It was the divorce of the decade. Two A-listers, whose marriage had been ecstatically happy, were on the rocks. Mainstream and social media were in feeding frenzy. Fans scanned the words in his books and her songs, finding subtle knives aimed at each other.
They met for the last time before the divorce became final on a publicised mediation weekend in a secret location.
“I’m going to miss you,” she said, as she lay in his arms.
“Me too. Just think of the sales so far and how much free advertising we’ll have when we get back together next year.”

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Take this exclusive opportunity to explore the mysteries of the zodiac through the wisdom of the esoterically enigmatic Madam Pendulica…

Aries

The ram runs with the flock so eats whatever cake fashion dictates is the new best thing ever!

Favourite Cake
Currently matcha and mint blondies with coconut frosting. Enough said?

Taurus

The bull has a natural affinity for dairy produce in all its forms, and finds choosing a favourite difficult with so much creamy lushness out there. However…

Favourite Cake
New York style cheesecake with chocolate sauce and thick cream holds a special place in the Taurean heart.

Gemini

The twins in a Gemini very rarely agree, leaving those born under this sign in two minds about everything, but on the topic of cake they are unanimous (almost).

Favourite Cake
Battenberg for its commitment to duality, although they’re still arguing about the flavour combinations.

Cancer

Cancerians like cakes with a shell. Madeleines dipped in chocolate. Choux buns hiding cream inside their crispy skins. Etcetera.

Favourite Cake
And what cake fulfils this fetish to its fullest extent? The macaron in all its weirdly textured colourfulness. A crisp shell with a slightly chewy centre, sandwiched with an inappropriately flavoured crème patisserie. Think Parma violet macarons with beetroot crème.

Leo

The lion wants a manly sort of cake. Nothing namby pamby and light. Give lions a mountain of belly filling calories with no nonsense and they are happy.

Favourite Cake
A big lump of heavy fruit cake with inch-thick marzipan and royal icing so hard it has to be approached with a chainsaw. To be served with an equally heroic portion of crumbly cheddar cheese.

Virgo

The sign of girlishness and precision. Of perceived delicacy and refinement. If asked Virgoans will suggest a liking for tiny petit fours, and not too sweet amuses bouches.

Favourite Cake
In reality nothing excites the virgin like a very very large doughnut oozing bright red jam and smothered in enough sugar to bury the whole dining room in a layer of whitishness that crunches underfoot.

Libra

The Libran scales can often be thought to represent a disciplined attitude to food and a devotion to the body beautiful. Which is only the case as it pertains to other people.

Favourite Cake
In the real world the Libran pantry contains many boxes of something inaccurately described as ‘French fancies’ – these being cubes of sponge cake liberally bedaubed with water icing and very sloppy buttercream. All the sweetness with no effort beyond opening a packet.

Scorpio

While the scorpion confesses to a passion for very dark chocolate, single malt whisky and champagne truffles, their darkest secret is an addiction to their…

Favourite Cake
Sticky toffee pudding with clotted cream. Eaten in bed whilst watching soft porn.

Sagittarius

Cake?  No cake for the fitness fanatic of the zodiac! The Sagittarian washboard stomach admits to nothing remotely cake related. Honestly! None!

Favourite Cake
The archer can be brought to tears of guilty gratification by a portion of Black Forest Gateau.

Capricorn

For the goat, who laughs at anyone who suggests self restraint as an admirable personality trait when one could be leaping to the highest peaks of desert delight, cake is to be enjoyed whenever it is offered and in as large a portions as possible.

Favourite Cake
Victoria sandwich filled with waterfalls of raspberry jam and mountains of vanilla buttercream, smothered in soft white snowy icing.

Aquarius

The water carrier is a creature of carefully constructed habit, clear and defined moral stances, and simple tastes.

Favourite Cake
Lemon drizzle served with English Breakfast tea. Or, for the southern hemisphere, lamingtons and a tinny.

Pisces

The fish is smooth and slippery in its daily life, but is given to moments of fighting fate for all it is worth when the stakes are high, just like salmon swimming upstream to spawn. The Piscean attitude to cake is much the same.

