Not as in a physical attraction to it, because it would a bit difficult to maintain a standing relationship with an abstract concept. (Then again, you never really know. The abstract concept of 'honour', for one, has many admirers.) But rather as in their tendency to use hyperbole often and excessively in their "epics".

This is widely regarded as one of the main reasons why most poets are thought to be bad poets.

The extent of this hyperbole tends to be just as excessive, as was illustrated by the latest ballads of the recent Toran/Scarlet Moon war. "Lord Viktor", for example, would have been hard-pressed to reconcile descriptions of the "twelve-foot blade of blackest midnight, crackling with purple ribbons of eldritch energy, seeming to cleave the very fabric of the air itself with every mighty stroke" with the foul-mouthed sword necessity had forced him to wield, and while Ronnie Bell does bear the nickname of "the giant woman", she most certainly does not "tower over horses" and "block out the sun with her great presence". Kirke would most vehemently protest the claims that he hangs clumps of shrunken heads on his belt, and much as Sheena might have dreamt of doing so, even he would deny having slept with two hundred and sixty-seven "beauteous maidens" during the course of the war, as some of the more ribald ballads claim. And every so often, Admiral Sonya Shulen of the Toran Republic is compelled to inflict grievous bodily harm on someone by the mere question of why she cut her "mane of honey-blond hair" that apparently used to "curl teasingly around the curves of her shapely calves".

As should be immediately obvious, sometimes the profession of "bad poet" carries with it a certain amount of personal risk, most usually to one's head, fingers, bodily parts of a more sensitive nature, and general well-being. But people still do it anyway.

But by far, the component of an "epic" that most suffe.... ahem, enjoys the "judicious" application of hyperbole would be the atmosphere. After all, as some (bad) poets have been known to enthuse, what's more important in a "dramatic rendition" than the atmosphere? The gloomy valleys, the vaunting peaks, the boundless fields stretching far and away; the ominous skies, the crashing waves, the dark and stormy night; and, in a war story, who could forget the thundering of hooves, the heady scent of smoke and sweat, and finally, the sun breaking through the clouds as victory is won?...although any city official could tell you that just as many murders happen in well-lit homes as in dank back alleys, and most veterans of war remember, above all, the metallic tang of bloodied steel mingled with the sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh, and any soldier who was there at the fall of Gregminster could have looked up and told you that the sun was not out, nor was the sky a blinding shade of blue. It was rather more grayish than that. Bluish-gray, perhaps. One less inclined to humour you would tell you it was just sky-coloured, and to go away.

But these considerations are usually put aside, in the name of "drama"; and so poets, good and bad, continue to refer to their boundless fields, their stormy nights, their suns breaking through clouds. Not one of them ever makes reference to, say, a mid-sized fishing boat on a not very turbulent river under a sky-coloured sky.

Which just shows the tenuous grasp most poets have on the abstract concept of "drama". Because the best atmosphere for human drama has always been the human mind.

Sometimes, on the trade road between Greenhill and the Forest Village, a wagon driver will lose control of his draft horse, and the horse, in a frenzy, will charge off in a random direction, dragging the wagon behind it.

Sometimes, the wagon driver will manage to bring the horse back under control, and after some soothing of the frazzled nerves of man and animal alike, will continue on his way. But more often than not this will not happen, at least not immediately; and the horse, and the wagon, will continue to crash recklessly through the undergrowth, leaving a trail of churned, torn earth behind them.

It is usually at this point that the horse wrenches free from the wagon, frayed and broken leather straps slapping against it's lathered sides as it continues to run, eyes rolled up in it's head, temporarily devoid of reason or sanity; the wagon, too, maintains it's forward momentum, it's motion as random and wild as the horse's. Occasionally, the horse will strangle itself to death on the tight leather reins instead, or exhaustion will claim it's life; but this does not happen often.

