I got some nice responses around the time this strip was first posted from folks saying that the story wasn't going where they thought it was going. And I'm always glad to hear that. As long as they didn't mean that it seemed to be careening off in some insane direction that makes no sense when compared to what's gone before.

     See, 'cause I like to think that my mind works in an orderly fashion. I like to think that if you hired enough strong backs with geology picks and shovels to dig through the detritus, you'd find that the sedimentary layers of my brain stack up in a fashion that could on the whole be called orderly. Heck, I've even been accused by certain people of my acquaintance of being a creature of habit, set in my ways, a bit of a fuddy-duddy--if I might use that phrase in mixed company.

     So consider Kestrel and Cory and the rest of these characters to be working those geology picks and those shovels, peeling back certain selected layers of my brain and displaying them for your dining and dancing pleasure. I hope the patterns thus revealed continue to be of some interest.