The sun in a pocket technique seems like a good one to master. I tried tonight but made a total mess of the whites. Putting the yolks in a little later however turned out well, and I had a delicious sauce to go with dinner. Should I ever nail it, I will indeed post a picture.

I did mention at the start of this blog that I was soaking cranberries in booze. Here is the work in progress. I went with vodka this time and not gin. Vodka and cranberry. That goes together right? I also put in a few drops of stevia to sweeten the concoction.

How long do you think before it is good to drink?

The Wisp

Bara raced ahead and was first to reach the room. She had the remaining piece of pie in one hand and had to fiddle with her key to open the door. Amy had just crested the stairs and she was already inside. Odd? Amy had turned out the lights but everything was ablaze. And the curtains were open again. They flapped in the wind. The diary! Bara ran to her desk and threw down the pie. It slid half-off the plate and onto an unfinished Shakespeare essay.
“What’s wrong?” Amy asked from the doorway.
“The diary! It’s gone!
Amy closed the door and joined her at the desk. She moved papers aside. There was no doubt. The diary definitely wasn’t there. “I left it here,” Amy said. “I know I did.”
Bara looked through the pile of papers one last time and then plopped herself down onto her bed in frustration.
“Somebody stole it!”
“Who’d have done that?”
“Ms. Korey knew we had it. It had to be her. She took it?”
“A librarian broke into our room and stole a book? Really? I don’t think so. Ms. Korey wouldn’t steal anything. Maybe it fell on the floor.” Amy went down on her knees and searched around. She was under the desk when a crash sounded. Startled, she bumped her head and let out a gasp.
Bara shushed her and helped her up. “Someone’s in there,” she whispered and pointed to the closet.
“The thief?” Amy mouthed.
Bara nodded.
“Let’s get help!”
Bara shook her head and took Amy’s hand, stopping her from leaving the room. She grabbed a field hockey stick from where it leaned against the wall and crept toward the closet door. She reached for the handle. Amy looked around for a weapon. She settled on an empty vase and came up beside Bara. Slowly, Bara turned the knob. She lifted the hockey stick into the air, ready to strike, and threw open the door … her arm froze.

