Artavatar and I are celebrating our 4th wedding anniversary tonight, as well as the 6th anniversary of our first date, and the fifth anniversary of his proposal to me. (We figured if we kept it all on the same date, we might manage to remember it. Heh.)

Walter

Laura

Cleo

Grimshaw and Jasmin

In honor of the anniversary — and my vacation laziness — we’re having Punday, Tall Tale Tuesday, and Wednesday Riddles all on one night. Whoo! I hope we can stand the fun!
Punday, brought to you by the fine people at Pun of the Day:

When the TV repairman got married the reception was excellent.
To some - marriage is a word … to others - a sentence.
When they bought a water bed, the couple started to drift apart.
With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.
It was an emotional wedding. Even the cake was in tiers.
When he gave his wife a necklace he got a chain reaction.
Two nuclear technicians got married. She was radiant and he was glowing.
He who hogs the sheets is usually very wrapped up in himself.
When a psychic showed me the girl I’ll marry, it was love at second sight.
She was the apple of his eye and he liked to sit down be cider.

Tall Tale Tuesday offers you a peek at Chapter One of my horror story, tentatively called, “What Little Girls Are Made Of”, all of which can be found at Just Write.

The main doors were not visibly guarded, but who knew what occult means and wards might have been laid across them for the night? It’s what Miles would have done if he’d been Lord of the Domain, but it was often difficult to discern what his Lordship might do. Inside the foyer, however, stood Carl Overs, a slender man, blonde and fair and blue-eyed, with a perpetually brooding expression. He was a deputy of his Lordship’s Wolf, and tonight tasked with guarding the city meeting. Carl was also Miles’ student. Carl had been sent to him by the Wolf, Aurik von Koenig, to learn the ways of the occult and the undead.
“Carl.” Miles inclined his head towards the young one. Carl was only four years dead, but had been nearly forty when he died.
“Sir.” Carl smiled briefly.
“What have you learned so far tonight?” Miles clasped his hands behind his back and stood at ease, surveying his pupil.
“I’ve learned that Clinton Argston is a weasel.” Carl looked left and right, peering intently at the corners and shadows of the foyer. Through the Wolf’s blood, Carl was gifted with the Sight, which the deputy used to good advantage.
“How so?” Miles had some of the Sight himself, and glanced at the corners, too. The trick could be learned without the blood, but being of the bloodline made learning the gift easier.
Carl shrugged. “I overheard him on the phone, talking to someone. In the past two hours he’s been here, he’s lied more than I have in the last year.” Carl grinned, baring his sharp fangs. The young always liked to show off their fangs. “All deals with live people, but he must have screwed over ten guys in twenty minutes. Not one to trust, that Clinton.”
“Anyone of import?” Clinton Argston was relatively new to the Domain. He’d presented himself three months ago, and found enough favor with his Lordship’s Mistress of Society to gain the dubious privilege of decorating this month. Miles knew that he had gained the favor by providing the Mistress with plenty of the arts and luxuries she was so enamored of. Argston was a fine arts dealer, and very good a procuring rarities. Too good, almost. Argston reeked of illegal activities, but so far, Miles had turned up no hard evidence of such.
“No one I recognized off hand, but it’s not my field. I could recite the names?”
“Not now. Write them down for me. Who has arrived, so far?”
“St. Micheal Bainbridge and some of his bunch, a few minutes ago. One of his guards gave me a bunch of shit about turning over their weapons, but finally gave them up. Which reminds me . . . “
Miles smiled, and handed over his side arm, sap, and knife. Carl took them over to the coat check and filled out a slip for them, stowing them behind the counter. He gave Miles the paper, winking at him.
“Anyhow,” Carl continued, “Dorna Mordaine’s in there, and the Mistress, of course. The Musicians were booked, and they’re all here – Raven, Tazz, Micah, Renfeild, you know the bunch. The Wolf’s around, and so are the rest of the deputies. Dogged Doug’s inside with Smoke, Thunder, and a couple of new dogs – little yappie buggers, Jack Russels, I think. I didn’t catch the names. A few people laughed at ‘em until they turned up the Stink hiding right at a table in plain sight, that we’d all missed, and fucking opened him up right to the knee.” The Stink was a vampire who was aptly named. He reeked of rotting fruit and garbage, due to living in one of Boston’s big dumps, and by his blood possessed the ability to Hide. The Hiding could be pierced sometimes by the Sight, and a few other means, but animals could see through it every time. Some had laughed at Dogged Doug in the beginning, but no one did now. Not only could his massive Rottweilers find anyone, but too many of them had seen the deputy sic his huge dogs on those undead who broke the Laws of the meeting. A prudent vampire only had to see a man or woman savaged by a 150-pound Rottweiler once before they started thinking that following the Laws of the city meeting was a good idea.
Carl had paused for a moment. “The little girl’s in there too, with her father.” Carl shuddered.
