A truly random excerpt

[nijibug]

"Lines on your face."

"Hm?"

"Is that what makes you old?" asked Eirendi.

"Quite the contrary; it is the being old that puts the lines on one's face," Haolan chuckled.

"Then what makes you old, Grandfather?"

"Do you know what old means, Eiri?"

She shook her head.

"It simply means that one has been around for a long time."

"Well, that doesn't explain anything."

"No, it doesn't," the doctor admitted. "Not much."

"But then...you aren't old at all, Grandfather!" Eirendi beamed. "You haven't been around very long."

The old man laughed so that the afternoon sun bounced on his bald crown, and the sparse gray of his beard and whiskers and eyebrows quivered with mirth.

"No indeed, dear child. But I daresay I do have a few years on you."



A salty wind from the southern sea
Up hill country it blew
The rain had scarcely touched the lea
When up sprang the bamboo!

Strings twanging as the gourd-curved body of the vielle thumped against her back, the girl