Sent to: Sandy Weaver - Deem who wrote: .....the beautiful inlayed chest in its small stubby fins. Christianaferret stared transfixed at it, that is until the Snap-Fish groused at her and said, "Stop gawking at it like some foolish kit and take it!", to which Christianaferret, troubles temporary forgotten, rushed forward to relieve the Snap-Fish of its gift - which did indeed smell a tad bit fishy she thought. "It is so beautiful." she said, as her nimble little paws traced over the well crafted cameos on its lid. "it may also be an answer to your prayers as well.' said the Snap-Fish. "How so?" questioned Christianaferretet. "Well aside from it being a priceless work of art, it also possess the ability to answer any question you would put to it." the Snap-Fish said. Christianaferret looked from the chest to the Snap-Fish and asked, "How?" "How should I know silly girl, I am only good at repeating the facts and doing as I have been ordered to do!", and with that, the Snap-Fish left in one great S N A P . "That is a very odd fish." thought Christianaferret, and with the Snap-Fish gone she turned back her attention to the chest in her hands. She then walked over toher hammock and climbed in, got comfy and began looking the chest over. It really was beautiful. It had all of these beautiful inlays which depicted a forest at spring time, and on its lid were two ferret cameos. After she was through admiring it, she looked for a way to open it, she looked first for a lock, but found nothing, she then looked for hinges, thinking she could take out the pins and open it that way, but found no hinges either. It seemed to be sealed as if by magic. So, to no one in particular she said. " So how do I open you?" and as the last word was spoken, two twin voices, from the two twin cameos said, " A question you must ask if you seek to find answers within." This startled poor Christianaferret so badly that she zoomed from her hammy, to the other end of her room, in a nano-second. When nothing else failed to happen, she did her best to finger comb down the bottle brush effect that resulted from the scare of hearing the chest speak. Walked back over to her hammie, and curiously peered in at the chest. She thought about the question she might ask, but then as one question came, so did a dozen others, and all of them had to do with her up and coming nuptials. She slid down to the floor and further thought, "Now I must not squander my questions either, because what if this chest is like that genies bottle I read about, and I can only have so many to ask?" After a few more minutes of deep thought, she climbed back into her hammy and said, in a nice clear voice," If after I marry the Dook of Cornish Hen, and have made my father, and his Dookdum happy and secure, will I myself be happy too?" And again, after she uttered her last word, there was a noise, not the twin voices as before, but more of a click and then a whirl, and then the lid of the chest popped up a bit. Christianaferret laughed with glee and then gently opened the chest. Inside she found a note attached to a bundle of what appeared to be old cloth. She read the note which simply stated "If answers to your question you seek to find, you must go out and live among your own kind." She thought this quite strange and set the note aside in order to see what was in the bundle of cloth, but upon shaking it out, she found not cloth, but a bodice, a chemise, two skirts and a pair of well worn sandals - very much like the outfits of the working class, and an idea occurred to her..... To be continued [Posted in FML issue 4907]