Quincunx

months later. . . Gnomie children milled around the center tables in a loose circle, mostly ignoring the adults setting up rows of full-size but empty clockwork shells. Minta dipped into the little cluster of runaway gnomies not mixing with the ones with families, sneaked up on a certain boy gnomie, and bonked him over the head! "Ow!" he cried out, rubbing the new lump on his noggin, which set off the echoes of two prior and fading lumps. "Can't you grow up?" "Not until you give me back my tinytop dolly, Illof!" Minta stamped her foot, but he'd already moved his. He glared down with two centimeters' advantage. "You're gonna be a rotten gnomie rogue, I know it!!!" "I took their parts. You lost your entire tinytop," he pointed out, his voice getting ever more reasonable as a teacher noticed the commotion and rolled up a copy of the Ak'Anon Report. "I DID NOT!!!--" A few seconds later, Minta had a bruise on her backside to match the one on his head. Another teacher wound up the progressive bell and let it chime until it rang with such volume not even the gnomie children could be heard over it, and thus quieted down. All the teachers on the west side of the room ducked, the bell was disengaged, the clapper broke loose and, pinwheeling end-over-end above the ducked trio, quenched itself in the waters of Ak'Anon. Tobon Starpyre was the first to stand and wring out the water from his robe. "Attention gnomelings!" he shouted, and clapped his hands together twice. "This is not, repeat NOT, a chance for you to experiment freely with tinkering! That is prohibited until you are sixteen levels old! We'd like to see a few of you survive long enough to reproduce! So don't go on trying it, you hear me?" Which they didn't, busy as they were muttering "ewwwwww" and "cooties" and "but I got a great idea for a clockwork--" CLANG! Every little gnomie jumped; Juline Urncaller tapped out the dent in the empty clockwork shell and put the mallet back in the toolbox. "These are not kits like your tinytops. These are gnomework carapaces. Each one has different attachment points, struts, and cable clips." She leaned into the nearest carapace, pointing out each feature as little gnomies swarmed around to peer inside, and continued, "We do not expect you to be able to assemble more than one of them." The third splashed gnomie now lifted a small bucket in either hand, her sleeves dripping trails on the floor as she displayed those buckets to the gnomie children. "We will ring the bell every hour. If you haven't finished assembling your gnomework by the time the bell rings, raise your hand and one of us will fetch you a new carapace and bucket o' parts. Remember, NO SHARING PARTS." Nonnie Texaker tried to wag her finger, but just rattled one bucket a bit. "Now come and get your buckets!" The gnomie children surged forward, but Nonnie didn't get tipped over by the rush--her clockwork footgear bolted into a special plate on the examination room floor. ***** Illof's second bucket was more successful than his first. Instead of a condenser apparatus which he couldn't find the space to fit and a gemstone grinder which ground any inserted gem to powder instead of to a luster, this bucket held dampers which he installed in the clockwork's knees and deflective reflectors which he attached to the outside. Minta set down a spring-loaded snapping arm and leaned over to see. "Why're the deflectors stickin' out like that on its head?" she wondered. "Watch," he smiled. He stuck his hand inside the clockwork head, wiggling his fingers in the eye sockets; Minta could see his wiggling even though she was still standing beside him at her own carapace. "A widened field of vision. . .neato!" "That will help it watch out for people sneaking up on it. The dampers will make sure his feet don't squeak." "Why aren't they in the feet then?" wondered Minta. "If they're up here, if the clockwork is not sneaking, they'll help with the balance. I bet I could put it on a ship in a storm and it wouldn't tip over." Illof looked pensive for a moment. "This bucket was supposed to make a sneaky clockwork, but it's still going to whirr and click. I think it's better this way, to look out for people sneaking up on it." Minta nodnodnodded and looked back at the snapping arm. It was meant to be installed on the secondary arm. Rivet a shield onto the end of it and the force of absorbed blows would bend it backwards, tensing the spring and eventually bashing the attacker. But the prospect of melee was so boring, and the bucket before that had been even sillier. It had been a necromancer's bucket, but Minta had glanced at it and known all she needed to know. Whoever created the necromancer buckets wasn't very smart, or efficient. She could've put in five improvements on that design and it still wouldn't have had equal power to Illof's rogue gnomework or to her bucket of warrior parts. Somethin' weird was going on. . . Ding Ding Ding Decision! Ding Ding Ding Decision! Minta put up her hand for another new carapace and bucket as Welno Tanboots began to quiz Illof about his modifications to the gnomework. *****

