When will it be that time again?

"Fudge it!" Quintus ran down the street, his powdered-blue cap tingling with the sound of bells that were attached to it and his caramel-coloured bloomers rubbing against each other. "They're going to start a fire!"
Quintus was no stranger to running. He ran almost everyday because the other boys chased him and threw chalk. They called him names, like 'Forenry!' and 'Heshem!', which were insults in his town. They stole his fried potatoes that he packed for lunch, or they stole his money. They left twigs in his desk, let his pig free in the fields, and lounged around in his art space, messing up his paintings and whittling down his favourite pencils.
"I simply cannot stand it any longer!" he had cried, last Tuesday, holding his dripping wet boots that were filled with eucalyptus oil and fighting back tears.
So he had ran.
"Quintus!" his mother had called from their front porch as she watched him sprint off at a slight angle through the gate and along the road (he had never been the straightest sprinter, or the fastest, or the most elegant). "Where will you go? You don't know anyone! And you're lousy at making conversation!"
"You don't need conversation to do laundry and pick peaches!" he had shouted back.
His mother had shaken her head as she wiped her dough-covered hands on a tea-towel, thinking, actually, you do.
For four days, on and off, Quintus had ran, walked, skipped, sat, slept, and limped into and out of various towns. He had eaten bread, stolen apples, washed his bloomers in the stream and put them straight back on, due to the public nature of his washing, and he had cried while sitting in the wet patch. He had been laughed at while he sang, danced, recited poetry, and told stories of shoes that talked. He had been given coins out of pity and then had them taken out of greed.
Finally, after many long conversation-less days and nights, Quintus found himself outside a run down building that had blue shutters in front of all the windows, and yellow and orange potted flowers hanging from the separate balconies. Quintus thought, this looks like where magic happens.
And he walked inside.
He sat down against the corridor wall, which was white and peeling, and stared ahead at the row of little wooden post-boxes all with little keyholes. There were thirty-nine rooms in this building. That meant thirty-nine keys. What a lot of little objects there were!
"Fucking useless!"
Quintus jumped at the voice as the building door opened and a girl came struggling in. She looked like she was heaving in a gigantic sack full of heavy body parts. Quitus jumped up.
"Hello!" he cried, filled with unease but out of sincere habit.
The girl looked up. Cans spilled about the place as she paused and glanced up and down at Quintus with her bright green eyes, as if he was being scanned for a price.
"Hi there," she said, turning her attention to the cans rolling around. "Fuck it!"
"Do you need help?" Quintus asked.
"Of course I do!" the girl grunted. "My bags have split wide open, and then some."
Quintus helped the girl carry all her cans up the stairs and into her apartment. Turns out she lived in apartment twenty, where a mattress lay in one corner, a row of potted plants lined up along the opposite wall, and there was a large nude portrait of a shapely woman blocking the bathroom door.
"Don't worry about that," said the girl, waving her hand. "I'm only holding it for a friend until she gives me the green. You smoke?"
Quintus blinked. "Smoke?"
The girl assessed him once again, this time with her head tilted to the side. "Why does your hat have bells on?"
"It's hand-made!" Quintus said loudly in a defensive stance, and the girl said, "Alright! Don't worry, I like it. It looks like a baby's bottom."
"A baby's-?"
"Do you drink?" the girl asked, turning away with disinterest. Then turned back and said, "Oh sorry, I'm Soriary. But everyone calls me Soria."
"I'm Quintus," Quintus said.
Soria smiled without the light touching her eyes, so Quintus thought she didn't look acquainted or charmed at all.
He watched as she poured some kind of honey liquid into a glass and drank it quickly. She poured another and raised her eyebrowse at him. "Do you want some?"
Quintus frowned, suddenly unsure why he was still there. He said, "No thank you. My heart, it burns, you see, when I drink coloured liquid so I try my best to stay away."
"Suit yourself," she drank that quickly, too, and then sat on the floor. Quintus decided to sit also, and told her the stories about shoes that spoke, but she didn't laugh or mock and she said he was welcome to sleep if he had nowhere else to go, before vanishing into the bathroom for a long time.
She came out when Quintus had settled himself on the floor and stumbled into the mattress.
In the morning she threw up, said, 'here's something interesting you can incorporate into your stories', and Quintus had decided to stay.