Favourite Cake
Mostly Pisceans enjoy the smooth simplicity of an egg custard tart, but on the days when they rail against the exigencies of fate nothing will suffice save a triple chocolate layer cake – served with chocolate sauce, ice cream, and thick yellow Jersey cream.

Madame Pendulica predicts she will return…one day!

A virgin smiles, her beauty glows
While those who would weigh fortune pose
A question of the stinging smile
As goose-fletched arrows eat the miles
Towards the goat whose hands embrace
A water carrier’s gentle face
And thou and I fry fish for tea
To feed my friend the ram and thee
The bull at bay, his death dirge sings 
Beneath the heavenly duo’s wings
While by the water, pink-shelled ones 
Defy the lion to seek the sun
And all the while the heavens above
Care not if we should hate or love
And, in spite of what we’re taught
The zodiac truly counts for naught

Jane Jago

Being a true shifter isn’t the blessing it may seem. But through pain and darkness Perdita seeks to find her own life despite the ambition of others…

Chapter Three – Mandrake (part three)

This was all happening too fast for me and I felt as if my head would burst but my tongue spoke anyway. “I am Perdita. I have no knowledge of my mother. The True Shifter whose flame I bear found me exposed on a barren hillside. He thought me no more than a day old.” I couldn’t say any more and Moth soothed me before carrying on with the explanation.
“He never look for female who birthed my sister. Instead taking her to his place of safety and rearing her as his own.”
“How did he feed her?”
Moth laughed. “Didn’t Shift a pair of titties. Bought a goat.”
Mandrake, whom I could not think of as Mylo, laughed too. But he also wrapped his warm arms tighter around me.
I dropped my head onto his bare chest and breathed in his spicy dragonish smell. After a minute or two I lifted my head.
“Do I have to call you Mylo?”
I felt him laugh. “Not if you prefer Mandrake.”
“I think it suits you better.”
He smiled down at me, but my stomach suddenly revolted again. I felt my cheeks pale and clamped my mouth tight shut. It seemed to me that I had nothing left to be sick on, but that didn’t matter. Mandrake saw my distress and lifted me in his strong arms. In the relative privacy of the trees I brought up yellow bile as my stomach heaved and cramped. When I had stopped trying to bring up my toenails he found another clean rag and wiped my mouth. Moth came to my shoulder.
“What can be the matter with you my dearest?” Her voice was strained and she looked to Mandrake as if seeking reassurance. “Our beloved is never sick.”
“We will find out.” He reassured her while carrying me back to the warmth of the fire.
The same dragon as before offered water and I thanked him.
I rinsed my mouth and leaned gratefully on the dragonish strength that was Mandrake. I felt weak and shaky, and while I struggled to find some measure of composure I looked to the sky, which meant I was the first to see the gleam of dragon hide in the sunlight.
“Incoming dragon,” I said.
Mandrake looked up. “Queen’s Messenger.” Then almost to himself. “I wonder what that portends.”
The messenger spiralled down out of the sky. There was nothing snowy about the descent, all was efficiency and the husbanding of effort. As his feet hit the ground, he made the change, with the same economy. His human form was slight and brown-skinned and he had one of those ageless faces that seem to defy both youth and cruel eld. He brought a package to Mandrake and they clasped forearms in the manner of warriors. Then the messenger turned his attention to me. He bowed respectfully.
“I’m glad to find you still here, my lady. The message I bear most nearly concerns you.”