"--isn't any such tinytop! It was probably a plain old tumbler." "There is too, I saw it when we were all explorin' in the hallways." Minta waved her free arm around to indicate the invisible wall. "Yeahyeah there were two tonkyhonk tinytops upstairs playin' music, an' a towertall tinytop in between them tryin' to put itself on their heads, but behind those was a different dolly, an' it looked a lot like my old tinytop dolly I never got to finish! An' just when I finally learned when Meldrath's gonna be holdin' town meetings, suddenly the door gets jammed?! He knows I want my dolly back!!!" In the brief lull between report and reminiscence, Fenik cast all the grafts onto his spectre, including those most useful and unknown versions, Hearing Graft and XP Graft, and set it to auto-follow Arkaniah. While his consciousness meandered down to Crystallos, his physical body remained beside Minta, nodding every once in awhile as she prattled on. ***** At the Stoppit Place for Naughty Little Runaway Gnomies Minta Rose pried out the cardboard backing piece with the outer shell strapped onto it ("TINYTOP - Ak'Anon's favorite children's toy for 515 years!"), the box o' parts, and the special wrenches which always seem to get lost right before you need them. The tools she lay out carefully by type (English, Metric, and Gnomish) upon the wrinkly old sock that used to hold her pocket money, except for the one with a safety-blunted box opener, with which she popped open the box o' parts. Out came the usual shower of cogs, rods, pins, gears, and--"I never saw this kinda gear before!" shrilled Minta, pouncing on a misshapen gear with teeth, channels, and three attachment points. "What's it gonna be. . ." and she looked down at the shell of the clockwork with guaranteed mystery function, ". . .a tinytop I dunno?" Tinytop's empty clockwork sockets stared out from the cardboard backing. Every little gnomie dreamed of getting one of the special toys. Any gnomie not living in the Stoppit place had at least one broken and discarded tumbler or towertall or tipsytoes tinytop shedding gears on the floor, until gnomie mommies got upset about always stepping on parts too small to re-use. Once, Minta had watched another runaway gnomie pick a funny metal comb and bumpy cylinder out of the box o' parts, then put the tonkyhonk heart into a salvaged tumbler, making a tinytop that made music whenever it fell over. That was neato, or it was until he got spanked for stealin' the tonkyhonk tinytop parts and had to give them back. Sure gnomie kids could put together different tinytops, but a really new function was hard to find. What result could that weird, asymmetrical gear produce? Ding Ding Ding Dinner! Ding Ding Ding Dinner! She looked 'round, dropped the gear back into the box, repackaged the whole kit, and shoved it into the most secure place she could think of, then thought of a better one an' pried the box out from under the bed, then a better one than that an' climbed up the light cord again, then a better one than that an' didn't have to wear her nightgown to dinner any more. . .Minta was very late to dinner, but it didn't help; she got back and the box o' parts was gone! . . .

For those who have been gone from Norrath for awhile, in the expansion "Secrets of Faydwer" released in September '07, the evil gnome necromancer Meldrath launched his secret flying fortress into the sky, coincidentally breaching the Steamfont Mountains and opening unreachable parts of the continent for exploration. It's a very gnomish expansion. Very Minta-ish. Disturbingly Minta-ish. I-wonder-if-the-guys-who-scripted-this-know-me-ish. (I should check that.) When our guild started to conduct raids into Meldrath's Majestic Mansion, I fell into the role of dispensing lore which may or may not have been EQ canon, but which dovetailed quite well with what did exist. . . .