He stayed for two days and in those two days they ate only flaky noodles that tasted like rubber with parsley on top.
"I HAVE PARSLEY!" Soria had screamed, banging her fist on the table and throwing out her other hand at the line of plants. "SO WHY NOT FUCKING EAT IT!" and Quintus had felt his chest tighten with fear.
They sat on the floor while Soria played quiet opera music. Quintus listened hard, straining his ears and leaning in closer so he could understand the messages and the melodies, but he didn't. Soria disappeared into the bathroom randomly throughout the day and would emerge looking vague or relieved or ashamed. Quintus noticed cuts and bruises and vomit stains, but never said anything just in case.
He watched Soria drink the honey liquid and sat next to her at the window where they looked out at the night sky.
"The stars, Quintus, are you looking?" Soria asked on the second night while they stared up at the darkness sparkling down at them like little winks of reassurance.
"I do see them," he replied.
"There are always shooting stars. What I mean is, there are always stars that fall. All over. Like signs."
"But there are so many still in the sky," Quintus said softly, afraid and alert but squinting around it.
"Yes, there are, I can see that! But look at the ones falling. Look at the ones falling! Ok? Is that so fucking hard!?" She waved her arms when she yelled.
Quintus said, "No. Yes. I can see them."
Soria stood up roughly and stalked into the bathroom. Quintus thought about leaving. He still had so far to run. His journey had not even began yet and here he was, holed up with a girl who spoke plainly of ending hers as if it was just another activity to fit into the day, without realising that every time she looked into the night sky she was desperately searching for hope.
"There is nothing here but patches of good and patches of bad spread out over the entirety of existence, Quintus," she had told him that night, "and you have no fucking idea how tiring it is to be stuck in the patch of bad."
He did know.
Soria came floating out of the bathroom and Quintus stood up, the bells on his hat tinkling in a cheery, courageous way that strengthened his resolve.
He said, "I fear it is time for me to leave."
Soria whipped around, her eyes ablaze and her skin weeping. She waved her arms, "Leaving! Ha! God, the problem with YOU, Quintus, is that you never see, you never know what it all means," and she grabbed the bottle.
Quintus watched her pour with a shaking hand and felt the emptiness that he had been trying so hard to escape grow inside his chest, seep through his arms and legs, down into his toes. Whenever he had experienced this before, he had run. Just before it touched his head, right when it had seized his throat in a deathly tight grasp, making him hoarse and numb and terribly afraid of breaking, he would jump up and flee.
But this time he couldn't, not without trying. Because this time he was watching someone else fight it.
"I am afraid," he said.
Soria laughed once between gulps.
"I am afraid," Quintus said again and stepped closer. "So very afraid of never seeing you smile like you do. It is your smile that lights up my world. In the truest way." He frowned at her as she stood with the drink raised in one hand, frozen and staring, as if dead already. "I have travelled very hungry, and wet, and I have been cast down upon! My world has not been kind to me. I was ridiculed and hated, I have known fear. I have walked with my eyes down and too afraid to walk with noise! How to silence shoes such as these, other than to tell tales?"
Soria stared at him. He stared back. Then he said, "To be true, the blackest of days take our hearts and squeeze, and we look for stars to take it away. But, if you do not buy some fruit and paint, an easel and some birds, a wind chime, some books, a couch, a hot chicken... just what is life if it is not about sitting with wet underpants while eating a hot chicken?!"
And he gathered himself up, gave her a tinkling nod and half a curtsy due to the stiffness of his bloomers, opened her door, and slammed it shut behind him.

*

Can I go back to when I believed in everything and knew nothing at all?

