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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BoldItalic" data-source="post: 6772247" data-attributes="member: 6777052">The air whistled though the hawk's wings. It twisted its flight feathers so and trimmed its tail feathers so as it plunged down in a steep dive, talons outstretched. It braked fiercely and hovered in the air within claws' reach of the grinning face of the smallest human-ish thing immediately below. It noted the hairy eyebrows and the tiniest detail of the face, so keen was its eyesight. It struck with great precision, estimating the distance to the pair of ears to a fraction of a hair's breadth. There was a brief sensation in its toes, accompanied by a shattering sound. The face vanished, broken into a myriad pieces. It grasped a talonfull of earth, some parts of which were sharp. This was not what talons were supposed to do. They should have been holding prey. It felt betrayed."No!" cried Rylnethaz, "Not the mirror!" and a great surge of emotion filled him with rage and grief and grief and rage, approximately in that order. He didn't stop to think but leapt up and and swung his sword in a mighty two-handed sweep that took the offending foot clean off the hawk. "Quite right too," said the hawk, "that foot failed in its duty. It deserved to die. Ow!"The hawk flew back up into the sky, leaking blood from its severed limb. Its mate clacked her beak in disapproval. "Mother always said you were useless," she scolded. "Now go back and do it properly. You're supposed to bring me breakfast."As the hawk prepared to dive again, it felt slightly unbalanced because of the now-missing weight but it knew it had to do it. Female hawks are larger than males, and there is never any doubt about who wears the feathers in the nest, so to speak.At that moment, as Rylnethaz was gazing distraught at the shattered mirror leaving only BoldItalic and Fingers to give their undivided attention to the sky, Clotbert was forgotten. He suddenly gave an incoherent shriek, stood woodenly up and lurched past them out of the burrow and into the open. "Get back!" shouted BoldItalic frantically and tried to grab him, but Clotbert was heedless; he raised both hands aloft and declaimed in a great voice "You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the shadow! You cannot pass." then screeched like a banshee. Fingers instinctively covered his ears and BoldItalic blanched. "May Myrristra protect her servant in his madness," said BoldItalic, "for I cannot. He thinks he is Gandalf."Perhaps Myrristra did intervene. We will never really know. But strange to relate, Clotbert's wild screech translated itself into meaning in the hawk's ears. It became the screech of the hawk god Yrrik Yrrik, uttering the doom of the world on the last day when all nests will be broken and the spirits of all the ancestors of hawks shall rise featherless and naked into a black sky. It was terrified. It forgot to fold its wings and swooped out of control to collide with the tree trunk, where it perched, shaking, on its one foot looking round wild-eyed and wishing it had been a better hawk when it was younger.Rumblebuff tapped the princess' mirror experimentally. It did nothing. He recited some words under his breath that were not suitable for well-brought up young ladies to overhear, although well-brought up young ladies are known use language in private that would make a sergeant-major blush. The mirror still did nothing. He pointed a curious device at the base of the mirror and pressed various studs in a seemingly random fashion. The mirror did nothing. The princess tapped her foot impatiently. "It could be the wiffy," ventured Rumblebuff. "I'll need to take it back to the workshop. All under guarantee, of course.""It's not leaving my sight," said the princess firmly. "He might …, that is, someone might, … wanttocallmeagain." She looked carefully nonchalant and studied her fingernails as she said this and her lady-in-waiting, the one who had fetched the gnome, sighed inwardly because she knew the difference between looking carefuly nonchalant and really not caring a bit. One false step now and it would be tantrums. Her mistress wasn't called Princess Infantile for nothing. (It's pronounced in-fan-till-lay, by the way, not what you were thinking.)</blockquote>

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