Faint, dropping and rising with the puffs of wind, comes the piping of a tin whistle. It's even more erratic than the relatively light winds of the day would justify. I wonder if someone is practicing trills and melodies instead of listening to a playback. There's an unobtrusive but continuous rush of cars, so far distant that I can't point to the visible motorway and blame it. The air smells like incipient rain, but here it nearly always does, with a hint of concrete construction dust. The world is not idyllic but it is not at war with itself. What is the world like outside your window?

Either you could list some of the failed metaphors and then write in an overt sentence about how those metaphors were inadequate, or you can describe the effects as Peredhil did and not the emotion directly. If you're feeling cheeky, declare that there are no words known in the language to describe such emotion, and then invent one or two nonsense words; let context carry the meaning. Be very careful with that last option, though, and include enough concrete adjectives that you can't be summed up as "doubleplus cromulent".* *This is much funnier because of the highbrow culture juxtaposed with the pop culture.

Sora Hikari: In the Almost Dragonic Voting Booth, curtain rentals are extra. [this space reserved for future madlibbing]

Twin-bodied spirits hugged themselves in the shadows of the moonlight, and suffered. The screams of their triplet body flayed them, and his mortal hands impossibly grabbing her, and the ache in her hands as they passed through his flesh, but worst of all his thoughts scalded: the girl knew how to keep quiet, not a normal girl, girl might not how to not keep quiet, dog-stupid dog-loyal dog-disposable. The twins stretched out to keep within the shadowed sides of birch trunks, and as their sister died, their souls were racked also. Much later, they glided out and curved over the mortal remains: a twig, beaded with leaf buds, more solid than young wood ought to be. One reached down as though to pick up the wand, but while her hand could disturb the soil and leaf mold, the twig fell through her palm. She drew back and stared into the band of green now marking it. Another separation wrenched the twins. Not-touch-world-we. We-three-bone-revive. Tripod-not. Cross. Tripod-strong. (A hint of phosphorescence on that thinker's cheek.) Tripod-world-strong? We-cross-bone-revive. World-tripod! Itself-holding-tripod. (This twin displayed her open palm, the fading slash.) They looked into her palm for awhile, watched the hint of chlorophyll puddle like water in the middle, and evaporate. As it did, the separation faded away, leaving one last thought which needed to be communicated. . . .Dog? Roots snaked through the forest soil in all directions, and they borrowed motion from the network, now sliding a great distance upon the support of a pine tree, now veering around a hostile rock as they stepped from lichen to lichen. The skeleton, accounted and neglected before, signaled to them moreso than the rivulet or the pond. Once again they curved over their object, but both reached down to fondle the bones, the tail and hind legs disarticulated and needing to be set right. They left his skull and forepaw in the water, held fast by the mud and nearly silted over, and left until last the other foreleg and rib cage, when the pretense of a third worker could no longer be upheld. When all was arranged, they drew themselves upright, clasped hands, continued to stretch their bodies to humanly impossible heights, stiffened, and fell. Two wands clattered to earth, striking the last two bones of the tail with two clattering notes, and the tail bones began to writhe. They shifted back to human form, clasped hands, transformed, struck two new bones. Again and again the peculiar instrument played its chimes, and more of the skeleton responded to the notes. Yet there was no intelligence to the motion, just random twitches from a sleeping dog, and the twin spirits lost something with every transformation. Luminous clear skin began to crack like old bark. Their bland faces faded to merely flat. By the time the four legs of the skeleton flipped and jerked themselves free of the silt and leaf mold, the spirits were haggard. Yet they marched on, knotting their palsied fingers together, and pushing themselves upright against one another's new weight to fall and fall again, stagger upright, let their heads droop down, and see the skull, alone of all the dog's bones, immobile. The wands crossed in midair, tapping the skull with one stronger note. All of the bones fell still. Water bubbled against this new and unsilted blockage in its path, building up against the foreleg bones and spilling over the lower jaw. It poured into the mouth, and then was captured by force from underneath, and swallowed. The tongue, and all the other flesh of the dog, reasserted itself. He stood, bent his head and retrieved the pair of dried sticks, stepped out of the stream and shook himself dry, then set off through the forest. His nose led him back to the third stick, and he dropped the others while trying to pick up the third. After snuffling up the leaves, and sneezing, he got all three, and pursued a new scent out of the treeline into the rising sun. Somewhere at the other end of the scent was a man who needed to be watched.

