Emlie regained her senses with her head resting on one downed cheek. The darkness clouding her vision receded enough to reveal that she lay in the midst of… stars? Yes! A great dark planar expanse flecked with numerous redwhite glowing specks. I’m lying upon the night sky!

But how had she arisen thus? What kept her aloft? Had she hung here insensate through nightfall, or had she ascended into a region of otherwise obscured daystars? Also what was the intrusive glow warming the exposed side of her face? Rolling her head so that it rested upon its rear, she looked down upon a blurry expanse of dark-streaked radiant blue. Were those the tracks and water-bodies of the distant world far below?

Emlie had time for only an instant’s vertigo-induced panic before her clearing eyes resolved the tableau into a cluster of denuded tree limbs reaching for the sky beyond. Clearer glances to either side revealed the “star field” to be an expanse of blazing wooden embers. Proper up and down instantly reasserted themselves, bringing with them relief… and a certain chagrin. I’m… flat on my back.

But Emlie was already moving on, too wonderstruck for disappointment. After all, it was no matter that her ascent to the heavens had proven itself a mere shock-addled phantasy – she had clearly nevertheless just been party to something extraordinary! The girl determinedly marshalled her returning faculties, intent on understanding what had occurred.

The next impression sorted out by her shaken sensorium was one of scent: there was an acrid metallic tang to the air, like the harbinger odor of a lightning storm. Her ears rang with the aftershocks of a titanic sound that she hadn’t had time to register. How long was I-?

She focused her resettling wits on the details within these impressions: A cloud of autumn leaves was midway through wafting gently down from the branches overhead. The embers were still cherry-bright but fading rapidly, while those that had landed amidst dry tinder were only just sparking the smallest of fires. Most concretely, as her hearing returned she could still hear thunderous echoes resounding distantly through the neighboring valleys.

Not long. Seconds. But what-? She sat up. And gaped.

A raw, gaping crater had been excavated within the larger depression of the hollow. It was centered on the spot Emlie had been facing a moment earlier… the spot where Gordun had been standing… the spot where the witchball had impacted. Of Gordun there was no sign, save for a single oversized shoe. It lay on its side atop the crater’s rim, its opening emitting a plume of milky smoke. The Glazersgush behind was all a-roil, knee-high waves rippling and clashing confusedly and sending up their own subordinate sprays of foam. She absently noted that the grass around her feet was crisped and steaming, though her hair and dress were inexplicably untouched.

None of this was what dumbfounded Emlie, though; her attention was riveted on the strange man standing in the crater’s smoking heart.

Emlie struggled for adequate descriptors with which to characterize for herself exactly who or what she beheld. But here even her prodigious imagination finally failed her, leaving her baffled and agog. The one immediate conclusion she could reach was that she was surely gazing upon the strangest being she’d ever laid eyes upon.

But beyond that? Short, she hazarded (and no, impossibly tall rather, she instantly corrected herself.) Soft? she ventured. (NO. Somehow quite the SHARPEST individual I’ve ever seen.) Finally: It’s... hungry. This last, at least, no internal voice gainsaid.

The figure at the epicenter (Emlie was undecided as to its gender) stood with its back three-quarters turned to her. It appeared to be staring out at the town with indolent curiosity, judging by the tilt and turn of the head. This was crowned by an improbably contoured top hat, one that widened prodigiously between brim and flattop peak like a tiny skull-squatting thunderhead. The head beneath was hairless, egg-smooth, and framed by knifelike pointed ears. It darted with clipped precision from point of interest to point of interest (like a bird’s, Emlie thought) yet the movements were also tiny, unhurried, somehow languid (no, she amended, more like a cat.) A long neck moored the head to an impossibly thin frame that was evocative of a mantis or a scarecrow, but that nevertheless conveyed a sense of preternatural solidity.

The being was immaculately clothed in a remarkably long-pointed tailcoat, vest over bibbed shirt, and high-waisted tight-fitting trousers with pinstriping down the impossibly long legs. The fabric of the vest wrapping the wasp-waisted midsection was iridescent, oily; it swam in Emlie’s vision, rebuffing attempts to focus on it while making her eyes water. She blinked to clear them… and many subsequent times in frank disbelief. The coats, pants and hat, definitively black an instant before, were now a bloody red. She blinked again. The outerwear was darkest charcoal. Blink… powder blue.

