ella_may_dixie@brokenworld.chaosdeathfish.com

Erratic but a musical genius, the Dixie family's leader is in mnay ways a perfect representation of the clan. Try not to get on her bad side.

Clan: Dixie Family

“Why So sad, child?” Purred the cat. “Look what an exquisite day it is? The light is warm. The colors are wild. Whats there to be down and blue about on such a high red day?”

“I… shouldn't talk to you.” whispered the child, choking back her tears. “Its not allowed.”

“Now allowed, eh?” It purred back in mock shock. “Now ain't that a thing. Not allowed to talk to a cat… but you ain't talkin to no cat. Not a good girl like you. You're talking to the wind, tellin it whats buggin you… and if I just happing to be basking here in this groove, then thats hardly a fret. miaw?”

The girl paused for the longest time, watching as the cat strutted and strode around the legs of the bench on which she sat, streatched taught like a violin string, then curled up beneath her two feet. She looked straight ahead at the meadow opposite and told the sky “The man I love is to be married.”

“Mmmmarried?” growled the cat from somewhere below “And I take it from those sweet tears you ain't his bride to be? Now ain't that a thing. Don't care for your songs of love?”

“No- I mean, yes… He loves me as dearly as I him…”

“Doesn't he sing beneath your window?”

“He does… or he did until his father found out.”

“Don't you make his heart beat a quicker time?”

“Yes. I've heard it myself…” The Girl blushed. “But his family have betrothed him to another. Theres a lot of money involved. His family needs the money.”

“Money ain't love, girl. Theres no soul to it. Why you letting a few caps get in the way?”

“Because its the rules. Its the way the Tallows have always done things. Mr Tallows told me himself. 'My father chose my bride, and I'll choose my son's'… Then they asked me to leave.”

“You went to speak to them all by yourself? Thats prretty brave child. And what did your beau say?”

“He couldn't see me. He daren't defy his father. I know he dispises him, but he's family. You can't deny family.”

“Pssh! Family is in the heart, not the blood. Your boy is just so caught up in rules and laws and sticking to the rythm that he's forgetting the melody! He's gonna make a mistake that he'll regret all his life for following another man's beat… but you can do something about that.”

“I don't know… what can I possibly do?”

“Anything you want girl, and don't forget it. Heck, you're already doing it. All you need is a little spice. Look near your feet and you'll see a mushroom growing in this lllovely shade. You know what that is, don't you. Storm Cap. More sway than Mr Tallow's Bottle Caps by far. You know what you can make your boy think, and think with, if you sneak him a taste of that… You'll have him head over heels dancing to the steps his and your feet want to follow in no time… then its just a quick waltz to the station and you're away to your own Union.”

“But we can't-”

“Oh you can, and you know you will. You already showed you've got the guts when you went to see his father. Bet your family didn't like that eh? No child, you aren't a girl to let the rules get in the way of what you want… and you already know what temple you'll go to to be married… I'll see you there…”

The last few words seemed faint. A moment later the girl looked down to find no creature beneath her feet… but her eye was caught by the innocent pink fungus, peeking out from behind the leg of the bench.

She stared at it for the longest time.

Ella May lived a good long time for a Mafia don gaining wealth, spouses and hordes of children. All the time she lived she dedicated to sex, drugs and Jazz but most of all, the anarchic side of Creation. Bringing back the essences of the dead, filling the silence with wild Jazz, making heroes out of nobodies and challenging order with chaos. It was said her flute could drive the ecstatic to sorrow, warriors to peace, the calm to frenzy; her voice and her music would speak to your soul and forge it anew into wild mass of emotions and turmoil.

Soon it would be said that when a cat appeared from nowhere, when a child was born deformed, when the dead were seen to walk again as ghosts or when a tune came sailing into your mind from nowhere that it was the work of Ella May, master of Creative Anarchy.

When many years had passed and the Dixies were spread across the world by their lives as pirates and travelling Jazz musicians, they would still return to the Jazz Temple at the call of a flute only they could hear, and the wail of a broken saxophone that wasn't a saxophone playing a tune that wasn't a tune. There they would play with the Trinity as they had in the old days: Matthias, Ella and the Spirit of Jazz.

Though you may not see her often now, Ella May is very far from dead. She wanders the world still, flute in hand, storm in pocket and burning hat on head.