By now, the Grim Squeaker didn't dare move, in fear of collapsing the short, but still rat-skellie-sized, towers of discarded springs and cams looming on either side of him. Minta lay stretched out in front of him, one eye shut and one squinting, as she twiddled a feather inside the hollowed center of a minuscule bolt. A delicate clockwork sheath cantilevered out from the joint and over the Grim Squeaker's scythe blade. As temporary placement corks dropped like mushroom spores, Minta scooted a scrap of zombie skin under the assembly to catch them. "Okok!" she squeaked, once corks, feather, and stacks had been swept pell-mell back into her toolbox. "I think that's gonna do it. Is a spring hinge nownow so when you're sweepin' sideways an' you move the lever it'll unlock so the scythepoint goes poke an' then flexes back an' pokes again. There's a secondary poker on the back of the scythe blade but can crank that back in if it messes up the balance or take it off if you pop the cotter pins out." She wriggled backward so as not to upset the project still laid out on her right side, looking over her shoulder to be sure she didn't shimmy onto the antenna-- "EWWWWWW!" Minta cried upon seeing the game. "COOTIES!"

On the other side of the barbecue, Minta lay on her tummy in the middle of a pair of transplanted tinkering projects, propped up on her elbows and peering through a spyglass at the Death of Rats. "Silly skellie," she said, glancing away from the spyglass at the project on her left, "couldn't he wait 'til I got my autopoker workin'?" The gnomie frowned at the scattered cam-and-shaft assemblies, the cracked casings, and various power sources far too large to fit into those casings. "Would be lots quicker to make if I could get one of those repeato-shivs. . ."

It's a longer poem than I usually like, but exactly as long as it needs to be. I never got lost except for the keystroke; that's not a term I've ever heard to refer to a piano. Tiny typo: I think you wanted 'maestro' and not 'mistro'. That particular typo made my mind veer towards mistrals--strong winds. Mistral One discordant blast The costumes ripped away veil snatched into the darkness by an unseen hand Windows scream leap like a beating heart rattle, rip, wrench free The mask tumbles convex concave on edge but never still.

Yaargh, this was an exercise in reading what was put on the page and not what my head made of it. The poem carried me well along what it intended to say until the last line, when I envisioned the personified thoughts curling up to sleep in the grass which was slicked with blood and gore of what they'd killed. There's nothing about that in the poem!

Hours later, maybe days. His body had separated; heavy on the side facing the earth, and vaporous on the side facing the sky. His leaden eyes were still, but his ear collected the sounds of the fly, gift of the air. A thread of buzzing spilled out of the cup of his ear and ascended, and in his mind he flew with it, maybe to land on the cheek of the NGO and feel fatness, remember what fatness felt like. The thought towed him back into his body and waded through the weight, probing. No reply. Nothing but the fly, dripping more sound over his earlobe--it had returned--dropping a buzz into every fold until his ear was full and weighed down with sound. Another gift. The fly landed on the boundary of the vapor, tapped the surface of the sound with its clawed feet, generated ripples. His ear realized his own cheek as the fly rubbed its feet against the skin; the vapor did not follow the lines of the memory of fatness.

Have you ever woken in the middle of the night and watched the patterns pulse against the darkness? I'm so glad to have regained them. I hadn't seen them since I was 8 or so.

