Alone in the forest, we met a mushroom bride who called herself "Chalice of Dirt", with good reason.

I misheard her and said, "Pleased to meet you too, Alice," which infuriated her. Begging her forgiveness, Marie and I, ran along the path past her, as she hurled insults at us.

Chalice of Dirt relented and told us a story about a man named Malice Green, who, in the early 1990s, had been beaten to death by Detroit police bearing heavy flashlights. The moral of the story, which we were told was true, is that the stars conspire along avenues that are not all that difficult to decipher and sometimes downright obvious. The stars that aligned at the hour of Malice's birth already had his final night in Detroit in mind. Often, our fate is an open book, should be but choose to glance up at the stars and read them.

I erroneously interpreted the story as a sign that we would identify Poison Pie's bride with certainty, when we encountered her.