In which - watch out, sweet thing, a change in the weather is all that you bring.....

"At which point this bloke, who fancied himself to be quite the "new frontiersman," as he put it, tells me that he doesn't need to know more about plants than he already does..." Not everyone is as receptive to devic wisdom as the Findhorn folks. "I decided against telling him he was standing in the middle of a lot of poison ivy. I supposed he was going to figure that one out himself before too long,"

Yeah, giving a deva a hard time isn't any more advisable than giving Mother Nature one.

No such problems here today. Aura talked to Azalea a couple of days ago and it looks like Tori is going to be out of our hair for awhile. We hope, anyway. Scaramouche is expecting a protege - according to her, the word is NOT "mentee" - a young tidepool deva (according to her) who she met while she was down trying to help find that plane that vanished in March....

 "This is the lion's den/I hope you knew that before you came in/this is where the angels and the devils fight/and they're choosing up sides tonight!"

(You have to imagine Hawthorne trying to sing that when she can't carry a tune in a bag....)

She sometimes hangs out with this band from her hometown of Kansas City called the Rainmakers. (Maddy was pleasantly surprised to find out they were still together. Another band she liked back in college that's still around.) Judging from some of the old magazines Maddy dug out to show me, Hawthorne adopted the stovepipe hat from their lead singer  who did NOT accessorize his with a pink bunny dress.

"Hawthorne, what are you doing?" I said. "And who's that?"

"Hey guys, this is Tempest. She's a storm deva. I met her back in Missouri a few years ago when we were stopping a tornado."

"Trying to. We didn't really." Tempest had an accent that Aura told me later was Welsh. "We ended up having to send it into a bunch of unoccupied buildings because we couldn't steer it far enough around the town."

"Oh yeah, right. We kind of took out the church, didn't we?" Hawthorne looked sheepish.

"It destroyed several buildings," Tempest explained. "None of them had any living occupants. It was the best we could do with what little time we had to work with."

"You don't, like, drop tornadoes on purpose?" Not the best way to phrase it, I know, but you try asking that question.

"Oh no, never. I'm just one deva of many who bring rain and snow where it's needed. At least I try to. But I can't call up a cloud if there's not enough water vapor in the air to work with. And sometimes the rains I call up get out of control and the next thing I know, I'm trying to control what your human friends call a supercell thunderstorm."

"Sometimes those things take on a life of their own," Hawthorne added.

"They are alive, in their own way. Some of the most powerful storms are almost sentient," Tempest said quietly. "All devas work with powers we can direct, but not control."

One thing she hasn't worked with before is humans. Unlike the others, her work really doesn't lend itself to human collaboration. So this is a first time for her.....


















Note: Tempest is a Pukifee Dony who arrived about six weeks before I was expecting her. I'm not complaining, though.

Bonus shot - Tempest in action a couple of nights ago.

In which the tree comes down and Scaramouche needs to start telling me stuff....

Not the usual view from the window this morning....

Along with the dead tree, the other trees in the front yard needed some attention. Dead branches removed, a couple of limbs overhanging the house trimmed back, that sort of thing.

Not fun for a deva who works with plants to watch, though, even though it was all needed for the health of the trees.

"It's like watching surgery," Aura said. "But you can tell they're feeling better." She looked around. "I warned them what to expect, so it's not as bad. But still not pleasant."

Here's what it looks like without that tree. There's still a nasty tangle of brush to contend with - this looks like a wilderness, but it's actually where the hedge overgrew into the old lily garden.

"Aura, you're going to have to show me what to do with this. I don't want to just go in and start cutting stuff," Maddy said.

"Why is there so much barberry?" Aura said, looking around.

"It spreads. I think they've classified it as invasive."

"No, I mean, why so much barberry in the first place?" (For those not familiar with barberry, it's attractive, but it gets out of control. And it has thorns. Lots and lots of thorns....)

"My father planted it. Remember, ninety-nine percent of what grows in the yard was his doing. And he didn't always have good judgement in matters of the garden."

"It's a nice plant, but it doesn't really belong here. And it's not very welcoming with all the thorns."

"That was why he planted it. He used to say it was to keep people out. What people, I don't know."

~*~

Aura was happy to see the twin oaks doing well after their trimming.

"Solid and healthy," she said. "You don't usually see that in trees like these."

"Trees? So it is two?" Maddy said.

Aura nodded. "They're two separate trees that, instead of one choking out the other, grew together. If you really look closely at the base, you can see they have two separate trunks instead of a fork. An oak that forked this far down would never have survived."

This is the bottom of the trunk, by the way.

And this is looking up.

















~*~

These are more my style, for obvious reasons.

"If it weren't for al the noise from the trucks, you'd think this was Bearsville," Scaramouche said.

"You were up there?" I said.

"Yeah. I went up there with the New York Dolls when they recorded up there. First time I'd been out of the city. I can see why your guy fell so hard for it."

"My guy?"

"Yeah, John Ashton." She looked around. "I was hanging around there when they were recording Forever Now. They were so cute. I don't think any of them had ever been out of London for any length of time and here they were out in the country."

"You met them?" She really needs to, like TELL me stuff like this.