“It’s me! It’s me!” Colin Van Fitt cowered in the closet, one arm protecting his face. The other hand held the diary. It was obvious what had happened. He’d snuck into their room, something he did on a regular basis, scaling the wall outside the window. After hearing a noise in the hallway, he’d hidden to avoid discovery by Den Mother. Boys, no matter how innocent their intent, were not allowed in St. Cat dorm rooms.
Bara dropped the hockey stick and grabbed the diary. Amy replaced the vase and put her hand out.
“You’re going to get caught one of these days, Col,” she warned and then helped him up. “Then we’ll all be in trouble. Couldn’t you’ve waited until tomorrow?”
“I was bored.”
“Won’t they miss you at your dorm?” Amy asked.
“Nah, my roommate’s gone home early for Thanksgiving. I have the place to myself.” He looked over at the desk and eyed the pie expectantly, perhaps pleadingly. No one knows hunger like a growing teenage boy and boy was Colin growing.
“Bored?” Amy chuckled. “Hungry more like it.”
He grinned. His smile was his best feature. With his auburn hair and warm brown eyes, he was good-looking, but one had to look up—way up—to notice. Colin was closer to seven than six-feet-tall. He scooped up the pie, threw himself onto Amy’s bed, and stretched out his long and painfully lean frame. His feet hung more than a foot off the end. With large ravenous bites, he set upon devouring the dessert.
“Don’t get food on my bed, you big slob.” Amy brushed at a few stray crumbs.
Colin sat up and ate more carefully. “Where’d you get the book, Barbie doll?” he mumbled with his mouth full of pie.
Bara didn’t like to be called anything but Bara, not Bar, not Bar Bar, and certainly not Barbie doll, but she’d known Colin since they were five. He was like a brother, and so she put up with it, but still focused on the diary, she didn’t answer him. She sat down on her bed and looked it over to make sure it wasn’t damaged. Amy shook her head.
“You wouldn’t believe it if we told you,” she said.
Colin continued to focus on Bara.
“Did you get it from your dad?” he asked her.
Bara didn’t even look up. Colin shoveled one last fork-full of pie into his mouth. He placed the now empty plate back on the desk, reached over with his extraordinarily long arms, and freed the diary from her grip.
“Hey!” Bara protested.
He ignored her complaint. “Won’t he be miffed to find it missing? It looks mint. I’d keep it under lock and key.”
“Maybe it should be ... if only to keep it out of your mitts,” Bara returned sharply. “And no, it’s not my Dad’s.”
She got up from her bed and tried to reclaim the diary. Game on ... for Colin at least. He jumped to his feet and held it above her head. She made a jump for it but gave up quickly. Even standing on a chair, there was no way she could have reached it.
“Give it back!” she demanded.
He gave a challenging smile. She tried again to reclaim it from his airy reach. A firmer approach was needed. She elbowed him in the ribs and back fisted him in the sternum, a move learned from karate lessons, lessons her mother insisted she’d take. Bara had no real interest and wasn’t all that good, but her moves were effective enough on Colin. He buckled over and collapsed like a folding chair on the bed, gasping and laughing at the same time. Amy grabbed the diary and returned it to Bara. Colin rolled over on his side and propped his head on his arm. He tried once again, this time with a less physical approach.
“If you didn’t get it from your dad, where did you get it?”
“Like Amy said, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“Try me.”
Bara looked at Amy, who nodded. She took a deep breath.
“Okay then … we found it at the library.”
“The library!” Colin repeated. “Of course. Where else would you get a book? Come on, no library would let you take that out. It’s an antique or something.”
“We didn’t check it out,” Amy told him.
Bara shot her a warning glance.
“You mean you stole it!” Colin mocked. “You did. You stole it. Did Amy drive the getaway car while you in your best blacks pulled off the heist of the century?” Chuckling away, he added, “I’m shocked, ladies. But don’t worry. I won’t turn you into Sheriff Pillanger—for a price.”
“Lame!” Bara shot back.
She made to put the diary away.
“Okay … okay …” Colin relented … kind of. “I’ll be serious. Just tell me.”
Bara didn’t look convinced but she sat back down.
“We should tell him,” Amy urged. “Maybe he can help.”
“Help … with more dumb jokes?”
“I’ll be nice. I promise.”
Colin knelt and struck a beggar’s stance, hands clasped together. Bara couldn’t help herself. She smiled. Amy was right. Even if he found humor in just about everything, often at her expense, Bara could count on Colin to have her back.
“We did find it at the library,” she told him. “But a dream led me to it.”
Like a confused puppy, Colin cocked his head to the side. “A dream? Really?” Then he just couldn’t help himself. “Was I in it?”
Bara threw up her hands.
“I told you. He can’t be serious. Unbelievable! Just forget it. Forget we said anything. You were right the first time. We got it from my dad. That’s all. So just for—get—about—it!”
Colin realized he had pushed too far and tried to sound staid. “Okay, tell me about the dream?”
Bara sniffed her sweater. “Do I smell like a lollipop ... nope, not a sucker. You had your chance.”
She grabbed a Shakespeare play from her desk and not even noting the page pretended to read. Colin looked at Amy. Amy shrugged. Colin crawled to the side of Bara’s bed. He poked his head above the edge and faked a lisp.
“Barbie, will you tell me, pretty please.”
She put down the book. He smiled victoriously—a premature celebration. She grabbed a pillow and threw it at his head, hitting him square on.
“Alright! Alright! I give up!”
She threw another pillow. It hit as well.
“Cease fire! Really, I believe you.”
She grabbed a stuffed bear and was about to throw it too.
“Peace!” Colin held up his hands in surrender.
Bara didn’t look convinced. “Honest?”
He nodded. She put down the bear and pretended to read again. Colin crawled up onto her bed and perched on the edge. He wasn’t going to give up.
“Seriously, how did you find the book?”
“Okay fine. But you have to promise not to laugh.”
“Not a giggle or a guffaw. I swear.”
Bara sighed and then began the tale.

…

Colin read from his phone.
“There isn’t any hits for Clâvigen. In French, Claviger means keeper of keys. No wait … there’s a tech company using the name … but that’s it.” He turned off the screen and thought. “Why don’t we look at our cast of characters? We got Nelson Sedgewick, the diary author, this Wisp being, and some creature that looks just like Bara but without eyes.”
“I think the Wisp wanted me to find the diary and the evil me, well maybe she didn’t, or maybe she was only a nightmare. But I’m almost certain the Wisp was real. I could smell her and everything. Dreams aren’t usually scratch and sniff.”
Bara hadn’t told Colin about the dark-haired boy. Amy had sensed her reasoning and obligingly said nothing. Colin would have teased the stuffing out of her if she’d told him some mysterious boy—a boy she’d never met—visited her dreams on a nightly basis. Besides, she wasn’t certain the dark-haired boy had anything to do with what was happening now. She’d been dreaming about him for a long time. So for the time being, she kept his nonexistence a secret.
“Let me take another look at the diary,” Colin said.
He held out his hand. Bara passed it over. He opened it and read aloud.

