Fluorescent Dreams Wax Cylinders - LolGrues!

8:27 - LolGrues!

Riba Rambles pointed me to LolGrues.

I had to write a shaggy dog story in response:

"C'mon!" Holly said, pulling me by the shirt. "If we're not there just at midnight, we'll miss it!"

I yawned. I am at my worst in the middle of the night. I stumbled around the trees, grateful for the full moon. "What's so special about this forest, at midsummer's eve at a full moon?"

"I told you -- you won't believe me unless you see it." She dodged one oak tree, then walked into a natural clearing. "Here we are!"

I squinted. Grasses and small plants. A ring of mushrooms, about twenty feet across. Dirt inside the ring of mushrooms. I shook my head, trying to understand the lack of life inside the circle.

I sat down using a tree for support. "Okay. We're in the middle of nowhere," the moon hid behind a cloud, "if I'm lucky, I'll get six hours' sleep before I have to go to work -- and the mushrooms are glowing?"

The mushroom caps shined with a white light that cast no shadows. They illuminated neither trees, grass, nor us. I got up. "What--?"

Holly giggled. She looked at her watch. "Thirty seconds," she said.

From inside the circle, I heard drumbeats and a bowed string instrument playing a regular, rhythmic melody. Nobody was inside. I relaxed, knowing what was happening. "Nice recording," I said, walking closer to the circle to look for the player.

Holly tackled me. Luckily, I landed on no tree roots. "Don't. Enter. The. Circle. You won't ever escape. It's not a recording."

I looked up at the circle. Clouds of smoke rose from the black earth. I smelled honeysuckle, roses, and sandalwood. The moon revealed itself from behind the cloud, and shimmering forms coalesced and revealed themselves.

Thirteen fairies.

"Surprise!" Holly laughed.

The thirteen were of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. Two were winged foxes about a foot tall. I recognized one fairy: Heather Alexander.

"They can only reach our world until the morning dew," Holly explained. "Just don't enter the circle!"

Heather Alexander played her fiddle, and we danced. A green-skinned jester told corny jokes from the twelfth century, and we groaned. Two wood-colored satyrs and a nymph did what they do best, and our mouths fell open.

"Can anything orgasm that many times?", Holly whispered in my ear.

A magician, blacker than Spinal Tap's album, pulled increasingly large objects from his hat, then set them free. As they left the circle, they vanished. "The elephant wasn't possible!" I said.

The two red foxes danced in the air, twirling around each other. As they twirled, Heather and the other four fairies played increasingly frantic music, inviting us to come, join, dance in the circle. Holly and I energetically danced folk dances, following the foxes' leads. (Sadly, not in the air.) The moon set. Above us, another light shined. As we got nearer morning, the dawn's light made the fairies fade.

I looked more closely at the lights above. A medium-sized ship was descending. All thirteen climbed on-board, waving to us. "What is that thing?" I asked Holly.

"It's a fairy ark," she answered. "We are likely to be greeted by the dew."