of the yellow pettalled flower.  Aurien perceived that Aelvryqh intended to secure a mount for their exploration of the wetlands region.  The silver haired sorcerer spoke in a trilling lilt:

     "Sun-tracked with many windowed eyes
       gentle harvest to buzzing hive obliged
       Bring ye now two light burdens sized
       smaller than drops of rain through skies
       o'er shimmered lakes kist with sun's fire
       towards dragonhome of golden pyre
       network of willing human spirits refined
       Colours enrobed ordered by red-black eyes
       This I ask of Bzzht' honeyed words ye bide."

     "The great hairy beast alighted the sun-like flower and graced them even as it lowered itself for their climb aboard.  Once secured, their legs tucked between large granules of collected pollen and ahold of soft fibres of the thing's thorax, the flyer took to wing and the hum became a steady background in which other sounds, voices, songs seemed to weave through like an oracle deep within a mountain cave heard dimly by those outside."

Syil was fascinated and at times experienced a strange sense of familiarity one has for a place never before visited or seen.
"That sounds like my world.  Lovely, please continue.  Your voice is soothing."

Klare looked up and her eyes lingered emotionless, before she lowered her gaze, and returned to read aloud again.