Lizards and Lizardmen, brothers still.

I did promise I'd show you which story I was talking about in the second Warhammer Anthology post. It took me a while and even though the label states fun, scanning these pages was an absolute bitch to do.

Turns out it's rather hard to scan whole pages of a book with a hand-scanner without wrecking the spine, the edges of the pages, or the last shreds of my patience. And the big scanner we have around here was absolutely no help at all either.

But hey, good quality or not, I did get it done.

The story served as some introductory background fiction for the original Lizardmen release in 2003 and follows the short chronicle of a captain of the Imperial Cathayan fleet who shipwrecks and in his journeying stumbles on the ancient Lizardmen civilization.

Besides of course being a good story it also is one of the few times the fiction actually gets to touch on the Cathay civilization, which normally is only visited in the rulebooks and the rpg handbooks, and even then, fleeting, and not as the heart of the matter.

 Imagine a small room. It is the room of a young boy yet dreaming of adventure. But it's a specific kind of adventure, one of journeying and of mysteries. Of seeing, and discovering. A boy's dream of the world's hidden places and as yet undiscovered wonders.

 There are plants and greenery throughout the room, some imitation and used in your brother's odd war-panorama displays, and some, real, still wet with the day's moisture. There's a bubbling mist-fountain in a glass bowl, the mechanism creating the mist hidden in an almost motionless sea of white, spilling occasional tendrils that vanish as soon as they tumble over their enclosing rim. The room, despite its active light sources, is largely in shadow, cast for the most part by the top half of the bunk bed, in the lowest bunk of which your older brother is reading this tale aloud to you. You are sitting in the farthest corner from him, in the deepest shadows. It is a favourite spot, because the light from besides the bed, the light your brother needs to read, doesn't reach you, and you are near the buzzing heat of the terrarium, the light of which spills out away from you, into the heart of the room. The lizards are quiet, but the crickets are not. Those tucked away in a little cabinet are in darkness, and chirp only on occasion. The ones being eyed by the lizards, chirp for all they're worth, as their time is running out with every self-satisfied rasp of leg on leg. Every once in a while, the lizards jolt into action, and scamper and rustle in their private undergrowth, and then, one by one, the crickets fall silent.

There are all sorts of strange and mysterious things in the room, not the least of which is the ornate pirate gun, tucked away on the high shelf of a bookcase, the shelf which you can't quite reach yet. But maybe you're holding it, maybe your brother, mindful of the feel of it and of the wonderful immersion that it brings, gave it for you to hold on this special occasion. Strewn everywhere are knives, feathers, glass bottles, drippings of candle-wax, bits of wood, tattered clothes and the usual old rubbish; the carefully hoarded collection of a boy not yet caught by life's stale drudgery. There's the tiny smell of paint dripped on the warm wooden floor, dripped on the cabinets and on the large desk piled with books and magazines. It should by now have been on the models of the warriors, on the monsters and the aliens, which are also strewn everywhere, but the boy has always been impatient, and creativity doesn't lend itself to colouring inside the lines anyway.

The one-sit is soft and comfortable, pliant, it smells of your brother and of safety, and you are small enough yet to have it envelop you still. Covered in blankets, you listen to your brother and to his tale of a hot and steamy jungle, in which mysterious lizards roam, lizards far larger than the ones beside you, basking in the heat of an artificial sun. These other lizards roar and chant, and have no need of man. Their realm is one of mystery, rite and horror.

As your brother tells the tale, you begin to drift and almost dream, but you snap awake and back into awareness, because the story's not yet done, and it is so important yet. But soon, you will sleep, right where you are sitting, huddled still in comfort and safety. And maybe you will dream, like he does, of adventure and mystery, and of wonders undiscovered.

But for now, you'll hold off sleep with the desperation of a child, because you know that here, on this couch and in this moment, is the best time of your life and that once it's gone, all you will be left with is a memory, incomplete and oh so fleeting.

-----