Sometimes, the horse, or the wagon, or both, will eventually crash into a tree; in this eventuality, the horse usually suffers a broken neck, the wagon a broken driver. But if this does not happen, then the horse continues it's wild rampage, and the wagon continues it's uncontrolled headlong motion, until they run out of energy, slow, and stop. (The wagon usually then proceeds to tip over on it's side, much to the frustration of the wagon driver, if he is still among the living.)

Sometimes, just sometimes, an animal -- perhaps a deer, perhaps one of the non-feral and therefore non-combative rabbits or squirrels -- will just happen to be in the path of the horse, or of the wagon. Sometimes the animal in question, quite literally, never knows what hits it, before it becomes a mangled mess on the grassy forest floor. But on occasion, the animal in question -- whether it be deer, rabbit, squirrel, or whatever -- will have time to turn, and notice the wild-eyed horse, the careening wagon.

And it will stand there, frozen, unmoving, staring. That is all it will do -- it will stare into the face of it's oncoming doom, fully aware that the first strike of those sharp-soled hooves, or the first impact of those heavy wooden wheels, will end it's life. Even knowing this, all it will do, all it can do, will be to continue to stare fixedly onwards, until the first blow strikes it and it can see no more.

It does not stare, as has been postulated, because it is transfixed in fear, it's limbs robbed of all strength by the specter of sheer terror, unable even to scream before it is no more. In truth, fear would only give the animal a boost, sending the squirrel scampering frantically to the side, pushing the rabbit off to the side in a clumsy hop, urging the deer the few stumbling steps to the side necessary to avoid the oncoming horse or wagon. Fear is a basic component of the survival instinct; where conscious thought fails, fear would produce unconscious action. Fear is, an old soldier once said, the best way of knowing you're still among the living.

There is no space for fear, when one is confronted by that which has the potential to destroy you, completely and utterly, in the physical sense or otherwise; only for a sick fascination, vaguely morbid in it's intensity, deadly in it's absorption. The deer (or rabbit or squirrel), unconsciously, studies every detail of the horse as it approaches -- it's snorting, flaring nostrils; it's heaving, sweaty sides; and most of all, the shape of the wicked hoof, seen in finer and finer detail as it swings towards the deer's (or rabbit's or squirrel's) head, perceptions slowing and freezing the hoof's downwards lash into still-motion captures: closer, and closer, and closer (now the shattered clods of earth on the hoof are visible), and closer, closer, closer (now note the hoof's fine black grain), closer, closer closer closer (black fills the vision) closercloserclosercloser (impact, crunching, black.)

It is the same sick fascination that is in the eyes of the child looking up at the sword swinging down, empty eyes framing only a repulsive attraction and the flash of the sword in the firelight; or in the eyes of soldiers stopped dead in their tracks by an arrow in the chest, staring blankly down at the individual fletchings, hardly aware of when their knees give way beneath them. The murderer who sees in each victim the death of himself feels it; the Poor Quarter midwife who delivers yet another stillborn child feels it. The general planning war often spends hours with eyes locked on his battle maps, seeing nothing. The farmboy or farmgirl gazes rapturously at a charismatic visitor, mind entertaining romantic fantasies, heart knowing that the force of the visitor's personality would drown their own forever, leaving no trace.

It is the attraction of the moth to the flame, the circling of the abstract, inexplicable aesthetic; all the while knowing vaguely, like the feather-light touch of a capricious breeze, that to come too close is to doom oneself, that even the lessened heat from it's present orbit will eventually overtake it and set it's papery wings alight, or drown it in heat and send it plummeting to it's own black abyss. But it continues to circle. Just as the deer (or rabbit or squirrel) is helpless against the horse or wagon, just as the child is helpless against the sword, and the soldier against the arrow already bleeding his life away, so too the moth is helpless in it's attraction to the flame. And myriad moths can only stare at the light that attracts with nymphic beauty, and a hovering threat of doom.

Somewhere, on a mid-sized fishing boat making a slow approach towards the docks of Radat under a sky-coloured sky, Anita was staring.

It is interesting, sometimes, to observe the extent to which three simple mistakes can affect the course of events.

