As MissCris indulged in her pipe-dream Starbucks coffee, Arwen came over and said, "Nice try, MissCris!", pulling her out of her revelry and back to the enchanted forest, where MissCris AND lil christian joined the rest of the gang. "I should have known it was just a dream!", MissCris mumbled sadly. The blue ladybug said, "I know everyone is hot and tired and hungry. We will eat here, then move on to find the secular hermit, and ask the Persnickety for advice." Arwen, the Duchess, and the blue lady pooled their magical powers and conjured up a feast!! A REAL feast, consisting of freshly baked rolls, real butter, the best fried chicken in all the land, cole slaw, and cupcakes and coffee, too!!
MissCris, in awe at seeing so much food, said, "anyone who touches that coffee is in trouble!! IT'S MINE!!" Pipp, always the troublemaker, blatantly said, "oh really" and poured a cup of coffee for herself. Along with a cupcake or two, of course..
Arwen and the blue lady sat down together to talk about the Duchess and her predicament with finding her true love. "We need to get her to talk with the Gypsy girl", Arwen muttered.
"I think she's scared to find out who her true love is," the blue ladybug said sadly. "But she needs to know!" The group, now satisfactorily fed and nourished, got up and moved on until they came to a bookstore called Persnickety. By this time, Arwen had once again assumed her ghostly cat form in the Sunnysky. Duchess Aimee, who seemed to get more and more into a furious mood with each step they took, tripped going inside the store, almost fell but was grabbed at the last second by none other than the secular hermit!! The Duchess looked up into a pair of gorgeous blue eyes, and said, "Thank you so much, kind sir!" The secular hermit replied, "My pleasure to help such a beautiful woman as yourself," then he winked sassily at her. Suddenly, a loud voice snapped, "No touchin' the merchandise until you buy it!" The blue ladybug, knowing the person who owned this voice, stated, "Ugly, stop bein' so rude to your customers! No wonder the visitors to the enchanted forest never buy anything here!", she huffed.
If you aint gonna buy nothin', then move along!", he yelled back at the blue ladybug, who stuck her tongue out at him in retort.
So the group, which now included the secular hermit, tramped on to their intended location of the top of Mount Tintin. Arlene played her flute, and once again heard the voice of her beloved Tintin, and said, "My love, show yourself to me!" Suddenly, Arlene looked down and found a note on the ground. Opening it, she realized it was a series of musical notes to a song she had never played before. "You need to play this song," Tintin said. "Then I can come to you at last."
next chapter: arlene's song and MissCris and Pipp learn the Duchess secret from arwen and the blue lady