Opalite Wires

The moment that Chimbeeriun realized this was the moment that Chimbeeriun realized, with some discomfort, that he really was learning something, and it made him guilty to think that his bad moods might have actually gotten in the way of something constructive.

Still, it was hard to say when exactly it had happened that he began to make a distinction between one salamander and the next — even when he realized it, it felt not that he had realized something new, but that he had realized something that he forgot, like coming across a toy of his youth. In any case, look, there they were — three salamanders, of denser, clearer outlines than the rest of the seething mass around Skaffwory. They had more solid shapes than the typical flame, which flickered out in licks and laps; they rather resembled very finely carved coal, laced with red and gold and sapphire. One was of the textbook, reptilian shape, though more snake-like than lizard-like. The others were slightly more missaphen, resembling crude golems, one with a single claw resting on Skaffwory's shoulder, the other bobbling up and down amidst the other flames (the other salamanders?) on wings as that glimmered with the fire.

They regarded him back as one, all of them with pupils of magenta and pale cyan. The feathers along Chimbeeriun's nape rose. Skaffwory's pleasure was immediate.

"So you can see them."

Which meant that she'd been starting to lose hope in him. Chimbeeriun frowned at her and opened his beak to complain, but before he could, Skaffwory gathered the three salamanders down onto the branch before him, with an enthusiasm and happiness across her features that he had never witnessed before. He could hardly remember a time before she had started being quite stern with him, and now here she was, pointing out her favorites in delight.

"You can see them?" Skaffwory clacked at him with suspicion as Chimbeeriun squinted at the branch, trying to distinguish the figures from simple flame.

"Yes," he said, and described them. "This one...the largest...is just like what I thought salamanders would always look like."

"That's Prince," Skaffwory said.

"And this one...with the leg."

"Foot," Skaffwory introduced.

"And...Wings?" Chimbeeriun guessed.

"Pins," Skaffwory corrected, "though you were close."

Despite himself he grimaced. "You couldn't think of better birth-names for your own salamanders?"

She whapped the feathers of his crest with her knuckles.

"Don't get to thinking that salamanders need to stoop to names," she told him fiercely. "The shapes they've taken represent precisely what and who these salamanders are. They know exactly who they are. The names I've given them are only a crude description of something I can't even begin to understand of another existing thing. As crude," she continued with a snort, gathering them up, "as the names we try to give ourselves."

Labels: chimbeeriun

and when it did, Chimbeeriun hadn't noticed. When she hadn't spotted him for a while, Kuhyo'ur left her business to go searching, though didn't have to look for long -- another sibling of their hatch had brought her news that Chimbeeriun was on one of the highest ironwood boughs and hadn't stirred.

Even if she hadn't been told, he would have been easy to see -- his body gave off a heated aura that made the air around him shimmer in waves as long as a wing-length all around. She came as close as she could, until the heat made her feel like her feathers were curling -- and even from the distance she was she saw that his feathers were glowing. His skin seethed with fires creeping in and out around his skin, peeking out in glimmers like embers twinkling on a charred log.

"Chim," she called uncertainly. She knew that Skaffwory had been teaching him how to master the salamanders, but she hadn't witnessed until now, nor really quite grasped, that this meant Chimbeeriun would be crawling with fire. In curiosity, branchers from nearby, who had already been watching the silent Chimbeeriun and occasionally throwing paper and wood balls at him for fun, neared closer than they had before. One experimentally tossed a wad of moist newspaper at him with her beak, and the branchers all crowed and raised their wings in surprise and delight as the wad disappeared in a flicker and hiss of steam.

"Stop that," Kuhyo'ur snapped, and then called again, more loudly -- "Chimbeeriun. Come on. Wake up. You haven't eaten. I know you haven't. I brought you your favorite even, look."

She unstrapped the basket from her back and pulled the blanket from its mouth, revealing rich dirt, a teasing glimpse of the glowing skin of a wyrm nestling within.

He glanced up at her, finally, and she swallowed as she saw his eyes -- bright blue. Just as Skaffwory's had been.

"Chimbeeriun?" she said nervously. What if his transition into an elementalist had gone wrong -- what if he had gone crazy? She pinched the basket between two boughs and stretched her wings, preparing to flee. The shimmery waves around him began to lengthen --

"No," he said, and there was something about it that made the air pucker closer to him. The waves shortened -- tightened down, so that now the air around him didn't shimmer anymore. The light began to fade too, become more contained against his body.

