With so many choices, what could go wrong?

"I can tell you those chimes- those ones there, the green ones, yes, those... those are lies."
I stared.
"Yes," she said, and stood. Brushed her skirts as if they had accumulated dust in her short visit to the stool. Smiled.
I felt a pinch in my chest and it made me step forwards quickly. "I am terribly sorry to intrude where it is unseemly for me to do so, but if I may, er, have another moment...?"
The woman watched me as I spoke. It was uncomfortable. I felt as though my mouth was moving too fast, or at a pace with which my words were not able to keep, therefore rendering me a babbling fool. But she continued to smile at me kindly and sat once more when I finished.
"Teraverr," she said as she arranged her skirts and straightened her back. "You are the most clean-shaven man I have ever met."
I blushed. "Thank you, ma'am. Can I-"
"However," she continued, "can you tell the difference between shaving cream and a razor?"
I blinked. "Ma'am?"
"Goodness! Teraverr, call me Holly. I am far too young to be a 'ma'am', and also, stop calling people ma'am. And stop slouching! That's it."
I am ashamed to say that I straightened when she told me so. The lace trim on her dress was rather fetching, all sparkly in its golds and silvers and hideously faded greens. Whoever had sewn on the green lace, well, let's just say they were probably working in an underground mine wearing sunglasses and singing distractedly along to Sporty Hump.
"Yes, thank you," I replied hurriedly, aware that she would need refreshments and a suitable reason for her to stay. I had none. I had only wanted to witness her sparkly dress in full earnest, for another few minutes, up-close to my eye, but not so close as to cause alarm, maybe touch... is that too much to ask? Was I being rash? Daring? Was I being a- a scoundrel?
I gasped and was unable to hide it or pretend it something other than an audible malfunction of my human emotion.
"Teraverr, are you alright?"
"Ma- err Holly, I mean, yes! I-I am well."
I turned and my eyes searched the cluttered room.
"Yes, well..." Holly made a noise as if she were fidgeting behind me. "You seem awfully tense. Have you been sleeping?"
Oh! The bags under my eyes! Were they so visible?
"Madam, I assure you with all my sureness and pleasure- not that I am pleasurable!" I added in haste. "I am certain that there are a number of unp-"
"You are beside yourself with nerves. Come sit."
Finally, I saw it. The red kettle. I lunged forwards with all my weight and slammed the teapot onto the stove top as if putting out a large spider with an enormous encyclopedia.
"Teraverr!" Holly cried.
"Got it!" I called out in triumph for no reason whatsoever, and I turned to face the alarmed, wide-eyed (enchantingly beautiful) woman standing with her hands clutched in front of her.
"Got what?" she asked, trying to peer around me.
"Everything," I said gaily- oh how gay it was. I was in a state of madness. Somehow giddy with a feeling of how divine it is to make tea. "Everything and anything!" I cried.
Holly frowned and I knew it was one of concern. She worried so much about the little things. How I should wish to scoop her up and  dance with her across the room, proclaiming in a hearty voice "nothing is such a worry, dear Holly, that we cannot dance it all away!".
Madness, indeed.
Instead, I lit the stove and grabbed teacups and saucers from the cupboard, altogether too hard and too fast so they all spilled out before me in a broken mess. My hands are obscurely too big; the fingers long but also wide, the palms as big as, why, as big as saucers! And I have never seen a saucer try to pick up another saucer, but I fear it would fail miserably. Perhaps that is why all saucers come decorated in pretty patterns, so as to keep them occupied with beauty and distract them from their utter uselessness.
"Teraverr? Are you sure you are well? You've gone rather pale."
"Yes... I do..."
"Here, let me..."
Holly came and knelt down beside me and started gathering the pieces into her skirt.
"Oh you mustn't!" I cried in a fit of anguish that was most probably more like horror. Yes. I would say it was. I was horrified at this breach of trust that had just transpired between us. I regret to say that I reached out one of my lumbering hands to pick out the pieces from Holly's dress, and she slid backwards, scattering the pieces around us like strands of cat hair.
"You are bold!" Holly declared, staring at me hard in the face.
I averted my gaze. Perhaps I was bold. Perhaps I was a forward man who thought nothing of taking broken china from a young lady's lap in a cozy, romantic setting. Perhaps I would have lit a fire with my telepathy powers, had I been born with such a gift or acquired it from a three penny wishing well. But I, Teraverr, was proud to be that man.
"Madam," I said as I stood up slowly. "The colour of your lace is wrong, yes! It is! Furthermore, you can make your own tea!"
And I strode out of my antiquities parlor as if born a new man, checking my pocket watch to discover that I still had time to purchase an ice-cream of my choosing down the street.

