In which - an update!

Actually, a lot has been happening - which is part of the problem. I haven't had time to write anything down.

For one thing, I have neighbors now.

Jett's partner in crime, Spike, crossed the Rainbow Bridge a little over a month ago with a scent gland tumor that turned out to be one of the rare metastatic ones. We intended to get two babies to introduce to him as new friends - but the introduction didn't go well, to say the least.

Jett is doing well, though - getting lots of extra attention - and I ended up with a gerbil condo next to my house. Oh well. :-) Meet Pagey and Percy. Pagey is the one in the first pic - the sort of Siamese-spotted-whatever one - and Percy is the reddish one, which Maddy said was called "Argente."

This was all just before the last Mercury retrograde. Normally I'm kind of skeptical about astrological things like that - I'm an Aquarius, after all, and we tend to be - but yeah, this last one was rough. Among other things, Maddy ended up with a friend in the hospital (another slipped disc - which happened about the same time last year, too,) the "Check Engine" light on in the Rogue for quite literally no reason ("Other/Unknown Error,") a rather anxiously awaited (and pricey) package going astray for almost three weeks and some weird cold/flu hybrid making the rounds that she's almost recovered from, except for a cough that sounds somewhat like a tuberculin seal (her words, not mine!) On the doll front, Shel tried to change shirts one afternoon and ended up needing emergency limb reattachment surgery when his left hand came off along with it. (Maybe not having separate jointed hands like they do isn't such a bad thing after all....) However, all patients, human and doll, are home and recovering, the "Check Engine" light went off  on its own, the stray package has arrived and all seems to be normal again.

Well, normal for here, anyway....

~*~

Devon's fella Rafael arrived just before all of the above started. He's a nice guy - not at all like what I was envisioning. Not I that I thought he wouldn't be nice, but - if I've got this right, he's an Unquiet Spirit like JT, also from New Orleans, who was a Vodou priest (is that the right term? I need to get a book on this.) Not sure about the circumstances that led to him being an Unqiuet Spirit, but I'm sure it's an interesting story - yeah, that kind of "interesting." He is a really nice guy, though, an seems to really know his way around the spirit/elemental realm.

And this is Paisley's friend Kilbey.

There has to be an explanation for him, and I think it has something to do with the same brown acid going around the first Woodstock festival - the stuff that was apparently not so good.

He said the missing antenna will grow back. (Apparently that isn't an eyestalk?) He also said he wished it would hurry up and do so, since it was like having one - well, unlike Kilbey, I am going to keep this G-rated.

As for the fact that he is in fact a "he" - Paisley said he's related to Mystery Snails, which actually do have genders. Most snails don't. Or do - they're both at once. Which explains how one stray pond snail in an aquarium turns into one bazillon about three days later. (I suspect the same is true for coat hangers in the closet.)




And if you need more proof that this last retrograde messed with EVERYTHING, look no further than our trusty thermometer. See that inside temperature? That was also the outside temperature, according to both the Weather Channel and the working thermometer. And no, the sensor wasn't in the sun.

And yes, it was sunny that day, too.







Bonus pic: Tempest and Kilbey.






















(Kilbey is a Doll Chateau Larry. He's named for both musician Steve Kilbey of the Church and the snarky but sweet shapeshifter who was best friends with the Lady Madrigal Baker in my Doctor Who fanfic days. Rafael is a Pukifee Pio - the only human-ish male in my BJD crew.)

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 Hitty Emmaline's grandmother isn't who you'd think.......

"Here we go - now, let me fix your scarf. Good little baby....."

"Um, Paisley?" Zephyr said. "Why do they need scarves? Don't emperor penguins come from Antarctica?"

"They're babies. They can't keep warm the way the adults can." As you can see, Paisley seems to be establishing a home for baby birds. "Now, did you eat all your krill? Good boy!"

"That was krill? I thought you were making smoothies," Zephyr said.

I wondered why my blender was soaking in the sink....

"Hey everyone!" Tempest said, coming in. "You'll never believe who's here all the way from Florida!"

"Devon?!" Zephyr exclaimed, running to hug the new deva in town. "What are you doing up here?!"

"Trying to help some of the other devas put an end to this awful weather," Devon said.

