The Book of Three

A man who acknowledges his faults? Is there such a thing? (I kid, I kid, no offense, fellas.)

T: "Are you catching on? Is this not hilarious?"

E: "Why are you being all charmingly conspiratorial when I am still furious with you? Stop that."

Right? Poor boy, it'll take him a while to learn diplomacy with her. ;) (And it'll take her a while to learn patience with him.)

He's trying to do the right thing, mature, wise thing as he sees it. (At least, in part. Not sure there's no spitefulness in sending "this girl" away, with her silly magic sword that he couldn't care less about, really.)

How sad it would have been if he succeeded.

Indeed! I've never seen it as spitefulness really, though - more like just a cavalier, sexist assumption that a girl has no place on a Great Quest. It's no accident that he doesn't use her name here - underscores the point that he's talking to the Other Man about Big Important Manly Events and anybody who's not a Man doesn't need to be involved here - but I don't think he means to insult her directly. Doesn't make it better, but he'll learn.

I'm not sure, really - the text does say he ties them up, though, and I got in a whole heap of trouble from certain fans for elsewhere suggesting that constantly tying knots in your strings would negatively effect the sound and he should just re-string them instead. So consider this a concession to textual accuracy! lol

Ah, ok...

I suspect that the functionality of stringed instruments was not one of Lloyd Alexander's areas of expertise. It's a pretty minor goof, and a writer who tried to get every single detail like that right would probably spend so much time on research (especially before the internet) that he'd never finish so much as a short story.

Very true - though he did own, as a curiosity, an antique celtic harp he'd picked up on his travels that DID, in fact, snap its strings periodically due to weather! He never learned to play it if memory serves, but I wonder if he ever tried to tie up the broken strings...:)

Thanks, yeah, these dialog-heavy pages challenge me to come up with interesting things to do to shake up the composition. Unusual POV shots are good for that but man they slow me down. I need references for a face from that angle and even with them I don't love how it came out, but...at some point you have to just move on.

lol Yep. Fflewddur might be prone to flights of fancy but he's no fool.

Road to hell paved with good intentions.

Oh gosh it does look like the bat symbol! LOL that was not intended!

I got so tired of that, haha. He loses it after Medwyn’s valley, though literally no one has noticed that!