The girl scrapes a butter-laden knife against her plate. The warm butter stops sticking to the side and slides up against the potatoes. It looks like a little melting ooze taking shelter.

  Her fingers scratch unconsciously at her neck. The mosquito bite from earlier is growing itchier.

  “Lyene!" shouts a voice, as young and shrill as her own, "Hurry up! I don’t want to wait any longer. I’m not the one who stayed out so long they didn't even eat. Look, it’s 7! We always-“

  "I know! I know!" Lyene picks up the plate and hurries into the other room. Her next words come out all a-grumble. “I can't even see the timepiece in there."

  Her sister grins smugly from her half of a straw cushion but doesn't press. Instead, she turns promptly to the figure swaying in his rocking chair, who is lit only by the embers in the fireplace behind him and what moonlight filters through the doorway. Lyene seats herself on the cushion next to her sister, who nudges her sharply with an elbow.

  "Watch the food!" Lyene exclaims, hands tight around the plate. "Don’t be clumsy."

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  The swaying of the rocking chair stops as their father plants his feet firm against the creaking floorboards. In his lap lies a book and a relic - the covers uncleanably dusty, the binding frayed. But their father is proud of it. It's the only book they own - a recent gift from a friend.

  He breathes deeply and visibly, waving a hand over the book held in the other. His eyebrows rise with mystery. The two sisters hush. One's retort dies in their mouth, and the other’s meal is suddenly forgotten.

  The book is opened by work-worn hands, past many other pages of twice-told and thrice-told tales.

  "Olivier. Lyene. Listen to the Tale of the Serpent-skin and the Wooden Pinik."

  What’s a pinik?

  But the thought remains unspoken. To speak would break the wonderful spell their father has begun to cast.

  Their father smiles.

  Then, rusty, shrill, and edged with allergies, his voice begins to ring, a commanding echo fabricated in the sisters' rapt imaginations. Not quite the voice one would expect to carry so epic a tale.

  But they don’t care. They’re hungry for the novel. Its adventure offers their heart a rhythm to beat against, a canvas to set their dreams to. Its romanticism gives the house an airy, mystical feel, suspended by fantastical threads spun out from the book by their father’s voice. And simultaneously, the words upon words wash over them, and they feel mundane and refreshed.

  Late into the evening, they sit, mouths agape, wide-eyed, even as their father shuts the book, a puff of dust dispersing with a narrated finality.