Like He Knew What He Was Doin'

Neffydd listened to the public transport driver and a Gnomish passenger chit-chat about idle things, both trying their hardest to impress a plump Pixie. It became more and more obvious that the Gnome was far outmatched by the chocolate skinned, half Mountain Giant driver as the conversation progressed.

With little gems like: "I was gunna go to Jamaica last year, until I heard that they got the snow that we were supposed to get." and "I don't wanna go to the Bahamas! I'd get stuck in that 'Devil's Triangle'!" How could she do anything but close her eyes, lean her head back and listen to the entertainment?

"Don't get me started on the Bahamas, man!" The driver shook his head. "I really don't want to take a cruise there, now that I heard what happened. Did you hear about that?" The driver must have been as entertained as Neffydd was to be engaging the idiot Gnome again and again.

"Naw... What happened?" The Gnome was predictable.

"I heard it in the news about that cruise captain that abandoned ship when it was sinking and let all the people drown." The driver's voice was dramatically 'stage hushed'.

"What?" Neffydd could almost feel the Stupid oozing out of the Gnome's mouth. "The Titanic?"

The only sound that you could hear in the stunned silence at the front of the transport was the sound of the engines and jaws dropping in disbelief, before the driver burst into peals of amused laughter.

Well... That escalated quickly.

One Friday night, not too long ago, Warder Sullens, Neffydd, Sutek, Shael and Jaeredd all went to this neato bar in Armory Square called Al's Wine and Whiskey Lounge. They have a great selection of alcohol that filled the seven foot shelves of the barback spanning a length of around twenty feet. There are couches to sit on and games like jenga to play with as you get schnockered :-D

They drank and played and talked and enjoyed the evening. They closed out the bar then left for Neffydd and Sullen’s place.

When they got home they broke open a bottle of wine but Shael was feeling weepy. (You know, let em cry, give em another drink and in five minutes, all good?) well, they went to Neffydd’s rooms so Shael wouldn't bring the entire party down but Sutek wanted to screw her so wouldn't leave her alone and she went into hysterics.

Neffydd told him to chill and he got violent. (Jaeredd later told Neffydd that Sutek drank a six pack of beers while she was calming Shael.) Warder Sullens escorted him out and they called their cabbie buddy to come get him.

Warder Sullens went to get money for the cab. While he was gone, Sutek broke into the house and started screaming at Neffydd that the cabbie was gonna shoot him... (No one has any clue how that came about...) Tomoe manhandled him back outside because she’d had enough.

Warder Sullens came into the warren through the back way so Sutek wouldn't fight him and they decided to call the cops since Sutek was convinced the cabbie would shoot him. That was when Sutek started kicking the door so hard that the core crushed and it started to buckle.

The cops got there, one stag faun one female pixi. Sutek got into the lady's face and started screaming at her. Ugh... He got a face full of ashfalt then said: "I'm sorry, dude! I didn't mean to resist ya!"

??????? Again, not a one of them had any idea... They finally carted him off at 5:30am after scolding us for giving him alcohol. He's three and a half decades old and his mother wasn’t there. How do they expect random friends to keep him from doing whatever he pleases?

Here Come the Gremlins

Thump... Slap!.... BANG!

"What are you doing?!" Neffydd asked Warder Sullens as he slapped at the hospital tray table in front of him, jostling his food and drink. He glanced at her quickly with wild eyes then went back to his pursuit.

"I have to catch it or it will keep running around; scares the children." He glanced off to the side and swiped at the empty air in front of him.

"Baby..." Neffydd caught his hand, careful not to jostle the I.V., but he jerked it away. "Hun, there's nothing there." Warder looked at her again with more attention this time.

"What?" He was startled, his eyes wide with fear. "There's a thing on the table... it looks like just a head... and another climbing the cupboard!" He pointed to the cupboard behind her. She dutifully looked at the empty cupboard. There was nothing.

"No baby, there's nothing there..." She looked at her life-mate with concern. This was not a good sign. The surgery had gone well and he was recovering rapidly; but suddenly she wasn't sure he was doing so well at all.

She left to find a nurse, the nurse quickly evaluated him and set in motion a series of evaluations by a string of people that took hours to complete. Finally a doctor from Neurosurgery evaluated him and decided to detox Sullens from all of the narcotic pain relievers, leaving him on acetaminophen and low dose of Fentanyl.

The nurses and Neffydd worked on a solution for better pain relief but could only come up with the use of ice packs to help reduce the swelling on the surgery site.

Neffydd worried, but his recovery wasn't over yet. There was still a lot of time for improvement.

Review: How To Tell A Perfect Ghost Story, By: R.C. Gillan

"Hi, Sweetie :-)" Katryni's words popped into Neffyd's mobile com while she was sleeping, "Rich wants you to read his new story. He's interested in seeing what you think."

