The King was in his Counting House... (Lost Fiction)

[rebel-wulf.livejournal.com]

It had been a whole 48 hours after the world had turned sideways, and Steampunk was still trying to turn it back around again. He'd been told, time and time again, that spending another night in the hedge would have to wait for a while. He couldn't understand the logic behind it and that scared him. Ever since the heart transplant, the world had begun to rotate, turning him further away from the real world and a foot deeper into the wonders of the hedge. His connection to the Wyrd had almost literally swollen since then and he hadn't even realised that he was turning away from all the wonders the real world had to offer.
     That shit had to stop right now. Mort had helped, with his water-flicking stick that came with being a Blackbird Bishop. He could never remember the name of those things. Aspergers? It didn't matter, it had given him a certain amount of clarity that he'd been lacking for a while now. He'd sat down with a notebook and had started writing down things that needed doing for the Freehold of London, things that would need volunteers. He would obviously try and get as much of it done himself as he could, as it would be pointless to ask other people to make a few sacrifices of their own comfort to get things up and running without him doing it too.
     He wrote easier, he realised, when he didn't have music bugging him constantly. Yesterday, when he had been making notes, all he could pay attention to was the fact that the scratches of pen and paper sounded like a song he barely remembered from his childhood, maybe something his mum used to listen to on the radio. Today it was just the noise of pen on paper and that was a small mercy he was greatful for. He needed some of this clarity back, he needed grounding in the real world or otherwise he was just going to turn into the lost equivalent of Baboushka, sitting at the centre of whatever the hell he had been building on sunday afternoon and as cray as... well, a hob.
     Other things played on his mind as well, things that he couldn't just ignore. Getting turned down by a certain ladyfriend was a 'bit of a bummer' as he would have explained out loud, but it was hardly the first or the last time a woman would say no to him. He was definately very glad that in his haze of delusion he went to Dunasheen instead of phoning her and asking her to come over, as that would have been embarassing for both of them. He was worried about Deyaneira too, as she'd gone back to eating the other meat... which was probably his fault because of Sunday. He'd been thinking about that alot since he remembered it and had come to an important desicion. Maybe if he reduced the amount of meat that Dey had to prepare, it might help her a little bit. God it was going to kill him, but he was going to become a vegetarian to see if that would help. And he was going to have to cut back on hedgefruit as well to keep him grounded. He very briefly considered going Straight Edge, but then realised he might actually end up killing himself shortly after flushing his last cigar down the loo.
     He pushed aside the notebook and turned on his computer, watching it with the slightly baffled look of an adult that had learned to pretty much do one thing on his sons computer and anything else was strange and alien to him. He checked his emails, put a hand to his face and sighed. "Maybe Adri has the right idea about not joining that bloody list." He muttered to himself and wrote up an email to his motleymates explaining his new dietary requirements, even making a rubbish joke in the subject line to try and make them feel a bit more confident about him getting better. Change(l)ing Dietary Requirements. He was glad they were all asleep, because otherwise he was going to get a belt for that one. He leant back in his chair and broke open another can of cola, taking a swig and leaning forwards to put it on the other side of the desk to his keyboard, picking up his notebook and starting to write again.
     People were counting on him.