In which it's just another day around the house....

"This has got to be some kind of April Fool's joke...."

"What does?" I was wondering what the FedEx package John got today was.

"We switched to Apple?" He didn't sound especially pleased.

"Miskatonic?"

"Yeah. When they said they were upgrading everyone, I expected something like your person's laptop. Not one of these...."

"I thought MirrorBooks were supposed to be good," I said. Not that I know. I've never used a Mac, much less a Mirror.

"They're just - completely different...." He got it booted up. "Now what?"

"Dunno," Scaramoche said, coming over to look. "I've never used one. Just an iPhone. Some of my human-type friends have those.....

......Hey, short stuff, no popping the bubblewrap, 'k?"

"Do you know anyone who knows anything about these?" John was at a loss.

"Swan does, I think. Where is she, anyway?"

"Upstairs. Something about rehearsing for the Spring Talent Show," I said.

"Oh yeah. The Woodstock devas do that every year. I think she said they're doing Oscar Wilde's Salome."

~*~

Meanwhile, upstairs.....

"I would, that they presently bring me in a silver charger..."

"Silver charger?" JT, aka Herod, looked skeptical. "Man, Apple's getting all fancy-schmantzy with this new release. WHich one is this, iPhone ten or something?"

"JT, stick with the script, willya?" Zephyr, aka Herodious, sighed.

"Okay, so - what would you have in a silver charger, whatever the heck that is, oh fair and sweet Salome?"

Swan, in character, took a deep breath. "The head of Jablome."

"It's Jokannan...." Zephyr tried, and failed, to not laugh."What do you think his first name is? Heywood?"

"I told you we should have picked The Glass Menagerie..." Swan said, laughing as well.

"Swan? You got a sec?

"What is it?"

"You know how to set up a MirrorBook, don't you?"














"Yeah. I'll be right down."















"Okay, what do I do here?" John was looking helplessly at the screen.

"Okay, launch System Preferences...."

"Where?"

"Right here. Now, click on Mail, Contacts and Calendars - okay, good, they have your iCloud account all set up already. Looks like your Miskatonic account is set up already along with your Gmail. So click out of that - okay - and click here to open your mail...."









"Is it - oh good, it's syncing up with the server..."

"If they did this right, you shouldn't lose anything. Were these your folders before?"

"Yeah. Looks like everything's here. I just hope I can get to all my stuff. I had a lot of files on the main server,"

"They should have thought of that," she said.





"Okay, here's the new emails...." He opened one and frowned. "Okay, what do you devas know about the Unseelie?"

"They're jerks," Scaramouche said. Well, she actually described them as something else, but I won't repeat it here.

"And they're not supposed to be here now. It's the season of the Light Court," Swan added.

"Okay - but first, how do I hibernate this thing?

"Here. It's called "Safe Sleep."


He hibernated the computer. "So what else about the Unseelie?"

"What's all the interest int he Unseelie?" I said.

"There have been some reports of attempted abductions and a reported attempt at swapping out a newborn in Boston for a changeling," he explained. "It was foiled by an observant nurse in the maternity ward."

"Are they sure it isn't the Seelie?" Scaramouche said. "You can't trust some of them, either."

"The Seelie wouldn't normally swap roadkill for a newborn," he said.


"Um - no. Ew." Swan made a face.

"I haven't heard anything around here," Scaramouche said.

"I haven't, either. I'll ask Tallulah if she has," Swan said.

"Yeah, where is she?"

"Bearsville. Where else? She told me to tell you she ran into one of your New York friends up there last summer."

"Who?"

"Cheetah Chrome. When he was up there putting down the track for "Bad Blood."

"No way. And she didn't tell me?"

Nice. And she didn't tell ME, either? How come the devas get to meet all the cool people?


~*~

Swan is a tan Pukifee Mio. Tallulah will probably be here next month.

Bonus pic - Paisley and Swan

in which Hurricane Gail Storm (Deva) blows into town.....

"Good thing your person had Magic Erasers...." JT was saying. "Sorry about that."

"It's not the first time something self-destructed in that microwave," I said. "You're sweet to clean it up, though."

"Well, it was my fault," he said.

"Not really. You were just following instructions," Scaramouche pointed out.

"Like everyone involved in every conspiracy ever." He gave her a funny look.

"Ah yes. But smuggling plans for a nuclear bomb in your bra isn't on the same level as microwaving a pizza roll for a minute and a half on high," she pointed out.

"Until it detonates, that is," he said.

We were interrupted by a tiny little lightning bolt and an itty-bitty crack of thunder.

