[Lush]

"This thing must be brocken!!!" A terrible, high-pitched, sing-song voice echoed through the dim passageways of Marrow Bones Studios.

"What's brocken, Mother?" A pitiful, hoarse, wearied voice answered. "Let's see, it couldn't possibly be your heart, because you don't have one.'

Leninia was too distracted by the frankly shocking images on her Cell- antír to bother with reacting to the Entish Guitar's brazen insult with her usual threats of torture and death.

"This Fellow...This Gal...This thing," she finally managed to say, "they're all...they're all..."

"Idiots?" The Entish Guitar supplied helpfully.

"I don't believe it," Leninia gasped. "I wanted a real adversary. I'm the most talented dark manipulator since Phil Whack'd-her, I deserve better than this! They carry on arguments with their swords, they engage in food-fights and flame-wars, they get stuck in witty-yet-annoyingly-distracting-from-my-glorious-persona sub-plots! They..."

"Well, what did you expect from a parody, Mother? In-depth discussions of Muddled Mirth for the lithe and the cunning? Some tall dude with a long name, cool sword and a manly countenance?" The Entish Guitar interrupted.

Leninia did not answer. She was deep in thought. She could not deny that as the group of the "gallivantin' village idiots" got closer, her grip on the Entish Guitar continued to slip. Not that she was worried, naturally, but why needlessly worry the already strung-out poor piece of talking wood?

For all her insults, Leninia had grown fond of the little piece of lumber. It's wry sense of humour sometimes reminded her of her last husband, John Lemmon. A tasty thing that one was, it was only too bad that...

But Leninia was not about to give over to regretting the past. There were things to be done today, such as deciding which sort of subliminal messages to be woven into which particular song, and other regular duties of the head of Marrow Bonea Studios.

Leninia stroked the Entish Guitar's strings and cooed nonsense to it in her magical voice (the voice was like the equivalent of a dangerous dose of cough medicine), and soon enough the hapless E.G. had fallen into a deep, drug-induced slumber, like everyone else in that dark, dreary and yet no longer so distant place.

[ August 19, 2003: Message edited by: Lush ]