~

Would you need me if I told you what I'd become?

I was disappearing in plain sight
I'm gonna ask you to look away.
A revelation in the light of day- no light
The sky's not blue and it hurts to pray.

You can't choose what fades
I'm gonna ask you to look away.
There's no light, in the light of day
A broken life will never stay.

It's a conversation, some kind of revelation
I'm gonna ask you to look away.
The daylight so violent and a thousand faces
I'd do anything but it's so hard to say.


~ Somewhere a clock is ticking

Where does that key take you?

"Let it be morning."
I said
"Let it be morning where the coffee is hot and the jumper is blue, or maybe grey, depending on the light."
The kisses are soft, and light, and breezy, like the touch of a wing and the hearts are bursting full of words.
Because, words
we need words.
We need extravagance and ink and the sky.
Just let it be gentle and still. Just for a while.
I said
"Can we go swimming?"
In the light. The water is cool and fresh and heavy, but light. Like kisses.
Light yet strong.
Like a breath of fresh air. Like sitting high up on a building and looking out over the city. How far are we looking?
Can we see the horizon?
Can we see ourselves? Sitting so high. All the tiresome calamities of yesterday and tomorrow fall away as I turn my face to the sun and I close my eyes.
Yes.
Look at us posing. The world cannot see us if we tilt our heads and lift our shoulders and smile. The lights and sparkles, how they shine, how they promise.
Can we see yet?
"Can you see?"
Why we sit and dream.
I lift my arms and move like an airplane. Let me capture you. With my bright nails and high-pitched laughter. Let me soar into time and run through puddles, leap over fallen leaves- fall, also.
Let me fall.
Because falling feels like flying and I am already on the ground.
Oh, how it feels!
Like danger and emotion and I turn my head so you do not see me bite into the fairy floss. Like speeding forwards really fast.
Can we rewind?
Or is the past too painful, too wonderful, to relive?
Let's fast-forward to when we grow old. Roots hidden deep inside the ground, down, down, down, spreading and forming and trying something new.
It feels like sinking.
It feels like hanging up the red raincoat and returning to find out it has changed to blue. Pale blue and ice in my heart.
Such a start.
It fell and exploded into a thousand lights, a million stars, a trillion, billion galaxies of colour I wish you saw
you saw
they saw
the whole world shaped as one giant eye, blinking at the hopelessness of touching and breaking. Of breathing.
"Can we run into tomorrow?"
can we try harder?
It's all numerals and apostrophes and flowers opening and bells tinkling, harshly, and jackets and somersaults and pink pjamas and low voices with double meanings.
A breath of fresh air.
Let's be that.
I wave at the postman. The rain feels like an ending
and I think
I think
why can't everything be far away? In the distance, tiny, so you have to lean closer. Why can't everything appear beautiful because nothing is being looked at fully?

Who you gonna call?

