Couldn't help myself. All of you going off and gallivanting around New London without me? Horrors upon horrors!

---

It was raining. And if she left the bus shelter she was going to get very very wet. And very very cold. Honestly, if it were just wet, she wouldn't have minded. But the whole numb fingers thing just didn't do it for her.

Lli chews her lip and glares out at the sky. Not this time. This time she was going to sit it out. It would only last for about an hour or so. She could keep herself occupied for that long, right? Right.

Tapping her foot rather unrhythmically, Lli squints across the street at the ads, reading them backwards then the right way. She paces. She starts quoting The Fellowship of the Ring but gets stuck once Gandalf gets to Bag End. She checks her watch. She's been there for a whopping three minutes and fifteen seconds. She gives up.

As she walks along the street, she beings to sympathize with all the sponges she's ever used. A car goes by, covering her in a wave of muddy water off the road. Yay. At least the rain will wash her clean again.

On her way up the second hill (there's five on her way home) she stops to sit on a rather slick rock. Unfortunately there isn't much friction between wet rock and wet pants and she falls off with a rather undignified squawk.

Rubbing mud off her arse she gives her surroundings a baleful stare. Suddenly a silver glint catches her eye. Hey, look! A quarter! She trundles on over, only to trip on a conveniently placed log. How she missed seeing that she has no idea...

...why she's still falling is also a mystery. In fact, why the zed is everything all black and what is that -- oof!

Lli picks herself up off a velveteen couch. She winces at the sight of the mud she left behind. Good thing this isn't her mother's couch; otherwise she'd be dead.... in fact, the question is, whose couch is it? Or even, why the heck is there a couch when she's outside.

Turning around Lli comes face to face with three suspiciously familiar and shocked looking teenagers.

"Toto," she mutters "at the risk of sounding cliched, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

---

One day the 'at the risk of sounding cliched' line is going to refuse to let me write it anymore....