"Another supercell?" I looked around. "Don't let it rain on the floor. I don't think it's waterproofed."

"There's not enough humidity in here for it to rain. I'm just trying to...hey, come back here!"





"Got it!" Devon caught the wayward wannabe supercell.

"You went back to brunette," Scaramouche said.

"Yeah. A fortune teller told Rafael a dark woman would be coming into his life," she said. "He didn't believe her, but I didn't want to take any chances."

"Bad storm! You know better than that! Now sit!" I've heard people yell at storms before - heck, I've heard Maddy call them things I'm not supposed to repeat here - but I've never seen a storm do as it was told before. Leave it to Tempest.

"How do you get them to do that?" I don't think Devon ever entertained the idea of a pet thunderstorm, either.

"Mon amis!"

"Devon, mon soeur! I missed you, cherie!"

"Tempest, mon ami!"

"And you, cherie! Mon courageux petit wind deva. Didn't I tell you that you were more than they are, cherie?"

"I didn't know there were others like you," Zephyr said.

"Everyone, this is Gail, Devon's sister. She and Devon were the two storm devas I met after I left Oklahoma. She's the one who worked with Tempest to turn the tornado away from that little town."

"I couldn't have without Tempest and Hawthorne," Gail said.

"I was still a linden tree deva at the time," Devon said.

"One of their storms had taken the life of the tree I'd warded for almost fifty human years," Gail explained. "I was furious. But I decided I'd learn to work the storms myself, instead of waiting to be a victim of another one. That I wouldn't be like them. I'd learn to bring the rains without bringing destruction along with them."

"Then they sent a tornado right at us again," Devon said.

"Both my sister's tree and a little town called Bon Coeur were in its path," Gail said. "But Tempest and Hawthorne were also following them and trying to turn it. We didn't have a wind deva to help us, so we had to try to turn it. And let me tell you, mon amis, that was not easy. I'd been a storm deva long enough to have come face-to-face with a couple of hurricanes, but this thing - mon Dieu."

"It was what humans would call an EF-5," Tempest added. "We turned it mostly away from the town, but part of the business district, the elementary school and the church were all lost."

"But only buildings, ami. No lives. Only what could be replaced," Gail added.

"When the tree I warded reached its natural end, I decided I'd join my sister," Devon said. "Hey, is Rue coming up here?"

"Soon," Gail said. "Rue is our wind deva."

"I asked them to introduce me to Zephyr," Tempest said. "They had Rue by then. I needed someone to work with. Someone good."

"We look out for one another," Gail said. "Which is why we're here...."










(Gail is a tan Pukifee Vanilla. She's named for musician Gail Ann Dorsey and based on a character from my fanfiction days whose name was Tatiana - Tianna for short. And I totally made up the town of Bon Coeur, LA.)

In which - (Re)introducing JT

Hi. And "meow" and all that stuff.

I'm JT.












You may remember me from Halloween 2013. I'm the - unquiet spirit, as Caroline calls me - who that West dude trapped in one of those spirit bottle things. Not pleasant. I managed to break out of the stupid thing and took over the body of a doll Caroline's person was working on. That was okay, but you know, there was stll the chance I could end up back in a spirit bottle. So I had to learn how to take a form on my own. I could have gone back to human, I guess, but I like the idea of being a black cat. So here I am.

Here's a little more of my story. So yeah, basically, I used to be human, but now I'm - well, whatever I am. It's not bad. I mean, I'm still around and all. And I still get to hang around with a bunch of my friends. Some of them are unquiet spirits like me and some are dolls - real ones, I mean - and some are devas like Scaramouche. I used to know her back when in the city. She hung out with the band I was in at the time. I think we were the first humans she made friends with. I'm not sure we were really the best choice, but she liked us, for whatever reason. And she was actually glad to see me.

I'm not afraid of that West guy coming back now - although I really do think he will at some point. He can't get me. I'm afraid he might be able to get to some of my friends - the unquiet spirits, that is - but if he does, I think we can rescue them. If Scaramouche can't, then her friend Devon's boyfriend can. Rafael himself is an unquiet spirit like me, from what I can figure out. I think he used to be some kind of Vodou priest - is that the right term? - from what Devon said. Anyway, he's from New Orleans, the scene of my last stand, just like Devon and her sister Gail and this other friend of theirs - I can't remember if Scaramouche called her Rue or Rhea.

So anyway, this is me.

And no, I have absolutely no desire to chase a stupid laser pointer. So don't even try that red dot thing with me. I'm not that kind of cat.















(JT is a Camilla Dynasty Wong in black. I think a black cat makes a pretty cool shell for an unquiet spirit.)

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.