Drawing back wide-eyed in the face of that modest miracle, Emlie again observed the apparition in totality, first noting a pose that was ramrod-erect yet obscenely insouciant. She noted the mincing, exaggerated care it was taking to avoid any contact with the stream. The hummingbird dartings of the head had ceased, its attention now focused across the water on the far tree line. And now came sounds: It was sniffing, hound-like, tasting the air. One such sniff ended in a gagging noise, as if if in offense at the savor thusly obtained. A hand posed daintily, palm-back against hip, before sliding lazily… almost sensually up the thigh yet still arriving abruptly at chest level, there to dip delicately into a vest pocket. The fingers withdrew trailing a scarlet pennant which they whipped blurringly up to face level, trick-flourished, and brought to wafting rest under the unseen nose. The handkerchief facilitated a most theatrical full-body snort comingling utmost delicacy and lusty loutish immoderation.

That snort in combination with the lingering electric odor elicited a sympathetic response from Emlie’s lungs and, before she could check it, she let slip a tiny cough.

The figure spun to face her. It pranced deftly, not so much simply pivoting in place as skip-leaping. Revealed under it, Emlie caught sight of the remains of the witchball. It had split into two fragments that lay one to either side of the beings’s point of appearance. As the feet spun at apex, she registered mirror-buffed leather shoes with square silver shoe-buckles adorning their long tongues, the toes tapering to bee-stinger points. Then down, the heels striking sparks from the earth as they alit, clickCLICK.

Following the sparks, Emlie’s gaze swept up from the feet, over trousers, past the (suddenly azure) tailcoat with its shimmering buttons shaped like plump beetles (or, as hinted at by the subtle twitching of legs, were they in fact live beetles?) and waistcoat (indigo oil-on-water now and, she saw, overlaid with traceries of indescribably delicate golden chain-link.) On over the bib and shirt (blinding white, wing-collars whose edges glinted like well-honed knives) and past a narrow cravat whose trailing strings appeared to writhe as if alive. Up that long, long neck, between the framing bat-like ears, to the head at last… not just egg-smooth, but truly egg-shaped, tapering end down. Not a gentle taper, either, but an impossibly sharp and pointy chin, like the terminus of a lovers’ heart. The skin was profoundly white, bone white, utterly pale to the point of blueish tinge, like Masson’s finest china.

And the face… the hat-brim hid the eyes from view. The highest feature visible on the face was an impossible nub of a nose, triangular nostrils utterly lacking the usual rounded eminences, every bit as sharp as the chin. And below that… she gasped anew as the head tilted quizzically, the upraised chin better featuring that mouth. An instant before it had been a teeny turned-up moue barely wider than the vestigial nose; but as the head canted the mouth had spread, impossibly wide, reaching nearly ear-to-ear and curving into an arc of impossibly avid mirth. The lips thinned to nonexistence as their remnant slit parted to reveal a profusion of perfectly white and conical teeth.

The figure reached up a scarecrow arm, grasped its hat-brim, and swept the hat off of its bald head as it described an inhumanly deep, precise bow. It bent with top hat over heart, almost mocking her nervous clumsiness through its transcendent grace. Then it wrist-flicked the hat into a tumbling ascent and rolled its frame smoothly back upright, perfectly spearing the hat-hole as full height and apex of toss precisely intersected. Through it all the grin remained, albeit toned down to a more human-plausible level of sly radiance.

Emlie realized that her own mouth was hanging open and closed it with a snap. Then she realized that at no point of this proceeding had she glimpsed the figure’s eyes; the flourish had been that inhumanly swift and smooth.

“Umm…. hello, uh, sirrah…?” She faltered, utterly at a loss for protocol in the face of the unprecedented.

The hatted head titled fractionally back towards upright. “MMMmmmm?” The voice was mercurial, effervescent, wind chimes over snake-slither-hiss. It roamed octaves and made deliberate playful mockery of gender telltales. “And what exactly might we be?”

“A… a girl, as it please you, umm, sir.”

“Quite the mouthful. Are such cumbersome trades-names the fashion in your little here-and-now, miss Girl-As-It-Please-You? I recall you Mudsiders used to have much more deliciously evocative names for that particular trade!” It… he, if only by the simple lewdness of his observation… smirked lasciviously at her.

“N-no… no! Not like that, no trade! Just girl…”

“O ho, virtuous titles now… now, now now now. After all, we mustn’t self-assess. Moral jurisprudence is most observer-centric, anyway.”

“I’m… sorry?”

