Maybe I'd better call a halt to the journal for a bit. Until something crops up, that is, which it hopefully won't for a couple of decades. In the me… - Jonathan Stroud

Spy three suspicious butterflies flitting over hedge. Check the planes. Yep, small foliots, arms flapping wildly. Wasp rises up behind them, shoots down out of sun, zaps them with Infernos, one, two, three. Burning butterflies crash-land in pond. Alert master to my triumph. She inspects charred fragments. Her scowl deepens; turns out they were her slaves, returning with valuable information.

Take that stupid grin off your face," he said. "You're putting me off." "Sorry." I adopted a hideous expression of malady and woe. "That's not much better.

"Woken up, have you?" the woman said. Her voice was like broken glass in an ice bucket.†