Secil yanked open the door with a mixture of frustration at the time-consuming activity that was answering doors, admiration at the gentle way this stranger handled their doorbell, and wondering if this was the same place the door had been in yesterday.
"Yes?" she said forcefully.
The man coughed and Secil stared.
"Hello," he said, smiling mildly. She took in his fluffy black hair and bright green eyes and slammed the door shut in his face.
Then promptly opened it.
"Sorry!" she exclaimed, "It must be the potion, I mean, pois- the drink- I had a drink earlier- tea! yes...tea, I had tea, lousy... lousy tea..." Secil smiled and tried to twinkle and sparkle and glow up at him in a friendly and less-intimidating manner.
The man said kindly, "Ghastly, this tea business." But Secil wasn't listening.
"Yes, that's right, over there," she said suddenly, sliding her gaze from the scratches on the wooden door over to the left window, as if she'd just been hit with a memory orb. "The door was over by tha-"
"Oh, you have roaming doors, too?"
Secil jerked back to the stranger and narrowed her eyes. "Only on Thursdays and every other Monday at four, nine and twelve, twice around the clock."
"Clocks!" the man exclaimed, looking appropriately enthusiastic.
"The very same," Secil agreed, although she didn't know what she was actually agreeing too. Was he happy at the relevant-ness of time? Or did he feel overwhelmed at all the hand variations and clock sizes? She asked, "Does your mother know you're out this late?" in a condescending way.
"I'm nearing thirty," he replied apologetically, with a wave of his hand as if to indicate how useless it all was.
"Oh, yes, of course..." Secil nodded with full understanding, "...the clocks. Do come in then."
"Thank-"
"No wait! You have to say your name first!"
"Ah." the man smiled again, in a knowing and approving way. "It's Alfred."
Secil and Mercery had built a whole room (with magic of course. They both refused, rightly so, to do anything manually exerting while in possession of wands) devoted entirely to store captured names, and which sometimes became an area for Mercery to practice the art of Loom. Secil would barge in with a jar containing a name that she had worked very hard to steal, sometimes wasting hours of her life with searching, and complimenting, and bargaining, and learning how to play the flute and make wooden clogs, to find Mercery taking up all her shelf space.
"I NEED TO LOOM!" Mercery would yell.
"YOU NEED TO MAKE A RUG WITHOUT YOUR FACE ON IT!" Secil would retort.
"I AM A WORK OF ART!" Mercery would scream in a fit of self-adoration, "I NEED TO BE PUT OUT IN THE WORLD. I NEED TO FLY, TO DREAM, TO BURST FORTH IN A FLURRY OF TALCUM POWDER AND ALLSPICE AND THOSE LITTLE DEFORMED PINE CONES."
"THAT'S THE WORST SOUNDING MIXTURE OF AMBITION I HAVE EVER HEARD OF," Secil would scream back.
"THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'VE NEVER DREAMT OF SEEING YOUR FACE AT THE ENTRANCE OF PARLIAMENT HOUSE."
"THAT'S BECAUSE I DON'T DREAM OF BEING A WELCOME MAT."
They would glare at each other. Then they would realise that they were both inconceivably right, and would hug, babbling their apologies, and Mercery would make Secil her own welcome mat that Secil would later burn in the pretense of cleansing her aura, and Secil would bake Mercery a love-cake that Mercery would insist they leave for a while so she could stare at its beauty and would later add to her potting mix and throw out in her veggie patch.
"Did you say Alfred?" Secil asked in a whisper as the man stepped through the doorway.
"I did."
"Oh..." she stared up at him, quite transfixed. He looked down at her, quite amused and a little self-conscious at the state of his shoes, which mattered now, what with her being so close to them.
"Sorry... I, uh, I normally get them cleaned-"
"But how long have you been called Alfred?" Secil demanded, the waves of lust spilling all around her in absolution.
"Ah, all my life..." he looked worriedly around the entrance, "You're not planning to take it, are you?"
"And no one's tried to steal it?!" Secil asked, swaying a little in the pale pink cloudy fog, breathing in a scent of preferred perfection, blinking against the magnification of colour.
"Are you alright?"
"Mercery..." Secil breathed.
"I'm terribly sorry, I only came about the letters. I think you summoned me?" Alfred took a step forwards, worry and fear sliding around his face, and Secil laughed out loud.
"The starfruit!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"It's an enhancer," Secil spun around clockwise waving her left arm and then anticlockwise waving her right arm. "I forgot. I get it mixed up with pineapple."
Alfred frowned, "They look nothing alike."
"Mmmm, I think one of my eyes may come from Jupiter." She shook her head and looked back up at him. There was nothing Secil disapproved of more than attraction, except maybe fatal attraction. She had books to write and movies to be a part of and spells to reconstruct- people today were so sloppy and traditional, always adding rose petals or saying some long incantation, it curled her silvery- white hair for days after reading them.
"Are you talking about the planet?" Alfred asked
"No, there's a place down the road called Jupiter's Duty. They sell eyes. But they don't do the insertion process, that's further down, past the post office- wait a minute..." Secil narrowed her eyes at this absurdly attractive excuse for a human. "You said roaming doors."
Alfred nodded. "Yes."
"And summoned. You said the word 'summoned'."
"I did."
Secil's heart started beating faster but this time she wasn't wrapped up like a lusty bean burrito, she was unravelling like a disorganised, sweltering mummy lost at the beach.
She said quietly, while thinking up numerous ways to incorporate the dry leaves around Alfred's feet in a curse, "That means you're a-"
"SECILIA!" Mercery shouted from down the hall.
Alfred jumped. Secilia shot out her wand arm with her wand in it and jabbed Alfred in the face.
"Oh! OW! Christ!"
"Oh no, sorry! It's reflex! I was a junior warrior ninja scout battle maiden as a child, and the training stuck!"
Bent over and groaning, Alfred gave a short laugh that sounded more in exasperation than overflowing with admiration and intimidation. "You can't be all those things at once."
"SELIA. I JUST GOT THE MAIL, FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE," Mercery yelled, sounding closer. "WHY FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE- FROM INSIDE THE KITCHEN NO LESS? WHY? WHY AM I HOLDING PINK ENVELOPES NEXT TO THE FRIDGE AT FIVE IN THE MORNI-"
"GO ON THEN," Secil shouted back, watching Alfred, torn between her desire to comfort and her impulse to verbally scorn.
Mercery suddenly strode into the entrance hall, scowling and red in the face, which did nothing for her complexion. "YOU DIDN'T TURN THE MAILMAN INTO A TOAD."
"Oh, didn't I?" Secil replied with casual elegance.
"SOME OTHER POOR HUMAN IS CROAKING OUT JAZZ MELODIES IN OUR GARDEN, MISSING THEIR FAMILY AND NINE-TO-FIVE, AND THE MAILMAN SUDDENLY IS UNABLE TO GET AT OUR FRONT DOOR."
"Shame..."
"That's me," Alfred straightened up, blinking. "I put a retreating marker on the door."
"OH," yelled Secil, beside herself and filled with defiance, defense, guilt and feelings of lust, "Charming OUR doors and stealing OUR letters, posing as a regular human to capture our hearts and souls and bewitch our minds with your enchanting smell and posh blue shirts-"
"'Regular human'?"
Mercery said, "Don't change the subject!"
Secil was quite blind with all her emotions and she may have also been suffering from caffeine withdrawals. She lunged forward, ready to push this impossibly good-looking thief out the door before hexing him into a snail with a crookedly dented shell, but she slipped on a mark on the floor, skidded sideways and crashed into the dresser.
"Good grief!" Alfred exclaimed. "Is your house nothing but full of traps?"
"Oh that's right..." mused Mercery, "I tried to clean the cauldron marks as your nightmares keep me awake all night, and I used polish instead of cleaning stuff, I mean, we really need to re-label our products. It said 'essen posoap lish' and I thought, 'lish, what a nice sounding fragrance'."
"It does sound nice," Secil agreed.
"It does."
"Like a spice," Alfred chimed in.
"Oriental."
"From somewhere far, like Atlana."
Alfred scoffed, "Atlanta doesn't exist."
"It does," Mercery shot back, "it's on a cloud."
"What cloud would hold an entire underwater city?"
"That's Atlantis. Honestly..."
"I say this calls for tea,"  Secil said firmly.
"Yes," Mercery nodded, "I'll get the Globe."
Alfred's eyes lit up. "You don't by chance have Minty Minting Flash?"
Secil scrunched up her face, "What's that?"
"It's like stepping into a cool-"
"We have tea with essence of toe," Mercery interrupted. "The toe, and that's it."
"Tea with toe," echoed Alfred, sounding ridiculous. Secil sighed. How could she ever be in sensuous longing with someone who said absurd things like that?
Mercery said, "The very same."
"But why not use the whole toe? Why only use essence?"
"Because," sighed Secil, waving at the pink lust waves once more and puzzled at why anyone would have to ask such a question, "Just imagine the taste of tea made entirely of toe!"

Can we make it bigger?