"Sure ^.^ is that the published one, or another?" Neffydd replied a few hours later when she woke up.

"The published one." Katryni replied right away. "You can find it in my Social Network wall."

Neffydd found the post on Katryni's wall and clicked on the link. She then downloaded an application to her mobile com that would allow her to read the book once she had purchased it.

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/How-To-Tell-Perfect-Ghost/book-YFLTd-x8rE6b91xjewwA_w/page1.html

"OK, I got it." She reported back to Katryni, "This should give me something to read on the way to The Pit tonight!"

"LOL! Good!!" Katryni replied, "It's a short, but a few minutes of good reading. He wants you to tell him what you think, when you're done."

They traded more pleasantries for a bit, then Neffydd started to read. When it was time for dinner to be made, Neffydd found herself wanting to return to the imaginative tale.

The story followed the less than lucky-in-love Terry Barker, who had his heart stomped on and decided to move into the country to heal. As he goes he narrates his experience as a how-to on writing ghost stories and why he should have known better.

He thinks nothing of it when he buys the perfect house for the perfect price and is able to close the deal quickly, as if the home is practically being thrown at him. Everything seems to be going great until strange things start happening in the hot August nights.

Terry's dream home quickly descends into nightmares when a spectral woman starts making nightly visits, then begins to clue Terry into her death-long torture.

Neffydd remained enthralled by the story, several times finding icy chills goosing her spine between her wings. She finished it on the public conveyance and sent her thoughts to Rich:

"The story was captivating and imaginative. It was a quick read, but held onto the spirit of the ghost story very well. I would have added some more descriptions, but what you have sets the scene very well."

:}¥{:
I recommend this story for anyone who needs to pass the time but doesn't want to start a novel. I read it quite thoroughly, to the end, be-cause Rich challenged me to find his one grammatical error. Don't worry, Rich, your error isn't that bad. ;-)

Monkey Brains

Neffydd and her father had a weird relationship. Take baking, for instance:

*»~:}¥{:~«*

12:17 AM Neffydd: mmmm I just had a mild epiphony... raisins in monkey bread. That is all

(58 minutes later)

1:15 AM Flash: Is that like the brains of monkey bread??

Neffydd: Or the shriveled eyeballs...

1:16 AM Flash: That should be green grapes baked then added.

Neffydd: ... you mean raisins? lol

1:17 AM Flash: lol, Green grapes - not concord

Neffydd: Sorry... Golden Raisins? :-P

Flash: Now ya gots it

1:19 AM Neffydd: hehe... I could seriously trick that out to look like brains and eyeballs...

1:21 AM Flash: How about baking the monkey bread then breaking them open on the top, inserting a (very small easy to peel) orange then adding the golden raisins?

1:23 AM Neffydd: If I bake a badly peeled blood orange in it then it would shrivel and the bread would get slightly gooey, just like I imagine the inside of a cranium to be.

1:24 AM hmmmm... My friends' party is coming up...

1:25 AM Flash: lol

1:26 AM Neffydd: Oranges, cinnamon & grapes would be soooo good too!

Flash: You could make an icing and add red food coloring too.

1:27 AM Neffydd: Yeah! but inject it under the 1st layer so it bleeds when cut into.

Flash: Yuch...

Neffydd: EXACTLY! HAHAHAH

Flash: if you can make them small enough, they will bleed out when they bite into them.

1:28 AM Neffydd: ooooh.... monkey bread muffins in coconut shells. Just leave the fur on
1:29 AM ^_^  I WANT TO MAKE THISSSSSSS!

Flash: lol

A Little More to Love (Prelude to GTFO)

"I got great news babes!" Byron Way's message popped onto the screen of Neffydd's mobile com. "I'll be able to come to the potluck on Monday!"

"You mean tomorrow?" Neffydd typed back. She hadn't even thought about the weekly potluck yet. She had been mightily distracted by enjoying her weekend off. There had been absolutely nothing to do and it was rather relaxing. This meant work... so she got right to contacting her circle of friends.

Monday Neffydd awoke early, due to falling asleep at some extremely early hour and started preparing for the onslaught of food related event planning. There is a complex mathematical formula for what time to tell each set of her friends to be there so that they all arrive in the same hour.

She also had to bring Sebbock to school to get some papers signed. So she ushered Sullens and Sebbock onto the public transit carriage and braced for a ride where she had to artfully answer every question Sebbock could think of.

About late morning, when all of the prep work had been done; Warder Sullens came into the kitchens, mobile com in hand, with a story of things that Aine had been telling people then showed Neffydd the display.

"Oh, for the luv of... tell her to message me!" The rest of the afternoon was spent cooking and burying the hatchet with her ex-lover, Shael. The trouble didn't come so much from the hatchet burying as finding the damn thing first.

