Poppensparkle invited Twinklebottom to enter the upper room of Pippen’s Tower in the castle known as Cair Tellos. Poppy’s face revealed great concern as she led Twinkle to the coffee table in what her young husband constantly called Poppy’s Worry Spot.
“So, what’s on your mind today? Why did you so urgently need to see me?” Twinkle said.
“It’s the creator. He’s not been well. And that’s concerning at his advanced age.”
“You mean the Slow One who writes our story? The one our existence depends on? How old is he?”
“He says he is 568 years old, but he writes fiction, so he lies a lot. In faery years he’s 138, so I guess he is probably almost 70 in human years.”
“Goodness, Poppy! If he dies, we all disappear into nothingness.”
“Yes, that’s the way being a faery works. We depend on the fools who believe in us.”
“So, what is wrong with him?”
“In January, one of those two crowns on his molar teeth that broke off during the pandemic got seriously infected. He had both teeth yanked out by a psycho lady dentist who nearly pulled his skeleton out of his body during the extraction of the stubborn infected tooth. He had to take lots of antibiotics and was in a lot of pain. He had trouble eating.”
“That sounds horrible, but survivable. Old Slow Ones go through that sort of thing routinely. The old lady who has dementia and talks to me all the time had all her upper teeth pulled out and something called a denichurr put in its place.”
“Yes, but that wasn’t the end of his health troubles. In the middle of January, he had to pee out four small kidney stones. That hurt an awful lot, and he got seriously infected somehow. He has this weird colon problem called diverticulosis, a condition where the large intestine is full of unexpected pockets that collect extra feces that stops moving and can become infected too.”
“So, he was also full of shit.”
“Um, yes. He had to get a shot of a super-powerful antibiotic in his behind, given to him by a lady nurse. He also needed an antibacterial powder that he had to stir into water, drinking 80 ounces of water or more a day. And he had to take lots and lots of laxatives too. At least seven days worth.”
“So, he got to know the household porcelain well.”
“It makes me glad that faeries are differently made and never have to poop.”
“You and me both, Poppy. So, is he dying?”
“I don’t think so. But I wish I knew how to help. He’s a weird old guy, but likable and funny. And we need him to stay alive and tell our story.”
“I know a dark faery I can consult,” said Twinkle stupidly.”
“Oh, that’s a truly terrible idea!”
An hour later, Twinklebottom sat in Dangerheart’s underground tea room.
“…So, that’s what is wrong with Mickey the creator. Is there anything you can do to help?”
Dangerheart grinned evilly. “I was watching through my crystal ball as the old hag stuck the needle in his butt. I laughed long and hard about that.”
“It isn’t really a crystal ball. It’s a Slow One child’s shooting marble.”
“It lets me scry on foolish mortals like the creator though. And I love seeing him get embarrassed or put through pain. I’m only sorry I didn’t get to see the psycho dentist yank the infected molar out. That would’ve been a hoot.”
“Isn’t there something you can do to help?”
“Well, he already went to the emergency room on Friday and after they scanned him and poked him and took his blood, they found out the infection was gone. They couldn’t do anything more for him with their science stuff. The pee doctor gave him some expensive pills that turn your pee blue. Surely there is no evil magic that I could apply that would be any funnier than that.”
“You think we don’t need to worry about him anymore?”
“I wouldn’t say that. President Pumpkinhead Trump will probably take away his Medicare and that will probably kill him. That should be funny to watch.”
“So, you think we are all doomed? The world will not remember us after our storyteller dies, and we will all fade away into nothingness?”
“Of course, we’re doomed. And you sure use the word So a lot. Or was that sew?”