"Chimbeeriun," Kuhyo'ur said in amazement.

"No," he repeated again. "No."

He looked down at himself, and then at her again. "I am Skaffwory."

Labels: chimbeeriun, skaff

He felt his anger boil between his eyebrows and his vision, already veiled with precipitation, became misty with steam emanating from his heating skin; rain bubbled and squirmed madly on his feathers, all down his nape and the back of his knuckles. His body began to hiss.

Remain calm, he heard, and realized with a start that it was not Skaffwory's voice telling him so — it was his own. He gripped the branch and did not move until some of the hissing subsided. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, inhaling some water but also some air which, though it battered his insides, cooled him down as well.

But not completely. He began to see the red of his eyelids, and when he opened his eyes he saw that his fingers were outlined in smouldering light which left deep black imprints in the branch which quickly turned into ashy black mud that was whipped by rain into the storm. The impressions were deep. He'd never seen Skaffwory leave such deeply-burned furrows, and he thought Don't panic before the emotion itself could take hold of him. It was alright. He would bring Skaffwory in from the rain. She could still teach him control.

He only just managed to relocate the orange light, and then made his way for it. The sylphs were still working at him, but the heat was spreading evenly around his whole body and they hissed as they were repelled. The heat also dried the branches that he used to walk on, and evaporated the weight from his wings, so he was able to make his way with fair quickness, with no other obstacle than Skaffwory herself, who he saw now was perched on her favorite branch like a statue, her body hissing violently, motionless despite the fierce shaking of the branch by the winds. When Chimbeeriun put his hand forth to approach, his fingers closed more tightly around the branch than he thought it would, and he realized with horror that the branch, once the breadth of his waist, now had the diameter of his wrist.

"Skaffwory!" he yelled in terror, "Skaffwory, this branch is going to break!"

She didn't hear him. He started to spread his wings, but as soon as he lifted them from his back the wind caught them, and he was forced to grab desperately as the wind whipped him and the branch he was on up and down and diagonally.

"Skaffwory!" he screeched once the branch had stilled, and still she didn't move -- she was so hard of hearing nowadays — and with the wind and the rain — and that hissing — "Skaffwory!"

The firelight, which had been dimly emitting from beneath her talons, began to grow stronger, and the steam grew thicker, until he entire body was shrouded in steam. And from the hissing came another sound, more sibilant, more velvet, a sound that he too heard, but not through his ears — rather, through his veins, through every drop of his blood.

"Skaffwory," it called, and then, yet another voice —

"I'm here." Skaffwory's, weak, cracking. And then, in her elementalist's voice, "I'm here."

The mist began to thin into dense, tapered strokes which spiraled about her — it revealed her standing now, and the fire grew stronger, lit up the entire branch so it was like a vein of red-orange lightning paused and shaking up and down in space. The branch was completely engulfed — by salamanders.

Chimbeeriun saw them there, for the first time, in awe, the creatures of flame that he had never been able to see before — and now he couldn't imagine how he had missed them. Their bodies were vibrant, beautiful, flickering, twisty and film-thin like feathers, or then again fat and dense like droplets of coal. They writhed and moved and didn't stop, weaving between and into each other, becoming one another, devouring, separating, reaching, singing.

"Skaffwory — Skaffwory —"

In a voice that was simultaneously a squeak and a roar.

The branch shook, harder, and Chimbeeriun saw that the salamanders' dancing was eating at the branch. With a shriek he reached out, but then drew back — it was too hot — not even the storm with all its wind and water could put it out — what was he supposed to do? The song was getting louder, the dance becoming faster.

"Skaffwory," he said — he must have yelled it — but he couldn't hear his own voice anymore. Steam was beginning to emit again, from his wings, from his whole body. A few of the salamanders had noticed him with hot sapphire eyes and had twisted away from their own and moved to his branch, where they coiled beneath his palms and soles.

Chimbeeriun watched, helpless and filled with impossible warmth, as the dance reached its climax and the entire branch burst into high flames, embracing and taking away his mother with bellowed song and then damp, silent ash.

Labels: chimbeeriun

The light — but not wirelight. Firelight. He knew that orange-red glimmer from anywhere.

