In which - Happy 2024?

 Beth: Hawthorne! What are you doing? Don't push my stuff off the printer! Leave Aziraphale and Crowley alone.

Hawthorne: They're in the way.

Beth: In the way for *what?* What do you think you're doing?

Hawthorne: TRYING to work on my San Tropez tan, thank you very much. Your tanning light sucks, by the way, I'm not getting tan.

Beth: That's because it's a grow light for the plants, not a tanning light. They don't need UV radiation and neither do you. 

Hawthorne: How am I supposed to get a tan, then?

Beth: You're not.  Now off my printer. Off off off....

Hawthorne, grumbling: She doesn't have to be such a stupid bitch about it...

Lily: Okay, one - language. Two - I told you to leave that alone and three - freaking get dressed, okay? No one wants to see that!

'Pixies! Right, Spot?"

Fawn: But you're a pixie.

Lily: Yeah, but that doesn't mean I have to like them. Or all of them, anyway. And what are you guys doing?

Lenore: Looking for a cage for Hawthorne.

Fawn: We are *not.* Not yet, anyway. 

Lily: Restraints and a ball gag, then?

Fawn: Again, not yet.

Beth, from the kitchen washing dishes: Don't give me ideas...

Me (Caroline): she doesn't need to. I've seen the kind of fanfiction you read. 

Beth: Hey!

Lenore: TMI, Miss Caroline. T.M.I. (Lowers her voice.) I don't know about Hawthorne. I think she's been hanging around with the wrong fae. She was always kind of hyper, but she didn't used to be mean. She's been hanging around with some other fae and she's starting to act like this girl I used to know.

Fawn: Was that back at the Academy?

Lenore: Yeah. We were friends for a long time, but they turned really mean, One of them was really dumb and mean. Hawthorne is starting to act like them. 

Lily: Yeah, well, your average rock is smarter than Hawthorne, so...

Fawn: Lily, be nice. 

Hawthorne: I wish she'd move her stupid garbage off this thing. And turn the heat up! It's freezing in here!

Me: Or you could, I don't know, get off the printer like you were asked to, stop being an idiot and put some clothes on?

Yeah, anyway, Happy New Year - more or less.....

In Which it's New Year's Eve 2023

 

...and going to be a quiet one. Beth, our person, managed to avoid it for close to four years, but COVID finally got her just before Christmas. She's pretty sure she knows who it was that came to work sick when they shouldn't have and needless to say, she is NOT a very happy camper. She didn't get super sick or anything - just a lot of sinus drip, a LOT of sneezing and an extreme amount of Samuel L. Jackson style cursing when the second line appeared on the little test thingy. She's been feeling better since Tuesday but still had a positive test this morning. She would tell you all to wear masks, although that train apparently left the station week before last. (And yes, she is indeed fully vaxxed and boosted, which is why she's up and about making peanut butter cookies and complaining about it rather than being in the hospital or worse.) I get it, though. Man, I'd be pissed, too. 

These weird things are some leftover Orbeez, by the way. I think she had the idea of using them to maybe root cuttings. She said she had some that were actually pretty (blue and purple) but she used them a few years ago in a failed attempt at keeping lucky bamboo happy. So these are apparently the ugly ones she's hydrating. These things are weird. Kind of like the love child of one of those Superballs you get out of a gum machine and a Jello shot. Don't tell her I know what Jello shots are, okay? You do learn some stuff being on the web. 

Speaking of learning stuff....

Lenore: I thought it was supposed to be sunny today.

Fawn: It was. *Supposed* to be. When was the sun out last, anyway?

Lenore: Christmas day....

Fawn: What were you asking Jamie about?

Lenore: I asked him if he'd asked Miss Beth about his sister coming here, and he said he hadn't yet. He also said there's a Miss Torrance who's going to be joining us. I think she's older, though. Like him. 

Fawn: Jamie isn't that old!

Lenore: No, but he's older than we are. And did you find the website?

Fawn: Right here. Archive of Our Own. That's the one Beth was talking about. 

Lenore: So where's this story?

Fawn: There are a bunch of them. This one's really funny, though. One of the characters is reading one of those really dirty books, but it's really badly written.

Lenore: It looks okay to me.

Fawn: No, the story isn't badly written. The book he's reading is badly written. and they wrote a bunch of excerpts. 

Lenore: Like the one Miss Beth wrote where one of the characters was reading that really awful romance novel?

Fawn: Yeah, except this one's really explicit. And funny. Like this. "My demon lover approached me and shredded the clothes from my body, scattering the shredded rags about the library like autumn leaves to the wind..."

Lenore: I hope he brought a change of clothes or that's not gonna be a fun commute home from work...

Fawn: I'm sure he thought of that somewhere along the line. He did plan this, you know."

Fawn, still reading several hilariously painful paragraphs later: "With this power from our coupling, I can replant the entire Amazon rain forest!" my demon lover declared as he vanished, leaving me sated and spent. It was then that I realized I had nothing to wear to get home..."

Lenore: Told you he didn't think it through.

Fawn: Well, I guess he could have worn a garbage bag. But that still would have been embarrassing.

Lenore: Not to mention that kind of went out of style awhile ago. And if the library has garbage bags like Miss Beth's office, they're all clear. So that wouldn't have worked either. 

Fawn: Yeah, he *really* should have thought that through. 

(For the record, Beth said "yeah, they're about the age I was when we started reading stuff like that, but we didn't have fanfiction. We had to make do with sneaking actual books. As long as they come to me with any questions, it's fine." She also can't remember the name of the one everyone was passing around like seventh-grade contraband, which, some to think of it, it probably was. She also said it was just about as comically bad, except it wasn't supposed to be funny. I think she enjoys playing benevolent cool aunt to a couple of twelvish-year-old girls.)

