Everyone Ages (XIAOLIN SHOWDOWN)

The Dark Night's Private Affair

We take pride in finding our way home, we humans. But I dragged from deck to deck, half asleep on my feet. Still, I kept one eye out for Jack's robots who might be keeping one eye out for me.
At long last I was on the right deck. A little woozy, I slipped inside a cabin door. But cautious. Always Cautious.  Surely the rest of the monks were in the cabin before me. A shaded light burned within. Raimundo was not in the bed. Nor Katnappe at the foot of it. I looked underneath. No eyes from there. Kimiko was making herself scarce.
But the other door inside the cabin gave off that the cabin was not empty. Far from it. A young lady sat on the dressing-table bench, turned away to the only chair. She wore some thing gauzy, softly draped: a gown for being a guest. Her hand extended to Chase Young there in the chair. Immaculate olive green and black. suit of light armour. Long head of hair, centre-parted.
The girl was a stranger to me. But I knew who she was, who she had to be.

'well, I'll be a monkey's uncle' I thought to myself as my eyes liked to pop out of my head.

Chase young leaned forward over the young lady's hand. He kissed it, watching his sharp teeth quite obviously. Oh dear. Kissing. I went beet-red. I didn't know where to look as I peered across the door crack, and I was all eyes. My hand drew up uncertainly in that way I have.

"My darling," Chase Young said.

I nearly passed out. Now I was scrambling back, wiggling back out the door, once more in a flight.
I hadn't been in the xiaolin cabin at all.
I'd been in Chase Young's.
And I'd just witnessed Chase Young kissing the nurse.
Oh, what secret affairs the dark night keeps.
I darted on down to the next door and ran into it, dizzy with what I'd witnessed. My cabin at last. But where was my breath? it took forever to find.
And there was Katnappe, in her tailed nightie, climbing into Raimundo's bed. I had not been missed. Katnappe was eager to tell Raimundo all about the evening, every detail. And Raimundo was eager to pretend he didn't already know.He was all ears.
Neither of them could be bothered to notice me coming in the cabin, dropping into my own bed in the other room next to Kimiko's. No one was eager to hear one of my adventures, which were every bit  as exciting as anybody else's. Every bit.

Though at one point Katnappe said, "Why am I smelling cake?"

And that would be me.
I was unstrung. My head and feet tingled. Kimiko was already there, sound asleep.

"Oh stop,"   she murmured, deep in some unsuitable dream. "I beg you."

On the days that followed, the entire ship could talk of nothing but the sudden romance that had broken out between Chase Young and Lily White, the heylin nurse. But that's the way with an ocean voyage: Dynasties have been decided. Chase Young hardly had time to change his clothes five times a day with all he had planned. For breakfast, then a turn on the deck with Lily White. For lunch and then their training. For tea and yet again for dinner. He was in and out of the cabin and so were his maids. We four, Kimiko, Raimundo, Clay and I, bickered in the cabin for days.
Omi found us bickering in the cabin. A maid had just breezed out the door with some ironing. Omi breezed in.

"Hello," said the bothersome boy. "I cannot stay long. But here is a delivery. Look at it!"

He'd pushed in among us. In his hand was a bouquet: Red roses and some lilies, tastefully tied up in thread. No doubt from the florist's floor. Run by Gigi.

"Compliments of his heylin lordship... or heylin joker.. Jack Spicer. I must get along with Jack Spicer."

How well we recalled seeing Jack.
We were lost in thought and curious too. The ship rose on a swell, hung there, then settled, then rose again.

Kimiko found her voice nervously. "Who are those flowers for?"

Sly Omi made us wait, spinning out the moment. Then he handed the bouquet over to me.

"Me?" I pointed an innocent finger at myself. "How nice."

"It would be Alice," Kimiko muttered. "how typical of  a goth loser. Honestly, nobody normal would go for her."

I stuck my nose in the flowers. Kimiko's brain was running riot. She babbled on.

"Still, since Lily White is going to end up as a heylin Queen, married to heylin Prince Chase Young, what would that make for us?"

Kimiko nodded in anxiety, looking at me. I was sniffing my flowers. Kimiko clenched her teeth. How suddenly she'd make me a villain. I was hurt. But would I let that show? I know better than that.

"Do not put your cart before your horse, now lil' lady.." Clay stated for me.

We were almost in sight of land now. Beams from my homeland of Europe lighthouses swept the nighttime horizon. Too excited to sleep, Raimundo chattered till all hours to listening Katnappe.
I tossed and turned. Then when I slept, I dreamed a familiar dream.
I awoke with a start. I lay there, bolt awake. I wasn't sleeping that night.