6/15/20 2:51 P.M.

The Land Lady and I were driving down the alley from the dollar store, laying in her supplies for the winter, about 140 cans of tomatoes, beans, coconut milk and such. She is a dainty under siege and will be hiding inside behind locked doors from late September until late April and needs enough food to last except for a weekly hour at a produce market in the wee hours before the Darksome Masters rise from the dreams that must afflict a God in his cosmic slumber.

An ebon princeling of 2.5 years-old, stood in the alley, holding out the open hand of command, for the lady to stop her car. He was being supervised by a 4.5 year-old princeling. They seemed half-brothers, the supervisor with copper skin, the commanding tyke with hazelnut skin.

The Land Lady waved them aside as she slowed, and as they barely scooched off she eased by.

Three doors down, in the parking pad, I was unloading the groceries when my fearless Master approached me, looked up as I towered over him and said, “You have to stop! I had my hand out. You ‘most hurt me!”

I grinned down at him and glared at his older princeling and said, ‘”That would have been a mess. You’re lucky you weren’t squished.”

An older teen was looking on from the alley, him and the 4.5 year-old prince frightened of me, but their rising light was fearless and scrunched his face up at me and declared, “You have to stop when I say stop!”

I grinned, “I don’t stop.”

He then turned half way, looked up at my eye-patch and said, “Why ‘cause you a pirate? You look like a pirate.”

“I was a pirate. But I’m getting too old. So I don’t rob people anymore.”

The boys then looked at me as they came together, faces scrunched in disgust that this feral paleface did not know his rightful place on halting and bended knee and the little prince said one last time, “When we say stop, you have to stop.”

And I laughed the cackling laugh of the damned as the Land Lady came around with her purse and sneered, “That little shit, he’s already been trained to generate a lawsuit and he’s not out of diapers!”

The Darksome Hegemon, has just taken the throne and already the peasants are stepping out of line.