She's Back

“Il prultho Preltis!”

Pumpus, a huge lavender-coloured head with little arms, voiced the joyous exclamation as Presh, all beige bows and curls, clattered prettily down the steps into Dean’s.

There was the old gang, happy to see her. They warmed Presh’s heart. How she’d missed Pumpus’s twelve-inch smile, and Oblong the lovable rectangle of flesh, and of course the proprietor himself in tablecloth cloak and snazzy shorts. Petunia’s Faction, as this trio was collectively nicknamed. Also present was Sonica, at a table sipping a drink, on hand in case Dean required her aptitude for harmonics while setting up his equipment.

It was all the same as it ever was. Oh, Nottingham. Nottingham after months of joyless colourless sterility. Great was the Leader, but the compound wasn’t home anymore.

“I’ve missed my last open mic night,” Presh greeted her friends.

“Oh!”

That was Sonica, and next second it was hugs all round. Oblong may not have been the best-equipped for this, but Presh knew he reciprocated when she squeezed him fiercest of all.

“Babe,” commenced Dean, in a sort of groan of gladness. “Whoever gives out the Mini-Flash names was just, like, he couldn’t see this, not like us, because…wholly precious. Like, the most precious. Tonight I don’t want to hear a word about ‘Semi!’ And you’re right,” he continued, by now half-ushering and half-bowing Presh over to the DJ deck, his wispy white straggles of bunched and belocked hair one big exuberant dance. “It’s been, since you were gone, well, it’s not that there haven’t been moments, it’s not that there hasn’t been this whole other vibe, but all that time…babe. The first bars. Then it’s like we’ll know. What we’ve been waiting for.”

He proffered the microphone.

“Then here’s one just for you, Dean,” Presh declared, and proceeded to render the opening lines of ‘The Red Red Robin.’

Everybody gaped at her pitch-perfect lilt, flawless from start to finish.

“Exfrootage zooblions dah, Preltis bluth-bluth-bluth!” Pumpus enthused.

“You got me, Pumpus,” grinned Presh. “Yes, I stopped off for singing-lessons. In fact that’s the reason I brought nothing back,” she added cheesily. “Typical little me. Didn’t find a thing to help Joe with his convention. Mission was a total washout.”

Dean however wasn’t having that. “It’s,” was the sum of his first attempt to grapple with Presh’s theme, though he uttered the contraction about twelve times, and afterwards there was quite a bit on catching the wave and the university of life and how Louise-Claudia had been much the same at Presh’s age until she’d had the good fortune to begin receiving Dean’s guidance. When he was finally done and had reverted to alphabetizing his karaoke books, Sonica poured a glass for Presh and the girls went over to the table to catch up.

“Interesting choice of Earth-number,” was Sonica’s first comment. She sipped her drink.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Presh replied, and sipped hers.

Sonica gave her a knowing look.

“Let me tell you about something else that’s everywhere in their songs,” said she. “Curious ritual the humans call ‘holiday romance.’ As best I can gather, it involves their going somewhere they don’t usually live, with the express purpose of finding somebody to not end up with. Then when the ceremony is over they go home again, in order to cherish the memories forevermore. They’re an odd lot. That said, it was an odd sort of holiday we took, stranded in Joe’s subconscious with our memories gone and terrifying menaces lurking round every corner. But, Presh…”

Gently she took her hand.

“Wouldn’t you be better thinking of it that way?” Sonica implored her. “Your mission was to help you get some perspective, not to change the way things are. Mini-Flash Juniper’s still here, and so is Mini-Flash Robin, and they’re still madly in love.”

“I met someone,” was Presh’s counter to this. “Another Mini-Flash, as it happens. A senior this time,” and she raised her tiny eyebrows.

Sonica looked unconvinced.

“Then why do I get the impression that, short on wind-up musical monsters as you confess yourself to be, you’ve nevertheless returned to us with a plan?” was her question.

Whereat Presh, as Presh so often did, just smiled.

TO BE CONTINUED