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Naboo's wisping (a lisp is risible, a wisp's just cute) tones hailed Howard and Vince, floating up the stairs:
'Where'd all th' carpets in this place go! I had t'substitute - we jus' flew 5 million miles on a doormat!'
Vince snorted into his Cola-Cola.
'Blame Bollo, he took 'em to the dry cleane…'ang on a minute, we? Who's we?'
Howard half-rose from the couch to see, and Vince knelt up, peering over the back of it like a well-coiffed kitten.
'Th's…th's is Ginger'
It was a five-foot fox, but it was quite clearly a girl-fox. There were large-shiny black eyes. There was a long foxy-face. There was lovely ginger hair – although, admittedly, it was all over her body. There were pert-curves, dressed in a stylish white cheongsam dress (There wasalsoa rather messy dead rabbit in one paw, spilling its intestines onto the carpet - but then again, nobody's perfect).
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then Howard managed to squint:
'Uh. She's a fox'
Vince turned slowly to look at him, sarcastic applause ringing out of every orifice.
'Yeah, well done, David Attenborough! Otherwise we'd never have guessed!'
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A few hours later – hours that had seemed to involve a lot of purple floor cushions, happy sighing and Bollo's DJ playlist including all sorts of rubbish slowdance crap that apparently 'made sense at the time'– Ginger remembered something.
'Naboo?'
'Yer?'
'We picked up a Hitch-hiker, but where did we drop her off?'
Naboo gave her a look that said 'don't know, don't care'.
Ginger shrugged cheerily. Fine. Probably just ran off when they landed. Or dropped off somewhere and plummeted to their death, God, I don't give a damn if they landed in an active volcano, as long as I'm allowed to purr at you and make sighing noises, like this: 'Sssiiiiigghh'.
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As it so happened, the Hitcher's young niece had set up residence in their very flat – in the broom cupboard, to be exact. With a little mop-waving and bucket-jiggling, she'd wedged herself in cosily, knowing that the nasty hoodoo would work better if it wasn't inconvenienced by long-distance travel.
She was now observing her intended victims through a pocket-sized crystal ball.
The time was right.
'And now for my first curse!' screeched Ethel the Hitcher's Niece, 'THE CURSE OF TOTAL CLUELESSNESS! It's rottener than the eggs on me Uncle's Tuesday market stall, it is! 'Ee won't know which way's up! 'Ee won't remember 'oo she is, why she's 'ere or what to do about it!'
Ethel attempted to cackle quietly, stopped when she realised it sounded like Donald Duck being sick, and muttered the magic spell words.
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'Carot cards?' said Ginger to Naboo, intrigued.
'Yeh, I c'n read them for you – it's an ancient Shamanic pract'se'
'Ooh, go on then!'
Naboo sat down cross-legged, shuffling the cards, and yanked a small chopping board out from under his bed. Ginger raised an auburn eyebrow.
'S'conductive to the Carot aura,' he said mysteriously, shuffling hard.
He handed the bundle of cards to the vixen.
'Gotta question 'nd you want answers? Jus' ask th' cards. Quietly. I don't need to hear. There's four suits: Carots, Beets, Taters and Parsnips, and loadsa other Major Arcana, 'nd they all know exactly what they're doing'
Ginger smiled, and whispered to the cardboard.
'Right. Now I deal 'm out. This is th'classic Vegetable spread. Card one: The 8 of Taters. Depicts a heart-shaped root vegt'bl,' he consulted his 'Interpreting the Carot' book.
'The picture shows the Tater being thrown skywards'
'Ah, s'a literal meanin', he looked up at her, with eyes like small puddles of spilt Lindt, 'love's'n the air'.
Ginger giggled.
'Two. The Frappucchino Magnets. Two people gazin' into each other's eyes, in Costas - or Starbucks. Means a powerful attraction between you and someone else, who's prob'ly opposite you right now'
Ginger looked up delightedly from the cards, amazed at the accuracy. Naboo's grin split his cheekbony visage like a pleasant hazelnut being cracked.