I feel as though I have been running. My feet ache and my lungs burn. I feel old and worn, lost in the process of decaying day by day. My outer shell has cracked and split apart, there are bits falling constantly, fading, temporary: skin, blood, memories, equations, plans, words, whispers, ambitions. Laughter.
The things that define us slowly change with time until we become someone new and when we see our reflections, our hearts weep for the way we were.
"Yes, yes, this is fascinating, but please pass the sugar will you?"
Secil scowled. "This is an autobiography, Mercery, it has to contain fact and musings."
"You can't muse without coffee-"
"Actually, I'm on a cleanse."
"A cleanse?" Mercery gasped in horror.
Secil smiled inwardly. Outwardly, she said, "Rightly so. I'm on green tea and soda water."
"No tonic?" Mercery whispered.
"None at all."
"No gin!"
"Not even."
Mercery gasped again, louder and with wider eyes, and clasped a hand to her chest. "Secil! The madness!"
"It is," Secil agreed wholeheartedly, because it was. She hadn't planned to go on a cleanse, as it were. She'd been down at the post office paying a bill, with intentions to visit the herbal shop next door for supplies - what with Beatrice on holiday and Beatrice's husband decaying six-feet under ground, slowing down progress - when the man behind the counter had pointed out her dismal appearance.
"He was rather rude," supplied Secil, "telling me I had circles under my eyes-"
"You do," Mercery interrupted grimly.
"- and going on about bronze door knockers and the time his niece broke into the neighbour's house for a lawn gnome-"
"Huh?"
"- honestly," Secil waved her wand through the air dramatically, "it's a wonder I didn't turn him into a toad weeks ago!"
"You did what!?"
"Hmm?" Secil had glanced down at her ingredients list and noticed a spelling error.
"SECIL!"
"How do you spell mushroom?"
"DID YOU TURN THE MAILMAN INTO A TOAD?"
"Keep your wig on!" Secil crossed out 'munchroom' and wrote 'muchroome', stared at it and sighed, crossing that out, too.
"SECILIA!"
"Yes! I turned him into a toad. And I took him home, and he's in the garden, playing, and feeding, and singing to his people. Now, tell me how to spell mushroom. It's not with two e's, is it?"
Mercery said, "Oh, alright then. If he's singing..."
Secil tapped the paper with her wand. (It wasn't really a wand; it was a longish, semi-straight stick that had a thin branch growing from one side, which she had tripped over while running away from a bad date one night. Secil refused to buy a proper wand. She had performed a complicated, slightly illegal enchantment on her stick, and after seeing how well it worked out, Mercery had done away with her own wand and copied her.)
The letters rearranged themselves, appearing and disappearing, until the correct spelling of mushroom shimmered up at her.
"Hey, those aren't my o's!"
Mercery clicked her tongue, stood up and stretched. Secil's laziness always made her extremely tired. "That's what you get for enchanting."
"I turned the milkman into a toad, too," she said casually.
"WHAT!?" Mercery dropped the kettle. It bounced extremely hard on the wooden floor and shot out the kitchen window. "FOR FUCK'S SAKE! THAT FUCKING ANTI-SHATTER CHARM IS JUST NOT WORTH IT!"
Secil sighed again, this time in calm contentment. Mercery's aggression at her own spell inventions always gave her a sudden tranquil feeling, much like stepping under a cleansing waterfall after drinking three pots of green tea at once. (She was a recovering coffee addict and the herbal stuff just did not fly). She wondered about detection work. She wondered how to trace handwriting. Was it done?
"You can't just turn people into frogs, Secil, it's not proper!" Mercery turned away from looking out the window. She tugged on her black and silver-star wellingtons, yanking them on so hard in her anger that her toes pushed out the end, and she cursed the stupidity and apathy of whoever made them.
"It's boring being a regular human," Secil complained. "Look at all these spelling errors, look at the multiplication sums on the fridge, look at the shopping carts in Beddells! They're so slow and the people scan my items with glazed eyes, as if they've never heard of-"
"You've never heard of!" Mercery interrupted forcefully, sounding like she didn't know what Secil was talking about (which she didn't). "And now I have to trudge out in the ponds so I can make tea!"
Secil watched Mercery stride out the back door, her long black hair breezing out behind her and long skirts swishing around her legs in determination. When she was gone, Secil jumped up and rummaged around in the kitchen for flour, starfruit, bread crust, ginger, and three sour lollies.
"Spell for tracing..." she murmured, flicking through her little notebook. Secil also refused to perform spells from books. She kept her own notebook with her own inventions, working tirelessly through her mundane existence, switching between writing her soon-to-be famous autobiography (that would go on to become a film starring majorly important actors, and probably even a television series) and creating her own brand of enchantments that she called Severely Secil. Her autobiography was entirely fictional because her own existence was as dull as a wilting cucumber.
"Nothing! Why is there nothing! Why have I not thought of this before?" she groaned in frustration, paused in thought for a millisecond, before snatching up the ingredients and putting pinches, halves, teaspoons and entire packets, haphazardly into the fat, alarmingly green cauldron that sat next to the fireplace. She stirred with the end of a mop, thinking about how expensive cauldrons were these days. This one had been bought from a second-hand store and heaved into the house with the help of three strangers.
"A wedding present!" Mercery had said with false brightness.
"My wedding," Secil had lied in clarification.
"We like to make soup," Mercery offered for no reason, so Secil had countered with, "For the homeless, down on Main."
"So many homeless," Mercery continued.
"Inventive instruments," Secil complimented pleasantly, thinking of the men and women she'd seen shaking their cans with coins in, as if playing a tune.
The cauldron-dragging had resulted in four lined marks all the way from the front door to the fireplace, and none of Secil's spells had worked so far in cleaning it up. It was dismal. Secil still had nightmares about these marks.
The cloudy grey mixture in the cauldron emitted a puff of glittery smoke, which Secil took as an indication that the potion was ready. She scooped half a ladle into a mug, drank it quickly and burped. It tasted like eggplant and brilliance. Yes, she thought smugly, how brilliant she was.
She waited, standing next to the cauldron, holding the mug, and watching the mixture slowly turn a pale violet colour. Bubbles formed in clusters on the surface. Another glittering puff rose up and dissipated.
Secil turned to her right and threw up. She crossed out 'sour lollies', sure that they were reacting with the other ingredients, and wrote 'bottom half of a gingerbread man' instead.
"SECIL!" came a shout and Mercery burst through the back door, puffing, just as the font doorbell rang.
"I think it needs an incantation," frowned Secil.
"Oh my god, Secil..."
"Yes... I know."
"No! You don't! Secil, Beatrice buried her husband in our yard!"
The doorbell rang again and Secil wondered who on earth was calling round at four in the morning. She looked up suddenly, registering. "Buried?"
"YES! SHE BURIED HER HUSBAND IN OUR YARD AND THEN WENT OFF TO CELEBRATE, PROBABLY EATING OCTOPUS AND GETTING A TAN!" Mercery stopped. "What are you doing?"
Secil stared unseeing at Mercery, thinking about starfruit and bubbles and alkalizing and the soothing, restoring properties of dead human toes.
She smiled. "Lead the way."