Anita's first mistake, of course, was when, in her haste to be away from Valeria, she paid too much attention to keeping her face in the shadows of the hood of her cloak, and not enough attention to keeping the rest of her belongings out of plain sight. Specifically, in her rather disordered state of mind, she failed to consider that her Shichiseiken, one of a matched pair of Seven Star Swords, would be just as recognizable to Valeria as her face. So, too, with the Falcon Rune displayed prominently on the back of the hand with which she adjusted the hood of her cloak with, a rune unique, as far as either of the two knew, to only three people on the entire continent.

Valeria recognized her, of course, and made two mistakes of her own, the first by yelling out Anita's name, which set her to flight, and the second by forgetting she was wearing wooden clogs. As a consequence, Anita easily outdistanced her, and was lost to sight. Had Anita kept going, undoubtedly it would have been many more years before the two of them met again. But here Anita made her second mistake: once sure that Valeria could no longer see her, she stopped, and doubled back; quickly enough that she overheard the mumbled ruminations of a man named Richmond as he levelled a measuring gaze at the retreating back of a swordswoman with hair the colour of flame, as she entered the Radat inn.

It is a matter of opinion as to the exact nature of Anita's third mistake. Perhaps her third mistake lay in not entering the inn and confronting Valeria, because had she done so, events could have then progressed directly from point A to point E, without having to go through points B, C, and D. Or perhaps her mistake lay in not simply walking away, leaving Valeria and everything attendant to her behind in the tracks of her past. But in either case, the mistake itself would be the same, and Anita's third mistake was in meeting Richmond in the shadows of a dusty Radat side road.

"You're Richmond, I take it?"

The man paused for a moment, then turned to face the person who had addressed him. "That's my name, all right." Anita made a mental note of how his eyes narrowed slightly, and of the faint tightness at the edges of the amiable smile across his face. The smile, especially, was familiar ground to her. "And you're..?"

"So she's from Toran, eh?..." "Somebody with an interest in those hailing from the Toran republic."

His eyes quickly scanned her expression (or lack of one), lingered for a moment, then returned to being passively piercing. "You don't look the type," he said bluntly.

Now she matched him, smile for smile. "Does a person have to look the type to be the type?"

He made a low sound of affirmation. "Point taken." Now the seeming slight relaxation of the posture, belying the razor-sharp alertness almost perfectly hidden underneath. "So... why is someone with an interest in people from Toran talking to me? I'm Jowstonian. Born in Jowston, that is." The smile grew slightly wider. "Not really of interest to someone interested in errant Toran generals, am I?"

She blinked, but outwardly gave no other sign of her surprise at Richmond's perceptiveness. For all she knew, Valeria might be the only Toran native in the town, which would certainly make her the most logical candidate for someone "with an interest in those from Toran" to be inquiring after... but that really had been too much of an "educated guess" for comfort.

A slightly different tack, then. "I heard you provide information about people for a fee. Even information about, say, errant Toran generals."

"Yeah, I spy on people," he tossed off casually, shrugging. "So you're looking for information?"

She wordlessly tossed him a bulging pouch, which he caught deftly out of the air. "3500 potch, and 20 hundred-weight gold coins, unmarked. Enough?"

The pouch disappeared into the folds of Richmond's coat. "More than enough, I'd say, for simple information on an errant flame-haired Toran general."

"And for information to be provided to that same flame-haired general."

He laughed, but a shadow seemed to pass momentarily over his features. "I deal in information, not misinformation, Anita des Coures. Just the facts."

This time, she could not help but betray her surprise. "How did you?--"

He gestured carelessly at her side, at her hand and the sword just beside it. "You passed through this area before, about three years back, and served a short stint as a mercenary sub-commander in one of those five hundred and one skirmishes with the Highlands that both sides kept denying. Some of those mercenaries still remember your sword and your rune, even to this day." His smile returned. "Whoops, shouldn't give out free info. Ah well, consider that a freebie."

Same damn mistake I made getting off the boat.. "That only explains how you know of my first name."

"It does? Oh yeah, it does." He'd gotten a coin from somewhere, and kept on tossing it in the air and catching it even as he spoke. "And as far as that's concerned... I just have my ways of finding things out, is all." Toss, catch.