Mandrake broke the seal, read briefly, then swore profusely.
“Will you let me in on the secret of what it is that concerns me nearly?”
He held out the letter, but I felt too weary to bend my mind to reading the dragonish hieroglyphs. Being already more attuned to my moods than any male had ever been, Mandrake understood.
“I’ll read it to you. ‘Close questioning of the prisoners discovered the source of the drug used to incapacitate a roomful of lycanthropes. We have spoken at some length to the creator of the drug which is lycanthrope specific and dangerous to any creature not carrying the gene. The human bartender who was bribed to release the vapours into the air died for his greed as did a young female who was innocently doing her job as a waitress. The lady tutor may find herself unwell: sick to her stomach and weary. The vial herewith contains an antidote to the poison that remains in her system. It has been tested and found safe by the chemist who made it.’ Which explains why you are sick, amata. Will you essay the antidote?”
Moth shook her head. “Until I smelled it.”
Mandrake unstoppered the tiny bottle and Moth stuck first her nose then a finger in it. “Is well,” she said, “nothing but healing herbs.”
I took the vial from Mandrake and the smell was like a summer meadow. I drunk it down and for a moment I was afraid I was going to boot again, but it passed and I felt the medicine coating my stomach.
“Will you be better now?” Moth wanted to know.
“I hope so. My stomach seems soothed.”
Mandrake put his big warm hand against my belly and I felt him pouring his warmth and vitality into me. On impulse I leaned forward and kissed him softly on the lips.
“Thank you.”
He lifted a forefinger to my cheek and stroked the skin.
“Will you sit and wait while my dragons flame this place? Then we can go.”
I nodded, but then I gripped his finger. “Mandrake, are you coming home with us?”
“If you want me.”
“We do. But do you fully understand what it means? What you will have to do? What you will have to give up?”
He smiled and something warmed in the back of his eyes. “Of course I do. I think I have known from the minute I set my eyes on you in the palace many years since. It is only that today it crystallised. It’s the profoundest thing I have ever felt. And, honestly, part of me just wants to run.”
I touched his fascinating mouth with the very tip of one finger. “Me too, but I know that I will never be complete without you. Or, rather, we will never be complete.”
Moth, whose emotional intelligence is as cramped as that of all fae, looked from my face to his and I felt her not understanding.
“Neither can run. Bond has you. Nothing to be done. I never want to be bonded. But is my life now.”
I soothed her. “And you are my beloved.” She smiled and I felt her love.
“Dear heart,” she said in an awed voice, “how did we bond battle dragon?”
“I don’t know. But do I know the bond cuts both ways.”
Mandrake appeared to understand us because he rubbed a big hand over my head.
“Don’t try to pick it apart, amata. We are who we are. And now who we are is a bonded three.”
Shimmering into dragon form he whistled his orders, and the wing took flight, formed an obviously prearranged pattern, and drew in a collective breath.
The flaming when it came was as controlled, precise and effective as Mandrake himself. One moment there was a whole slew of ugly concrete buildings and about a mile of chain link fence. The next minute there was nothing but very hot ash. Moth was impressed.
“In all my born days I never seen…”
“You have seen dragons flame before.”
“One or two. And only angry. This not like that. It like housekeeping with blowtorch.”
I laughed at the analogy. But when I thought about it, I decided it was pretty accurate.

