(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

The door opens onto an alley in New York City. It nearly always does.

"We go around the front and into the Firehouse," Ray says. "The door tends to lock behind me when I head to Milliways. Don't worry, the guys are all used to me bringing home strangers."

Comments

[creator_raven]

Elsewhere, in a--well, not a darkened corner, but somewhere no one is really paying attention--Raven is slipping the occasional cookie out of certain packages.

What?

It is taste testing!

[gone_byebye]

The Get Well Basket on display has particularly appealing cookies. This place is heavy on the chocolate chips. Oh, yes. Mrs. Fields does not mess around when it comes to high caliber cookies.

Triple chocolate cookies, anyone?

[creator_raven]

Possibly Raven will never leave.

Not even when the store closes.

Oh dear.

[gone_byebye]

"Each of you boys can have three full size cookies," Ray says, "and that's contingent on you behaving yourselves. YOu know what contingent means, right?"

"Means we gotta keep bein' good," says Joey, who's busy picking out his cookies. Alex just nods.

"Okay, cool. Raven? Uh, where did you-"

Oh God. He lost the Trickster.

These poor, unprepared fools.

[creator_raven]

At least this time there is no moving pornographic pottery?

Instead it is Mardi Gras far, far, far out of season.

At least for a block or two.

Raven is particularly pleased with the floating balloons that send showers of glitter on all that pass below them. Or almost below them.

Or, you know, above them, too. The buildings have never looked so sparkly.

[gone_byebye]

Outside, there are vendors of bootleg movies and sellers of perfume, street preachers and cops, homeless people and printing company executives and shoppers of every stripe.

They're all glittering. None of them have any idea why.

Ray pays for as many cookies as he can carry, grabs the boys, and says, "This is just where we came in."