This one time it was all 'wall staring' and climbing back into my brain, and oh, wow, a peanut!, and then it was all Chilli plant and billions of butter containers and that one spider web and papers that didn't tell you anything even though they were covered in words.
It was all this and more.
Then it wasn't.
And I said, I said: "But where do they all go? All those little formations that have to be kept squeaky clean and rounded nice and current and amazingly hilarious?"
And they replied: "In earnest, Cerri, we have no idea what you're talking about. Have another drink."
I made a face to let them know I couldn't possibly, but I accepted. I held the face. I drank around and through and during this face.
It was a blast.
And in the morning I sat down on the pavement squares and ate a cupcake. I jumped hopscotch. Ran to the transportation device and held my breath for what seemed like eternity. I carried a yellow balloon, which turned out to be a stray cat, which fell asleep in my arms so I took a photograph. I called it Vincent.
When it woke up it told me its name was 'certainly not Vincent' and that 'I should be ashamed to suggest such a thing, why wasn't I? Did I have some mental deficiency? Was I under some magical spell, like I had eaten too much Catnip?'
I said: "Vincent, I am no cat."
To which Vincent replied: "Well you should be."
I thought about this. Vincent meowed. I almost tripped over an uneven surface in the ground but a man wearing a jester hat and a long green coat grabbed my arm.
"I'm sorry," I said, rather embarrassed, "It's my cat, Vincent. He's a terrible directional navigator."
The man smiled kindly down at me. "My cat is just as terrible."
"Oh!" I exclaimed in glee while Vincent glared in his cat way at me, "What an exciting coincidence!"
And it was, until I realised he was holding a decaf coffee mug. I laughed in a haughty, 'higher up than thou' way, and I said, "Elderly gentleman, I decline!" then ran off, leaving him wrapped up in a cloud of indignation because he was only (apparently) twenty-six.
"That was rude, even for a lowly human such as yourself," Vincent purred. He seemed to be enjoying the running so I stopped, out of breath and sweating more than a delicate female should.
"If I am to be conversing with the opposite sex, I need to make sure they are well caffeinated for the conversations we take part in and I just can't, Vincent, I just can't allow fakeness of any sort into my life."
Vincent licked one of my stick-on fingernails smugly.
"These are for recreational purposes," I said defensively, "where everything is fake."
"I see."
"I'm tired of you seeing," I declared and made to drop him on the ground but he clung to my shirt and hissed.
I sighed. Vincent meowed in protest. "Human, you must carry me to the end of the city."
"Because?"
"I have family there."
"Oh, you do?"
We walked into a beauty salon and I paid for Vincent to have an entire makeover, which consisted of an overall trim, a shampoo and rinse in 'Unconditionally Lavender', and a bright pink Mohawk.
The beautician called Schmoo pulled me aside and said in a velvety smooth voice that I would not associate with an exotic Indian man: "That was not Unconditionally Lavender as it said on the bottle, I am afraid." He looked anything but. "It was Rashers of Rose."
I gave him a pitiful look, signifying that I was a dedicated pet owner and if my beloved cat wanted Lavender scented fur, then, by god, he would have Lavender scented fur. Schmoo nodded in a business-like way, and I read another whole magazine devoted to bikini waxing while Vincent went through his correction process.
I wouldn't say I came out scarred for life at all I had just read, but I was a changed person. These things changed you.
I might even attend a church and sing a hymm about sheep. Sleep with one eye open. Pour my soup into a bowl before heating. Open my umbrellas outside. Buy an umbrella.
"You are entirely dramatic," Vincent said, "And I hate you. Everything you are I despise."
"Catums," I said gaily, "Shoosh."
Me and Vincent weren't ever going to see eye-to-eye; he was far too small. We would never agree on everything, or even anything. We would never share food or laugh about old times.
But I can honestly say that we will be friends for life.
"Human," Vincent clawed my ankle, "I used your handbag as a latrine."
There certainly was a large amount of pee in my bag, that fact could not be denied. But what really got me about this situation as I looked down into the topaz liquid vibrating with all the streetwalkers hurrying by, was the appalling matter of a cat using the word latrine.

Can we make it up as we go?

The suffering of Gregory Oswald.

