Fall-ing back to Caledon

The return voyage back to Caledon's shores was not an easy one.

The girls' excitement over the vistas as our airship set off over the waves of Blake Sea faded after only ten minutes. Though I had amassed what seemed to be a bottomless bag of activities for our journey, the kits went through all that I had in only an hour.

I resorted to lying, telling them that their father, Duke Constantine (or Captain Bunneh to those who know him well) had sent his Indigo Squadron out to accompany us home. The next three hours was filled with a mis-identification of every bird, cloud and, indeed, large insect as a Crimson Pirates aircraft on the horizon.

When we arrived at Oxbridge Village, the girls glimpsed a poster for the Caledon Harvest Festival on the platform and the bargaining began.

I briefly forgot how elusive they can be when they want to be. Had I remembered, our bargaining would have included leashes.

They promised to hold their hands behind their backs while I checked at a local dealer about an antique artifact. (My deal with the girls had been that, if they were good during my dealing, we would spend an hour at the Festival.) Instead, as I turned, triumphant in my victorious haggling, I smiled down at an empty space--the girls had sneaked out of the store!

I am not all that sure what adventures the kits found themselves in before I happened upon them. They both jabbered away, telling me their tales but, though my hearing may have inhuman acuity, trying to decipher excited kittens in stereo is not yet one of my talents.

I do know that the girls both had found a prize pumpkin.

 

Due to their jabbering as if they were over-wound music boxes, I knew they'd gotten into sugar somewhere.

 

Moggie handed me an apple with a chunk bitten out of it as a "prezzie."



And Minnie was wet from head to toe--I was compelled to purchase a towel from a local merchant to dry the moppet off. (She never did tell me what had happened there.)


 


 I finally urged them back to the CAT platform and we set off to the station in Cay. Unfortunately, Moggie had also visited a gypsy fortune teller while at the Festival, who sold her a song "fulla funny words" that she had to try out.

Who sells a lava devling summoning spell to a magickal munchkin??? (Seriously, point out the culprit--I'd like to sink my teeth into them, slowly.)

 

Needless to say, no one else accompanied us on the ship back to the Iron Cloud. While Wrath will be happy to see the whiskered bundles of energy, I somehow doubt that their mother will be.

However, the Firth Witch has called for her Coven to meet--I had to heed her call, though I know that puts the children in the bounds of whatever she has planned this season.

Before our reunion, however, I need a nap.