'Aaaah...' he smiled, giving a knowing nose-tap, 'I get it'
'Oh!' Ginger held her hands out, charmed.
'Yeah - you fancy Vince!' Naboo grinned.
'What?'
'The Carot cards see all,' he said mysteriously, 'and through walls. Vince's'n the next room'
'No! No, that's not right at all! I don't fancy Vince, you twat! Why d'you think I've ended up back here with YOU? Naboolio, I…'
At that moment, Naboo's phone went.
'Hang on a minute…'ello? Yeah, Pete…no, the cheesegrater was purple…Linkin Park...wot? Look, leave the owls alone…Dennis the Menace…ok, cheers Pete'
Naboo put the phone down on the rather bizarre conversation.
'Sorry…wot?'
Ginger was stunned. She breathed hard for a minute, and then composed her foxy self.
'You're joking, aren't you? You're just pulling my leg. Just because I was too busy going 'siiiigh' to actually SAY anything – but NOBODY could be so stupid as to not realis…!'
'Sssh,' he put a finger to his lips urgently, 'y'disturbing the Carot mystique'.
'Don't bloody 'shush' me!' she said, sounding rather strangled, 'Look, just...just carry on with the reading'
'In th' 'Near Future' position. The Kentucky-Fried Lovers,' he read, turning over the next card.
'What does that mean?' Ginger said.
'Well, it can indicate two small people about t'make mad passionate love to each other,' Naboo said matter-of-factly, as Ginger's eyes grew rather round, '…or jus' that you'll soon order a takeaway Fam'ly Bucket'
'So? Which one is it?'
'Oh, you c'n never tell. Magicks' nottan exact science'
'It's not a bloody exact anything!' Ginger said, getting upset, as the evil green magick took a real hold.
Naboo frowned at her, as if he couldn't remember something.
He considered her for a second, and scratched his head.
'What IS your name again?'
'What? Ginger…I told you! Remember?'
'No. How come y'here?'
'I came back with you, remember? Through the Desert of Nightmares? On the carpet?'
Naboo squinted at her.
He yawned widely, a faint green tinge creeping into his turban. This was boring. SHE was boring, whoever she was. And for some strange reason he'd suddenly developed a hankering for Polos…
He turned over the next card disinterestedly, hoping he could get her to go away.
'This card's known as the 'She Fancies You, You Berk!' card'
'Why?'
Naboo yawned, and showed her the card.
'Cos it's got 'She Fancies You, You Berk!' written on it in mighty big red letters'
'Right. I see. SO …' she said, a low growl starting. Foxes do not play games. Games are for domestic cats, hockeystick-whackers with attention spans too short to cope with anything else, and 3D-Chess geeks. Naboo was none of these.
'…what do you think a card reading 'She Fancies You, You Berk!' could possibly mean, Naboo?'
Naboo looked at her blankly.
'Dunno,' he said, and stood up, 'Want some Doritos?'
And he wandered off towards the kitchen.
Ginger clawed murderously at the carpet.
Possibly to choke you to death with, she thought.
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A short walk later, he returned. Naboo opened the packet of crisps.
'Oh m'God, look at these cards!' he choked through a mouthful of crumbs, pointing.
'What-what, Naboo?'
'Th' spread is blin'dig'ly…,'(three syllables at once weren't his favourite. He swallowed) obvious!'
'That's what I thought,' Ginger said tearfully, 'But you kept missing the point, by about a light year, and I thought, I thought…well, I thought about kicking you in the teeth and storming out, mostly, but I ALSO thought…'
Naboo dropped the Doritos and hugged her tight.
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'Dowitos', you lisping SLAG! I'll 'dowito' you!' Ethel screeched, clawing at her crystal ball, 'The one thing that could undo my evil plot, the ONE THING, an 'umble packet of tortilla chips, and he goes and eats it, the SLAG!' Ethel hurled the dustpan and brush at the wall, raging.
The 'Parental Controls' Content Filter kicked in (her Uncle had wanted to protect her young polo eye), and the screen blacked out, as whatever was going on in Naboo's bedroom quickly gained an '18' rating.
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