Jane Jago

Ponies and Progeny or the graceless art of equine management as envisaged by the pen of Jane Jago and inspired by the genius of Norman Thelwell (1923-2004)

Today we consider the importance of stirrups…

***** ***** *****

Some whimsical words on whimsical themes…

At Christmas, Dad played a trick on the cat. He fed her a chocolate with mustard in the middle. She was very sick. Mom was cross. “Never piss off a cat,” she said.
Dad laughed.
August, and we were packing for a family trip to Florida. Dad was in a good mood, fooling around with my baby sister and kissing Mom on the mouth. Then he tripped over the cat. Broke his hip and his knee. We left him in hospital and got on the plane.
Mom looked at me and winked.
“Never piss off a cat. They don’t forget.”

Jane Jago

One must perforce confess that one’s interest in this particular literary effort was sparked by a bout of bronchitis. One was confined to beddybyes with poorly chest and Mumsie loaned one the box set of a television adaptation of this little book.

One was instantly enraptured. And one defies anyone to watch the dripping wet figure of Colin Firth emerging from that pond without a twinge of unfamiliar excitement.

Purely on the strength of such an enjoyable frisson, one embarked on a reading of the book upon which the series was based.

What disappointment awaited one.

Gentle reader it is dull, dull, dull.

The plot is thin at best.

The characters are woodenly cardboard.

And the language is old-fashioned and often abstruse.

To recapitulate. A young woman refuses a man. Then she sees his mansion in the country and changes her mind.

Star Rating: Two out of five. Plus one for Colin Firth’s sex appeal.

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

The humans were happily drawing water that the myora kept fresh and sweet for them.
Rescued from a dying world, the oddly appealing humans couldn’t shape reality mentally, lacked telepathy, and had an irrational urge to over-procreate. Some myora even considered humans to be sapient. Those who watched now didn’t care. They were here for entertainment.
The signal came and the culling began, with the smallest humans screaming as they were caught.
This way of managing animals came from the humans’ own history. And since the population had to be kept in check, why not have fun doing so?

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Take this exclusive opportunity to explore the mysteries of the zodiac through the wisdom of the esoterically enigmatic Madam Pendulica…

Aries

The ram likes softness and warmth, and doesn’t mind if things get a bit greasy and smelly

Ideal Undies
Woolly long johns (cashmere for preference, but any wool will do).

Taurus

If asked, the bull will loudly disavow any interest in anything as girlie as underpinnings. But the facts speak for themselves and a drawer filled with frilly lace gives lie to bullish disininterest.

Ideal Undies
Anything from Victoria’s Secrets

Gemini

The astrological twins look both ways, so penchants for both plain cotton and gold lamé characterise the terrible twosome.

Ideal Udies
Carefully unremarkable white cotton for weekdays. On weekends nothing is too extreme.

Cancer

Cancerians can be excessively crabby about underwear, and more than a little fetishistic about the shell that camouflages their genitalia.

Ideal Undies
A leather thong with attached chains.

Leo

The lion needs to shake its mane and anything interfering with that noble ambition is a complete no no.

Ideal Undies
The lion goes commando proudly and no matter what the weather.

Virgo

This is the sign of virtue and organisation. Virgoans need to see themselves as immaculate in every situation and would shun any item of clothing not pertaining to personal crispness.

Ideal Undies
Anything pristine, blindingly white, and absolutely asexual..

Libra

The Libran balanced psyche demands comfort with a side order of chic and slippery sexuality.

Ideal Undies
Silken camisoles and French knickers for the ladies. Raw silk body skimming trunks for the boys.

Scorpio

The sharply sexy Scorpion hides the sting in its tail under a carefully curated appearance.

Ideal Undies
The juxtaposition of leather and lace fits the complexity of this signs character and how it chooses to express its individuality.

Sagittarius

Being of an athletic disposition, the archer looks to technical fabrics and modern designs, and requires its underwear to be both serviceable and sleek.

Ideal Undies
Sports bras. Lycra shorts. Perspiration wicking fabrics. And colour blocks.

Capricorn

The goat enjoys food and pleasures of the flesh with equal hircine abandonment. Which means that underclothing needs to be both loose and of luxurious texture.

Ideal Undies
Silk and cashmere vest and pants with no pretension of style, but every evidence of luxury.

Aquarius

This star sign, born when the winter weather is often at its most harsh, requires that the scaffolding beneath its outer garments is of sufficient ability to keep any kind of weather at bay.

Ideal Undies

PVC catsuits are de rigeur for water porters of any gender.

Pisces

The fish is sleek and slippery, which makes it hugely surprising that this sign prioritises comfortable underwear above any image enhancement.

Ideal Undies
Old and much washed. Female panties will probably be a little lacking in the elastic department, and male underpants may sport the odd hole in the testicle area. Both lots will be faded to a uniform and comforting shade of grey.

Madame Pendulica predicts she will return…

So my rosebuds have been gathered
And my harvest taken in
As my life draws into winter
Though the season it is spring
And the days are getting longer
Though they always seem too short
Now the sun is shining brighter
Than I had sometimes thought
Yet still the world seems darker
Than twas in my days of youth
The ever-growing shadows
The cold and bitter truth
But there are still always pastimes
And often good company
With bonhomie and laughter
And honey still for tea…

E.M. Swift-Hook