Visions in the Light of the Moon

Niles woke up before this alarm went off and he sat up in bed. He felt so refreshed and ready to take on whatever the day had to offer. He took in a deep breath and bounded from his bed. This was the day he "planned to make plans" and Frasier agreed to help him with it. 'When you put the minds of two Cranes together, ain't no mountain high enough'. Setting aside the pilfering of Marvin Gaye's song, the phrase held true and Niles was ecstatic about it. He was so excited, he ran downstairs for breakfast without dawning his robe over his cotton pajamas. He ate a hearty three egg-white omelet, two 12 gain toasts with the crusts trimmed, freshly squeezed tomato juice, (that's right: 'freshly squeezed tomato juice'), a slice of melon, and he purposely didn't have any coffee. You see, he was meeting Frasier at Café Nervosa extra early this morning to discuss matters, due to the fact that Niles had double scheduled his patients in order to free up time for planning. His heart was filled with joy. If he could have whistled while eating, he surely would have done it.

After his quick breakfast, he wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and bounded upstairs to shower and save. At this rate, he was going to be at the café before Frasier even left his apartment.

In his hustled pace, he stopped to take a step back into his bedroom to take a quick view of the picture resting in the most expensive frame he could find at Neiman Marcus. It was of Daphne. His heart was full of life and it dance at the sight of her, even when it was just her picture. He gave the picture a respectful wink and set it back on his bedroom dresser. Then, like Ebenezer Scrooge, not the greedy Scrooge, but the one full of life at the end of the movie, Niles sprang out of his room and dashed away for the bathroom.

In an apartment of the nineteenth floor of Elliot Bay Towers, the love of his life was already up and about. She was in the kitchen making coffee for herself. As she brought the coffee cup to her lips, she found her hands trembling so uncontrollably, she feared she may burn herself with the coffee. The pit of her stomach was in knots.

"Good morning Daphne."

Frasier's voice startled her and she dropped her cup and it went crashing to the floor.

Frasier had just pulled his bathrobe belt tighter when he realized what he must have done. "I'm sorry Daphne. I didn't mean to startle you. I smelled the coffee and didn't expect it to be brewing this early." He helped her pick up some of the larger pieces of the broken coffee cup.

"I'm sorry a broke your cup, Dr. Crane. I'll buy you a new one."

"Now now, Daphne, accidents do happen." He took a quick look at the pieces of the cup he had collected. "This isn't the cup I stole from my first SeaBee awards banquet, is it?"

"Oh, Dr. Crane." The tears started to form in her eyes.

"Oh, Daphne," Frasier's voice had dropped. "There's no call for tears. Except for weekends, I usually get my coffee at Café Nervosa."

"I'm sorry Dr. Crane. I don't mean to be so emotional."

"Come here." He gave her a hug. "Don't worry about this." When he pulled away, he could sense something. "There's something else, isn't there? Something is troubling you."

"No, it's nothing. Nothing at all." She retrieved another cup from the cupboard and poured him his coffee and handed it to him.

"Daphne, I'm a psychologist, I can sense these things."

She couldn't open up to Frasier about her being so shaken by a vision of hers. She just couldn't. He didn't think her visions held any water and she'd be sod off if anyone was going to down play this vision. She was grasping at straws. "It…it's me mum."

"Oh my," Frasier was genuinely concerned. "What is it Daphne?"

"She… she…" Daphne was scrambling. "She said the dog died."

"Oh Daphne, come here." He gave her another hug. He then added, "Just to make it clear, this isn't a cleaver English phrase for something I have no idea what it means, is it?"

"No, me dog died." She pulled away, wiping the tears away. "He chased his last bit of tail."

Frasier looked dumbfounded. "Okay… are you trying to tell me…"

"Oh, he used to spin around and chase his own tail."

"Yes…" Frasier's face started to flush red. "That's... what I thought you meant."