"How gay it is to be out here," Harriet said admiringly. She had traipsed all the way from Little Totten- a magical place that made the best cherry pies in the entire universe- just to sit on this very bench. However, when she had started her journey, she had been terribly certain of finding company alongside this bench.
She did not.
The sun had watched her as it rose high into the sky, sitting alone and forlorn on the bowing, thick planks, sometimes muttering to herself, other times singing softly or calling out to various insects for attention. Once or twice she had even attempted conversation with the cat as it rolled around on the sunny concrete, but they had been rare occasions, after which she had sank back into her pot instantly, afraid that it would leap up and nibble on her chilli pods.
The sun had watched and smiled to itself, interested in such a way that only those with an infinity of entertainment options can be.
Then Gregory had arrived.
He had trudged up, leapt up, sprang forth, into Harriet's world of frosty midnight conversations with sluggishly slow snails about star signs and wellingtons, sweltering hot days consisting of edging her way around under the umbrella to gain maximum sun while sobbing drearily in mourning for her harvested children, and mindless drooling at the big tree standing tall and leafy just outside the green fence. How handsome that tree was! She had no idea whatsoever as to what it could be or if it had a name, but it looked considerably male- what with all that lusciously masculine, peeling bark and glossed sturdy branches reaching up to the heavens!- and Harriet had been entranced since the day she set eyes upon it.
"Say, what's so fascinatingly gay about that tree then, eh?" came a voice to her left and Harriet started out of her impossible, possibly naive, fantasy which boasted lavish weddings that included church bells and cake made to look like flowers with bees on, and she turned to clap eyes on a cactus.
"What?" she said hastily, "I wasn't oogling."
The cactus smiled as it looked at the tree. "Well now, there's nothing wrong with an oogle."
"You're male!" Harriet accused in an accusatory voice. "You're the spitting image!"
"You could be slightly off..."
"I am never off!" Harriet said the words like a jab and raised her leaves and branches and red chillies as high as she could.
"Ahhh, the Thai Chilli," said the cactus pleasantly and in the faraway tone of one in deep thought, "what a pleasure it is to meet one at last."
Harriet looked down at the cactus plant in disgust, "I beg your-"
"Halt! Aaaaand, needles into the air, switch!" the cactus yelled suddenly.
"Oh!" Harriet cried.
"Do excuse me, TC, I was in the army," he said promptly, and Harriet said: "The army!" as if he had just told her he never shed his dead leaves.
"Seven years, just. Broke my old Mam's heart, but I said 'Sweetpea (she is a sweetpea, actually, from her aunt's cousin side, he told Harriet later, and Harriet had unsuccessfully replied, suuuuure she is, have you noticed everyone foreign or made up into the family tree is always from the aunt's side?, due to the cactus talking over her in a brisk manner), you don't have to worry about me, I will be back before the little ones start shelling' but I wasn't and she died a tragic death that is still unclear to this very day."
Harried looked appalled. "Gosh! What a tragedy you have suffered!"
The cactus nodded, still staring straight ahead as if his call to attention was still in motion, and Harriet gazed appreciatively at his straight posture. His short, green, spiky stems were just resplendent in all their silken little glory. How she would like to touch one.
"I have suffered such a tragedy," the cactus continued, unaware or just accepting of her fixated nature. "But I have kept an optimistic view and it is this, this! above all else, lady, that has kept me going throughout the days."
"Are you telling me that your mother is named after her own design?" Harriet demanded.
The cactus turned finally. "Am I saying which to?"
Harriet rustled her leaves impatiently. She may have leaned down closer, or it may have just been the breeze, but, certainly, there was movement and it was hers. "Are you spouting off stories about your mum called Sweetpea-"
"If you will kindly shut it, you will come to the furry notion that I have said no such thing."
The cactus gave her a level stare. He was trying to remember if he had, actually, told this fine excuse for a chilli plant his parental background and after two electric seconds he decided, no, he had not.
"I'm psychic," one of Harriet's leaves waved in front of his face with a swish and she swayed in the sun with authentic agility. "One of my many gifts. Now, tell me about your mother."
"Hold up there! Prove it!"
"Yes- what?" Harriet stopped being agile to show authentic confusion. Her leaves fluttered slowly and her head drooped a little.
The cactus smiled in a satisfied, cactus-kind-of-way: tight-lipped and without much movement. "Answer me this question correctly and I will forever be in confidence of all your decisions!" he cleared his throat as if he did this at every hour of every day and rumbled: "What is my name?"
The cactus was smug on the inside. He was almost bursting with the knowledge that she would say his name was 'cactus', and then he would burst out with laughter, right in her face, because she would be wrong and he loved seeing people so unsure about what they were so sure about.
Harriet gave a short shriek of laughter that made a bird take flight from the grass. It was probably meant to be a snort, it was so short and not at all very high-pitched, but it worked also as a shriek and it sounded better when she described it to her own ears. How maddeningly childish this cactus was! It was a pleasure to have him entertain in such an earnest manner. She should ask him to stay.
The cactus's demeanor faltered. "Yes?"
"Your name is Gregory Oswald and your mother is a sweetpea and she's called a sweetpea and it's all from your aunt's cousin's side- which is awfully tragic in itself, there being a cousin from your aunt and so on- and it's all set in stone so I don't even have to ask you because I know you will say yes, so welcome, Gregory, to The Bench!"
Gregory watched her many stems spread out wide in a welcoming gesture. He thought about sitting beside this psychic for all eternity, knitting and singing and wearing snail-shell hats and looking through acorn binoculars at that damn (yet stunning) tree and swapping steamy mugs of FertilizeThis! while listening to clams debate from the ocean-side on wireless radio. Had it come to this already?
"I- I am- oh!" he suddenly remembered, "You're Harriet the Psychic!"
"Yes!" she beamed.
He laughed and she did not care for the loud, hooting, caw that she heard. "I was always under the assumption- that is, I heard on the wireless, not that the base had it often, nor did we indulge when we could!- but I remember it being 'Harriet the Sidekick' and I wondered, rightly as I must have, where the hero was."
Harriet stared. She was insulted. Not only was she now stuck alongside a cactus who thought she was second best in some radio drama, there was absolutely no way she would be able to 'accidentally' knock his terrifying, corded spike-straightener off the bench into a bucket of innocently maneuvered rainwater.

