[His grin drapes lazily over his lips as a grapevine might train over a branch, and he delights in the way her eyes follow him as bees would seek the next flower upon which to land. Then his fingers dance nimbly over the strings and in a slow stream of notes begins his song.

The songs that swell in his throat are usually of his homeland, the heroes celebrated by the Achaeans and the gods revered, yet now what rings forth is a tale of a stranger shore. Yet even so he begins with the familiar evocation of the muses who atop Mount Parnassus dwell, and the tune sways like wind through the boughs of ash trees, like waves upon the wine-dark sea.]

Sing, O muses sweet, of the splendid tree,
The ash whose mighty boughs do bear the name
Yggdrasil, the heart which in the world's breast beats,
And all in the nine realms know of its fame.

[Such is one of the stories Olivia had once read to him from the book given by gold-clad Gilgamesh, the stories of lands he cannot place, where dwell gods and men whose names are unfamiliar against his ears. Another two verses he weaves together, ere his voice falls away to leave the lyre to sing out alone: the instrument seems a part of him, so in tune he is with his music, his body bobbing and bending to the shape of the notes even as he sits there atop the bed.]