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Peggy Powler & The Metal Man.
#4
Maybe there'll come a day when many who are not lamplighters or thieves will work through the night and society will take
it as standard that productivity outweighs the natural pace of what most people generally take for granted. The Farmer, the
Baker and Blacksmith like to be up early, milk-heavy animals awake due to natural light, breads need time to brown for the
customer and the hell-heat of a kiln isn't something one can just create with a spark from a flint.

But even these professions require sleep and the old adage 'early to bed, early to rise' seems to vaguely be adhered to
most and certainly those in Mornington. For a certain little Witch sitting on the summit of an artificial hill, she agreed
with this steady gait of life and believed that anyone working through the night must have an agenda not appropriate
for daylight hours and eyes.

So as Peggy Powler surveyed the dying canopy of of the surrounding forest from the grassy apogee, a far-off plume of
chimney-smoke drifting across the crescent moon told her someone else was awake. Someone else apart from herself
and the torpid boy sitting beside her, a boy who liked to gaze at Sarah Goodwin's closed-curtains.

After Jasper's entranced revelation of his metal man encounter, she asked the dazed lad if his parents were aware of
his nightly passion, but she may have not precisely use those words. His account was mind-boggling in regards of what
he'd witnessed when hiding up a tree, but his explanation of how he fooled his Ma and Pa and his reason for being up
among the foliage there, wasn't too-much of a stretch for the Last Witch of Underhill to appreciate.

The developing young dealt with all sorts of changes in their lives, their position in a family-setting and with their peers, the
weird metamorphosis of their bodies and the concept of who they believed they are to what they will be. A veritable jungle
of elusive elements. Most adolescents grow out of their fantasies, but there's a fine line that young Jasper Forster had been
walking for some time and Peggy's recent abracadabra had hopefully caused the boy to wane on his need to spying on his
secret love's privacy.

"Wh... Where am I?" Jasper asked with a tongue too large for his mouth, Peggy's enchantment was usually for grown adults
and she guessed this was the reason for his latter confession to come to light so easily. Smiling kindly, the sorceress patted
the hand on the dew -damp grass and replied "not far from home me-lad, but Ah've a query about who might be warmin' their
backside usin' that". A different digit that Peggy had attained the story of who -or what might had taken Gideon Tundy, pointed
towards the thread of exhaust floating across the curved rider of the night.

Jasper peered out across the greenwood and whispered one word. "Horton".
.................................................................

The sombre gloom beneath the reddening leaves of a forest is a world that many with an imagination suggests a microcosm
of creatures that shun the day, monsters who envy those who enjoy the sun and beasts that hunt for the sleeping. In reality,
Peggy found through her journeys that predators and fiends in the trees tended to steer clear of trouble that involved anything
that wore clothes or travelled in pairs. Accam Dey excluded, of course.

So with the ten-year-old in tow and a head of spells, the two small shapes brushed a wake through the browning bracken on
their way to the abode of someone Jasper had named earlier. Descending from the tor, the boy had related what he knew
about the reclusive man who rarely came to Mornington. "My Pa reckons he's a crazy old fool and boils kids in a big pot..."
Jasper hissed earnestly as they headed in the direction the Witch had gestured. "...Eh, you don't think he is the metal man
that grabbed Gideon, do you?" he appended towards the big hat wading among the dying ferns.

Peggy ignored the question, she'd been mulling over the plant around them and the nebulous link she'd heard regarding the new
religion. Bracken seeds collected on a certain date and beneath a particular moon phase can render one invisible, that date was
now named after an acclaimed holy person and the fern's magical allowance had been attributed to a hallowed event involving
this venerable adherent to the faith. The solemn disciplines of acquiring the seed without speaking, the diligence of patience to
let the grain fall naturally and catching the spores without touching them in a pewter dish, lost to a tale of make believe.
It's enough to make a person of the mummery-vein to say 'Bugger'.
.................................................................

Oliver Horton glanced at Boy-Boy Munce and Gideon Tundy beside him in the makeshift cage, but said nothing. The young Gypsy
had fallen asleep some time ago, but the farmer's son in the bib and braces was awake and all-eyeballs at the scene outside of
their prison. Steam hissed softly from the metal man's head as it stood at the spider-web-covered window and in that strange
warbling voice announced "Someone come". Oliver stroked his long beard and hoped whoever it was could run and run fast.
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe. 


Messages In This Thread
Peggy Powler & The Metal Man. - by BIAD - 08-09-2022, 11:24 AM
RE: Peggy Powler & The Metal Man. - by BIAD - 08-10-2022, 02:14 PM
RE: Peggy Powler & The Metal Man. - by BIAD - 08-11-2022, 08:46 PM
RE: Peggy Powler & The Metal Man. - by BIAD - 08-13-2022, 08:41 PM
RE: Peggy Powler & The Metal Man. - by BIAD - 08-15-2022, 10:31 AM
RE: Peggy Powler & The Metal Man. - by BIAD - 08-16-2022, 09:18 PM
RE: Peggy Powler & The Metal Man. - by BIAD - 08-18-2022, 01:46 PM
RE: Peggy Powler & The Metal Man. - by BIAD - 08-20-2022, 11:03 AM
RE: Peggy Powler & The Metal Man. - by BIAD - 08-21-2022, 01:03 PM

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