Lenore also got a guitar for Christmas, but she eschewed the "Campfire Sing-Alongs" book it came with in favor of looking up the chords to "Rock And Roll High School." Like Beth at that age, I think she's decided she wants to be Riff Randall when she grows up. 

Meanwhile, back in the living room....

Maddy: Okay, these things are weird. What are they again?

Hawthorne: Cool! A ball pit! COWABUNGA!!!!

Maddy: Hawthorne, wait up! This isn't a....

*SPLAT*

Maddy: I tried to tell you....

Barbie: Oh for the love of - Hawthorne, are you okay!?

Hawthorne: I thought it was a ball pit!

Hawthorne is fine, by the way. But we had a very long talk with her about (literally!) looking before you leap, and asking questions - and permission.

And no. I have no idea what Beth was planning to do with those Orbeez, but pixie ball pit probably wasn't it....

Anyway, Happy New Year!

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 second opinions are a very good thing - mostly........

"So this is what they wrote up?" Fawn said.

"Apparently," I said. "They were trying to pressure Maddy into leaving her keys and taking a rental car. They kept saying it wasn't safe to drive. I think she finally convinced them that she had to go talk to the bank about getting the money for the work. With parts, labor and tax, it would have probably been over two thousand dollars."

"And may I add that she totally did NOT state any of this - stuff. She didn't mention anything other than it needing the oil change the appointment was for."

Maddy had a pretty ugly little thing happen at the dealership when she took the Rogue for an oil change. (I need to add that this isn't a Nissan dealership - it's a Jeep/Dodge/Kia/Hyundai place.) The mechanics sent the poor girl at the counter to tell her that they had done a 100-something-point inspection and found all this stuff wrong with the Rogue and she needed to leave it and make arrangements for a rental because it "just isn't safe to drive." Maddy, however, kept politely saying she'd need to go to her bank and speak with them about getting the money BEFORE she agreed to anything and (finally) got the keys back and got out of there. Before we'd gotten a mile, the "check engine" light was on. So Maddy pulled into the Walgreens lot and - hello, loose gas cap. (It wasn't loose before they started messing with her car. Just sayin'.) A few clicks and - no more light.

"It was making a funny little whirring noise every now and then. Like a baseball card in the spokes of a bicycle. Except I hadn't mentioned it or asked them to check it," Maddy said, coming in.

"Is that why you took it to Hyatt's?" Fawn said.

Maddy nodded. "Guess what it was."

"A baseball card?"

"Nope. Mud flap. It had gotten bent and was hitting the wheel. Problem was, it wasn't where I could see it without crawling under the car. They just bent it back into place. And the vibration when I hit the brakes really hard - which I also had NOT mentioned - that they claimed was the "worn bushings" or whatever - that was because the brake rotors hadn't been replaced when I had the brakes done and they were in really bad shape. The pads had worn down just enough for it to be noticeable."

"Didn't the dealer do the brakes?" I seem to remember going with her for that early in my blogging career.

She nodded. "So Hyatts redid the brakes and did the inspection. I actually had been expecting them to tell me that something really horrible and expensive was wrong with the Rogue, but it wasn't. Not that brakes are cheap, but it was a lot less than the two thousand the dealer was trying to charge me. So no more dealer. It's Hyatt's from now on."

"Did you tell them what the dealer said?" Fawn asked.

"No. I didn't want to come off like I was trying to play them off of anyone else. If something was wrong, they'd find it. But you know, when things started going really wrong with my little black Saturn, it wasn't like someone coming out and telling me "oh, by the way, your transmission's shot." I knew something was weird before that. Every time something's gone wrong with one of my cars, there were symptoms. And the symptoms the Rouge had just didn't match what they were telling me."

"Like how?"

"Well, they were saying the torn boot was on the passenger side, but the noise supposedly coming from it was coming from the driver's side. Kind of a clue that something wasn't right...."

"So what are you going to do?" I said. "You should tell someone. Report them. Dutchess Cars, I mean."

"To who?" Maddy looked at the writeup. "And I don't think I have a case with the way they phrased it. I think the best I can do is warn everyone to get a second opinion if something like that happens to them."

"Something like what?" Hawthorne said, coming over to look. "The heck?"

"The dealership's explanation for a bent mudflap." Maddy explained.

"Losers. They saw a female walk in and their eyes lit up with dollar signs - ka-ching! - like in an old cartoon or something." Hawthorne looked disgusted.

"And oddly enough, the Rouge was just out of warranty by about fifty miles," I added.

"Hmmmm..." Hawthorne looked thoughtful. "I'd say it's time we opened up a nice big can of whoop--"











"Hawthorne, stop. Every time you take matters into your own hands that way, something bad happens."

"Yeah, to the idiots who deserve it. Tempest, these morons can't go around thinking that just because a customer is a woman, they can rip her off. It's not right!"

"You also don't know that was what happened. Maybe they just made a mistake."

"That's a pretty big mistake for someone who's supposed to know what they're doing." Hawthorne retorted.

(For the record, I'm with Hawthorne on this, although I don't think I'd trust her taking matters into her own hands either....)

"I say we go all gladiator on them. Fa-tang! Fa-Tang! I tell you, I would make an awesome gladiator, wouldn't I?"

"Nefoedd helpu ni..." I'm not sure what Tempest said, but I think it's Welsh for "Oh crap..."











Maddy's note: It's "Heaven help us," according to Google Translator. I think the devic facepalm says it all, though....

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.