Making it up to her favorite stump in this weather was less a matter of flying and more of swimming and crawling. He made it a fair distance before his wings began to burn with the heaviness of the water saturating every feather; by then he had made it to the dense cluster of loftrees and gripped the loftrees with fingers and talons, gripping as much as his weak hand muscles allowed and as tightly as his talons could without him having to struggle to unclutch them from the irony wood. One branch after the other, crawling roachlike on the seething tangle, water collecting and dripping off his brows — the firelight — the firelight —

He stopped moving, though was not motionless — the sylphs were seething and they felt him, and pressed against his body, squeezing it with antagonism, shaking his branch — it bobbed up and down pendulous lengths and it was all he had to keep his calm and grip. They were worse now — they were angrier than they ever had been. It wasn't just the seasonal aggression — well, that was part of it — but they were angry at him.

"Leave me be," he wailed, and then shouted — "Leave me be! Come on! What did I ever do to you?"

He could feel the hatred in the wind, the jealousy of it.

"I need to get to Skaffwory," he explained, as if they would care. "I need to get to her."

It howled — it raged — it sobbed and spat at his body, shearing feathers, scratching skin. Begging, demanding.

Be afraid!

Labels: chimbeeriun

as time flickered on they shifted and rubbed together until the sky was filled with echoing, undiscernable gossip, which rumbled and grayed and dimmed until the skies grew stormy with frustration and friction. When the sky grew this busy not many dared to stay out in it, and instead crowded into the combs and tunnels in the cliffs, or else into Lower Quartzal itself, crowding together in awkwardly close quarters, all cone-shaped in woven ponchoes that protected their feathers from the dense, elementally-charged moisture that tended to make the filaments glisten and stand on end.

It was the first day of the mass exile of the passerine to walkers' Quartzal and Chimbeeriun had just newly retrieved a poncho from Kuhyo'ur, a secondhand one from her mate which was slightly too small and a little too zappy but which did the trick, though everyone Chimbeeriun touched jumped slightly with static.

"I'm sorry -- excuse me --" he said briefly, and then, "have you seen the Elementalist Skaffwory?"

"No," came the reply, repeatedly, "No --"

"No, I have not --"

"No, not since last Market --"

"No --"

"Never," said one brancher, and who asked then, in confusion, "Who is that?"

Chimbeeriun stared at him, at first disgusted, then chilled. Who was Skaffwory, indeed.

Who was Skaffwory? It occurred to him abruptly that there would come ages who would not know Skaffwory, in fact, yes, here was one here now. Someone who did not know the only fire elementalist passerine in all of Anthem history!

Chimbeeriun moved on, asking and asking, until he had the answer he both was searching for, and dreaded: "I haven't seen her in the caves, but I did see a light on the higher branches. It looked like firelight."

Chimbeeriun rushed to one of the cave mouths -- it was raining harshly, the slyphs throwing fits and shrieking and weeping hysterically -- he couldn't see anything, and he pushed the poncho over his shoulders and threw himself against the wind, labored up to a higher cave, plastering himself against the stone within before brushing the water from his eyes and peering through the rabid precipitation for a sign of Skaffwory's orange-red light.

Labels: chimbeeriun

"Is Skaffwory not doing any better?"

He only huffed at her and began to rummage through his satchel. Kuhyo'ur whistled at him in dismay.

"She broke more?"

"I misjudged how much I needed earlier," Chimbeeriun lied absentmindedly, counting out bills. He handed them over, and when Kuhyo'ur just looked at him, his feathers ruffled with agitation.

"What's the matter? Will you just give them to me?"

"It's really strange, you know," Kuhyo'ur told him.

"What is?"

"That you're...that you're taking care of her." Kuhyo'ur turned back to the shelves and began selecting synthetic shafts and soft plumes that looked like long eyelashes. She wrapped them in parchment and placed them carefully in a woven bag, then handed them to him.

"She can take care of herself, you know."

"Yeah." He doubted it.

She could hear it. "She's an elementalist, after all," she continued. "The only passerine fire elementalist in all of Anthem Low. She doesn't need anyone to mend her feathers for her."

He snatched the bag away from her. "What's your point?" he demanded, already backing off the landing and spreading his wings.

"You still have your hatching name, Chimbeeriun," Kuhyo'ur reminded him, setting one hand on her hip and the other on the egg she had wrapped snugly against her belly. Her feathers had grown out to a huge, nesting fluff in front of her, nearly obscuring it. "You need to find your own."

