Draque begins to speed out a tone of qualification, turning a canny, hard expression to Adamion's cool countenance.  He sets his narrow shoulders back as he speaks, raising a finger to tap the air with emphasis.<br/><br/>"There are different customs in Gibeon though, Cousin Adamion."  Draque curls his lip, stepping closer into the firm, regal space of the stockier elf.  "We don't drink before ten in the morning and we don't eat in bed.  And we like our hounds in a more natural state, so I'd appreciate it if you'd keep any artistic impulses you might have down to a minimum."<br/><br/>Adamion looks back at him like just so much dark glass - brilliant and immaculate of concern.  He raises a hand at Fern and Miaren, his fingers spreading.<br/><br/>Ava's voice rushes out a response in pizzicato.<strong>"He means he will enhance your strength, your vitality, your size, your passions."</strong><br/><br/>Adamion's voice is molasses over the keener flood of Ava's thoughts.<strong>"A minimum.  Life is not made for minimum's."</strong><br/><br/>He grins subtly.<br/><br/><strong>"Your speed and your senses will be enhanced.  You will be given the best facilities of hunting hounds."<br/><br/>"With that attitude, best you wait until I invite you." </strong>Adamion cants his head and twists that subtle grin higher.<strong>  "See you then, cousin.  Not a moment sooner." </strong><br/><br/><strong>"Obey him.  Draque and I will arrive soon to deliver you to exit, back to your world." </strong>Ava's hand slides up to grip Fern and Miaren's flanks, seeking to indent them with the smooth certainty of her fingers.<br/><br/>Then Adamion's fingers close.<br/><br/>The Garden shuts with them.  Trees fold away into darkness - darkness the very unbroken lightlessness of Adamion's hair.  The sky turns the color of his eyes.  The ground is lifted, tucked like origami into oblivion.  Perspective truncates, refines into total blackness, collapses.  All detail is closed away.  All sensation is closed away.  A moment of vertigo flares, big as darkness, in a space of darkness the size of the world.<br/><br/>Then the world opens.<br/><br/>Adamion's fingers are opening.  The air they open in is not the air of the forest.  This is a new place.  It sparkles, lush and fresh in every aspect:<br/><br/>The horizon is a work of brushed ceramic; a lustrous cerulean washed with a glaze of tropical heat.  Its bowl encircles the level ground tightly.  Low houses stand in the near distance, forming an iron frame for the sky with their sprawling compound.<br/><br/>The roofs of the houses are peaks - supple isosceles triangles or curved and wide, all of them with sharp apexes.  They are narrow and without fronting or decorous eaves; just smooth, black lines.  Below them, the walls are grids of wood with a glassy substance, milky as winter mist, stretched within each rectangle.  A bare, elevated promenade encompasses each house and connects them into a compound of strikingly precise geometry.<br/><br/>Within the vastness of the compound's embrace, all around Fern and Miaren, a tidy garden sprawls.  The ground's contours heave in shallow rises and valleys like a sleeper in the throes of an extraordinary dream, their fleshy swells dusted with neat grass and sinewed with crisp, dark sandy paths.  The paths weave in idle twists through squat groves of willow trees and groomed arrangements of flowers in prismatic fractals.  Objects raise in iron or dark wood throughout the map of the paths - benches, lampposts of lean abstraction, racks and private gazebos.<br/><br/>A collection of such racks stands around the intersection where Adamion, Fern and Miaren find themselves: Some set high like painter's frames, others hunched low like breeding stocks, others still layered like playground bars; all with sinuous straps wound about them.<br/><br/>Wearing similar straps in light, seamless harnesses like Adamion, a dozen elven men stand in attendance.  They too have the striking, brilliant qualities of celestial composure and lithesome elegance as Adamion and Ava do.  All bow neatly at the waist in greeting to Lord Adamion.<br/><br/>Their Lord pays them no greeting in reply.  His attention is embedded in Miaren and Fern, piercing them with sable intensity.  He pivots to face them, sliding the scalpel of his stare over their bodies.<br/><br/><strong>"Now to get to know one another better.  To see what you truly look like under all that imperfection." </strong>