Time: Thursday, 26 August, 1999
Place: The Fiendish Glow, and a park in Toronto
Follows: Vampbear on walkabout
Pen, and MacHeather are real and are used with permission.
[The Fiendish Glow, Thursday, 26 August, early evening]
"Pen? Pen?" Brenda poked in and out of the office, the supply rooms, and the two dining rooms looking for the Fiendish Glow's senior manager. She finally found her coming out of the "Ulsterman's" wine cellar, clipboard in hand.
"What's up, babe?"
"Open Circle."
"Huh?"
"Some of us FK pagans and friends are having an open Circle tonight. I'm thinking maybe some of them might be able to help us find Chris and Heather."
"Whatever."
"Think you can hold down the fort for a coupla hours?"
"Sure babe, sure. Just be back for closing."
"Robyn said it would only be a couple of hours. It's an open Circle, after all... can't do *too* much that would take up lotsa time."
Pen shook her head, trying to recall what some of the actors she handled had told her about pagan practices. "I still think they've just decided to hole up in a love nest and get some serious (non-PG-13 word deleted) in there," she opined.
"By the way, I'm gonna take Lucius with me; maybe with all the folk in the Circle, he'll have better luck than me in finding our missing couple."
Pen laughed. "You really think the 'Destroyer of Pens' is going to find MacHeather and Chris in the middle of a park, when he couldn't even do it in the middle of the Glow?"
"Tell me it isn't worth a shot?"
Pen shrugged. "Believe what you want, babe."
"Tequila Sunrise, Pen. Tequila Sunrise and giant jalapeno peppers."
"And Clan MacIntyre dress???"(1)
Brenda nodded
"Very well, give it a try."
"Thanks, Pen. Seeya later," Brenda said as she skipped out of the back rooms and ducked upstairs to collect the once-black cat in question
Some time later, in the park
Covered by an old, heavy, raggedy Kinsale cloak, the neon-green Glow Worm edged her way into the park, carrying a blacked-out cat carrier and hoping that the Invisibility the cloak had previously afforded her would make her less conspicuous to those not used to the bioluminescence that was common to all Celtic Glow Worms. She needn't have worried; the park was lit with enough sodium vapor lighting to dampen the effect of her bright neon glow. As she approached the group of participants, she carefully slipped back the hood to expose her neon glow and graying hair, loosed the cloak, and lay it lining-side up on the ground. She placed the cat carrier on the worn quilted crepe-back satin before sitting down next to it, releasing the carrier door, and removing the squirming feline from its confines. She lifted Lucius to eye level and, after a few minutes, caught his gaze
"We must find MacHeather and Chris," she told the cat
"Mreowr," Lucius replied, slipping out of Brenda's hands and running in circles around the cloak, carefully sniffing the air each time. On the seventh circuit, he lifted his nose in the air, lowered it to the ground, picked up a twig between his forepaws and his teeth, raised his head, lowered it, and ran with the twig another three times around the cloak before sprawling out in the center of the cloak and drawing pictures in the air with it. Suddenly, there was a bright flash of light, like a flashbulb going off in the dark..
When the haze cleared, the cat had returned to his usual black color, and the woman, to her normal greyish skin tone
"Mreowr," the cat said, burying the stick in the sand. "Now we're raidy to go in," he purred, dragging his carrier towards the woman on the cloak
Gathering cat and carrier both, the woman slung the cloak over her arm and proceeded to where the group was forming.
(1) Brenda and Pen are referring to the "glows" of some of the Glow Worms, and/or what they did about it. These glows intensify when we encounter the Faer Ones. See http://home.earthlink.net/~webwarren/glow/glow.html for details.
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NEXT STORY: DUNBAR WALLACE STRIKES AGAIN
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