And Life Goes On Down Under: The Haven
It was another typical day at work again, one could say, if work at LEPrecon could be regarded as ordinary in the first place, especially while being known as 'the crazy girly captain' to the general population. There were also other rather cumbersome things to deal with, such as the 'coronary-waiting-to-happen' a.k.a Commander Root, smartass centaur Foaly and her various male colleagues who spent more time hitting on her rather than following orders. In fact, Holly had just escaped a very nerve-shattering, blood-boiling encounter with our very favourite green-skinned Casanova, Chix Verbil. Ever since that now famous 'chamber-pod-incident', he was even further convinced that Holly was absolutely enamouredwith him (never mind the broken wing) and was even more annoyingly persistent in his efforts to get her to 'admit how (she) liked (him)'.
Besides all this and the occasional lambasting by a particularly enraged Root, life as a recon officer was better than ever. Since the Haven had gotten it's affairs back in order (just recently may I add), the Council had finally agreed to give Foaly a raise in his 'much needed' funding, and also bought new equipment (to the relieved cheers and whoops of the recon officers, Holly not the least) for the LEPrecon unit.
As Holly walked to her cubicle, she scanned her chocked-full schedule for the month, she was feeling a slight bit, well unsparky , as fairies put it when they had been putting off the Ritual for quite some time already. Despite usually resentful of desk assignments, she was pretty glad there had'nt been many above ground Recon jobs of late, she would hate to repeat that disastrous Troll-in-Italian –Restaurant experience again, --but Hey!! was'nt she forgetting?That was the same night on which she had first met Artemis!! And if anyone asked whom she would have most dearly desired to meet once a again, she would have answered without a moment's hesitation "Artemis Fowl".
Foaly, on the other hand, was not short of time in any way, in fact, quite the opposite (to his abject delight and an extremely fired-up Commander Root's chagrin). And just as he had so promised Holly that fateful night they erased themselves from Artemis's life; he was then lounging in front of the computer clicking through the boy's memories, trying to understand (in his most distinctly centaurianway) the inexorable genius's mind. As he watched the phosphorent green Gnommish symbols flash across the glowing monitor of his computer, he began to feel, as Holly was then, far guiltier beyond the description of mud-men and centaurs alike. Holly's words on the night of the fateful mind-wipe seemed to play back to him with clarity that surpassed that of any tape-recorder in the whole of the Lower Elements; "he'll go back to what he was before, and we'll be to blame". She was right, they, the fairies whom had imparted to Artemis, a sense of right and wrong and the gift to make a livable existence, were the same ones to take it away. It was bitterly ironic.
Foaly raised an eyebrow at his uncharacteristic elvishness, he was getting too emotional, time to get out his trusty centaur's handbook. And so the shadow of guilt passed over him as if a fresh gust of wind had blown by from the surface and blown that overhanging cloud of murk away.
"WHAT!!!" A shout which sent the whole LEP building reverberating echoed from (no prizes for guessing) Commander Root's office, sending all the unfortunate staff members scuttling away, convinced that they would be deafened for life.
"Whoa! Ole Beetroot sure is fired up now!"
"Ah, sure's sure somebody gonna get it from him alrigh'd."
Such went a conversation between a sprite known as Chix Verbil and his other bewinged and equally moronic colleague. But yes, (gasps all around everybody) they were right, Root was unsurpassingly 'fired up' and some unfortunate being was 'gonna get it from him'. That person was a prison gnome working in the Arctic Circle, Mulch Diggums, notoriously kleptomaniac dwarf, had escaped.
"D'Arvit! All that effort wasted! You, blasted idiot of a hairy gnome, were supposed to KEEP---HIM---IN---JAIL!!!"
"B-b-but, b-but h-he j-just esc-caped w-when I w-was'nt l-looking-g."
"WHAT DID YOU EXPECT THAT SCOUNDREL TO DO, STAY PUT? OUT!! OUT,DAMMIT!!!"
"Y-y-yes S-sir." And the gnome, trembling from head to foot, scrambled out with a distinct sense of rubbery knees. Getting shouted at immediately after returning from the North Pole was not pleasant, not pleasant at all.
Right at that point of time though, unbeknownst to all and sundry, was the infamous Mulch Diggums, burrowing through the deliciously rich soil right above Root's office.
"Jeezus, I wonder what's gotten to old Julius this time?" He said in between bites, as he chewed his way to Ireland, he had to find Artemis.
The soil down there was Grade A Star, the way dwarven gourmet places put it, good chewy, earthy clay. Down in the depths of the Lower Elements, one did'nt come by annoying bits of gristle from graveyards anymore, and the soil was beautifully moist, like one of those Angel Fudge Cakes, the only thing the Mud People had that was better than whatever the fairies made.
Mmm, especially after that jaw-breaking Arctic permafrost, this was the best home-coming Mulch could have had ever.
The day was at it's end again, the waning light of the golden dusk diminished, fading into a nondescript twilight blue as the shades of evening drew on. Holly was but a faintly shimmering patch upon the darkling horizon where the skies seemed to open up and extend to the infinite heavens beyond. She had her shield on and hovered gently above the lands upon which the shadows of the approaching night extended. She was helping Foaly test a new prototype for wing design, his ego still had not quite recovered from the thrashing it had suffered during the goblin rebellion. "Hey, looks pretty much like a blue rinse does'nt it?" came the centaur's hushed voice through the built-in speaker in her helmet, centaurs, not being able to perform magic, had'nt been allowed on the surface for centuries and opportunities to see the earth were few and far between.
"Yeah…you remember, that time we did it over the Fowl Manor?" Holly replied huskily after a moment's hesitation, all the while thanking Frond's Kingdom that her friend was'nt able to see the wetness the memory had glazed over her eyes.
"Sure do. I know exactly what you're feeling now, don't think that I'm that insensitive. Anyway, we're all missing him, not just you but no one else is exactly blubbering over it like you are."
"Foaly!" Holly, despite her internal turmoil at that moment, an insult when she heard it and made a mental note to scorch the words: 'I, Foaly the centaur, am an ass. Kick me.' On Foaly's hairy behind the moment she got back to the office with her Neutrino Laser. The centaur, despite having claimed to be not 'that insensitive', was still the most obnoxious creature in the whole of the Lower Elements.
"Alright, alright since you can't even take a joke…"
"Foaly! I'm warning you, when I get back…"
"O.K, I surrender! White flag, calm down already! Just fly around and tell me how it is."
So she did, she warmed up the miniscule motor which basically looked like a glass box on chain which hung on a chain round her neck, the wings, illuminated in the pearly incandescence of the waxing moon, fluttered to life, a whirring, quick-silvery fan, with that, she zoomed off, light, free and airy over the darkened world to the Ring of Tara.