+

How does it feel to pretend?

"It couldn't possibly get any colder," Second was saying jovially, leaning back in his wooden chair. It was one of those hard-backed chairs that made him sit upright and proud.

"There is proper moisture in the air to suggest possible rain," Watt countered with a little scowl on his face. His dark eyebrows moved up and down as he ran his light blue eyes critically over each of the framed paintings hanging on the wall. His chair did not have a hard back. His chair had a green velvet seat and arched, curly feet.

"Are you the weather man?" Second asked with a jeer.

"I have always been told that I have a face for television."

"Ha!"

Avery coughed and both boys turned to her. She was knitting something long and twisted, and rather blue, and she hummed very quietly to herself while she did this. Her light tangerine-coloured hair fell about her cheekbones and her long eyelashes kissed each other every once and a while.

"Back me up!" cried Second.

"About what?" asked Avery.

"Do your butlers not bring herbal anymore?" complained Watt. 

"They bring whatever they like," replied Avery, not looking up. "This time I believe it to be Earl Grey."

"Earl Grey is not herbal, Aves. It appears I cannot even have pleasure within my closest companion circle."

"It comes in a bag," Second said, with a hand motion not unlike that of scooping, which confused Watt.

"Are you trying to move something?" he asked with brows furrowed. 

"Am I?"

"Something out of thin air?"

Second sighed and leaned back again, tired. (His hand gestures had always bewildered his mate, if truth be told. It was like baking a cake with instructions written in a foreign language. Like elvish, Second thought, it is exactly like deciphering Elvish while trying to create a decadent masterpiece for an ethereal wedding).

"Brunei," Avery said suddenly, jerking Second out of his strawberry-swirl fantasy. "You're home."

The two boys watched as Avery carefully put her knitting on the table and rose silently and elegantly. Second narrowed his eyes, picturing her in Elvish dress.

Watt said, "Hello Brune. How goes the weather up at the peak?"

Brunei looked dishevelled and slightly slumped forward, as if he had carried a heavy load for long hours without breaks or mugs of hot chocolate. The snow sprinkled in his dark hair made him look like a coconut cupcake.

"'Up at the peak'," Second mimicked, looking like a spoilt Prince. "You don't make any sense, Wattary!"

Brunei said, "Hello chums," fairly cheerfully for someone who was missing most of his tapered hat. He put his arms around Avery, she murmured something at his ear that made him bend further, and Watt turned to Second and muttered, "All these pictures, you see them all? Why are they all blue?"

Second didn't have time to be concerned about the blue of pictures. The choice of hanging house decoration didn't interest him in the slightest! He leaned back- because his chair was at the end of the table and he couldn't see the pair- and called out to Brunei, "Mate, did they find the silver?"

"Oh, they have silver now?" Avery inquired, surprised and grim, and in need of a good polish. Her clothes and skin and hair all appeared a bit dull. She could have made a superb bell, Watt thought admiringly, his eyes slipping back to scrutinize the pictures in secret every now and then, if she had not been born a person.

Brunei smiled and it lit up his face. Second frowned. Watt pulled his eyeballs back to the activity and frowned as well. 

"They found a tidgy tippit o-"

"Tidbit," cut in Avery as she moved to the kitchen. She walked with an air of someone who wasn't paying any attention to her surroundings but she also carried herself lightly, like someone who thought they would fly away at any moment, and who was, possibly, ready for it.

"-of copper! Nothing else worth mentioning though."

"That's a shame," Second said, his heart pounding in an escalated way. He drummed his fingers on the table to hide the sound. 

Watt was fearful that the volume of his own increased heart rate would be discovered, only he was not so adept at covering it up. He leapt up at high speed, overturning the milk jug and plate of almond biscuits, announcing in a hurried voice, "I have to meet with the toilet, at once! Or else my bladder will fail and I will spill all over the furniture! Not that this chair is the most comfortable or the most lean- yes, I have seen lean chairs, I have seen gleaming and quivering chairs that couldn't possibly hold the buttocks of man and woman even though that is their life aim! I am sure, in the fullest, that they are sombre and in the practise of attending museums for the post-modern art, I am sure they critique! But, as I say!-" before sprinting from the room.

Second hid his teasing grin by pressing his lips together in a thin line. Brunei said, "Righto," in a noncommittal way and plopped himself into a chair. Second drummed louder.

Brunei called over the drumming: "HOW WAS AVERY TODAY?"

Second averted his gaze to the blue pictures. "WELL," he responded. How blue they were! He'd spent a lot of his time in a hazy belief that Watt made up half of his daily observations. But now, having seen the evidence with his own two eyes, he called out (careful to keep his eyes on the wall): "WHY SO MANY BLUE ONES?"

"BLUE ONES?" Brunei asked, sounding puzzled for sure. 

