There was a lot of traffic back and forth from the bathroom. I pretended to be waiting for someone, someone who wasn’t a six year old girl, and then ducked in to the restroom. I washed my hands and glanced into the mirror.<\/p>\n
A Lion was standing behind me. Large, Aslan-like, completely bone-white except for the strange displacer-beast like-tendrils of black ivy vines growing out of its shoulders. It yawned, or showed its teeth. I’m not sure which or if both was its intent.<\/p>\n
Incongruously, if such a thing could be said about the whole situation, it had a pink tongue. Bubblegum pink. I guess its gums were also pale pink, but really, it made me think of blood and then of cotton candy. At least I’m good at adapting quickly to such degree of turnaround, or I was still scarred from early watchings of Killer Klownz.<\/p>\n
“The message?” I asked as the running water slowed to a trickle. I busied myself for a moment screwing in the little pieces of the faucet that were loose. Yeah, I do that. Sometimes I even keep a small screwdriver in my pocket when I’m feeling particularly nerdy.<\/p>\n
“You’re no fun,” the Lion complained. He settled to the middle of the bathroom floor and rubbed his nose against his paw.<\/p>\n
“I disagree. I’m lots of fun. Right now I’m thinking if you close your eyes and mouth in a snowstorm I could represent you with a blank page as if it were a photo.”<\/p>\n
“I thought that was the White Elephant jokebook.”<\/p>\n
I couldn’t stand it. “How do you know?”<\/p>\n
“My cousins stand outside a pretty famous library.”<\/p>\n
“Oh.” I smiled.<\/p>\n
“You might want a notebook for this,” the Lion said, blinking its milky-white eyes exaggeratedly.<\/p>\n
I pulled my phone out in just as much exaggeration. I flipped it to notetaking mode.<\/p>\n
“The Seven King of Small Things,” the lion said. I liked the Lion’s voice. Very James Earl Jones as Mufasa from the Lion King. When Disney gets those things right I always wonder which came first. The fey reflect well, but that goes both ways. <\/p>\n
“I got it. That’s it?”<\/p>\n
“Shut up, Small Wizard,” that had the hint of a roar in it. <\/p>\n
“I’ve got a hot date waiting for me. Sorry for the impatience.”<\/p>\n
“Lovely flowers, those. No need to apologize. Let me see.” The eyes flashed red for a moment, not like a infrared, but as if they filled with blood and then drained in an instant.<\/p>\n
I wrote it like this:
\n
B4 U METAL? TEST YOUR METAL? W\/O METAL?
\nWHETHER? U WHETHER? WEATHER? OR NOT
\nARISE AROSE UR TWINKLING TOES
\nTOES THE LINE TO THE LEAN ALONE 4 PROSE<\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\nIt sounded pretty dramatic, but the scansion was terrible. I didn’t pretend to understand its meaning. I only had two questions. “And each of you ghosts of Christmas Never are going to give me bad poetry?” I looked up into the mirror.<\/p>\n
I was alone with a fake potted plant in the middle of the men’s restroom. With one verbalized unanswered question, and one just left to die alone in cold amongst the tiles.<\/p>\n
I sighed and left the planter to go join my date.<\/p>\n
“What was that about?” Rohana asked as I came back to the table. Our appetizers were there, as well as our drinks. I had expected something different than wine since she was headed to her shift, but I hadn’t expected the little mint leaf and fruit skewer in my cola.<\/p>\n
I took a drink to gather my thoughts and glance at my watch. It had only been a few minutes, so I felt relieved. “Little lion men jumped me in the bathroom with bad poetry.”<\/p>\n
“Rhyme can be wielded as a weapon,” she agreed, nodding. Then she stopped and gave me a tight smile. “Really?”<\/p>\n
“Well, I exaggerated. It was a single lion man. But he was really, really big.”<\/p>\n
“Where did you take the pot?” she pointed a finger behind me.<\/p>\n
“Are you accusing me of drugs?” I grinned. “Oh. Um. I thought…” I turned around and there was a nice bare piece of counter behind me. “Apparently I left it in the bathroom.” Only I hadn’t taken it to begin with, but, you know, might as well be hung for a horse than a pony. No, wait, it had something to do with sheep. Of course it did.<\/p>\n
“I am suspending my disbelief in part because weird things do happen around you,” she said. “You don’t look particularly whipped,” she tilted her head from side to side checking me out with a smile.<\/p>\n
“Were you offering to change that?” I teased, reaching for some of the food on the plate.<\/p>\n
“Flogging, maybe,” she blushed a little and took a sip of her drink. <\/p>\n
“Oh. So now I know,” I teased. It was much better conversational ground, plus, she turned a cute pink when she blushed. Same pink as her drink, actually. I waited for a moment of weakness to spring the comparison on her, and hopefully get another shade. It’s a little game, a game of rouges for rogues.<\/p>\n
“These are pretty good,” she said, changing the subject.<\/p>\n
“Huh. Not metal. Well, one of them could still be metal, but meddle. He meant meddle.” I pulled my phone out.<\/p>\n
“No, no metallic aftertaste. You have the strangest non-sequitors,” she said. She leaned over to look at my phone.<\/p>\n
“Huh. Bad poetry. And here I was thinking you had sudden inspiration for a love poem that didn’t work out. This second line, oh wait, just give me the phone.”<\/p>\n
Bemused, I passed it over to her. I felt kind of naked without it, I realized, but it wasn’t uncomfortable being naked in her hand. Or something like that.<\/p>\n
I got it back a moment later. She got up and read it over my shoulder.<\/p>\n
“Before you meddle, test your mettle without metal. Whether you weather the weather or not. Arise, arose, your twinkling toes, toes the line to the lien alone for prose,” she said aloud. “It’s a riddle of semi-elements. Metal as fire and earth, weather as air and water. Dance and law are not elements I am familiar with, although I do believe in meat and honey elementals.”<\/p>\n
I kissed her. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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