A bane of innocent daggers flew through the starlight door where Joan the merry blacksmith banged on a chorus of anvils.

Besmirched and begrudged, Joan, dearest Joan, entered the realm of the constant filberts of paradise. Such birds as those flitted like Joan’s eyebrows against the hot brick wall of a sunny afternoon where daily dairy cows sing to the goddess of milk stools. The Pythia of Delphi said as much as anyone about the state of Joan’s relationship with the butcher, but the baleful butcher proved the Pythia wrong by standing up gently under the force of Neptune’s powerful waves, and he drowned the proceedings at Delphi with a mountainous tsunami. Joan asked the butcher what was going on, but the jury had already reached a haughty verdict, and the verdant bailiff announced that all cars in the mezzanine level of the parking garage would be towed at owner’s expense within the hour.

Joan returned to the forge of her forge and under the starlight door, she pounded a dirty ditty into the clay–the melting clay.