“Tut-tut, and contrition is positively gauche.” The strange man shook his head in mock dismay. While doing so, he glanced almost imperceptibly towards the pieces of the witchball. “Virtue… feh! Why, ‘tis a perfect prison to chain a nature in… human or otherwise. Yet ever are you mortals scrambling to incarcerate yourselves…” He made a gracefully theatrical shrug.

Be it attributable to what was being spoken or what exactly was speaking it, Emlie was having difficulty following. She’d become more and more uneasy as the disjointed utterances mounted each one atop the prior. Finally she could no longer contain her bafflement: “I’m sor- I’m confused. What are you talking about? Where did you come from? Where is Gordun? Who are you?? Tell me your name!”

The stranger gritted his teeth and through them issued a sound like bells over frying bacon. It took Emlie a second to realize that he was chuckling, albeit as a snake or a broken pipe organ might chuckle. “My, you do charge right in, don’t you, dirtling? A bit unbalanced! A bit uncouth! After all, I’ve made no move to flay off your skin and lay bare the wet and glistening truth underneath, eh? My name, indeed!” He shook his head, amused and incredulous.

As the man tinkle-sizzled out the last of his mirth, however, something appeared to occur to him that struck down his jolly mood, and his headshake transitioned abruptly to a theatrically sorrowful head-hanging. “And yet, alas!, for all that the game will grow old very quickly if we don’t give you something to go on, eh? Else you’d go on ‘sirrah’ing me at every turn, no doubt. Or butterbrainedly presume to ask me again for my name. And that, child, would VERY quickly grow unforgivably tiresome.” He took advantage of his dangling head to scan the ground about his feet. “We’ll need something concise, yes… descriptive without overstating. Capturing the essence without capturing the essence, if you catch my meaning. Hmmmm….” The chiming hiss again…. “..aha!”

His head snapped up, the smile one again sliding impossibly wide-open under the top-hat brim, and nodded decisively. He gestured toward a patch of long-stemmed plants bearing tubular purple flowers: “You may call me Foxglove.”

Emlie returned the courtesy. “I’m Em-”

She paused. Why had she paused? My name is my own… until I tell it to this stranger. After that, it’s his too. She frowned. There was something strangely… familiar about all of this.

Could… could it be? Realization struck, and with it knowledge. Information hard won from out-of-fashion books and equally derided Clear Crucible oldsters, harder defended from the plethora of more sensible folk who had castigated her for taking seriously such disreputable nonsense. Could it truly be?

And if so, where was the elation she’d long expected to experience if and when her superstitions should ever be borne out as fact? It wasn’t there. Instead, she felt trepidatious, on utmost edge… and perhaps with good reason. After all, she’d just spent the morning reading a veritable catalogue of “true” stories relating to just this sort of thing, many of them dire cautionary tales. He speaks of a game… Answer to her secret prayers though this creature might be, Emlie was savvy enough in regards his nature to recognize just how fraught any dealings with him might be.

Certain key facts out of her vast store swam to the fore. There was a peerless opportunity for wonder and discovery here, no doubt, but also fantastic danger for the unwary. She could not go blithely. She must step into this game as a player rather than a pawn. She must show from the outset that she, too, had some knowledge of at least the most basic of its rules. There was a power in names, especially in a name such as hers. She must withhold it.

She cast her head around, scanning the bower herself. Then, having spotted floral inspiration of her own growing on its turfy brink, she returned her regard to the stranger and resumed her reply. “-embarrassed to have put you on the spot so. I apologize for my poor courtesty.

“You may call me Rose. It is a pleasure to meet you, Foxglove of Faerie.”

Foxglove had quirked his head again in order to respond with another chimeslither laugh… a laugh he now caged unvoiced behind an endless double row of teeth. He considered the girl with newfound interest and intensity, finally deigning to gaze directly upon her.

And as his gaze roved up Emlie’s body from toe over trunk (lingering an instant on her unusual brooch) to crown, the girl belied the confident poise stemming from having deduced this being’s nature and game by gasping yet again. For the smooth expanse of forehead extending from Foxglove’s hat-brim extended down to the bridge of his nose before giving way to… naught but more smooth expanse! There were no slits, no pits, no protrusions of orbital bone. The skin swept dual smooth eggshell arcs from crown to cheekbone. Foxglove wasn’t eyeless, however; far from it. Crowning the smooth flesh to either side of the nasal bone like obscene cherries topping flatcakes were twin blood-red orbs, blazingly faceted, undifferentiated by iris or pupil. Foxglove quirked his head infinitesimally, and a scintillant shimmer rand across the orbs’ faces. Not tissue, these, but ruby! Yet they saw, and seethed with a most un-gemlike life.