Minta jumped up, stomped both feet down on the ground when she landed. Another fragment of zombified flesh squelched under her shoes, squirting out at the arches and toes, but it still didn't stop moving! She stomped one foot angrily and wheeled around to investigate her barricade. Already what had once been a neat gnomie-high pile had slithered down to a pancake of undead bits on the forest floor, and even now the furthest margins of it were the pieces with the most reanimation, wriggling further away. The gnomie waded into the mess, picking up the larger partial skellies and tossing them back to the center, to no effect. She only stopped when she spied a pelvic girdle and hind legs which were squirming far faster than the hunk of zombie flesh pinning them down, reached for it, and got burnt by her own potion. "Ow!" she squealed, and flung it end-over-end into the forest, where it tangled in a bramble. "Skelliebadger's all broken an' there's nothin' left worth zombifyin'. . ." she sulked, and stomped out of the clearing, making sure no step missed squishing a bit of undead. ***** "--assurance--" blurted Tzimfemme, as she stepped from the branches of the elm tree into an adjacent and ancient walnut, and grasped higher-up branches for support. "Bipedal--" There was nobody there to hear, and nobody Tzimfemme wished to talk to, but words still jerked out from between her lips when the internal debate got too heated. Thus, when she grasped at the branch of a sycamore and the seed pods pricked her palm, "sovereign"; "soul--" and sheared off bark with her foot as her weight shifted onto it; "--consent. Nothingness--No--" in between impacting several branches on her way down; after snatching her breath back from the forest floor and before the bruise from shoulder to knee was more than merely numb, "Dog"; and, when the thousand shadows of the leaves spat forth fractals of shades as she pushed herself up to recline on her uninjured side, "damned black mages". ***** Minta looked up as the sky flashed green, and then took a deep gnomie breath and expelled a mighty gnomie sneeze. "Achooo!--Wow, that's LOTSA sparklydragons!" She fell into a fit of giggles, and less strong sneezes, as shed faerie dragon scales rained down from the mass flight. When she finally stopped watching them and resumed her skittering run back to the Pen Keep, she was glittery from head to foot and laying down a sparkly trail. The sparkles showered down and placed a brighter spark on the ground when Minta skidded to a halt just outside of the ring of focused undead, now beginning to pile up on itself and form the base of a hemisphere. "Ohhh, so _that's_ how you gotta get them to stay put!" exclaimed the gnomie, "gotta get them to focus onna point. But nono." She tugged a cherry pixystix out of her pocket and slurped it down while thinking. "Then they'd all fall down ON the point." The crumpled-up wrapper bounced off of the sole of a crowd-surfing zombie's foot, without effect. "An' they're not turnin' aside. . .um. . .um. . ." Minta jittered on the spot with various thoughts, but despite that stint in Cftm!, she hadn't grasped the concepts of 'arch' or 'dome'. In the end, she dropped tryin' to work it out with her brain and picked out one slack-jawed ghoul at ground level with plenty of ichor still sloshing around in its veins. Instantly that ichor ran as hot as lava as Minta whispered one of her funnest spells, but while the ghoul's flesh liquefied and ran downhill towards the gnomie, the hot jelly fought against gravity, and by the time it had halted the decline and begun to climb back towards the barrier, the circle of undead had merely drawn in a bit to close the gap. Minta scowled, then brightened with an idea, and looked through her bigger pockets for her collapsible ooze surfboard. On the inward side of the circle, defenders and undead-slayers alike boggled as the gnomie crested the backs of the invaders, surfing in slow motion as the ghoul jelly slapped against the magical barriers and recoiled and slapped again. Minta waved hihihihihi!

Not only is she legit, she took the dream bouncing around 90% of our collective heads and brought it through to reality. It doesn't sound like physical location (specifically, outside the U.S.) matters, but many of us are. Better to check up on that.