"..and if I wanted to know just what those ways were?"

"I'd tell you not to get too close to the fire, or you'll get burned." Toss, catch.

Huh. "In any case, there's no need for you to pass a certain flame-haired Toran general misinformation. I said 'information', not 'misinformation'."

Toss, catch. "Uh huh. Just what 'information'--" Toss, catch. "--am I supposed to pass on to her?"

Just what do I want her to know? "I'll be in the bar tonight; I'll let you know then. Just find out what you can by then, that'll probably be enough."

The coin spun through the air, sunlight glinting momentarily off it's surface as it fell squarely into Richmond's hand. A sardonic grin now across his face, he replaced the coin in a pocket of his shirt. "Anything else you'd like to know, perhaps? Maybe what the situation in the Highlands is like? Or maybe who your master was?"

Anita grew very, very still. When she spoke, it was in an oddly emotionless tone. "I already know who our master was."

His face strangely serious for a change, Richmond studied her flat expression for a few moments.

"Yeah... yeah, you do know, don't you?.."

Why are you here, Valeria?

After all this time... what, four, five years? Since that night...

Just that one night... in a way, it set both our paths for the past five years, didn't it, Valeria? Strange that both our paths, in a way, have led to the same thing.. but it's not that strange, after all.

Why are you here? Why now?

Was it a mistake, that night? I don't know. I really don't know.

Did the master tell you, Valeria? Or did he keep silent? Or could he even stay you long enough to tell you?

Why are you here, Valeria?

It's almost all been one long damn string of coincidences, hasn't it, Valeria?... It's ironic, in a way...

Have you felt like you missed something somewhere, Valeria? Like that time long ago?.. It's like we blink, and something changes, and then all we have is a fading snapshot memory, an image captured in a flicker of eyelids..

Why are you here, Valeria?

Why here? Why now?

Why you?

She was halfway through her third bottle of wine when a mug and a stein of beer seemed to materialize on the counter next to her. Richmond, oddly enough, seemed to have materialized on the corresponding seat at roughly the same time.

Her greeting was succinct. "I'm paying for that, right?"

"'Course. You're the employer, aren't you?"

"Mmph." She took a sip from her glass, letting the vaguely tangerine-like taste of the wine wash over her tongue. It might have placed a faint, sleepy smile on her lips, had one not already been there. "What is that stuff, anyway?"

The self-named private detective quaffed a mug of the beer before responding. "Jowstweiser beer. Want some?"

"No thanks. I'm not a beer person myself."

The private detective grinned. "You sure? Jowstweiser's one of the best Jowston beers. Men have killed (or inflicted grievous bodily harm) for this stuff, y'know."

"So? People in general have killed or inflicted grievous bodily harm over just about anything. Beer's no surprise."

"Heh. Yeah." He set the mug of beer down on the countertop. "Kinda weird... your tone's awfully light for that kind of subject matter."

"Isn't yours?"

He grinned again, with practiced ease. "That's true too." He began drumming his fingers on the bar's polished wooden surface. "What're you drinking, then?"

"Midnight Sunset. Melodramatic name for a white wine, isn't it?"

"You'd be surprised how many people around these parts find melodrama comforting." His fingers continued to beat out a staccato beat on the glossy wood -- taktaktakTAK, taktaktakTAK, taktaktakTAK.

There was a long pause. Anita drank her Midnight Sunset, while Richmond's Jowstweiser sat, nearly untouched, atop the bar counter. The only other customer of the pub sat at a far table, staring moodily into the depths of her glass. The bartender tended the bar.

Anita was tipping wine from a fourth bottle when Richmond, one eyebrow raised, shot a question at her. "Don't you ever get drunk?"

"Only about after the ninth bottle."

Blink. "How the heck do you manage to do that?"

"Practice." She let the last of the wine in the glass trickle into her mouth, then refilled it.

taktaktakTAK. "You have heard the rumours, right?"

