I woke up with a dog licking me. That was typical of life in an alley down by the docks in Geneva. It was just like Third Elf’s life out back of Sugar Mountain, all candy and booze and kitty litter. I shoved the dog away and rolled over to try and get some more sleep.

I’d been trying to keep up with my yoga, but the booze got in the way. My health was beginning to suffer.

But… if you were living in an alley in Geneva, waiting for a blog post that might never come, from the best friend you ever had in the whole world, wishing Shelly — Shelly! Married! — had been able to have a little faith, to see you more clear, to look past your toned, tanned, muscular facade into the real truth in the heart of a man such as the kind of man you truly in your heart know yourself to be, well… you’d be socking back a few too.

They drink Schnapps over here in Switzerland. Some kind of pepperminty Euro swill. It does the job.

The dog was back. I shoved it away again. I was thinking about dames. Those Swiss dames, man, they’re something else, all blonde hair and sexy little dirndls. They look like something off a cuckoo clock.

But they wouldn’t come home with me. Said I lived in an alley. Which I did.

I just didn’t get what Foxy was up to. What was all that crap about black cats and weepy eyeballs? What was he trying to tell me? Why wouldn’t he get back to me? 

I was afraid he’d lost his mind. He never had that much mind to begin with. Salt of the earth, that Fox, but no intellectual.

The dog bit me in the ear. I rolled over to punch him. It was Fox. He had a couple of coffees and a bag of pastries.

“Foxy!” I yelled, but he shushed me. He didn’t seem to want to talk, but his tail was wagging like a puppy’s and he couldn’t stop bouncing and grinning. Me neither. 

We drank the coffees and ate the pastries, and then I packed up my climbing gear and fed the cats and before I knew it I was following Fox high up into the Swiss Alps, loping along easy in the bright spring air, through mountain meadows like emeralds bursting with wildflowers, higher and higher, Fox in his element in the wild and me, Sherpa Joe, me in my element too, dammit!

No more Schnapps for me. I swore it. I swore it out loud.

After five hours of hard climbing we arrived at the most beautiful meadow of them all. It was shrouded in mist, but when the mist lifted it was as if you could see for a million miles, all the way to Swaziland I bet.

“Sherpa Joe,” Fox said. There was mist swirling all around him, and it was glowing a faint golden colour, like amber or a cat’s eyes. I couldn’t help noticing that he was walking upright. How did that happen? He was taller, and he seemed to be wearing clothes. Some kind of robes.

“Allow me to present my beloved,” Fox said. “My lady the wood nymph Woodsy.”