cimorene

after another surreal day, i'm dressed like a cheap whore, and

ninglor is frozen halfway between 'elf witch of terrible power' and ... girl in pajamas.

our objectives for the day were: 1. get sneakers, 2. get adrienne's hair cut, 3. see downtown northampton being cute and pretty.

of those, we accomplished (3) alone. no sneakers to be had. no haircut places open. we went through the smith college campus on the trail of a salon--and ran across a beautiful little castle made out of trained vines and bound branches. like, three towers, with door-arches and round windows and peaks in the roof, partly covered with waving leaves and living flowers.

then, on green(e?) st., a trellis and a chair.

then a little shop with a silver pendant and a velvet scarf that adrienne wanted, and didn't get ('they close at 6,' we said, 'we can come back.')

so a goddess shop, and some little shoe boutiques and new age shops with jewelry, and wearable art galleries, and places with posters later--we found a veggie cafe for lunch that seemed to have atmosphere. adrienne ordered iced chai and they couldn't do ice.

this should have been our warning. we persisted. they only took cash, which sent us across the street for an atm, as neither of us HAD cash. into 'thorne's market,' which turned out to be a mall. we went in a back door, up a maze of stores, through an icecream shop. asked directions. finally found the atms. back to the veggie place, which had no bagels, no ice, and only chai WITHOUT sweetener (which i did, btw drink). apparently to make up for these lacks, they had, on their quiche, the same mass of sprouts as of quiche.

they played a live ani album while we were there which was acceptable and even pretty good.

went to

modernmyths in search of

fuschia, who was not in. looked at watch. 5:20, aiiieee! ran back, on opposite side of street. oh, THERE was the store with the harry potter scarves, so we went in and dawdled about a bit. no shoes, scarves all gone. not even any good sunglasses. lamps still tempting, but alas, am broke. back on the street. we ran to green(e?) st again in search of the shop so adrienne could get the pendant. walked down to the trellis and took a picture. heard blaring of 'lady marmalade' from smith across the street, barely recognizeable. i remembered that pink was having a concert there, i'd read (!!!) but we had to find this shop before 6. so. all the way down to the end of the street once, then halfway back up and then down and then up again. two fandom queens and we couldn't even find a new agey shop. i might have likened the experience to a young adult fantasy novel. pink still blaring. source still not-quite-identifiable.

both of us were getting quite distressed. bus schedule was checked.

finally we found it, on the very corner at the beginning of the street. we hadn't even started looking yet when we walked past it for the first time. it was just past 6--closed.

'on the whole,' i said, 'i'd rather we were both stupid than that i had to suddenly admit the existence of the supernatural.'

wandered about following the sound of pink until it was irretrievably lost--maybe, said adrienne, someone was just playing it really loudly, which was possible but would have made a freaky coincidence. got lost only twice on the way back to the bus stop and ran to catch the bus for the second time in the day. sat next to the pharmacy girl who'd given me my medicine, like a thin kelly osbourne with a shorter pixie cut, a lot of mostly-black and faintly pink eyemakeup. was so strikingly beautiful that adrienne and i both had trouble not staring.

discussed history of

squirrelmir. i napped and adrienne posted the story she wrote last night.

and she has elfwitch hair too, right now. was photographed in my blue yukata a bit ago.

and i learned how to tie a tie.