(--____0)v

What do you see between the cracks?

"Well, I don't know why you would," she said in a miffed voice. He was almost running to keep up with her as she glided down corridors and through arched doorways into bigger or darker or intensely more cluttered rooms.

"It's Quentin-" he puffed, lifting his leg over a stack of old books, but she cut across him by calling back over her shoulder: "Cupid is not called Quentin. Goodness."

"He told me h-"

"Armund," she turned abruptly in one sweeping motion and smiled down at the little dwarf trailing her every move. How atrociously adorable. "Armund," she repeated, and he looked up at her with a frown, as if suspicious. "I have met the budding archer- if he can be called that! His failed attempts far outweigh all his successes, which could be why he drinks chocolate all day-"

"He doesn't!" Armund cried in horror.

"He does! And he pays for it! With coins from right out of his purse!"

"Scandal!" 

"Outrage!" 

"Sacrilege!"

"Outstandingly contemptuous!"

"Startling!"

"Ok, I'm out of woulds beginning with 'o'..."

"Yes, I was faltering also..."

She straightened her shoulders. "My point is, dear Armund and all you stand for, is that I have met this charming Cupid and he has never been a Quentin, ever, in all his lives."

"Oh..." Armund dropped his gaze to the polished floorboards, wishing he knew how to ask for her interior designer while simultaneously wondering where she kept her silverware. It certainly wasn't in any of the kitchen drawers, or bathroom drawers, or bedroom drawers, nor had any been found under the stairs or in the linen basket. He was tired and poor. It only seemed fair that he exchange some of her expensive household items so he could buy that silky undergarment he'd had his eyes on for the past two and a half weeks, did it not?

He smiled at nothing, lost in his admiration.

"Hello, Armund? Are you among the living?"

"Pardon!" 

She was eyeing him suspiciously and he had a sudden terrible feeling that she could read his mind.

"Begging your pardon to my earnest slip of reality, the one and only Candace, I must have had an overload of cream cake this morning." Armund gave a small bow, rather a little tip of the head that would have been deeper had he been wearing a hat or shoes with bells on. He did like to admire those bells.

"I feel you are unwell."

He nodded sagely.

"Yes..." Candace stood and stared at him without seeing. "Cream cake and the power within. Excuse me Armund! I have business to attend to!" and she swept off through another door.

What bother! How was he ever supposed to keep an eye on her if she flew through the house like a bewitched hen?

"Your ladyship! I mean..." Armund hastily made his way through the door and spied her dress whipping around the corner at the end of the corridor.

"I must insist you leave, dear dwarf!" she called from far away. "I fear anyone ever setting their lovely eyes upon my baking skills... unsightly! Ghastly! Like wearing a see-through slip on the top floor balcony!"