A branch of medium thickness bent above Sir Walnut The-person-sitting-up-there-didn't-overhear-the-rest-of-the-titles as he shook the creases out of his pants. Leaves rustled in the descent, more than would be necessary for any airing-out of crumpled clothing. "Make it plain to Kikuyu Black Paws," said the naked woman crouching in the elm, "that _she_ will _not_ be breaking anyone. I cannot make the point myself without slipping into a rage. . .and why," she broke the locked gaze and shifted it to his pants, "are you bothering with those? "Never mind," continued Tzimfemme. "I'll be patrolling. Keeping my head clear. Finding where Minta's gotten herself to, because there are far too many undead for her to have not shown up somewhere. Small. Purple-headed. NOT the enemy. Finally--next time, save some of that vampire's blood, this is thirsty work!" ***** These zombies were hard to keep hold of! Minta squirmed on her tummy behind a log and peeked out through the branchy end. A squad of animal zombies flowed past the log, like a mixed herd of dead predators and prey, jostling against one another's bodies in the struggle to keep upright. Nope, not that mostly skellie tiger, is almost certainly too willful. Nuh-uh, don't want that tiny zombie squirrel, it's not tough enough. But on the far side of the herd, not in an ideal spot but good enough, was a skellie BADGER! THAT would be able to take some abuse! The gnomie crossed her fingers, crossed her toes, and babbled out a few words of a spell, and it caught! The skelliebadger pet turned against the flow of zombies, making a beeline towards Minta. A fleshy deer zombie shuffled into the obstruction, tangled its hoof in the badger's pelvis, and wrenched loose of its forelimb as it fell. As the skull tumbled and pinned that zombified squirrel to the ground in its unbroken horn's tines, the rear of the deer stumbled sideways, upsetting two more skeletal deer. Those, in turn, thoroughly blocked the pathway. Some of the more agile undead could crawl up and over the pile, but slower ones like those grounded zombified birds were stuck-- "Skelliebadger TEAR THEM UP!" --and easy to slaughter. Minta reinforced the skelliebadger with more incantations, for faster clawin' and harder bitin', and even risked drawing the attention of the undead herd by whipping her arm out sideways, flinging a potion bottle. It broke against the skelliebadger's opponent, but the magically enhanced chilli oil splashed onto her pet and began to sear the mouths of those zombies now attacking her pet in a fury. Zombies melted into skellie-mouthed creatures; skellies cracked in the heat, then shattered as they bit with relentless pressure. Minta tucked herself behind the log, as still as possible, and released her hold on the skelliebadger, but the fight between toughened mindless undead and mindless undead herd did not cease. Just behind the initial barrier of fallen zombified deer, which by now had struggled to the feet of what legs remained attached to them, rose another and less temporary barrier of twice-dead undead. Minta really wanted to go take a peek at her handiwork, but it wasn't safe so long as she could hear the bones snapping and grinding. . .

She needs an outlet." Her eyes hardened and her mouth curled downward. "What she honestly needs is to be broken. . . "No." The word brought Tzimfemme to her feet, and hung there until Kikuyu Black Paws was done with her breathless tale. Then it was noticed. "What do you mean 'no'?!" shouted the ninja, wheeling about and nearly knocking Jolinar off her feet in ways both physical and psychic. "There's no 'no' about it!--" Tzimfemme took a few seconds to shift her brain from decoding Jolinar's speech (or applying it to Rosemary's in her mind, and a few things that madwoman had said were much more clear now) and understand why Kikuyu was upset. "Certainly I'll rescue her, but breaking her--no. She hasn't done anything _nearly_ vile enough to warrant being broken. How to make this more clear? If you suggest breaking her, I will hurt you to stop you from succeeding. Twin or not." The urgency of finding Degorram and the urgency of protecting her glanced off of one another like ship and iceberg. Tzimfemme dug bare toes into the soil, which gave way more than sodden ground should have. Kikuyu shifted weight to better roll away from a blow--but then Jolinar, fortunately for all, laid a hand on Kikuyu's shoulder and broke that self-destructive circle. Kikuyu stared at the bedraggled girl before her, her emotions roiling. Something like anger and jealousy rose to the top first-- she had seen Degorram when her own twin could not?-- but she ground it down with her teeth. Don't find an outlet for you frustration that doesn't deserve it, she muttered inwardly. . . An echo of inward muttering from the naked mage: Better explain that later. Apologize. Maybe. Better yet, defer to Wyvern--heh! Wyvern! in charge! world's arseupwards--now to defuse that, and explain it to Degorram later. Find her get her smash her oppressor. Even if Kikuyu if inadvertently. No. Wheels flowers white icebergs sunken within wheels. Wyvern twitched, his face developing a very uncharacteristic scowl. "Call a meeting of the Elderssss," he hissed. "Thisss isss the point where it ssstartsss to go fassst!". . . He grabbed Tzimfemme's shoulder and shook her out of it, but then returned to pacing. The naked mage saw a scrap of blackness peel away from the surroundings and slither away, and sprinted to pursue. Shadow was almost as quick as light, however, outpacing her. She gave up on running and attempted to scan the area for undead energies, a weak spell but still something clumsy to manipulate. No result. Well, then it was probably not a necromancer's shadow. "Note to self: Ask Minta about availability of clockwork gadget to detect undead. Splice into fiber optic mana network," muttered Tzimfemme as she returned to the group.