"Yeah. They're all really nice, although I don't think poor John realized he wasn't seeing me because he was drunk. He was kind of a mess in those days. Sweet, but kind of a mess. He got it together, though. They all did. I have to show you a picture one of their friends took of John and Charlotte, my salamander."

Okay, I need to get some stories out of this girl. Like, a lot of stories.....

In which it's a quiet day.....

The butterfly bush is making a comeback.

It's nowhere near its former glory, but it's coming back, at least. The butterflies and hummingbirds are happy.

And both Maddy (my person) and Aura are glad that this eyesore will be going away tomorrow. We have tree trimmers coming to trim up some trees, remove some dead and overhanging branches - and remove this dead pink dogwood. You'd think I'd like this thing, being that it's pink and all, but it hardly bloomed when it was alive. According to Aura, it should have been taken down a long time ago.

"I don't know why your father was so bent on saving it," she said. "It was diseased. Even a deva could see it had to come down, for the sake of the trees around it - not to mention that it's growing into your electric line going to the house."

"I think it was just to spite my mother. She wanted it to come down, too," Maddy said. "He was like that."

"You warned the tree trimmer about all the concrete and steel pins he put in it?" She looked around.

Maddy nodded. "I told him to watch out for all the junk in the trunk and he laughed and said he'd make a note of it."





"I thought we were supposed to save every tree we could," Daisy said.

"Within reason. Sometimes they need to come down not only because they can't be healed, they could infect other trees around them. At the very least, the energy sent out by an ill plant isn't good for the ones surrounding it. Once they're weakened, they attract all sorts of insects that do further damage - things healthy plants can ward off with ease." Aura looked around. "Most times, if you correct the conditions that are stressing the plant, the insect problem will be resolved without the use of poisons."

Ask a deva. They know.

~*~

Speaking of devas, Paisley is trying out the blonde look. Kind of cool to be able to change your look on a whim like that. I think it makes her and Aura look even more alike, but I don't know. It kind of makes her look like one of the Olsen twins. I don't want to tell her that because I'm not sure I mean it as a compliment....






Meanwhile, Scaramouche got our resident stylist. John-John, to blow her hair out straight. The humidity the past few days was turning it into something resembling a Brillo pad.

Val and I.....














Scaramouche and JT apparently know each other from back in the city. From what Val gathered, she knew him when he was still  - not sure if "alive" is the right word - maybe "corporeal?" - and in a band. She didn't say which band, though.

Interesting.....






We haven't heard back from Azalea yet about the whole Tori thing. She did promise to let us know, though.

In which we're summoned to a meeting....

So - yesterday we received a message by Sparrow Post (I didn't think they were still around - I thought they'd been taken over by Airborne Express!) requesting our presence at a meeting with a member of the Faeire Court in regards to the "incident" on the 31st.

We arrived at the rock on the verge of the woods a little ahead of time. Scaramouche was a little suspicious, but said she didn't think they'd try anything funny in the presence of the devas.

"Pixies and fairies never have gotten along well," she explained. "And we devas have our own problems with them."

"Why?" I said.

"One of the few absolute rules devas have is that you never harm an innocent third party to get back at someone else," she said. "If we have a problem with you, we'll take it up with you directly. We won't harm your animals or your family to make our point. But fairies  - well, some of them won't hesitate to do stuff like lead all your sheep off a cliff to their death or chase your horse into a bog and cause it to break a leg in order to strand you. And then there's the whole business with changelings. If you're going to take another into your care, that means you care for it - you don't just forget about it when you get bored with the joke and abandon it - whatever it is. You take responsibility for your actions and don't harm others."

"Not all of them are like that. Not at all," Aura said. "It's just a few. But you can't always be sure who you're dealing with."

"Like the Firefly fairies. They're good fae," Scaramouche added. "Plus they're a blast to hang out with. Never met one of them I didn't like...."

"Somebody's coming!" Paisley said.

"I'm Azalea, Adjunctator of the High Faeire Court. Thank you for meeting with me on such short notice."

She sat down with us. "First, I want to apologize on behalf of the Court for Toriena's actions. She's been placed in custody and will be charged with assault and violation of an Order of Restriction. I needed to get a victim's statement from Daisy and witness statements from each of you regarding what happened."







"Not to start an argument with you, but Tori did start it." Aura said. "We were just minding our own business when she came up and started with all her garbage...."

"She did. And your actions were entirely justified," Azalea said. "In fact, Scaramouche showed more restraint than I would have under those circumstances."

She took statements from each of us, but said we would not need to be present at the sentencing. She also said she would keep us updated on the outcome.

Paisley said that sounded like it would be the end of that, but Aura and Scaramouche weren't so sure.

"I think we can trust Azalea," Aura concluded after she left.

"She's cousins with the firefly fairies," Scaramouche agreed. "She's fine. If I'd known it was her, I wouldn't have been so concerned. But Tori's family is from those old-school backwoods fairies you just can't trust. I doubt we're heard the last from her...."

Note: Azalea is a Resinsoul Mei in Light Tan. She's been part of the doll family for about two and a half months, but only recently revealed her name and character to me.