"You cannot bake a cake!" Armund called, somewhat agitated. "Quentin is coming to see you, five thirty sharp!" His agitation stemmed from his bare feet that were not accustomed to running, and they rightly shouldn't be seeing as how he spent most of his time in caves, digging, or reading Elvish Elerberry Stews and Other Recipes Elves Don't Want Dwarves Knowing. 

"I can and I will!"

Silly female! Armund skidded and tripped past sunny rooms with large windows and white furniture, past clocks and what looked like a dream catcher made out of bones. He slid under wooden arched doorways and through a bathroom when he realised what was making him sweat more than this very un-fun game of chase. "You have no doors!"

"I pardon you?" 

"The doors!" Armund slowed to a stop, breathing hard, bending over once again to steady himself and also admire the shiny, if dangerously slippery, flooring. 

"What about them?" Candace called over a muffled bang. 

"You have none!" he yelled, unsure why he was so angry, but sure that he could make out his reflection and this did not sit well with him. 

Candace laughed. There were more loud noises that could probably be a spoon scraping a metal bowl or an electric mixer starting up or sifted flour flying up to puff in a face, but would most likely be Candace falling over her abnormally long daytime attire and knocking over a vase.

Silly woman!

"I've just run through the bathroom and you have not one hinge in place, not one doorknob waiting on the sink, not one 'do not disturb sign', and where is that sign Candace the great one, where is that sign?"

"Your poor little brain!" she exclaimed with some kind of glee or delight, "To be so addled over something so trivial!"

"I protest you!" he said angrily and then stopped short, awash with fear.

"You would!" was her gay reply.

He breathed a sigh of relief that sounded like a thousand wind-chimes caught in a rainstorm. Since when had that been his exhaling noise of choice?

He heard it again.

"Candace! Quentin has arrived!"

"Oh, Gerald!" Candace came rushing into where Armund stood, with a swish of her dress, elegant, at ease, and glowing down to her very essence. "Yes, it is about time," she said.

"It's Quentin," Armund shot at her. His expression softened when he noticed cake batter smeared on her neck and flour sprinkled like dust all down one side of her dress, and he ran after her.

"I was making a cake," he heard her laugh as he turned into her high entrance hall to find Candace chatting animatedly with a little boy.

"Armund!" the boy called happily, looking past Candace.

"Greetings, Quentin, master of the bow and stealer of hearts just the same..." he bowed again, a proper bow this time where he pretended to have shoes with bells. The proper bows always gave him an ache in the neck when he straightened.

The boy laughed heartily, "I don't steal hearts, silly dwarf, I rip them out and feast!"

"Of course." Armund nodded easily as he knew this. 

"Now, I feel," started Candace in a high-pitched way, "that we delightfully passed the important business of introducing ourselves, and while Armund and you have clearly met, I wonder if you and I may have the honor?"

Quentin looked up at her, his straight caramel hair shining in the sun, his pale face open and his light grey eyes intensely curious. He beamed. "Absolutely. Hello there," he stuck out a small hand, "My name is Quentin."

Candace gasped. "You just can't be!"

Quentin smiled, "I probably could."

"You lie!"

"Only when hungry."

"I'm afraid I do not, and will ever not, believe you, entirely, until the day I die," she said firmly.

The boy swung his basket, smiling and sparkling and positively unaffected by this ambiguous insult. "Whatever seems right in your world," he replied. "But you have a job for me, yes?"

"Oh, Candace," Armund said sadly.

"Times are busy, they are," Quentin said matter-of-factly. 

"Are they?" Armund asked without a real need for the answer.

"People always want to be in love, always. I've had to see a physiotherapist four times this year."

"How dramatic," Candace supplied without feeling but with an oozing of sarcasm so thick it was like liquid. "If you highly enterprising gentle creatures of the world will excuse me, I must be off to immerse myself in things which actually matter." and she turned on a heeled-foot and strode haughtily back where she had glided from moments ago.

Quentin smiled at Armund and Armund felt his core center itself. He felt goodwill and cheer. He felt like the colour pink.

