Serializations of the Hitherby Dragons novels

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“Why is my floor vibrating?” Jenna thinks. “Why is there this constant crackling hum in the distance, as there has been for hours? I wish to write a reward to my sponsors for having funded the project in such good time!”

Jenna ponders.

Jenna stares upon her Jenna-screen.

Dribs and drabs she writes then, of the old days—of the days before Hans made sense of things; of the days when the sun was held in existence by the exhalation of the sun-beast rather than existing under its own imprimatur in the sky. She imagines that beast as like Tolkien’s balrog; well, perhaps as like Tolkien’s balrog: in the presence of a noise like that her images stay not firm.

(Also her language becomes oddly florid. Still. The story is as it is. If it is florid, it will be florid.

This story, after all—

This story’s true.)

Jenna types bits and pieces of Brygmir onto her Jenna-keys. Of Brygmir, who makes tape for Hans’ emus. Of Brygmir, who is descending even now into the dark and secret places underneath the surfaces of things—

Down to where that sun-beast trembles, where it roars, seethes and bubbles, and remains.

For it is that beast, and nothing other, that sears together the two sides of her emu-tape—that burns away the division between the unglued side and the side that binds.

On her way down Brygmir draws out the souls of the worms writhing in their ceiling-holes, extrudes them, weaves them together into the colorless tape of worms.

She stops to bargain with the forgotten men—I will call them men, though they are not human, quite, nor male, quite: for such were they last called—

On her way down Brygmir stops to bargain with the forgotten men, in their forgotten city, who dwell between the sun-beast and the world. It is the greys and beiges of their dolor that give their color to Brygmir’s tape.

. . . Jenna writes these things; but it is difficult. She seeks to tell you of them—but it is difficult!

There is a vibration in the floor.

There is a vibration in the floor. There is a rattling in the air. Everywhere there is an un-Brygmiring noise, a noise to de-gel Brygmir; it makes the concepts of Brygmir, piled one upon the other, not adhere.

And perhaps this is a crossing of layers.

Jenna has often noted of late that her reality shapes itself to the model of her fiction. It is perhaps a karmic judgment on her for putting so much of Jenna in her work. So, perhaps it is a crossing of layers; perhaps her work here mirrors Brygmir’s. Perhaps this noise is the same difficulty as that of smithing Brygmir’s tape.

. . . For an emu does not naturally attach onto a wall, you know; nor does the fire of the sun-beast bind easily to souls, or beige, or grey.

Eventually Jenna considers the possibility that it is her air conditioning that is at fault.

Perhaps it is not functioning properly. Perhaps it is rattling her home, on some deep and subsonic level; perhaps her floor, the air, her ears, her mind resounds with it, the A/C malfunction, the rattling of the breathing of the beast.

She fishes up her A/C control. She clicks it off.

In that moment the idling, rattling sound converts itself. The motorcycle on the street below revs loud its idling engine; roars like some forlorn, abandoned sun-beast; and it drives away.

There are some who will doubt this story; some who will imagine that it is fiction. They will say: Jenna, that button does not control motorcycles, nor do they idle beneath your window for the hours that this demands.

There are some who will doubt this story; but I will tell you, it is true.