"THE PICTURES HERE ARE ALL A MIGHTY BLUE AND I CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY THEY NEED TO BE SO. IS IT A TRICK? ARE THEY ALL ACTUALLY DIFFERENT COLOURS BUT YOU'VE MANAGED TO PUT SOMETHING IN THE LIGHTING?"

"AHH, NO, THEY ARE ALL BLUE."

"IS IT MY EYES? YOU'VE ADDED A MAGICAL INGREDIENT TO THE FOOD SERVED, SPECIALLY, LIKE A LIQUID POISON OR RESTORATIVE?"

Avery appeared at that moment carrying a large silver tray piled with grapes. Second stilled his fingers.

"Avery, thank god," Brunei said in a voice overflowing with gratitude, and Second had to wonder if he'd matched it entirely to the plate of grapes, and how he found the time. Was there nothing Brunei couldn't do?

"I thought you might be hungry after a long day at work," she placed the tray on top of the scattered cookies.

Isn't it bad enough that he's so damn good-looking? Second thought, still staring blindly at Brunei. He's like an irresistible bowl of melon. Exactly. Second felt his heart start up again, but he was too far gone. Like dipping a coffee spoon into the ravishing, impossibly cold, crisp yet moist, flesh of green wonderment...

Was he drooling?

"Your hand-towels are twelve thread-count!" Watt came in like a verbal ambush. "Twelve! That is almost one thousand less than I expected of you, of both of you!"

"What needs to be counted twelve times?" Avery asked in a voice like a gush of rushing air. 

"No, no, butternut, it's to be counted by a thousand, twelve times, and then taken from a thousand by twelves..." Brunei looked up at Watt's face of injustice. "Isn't it?"

Second laughed. "Better with a twist of lemon!"

Watt closed his eyes and put a finger in between them, on his nose ridge. "I cannot express-"

"Then don't!" called out Second. He stood up, swiping a handful of grapes and thrusting them at Watt in a form of alliance and gallantry. 

"Oh," Avery turned, admitting the cloud of boredom to descend once again. "They were talking about our towels, Brunei. We have substandard quality and it terrifies them."

Brunei popped a grape into his mouth and chortled around it. "They have the same fear down at the gates. They worry over underwear stretch and belt shine and how to correctly add cinnamon to pancakes."

Avery laughed. She touched his shoulder. Watt and Second stared. The bunch of grapes lay forgotten by their shoes.

That touch is not sacred! Second thought, aghast. How small her hands are to be able to apply the right amout of pressure, the pressure only a man can make! 

How cold the tents must be down at the gates, thought Watt, in a practical and highly motivational take on elemental temperature. There must be all sorts of ways to keep warm. He praised himself for thinking like a weather reporter in this time of stress.

"Why not try the hands of man?!" Second called out desperately at the same time that Watt declared, "Men give off TWICE the amount of body heat compared to a recent study conducted in Poland and revised in America, once over, just try it!"

Brunei asked politely, but with concern and mild apathy just to keep things interesting, "Have you both caught a chill?"

Avery said in a wispy, whispery voice: "It just won't do." 

She placed her small hand on the door knob and pulled it open, letting the wind rush in, dash around the room and jostle the pictures on the wall, rattle cups on their saucers and overturn the biscuits so their almonds showed.

Brunei rose slowly. "Avery!" he called.

"Avery!" Second and Watt shouted together.

They stood very still and watched her step gently out into the night.

~

avery

I think of you only,

avery,

won't you come home.

"...A scone with your tea?"

"GOD DAMMIT, CLARENCE! WHY DO YOU INSIST ON NAMING ALL OUR CHILDREN WITH J? That woman and her five children, the absolute DEATH of me..."
"All 'J', hah! You'd know them all by now if you put things back where they belong-"
"Eh?-"
"The SPOONS, Harold, the SPOONS?"
"Spoon? Good-"
"Look at that over there! Just look at this mess. Soup spoons in mixed with the dessert spoons, how I ever manage to find the right one I'll never know..."
"Who's worried about the dishes? This is all to do with your bleeding singing in the shower-"
"Oh! MY singing-"
"That's right-"
"And I suppose you think you're some Saint. Saint Harold, from the church of 'Sorry Your Worship, These Sock Are From Last Friday'-"
"Saturday church service is allowing day old socks!"
"Not Tuesdays."
"THEY'RE ALL DOING IT!"
"AND WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT IT? Since when is Church time your regular? You never."
"I always!"
"The only time I ever saw you in a church was at our wedding, and even then! You were out of there faster than- is that my pie you're eating just now?"
"This? This is-"
"Harold..."
"Hold off, you angry bat, this is from Macy-"
"Next door's Macy?"
"Macy from that house with the green fence-"
"FROM NEXT DOOR! Give me-"
"Quit chasing me!"
"You think my singing is bad, just wait until I add a little SOMETHING into your next meatloaf. Now give it!"
"Poison!"
"GIVE IT!"
"OW, that was my knee you ung-"
"Ow!"
"God send you to hell-"
"Give. me. the.-"
"If I can't eat rhubarb pie in my own KITCHEN, CLARENCE, MY OWN KITCHEN! Where does that leave our marriage?"
"You think I'm going to let you eat HER baked goods?!"
"Better than that hideous dress you made me wear two weeks ago-"
"That was SILK!"
"IT WAS HIDEOUS AND MADE MY THIGHS STICK TOGETHER!"
"Oh, go iron your hair, you little sissy."
"Make me! Oh, forgot, ma'am, I'm eating next door's pie..."
"ARGHHHHHHH!"
"GOOD GOD-"
"OW!"
"PUDDINGTON!"
"MY PIE!"
"...well, technically.., it's Macy-"
"YOU LOUSY MONGREL!"
"Clarence!... Stop!... Can't breathe!... Please, I love you.... I've... always loved you. They meant nothing, all that.... Water. All water under the bridge, eh?..."
"Harold..."
"Yes. Yes... I'm here. Just loosen... the grip..."
"Oh... Oh, Harold. It's... It's just... it's the mats!"
"..."
"So wet, all the time!"
"...Eh?"
"I come out from the shower and there they are, sitting neatly- because I fold them straight away out of the dryer, you know. They don't come with those lines already in- all arranged in a row, and then I STAND ON THEM, with my WET FEET! And they get WET!"
"Clarence, love. Come here."
"Oh Harold!"
"Have you always worn this scented powder?"
"Today's my first try. I only put it on my neck because it says on the packaging it could upset the thinner skinned areas."
"It's a lovely rose scent."
"Isn't it?"
"Mmm."
"Harold? Are you working out again?"
"Quite. I do get a few bench presses in after work most afternoons."
"You can surely tell."
"Can you?"
"Oh, yes, very muscly and strong."
"Good."
"Harold, dear? Will you help me clean up after I blow my nose?"
"Of course, love. Here, I'll set this chair right and you can sit down a while."
"Oh, my knight in shining armour!"
"Well... I can carry ten cans of paint at a time..."
"So strong and handsome! It's a marvel every day!"
"Marvel at yourself, Clarence. The wonder of beauty and elegance that shines upon you is everlasting..."
"Oh! God! Take me here, in the kitchen!"
"Yes! let's..."
"We can have another..."
"Another?"
"Another baby, Harold, oh, thin-"
"Now hold on a minute!"