She had actually just gotten the painful, 3 year long ordeal smoothed over and ready to organize into digestible chunks when the message popped in: "I'm on my way, babes." Great... Byron was not a favorite person, but tolerable in small doses.

"OKies." She sent to Byron; then opened another solid message to Shael.

"Wanna come to our weekly potluck?" She pecked out on the smooth surface of her mobile, "There's gonna be a bunch of people here and we can pick on my 'boyfriend'... That's always good for entertainment."

"I haven't got transport." Came Shael's reply. "I don't live in the city anymore."

"Yeah, I know..." Mutual friends of theirs had felt the need, over the past years, to tell Neffydd everything that went wrong in Shael's life... Neffydd found it annoying, really. "Let's see if one of my friends has the time to help us. Would you come if you had a ride?"

"I could be persuaded..." She replied quickly, "I would have to bring the lil monster along."

"Of course! I couldn't bear to be the one to tell her she couldn't see her boys! lol..."

Neffydd thought of Jaeredd first. Maybe he'd be willing to drive if Neffydd put some gas in the tank...? She messaged him and he replied right away that "Of course!" he would help get Shael to the party.

The plans were set, Byron arrived then Jaeredd and Neffydd left with Jaeredd to get Shael and her minion. Thirty minutes later, after driving up to the northern suburban part of the sprawling city and back, Neffydd walked into her party going, full blown, without her.

Neffydd loved that her parties were so well planned that they could go on without her having to micro-manage them.

The night proceeded smoothly with pot roast and drinks had by all. Some people left after dinner and there were just a few left to drink and be merry.

Somewhere toward the end of the night, Shael noticed that the eggnog that they had been adding butterscotch Schnapps to had high fructose corn syrup in it and winced. That was one of the human inventions that she detested the most.

"Like you have to worry about it." Byron goaded her. His feet were possessively in her lap as they had been for most of the night. "You aren't fat."

"No," Shael agreed with him, a bit defensively, "I know I'm a skinny girl. But I don't want to be the girl who used to be skinny but isn't any longer because she did nothing to keep healthy."

"That's a good bit of reasoning..." Jaeredd started but Byron cut him off.

"It's like you and Neffydd..." Byron told Shael matter-of-factually. The absolute dead silence of the room created and emotional event horizon that even Byron could sense. He looked around the kitchen to every pained face and smiled. He thought he was finally getting his fifteen minutes from these people!

Jaeredd broke the momentary silence by issuing a warning: "Dude..." He said gently, "I wouldn't finish that thought out loud."

"No, it's OK." Byron assured him. "Just let me finish."

This statement was greeted by the room practically exploding with astonished reprimands from slightly drunken fae-folk. "No!", "Oh, migod!", "Do not say the next thing."... even Shael's ten year old girl child was screaming: "Shut up! Don't call Neffydd FAT!"

Over this din, Byron managed to force out his statement. "Shael, you are skinny and hot; but even though Neffydd is heavier, that just means there's more of her to love."

More ice-cold, shocked silence as a few people moved to block Neffyd's access to weapons. The silence was broken, finally, by a child's pained groan. "Did he just call my mom fat?" Sebbock, the socially disinclined, asked. Even an Autistic child could see it.... ouch. Neffyd broke into hysterical laughter.

Neffydd looked to Shael, who had gone pale with emotional mortification. Neffydd jerked her head toward the front of the house then looked at the time display on her mobile comm. Shael nodded and looked at her mobile too.

"Oh, Jeeze... I didn't realize it was that late!" Shael exclaimed. "I was supposed to get my kid in bed hours ago!"

They asked Jaeredd to bring Shael and her daughter home then all headed for the door but Byron slipped in between Neffydd and Shael to block Shael's progression.

"Can I get your number and maybe FaceBook?" Neffydd's mouth dropped open and a slow anger started to burn as Sutek snickered and Jaeredd coughed/gagged at Byron's audacious request.

Shael was able to extricate herself from Byron's lecherous grasp and they finally made it to the parking lot piled into Jaeredd's vehicle.

"Thanks, for driving... we needed to get the hell outta there before I cut him." Neffydd told Jaeredd.

"Yeah, I kinda figured." Jaeredd replied. "I couldn't believe his audacity!"

For the remainder of the trip, and even after Shael and her young one were dropped off, the conversation was about processing the utter shock of the out right disrespect.

When Jaeredd and Neffydd returned to The Lair, she looked about the lounge and Byron was nowhere to be seen.

"Did the Shit Head leave?" She asked of no one in particular.

"Oh, shit..." Sutek's bird-like features set in a look of apprehension, "That's never good."

"No, he's still here." Sullens replied. Byron re-entered the lounge just then. Out of difference to her strong sense of polite manners, Neffydd endured about half an hour of idiotic babbling before Byron finally tweaked the last nerve.

"I'm hungry..." Byron announced, as if anyone in the room cared at that point.

