WHOOOOOOOSH!
"What the...aaaaaaaaaaa....!" Shendron's voice trailed away as his now decapitated head flew out the window. His mother stood there triumphantly, orcish blade in hand (orcish blades have many uses other than chopping off heads...they are amazing when it comes to dicing those lettuce leaves!)
When Shendron came to, he was eye to eye with his wife.
She looked very...very...very angry. Suddenly, she jumped on him and was trying to bite his ear off!
"Ow, ow, ow! Woman! What are you doing!" Shendron yelped.
A frog lounging in the garden, watching the two heads fighting. As the frog sat, he thought: "So cliche'd...this happens too often to be funny anymore."

Of course his search for his mother and (soon to be ex-) wife (where are those divorce papers) was considerably slowed by the fact that Doncheadle had started gnawing on his far-left leg and wouldn't let go. What had started as a mild tingling sensation in his foot was now outright agony, as Doncheadle had now reached the bone. Again. How were the scars supposed to heal?!?!

In the mean time, while Shendron had been knocked out cold in the kitchen, his mother had been contemplating her new nailpolish, considered new curtains for the bedroom to match the duveit and had chopped off his wife's head. She really thought blue would go better...

Shendron could hear a soft moaning coming from the passageway. He walked closer and closer to the source of the sound, until there in the middle of the passageway carpet he could see his wife's head. Making a mess all over the carpet!!! AAAAAAAAH!!! How would he ever get the stains out!! He quickly ran up to her and kicked her (head) out of the way. While he sat and scrubbed at the carpet, he wondered if his wife could possible grow a less bloody head next time...

Well, when he came too, he was not surprised to find that his fat slug pet, Doncheadle, was licking his face. His favourite game was to knock Shendron unconcious. Everytime he tried to knock him out for longer periods of time. The good thing about it happening this time is that the glass jar on his hand had broken with the fall, and the swelling seemed to have moved from his hand the the baseball size bump on his head where Doncheadle had hit him. Ok, gotta get up now, and get to work. His mother and the three-eared freak he used to call his wife could be anywhere by now.

Shendron walked past the screaming blue object, ignoring it for the moment. In the land of Sawvadawn, anything can happen...and everything usually does. He walked into the kitchen. He needed to remove the marmalade jar to regain his full power. Going to the sink, he opened the tap and placed his swollen hand under the pink liquid. As he was about to give up, cursing under his breath, a sloppy and wet object hit him on the head. He slouched over the sink, finally sinking to the floor. Light spots filled his vision before darkness enveloped him...

Oh shock, oh !!!!!HORROR!!!!!!, oh greatest of great bad things! How could his lovely wife have done this to him? To team up with a vile ugly, hag, sorceress and betray him like this. How could a woman of her beauty sink so low. Ok, not PERFECT beauty, there was the extra ear she has, but other than that, he thought her heart was so pure!

nooo... must..... wake.... up!

With that last burst of energy, Shendron finally shook himself from the spell his mother had cast on him. He had known all throughout the dream that something was wrong. He had noticed the one fatal flaw in his mother's dream spell: everything had been too normal!

At last now he had broken free. Now he could stand and defend himself against his mother. But wait... Where had they gone? All he could see in the room now was a toppled over nightstand, and a large, oblong blue object moving about in the middle of the room. Every now and then he heard what sounded like either muffled screaming or the noise those machines at Milky Lane make when churning out choc-strawberry icecream. He couldn't decide which noise this was, so he left the blue object alone for now, not wanting to mess with something that could possibly be making ice-cream for him!

He decided now to try and discover where these light patterns on his bedroom floor were coming from. Although in the day time he would not have been bothered as the light would have merely been the result of sunlight streaming through the forest canopy, it seemed very mysterious indeed. More mysterious than the 8th wonder of the world, in fact, although not anywhere near as tasty. He wondered if he would have noticed the light if his wife had put up that roof they had been talking about for so long. But then in the middle of a forest, there really isn't much need for a roof, or so he had convinced his wife.

The light patterns seemed to be formed from a light source somewhere near the kitchen...

As he neared the kitchen he saw it. Between the crack in the grocery cupboard doors, he could see the bright source of light. Of course! The glowworms!! How could he have forgotten to bottle them up again. But then he remembered that his wife had used the only bottle in the house to store the cherry marmalade. That same bottle was now stuck on one of his hands....

WAIT! How could he have been so stupid! His wife had made the cherry marmalade! Which meant that she would have to be in on the plan with his mother!

