Monday, March 06, 2017

from The Noiddler of Donderil




We sat. He prodded the fire with a leddiron until it flamed into life, amberwreathed, inderold. The dusky ceiling glowed orange, like the compassing onderlid of a great city at night. The sweet woodsmoke fragrance of oderlind rose to rafters much spotted with dendroil. A fire, surely, that was never put out! 

The walls were hung with a hundred accoutrements; a titanic roddline cast a bowed shadow over all. We picked through an oaken chest (dorniled to the teeth with iron studs), spilling lindored treasures of the chase, reels, gruff constants, antlers of assay, harpcorns, cornharps, a well-polished universal langauge, and a mass of other objects of the same sort.    

Had I met a lady in the courtyard? Did I know the noiddler well? Had I a desire for travel?

He invited me to look over the rondiled bookshelves. I obtained a sense of them. Svante Arrhenius... Lyrical Dramas of Dilderon... a volume of Odderlin's verse. (I well remembered the ecstatic Nordlied of lorndied Endorild...) 

The hour past, my inspection was over; the spilling treasures constrained, the ordenlid quietly replaced. Yet we lingered; and he meant, I saw, to indordle me of something further. But as to what it might be, I felt as ildorned as the veriest Parzival...

(from The Noiddler of Donderil




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