"Oi!..." he took a step back.

"Candace is upset that I'm named differently, as if I changed my entire person."
Armund chuckled. Then thought, why do I find this amusing?
"Yes," Quentin chuckled too. "It is."
Oh well! Armund gave another chuckle, feeling at one with the world and almost as if he could rise into the air like a giant, dwarf-shaped balloon and explode with the blooming contentment of it all.
"Do you have a job for me?" Quentin asked. His silver arrows glinted and sang. His bright eyes danced.
"I wanted to call myself Barry," said Armund proudly. "But it was taken already by a troll and a gnome."
Quentin laughed and it was music. Armund sighed.
"What a coincidence!" Quentin remarked. Armund nodded eagerly. How small and delicate the little boy's wings were; his tunic must be cut to allow for them. And that smell! Armund inhaled with all his breath as if he were about to snorkel without an air tank or otherwise be shot dead, and it was pure magic all at once. He wondered if could breathe in like this until his dying day, lest he die of grave dissatisfaction and discomfort, when there was suddenly a loud bang from the kitchen area and he blinked.
Quentin was watching him in a mild, patient yet expectant way.
Armund said hurriedly, "I feel the need to continue my antisocial ways as we dwarves have always, certain that I will meet a fellow, possibly wearing mining gear and carrying a large axe and hoarding stories of gold and diamonds and manuals about how to ride a tractor and where to buy sheep, which can be expensive hence the need for fine silverware and even finer undergarments, so I say good day to you, stealth warrior who gives abundant pleasure but takes even more, may you find eternal happiness and that pair of shoes which actually fit."
He slammed the door in Quentin's face just in time. His eyes had turned a violent shade of pink and his wings had flared out, six times their original size and a superior metallic grey. Thin, claw-like fingers with red nails had been reaching back to seize an arrow.
"YOU DON'T SLAM THE DOOR AT CUPID!" Candace came screeching in and almost bowled Armund over. She grabbed Armund and shook him.
"Lovely Candace!" he exclaimed up into her face, "have no fear!-"
"There is everyth-"
"-he was trying to enchant me! A dwarf! I tell you-"
"You scum of the lowest pond in the furth-"
"-but I bade him a well wish-"
"That won't sto-"
"-and your house is ant-"
"It is certainly not!"
There was another bang, but louder and insanely heart-stopping as the living room window burst open. Candace yanked Armund away from the glass and they ran.
"You undid the charm!" Armund yelled accusingly.
"I felt it was time!" Candace yelled defensively.
"I gave him a well wish! I wished him well! That is not something we dwarves do! I will now face ridicule and open sneering!"
"Oh go wipe your face with that ridiculous sneering nonsense and bring yourself to the attention of our ever-present predicament: we will very shortly be shot with an arrow of love and I am not ok with that!"

~

How long ago did the kettle boil?

