Frank Advice From a Lieutenant of the Finnish Air Brigade.

There's a sloping area near the meridian where, if last time is any indication, my comfort level should reach a point which will soften any intimations of defeat. The heart, which was written about in a magazine last year, seems okay for the effort wasted on my behalf. Prior to this winter I'd circulated a list of favorite tonal pictures for everyone to select the one to help them meet their inevitable end head on, should it come to that. My own brickture will stay at my slayer's house for safe keeping. He loves me for that but my temperature appointment can't wait. I've been told to appear willing to accept a small scar if there's even the tiniest possibility that my grade would not be scotched.

I have to admit right now that it was difficult to conceal my delicious embarrassment when the men (of whom I'd only recognized one, the last through the door) brought a six-foot length of harbor rope and an inactive chain saw. None in our group had any reason to expect that but we'd grown so close over the preceding nine seconds that our smirks revealed—like it or not!—the activation of a sensitive plot. As a lieutenant in the Finnish Air Brigade once told me, if you have to ask then your name will no longer serve its purpose as a quiescent plaything. This could cause some to lose their sense of valor. Those of us who still feel a pride in our (literal) blood are a diminishing quantity of enraptured beings. But that can't stop a thing like me from boiling over, if it comes to that.

Where my former partner, Bernhilda MacIntyre, lost her tooth encryption is anyone's guess. If you'd told me that this would be how it ends, I'd be all up in your face like a dilatory apostate. It goes to my upbringing. But the Southern Plains don't even exist anymore, as most folks are sadly aware. In the bag I keep at the ready, you'll find not even one bug, electronic OR organic. They make them that way now.  Bags, I mean. And no, it's just not in my nature to be mean, but sometimes I just can't help myself. If you need to know it's because of my deformity. I don't really like to talk about it; why do you ask? I could get you in after dark. All you have to do is ask me later. When it's dark. 

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