n his
owner's windpipe. He would fall from grace with a thud, enmeshing
himself in a thousand pieces at his distant relative's feet.
Least-wise, he would rot in a sewer near a busy bus stop replete with
all the dronings of archaic feet. Or, or he reasoned, he would outwit
his opponent and maintain his old hegemony. Oblivion seemed a more
forbidding fate than drudgery.

For sometime, Clarence had watched the new meerschaum from a distance.
Its lily white figure elicited a plan. He would disgorge from the pit
of his favourite ashtray all the toxins lodged in the burnt up tobacco.
He would prove white was an aberration. He and he alone would disfigure
her perfection. A good pipe should camouflage its owner's hazards. He
had only to tar and weather his rival or await the smoke to cloud the
delicate perfection of that effeminate form.

Reveling in the sense of this new found power, Clarence became puffed
up with more than his own smoke, and his thoughts fell into a dry
rattle. The owner feeling this unaccustomed rush of heat and
experiencing hard drawing from his companion, vigorously tapped the
stem against an open door's edge. He muttered something to the effect
about the clogged nature of his old instrument and how refreshing his
next smoke promised to be.

And so it would, without the residue of filth lodged inside the once
trusty pipe.

ADUA

Adua had never regarded his life as a pantomime. He wanted so much to
please. As a dandelion, he thought of himself as little brother to the
sun catching her yellow butter in his eyes.

It came as no small surprise, then, when Adua learned of the world's
misgivings toward him. Other flowers, far less nobly constructed,
seemed held in such greater esteem. The first shred of evidence of this
that Adua was indeed not a bountiful plant came when cattle distained
his presence. Later, a smelly herbicide was used in his presence and
Adua knew all was not well. Most discomforting, however, was the manner
in which other flowers measured up in comparison to Adua. Even flowers
that Adua considered quite ordinary seemed, tongue in cheek, to fare
much more prettily.

"Adua, Adua as the wind blows so do the poppies grow."

Somehow, Adua heard that refrain while nodding his head in the summer
heat. He had grown accustomed to the red blotches that spilled their
colour so near to his own colony. To him, their mauve crimsons were
gaudy, a shrieking red quite unlike his gentle yellow n