A ROUGH RE-ENTRY

 

I Will Blend No More ForeverThe Queen and I left Dragon’s Ridge not long after the “First Encounter of the Petroglyph Kind” took place. Queen Dee continued her nail care, now in the buffing stage, until I drove her to the nearest acceptable city. I dropped her off at a phone booth, an ancient precursor to the cell phone, where I watched her make a call to whom I presumed must be her chauffeur. She clearly made contact and from within her glass cage, waved me off – not entirely unkindly – but with a dismissive flip of her scepter.

I gladly disengaged. I was still dazed by the strange summoning to the even stranger ridge in the middle of nowhere, which summons I suspected was initiated by the Dragon’s call. This “by invitation only” meeting was an introduction to a force that measured about 8.5 on the Richter Scale, the magnitude of which had not yet subsided in my body as a result of being invited into a world seemingly well beyond my ken.

As I drove home, the after-shocks of the encounter somewhat subsided and my thoughts slowly returned to more mundane musings. I realized I never got an explanation for Queen Dee’s sudden and mysterious appearance at my front door. As I pulled up at my alleged ultra-secret hideaway, I still wondered – Was her journey the consequence of a hostile drop-off or was it facilitated by an accommodating spacecraft that deposited her at my door? Before entering my home, I did cast a suspicious glance at the formerly innocuous broom leaning against the wall.

Guess who was waiting for me? A totally abandoned dog.

Queen Dee was allergic to dogs, so I had to leave my dog behind. St. James was apparently equally allergic to Queen Dee. This dilemma was a bit hard to understand because they were clearly on the same team, but there appeared be some sort of subtle and unstated competition, which also never got explained. (Maybe that’s just what happens when two queens occupy the same space at the same time.)

As I looked into my dog’s accusing eyes, I instantly launched into “Plan B”, which was a tactic I developed to sabotage the “Abandoned Dog Story” I was about to hear in excruciating detail. I know this was a tad bit mean, but you have no idea how many times I have heard this story. I looked back at her and acted both shocked and surprised as I said, “Where were you St. James? I looked everywhere. Where did you go?”

Somehow this role reversal seemed to work, successfully short-circuiting her fluently English-speaking mind. As she wondered where she had been, I slipped back into my once secret and hidden home, unharassed by a confused Border Collie who was still pondering the question.

I’m very glad I figured out her weakness was logic. (Homonyms were also a problem for her, but that specific issue did not in this instance apply.)

Continue to the next exciting adventure of – I Will Blend No More Forever – Part IX