~

Which song is on constant repeat?

Maurice sat in his sunny spot on the window sill, sneering. His first thought this morning had been about the peace and quiet he would experience once The Girl left for the day, but alas! She had not left! She had opened the curtains so the sunlight spilled away from his dry, cracked skin and into her room, warming up her dirty carpet and rouge-coloured clogs and pile of dusty papers that had been sitting on her bar-heater since the dawn of time, probably.
Psh!
Then she had bounced around with an ungodly amount of energy, using that white, vibrating square non-stop and dazzling with brightness and sparkles that- in his world- should mean she had some toxic illness preceding death, but here, in this upside down mad world, merely meant she was 'busy making plans for the day ahead'.
Well! Sorry if he didn't believe a word of that! Maurice scratched his eyebrow as he watched The Girl play around with another, larger, silver square. Her attention was admittedly absolute. He narrowed one eye (the eye that could see her), uncomfortable with the act of throwing niceties to undeserving people, even if This Girl would never hear his compliments. Look at her,  he grumbled in is head. Look at the way she sits with her legs crossed. Are we in a type of prayer meeting? Does she know her blazer is on backwards?  
He focused back on the lump of ceramic shit that commanded his attention most days.
Maurice is a gnome. He went to those YIG meetings and took the flyers in his thick, grasping hand, because he had wanted to know more and his hands always wanted to grasp. He liked to do things. He was industrious. Some days, when he wasn't staring at this monstrous ballsack, he liked to imagine he was really a dwarf who had been kidnapped and forcefully brainwashed into becoming compliant and perfectly-painted. He liked to believe there was an alliance forming, a rescue mission arising, perhaps somewhere in the East as that is where most good things rise.
"We can take the underground railroad! It should be round in twenty," came a voice and Maurice jerked his seeing eye to the activity.
Oh, The Boy is here. Maurice fumed quietly. Now they're going to start that jig again, as if I haven't seen enough bloody Kilts!
"The underground!" retorted The Girl in a dismal voice, "Yeah whatever. I thought they closed that ages ago."
"Closed?" asked The Boy as he wandered up and down the small amount of carpet place available. The Girl sure did know how to keep guests uncomfortable and pacing.
"Went down for repairs, you didn't know? They found a body, half an arm, and no teeth-"
"Wait, no teeth?"
"None."
"Hmm." The Boy stared at the piles of shoes and display-flamingos crammed around the bookcase, as if they would give him some inspiration. Maurice chuckled mildly. "What about ninth?"
The Girl shrugged, "Could do."
"Come on! We can take a gnome and blow it up!"
What now? Maurice blinked. He watched as The Girl looked over her scattered collection of gnomes. He squinted. She didn't look the least bit apprehensive! Hadn't She spent hours upon hours painstakingly painting each and every one of them, only to set them some place high where all they could do was stand and stare? Didn't she know how tiring that was?
"Come on..." wheedled The Boy. Look at Him, all wired up and restless. Maurice glared at His thin, shiny belt. He used to have one exactly the same!
"Yeah, alright," The Girl said, getting into the rhythm. "Let me make a few calls."
"Which one?"
What fucking traitors. Maurice tried to look for each gnome but couldn't due to his position, and he wondered for the thousandth time why She had placed him sideways on this ruddy windowsill, and he cursed Her stupidity, Her spontaneity, Her relaxed opinions and Her constant sleep-talk of magic hats and enchanted pumpkins. For god's sake, didn't She live in the real world at all!?
"Ummm..." The Girl glanced around pleasantly. The Boy glanced also, but in a shifty manner, and Maurice swore He shot a glance his way. "The fucking tards", Maurice muttered aggressively. Pick the pink one! The pink one! All he does is sit and smile and it's fucking LUDICROUS!
She did look up at the gnome with the pink jacket and glittered, yellow hat. Maurice tensed. His seeing eye started to water as he stared as hard and as furious as he could up at The Girl. His other eye gazed unseeing into a wall of red.
For the love of every unholy dick out in the world...
She stood up and Maurice almost yelped. "The monochrome gnome! Take that one."
You fucking cuntstop.
Maurice felt Her cool, thin fingers enclose his head as She picked him up lazily and without respect and handed him over to warmer, longer fingers that gripped his torso. Colours flew around him and he had to admit, he felt a little motion sick.
"The black one!" The Boy exclaimed without originality. "The best one!" claimed The Girl lamely.
They both deserved to rot in the furthest pit of hell, the darkest cave of Hades, the painfulest-
"So ten then?" said The Boy happily, suddenly flipping Maurice about, ignorant of his sensitive digestion issues and eczema patches on both legs.
The world whirled and bounced. His head swam. His mouth was unused to this movement and he, embarrassingly, started to drool but doubt The Boy noticed so he didn't worry. The Girl said something and The Boy stopped flipping long enough for Maurice to catch sight of his lumped-up window-sill companion. How happy and peaceful he looked. Maurice tried to focus between woozy blinks at this real garden gnome with whom he had never spoken to. All those sandwich lunches in the sun, all those bird-watching games seen with one eye, all those midnight conversations under the moon and fits of giggles while listening to The Girl rave on about a potted Geranium losing its spark or her 'Durnham' dying before she could finish reading it more crack stories of madness.
Durnham, thought Maurice as he lay rather comfortably, if a bit stiff, in The Boy's hand. Probably code for obscene sex. He should make an anonymous call and have Her locked up.
"Yeah, he's the worst one... ugh."
Blasphemey! Maurice perked up at the injustice of this conversation. She had painted him entirely black because She was bored of colour. She had the real problem here, not him. She was 'ugh', whatever that was. No doubt more code for how incompetent and utterly obscure She happened to be.
The Boy laughed at something unfunny and walked off. Maurice caught a last glimpse of the marvellous gnome he called lumpy, the gnome who had actual curves and shades, with real features, wrinkled hands, folded boot fabric and a belt with visually genuine buckle holes. The realest garden gnome who sat there smiling but never talked or ate or giggled because his realness didn't extend past his exterior.
Well! Maurice thought, as his world turned and turned so the real and unreal merged together like different flavours of melted ice cream in the same bowl, he may be the realest gnome around, but I am going on an adventure! I am going to see the underground and the body without teeth and the-
He stopped, horrified.
"Come on, then!" called The Boy from a dark area with fluffier carpet and immensely more paper piles than that air-headed female. "Get a move on!"
"Yeah yeah, keep your hair on!"
Maurice was distracted by a book titled: 'How tall is my grass? and Where to put my spare awning?... Household hints you never knew you needed!' and he thought, What the fuck is this shit?
The Girl appeared carrying a large backpack that was outrageously too big for her weak little arms, The Boy bounced on his feet in some form of excitement or mental retardation, and Maurice suddenly remembered Their earlier conversation.
Good lord. These lousy moronic fuckwits are going to blow me up!


