Edit 5: Sailing to Tawnydale

[Quixilated]

Hello alexorande, I adore this scene.   

Sailing to Tawnydale  Is this a reference to an actual place, or an actual fictional place from a story book?


Sweetgum balls, acorns, leaves, 
and pine needles are scattered  
in the shapes of  
 
                        dragon footprints.  yes, love this, I can see it and smell it
Tree sap aromas fill the air like cinnamon. 
Squirrels scamper twisted boughs of gold  I keep wanting to add a preposition here, "scamper along twisted boughs" or something like it.
ignoring monotone requests from trees to stop.  I really enjoyed this exchange between the trees and the squirrels.  It is so exactly like them with the creaking,  "the monotone requests from trees."  That is exactly it.  
Some respond in laughter through their cheeks, 
plump as grapes, at times to end up choking.  
The trees just sigh into the breeze. 
 
Tiny grumpy men in pointy red hats   i'm visualizing gnomes here, yes?  Something like?
hop in and out of burrows big as pumpkins, 
who rarely talk with anyone except for when 
they're talked to by bands of mounted knights, This sentence gets a bit convoluted, it's difficult to follow.  First it's about the tiny men, and then it is talking about the knights.  The description of the gnomes and the description of the knights each needs it's own sentence.  I know that in the middle they have an interaction, but it becomes confusing by the end, when you get to the part about jokes and laughing, whether we are still describing the little people or whether the laughter and jokes belong to the knights.  
who travel roads, and crack jokes that echo  
in their armor, followed by laughs that belong  
to someone with a stomach  
                       or any organ, for that matter. i didn't understand this comment
 
Bipedal shepherd dogs, who raise I can't help visualizing Tasha Tudor's Corgiville here and wonder if that is intentional, or merely happenstance?  Either, way, I love this image!
livestock and tend farms, occasionally ask  
their scarecrows' how they're holding up,   apostrophe not needed after scarecrows
and would hand them cool leftover okra stew—   
made with everything reaped beneath the sun  
and a never-setting harvest moon. 

Where the stars stumbled drunk from the sky  Love this line. 
and fell upon those ochre mountains laughing, and this
is where the giants drink their kegs of mead, 
in taverns booming full of song and laughter. 
 
I was in my room, and then a return to reality, a waking up, allowing the realization that the narrator has allowed the reader into the sacred space of a private imagination.  
sketching all about you. At my desk, 
throughout the sun's climb, I heard
the buzzing noise that sounded like 
a lawnmower cutting grass.  

I look forward to seeing where you take this.  Thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  

--Quix