"What's the rush? What's so important about it?" he snapped at her. "I like my name well enough. I don't think there's anything to having my own name anyway if it doesn't mean anything." He spread his wings.

"It isn't about having a name others think is meaningful," she called after him. "But about having one that proves you have meaning to yourself."

She sighed as she watched him buffet away, in wild yet precise kite angles. Attached to a string.

"Skaffwory is going to die soon," she said aloud, hoping a slyph would catch her words and bring them softly to his ear. "What are you going to do then, Chimbeeriun?"

Labels: chimbeeriun

the air grew chiller and drier as brasher cousins of the normal slyphs made their pilgrimmage. It was not the first time Chimbeeriun had had to deal with this sort of weather but it might as well have been; the stuff sheared him ragged, as easily as if he had only just set his wings to the air the day before, so that when he finally made it to Skaffwory's favorite perch higher up he looked like a mess.

Skaffwory tilted her head and eyed him. She had grown stricter with him of recent, but to Chimbeeriun's frustration now she smiled at him, amused. "Did you crash into something, you silly thing?"

"No," he grumbled at her, and slung down his bag, holding out the gape for her to see. "Here."

The inside was filled with feathersticks and jars. Skaffwory craned up to look in.

"You have surpassed me in c-creating those, I think," she said, and her voice knocked about a little wrongly in Chimbeeriun's ear; he looked at her, blinking. Had her voice just cracked?

Surely not. Skaffwory tried hard to keep her voice crisp. He began to form some sort of jeer, "What was that, you old bird, even I don't click anymore when I speak," but Skaffwory had already settled back down onto her branch, her feathers fluffed and eyes half-open, crouched on the branch. She had always been a fat old thing but abruptly Chimbeeriun realized that her wings (presently unfolding, folding again) were rather small, as if shorn too by the wind.

But this couldn't be right, Chimbeeriun thought. Why would they be shorn by the wind? Lazy buzzard. He hadn't seen her in the sky since the brasher sylphs had arrived. She had sent him on errands to retrieve her food for her, even, and he'd been the one carrying on sales at walkers' Quartzal, gingerly handling jars and fire-proofed pouches bulging with her salamanders.

"I should hope I got better at making them," he told her instead, "since that's all I ever do."

She snorted at him. But didn't say anything back, only reached out to take a featherstick and stick it beneath her talons. It jutted out and fire began to curl the softened fibers.

She never let his comments about the uselessness of her training go.

This time there was a chill against the back of his neck, and he slapped it, trying to scare away the slyph that was niggling beneath his nape-feathers.

It had to be a slyph.

"I hope you're not going to make me get food for you again today," Chimbeeriun ventured, and Skaffwory didn't reply. He waited, for a while, and realized that she had fallen asleep, though her eyes were slightly open.

This too was a first. Chimbeeriun gripped and ungripped his branch. Had she just dozed off? She must have been exhausted. What did she even do anymore that would tire her? And she left the featherstick smouldering, the idiot.

She really was sleeping.

Chimbeeriun huffed, but waited a little longer; then looped the bag's straps on a nearby branch and spread his wings. As he did, however, he saw that the featherstick was burning -- not just smouldering, but burning, a candle-sized flame set right against Skaffwory's scaly ankle. Skaffwory had never been burned by her beloved salamanders that he had ever seen in his life, but as he stared, the fire began to creep and blacken the tips of her gray feathers.

"What --" He started in surprise, and then squawked in panic -- fire -- feathers burning! He launched himself from his branch and grasped the featherstick with his talons, but as his claws wrapped around it the fire abruptly grew, with a purr like an opening wing; he shrieked his surprise and fear and began to beat the stick against the loftree branch until it shattered and disintegrated, and then he threw it into the sky. The slyphs buffeted it back and forth with some curiosity before letting it go.

"Skaffwory!" he shouted furiously, and she started from her sleep in shock, all her feathers sticking out on their ends. "What are you doing?"

"What happened?"

"What happened? You were almost consumed by your own sky-forsaken salamanders, that's what happened!"

"C-consumed...?"

She looked at him with confusion. "Surely not, Chimbeeriun," she said, and then looked angry. "Did you do something to anger them?"