#3. To know about Filipino culture, you have to understand what Jollibee is all about. Jollibee is the Filipino MacDonald’s. Of course, it is cheaper… and better tasting. There are a few of them around the country here. California has more than Texas. They are like a giant Filipino magnet. You go there to find the Filipino community in any American city. But other people love the food too. You have to sort the Filipinos from the Hispanics and white folks that are not too proud to eat cheap and delicious.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Real Magic in that Old Home Town
Rowan, Iowa… Not the place I was born, but the place where I got to be a stupid kid, and have the lessons of the good and god-fearing life hammered into my head hard enough to make a dent and make it stay with me for more than half a century. I got to go to grade school there. I learned to read there, especially in Miss Mennenga’s third and fourth grade class. Especially in that old copy of Treasure Island with the N.C, Wyeth illustrations in it, the one Grandma Aldrich kept in the upstairs closet in their farm house. I got to see my first naked girl there. I learned a lot of things about sex from my friends there, and none of them were true. I played 4-H softball there, and made a game-saving catch in center field… in the same game where my cousin Bob hit the game-winning home run. But those were things kids did everywhere. It didn’t make me special. There was no real magic in it.
Being a farm-kid’s kid taught me the importance of doing your chores, every day and on time. If you didn’t do them, animals could get sick, animals could die, crops could be spoiled, the chickens could get angry and petulant and peck your hands when you tried to get the eggs. Cows could get grumpy and kick the milk bucket. Cats could vow revenge if you didn’t direct a spray or two at their little faces as they lined up to watch you milk the cows. And you never knew for sure what a vengeful cat might do to you later, as cats were evil. They might jump on the keyboard during your piano recital. They might knock the turkey stuffing bowl off the top of the dryer when Mom and Grandma and several aunts were cooking Thanksgiving Dinner. And I know old black Midnight did that on purpose because he got to snatch some off the floor before it could be reached by angry aunts with brooms and dustpans. And all of it was your fault if it all led back to not doing your chores, and not doing them exactly right.
But, even though we learned responsibility and work ethic from our chores, that was not the real home-town magic either. I wasn’t technically a real farm kid. Sure, I picked up the eggs in the chicken house at Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich’s farm more than once. And I did, in fact, help with milking machines and even milking cows by hand and squirting cats in the faces at Uncle Donny’s farm. I walked beans, going up and down the rows to pull and chop weeds out of the bean fields at Uncle Larry’s farm. I drove a tractor at Great Uncle Alvin’s farm. But I didn’t have to do any of those things every single day. My mother and my father both grew up on farms. But we lived in town. So, my work ethic was probably worth only a quarter of what the work ethic of any of my friends in school was truly worth. I was a bum kid by comparison. Gary G. and Kevin K, both real farm kids and older than me, explained this to me one day behind the gymnasium with specific examples and fists.
Being a farm kid helped to forge my character. But that was really all about working hard, and nothing really to do with magic.
I truly believe the real magic to be found in Rowan, Iowa, my home town, was the fact that it was boring. It was a sleepy little town, that never had any real event… well, except maybe for a couple of monster blizzards in the 60’s and 70’s, and the Bicentennial parade and tractor pull on Main Street in 1976, and a couple of costume contests in the 1960’s held in the Fire Station where I had really worked hard on the costumes, a scarecrow one year, and an ogre the next, where I almost won a prize. But nothing that changed history or made Rowan the center of everything.
And therein lies the magic. I had to look at everything closely to find the things and strategies that would take me to the great things and places where I wanted to end up. I learned to wish upon a star from Disney movies. I learned about beauty of body and soul from the girls that I grew up with, most of them related. And I invented fantastical stories with the vivid imagination I discovered lurking in my own stupid head. I embarrassed Alicia Stewart by telling everyone that I could prove she was a Martian princess, kidnapped and brought to Earth by space pirates that only I knew how to defeat. And I learned to say funny things and make people laugh… but in ways that didn’t get me sent to the principal’s office in school. Yes, it was the magic of my own imagination. And boring Iowa farm towns made more people with magic in them than just me. John Wayne was one. Johnny Carson was one also. And have you heard of Elijah Wood? Or the painter Grant Wood? Or the actress Cloris Leachman?
Yep. We were such stuff as dreams were made on in small towns in Iowa. And that is real magic.
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