[All language and representations are extremely fictional due to the 'voice of Maurice', who is a very angry, cynical gnome and uses verbal profanities as often as a coffee addict would drink finely brewed coffee (which is often, as I happen to be one).]  (4__4)v

Have we been eating these all night?

An evil glint sparkled in Topiary's eye as he watched Mazarin hold up a large piece of glass.
"You could sell that," he remarked casually, kicking a piece of yellow lego. It rolled over the carpet and under a thin-legged table made of splintering, soft wood.
"Maybe," Mazarin nodded. She held it up over her eye and peered at him. "Hello."
He said, "Will you keep it in the key drawer, then?"
Mazarin huffed in such extravagance that her arms swung down and Topiary leaned forwards, horrified with his arms outstretched, ready to leap if it should come to that, and she said in a ringing voice, "Not everything has to go into the key drawer, Topiary!"
"Where else would it go?!"
"Oh you're so mortified about every little thing!" her arms swung back and forth. The fingers of her right hand gripped the glass tightly so little patches of yellow formed on the tips. Topiary watched in alarm. "You're cutting off your circulation! Here-"
He lunged forwards.
"Hey! Fuck off!" Mazarin jumped back. His eyes were ginormous. Had they been that way this morning when she'd met him in the kitchen, half-dressed in a pair of tweed trousers and a daisy patterned dressing gown??
"You're going to sleep with it!" he yelled in frustration.
"Hah!" she flung her arms out in triumph. "Maybe I will!" And she jumped back again as he took a swipe.
"I'm over the line now buddy! Surrender and bow!"
Topiary looked down at the connection line that separated the thin, light blue living room carpet from the fluffy cream-coloured sitting room carpet. In all of Topiary's life he had never known why a house should have two rooms for the same purpose. One room to sit and read the paper by a light fire, maybe with a fan in case he grew too hot and a small bookshelf to set up his typewriter on, should be all anyone needed.
Although, now that Topiary thought about it, perhaps two rooms had merit. Why not write in one and read in the other? Keep the two activities entirely separate. All that confusion! So many muddling occurrences jumbling together that should be laid out neatly and smoothed over. How does one achieve anything with all that mess! No, here was an idea that could shake it all up, spill it all over and sort it all out. Separate rooms! Two different arm-chairs, two different types of lamp, two sets of wall painted in different shades of white (is there even such a thing? he thought, gasping). Two types of alcoholic beverage, two frog figurines with only one arm, maybe even two pairs of slippers! He'd match them to the carpet! Why, even two sets of his hair piece. He could change them every day and say goodbye to his current pastime of wringing out the sweat to pacify the itching!
"Mazarin..." he said slowly, as if mulling an idea over in his head or trying to remember something important.
"Surrender, buck face!"
She probably meant 'fuck face' but he couldn't be sure that two pairs of everything wouldn't flame his soul into further creative ambition. Were two rooms enough?
"Topiary, yoohoo! Let's get some pasta from Vincent."
"Mazarin!" he said suddenly, looking up with a stricken expression that usually precedes news of a terrifying nature.
Mazarin shouted something incoherent, lunging back awkwardly and, once again, flinging her arms out in surprise. The piece of glass sailed through the sitting room and smashed through the window as Topiary called out in horror: "I haven't got two hair pieces!"

~

god I'm gonna miss you when you... s m i l e