"Did -- I --"

So she blamed him? When he had saved her? His wings clapped open with anger and without further word he threw himself from her branch, not trusting himself to explain kindly to her, and frightened of the prospect of it.

Why was she acting his way? It was unlike her. She better get back to normal soon.

Labels: chimbeeriun, passerine, quartzal

and his feathers fluffed more; in agitation he began to preen them down, alternating between speaking and combing. "I have to press and soak charcloth, and I have to carve feathersticks, on my own — I can't even buy them. She keeps telling me, they'll know if you buy it, they'll know if you don't make it with your own hands, but I don't see how they know anything, the..."

Stupid things, he'd started to say, but he heard Skaffwory's voice in his mind now as well — Don't insult them — they'll know if you insult them. Do you really want something so powerful to even have the inkling that you don't respect it?

Kuhyo'ur was nodding vigorously. "That's how it was with me too, I had to do all the grunt work — spinning out filaments, making these wires —" She pointed at the box she had earlier.

"Actually," she amended with a kind of grimace, "I guess I'm still doing that stuff now, but...but I mean...it works up to something more, doesn't it? It's all basics but it really is helpful, eventually."

Chimbeeriun snorted at her loudly. "Probably not as helpful as it could be. I guess with the charcloth at least I get something at the end, but sometimes she has me meditate — just — just sit there, and think. Just listen to the wind, she says. Just listen," he mocked, "to the sound of everyone else making money, earning a livelihood while you sit there like a worm, waiting to be picked off... Everyone else has jobs. Look at you!"

Kuhyo'ur laughed. "Isn't that a little unfair? You do have a trade, after all. Even if it's going more slowly than usual, I think it's awfully cool how you're going to be an elementalist."

"If all an elementalist does is sit around thinking about nothing and carve sticks, then I don't want to be an elementalist at all."

"Haven't you ever seen the salamanders?"

"No," he said. "She only ever just sits there on her fat, burning branch putting tinder on the bark. The branch just looks like burning coal. She says she doesn't call any powerful ones when I'm around because I'm too young. I'm not learning anything that's going to help me in life," he told her in a rough voice. "I still have to rely on her for everything. And —"

"Kuhyo'ur! There are clients!" called a voice from inside, and Kuhyo'ur looked back hastily.

"I'm coming! I have to go," she told Chimbeeriun. "I hope things get better with Skaffwory. Come back again — I think I'll be busy for the rest of this week — but maybe the next at the fifth flicker, okay?"

"Okay," Chimbeeriun said, feeling even more frustrated. So his sister — Kuhyo'ur — was busy. Busy working and earning a livelihood. While Chimbeeriun wasted away his short youth playing with sticks and oily cloth.

He launched himself into the air. The wind was good and buffered him up fast, but he flapped anyway, hard, rowing out his frustrations. I hate this. I hate this. How much longer am I going to have to do this?

Labels: chimbeeriun

bringing him treats, sparing him comfort in the cold or at least from sharp words; whenever he had a wish for anything she made him first exercise and demonstrate some verse with salamanders. Several times after that first, he was tempted to flee the whole business altogether, but it was hard for a passerine to get work in Quartzal that did not involve either solid muscle or trade, the former of which he lacked, frustratingly, because he could see for himself that other passerine were already earning their own wages as ferriers through the air of Quartzal, while he was forced to cling to the tailfeathers of his mother, and the abominable trade which was the only one she would teach him.

He occasionally spotted his siblings and they would nod at each other politely. He was not particularly close to any of them except for one sister, to whom he occasionally still paused to give longer conversation. She was an apprentice to a feathermender.

Chimbeeriun perched on a nearby branch and called out. "Chureiya, Chureiya," he chirped, and soon enough his sister emerged. Like him, she was rather short, but she made up in dexterity what she lost in general strength. The delicacy and attention with which she created the hair-thin needles and filaments for replacement feathers was something that Chimbeeriun could not imitate.

"Chimbeeriun," she chirped back to him in surprise, and then delight. She approached the open side of the mendary, setting down box filled with coils of bent wire. They exchanged several notes of playful greeting, and then her face firmed.

"You may not call me Chureiya anymore," she announced, and Chimbeeriun's nape fluffed widely.