[Conversation partially excerpted from a lively IRC session.] Forty minutes prior: ". . .and if you could keep your less sensitive conversations a bit quieter, or--" "Alright alright, we're going outside, _sheesh_." The kaffeeklatsch packed liquor bottles, cocoa thermos, and one rain-dispelling stone into a picnic basket, and then each filed out of the main assembly room toting with dignity a comfy chair and an air of faint injustice. Fifteen minutes prior: "--covering while revealing is _not_ covering!" Appy clunked down her glass on a Women Against Speedo's coaster. Most of the kaffeeklatsch nodded sagely, but Tzimfemme choked on a shot of 80% cocoa and fanned life back into herself with a Women Promoting Speedos paper napkin. Words failed her, and she reached to the left with the unoccupied hand in order to draw a portal and an illustration--drawing everyone's attention instead to Kikuyu, lost, and Wyvern dancing around both with distress for the other Pennite and sheer discomfort at all the water pelting down. [to be continued]

Troll basics, from the trollish minds of Eye of Mordor: One, two, many, many one, many two, many many, many many one, many many two. No troll could be found with more than eight surviving fingers to confirm higher numerals. Red sock on the right foot; green sock on the left foot.

Do not squirt the WD-40 at face level and do keep your mouth shut. Buy more cleaning cloth/detergent BEFORE starting the restoration project. Do not let the gnome apply the WD-40, generally. Forget liberal application, she'll go straight to radical.

Rydia left one hand to prop the door open and glanced down the stairwell. The rift to the Mountain Halls had been unsealed, and one of Gralq's cats was even now oozing through that doorway, half lithe and half plump. Inside the cat basket lay one fresh, newly laundered blanket and one old, rumpled, fur-covered blanket. Three dishes on the floor held dry kibble, wet kibble, and the leftover sardines from Rydia's lunch. The fire had been banked, the skylights admitted sun. A catnip mouse, a jingly ball, a blinking red shiny, and one of Rydia's own feathers had been scattered over the throw rug. All snubbed. Zira, parked dead center in the doorway, meowed again. Rydia's hair spontaneously stress-frizzled. Her ears pricked straight up in exasperation as Zira rose, turned, took two steps out of the doorway, then resumed her former spot and caterwauled. "I'm sorry, kitty, but I have places to go!" Rydia finally sputtered. She stepped out of the house, shut the door on Zira's butt (displacing the cat a few centimeters) and walked into the forest--and Zira leaped down from the rocks and ran ahead a few paces, then chirped a short mew. The curve of Rydia's ears softened. "Just a moment, kitty," she said, "I might need to go back to the house and get ready." ***** A short while later, Rydia was glad for that. Any problem bad enough to upset a cat did merit going out armed, lightly armored, and with a snack pack, even at the cost of that cat rubbing increasingly desperate figure-eights around her boots while she packed. Dragon breath would also have ruined the gown she had been wearing; archmage gear was more flame-retardant than that. When your ally liked to buzz you every morning you didn't wake up on time with an overflight of red dragons, you learned not to wear flammables. It flared its wings. This was not an ordinary red dragon.

