I want to thank both of you, from the bottom of my heart, for taking the time to give me your thoughts on your participation in the fandom. I want to encourage everyone else who is reading this to do the same. Book recommendations: do yourself a favor and get the Lyonesse Trilogy by Jack Vance. Vance is one of these secret authors--a person so incredibly talented and influential that he virtually disappears inside his own genre, despite the extraordinarily far-reaching echoes of his work in pop culture and literature. He is a science fiction and fantasy author, which is probably why he was never taken seriously as a writer. Call him the Nabokov of fantasy, I think. Speaking of Nabokov, in keeping with my theme, I have included some of his work in this little chapter. It is from his poem-novel Pale Fire. --=-- PART XX “Merci.†Spy accepted the plate. “I regret that I am a burden for you, until this little siege is over.†The two of them breakfasted in the empty room, enjoying stillness and bare walls after so many hours in the yellow riot of Scout’s room. “Only time I’ll get you to myself indoors, I guess.†Sniper sat beside the agent, making the bedframe squeak. He smiled shyly, and thrilled when it was returned. “Very true. Although, it has not been so bad. I relish the opportunity to teach, and you make an able pupil.†Sniper grinned at this, but felt the punch land in his gut anyway—still, it was more of a rabbit punch than the freight train that would have sunk him a few hours ago. He was getting better at this. “Cabin fever was not covered in my contractual insurance. You will have to entertain me today.†“I find Scout’s ‘frittata’ bloody entertaining.†Sniper forked the mass on his plate. The breakfast duty roster was nothing if not egalitarian. “Oh oui, I know you do.†“Haw haw. How old are you again? Ancient, I reckon. You got some silver in that scruff.†He swiped at the rough stubble around Spy’s mouth. “Oughta be taken out back and shot.†“You may do to me whatever you wish in your outback; I will rise again, like the phoenix.†Spy’s gesture was grand. “Nahhh…you old guys can manage maybe once every forty-eight. Your dongers get all stodgy.†Spy made a face like he’d bitten a bad tomato. “What did you say? My what?†Sniper laughed helplessly, barely keeping his plate. “Mon dieu, if you value my peace of mind, keep your disgusting local idioms bottled up with the rest of your offal. How did you savages found an entire country on such ugly language?†“Quickly, and without all that sneering or prancing about, unlike you fancy lads.†“More impertinence! It is what I have come to expect, alas. Finish your tea; I want to hear everything about your vulgar red wastelands.†Late morning found them locked in the little room, leaning against each other on the mattress. Sniper had quickly run out of outback tales—you shot one rabbit pretty much like you shot another; the homesteader’s desert held few charms for those who hadn’t grown up in it—and Sniper soon fell to the sorts of words he knew best. “Would it be ridiculous, to tell you some more poetry? Promise it’s not mine this time. I keep the good stuff locked up, for special occasions.†He tapped his temple. Spy sat up and looked at him. His face, unshaved and well-used as it was, held a certain relaxed earnestness that Sniper didn’t think he had seen before. He seemed to be searching the gunman’s eyes for something. “Is that a no?†“Non, non. It would be ridiculous. And I would enjoy it very much,†Spy replied quietly. He lowered himself back into his place against the worn vest, but let his head fall under Sniper’s chin. Sniper rested his cheekbone on the masked skull. He thought he felt a quickening of his lover’s pulse; an almost eerie stillness pressed their bodies together, their disparate angles locking up like teeth, red and blue. He shut his eyes, letting himself breathe, making space to remember. But he need not have worried, because the couplets were there instantly, crowding around the edges. Snow, and color, and the beating of wings against cold glass. They jostled brightly, and he smiled, his stomach weightless with the anticipation of speaking. He felt almost as if he could not begin. He began. â€I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate: Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass Hang all the furniture above the grass, And how delightful when a fall of snow Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so As to make chair and bed exactly stand Upon that snow, out in that crystal land! Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque, A dull dark white against the day's pale white And abstract larches in the neutral light. And then the gradual and dual blue As night unites the viewer and the view, And in the morning, diamonds of frost…â€