The Rainy Day

For almost a week after the Little Miss Turfontein Pageant glory they had engineered and shared, Miss Yucki and her monster minions stayed in, brewing and enjoying treats for themselves such as lush pink cupcakes, Butternut Surprise and Carrot Cake Dream - all of which have the power to send one through dimensions.

When living in one world, though, it is never a good idea to stay outside it for too long so, before dementia set in, Miss Yucki took charge and called for an excursion through the city to the children's playground on the lower side. It was a long walk to their destination and it was chilly out, but Miss Yucki and her minions didn't mind. They shuffled along, kicking their way through piles of dry fallen leaves that had been collected at every corner by municipal workers that morning, and arrived at the playground ready to play.

Miss Yucki's favourite metal riding horse was there. She absolutely loved this grizzled, peeling steed that made her head role on her little shoulders. As was her wont she rode it around and around for ages this day, watching the world swinging by from the edge of a circle - the muti monsters fading to coloured blurs on the grass in her periphery.

After her horse ride, Miss Yucki and the others poked around the playground for hours, uncovering and discovering the treasures that so often presented themselves.

These times at the park are always punctuated with a fair amount of lying on the hill watching clouds. Much divining can be done through the images that appear in clouds, although in some worlds the medium has been widely discredited and classed as 'divination pop'.

Knowing this, Miss Yucki has used the reading of clouds purely as a most excellent and informative personal pleasure.

When, at the playground, Miss Yucki got around to some real divination, she would do it behind an old Weeping Willow that occupied the corner of the lot. While she worked, her minions would keep a sharp eye out from strategic yet casual positions, busying themselves with the catching of bugs and, a perennial: causing a fair amount of trouble in and around the old anthill.

On this day, while Miss Yucki was behind the tree, rain came down suddenly - as it often does when one is not concentrating on the up! A few big, fat and splashingly wet drops hit the willow's weeps, collected into larger drops, and fell to the grass beneath, a fair amount finding Miss Yucki.

"Yay!" she thought, "Two hair washes in one week!" On the mound to her left a Yucki Monster growled, not won over by his newly damp horns.

Miss Yucki, though, squealed with delight and skipped across the playground to the park gate, where she had spied a perished umbrella. With a wrenching sound and a shower of damp rust she extracted it from where it lay, wedged in between a slab of concrete and the park fence.

Team Yucki huddled now under the umbrella and took advantage of the new conditions, jumping and playing in and around the puddles and slush.

While negotiating the bank of an impromptu sloot Miss Yucki discovered a narrow storm water drain that she had never seen before. It lay almost perfectly hidden behind a written off jungle gym.

My oh my what a torrent was rushing through the narrow gap - lovely brown water speeding along and being sucked through a drainpipe into the slimy depths below the children's park. Miss Yucki was delighted - it was the perfect venue for a yucki regatta.

Her minions stood smartly to attention as she ordered them near, a well-drilled unit with mischievous grins. They listened attentively to her plan for building boats, then rushed off to all four corners of the park, hunting for boat building bits.

In less than a moment they had a little fleet of newspaper boats, each emblazoned with different headlines.

"Axe Murder Trial put on Hold" was the first off on a disastrous voyage ending in the drain that goes under the park. It leaped out of the whirlpool once and seemed to be in the clear, yet it was sucked back down, down, down to Davy Jones' locker for drains.

"Sangoma Heals Newlywed" fared far better, sailing proudly towards the whirlpool. It almost nipped over, but the peril proved too great and it too was taken.

"Beckham Glitters in Prague", though teetering slightly, proved itself worthy by leaning its way to the right of the peril and sailing off awkwardly towards the outskirts of town.

The wind started to howl now and Miss Yucki decided that it was time to move on. The Yuckis agreed. Nap time was calling and so, with their trolley in tow, they trundled back to their haunt. Miss Yucki, their princess, traveled in style inside the trolley, using her brand new umbrella to make the ride even more luxurious.

There were next to no people on the streets in those conditions, yet the single homeless man named Stan who they passed on the way back to their favourite alley, took a swig from his bottle of methylated spirits as, far back in his mind, he wondered at this scene of a trolley, moving along independently and occupied by such a strange, pretty little princess.

Fin.