Fern's canny estimation measures the hall beyond: It is paneled wood, arrayed in long, lean, dusky strips - twenty feet wide in a row some one hundred feet long.  Four rice paper doors suggest four distinct chambers on either side.  No sign of movement is discernible.  No illumination, but for the natural ambient light from gaps in the ceiling.  Nothing stirs there - even dust is absent.<br/><br/>Below in the garden enclosure, the griffon emerges.  He seems none the worse for wear from his coupling, his pelt still a gleaming tumble of bronze over the lope of his sturdy muscles.  He stalks from the branches idly, strolling his leonine weight under a canopy of ivory wings in folded glister.  There is no mistaking the object of his attention, though.  The glistening lapis of his gaze punctures Miaren.<br/><br/>His intent is less clear.  Though scent and sight both give hints of his pronged phallus, poking with crimson anxiety from the furry droop of his lower belly, his haunches have no tension in them.  His great, regal mass betrays none of the taut readiness of a hunting predator.  Rather, he seems to approach Miaren as though sauntering up to a creature both harmless and intimate.<br/><br/>And, set in the curve of his beak, he carries a severed branch with four plump, ruby fruits attached, swaying fat in their pocked, ripe rinds.