affame_le_geant_the_desperation_of_ignet_blackfire fyn gula ....and so they let ignet blackfire speak. twinkletoes, his paper body pressed into the shape of thora and praayli's resistance on behalf of the mandrill, relinquished his anger and sat down. in his chest were the impressions of their thin arms as they pushed him back in an effort to quell his temper. he pulled himself back into shape, regaining his masculinity, like a bird preening his ruffled feathers after missing its oppurtune chance at claiming a careless mouse. couge picked up his fallen accordion and placed it upon an end table on top of a book of the works of balthus. they sighed in alternating sequence and yielded to her attempts at reason. "i understand your rage," she said, gathering her wits. she had been reduced to a quivering ball of fear when twinkletoes came after her. but now, with the mercy of the two women, she felt enough courage to plead her own personal case of mistaken purpose in this sudden desert of existence. "proina is everything bitter when we are anticipating the sweetness of life. she is the wet fingers that extinguish candle flame illuminating peculiar, avoidable darkness. she is the appearance of storm clouds when the smiling sun, singing songs it makes up to tunes from old women playing borrowed concertinas, has enjoyed traipsing unshackled through an endless sea of azure sky. she is the perpetual antithesis. she upsets the balance. she is the mirror that lies. she is the reminder of death." ignet blackfire paused then, for the words she spoke were acidic on her tongue and if she did not stop, she would have surely burned herself and would never again be able to the taste the likes of australian shiraz, or hazelnut cream cannoli, or the breath of her husband's kiss when he simply says, "j'taime." couge oktuber listened like a student attending a school where he was learning english as a second language. "then why in the fuck did you work for her?" he asked, pounding his fist against his thigh. he had pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his quicksilver cords and removed a small tablet and pencil that contained a point he sharpened by using his fingernails. he quickly scrawled notes of the things she said for he was boffden the beardless gnome's anti-slacker representative in montlapine and this was major. this was the stuff that stopped the press. that made the headlines of the underground newsletters, that proved the graffitti artists correct. "shhhh," praayli said, urging her husband to quiet his wrath. "if you would just remain calm as you usually are, the relative ease that first attracted me to you, you would discover in her story the truths you are seeking. stop resisting the pull of gravity." couge released the breath of his frustration. if praayli was not so integral, so completing, so yin to his fucking yang, he would have dragged the mandrill to the proper authorities long ago. however, praayli was never afraid of the jack-in-the-box when it played its eerie, daunting soundtrack of surprise. nothing ever bothered her. it was like she knew that the future was simply the present in a different color and all that the spectrum offered looked good, especially when they were placed side by side, all of them together like winter clothing and accessories sold in the Gap. "i needed the money," ignet blackfire said. "ever since the fall of birds, when the spegnere was killed, followed by the poignant death of the dandelion, when saumboo became a statue, and frau werzenwozen became comatose, all work has stalled, nobody wanted to give up their hard earned cash for soul separation. i was struggling just to pay for day to day food, let alone rent." praayli refilled the mandrill's glass, this time with spanish port. "so, i was desperate, i mean, i was scraping the bottom. i have done so much work, so much honourable service to kemulyan hipsters up the freakin' whazoo...but then, boom, nothing, no e-mails, no calls, no voice mail, no word of mouth, it was like i was laid off by the hand of god." she sipped from her glass. thora and twinkletoes no longer looked at her. they realized collectively that proina was advancing and the next step was to find out what it was that was being stored in the walk-in fridge back at the garden shoppe. cut to the chase. time could be running out. "the last thing i heard was frau werzenwozen was stranded along the bianca strada as puppertwinkle went searching for help," thora thought to herself. " who grabbed her and forced her into the the hospital and fucking killed her baby?" she had so many questions for the mandrill. what about saumboo? what did she know about him? what did she know about puppertwinkle? about baeroun? "first things first," she told herself. "excuse me a second, ignet," thora said, her thinking becoming words, then, verbs, then a sentence, finally a question. she walked over to twinkletoes, secure that they were united in thought, just as they had been for the past 22 years of their marriage, and put her arm arounnd his paper shoulders. "tell us, please, what that stinky thing is that is we left behind in the flower fridge of our garden shoppe?" 030128 what's it to you? who go blather from