She replied languorously, idly swirling the soft amber contents of the glass. "About Jowston and Highland? Of course. So which one's true? Kyaro razed, Toto razed, Highland army slaughtered, or giant purple wolves invading Muse?"

"Giant purple wolves?" taktaktakTAK. "Hadn't heard that one myself..."

"Whatever. So what about the rumours?"

taktaktakTAK. "Mmph. All wrong, or at least not totally right. Truth is the Highland youth army, the one called the Unicorn Brigade, was slaughtered almost to a man (or should that be boy?) while performing maneuvers up at Tenzan pass. Most died from multiple arrow shots. The arrows were of Jowston make, so the whole of the Highlands is in a snitch." taktaktakTAK. "That's what your errant Toran general is here investigating."

The wine traced a sparkling trail in the air, from the bottle to the glass. "Officially, at least."

Richmond grinned. "You do know her well, don't you? Word is she practically begged President Lepant to send her; guess being around the elves too much was making her go stir crazy."

"Mm." She stared into her glass. "Figures."

Richmond's fingers stopped their tapping. Raising the mug he hadn't touched past the first drink, he took a small sip of the beer, before setting the brown earthenware vessel down again. "So? What do you want me to tell Valeria?"

She did not reply immediately; instead, she waited for the bartender to uncork a fifth bottle of Midnight Sunset and set it down on the counter. Then, as she filled the glass, she murmurred, "Tell me more about the Unicorn Brigade first. It wasn't Jowston, was it?"

"1000 potch." Without looking up from her glass, Anita reached into a belt pouch and extracted ten hundred-potch coins, sliding them over to Richmond. He pocketed the coins, but was momentarily silent. Finally, he spoke.

"You're right about it not being Jowston. Jowston arrows were used, but the bows that fired them were marked with Prince Ruka's White Wolf insignia." He tried to study Anita's reaction, but the faint, sleepy half-smile on her lips, half obscured by the translucent opacity of a glass of amber liquid, was as unreadable as always. "The Prince of the Highlands wants a war, and it looks like he's going to get it. He may already have made the first move -- no one's heard anything from Toto for several days now. He could have overrun and blockaded it--"

"Or razed it to the ground." Anita's tone was curt and matter-of-fact.

"--or that, yeah." He shook his head. "Rumour's always said the prince had a taste for the bloodier things in life."

"Mm." She emptied the last contents of the bottle into the glass, and raised it to her lips. "Richmond?"

"Hm?"

"Answer me truthfully, please... the moment you're finished here, you're going to head over to the inn, and sell the exact same information you just sold me to Valeria, aren't you?"

"I prefer 'provide' to 'sell'. And the answer's, quite simply, yes." The half-serious grin crossed his face again. "And I won't even charge for that."

"Huh..." Draining the glass, she stood. "Then you might as well 'provide' the information that I'll be in Muse, then. I'm sure she'll thank you for it." That last she said with a sarcastic twist of the lips, even as she reached a hand into the same belt pouch she'd paid Richmond from.

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"And this is not misinformation?"

"Of course not." She stacked eight 100-potch coins on the table, one atop another. "In fact, I'm headed for Muse right now."

Richmond raised an eyebrow. "What, not even going to get a night's sleep first?"

"Nah. Some nights, you just can't sleep anyway." Was it his imagination, or did that sleepy half-smile have a teasing quality about it for a half-second?

After she'd left the pub, Richmond stared down at the beer in front of him for a while. Then he looked around -- the bartender was still tending the bar, as always, and the woman at the far table was still staring into her glass. An empty glass, he now noticed.

He sighed. Getting up, he lifted the still more than half-full stein of beer. As the bartender unobtrusively scooped up the stack of coins behind him, Richmond walked over to the far table, and set the stein of beer down. He stepped back.

The woman did not look up. One of her thin, sinewy hands grasped the stein, tilted it, and filled the glass with Jowstweiser beer. But she neither looked up nor made any movement to lift the glass. Richmond was not surprised.

Sighing again, he left the pub, directing his footsteps towards Radat's inn.