Feylings in Dragon's Keep

Chapter 2 ~Hops McGee~

 Lyrie, now the ripe age of 22, has blonde hair pulled into two messy braids and her blue eyes are wide with excitement. Lyrie steps into the corridor of her lovely home with columns lining the entryway and marble floors that echo as she steps. The echoes grow louder and louder until she reaches a large door engraved with bunches of grapes on vines wrapped around books.

Lyrie opens through the grand door and steps into the circular library. The library is flooded with daylight through the giant arched stained glass window that takes up a majority of the far wall. The stained glass depicts the Hucrele family tree from Elrand Hucrele the founder of Hucrele Winery to Lyrie Hucrele the heir of the winery. The library is a cylinder tower that reaches up to three floors with every wall filled with books of all kinds from gardening, to magic, to mysteries to romance, and even books on the Feywild. As Lyrie steps into her library she catches a glimpse of two bunny ears, one white and one black, sticking out from behind a stack of books labeled, "The Mysteries of Herlock Sholmes" and Lyrie knows those familiar ears all too well,

"Hops" Lyrie cries out with a huge smile. The little bunny steps out from behind the stack of books with a book in hand as he reads aloud a line from one of his favorite books,

"The world so desperately in need of a hero, Herlock Sholmes steps up to the task" The theatrics in his voice makes the book seem more than a fictional mystery book. Sometimes Lyrie swears that Hops thinks these books are actual history instead of fiction, but Lyrie plops down next to her friend and observes him as he gets sucked back into his book barely acknowledging her presence. Hops McGee is the newest member of Lyrie's home staff. He is a harengon who wears a big top hat with patchwork all over it and is Lyrie's best friend.

~

"You are now Hops McGee and we are going to be best friends Hops!" Lyrie remembers the look on Hops face not disgusted like the looks she is used to getting from her little town, rather elated and maybe slightly confused. Lyrie held out her arm and Hops grabbed it as they skipped off to Lyrie's home where she begged her parents to let the little bunny stay. Her father and mother looked at each other with a knowing look, knowing that Lyrie would sneak him in anyway even if they had said no, so they reluctantly said yes. Lyrie after taking Hops on a tour of her abode, they landed at the library where Hops stood at the doorway amazed, blown away by the masterpiece of the collection of books that the Hucrele's had, with an excited tapping of his foot, Hops entered what would soon be his new home amongst the stacks of books and the broom closet that would become Hops' room despite Lyrie's dismay and encouragement to take one of the many unoccupied rooms upstairs, but Hops like being close to the books and Lyrie would learn to live with it.

As Lyrie remembers meeting her new best friend on that fateful day a small smile crosses her face as Hops excitedly puts the books back on the shelf this time organized by color, which Lyrie knows he will soon undo because Hops McGee has always been one to organize daily whether by color, title, the last word on the last page, and many more unique organization methods. Lyrie's parents have learned to just ask Hops to fetch them a book as needed instead of learning the new organization method every day. Hops looks at the stacks and stacks of books and frowns, realizing how color organization is not the perfect way to organize and recognizes that he'll have to redo it tomorrow. Lyrie now catches Hops' attention as he turns to face her,

"Lyrie, what have you found today?" with an excited chipper in his voice and Lyrie's lips curve into a smile that encompasses her face, and her face feels like she has never smiled bigger. This is why Hops is Lyrie's best friend, Hops is just as excited as Lyrie about new things and new things to research. Although Hops is way better at the research part of things than Lyrie. Lyrie holds out an odd, shaped rock with a singular ring wrapped around it, a strangely translucent butterfly with a pink hue and finally, the thing Lyrie was most excited about was a blue stone with a green hue. Lyrie likes to collect knick-knacks from her adventures in the Feywild. Hops always gets excited along with her as they then spend hours studying the few and far between collections of Feywild books the Hucrele's have collected only recently with Lyrie claiming that Hops has a knack for planar study. As they study, they are able to identify the rock with the line as just a simple stone probably, the butterfly, and finally, the blue stone with a green hue is left unidentified.

Tired after a long day of study, Lyrie picks up the newest bobbles in her collection and carries them up to her room. The attic of her family's abode. She pushes open the door and light streams in. Lyrie's room has three large arch windows lining the opposite wall to the door. Beyond the windows stretch the miles of the vineyard below eventually reaching the edge of the woods lining the Hucele property. Besides the beauty of the outdoors that Lyrie's room is rather impersonal. It looks like a room anyone of her stature could own, but Lyrie keeps her most precious stuff in a secret room hidden behind racks and racks of dresses tucked in the corner of Lyrie's closet that no one has seemed to find except her. Prior to finding the portals, when she used to need an escape, she would hide there.

As Lyrie pushes past her dresses into the back of her closet she imagines she is traveling through a dense forest with vines and plants that all reach down the eat her and as she crouches down to reach her secret space she imagines cutting through each vine and plant that reaches out. Lyrie presses against the wall where the little door is hidden, and it pops open a sunset light pours out of the door. Lyrie crawls into the space that opens into a secret workshop space with a magically enchanted string of lights that circle the room giving off the sunset light, a desk skewed with papers of her writing from her adventures in the Fey, and show boxes line the walls with identified items within them from pixies to strange animals moultings, butterfly cocoons, stones, plants and so many strange, but beautiful things Lyrie collects. The walls are lined with papers ripped from books prior to Hops arrival. Lyrie knows now that if Hops saw her ripping pages out of his precious books, he might lose his mind.

As Lyrie looks around, she observes her strange collection trying to find spots to put her newest pieces. She realizes that her collection is mounted on every wall, like the things she loves most in this world are grasping onto every inch of her small secret space. Lyrie thinks of all her time with the Fey, they have been identified to be a part of and there is so much more to do. Lyrie looks to her desk where the first item she ever brought back from the Fey, is a yellow flower that has never faded in beauty. It is ever-growing, carnivorous, but stunning. The flower has given Lyrie hope, hope for a future that is encompassed by magically unexplained things.

As Lyrie looks at her collection of odd knick-knacks from the Feywild she thinks of how she wishes she could share the adventures with her friends, maybe her parents. Lyrie has never been able to bring anyone else with her to the Fey. She's never been able to show anyone the amazing world she has come to know as the world of her deepest imagination and dreams. Although she is not quite sure why she can go through the portals, no one else seems to be able to. Lyrie has tried to bring Hops along too, but he always gets left behind, whether the portals were made for her, or she somehow made them herself, she does not know, but she is grateful for the escape it has given her. Lyrie lets out a deep sigh as she places her newest pieces to her collection into its new home and leans on her desk looking over all her writings of secret hopes and dreams. Someday, maybe she'll give all her research to the university, or create a museum. But that is someday, for today she can write and research and explore within the walls of her tiny town of Oakhurst within such a big world.

As Lyrie leaves her secret workshop, she looks back at the beautiful golden hour light that glimmers off all her butterflies, pixies, plants, and pebbles and smiles thinking of how big the world is, yet this, this is just a small taste of it.