EXCERPT 18 – QUEN NIM
The formidable Princess pictured below is Nimble Missst. She is the focus of two stories. One was written long ago by Harpo. The other is this one, Quen Nim, written by Bekka.
“Ridiculous,” said Nimble Missst. She stood on the ledge part way down the cliff and close by the cascading O’Tan Falls. “Ridiculous times three.”
She shook her head of flame orange curls, which truth grew green at the roots. She shook a smoke ash green fist. Her startling violet eyes flashed in frustration. She stamped a web-toed foot. She opened her powder blue wings and flung herself into the falls. She fluttered for a satisfying drench. She misted green and twined in foggy spires through and around and up the falls. She jelled solid at the top of the cliff and swam fiercely against the racing river’s current, slamming the water with her wide-spread webbed fingers and toes. She bobbed up, flew to the shore, settled. She misted again and hovered there, a shimmering green cloud. She jelled in red vest and pantaloons, arms folded, startling violet eyes smoldering with anger.
“Ridiculous,” she repeated. It was her favorite word. Such was so. She was Nimble Missst, a Princess true of Cloud Castle City. She was famous for her snapjaw mind. As a solver of puzzles and riddles she reigned unchallenged. As a youngling with scant ten bar years of life, hadn’t she solved the rebus of the Lemonlime Dragon? She had. Such was a truth known from the Swump of Greedge in Clover to Fan Wa’s Island in the Wide Great Sea, from Skrabble to the Chack Tree Forest, from the Woeful Wanderers’ Wasteland to the Woods Beyond the Wood. She was that well known and respected for her snapjaw mind. Now possessed with fifteen bar years of life, her snapjaw mind snapped sharper than ever. Sharp and snap were words that fit her. She took so such her prickly outward manner from her mother. Her mother was Rindle Mer, the unsmiling watery woodlock. Nimble Missst’s hidden soft heart she took from her grandfather, Dabber of the West, and from her grandmother, Lady May of Orrun, and, truth also lastly, from her father, Jay Dot of Orrun.
“Ridiculous, but if it is to be so, it will be done my way,” Nimble Missst promised herself.
She lifted from the river bank and flew in thoughtful leisure back over the cliff and down to the ledge. On landing, she walked to a crevice in the cliff face at the back of the ledge and reached her arm into it up to the elbow. She felt the soft shimmery material with the webs and fingers of her smoke ash green hand. She clutched and brought out her Grampa’s silver cape with the gold clasp. It was the cape he’d been wrapped in when he’d found himself flying to the ledge next to O’Tan Falls. His first memory. Nothing before. Such was so. Nimble Missst had heard the tale countless times at her insistence from her Grampa. Special bonded tight and strong was the link between Nimble Missst and her Grampa, Dabber of the West. The cape belonged now to Nimble, and so too did the ledge. The ledge where Dabber of the West lived his younglinghood was now Nimble Missst’s personal retreat. She spent half the year there, truth to be told, playing in and around the falls and thinking. That is the why that it was ever so such easy to find her whenever she was needed.
“That’s why it’s so easy to find me,” she muttered to herself, clasping the cape around her shoulders. “I should find other hidden retreats. Ridiculous. I’m supposed to have a snapjaw mind. There are plenty of other places. Thousands! But they aren’t here. They aren’t Grampa’s ledge and the Falls. Treat it like a puzzle, Nim. A puzzle stands no chance against the likes of ye.”
She chuckled at her latest thought and nodded with a frown. She misted, cape and all, floated as a sparkling green cloud into the sky. She drifted, dawdling and plotting, toward Orrun Mountain.
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