"What! Who are you now, then?" he asked, amazed, and her head bent down several times, preening back her own fluffed nape, so she looked sleek and mature as she declared, "My name is Kuhyo'ur. I am a mender of passerine feathers and bone. Not an especially good one, yet," she said, "but not nearly as bad as I was when I started."

Chimbeeriun flushed with some magnitude of jealousy. He didn't know about his other siblings yet — but somehow he had felt that his sister would keep the name that their mother had given them for a while yet.

"My teacher acknowledged me," Kuhyo'ur said, drawing herself up, "and introduces me as such to all those who enter in."

"I am glad for you," Chimbeeriun said, as earnestly as possible, and tried it in his mouth, "Kuhyo'ur," and she beamed at him.

"How are your trade studies with Skaffwory?"

Labels: chimbeeriun

This had not really occurred to Chimbeeriun ever until he happened to see another passerine, apparently a half-sister from several clutches prior his, seek Skaffwory for counsel.

Lurking from a couple boughs away, he could hear them talking about egg-related stuff.

"Have your mate obtain shells for you to eat," Skaffwory was saying.

"Shells?" the younger passerine said with some disgust.

"Shells -- Pearlusk would be the easiest source. The shells of oysters or madelines, or, if you are disinclined, consume the bones of cuttle. This will help you form strong, stiff shells for your own eggs. It will also improve your laying muscles."

Skaffwory coughed and huffed, the plump of feathers and skin at her throat inflating and then deflating and swinging back and forth. Compared to Chimbeeriun's half-sister, who was a sleek and young passerine with smooth and shiny feathers, Skaffwory was huge and jagged-looking, some of her feathers lacking luster and turning gray and ruffled, so in some places she looked especially fuzzy. She had also grown many knobs with age, which bulged on her brows, a dull yet bright red color. Skaffwory was also quite fat, in passerine terms -- her fuzzy feathers hid it but there was no denying the way the branch she was perching on dipped down beneath her weight. And then she always attracted salamanders to twine around the twigs too. Loftrees were extremely hardy and could withstand the crawl of salamanders but it probably didn't help things.

"Also," Skaffwory advised in her grainy, low voice which sounded like she had cracked leaves in her throat, "consume many natural oils, such as those contained in the seeds of safflower and sunflower. A good secondary would be fish."

"Fish!" The younger passerine was looking increasingly sick. "Skaffwory, you're killing me."

"Not as easily as you will kill your hatchlings if you can't even lay a hard shell," Skaffwory told her, tilting her head and combing out the rough of her neck. "Or worse, if you can't lay the egg out at all, which is what will happen if you lack oils." She caught a feather in the nimble hook at the edge of her beak and rearranged the filaments, waiting for her daughter to get over it.

"Do you have any other advice?" the younger passerine asked grudgingly, and Skaffwory this time did not even bother to look at her.

"Roost here," Skaffwory said. "I understand that you all of the newer clutches fear going high and want to keep your nests close to where the walkers are so that they can keep an eye on them, but up here is the only place where you can feel the sunlight, whose energies will help you absorb the shells and the oil."

"Skaffwory," said the younger passerine with annoyance, "it's not that we like keeping the nests close to grounded Quartzal, and we don't do it so that the walkers can watch us, it's just that those higher-up caves are so dangerous. What's the use of having a strong egg if the next little quake is just going to do it in? And there's no space up there in those teensy holes for a big clutch and someone to sit on it."

"If you so insist on a nest down there," Skaffwory said primly, "then just know that you'll still need the sunlight."

"If it's just sunlight, I can buy a jar of it."

"And the warmth too."

"Then I can get a basket of salamanders." She looked at the salamanders coiling around Skaffwory's feet.

"Purchase them from me when the time comes," Skaffwory told her. "My salamanders have the sweetest temper of any others sold in Quartzal and even the Bazaar, and won't burn the wings off your back."

The daughter nodded and stretched out her wings; just as she began rowing the air, Skaffwory told her, "Urackea, know this: I have had only three daughters die of binding, and their common element is that they did not heed me."

"It's gross, but I will heed you," the younger passerine said, bowing her head. "Goodbye."

She left. Skaffwory withdrew another charcloth from a pouch she kept around her ankle and pointedly carried on with her business until Chimbeeriun ventured, quietly, "Skaffwory?"

And then again, when she didn't look up -- "Skaffwory!"

"What need have you, Chimbeeriun?"

"I'm hungry!"

Labels: chimbeeriun