“Hours,” the Geezer, examined the pair of hourglasses. “They orbit Reflection, along with the Night hours.”
A pained expression crossed Leah’s face as a ludicrous idea wormed its way into her mind.
“Are we in the sun?” she asked.
“Gracious, no!” The Geezer laughed at that.
“Well, then, where are we?” Questioned Sherman, prodding the hourglass. Saya swam through the air to join them. “And why is Saya allowed to fly?”
“Because I’m special,” she said smugly, pulling his hair and gliding out of his furious reach.
“It’s impossible to explain if you don’t understand the principles of space and time distortion and matter distribution, but you’ll get it eventually,” snapped the Geezer. “This is the Sibelnu.” he waved his hand at the set of hourglasses.
“From Elby’s descriptions and the name, I thought of something a lot more.....intimidating,” commented Rowan, squinting at the tree-glass.
“Oh, you’ll be intimidated,” growled the Geezer. “Once you understand what it can do.”
A golden lever was located between the hourglasses, and the Geezer grasped it firmly. “If you like, you can go to the windows, but you’ll have to come back before long.” Rowan dashed over to the window, while the Geezer pulled the lever.
There was the harsh squealing of unoiled metal as the two hourglasses began to move, the tree-glass slowly moving upright and the sands collapsed against the bottom half of the glass, the life of time gone from their grains.
As the hourglasses ground into position, a single petal fell from the blooming tree, disappeared, and slowly glided down to rest on a branch of the dead tree.
“Holy CRAP!” shouted Rowan, who was once again leaning out of the window. Leah raced over to join him and almost fell out from astonishment.
The sand had suddenly stopped moving beneath the islands, and a bright something was clawing at the sand, shoving it aside.
A flash of blinding light and an explosion of sound rent the air, shoving Leah and Rowan back from the window with an incredible energy. Light pressed into the stone room with terrible vigor, nearly blinding all within. No sound of anything breaking or glass shattering reached the ears of those assembled; no tinkle of fallen china floated through the air; no thump of collapsed furniture tore through the air.
To Sherman, it was like being flooded in rays of darkness, though the full force of the power still knocked him back.
“…ON A SANDWICH!” he shouted, rolling around somewhat like a turtle stuck on its back.
“Oh, shut up, you ninny,” said the Geezer coolly, prodding Sherman in the ribs with his foot. For all his years and dependency on his cane, he hadn’t even stepped back from the light.
Rowan scrambled back over to the window and looked out. Light flooded the entire horizon, and the islands cast shadows above their floating masses. Below the islands Rowan could see bursts of different colors, sometimes a vague purple, other times a strong blue. With the glow he was seeing, it was all he could do to stagger back and throw his arms over his eyes again.
“Was I just staring at the sun?” he asked blindly, to no one in particular.
“In a manner of speaking,” said the Geezer. “To attention, all of you! It’s cram-time.”
___
**
When the three musketeers looked back on it later, it was a bright blur of pressing facts and instruments for everything from attracting sanoa –a tiny fish that lived in the sea that gave good advice- to locating the best kind of earth to grow lion cacti – a plant that roared and snapped if you got too close- to a mannequin to imitate whatever someone somewhere else was doing.
Leah, being the fastest reader with the ability to digest information like nobody’s business, was reading through hundreds of books on spells, creatures, philosophy, history, and the Druidite language, emerging from each book with lit eyes, silently mouthing formulas for spells or dates of battles long buried in the sands of time.
Rowan seemed to have the knack for spell casting, and the Geezer had him run through dozens of different kinds of spells, each with different methods of casting and unbelievable amounts of sub-variations, though the first time he successfully managed to levitate a tossed-down book he let out a whoop and send it flying into the back of Sherman’s head.
Sherman was left with the task of learning how to forge magical items, a task he found interesting, though he wasn’t quite the adept Mekare had believed him to be- or so Sherman thought as he labored over a large hunk of magical clay, trying to wrestle it into a rude jar that could purify water.
Saya flew around randomly, sometimes resting on Leah’s hair to annoy her and look at the sometimes-fascinating illustrations splayed across the pages or commenting on Sherman’s efforts. The Geezer stumped about, grunting random questions at Leah, depending on the book she was reading, prodding at whatever Sherman was trying to create and whacking Rowan over the head with his cane when he made a particularly stupid mistake with a spell- something the Geezer enjoyed and made no attempt to hide.
And all the way, precious petals were floating down and re-budding on the half-dead tree on the bottom bulb.
The Geezer would go over to it and stare at it unseeingly when he became tired of asking questions or giving Sherman’s work nasty glares.
Their anti-matter selves apparently had no stomachs, or the stopped time simply prevented them from feeling hungry or tired, for they felt no exhaustion or other reasons to stop their nonstop training.
**
__
And suddenly, an echo of mad laughter echoed through the fevered silence from where the Sibelnu sat, petals falling away.
“Oh, jeez,” muttered Saya, looking up exasperatedly from examining a picture of druid dwellings. “Him.[/b]”
“[i] So said the halflings laugh and the shapeshifters glare
Against my fortune and into the silver fair
But I said, ‘all to me is a cup of tea
And the sugar and the cream you are NOT!’”
__________
Sigh. I feel like such a jerk, all of you itching to read something interesting and me giving you blabbles.....(Heh, that's a funny word)
So to alleviate some of the blabbelly-ness, I'm throwing in......haha, oh just you wait.
Speaking of waits, sorry about not updating when I said I would...
You know that feeling when you feel like you'd throw up if you ate another bite, but ate it anyway, and threw up?
Translate that to writing, and you should get the way I felt when I was confronted with the Word window marked "undines".
:/retch:
Nehoo, enjoy.
~Sumi
EDIT: Edited so Snoink won't murder me. XD
