Thistles & Roses

I know you guys can't live without Merle. Or rather, Clara can't. (Okay, me either.) ;) So here he is. I apologize for the length, there was no way I could squeeze it any tighter! ...Hope you enjoy!

This kid was due any minute, and I wasn't the least bit prepared.

Arthur and I had parted ways after stepping onto the platform from the tube. We hadn't done much talking the rest of the way. I could tell by the clouds in his eyes that he had gone back in his head. Fine by me, he was still too spoiled for my tastes.




I left the station and headed home. The streets of downtown were unusually vacant for this time of day. A fine misty fog rolled in from nowhere. I grinned to myself remembering how I used to always tell Magda that a fine fog meant trouble with a stranger. She always grunted and told me "Fug the fog! Keep walking". I missed her even more nowadays.

 Huckle Street, where I lived, was not far from the tube. Magda and I had managed to cobble this tiny place together in our much younger days. It's a small place, this house of ours, not much to brag about but it's home. Only thistles grow in the yard, and Mag's has her darn blue roses scurrin' up the face of it. The shutters are in desperate need of painting and the chimney ain't never been nothing but crooked. The beauty of it is the house isn't visible to anyone except whoever you wanted it to be visible to.  Part of my old gal's charm is her magic. She could hide a herd of wild mustangs right under my mustache. I know because she did once.

I swung the gate open to the little yard and picked some thistles which I stuffed in my coat pocket. The roses needed to be trimmed back so I picked a dozen or so and headed inside. There was no telling on when that kid was going to show up. I decided to keep myself occupied by making tea from the thistles and arranging the roses in one of Mag's glass cobalt vases just the way she always liked.

Looking at them on the table, they didn't seem quite right. I picked them up and opened the door in the back of the house and set them outside on the ground. That door was my favorite part- another one of her concoctions. Most of the time you'd open it up and not see anything out of the ordinary. But on occasion, I'd turn the handle and she would be on the other side smirking at me. I don't think anyone else but me could be as fond of a door that went nowhere.

The tea finished steeping and I hadn't rested my tail more than a minute before I heard a timid knock on the door. I opened it up to see a pair of swamp green eyes staring wildly back at me.

"You're late, Seamus."