"Problem is, we don't even know exactly where it's coming from," Tempest added. "Well, we know where, but we don't know who blocked the normal atmospheric patterns or why."

That doesn't sound good.....

"And here's Emmie! How do you like it here in New York?"

"It's nice...."

"I told you it would be."

"....but I still don't know why you had to sell the farm to those pixies. It wasn't losing money."

"Sweetheart, it was time for a change. I'd done all I could working with that land. It was time for someone else to take over. And you needed a change, too. All that time with those china head dolls wasn't good for you. You're a wooden doll, sweetie. You can afford to take chances that they can't."

It took me a moment to put it all together. "Wait. Your grandmother is a deva?!" She'd mentioned her Grandmother Devon awhile back, but I'd been expecting another Hitty. Not a deva who looked younger than Emmie herself.

"I was a linden tree deva before I learned to work with storms," Devon explained. "Emmie is carved from one of the branches of a seedling of the tree I was brought into existence to tend. So in a way, it makes me her grandmother."




"Are you and Rafael still together?" Emmie seemed at a bit of a loss for what to say.

"We are, indeed. He may be joining us later this year up here. I'm going to try to talk him into it, anyway. Right now he's working with manatees,"
Devon said.






"Devon is the one who sent me to find Tempest," Zephyr added. "Her sister Gail worked with her - Tempest, I mean - to turn that tornado that those awful storm devas sent toward that town."

"I know a good deva when I meet one," Devon said with a smile. "My sister should be joining us here pretty soon, too."

Not who I would have expected, but pretty cool nonetheless.....



Note: Devon is a tan Pukifee Ante from the FairyLand Halloween event. She was ordered directly from FL, We're still waiting on three other tan Pukifees ordered through DDE.

She's named after a pilot we saw on "Hurricane Hunters" whose first flight was through Hurricane Rafael (the one just before the infamous Sandy.) I do wish I could remember her last name, because she was totally awesome.

In which - Zephyr

"Once blind and innocent, you took the narrow road
With your hope and your faith all neatly in a row....


















But on that great dividing line between love and what you wished to find
You stumble and you fall....

Look to where the colors flow, it's a fluid space where spirits grow
Unimagined on a hill...."
















Lyrics are from "Angelic" by Satellite Paradiso. I'd love this album even if John Ashton had nothing to do with it, but the fact that he does makes it even better.

Okay, yeah, and Maddy was getting all fancy and stuff with Photoshop Elements 13.

In which it's stormy - inside....

"That's weird. I thought I heard - thunder?!" Much like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects a supercell thunderstorm - at least, not in the dining room. "Tempest, what are you doing?"

"Okay, please don't let that thing rain on my sewing machine...." Maddy added, coming in.

"Don't worry. It's under control. I haven't let a storm get away from me yet," Tempest said. "But could you open the back door for a moment, please? Just the glass. We need some cooler air in here for this to work."

She did. "For what to work?"

"This," Tempest said. "Okay now, Zephyr, we've got some cold air for the rear-flank downdraft. Pull that into the circulation...."

"Little bit more...."

"And perfect!" She looked apologetic. "It's far too cold to raise one outside. I needed warm air."

"That's what I tried to do back in El Reno." Zephyr looked sad. "But it didn't help. I thought it would do what it did here. Isn't that how you break a vortex?"

"It is - provided you have any cool air to work with," Tempest said. "Which you didn't. You can't work with what you don't have."














Just for the record....

That tornado exploded to just over two and a half miles wide in about thirty seconds. Radar-estimated winds at the base were 296 mph. Right at that moment, it was the strongest force on the planet - and Zephyr was trying to make it play nice and not go across the interstate.

"That's it," she said. "Even I couldn't quite see the outer circulation. The other devas had made it transparent. And it was going so fast. I thought I could dissipate it or turn it or something, but then it was on us - and I saw the truck get picked up. I tried to stop it, but it still rolled. And it was so big. I wasn't close enough to the other car..."

"And you saved everybody in the Yukon," Tempest pointed out. "That was very quick thinking."

(I think Tempest is happy to have a wind deva to work with who thinks the same way she does.)







Bonus pic:

Christmas dresses!