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A Miracle on Fifty-Fourth Street

 -"There is a plot afoot on the Moon," she breathed out, her face worn into a pattern of shock and dismay. "The red one, not the blue." 

I looked at her. "Is this a surprise to you?" I asked, as gently as a feather. 

"This is different!" she snapped. "Usually the plots are simple enough. The Duchess of Bat Scritchies has a feud with the Countexx of Insignificant Symbolic Dreams over the use of the doubled "x" in er name, and so gets together with the Carmine Cardinal of the Cerise School, or the Claret of Garnet, and then there's some kind of humiliation involving a giant letter falling on someone. Maybe there's an explosion. All delightful- it's always so charming to see it in my viewing-glass, especially when that dashing Jar-eel the Razoress shows up and sorts things out." She looked from side to side. "This is different," she said, whispering. 

 I nodded. "Of course, of course, I understand that." I paused. "What's different about it?" 

 "The goal is to make the Red Moon fall from the sky," she said. Her voice was devoid of any hint of jesting. "Then it will be directed into the southern seas, where it will be blanched with the aid of firebergs, and rise again as the White Moon." She took deep breaths. "And of course, anyone not in on the plot will be quite simply... softboiled." 

 I considered this. "Well." I considered it some more. "Are you sure?" She nodded. I sighed. 

"Well," I said, "Have you spoken to anyone else about this?" 

"Why would I do something like that?" she asked. "I mean, you know how it is. You go to the Danfive Xaron cult if you're a woman and they start screaming out 'No, not my eyes!' and then there's an enormous delay while they find women to talk to you. And you go to the Spoken Word and they tell you that it needs to be provided in a dead-drop or a live one, and do I look like a schemer?" She paused. "And the Blue Moon are totally useless. They need it to be in groups of seven words and it's absurd. Totally absurd."

I nodded. "I understand. It's really very hard to pull those levers of power, isn't it?" I shrugged off the garb I had put on in the divine Wardrobe, back on the Red Moon, and let my light spill out. I was a beauty, I knew, in her viewing-glass and in the bronze mirror on the other side of her shop. Argent and scarlet bands spiraling around each other. She froze, looking up at me. 

"No..." she whispered, and yet it was not the whisper of defeat that I had expected and feared. "How could I have failed to see this..." 

"My garment got in the way-" I said, but she cut me off. 

 "Your beauty is beyond compare," she said, her eyes dazzled with sheer Lunacy, and I realized that, while I might be well along the road to become a phosphore from a simple and humble lune, it seemed my light was still potent, psychedelic even as it was entheogenic. I stood stock still for a moment, and then she leapt onto me, and I, ephemeral as I was, neverthless was born down to the ground, swirling, as she lavished affection onto me, and exclaimed at the minty taste of my lips-

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