Someone flips the light switch. Two fluorescent tubes turn nacreous purple, with darker bands shivering to and fro within their lengths. The others turn off the rest of the way, more or less. The same someone fumbles with a 35mm film reel and a projector from a school district fire sale (1974. Tragic story. Talk of the town for months.), pinches a finger, threads film, turns on light, gets a face full of equally sickly incandescent light, moves out from in front of the projector. Four Three Two Gear & Crossed Wrenches Symbol Title frame reads, in humorless subtitling font, "Whereabouts of a Gnome" until later frames show their defacement with a sharpie marker and an additional 'i'. The tape flickers and rattles as the additional ink forces some slack into the film reel. Another title frame follows: Sighting One. Minta gallops down a hill while riding a clockwork pig, the sounds of sliding sand barely audible over the flickering rattle of the film itself. Over the crest slither half a dozen tall anthropomorphic snakes, scattering as they catch sight of the gnome, but all still pursuing. She grabs hold of the emergency brake and wrenches it upwards; the roboboar locks its legs and slews counter-clockwise, Minta shrills with glee, and the pair perform a full turn within the pig's length before toppling over. Minta lies still while the roboboar engages automatic folding sequence and condenses into a frisbee-sized disk with the handlebars projecting. The nearest snake glides to the crash site, arches its head to the ground, flicks its tongue at the disk, nudges the gnome with its nose, turns away. Another title frame follows: Sighting Two. Minta sitting on the rug in Starlight and Rydia's underground home, hugging her knees, giggling up a storm and chanting, "I saw it I saw it I saw it I saw it!" Another title frame follows: Sighting Three. Minta clings to the top of an army's standard--halved vertically, black and white, overlaid with the circle of the Chinese zodiac--while the army of many races (but no gnomes) waits underneath; some point sharpened metal stakes at the gnome, some climb up on the backs of taller races wielding flaming torches, some prod with long bamboo poles while others position themselves beneath with oversized slices of bread and waterskins full of sandwich condiments. Another title frame follows: Sighting Four-- The projectionist is flagellated with the broken film of the beginning of Sighting Four. That sickly incandescent light illuminates a square but doesn't do anything to lighten the room.

\o_O/ Dear Pen Diary, You know how the dust bunnies have been popping less over the past few days--I think they've gotten better at holding themselves together, or someone's made a sticky spill on the floor. I mopped the kitchen to make sure Minta hadn't gotten into the honey and covered her tracks too well. I hoped they'd keep popping, even though it's harder to sweep them away after they've exploded, since the smell of cookies is so nice. Well, they've started again--I think--but now they explode with the scent of banana bread and sometimes, I would swear, long-dead mice. Very long dead. That mustiness which lingers just before the spring breeze sweeps through the house and finally gets behind the baseboards, in an aboveground house. . .Maybe my nose is too sensitive, Starlight can't detect anything like that, and would just like me to bake some banana bread. Now how strong do I make the dough so that it tastes good when the air is clear and not too strong when the air is scented? --Rydia, pointy ear recipe hunter

I don't know about your Rune, but my Minta thrives on being in a community. I can't write her effectively when cut off from the online world and not among hyper people. As for the relative quiet of the past few days, compared to the relative volume of drinking songs a few days before THAT, I call mass hangover.

Just received a pair of William Golding novels, completing my collection: The Paper Men, one of the simplest, and Darkness Visible, the most complex--there's a name in there flickering and fluctuating like a word written in Hebrew and never spoken, which probably would mean something if I knew the language at all. . .I won't be surfacing for a few weeks, at the earliest, and that's with having devoured this one before. . .