Foxglove frowned in consideration of her, and his rubies conveyed his expression by narrowing top-to-bottom and bulging out to the sides… squinting! The crevice-smile stretched to its fullest intensity, practically threatening to devour the faery’s own ears. It was evident that he was only now truly noticing Emlie for the first time. She wasn’t at all sure that she welcomed the fingernails-trailing-down-her-spine feeling that this scrutiny evoked.

“Oh, aye. Of course you are. Well met, ‘Rose’! You know… there may just be something to you after all…”

Emlie allowed herself a smug smile. Out of this being’s own mouth, admission that she had-

And then he was on her. Looming tall, hunched invasively close, delicate hands pinioning her arms like the iron vise-grip she’d once seen Beidon use to secure a pig-iron work-piece. The rubies hung before her, promising all and nothing. The faery’s scent struck her, a subtle, volatile odor compounded of pine and orange peel, baby-scent and dry old dust, foul putrescence and impending storm. His voice, fittingly, was a stormy growl.

“…but then again, perhaps not. Now that you’ve found the faery, O Cleverest Rose, now that you’ve at once released him and constrained him, what would you have of him? Back into the harridan’s orb, perhaps?” He rolled a shoulder in the direction of the new-blasted crater. His hands gave a merciless squeeze, hunching her shoulders between them. “If so, the girl-child might find to her surprise that her own flesh is more pliably contained therein.”

Released and constrained. What did that mean? She suppressed a whimper. “N-No! No, I-”

“‘No?’ Not one of my favorite words.” The hands were suddenly bracketing her face, their touch whisper-light upon her cheeks. The terrible anger of a moment before dissipated as abruptly as a storm squall before a sudden breeze. The voice became sympathetic, seductive. “Perchance then she seeks the Fairy Gift that her kind are always babbling on about... If so, she’s come to the right place!” The facets dissolved out of Foxglove’s eyes, the orbits now windows into pools of crimson heart’s-blood. “Lesser faekind play at evoking what is asked for, those honest little tricksters.” Held within his eyes, Emlie swooned, the sensation one of drowning in all-pervasive warmth. “Whereas your present servant, humble though he be, is of another order entirely...”

The faery was close by her, though he’d never moved, their bodies all but touching. Sudden un-Barrelbindlike warmth coaxed instant sweat from her skin. The heat engulfing her, Emlie realized fleetingly, was emanating from Foxglove, whose garb now disconcertingly bore the same flushed-porcelain hue as his skin. The heat pulsed, caressed, washing over her in waves like the swelter off Beidon’s forge when he enticed her too close to it. Beidon, think of Beidon, he- But the blood-wells swirled hypnotically, beckoningly, dispersing thought. “Only ask, and I shall grant you that which you truly crave.” The caressing hands formed a steepled corridor framing her mouth, ready to carry forth the only possible expected response. Emlie pursed her lips to give it, blinked rapidly... and withheld.

Fighting for a moment’s clear consciousness amidst the onrush of strange sensation, seeking a vantage from which to evaluate an overwhelming offer. Knowledge trickled through her brain, piecemeal, useless. Fairy offerings... fairy wishes... temptation and consequence, she couldn’t- Oh, Beidon. He was so stolid and sure, his courses all but predetermined, he should be standing here beside her, not Emlie alone. Surely he’d know-

“…Beid… know...” she murmured. And then the spell, trance, moment broke.

“‘No’ yet again!” Foxglove, thwarted by the homophone, hissed as he daintily shoved Emlie’s face (and, by extension, Emlie) away from his own suddenly disgusted countenance. “Is that all you mortals know how to say, then? Or is it that I’m phrasing my queries poorly? Failing to translate?” Emlie had landed unceremoniously on her rump, and the mercurial faery now loomed over her. “What was that customary pro forma inquiry amongst your kind, again? Male to female, prelude to action, heavy on the euphemism? ‘Shall we have dinner’, was it?” Foxglove’s smile was now huge, gaping, unambiguously predatory, and close for comfort. “How about it, sweet Rose? I am nothing if not adaptable to local custom... and I am quite, QUITE hungry. So I shall ask one last time…having released me, what is it that you would have of me?”

Emlie, senses whirling, was at a loss to comprehend much that was transpiring at that moment, but she did understand that, somehow, much hinged on her next response. Whatever strange onus the faery was under clearly chafed him to the point that his impatience imperilled her. Yet an unwise suggestion as to how he might discharge his obligation might prove equally ruinous. Plus, the faery might well be able to sense duplicity or evasiveness, Emlie knew, and he probably wouldn’t much appreciate it. Only the truth would do… but what is that?