But Shendron shook awake with a fright! He realized that he had just had a nightmare. It was just a bad dream, a very odd, bad dream. The Wadi of the Temple of Rain stood up and walked over to the window to survey the scene below him, the gardens of the temple were well kept and beautiful, even on this moonless night. He breathed in and his muscled chest moved out and he strained to get every bit of fresh air in that his lungs would allow. His thoughts held him and he didn't hear Candri coming up behind him. She stretched out her hand and put it on his shoulder very gently. He didn't start, but enjoyed the warmth of her hand on his cold, sweaty skin.

He couldn't understand why his mind played these tricks on him during sleep. Any Wadi would be emarrassed beyond compare at thaving such nonsensical dreams. He was trying to track down the cause in his own mind. He focused on the waves and patterns of his brain. He followed the path of the dream through the folds and turns of his thoughts. But as he got closer to the source, his mind reeled back, thrown away from the cause of his mind's ailment, and he did not know how to react. Every time for the last seven weeks when he had tried through meditations to get closer to the affliction, he was repelled out of his own mind.

He had to think, but Candri woke him from his thoughts with a butterfly-light kiss on his shoulder...

Her weaving took on the shape of a jersey...then a scarf...and finaly a sock!
"No!" She said quickly whipping the sheets from under her husband.
They stood facing each other. Shendrons mother with a deceitful looking, custard filled sock and his wife with a very ordinary looking blue sheet. The tension could be cut with a knife!
"You won't get passed me!" Hissed Candri, "I will protect my husband against your well-known and much dispised custard attack!"
"We shall see about that..."

With his bottom left hand stuck in a glass jar, Shendron was left with only 5 hands to defend himself! How would he manage this! But then, he thought to himself, he should perhaps first wait to discover who his attacker was, as this would probably determine the fate of his life, and the lives of the hundreds of other marsupial-inhabitants of the temple.

Then, from the shadows, a figure emerged. At first a dim silhouette, and then growing steadily more visible, until at last...

"MOTHER!"

"Yes, my son, it is I, your mother, ruler of all things purple." Her voice rattled with the shrill raspiness than tends to occur after 3275 years, 284 days and 17 hours of life in most middle-aged single mothers.

"How can it be!" cried Shendron. "I thought you had died in the last great caramel tsunami. "

"You would hear of my escape then, my son? And how I came to be in the possession of the cherry marmalade?" Her voice, although only and whisper, echoed through the bedroom and ensuite bathroom.

Without even waiting for a reply, she began to weave her tale of lies, deceit and custard...

Because she knew that there was someone who had planned all of this. Her husband was the Wadi of the Temple of the Rain. He was the most powerful Wadi in the land and his ONLY weakness was his sweet tooth! He had almost no control over it and even his daily meditations could only keep his desire for sweet stuff at bay. But here he was, despite all his enormous power, with his hand stuck in a Marmalade jar. Not just any maramlade either! It was CHERRY marmalade! The only fruit he was allergic to! Of course, when he began gorging himself he kenw that his accolytes could cure any ill-effects and have him right as Rain (so to speak) in no time at all.

Shendron now realized this was a mistake, as did his wife. The trap had been sprung, now they only had to wait in silence and high emotions for the assassin to show himself. They were not incapable against an attacker, in fact, they were quite deadly, but with Shendron's hand stuck and swollen, there was the draw back of not being able to sign the action to make the incantations effective!

Here they stood, in the room of the High Wadi of Rain, waiting, perhaps for their doom...

As he was lost in thought, he did not notice a shadow falling across him.
"FOR THE LOVE OF SHIVA!" The bellow could have woken a thousand dormant trolls! She had found him with his hand stuck in the jar...and yes, it was STUCK in the jar!
"You KNOW you are allergic, you idiot!" She attempted to grab the jar but it slipped through her fingers. His hands had swollen and had filled the rest of the jar, the remaining marmalade was pulvarised against the base! Her pointed ears twitched in irritation...

And then it hit him! Out of nowhere, the cherry marmalade hit him through the face! He couldn't believe his eyes. Or his luck! An entire jar of cherry marmalade, right there next to him, ready for him to dig into. OK, fine, he had to admit that blood spattered cherry marmalade didn't have quite the same appeal as clean cherry marmalade, but then it was his blood, so what difference did it make.

Half way through the jar of stickiness, something else struck him, although substantially less solid than a glass jar. A thought. Where did the marmalade come from? hmmm...

Because she had REAAALY big ears, and he knew how accute her hearing was, even to a heart pounding in a chest with blood that was boiling in lust. He HAD to have it!!! He just HAD to have some cherry marmalade, but if he got out of bed now, he knew that she would smack his head so hard that he would hear bells for a month! She had forbidden him to eat the cherry marmalade, but he just didn't know why...

It has begun. Patterns of light fell on the lush forest floor. The Elf did not move. Lying behind a large rotting log; he could feel his blood pumping through his temples. He could hear his heart pounding. He was afraid that she would hear it too...