Trying my luck, my hand at Peter S. Beagle's "Two Hearts". If you haven't read it,
good christ, already. Gorgeous, as ever.
Hard to pluck the Grifiin out from the shadow of the Harpy--she's so dominant a feature in the lunar landscape of the first book. Furthermore, it was difficult to approve the fevered second monster held next to the Harpy's chillier aspects. The Griffin is all heart(s) and stomach, blood and guts, to her cool. Jaws for the flocks, blood for the fields, and a singleminded focus on rapine without romance. No regard for the myth properties that even the Harpy had sense to acknowledge. Denied even a gendered pronoun, it is simply reduced to a weapon.
So I nocked the thing onto a tightly strung moon and used it according to purpose.