"OK," Neffydd replied, "There's plenty of left-overs and the beef is still hot.."

"I'll just go get my sandwich from the car." Byron left, returning shortly with a sub-shop take-out baggie, a brief case, a small suitcase and a EatherCom mobile terminal carry case. Neffydd had finally been insulted enough.

"How do you think you have made me feel tonight?" Neffydd demanded. "Hitting on my Ex, insulting me to get into her good graces, hounding her for her contacts while I stood right next to you..." Neffydd's voice was getting louder and louder as she vented her emotions.

"I didn't mean-" Byron's eyes were wide.

"BULL SHIT!" She interrupted him. "You knew exactly what you were doing and you kept doing it. Six people screaming at you to not say something isn't a subtle hint that you could possibly miss, you ass..." Neffydd got up out of her seat and headed toward her sleeping chambers. "You know what? I've become too emotional. I'm going to bed."

Neffydd stormed into her room, slammed her door and threw herself belly down onto the comfy bed. A few moments passed where she could hear murmuring coming from the lounge, then a knock on the door.

"Neffydd?" Sutek's muffled voice came from the other side of the solid wooden partition. "Are you really going to bed?" He opened the door a crack, just in case she was still in a mood to harm people.

"I don't feel like starting an incident."Her reply was muffled by her soft pillows and blankets.

"Well, then i guess we'll just have to move the party in here..." They proceeded to drink and talk. After a while Sullens came in to inform them that Byron had left for his home and they all wound down for the night.

Tomoe Is An Adult! ... Or Is She?

"What do you ant to do for your birthday party?" Neffydd asked her sister, Tomoe Oda, with a huge grin.

Tomoe swiveled her seat to glare at her older sister. Neffydd loved annoying her and this was the perfect opportunity.

"I don't know..." Tomoe said gruffly. "Nothing."

"Nope!" Neffydd's voice was almost unbearably sweet. "We should have a party! It's your twenty first, after all..."

"Ugh!" She groaned. "OK, will there be drinking?"

Neffydd looked at her younger sister as if she were trying to grow wings by glaring at things.

"Of course there'll be drinking!" Neffydd's brain just couldn't absorb some of the maligned thinking Tomoe was capable of. "... twenty first birthday without drinking..." She muttered as she walked from the room tossing a few solid state messages to her friends.

The weekend went quickly. Neffydd had to spend Saturday at The Pit but she had Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday off.

Sunday all the fun started.
First off: Neffydd's friend, the Incubus Warder Llushos, stopped by early to wish Tomoe a Happy Birthday and spend some quality time.

Neffydd was just finishing off Tomoe's Birthday cake, a triple-tiered double chocolate affair with Chocolate-Maple butter cream frosting that Neffydd had whipped a little Irish cream into for flavoring. The icing was lathered on thick between the layers and around the outside then a layer of thin-rolled white fondant was laid over it all, moulded to the shape of the cake and painted green. Then Tomoe decided that she wanted green and red spider webs and spirals all over it. Neffydd sighed and started painting.

Llushos showed up just in time to help create an inventive cover for the garish monstrosity of a confection and put it up for the party later.

After Neffydd and Llushos diverted them selves with quality, in-depth conversation and a luncheon at The Gem, he left to tend his herds (as all Warders are wont to do.)

The landlord she had spoken to about an appointment to view a new lair called to postpone so Neffydd returned to her bed suite for a nap.

She woke with just the right amount of time to ready herself for the party. Shower, lotion, powder, scent, clothes, make-up, hair... good thing she wasn't going out tonight! The party would be right here, in the lair. While she readied herself she convinced her sister to put on some of Neffydd's prettier clothes. Once Tomoe was in girl clothes instead of her usual boyish garb she decided to have Neffydd apply a few layers of make-up for the special occasion.

The Night Elf, Jaeredd, was first to arrive coming to the lair's lazy lounge as soon as it was dark enough for him to be out and about.

Neffydd's old friend and love apart, the centaur Gulzar Rux left a static voice message for Tomoe, that made her pale blue eyes well with tears. He recounted a few good times they had and professed his undieing brotherly love for her.

A few more people showed up and some more contacted them by voice or solid on Neffydd's com.

Tomoe maintained her dignity while getting completely sloshed and having the time of her life. They danced and drank and ate... Teri gifted her a handmade ring while chanMaelgwyn pooled their cash for a set of matching rings/earrings/necklace all with spiders and webs molded on. Jaeredd brought out pumpkin flavored fudge from a local grocer and a bottle of butterscotch schnapps. Tomoe squealed appropriate thanks for every gift and made use of every one at once.

Soon people started to filter out. Their favorite drinking vid was playing in the background and both Neffydd and Tomoe had drunk themselves to a stupor. Naps were in order.

All-in-all...? It was a wonderful night.