The uncertainty and pressure were intense. By rights, she ought to be undone by terror. And yet…

Peering into her interlocutor’s avid eyes, Emlie realized that she felt no panic, only fascination. And reflecting on the oddness of that, she all at once understood the simple truth of the matter: she was hungry too.

Hungry to see what those eyes had seen. Hungry to experience the truth behind the fierce obsession that had earned her a lifetime of mockery. An alien reality stood embodied before her. Emlie been pining for it all her life long, futilely seeking the merest glimpse into it, persevering in the face of a societal disavowal so total that everyone else had mentally consigned it to the real of phantasy; this was her chance to at last see the door thrown open wide. And all of those who’d scoffed, mocked, corrected, obstructed? All those well-meaning teachers and tutors? Fat old Sister Margot? Her father? Even her Beidon?

To the Refuse Heap with the lot of them!

She'd show them the truth they were so blind to.

Fear and confusion were instantly laid aside, threat ignored, caution thrown to the wind. She found her lips shaping the words, voicing her reply to the faery:

“I want to go with you.”

Foxglove paused. For a briefest of moments, the faery’s suavely manic persona slipped; he rocked slack-limbed back onto his heels and stared at Emlie in frank unguarded astonishment. Then, as if embarrassed by the glimpse he’d afforded Emlie of a genuine reaction, he slid back into sardonic scorn with redoubled intensity. A slow smile spread across his face, his insouciant posture returned, and his next utterance was especially thick with sneering smarm.

“Oh, do you? Tell me, to what do I owe this delightful attachment? Do I look to be in need of creature companionship? Is it my wit, my charm, my famed husbandman’s affinity for all that flies, foals, farts?” He leaned in, smirking daintily and with his ruby eyes literally rolling over his brow. “Think of some other boon. Freed me or no, experience is a bitter teacher and tagalongs have long since lost their novelty for me. I don’t do pets, children, or charity, Rose. Tell me now how in you I’m not threatened with some perfectly awful amalgam of all three!”

Ire flared, accompanied by no small amount of panic. She might have spoken in haste, instinctually, yet the feeling that she had demanded rightly grew with every passing second: After all, here was her life's obsession made flesh. A faery, the very embodiment of magick and wonder. Proof that she had been right all along... a proof that, could she but seize it, she might wave in the faces of all of those mockers and doubters. She couldn't let the opportunity slip away! Nor could she let the sleight go unaddressed.

She clambered inelegantly back to her feet: “How DARE you? Do you know who I am?”

Oops. She’d responded indignantly out of habit, and immediately after inwardly cursed herself for her inability to guard her mouth when addressing the potent faery.

But Foxglove did not take offense; if anything, he looked intrigued. “Not in the slightest. Correct my lamentable gap in knowledge, pray.”

“I’m the Lo-” Emlie caught herself… she meant with her high station to impress the faery into acquiescence, but what could ‘Lord Mayor’s daughter’ possibly mean to one such as this? He certainly wouldn’t understand the respect such a role ought to command. Better to paraphrase in terms that this visitor from far places could understand and appreciate. “I’m the princess of yonder realm.” She said this with deliberate hauteur, throwing a blithe gesture in the direction of Clear Crucible.

The rubies flared avariciously. “Royal blood, you say?” The faery could not keep a certain trembling eagerness from encroaching on his voice. “As it happens, Rose, I am, as they say, ‘in the market’ for such a thing.” Foxglove appraised her, down to her toes then back up to her face. The light in the faery’s eyes dimmed, and he rediscovered his sneer. “…Truth be told, though, I had hopes of finding it flowing through the veins of an unspoilt babe, not a withered and used-up hag.” He made to turn away.

“WHAT?!? You beastly so-and-so… I’m barely yet ten-and-six!”

“Rose, I honestly have no idea whether you’re prattling months, years, or decades… human lives are so ephemeral, who can be bothered to grasp the bookkeeping? There’s a reason, you know, why our tastes in human companions traditionally run chiefly to your youngest of children?” And off Emlie’s continued wounded look, “Truly, no offense is intended Rose, but you must admit: you mortals peak early; you’re withering practically since birth.”