Miles’ lips tightened. Kissing children into death was considered a miserable crime, and the poor victims themselves were often killed outright. Somehow, the dead child called Annalisa had survived. His Lordship didn’t seem interested in challenging the little girl, either. “What’s on the schedule for tonight?”
“Nothing too special. Some new people presenting themselves. There’s a group calling themselves the Circle of Blood, and claim to be sorcerers. Five of them. Another new fellow is here to present himself, too – a Scott Ashton. The Councilors have some new hunting restrictions they want to discuss. Mad Jack wants to bitch about them already, and I don’t think he even knows what they are. If he does, he isn’t telling. Then his Lordship will hear new business, if anyone has the balls to bring some up.” Carl chuckled.
The door opened then, admitting Hector Drake, and Miles nodded to him. Hector was a tall, spare, and thin. He was balding, and still wore a set of little round spectacles, though undead eyes needed no such things. His skin was pasty white and wrinkled, and his dark eyes were sunken, underlined by purple streaks. His remaining hair was white, wispy, and receding. He’d died at forty-five, and looked ten years older. “Mr. Eisenlord, Mr. Overs.” He had a voice like spiders made of parchment crawling through dead leaves. “I have no weapons, Mr. Overs.”
Carl nodded, nonchalant. “Go on in, Heck.”
“I shall. Thank you.” He nodded again to them both, and went into the main hall. The old man moved with the strange grace of willow trees in the wind.
Carl watched him go. “That old guy gives me the creeps.”
It had been a long time since anything had given Miles “the creeps”, but if hard pressed, he might have consented to calling Hector Drake unsettling. Drake had been around for a couple of years, but no one, even Miles, who was in the business of knowing things, knew much about him.
Miles sighed. “Into the lion’s den.”
Carl barked a laugh. “Good luck.”
Miles turned and went through the double doors, and stepped into the sea. Or so it seemed. Clinton Argston had draped the huge hall in deep blue and green silks, floors, walls, and ceilings. The light was blue-greenish and dim, filtering through the silks which were fixed loosely, so that they flowed and rippled like waves. The room was sweltering hot, even to dead flesh, and thickly humid. The air in the room smelled of the ocean, briny, but not the clean, fresh sea air that Boston was accustomed to. This was the smell of a dead and stagnant tidal pool, with just the vague hint of dead fish wafting. Many small, round tables were arranged about the room, twenty or more at first glance, and all draped in blue silk and rippling as well. On each table sat a neatly-arranged circle of kelp and sea flowers, and ensconced within a small, flickering candle in a deep green glass holder. The chairs were glided gold, corroded, encrusted with barnacles. Miles didn’t relish the thought of sitting on one of them. The benches along the walls were no better. At the back of the room was the stage, also rippling with silks. At center stage stood an old stone fountain, spilling briny water down it’s chipped and cracked levels. At some point, the fountain had been grand, Miles could see. Whatever had decorated had long since worn away, and now it was only smooth and lumpy and misshappen, draped in seaweed and barnacles, discolored from the salt water. It was lit softly from within, and the water glowed. Floating candles shaped like flowers eddied in it’s basin.
To the right of the huge, old fountain were the Musicians. They were dressed in deep blue and green, their clothes made of disks of some reflective metal, making them seem scaled. They played as a string quartet tonight, and their music was strange and tidal, clearly some original work of either a genius or a lunatic. The music flowed and rippled, and Tazz’s big bass cello struck an underchord that put Miles in mind of the very beginning rumbles of the wave that would become the crashing tsunami. The whole piece seemed unending, and was full of minor chords. It was unsettling, tense like the whitecaps of a coming storm, rather than soothing. It put Miles’ on edge almost immediately.
To the left of the fountain was a monstrous dischord, the Bone Throne, the huge chair that his Lordship sat in while holding court. It was said it was built of the bones of his enemies. Certainly the arms of the chair were graced with two fanged skulls. Vampires left no remains when they died, but Miles knew the chair was built of real bone, and real fang. Probably real sorcery of some sort, too. He’d never been invited to examine it. No effort at all had been made to fit the Bone Throne to the theme of the room. It simply sat there, large and glistening white and out of place.

And finally, thank Riddlenut for our Wednesday Riddle:

The same five letters can be anagrammed into four different words that fill in the blanks in the sentence to make (somewhat) good sense. What are the missing words?
The farmer with hundreds of _ _ _ _ _ , deeply _ _ _ _ _ about the amount of rainfall, and _ _ _ _ _ around with artificial watering systems when the ground is dry enough to _ _ _ _ _ him about the possibility of crop failure.
Highlight for the answer: Acres, Cares, Races, Scare.

Playing the Popularity Game:

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