The camellias are so beautiful on campus this time of year. Today I met a little man underneath the bush by the side door to the psycho-anthropology lab who told me if I came back tonight he’d give me a tour. Can’t wait!

Has anyone seen my roommate? Her name is @Dahlia Makes Tea, and she didn't come home last night. She was last seen under a streetlight near the Psycho-anthropology lab, wearing a thick but soft and luxurious matching tweed skirt and top from Karl Lagerfeld, and a small black veil held in place by a tiny pillbox corsage on the top of her head.

She is always fashionably dressed.

GARDEN TOURS CANCELED

Due to a "misunderstanding" with the "Good People" (please do not call them "little"), no students are to accept offers of "tours" of the "garden" from anyone, no matter how kindly or cute.

We plan on reopening tours as soon as we have successfully negotiated this year's contract with the Good People.

Sincerely,

Big Jim
Student Activities Coordinator
Class of '99

Apart from withdrawing their official endorsement of Garden Tours, it doesn't seem that the administration is doing anything about my missing roommate. "Time runs differently on those tours," @Big Jim told me. "It's probably just a missed connection, due to our current, uh... service interruptions," he says. Apparently a clause in our school applications that says that extended absences (or disappearances) are "to be expected" and the school has a policy of not acting on reports without "direct evidence of foul play." Hmmmph.

I spoke with @Fawn about hiring her friend Larry Moon, Skunk Detective, to look into it and received a letter back from Larry Moon, where he declined and told me the Good People and their land were outside his realm of expertise.

Even though it's "off limits," I hear there are still Good People in the garden, underneath the camellias and the magnolia and the remnants of the cherry and the daphne. I will make friends and inquire directly. They certainly seem accommodating.

The little man under the camellia bush was quite accommodating. Using his "gnomenclature," he opened the tunnel beneath the bush and brought me "backstage." Psyhigh's gardens are delightful, but it's truly an eye-opener to see what goes on behind the scenes. They're preparing for spring, and the buds are being loaded into their propagation cannons, and the colour reservoirs are filling up. When I turned around to ask my guide, he was nowhere to be found! Perhaps this is related to the labour issue @Big Jim mentioned. I must continue my search for @Dahlia Makes Tea unaided. Wish me luck!

Backstage at the garden is so busy and industrial, it’s amazing we don’t hear them banging around all the time! Most everything is made of soft biomass, but still those gnomes make a racket. Plus their singing. And the harps. I guess the thunder seeps through now and again, but otherwise it’s remarkable we never know it’s here.

Still no sign of @Dahlia Makes Tea, and the Goodpeople are too busy to talk. Everywhere they’re preparing the scenery for the new season, rigging it up with magical filiment to fly it in from the wings. The colors are amazing—streams of rainbows flowing everywhere through systems of canals, and conveyor belts carrying tightly packed buds and blossoms to and fro. Where does it all come from? Perhaps if I seek it out I’ll find my roommate there.

Beyond the hustle and bustle of the garden staging area, the land of the Goodpeople goes on and on. The canals of rainbow colors meander through pleasant rolling hills of goat-cut grass, and the fairy folk busy themselves carting raw materials in wheelbarrows and fae-powered vans. There are buildings made of sweets and meat, rings of mushrooms singing encouraging work songs, and a blue sky filled with puffy clouds and an ethereal light.

None of the denizens of of this country will give me the time of day, however. I want to ask about the whereabouts of @Dahlia Makes Tea, but either everyone is too busy or under the constraints of enchanted legal advice to talk to me. Aside from people of the little gnomish type that led me here, there are pixies, nymphs, and leprechauns of all shapes and sizes. There’s even a mass transit system of subways and tubes, built for creatures of various sizes, but they’re all too small for me. They range from tiny pipes for the tiniest sprites to culvert-sized tubes with trains for elves. It’s like a sorting system where you have to be the right size to move to the right place, but there are none that are built for me. I’ll just keep walking along the canals and see where it takes me.

My eyes are going googlie from the technicolor wonder of the land of the Goodpeople. The Color Canals cover the plain—streams of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet starting to converge like a rainbow highway. I’ve been making my way along the access roads, climbing over couplings and control valves at the pump stations that dot the way. I met a dwarf ditch rider checking the pressure on the pipes and received a brusque rebuke, chattering at me in his fairy patois. He made a call on his walkie talkie, but let me continue on my way.

The land is flat, the sky is blue, and the puffy clouds ridiculously happy,
but I see a dark structure looming in the distance. Could it be the source of these prismatic drainage ditches? It’s the only clue I have, and hope it can shed some light on the fate of my missing roommate, @Dahlia Makes Tea.

I don't think it would be safe to move @Dahlia Makes Tea in her present condition. And her enormous size would be an issue too. How did she get so big?

She's stretched out on the floor of this massive warehouse, flat on her back on the concrete floor, and she's at least 50 yards long. Which means her head alone is 20 feet tall, and wouldn't even fit the front door of our dormitory. What happened to her?

And worse--all the tubes. I was following the Color Canals, looking for the source of the rainbow streams and reservoirs, but I didn't expect it to be my roommate's body! There's one spewing violet at from the top of her head, indigo from her forehead, blue from her neck, green coming out of her chest, yellow, orange, and red down the rest of her body.

This is DEFINITELY outside of the arrangement the school has with the Goodpeople I'm sure. And I have a scary feeling I wasn't supposed to see this.

OMG someone's coming

I’ve been giving the same story over and over again to different interrogators, my arms bound by vines to the table in this tiny room. There’s been an elf, a brownie, a gnome, a dwarf, and some other creatures I can’t place. It’s like every race in fairyland wants a piece of me.

They’re definitely playing some amount of good fairy/bad fairy with me. Some are aggressive and hostile, banging at the table and getting in my face; others are kindly and loosen my restraints while they’re with me. “Just tell us why you’re here, dearie,” and “Who sent you child? Just tell us and we’ll let you on your way.”

None of them believe my story, that @Dahlia Makes Tea is my friend and roommate, and I came here on my own to find her, and doesn’t fairy law say I get some kind of fairy lawyer, or at least a phone call? “You’re lucky we don’t just tie you to a chair and watch you sink!” says an especially surly lady elf.

The good ones are bringing me food—heaps of sweet rolls and donuts on silver plates—but if there’s one thing they tell you in Goodpeople 101 it’s not to eat the food in fairyland or it can really complicate things. But it’s getting harder and harder to resist, and between the hunger and the sleep deprivation I feel like I’m losing my mind.