Always during dinner! It's always during dinner. She'd just settled down to a nice, quiet meal of karei shio-yaki, even turned off her cell phone, and still she was interrupted.

She stomped outside, the door making a satisfying crash behind her as she skittered on the worn-down stone path. Lightning arked and rain pelted the ground as she made her way to the sandbar. Dark and stormy? Interrupt her meal and learn just what that meant!

As she approached the ship, she noticed it had run aground. Hmmm ... maybe she shouldn't turn off the lighthouse light during dinner. She'd hoped it was just a desperate telemarketer, but she realized it was far worse, worse than a Carrot Top commercial, worse than even a FOX "Reality TV" special - a power so dark even she dared not traffic with it.

It was a lawyer.

The lawyer squared himself up - probably the only time he was square with anyone - and presented her some papers. "How do you plead?"

She ripped the paper from his hands. She'd show fear to no one, not even to a hell-spawned maggot like this. "Young man, I do many things; I laugh, I yell, I even turn idiots into toads on occasion - not that it would make a difference in your case - but one thing I do not do is plead." She poked him with a chopstick, forcing him to take a half-step back. "Is that clear, you slack-jawed, thick-headed, pea-brained, defeathered chicken?" She punctuated each word with another vicious, chopstick poke to his chest, driving him back to the gang plank.

"But, madam - "

"I - do - not - plead!" She flung her arm at the ship, cackling as he dodged her arm. "Now, you turn this little tugboat of yours around or you'll be doing the begging and the pleading."

He gaped at her like a fresh-caught fish. "But the papers ... "

"I have a paper-wrapped salmon recipe I've been dying to try for ages. This will come in very handy." She whipped around and started back up the path to her house. "That's your cue to git, boy," she called behind her.

She grumbled as she trudged up the path. Jelly-spined lawyers and their evil ways! All her years, and they still gave her problems. A sigh rattled through her, only to be swallowed up by the wind. She felt the weight of her years descend upon her. She was afraid she'd finally found a situation she couldn't fix: the recipe called for lemon zest and she was all out.

RC 5