I printed my 30 pages of Erthe, and I was trying to read them with an objective eye. The first six pages or so will need some serious rewriting when the book is done. Somewhere in the middle of Chapter 2, things pick up. I think this was part of the section I wrote during Christmas break last year:

"Please, sir... ma'am..." She stopped again in confusion.
"I am male, and my name is Pharr," said the bird, sounding amused. "I have been and will be Pharr the Phoenix for as long as I can remember."
His statement hadn't entirely made sense, but Susan pressed on anyway.
"Then Mr. Pharr," she said, "what is this world? Why are some people in it so unfriendly? And why do some hear music and some do not?"
"I am not a 'mister,' in the way of faeries and men," replied Pharr, "and this world we live in is called Erthe. (He pronounced it 'ERTH-uh.') As for the music, it is a way of calling. Some of us are meant for extra danger, and in the end, extra joy. We live life a little more - wildly." And he ruffled his feathers again, sending waves of silver flashes up and down his body.
Susan mulled over his answer. "What about nasty folks like those leprechauns? I never met anyone like them before."
Pharr sighed. "Then you're lucky. Sometimes I think there's many more nasty folks than nice, at least out here. I've never met a nice leprechaun, in fact. The answer for their nastiness lies somewhere back in my Old Memory, but Old Memory's not the sort of thing one can tell to other folks, you know? It's a little too deep and rich. Takes too much training. But then..." He looked Susan up and down. "How old did you say you were?"
"Not very," replied Susan.
"It's too bad," said Pharr, "because I hate waiting. It seems like such a pointless waste of time to wait while everything else in Erthe catches up with Memory To Come..."

Heehee, I like that bit, even if I wrote it myself. And this bit:

"Can't you just fly me back into the valley?" she begged.
Pharr spread his wings in a gesture of helplessness. "I would if I could, little one, but your elders and the gravities have made an agreement. The gravities have made a shield over your valley that reverses the approach of all flying creatures; else, you would have received many visits from the air by this time."
Leprechauns, rocs, and now gravities? "What else lives out here?" Susan ejaculated.
"Oh - men. Mer-people. Fires, lightnings. And gravities. You've met the rest." Pharr waved a wing in dismissal. "Some are good, some are bad, some are both, and some are neither. You'll get used to it..."

Ooh, this is fun. Of course, I am ignoring the more mediocre bits in between... And these were sections I wrote before the summer. Let's see if I can find a bit I like in the new chapters.
Hm, this is a lengthy section, and I can't decide where to cut it. :( Maybe I'll just put it all:

"Now. How can numbers be infinite?"
He snapped out the question just as he had snapped his fingers a second before. Susan raised her hand. At Dr. Amosoph's expectant nod, she spoke.
"Each number by itself has an end," she said. "'Four' is a unit. It doesn't go anywhere or change. But when you set numbers going, they don't stop. If you start counting, you never reach an end. The numbers march along in neat rows. They travel as far as we can imagine."
Dr. Amosoph beamed. He glowed. He seized his flyaway hair in both fists and pulled it straight up. "Yes!" he cried. "Yes! Did you others hear that? A number sitting in itself, in its own lumpish imaginary state, is never infinite. Infinity grows in iteration upon iteration of numbers in movement. Numbers that change. Yes, my little kinder, I am going to introduce you to the study of change - the study of..." he leaned in again, "...Calculus!"
Jason sat stolidly, pudgy face unmoved. "Why?" he asked.
Dr. Amosoph stopped and stroked his small gray goatee meditatively. He spoke in a calm, even tone that was quite different from his previous bombastic style. "Why? Well, for one thing, I have to. I'm supposed to teach math to you ungrateful lumps - ungrateful except for you three of course, Megan, Joey, and Susan - and I'm supposed to make you like it. So humor me. I'm trying to enjoy myself in the process."
Susan grinned. Dr. Amosoph caught it and winked.
"Ha!" he announced. "I made the ice princess smile. I must be doing something right." He spun around and raised his arms to the mushroom ceiling above, gazing up in a grandiose gesture - then stopped, mid-raise.
"Oh," he said, "of course. We can't discuss infinity in here. No wonder he doesn't understand. Come on, come on you urchins. It's outside for us."
The class, except Jason, cheered and grabbed their slates. Jason pushed himself to his chubby legs with difficulty, and the students followed Dr. Amosoph. They shoved through the wall-fronds and blinked in the light of noonday. Their teacher gazed up and smiled blissfully.
"That's more like it," he breathed.
The young faeries, who had been chattering eagerly as they trooped outside, stared up too. They fell silent. It was very blue.
Blue indeed. The sky started with aquamarine in the center, which sparkled brighter than the stones the North Quarter faeries picked from the ground with their sharp tools. The sun blazed, round and hot, almost overhead, bleaching the sky paler at its edges. The kinder trned round and round, squinting past the bright light and drinking in the blueness.
"Imagine," began Dr. Amosoph, his voice hushed, "that we push ourselves into the air and soar, trying to reach the place where the blue is perfect. We fly very, very fast for a very, very long time. The air sparkles around us, heavy with blueness, and each minute it becomes a shade more intense. But there is always more blue to find. That -" with finality, "- is infinity."

I shouldn't spoil my favorite sections for Lisa and the rest of the writing group, but I imagine I will have written more by then anyways. Besides, chances are I will have to alter or cut some of these segments in the years to come, so I might as well enjoy them now.

I like these sentences: "Fiddles jigged out their happy swirls. Here was uncomplication, music that brought tears with its sheer joy."

And the romance begins:
"Yes, you know, the children's story?" Louis looked down at her. "Bad children lose their wings. Surely your mother told you that one?"
Susan caught the emphasis and flushed. Her chin jerked upward, and she stared Louis full in the face. Her violet eyes uncloaked and unleashed all the violent life behind them in sparks of fury and hurt. Louis stared into her wonderful eyes in amazement. He loosened his rough grip on Susan's waist and hand. But it was too late. He gasped in pain as she stepped purposefully on his foot. "I didn't ask you to dance with me," she hissed. "You could at least be civil!"

And later:
In that second after she stared Louis in the face and he had seen her eyes, his face had gone very still. He had lost his train of thought, and her own eyes had done that. She smiled, deep inside herself.

But the adventure continues:
Light. What a relief, that she wouldn't have to climb down into a dungeon of unknown darkness. Now she looked up at the torch, keeping its flickering tongue as her focus as she climbed down. Strange how alive it looked here, as if it were the only living thing, and as if Susan and the Guardsman were merely animated corpses. Strange how she had never seen fire used as a light before. What had Pharr said - something about fire being a sort of creature? She gazed more deeply into the torch's flame. Some part of herself, the part that felt angry, hurt and mistreated, drew her closer yet. Was there something there, sitting and laughing at her, and calling to her at the same time? She could almost make it out, just a glimpse of an eye.
"Pretty, innit?" said the Guardsman. She jumped, and one of her hands almost slipped off the ladder. She realized she was sweating heavily, and her palms were slick. "What?" she asked, a bit breathlessly.
"The fire. We use it down here because there's nothing to burn, and because fireflies refuse to light. They don't like it underground."

Ai yi yi, my work is so imperfect. Its imperfections protrude everywhere I look. But I am learning and improving, and that is all I can ask. :)  ¶ 12:38 PM