Avery glided softly through the mist, sighing every now and then and focusing on nothing in particular. Her departure had caused her mild grief. Now she had sand in her shoes and a fluttering heart, constant concern for the only men in her life that she had left still with shock and surprised like the coloured portraits hanging around them, and she wondered if she had been a little wild.
Could her exit be considered wild? Certainly, she had been thinking about it for some time. When she served out that over-sized plate of grapes, for instance. And, similarly, when Second had dropped his soggy handkerchief in her entrance leaving a wet patch that he slid in, just a little but enough to smear, causing Watt to step in it also, all while he infuriatingly waved away her concerns about his overall, obviously ailing, health.
This memory made her quiver with slivers of contempt. The problem with Avery was her inability to work up an appropriate level of anger so people would take her seriously. She simply did not have the energy.
She realised this as her foot hit something hard yielding and she cried out, looking down to see a figure hunched up on the sand.
"Oh!" the figure exclaimed and leapt up.
"Goodness!" Avery stepped back instinctively, "You were very far down."
"Yes, I was," Quintus agreed, rubbing his bottom and squinting at her.
"Could you see far?" she asked, wanting to get the scope of his vision.
"I could not," he answered honestly. "The fog is too thick."
"Oh, of course," her mind wandered once again as her disinterest took over.
They both stood and stared at the fog, avoiding each other, and then Quintus said in a rush: "Sorry, is that- is that why you kicked me? Because of the fog density?"
Avery swayed gently to a silent tune. She said: "I walked out on all the people I love" in a whispery voice.
Quintus leaned in closer so the whispers would swim into his ears. "I did, too."
Avery nodded. "My husband, Brunei, works down at the gates. His work keeps him long hours and his friends visit often. His two friends... they love him."
Quintus watched strands of her hair fly in her face and marveled at her lack of concern. He wondered if she was one of those people who were carved out of stone, set, and then animated using goat fur, honey and candle wax. "What gates were these, do tell?" he asked instead, because this town had taught him caution in conversation and seven different ways to weave a basket.
"The Peyying Gates," she recited proudly, a faint smile lighting up her dull eyes.
Quintus thought about all the gates he knew and realised that they were all made out of wood and housed animals. He felt on edge.
"Oh, Peyying," he remarked as casually as he could. "Are they south of the farm?"
"They say he does not work hard enough," Avery said loudly and Quintus jumped. "They say, the workers at the gates are not- your hat looks very peculiar," she interrupted herself. She was peering at him in that intrusive way people do when they're trying not to insult someone about a malfunction of their appearance.
"It's hand-made!" said Quintus defensively. "Made entirely by hand!"
"By your hand..." Avery whispered, neither impressed nor ready to give a compliment, and Quintus felt the fondness he had developed for this vague woman disappear almost completely. She said: "It looks like a baby bottom" and turned to the sea in an effective conversation-ending gesture.
"This hat has silk!" he declared.
"It also has bells," she replied dismissively. "Loud, cantankerous, soul-ripping, soul-crippling, soul-squenching bells..."
"'Soul-squenching'?" Quintus echoed, uncertain.
Avery nodded at the sea.
"Soriary was wrapped up tight in a ball of self-destruction and there was no way to pierce the outer layer," Quintus said. "I could not. I was a coward! I made myself flee as if I, myself, had witnessed the brutalities of war..." his voice caught in his throat and he looked away, afraid he would choke or sob or vomit.
Avery swayed, seemingly lost in thought.
"There was nothing you could do," she said after a while, in a soft yet practical motherly way, and a weight Quintus did not know he was carrying instantly fell from his hunched up shoulders. She said: "Some people are a war themselves and they must learn to wield their own sword, or fall heavily upon it."
"Yes!" Quintus heaved, even though he didn't believe that her analogy applied to the beautifully worn flower that was Soriary. He did his best to blink back tears. He wiped his nose on his tunic sleeve. He smiled gingerly at the ocean but the ocean did not smile back. Probably because there was too much fog in the way. Or probably not.
"My departure was very sudden. It caused a slight disturbance, but I have not been back to see," Avery closed her eyes.
"It might be for the best," Quintus said without consideration, as he did have a lot of practice at departing and none in tact.
"Would you think so?"
"I fear-"
"Yes," Avery cut in, "Your fear. It is rather unbecoming."
Quintus frowned. "What is?"
"All this fear..." and her voice was lost and so far away that Quintus leaned in further, a tad annoyed now that she couldn't keep proper volume.
"I believe fea-" he started but Avery interrupted again with a soft sigh: "Of course you would. But look at that," she pointed ahead to where there seemed to be mountain tips growing out of the thick, fluffy fog.
"The confusing peaks." Avery breathed, almost in hushed awe.
"Yes..." said Quintus, dragging his uncertainty back to the front-line of his current emotional state, trampling over confusion and exhaustion and the need to urinate.
"They think he works up there. They do not listen, therefore misunderstand almost everything Brunei says." Avery blinked her sad eyes and Quintus felt something sharpen in his chest. "But fear..." she went on, "...fear can take us places. There are great places and I think..." she stepped forward.
Quintus jolted, "Are- are you-?"
"... I think we should walk right up to fear." Avery took another step and Quintus felt such a sudden rush of loneliness that he lunged forwards as well.
"Yes..." Avery whispered, staring out at the rising peaks with an expression of something like excitement mixed with horror that surrounded a hint of a smile.
"...let us see where fear will take us."