Chapter 82 Frogs, Kisses, Ghosts and Wind

  "Remember when we were girls, still believing if ye kissed a frog he would turn into a handsome prince?" Honey Sanders asked her closest friend.
  "Ye believed that Honey?" Dame Esmerelda Frell was incredulous.
  "When I was a small girl.  Ye mean ye never kissed a frog?"
  "Those slimy things?  Ye didn't."
  "Well...only once..."
  Esmerelda laughed.
  "And did ye get a prince out of it?"
  "Well, not right away."
  "What prince would that be Honey?"
  "Why Winifred of course."
  "Oh Honey, Winifred had nothing to do with kissing a frog."
  "Try telling that to my childhood self!"
  "What did he look like...when ye kissed him?"
  "Winifred?"
  "No...the frog.  Did it's eyes bulge?"
  "Oh, the frog!  It looked like this."

  After a good hearty laugh Esmerelda asked quietly, "How are ye doing without Clover?"

  Esmerelda knew she had pushed, but if Honey couldn't talk about this with her closest friend, who could she talk to?  The poor woman had no family left.
  "Like her sister Goldilocks and my husband Winifred, she is still with me."
  "They will always be with ye, in her heart."
  "No, I mean with me."
  "...In the urns?"
  "Ghosts."
  "Honey...ye must have been dreaming."
  "Mayhaps ye are right," she sighed.
  Me!  A figment of imagination!  Mother, how could ye say such things?

  Am I real enough fer ye now mother?

  "Why whatever is the matter Honey?"
  I shall show ye what ails her old woman.

  "Ye see her now, don't ye?"

  "I do believe I have," Dame Esmerelda replied, quite out of breath.

  "Mayhaps ye are just sharing me little dream Esmerelda."

  "I..I..pardon me Honey.  I am very much in the wrong."
  "Now ye must pay."
  "What?"
  WHACK!
  Honey got her good with a pillow and the 2 giggled like girls.

  Clover moaned softly, "Goldilocks and I used to fight with pillows."
  Honey tossed the pillow back on the little bed in the corner.
  "Did ye hear something?" she asked Dame Esmerelda.

  "Something," Esmerelda replied.  "Something like the soft moaning of the wind.
  "Only inside...where there is no wind."
  "Exactly."
  Clover opened the wooden door.
  "I guess there was a wind in here after all,' Honey announced.
  Clover looked back at the living.

  The poor dead girl wanted her mother.