Guenevere arrived in Windfall, dressed in dusty rose velvet, a feather waving from her felt hat. Her hair was truly golden, her eyes the deepest blue. I fell instantly and hopelessly in love with a woman I had only ever glimpsed in passing. Some said she had been born in Europe, orphaned as a baby and then raised by nuns until coming into her inheritance. Less generous gossips suggested her wealth had come from shadier sources. Even then there were whispers of witchcraft. I shut my ears to this kind of talk. Guenevere was alone and I told myself in need of my protection. I was confident she would adore me in return. Wooing women was my greatest talent.
Alas courting her wouldn’t prove easy. She moved into a cottage deep in the wood, surrounded by a hedge maze. She obviously wanted to be left alone. Such was my arrogance I didn’t include myself among those she wished to avoid. Guenevere may have wanted a quiet life but neither I—nor the Slip spirits—would grant her wish. I told myself if she were but to meet me …

Colin paused. A look of alarm overwhelmed his face.
“Why did you stop?” Bara asked.
“Shh … someone’s coming!”
Barely heard footsteps approached in the hall. The lightness of foot and the time in between steps suggested that whoever it was, he or she didn’t want to be heard … a footstep and then silence … a footstep … then silence. But the wooden boards of the dorms were telling, betraying the stalker with every creaking step. Slip Spirits? No, not spirits, but no less terrifying.
“Ladies!” A shrill English accent carried down the hall, piercing through the closed door.
“It’s Den Mother!”
Having announced herself at full volume, Den Mother gave up any further attempt at stealth. Her footfalls were now as heavy as a linebacker on eggshells, and they were coming fast. Amy threw Colin’s bag at him. Bara pushed him to move.
“You have to get gone—now.”
He sprang to his feet with the diary still in hand and headed for the window. No one thought his escape route too dangerous. They were on the second floor, not an impossible jump, or climb for that matter. It was how he’d gained access to the room in the first place. Colin was at the open window. He had one foot out. Bara pointed at the diary.
“Leave that here.”
“Right. Let me know how it ends.”
He tossed it to her. She slid it under her bed.
“Lights out, ladies!”
Den Mother was doing bed checks. Doors were heard opening and closing all along the hall. The doorknob to their room rattled but didn’t open. Amy had locked it.
“Bara!” came Den Mother’s sharp tones. “You open this door instantly!”
“Coming, Den Mother!”
Den Mother had a name. No one used it. Keys rattled. In seconds, she’d be in the room. Colin disappeared from the window frame just as the knob turned. The door flew open and an enormous shadow fell across the room. With her heavily muscled hands on her broad sturdy hips, Den Mother did a thorough job of filling the doorway. She had the physique of a tank and was as well-armed. Only the extraordinarily simple or suicidal ever crossed her. “Are you girls alone?” she asked Bara pointedly.
Den Mother didn’t like Bara. She liked few of the students at St. Catherine’s—spoiled princesses, she thought—but this one she held in special disdain. Bara was far too headstrong for her own good or for Den Mother’s comfort.
“Yes, Den Mother,” Bara answered with her best imitation of meekness.
“I thought I heard a third voice … a boy’s voice.”
“That’s impossible,” Bara returned.
“I know what I heard.”
Den Mother took a step into the room and peered around. Bara looked at Amy. Amy looked as guilty as one could look. It would be up to Bara. She thought up a lie, quick.
“We were practicing,” she offered.
One heavy eyebrow lifted. “Practicing?” Den Mother echoed. “What were you practicing?”
She bore her gaze into Amy—the weak link. Amy remained silent. She looked down, refusing to meet Den Mother's stare. Bara rolled her eyes and handed over the Shakespeare.
Den Mother read from the page.
“Macbeth?”
Macbeth it is. Bara’s mind continued to race to make the lie more believable. “Amy was playing the three witches. I was Macbeth and Banquo. So fair and foul a day I have not seen” she said in a grasped-for-baritone.
Den mother studied her.
“Impressive performance, Miss Cavanagh.”
She wasn’t buying it. Her narrow eyes focused on the open window. She crossed the room and looked out. Thankfully, Colin had completed his escape and disappeared from view.
“Why in this weather would you have the window open?” Den Mother demanded.
“To add mood to the scene.” Bara quoted from Macbeth once again, “When shall we three meet again … in lightning, thunder, and rain.”
“The weather certainly is helping with your studies, now isn’t it?” Den Mother replied ironically. “Still, let’s keep nature outside where it belongs.” She closed the window with more force than necessary. She’d no way of proving her suspicion and so had to let it go but knew—as sure as raccoons like to eat garbage by the pale light of the moon—she’d been deceived. She vowed to keep a closer eye on this little snippet.
“Lights out in five minutes and I’ll be back to check.”
Den Mother glared once more and exited the room. Amy and Bara knew she’d be true to her word. The old bag was likely listening from the hall. Amy jumped up and closed the door, but a closed door was little defence against her prying. Best to do as directed and go to bed. Further reading of the diary would have to wait. Bara slipped it out from under the bed and placed it in the top drawer of her desk. She locked the desk and placed the key under her pillow. Then she and Amy got ready for bed.
Five minutes later, Den Mother opened the door. The room was dark. Amy and Bara were deep under the covers, feigning sleep, fooling no one. “Hmmphf!” Den Mother sniffed like she smelled something rotten and closed the door again.

link to audio