That touched a nerve. Emlie found herself suddenly unable to keep a full measure of childish petulance out of her reply: “How novel - you’re practically the first to accuse me of being OTHER than a child! I spend my days indulging in what the worldly adults around me consider the most trifling of fooleries and fancies, hearing no end of ‘act your age’s and ‘grow up’s. Distracted with discredited follies to the point of queerness¸they’d whisper! So preoccupied with infantile fancies, they’d say, that I’ve doubtless never touched a man-”

Foxglove stroked his chin contemplatively. “Never, you say? Now that is a valuable commodity behind the Veil, practically coin ‘o’ the realm…” He turned fully away. His next was a mutter likely intended for himself only, but Foxglove had an impressive stage whisper: “Blessed Queen, but a virginal human princess comes temptingly close to fitting the bill, surely the rest could be— No. No, I simply couldn’t. I shouldn’t. Better late and empty-handed than the bearer of further disappointment. Any more almosts and half-measures could see the end of me...”

He sighed theatrically, smoothed down his (now mopily dun-and-ochre) ensemble, and once again pivoted away on his heel. “Apologies child, but I fear we’re simply not fated to be and I truly must be going. Why, I can hear the chimes of my freedom calling to me-”

“‘Chimes’? You mean the bells? The ‘chimes of the faery bower’?”

Her question had been dreamy, idle, offhand – she hadn’t meant anything by it. She certainly hadn’t expected the extravagant reaction it provoked in Foxglove. Caught by the question midway through his first departing step, he stumbled – the first failure of poise she’d witnessed from the preternaturally graceful faery. His head whipped around, his gaze pinned her. Crouched, caught on an outstretched hand and with one knee grounded, he quietly queried, “You… you say you hear bells, child? For true?”

Emlie hadn’t thought of it until she’d blurted it out, hadn’t thought of it in years in fact, and now once called to account couldn’t at first say whether what she’d alluded to belonged to the realm of fact or of phantasy. Certainly in her memory she had heard them... in fact, she’d always heard them. Faint, tinkling, ethereal: the bells had been there, chiming against the far edges of her perception, for as long as she’d been a visitor to this spot. The telltales of “the Ancient Spirits of the Pan-Baronies,” as she’d teased Beid… the soundscape of her “magick bower.”

But had they been real? As someone who’d always proudly decried the distinction between “real” and “imaginary”, she’d never before had the inclination to explain or debate or question or decide; they’d always just BEEN, wafting through her own unique and special awareness. The Beid couldn’t hear them had only ever been cause to ridicule his lunkheadedness, never to question their actuality. And over time, they’d blended unremarkably into the thousand-and-one other idiosyncrasies that defined her and separated her from the Clear Crucible rank-and-file. They’d become one more piece of what made Emlie Emlie, and consequently she’d ceased to register them consciously at all.

But now the question seemed abruptly gemane… critical… unavoidable. For true? Before the faery’s insight only the truth would do. Could she hear them? All she could do was shake off the terror of being put on the spot and try. Only just recollect the sought-after sounds, call them to mind, invoke them. Only empty mind and ears and open herself to this holy place. Only listen, well and truly listen, with hope and fear and imagination and… yes.

There they were. The bells, chiming on the wind. She’d needed only let her mind drift… “Yes… yes, I hear them. A dreamy song…”

Foxglove stared a moment longer. His gemstone gaze penetrated flesh and blood, probing her soul. Finally, he nodded, a slow and reverent nod full of certain satisfaction. Then, as if to deliberately profane the solemnity of the moment, he leapt back to his feet with a heel-click, boosted by a mighty flatus.

“Well, that’s it then. It’s your lucky day, Rose: I have in my infinite compassion and forbearance deigned to allow you to accompany me.”

The profane display and blithe declaration hit like cold water to the face of the somnambulistic girl – she sputtered and shook herself, flailing her way back to a sense of place and of happening. By the time she had, the faery had turned back towards the rear wall of the bower and taken several steps.

“Wait, I-” But the faery only beckoned after her impatiently. “Do come on!”

Emlie, following his focus, was perplexed. She reached out confusedly in the direction indicated. “To where?”

Reaching back with an impossibly long arm, Foxglove seized her wrist with a captor’s iron strength, only to pump it in chummy camaraderie. “Why, to the realm beyond the beyond, to the domain of incarnate dream and of madness made manifest, to the very cynosure of your hopes and desires.”

He underscored his next words with a flamboyant spread-armed pirouette:

“Pack your bags, Rose – we’re through the Veil for Feyside!”

Next Chapter: 7. Beidon Makes A Splash