“It’s a 1986 Dodge Aries. I did what I could, bub.”

The queen squints. “Where’s your bow?”

“Let me tell you an old story...”

“Oh, just dandy,” I say.

“You have the gift, but practicing magic is forbidden to nobles. You know this!”

Waning fame turned the pop star’s eyes to sorcery.

Soon time will make him a lost boy.

Beside the solace of the sea, I read his stories of Tiffany.

“Hail Bellerophon, cunning slayer of Chimera.”

“When’d it start?” “An hour ago,” she answered, “maybe two?”

Another swing of the axe came.

“I should have trust issues accepting baked goods from a witch in a gingerbread house.”

Mell dropped his cigarette. “Oh, great.”

Robots and dinosaurs charged, but the army women of the New Model Infantry fought like Valkyries.

“To be a man, you must climb to the mountain top!”

I find a broken circle of blue azurite stones.

“Like the blind telling the sighted there are no colors.”

“It’s definitely trapped in amber,” she says, examining the mystery inclusion. “Millions of years old.”

If he’s the garish peacock strutting in jester’s garb, then I’m the dull hen in alchemist robes.