Nixie was doing the best she could to control her emotions.

It looked as if someone had been taking lessons from the nixie.

She waited until Nixie was back in her room, then walked away.

"Now you see why people like me don't usually talk to anyone about all this," Nixie said.

Then Nixie called out and pointed in a direction off to one side.

Nixie sort of thought her mom knew and pretended she didn't.

But before she got to the door, Nixie trotted up behind her.

"No." Nixie looked at him as if it should have been obvious.

"So the nixie really is interested in us, as men?"

Nixie got up from a couch she had been perched on.

"I'm sorry to tell you this way, but my concern now is for Nixie."

With Nixie helping, glimpses of a place started coming together.

Charlie heard Nixie bark, turned his head and saw it at the last moment.

Nixie raised an arm and moved it across her field of vision.

He looked over at the monitor, saw that Nixie was in bed, sleeping.

We only had one nixie out, and the first fish blew that the hell away.

"What should we do if the nixie comes back?"

"Nixie's in touch with one of them down there now.

Outside, Nixie dashed behind a tree when she heard the engine.

"It wasn't possible to put pieces together that could work the way they can here," Nixie answered.

Nixie looked up, and a strange, distant expression came over her face.

At wit's end, she sat on the floor with Nixie still clinging to her.

Nixie looked up now, and those quiet blue eyes hardened like glass.

It would be good for Nixie, certainly, to see them, to talk to them.

She streaked out of the room, swung into the one Nixie was using.