So, I had a dream last night that Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanova, and I were sent on a mission by Nick Fury. While walking down the New York street together (because this is how you get somewhere when Bad Things Are About To Happen), we were picked up by a trio of women with black hair and even blacker leather, in a black convertible.
Sure, Captain America said, we’ll get in your car and let you give us a lift.
Uhm, said I, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. (Perhaps it was the black hair, black leather, and black paint job combo.)
The sardonic lift of the Black Widow’s brow suggested she was a tad skeptical, herself. (Perhaps at the fact that all six of us somehow fit in the two seater). But, still, she said nothing. In fact she said nothing throughout the whole dream and instead let her eyebrow do the talking for her.
But you know, we’re cool, we can handle it, right?
In the car we go and proceed to a small apartment where the trio is quite eager to demonstrate their hacking prowess. (A little Too Eager, if you ask me. Natasha’s eyebrow remains skeptical.) They know where the bomb is!
Great! exclaims Cap. Why yes, I WILL push that big red button there to disarm the firing mechanism, or whatever it is that sets off bombs.
Mayhem ensues and though the giddy laughter of the trio, it is revealed that the Big Red, Not At All Ominous Button had, in fact, detonated the bomb we had been charged to find and defuse in the first place.
Great, what exactly had you expected, said Ms. Romanova’s eyebrow to Captain Rogers.
The scene changes, as dreams are wont to do. I have been separated from the Shield unit and found myself wandering the catacombs in my parents’ basement.
I am lost! Alas, Captain Rogers and Ms. Romanova will be very worried. I hoped it will not distract them from Things That Must Be Done.
Just when I was about to give up hope of finding my way out in time to catch up with them, my name was called from the shadows of a crumbling arch.
There I looked to find a tall man wearing a worn cloak, muddy boots, and a rather long sword by his side. His hood was drawn over his features (of course).
He stepped into the light and I cried, But you were dead!
I am and am not, said Aragorn, revealing his elvish heritage in his reply. He is about to give me some advice.
You must use this, said Jesus, I mean Aragorn, as he pressed a silver brooch into my hand. (It is important to note that this piece of jewelry was NOT the Elessar. It instead had a black stone fixed to uhm, some flying animal that I never got a good look at, not green.)
But don’t you need this? I asked, clued in by the the sudden appearance of an audience of Italian monks who had just cried out in dismay. (They were doomed! Surely the wizard will slay them all now, in this alternate universe!)
No, said the noble Aragorn, because he was Aragorn, and if Strider Telcontar knows anything, it’s that there’s no use relying on a piece of jewelry to give you the power to stop an impending apocalypse.
I closed the wardrobe doors behind me to emerge onto the concrete patio behind my parents’ house. (Okay, who I am kidding. It was actually the doors to the walnut cupboard where my mother keeps the good china.)
And so ended my adventure, as I found myself pressed to Luke Skywalker’s (old man Luke, not young boy Luke)’s chest (actual body part, not where he keeps his linens).
I talked to Aragorn! I gently sobbed into Skywalker’s fuzzy robes.
He said nothing in reply but gazed sadly out over the cliffs of the rock quarry next door to my childhood home. He needed no words to comfort me. I trusted that he, who had met Aragorn in the Battle of the Pelennor fields, would understand my plight.
Hearseeno 