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So there were leprechauns, and they had even been in her house the night before, and disconnected her alarm circuit, so that she had lost both Tarquin and any chance of catching them in her kitchen.

 

A few days later, Tarquin was invited by the leprechaun princess to the ball at the leprechaun palace. She was very keen on him, and asked him to dance at the ball. It would have been daytime in the world above, but since they lived by lamplight all the time, it made no difference. He was dancing with the princess, who was rather pretty. However all of his thoughts were still on his infatuation with Colleen. He knew that he could never go back and see her again, unless he wanted to see the inside of her mouth immediately before being despatched by it. Yet still he couldn’t help thinking of her.

The dancing was accompanied by leprechaun musicians playing live instrumental tunes, as they had no electricity down there. They had gotten what they needed from the earth to make their lanterns and other facilities function, and the lantern lit palace looked spectacular.

During one of the tunes in the second bracket of dancing, they heard an earthquake above them.

“Don’t worry, it’s for the best,” said the prince of leprechauns, “Any further soil movement can only serve to conceal and reinforce our kingdom all the more.”

The loud noise came again, and the musicians took a break, deciding to wait out the disturbance until it could no longer interfere with their tunes.

Suddenly the cavern roof was lifted up by something, which turned out to be a shovel, and tossed away above them. Looking up from the palace courtyard, Tarquin saw that Colleen was digging into their kingdom.

“She must have snuck back down and overheard you rescuing me last night,” he said, unaware of her video and alarm system, “She only let us go, so that she could come here and surprise all of us today!”

“Everyone turn invisible!” called the prince.

“You’d better hide deep in the palace,” said the princess, knowing that Tarquin didn’t have their power of invisibility.

Tarquin went and hid behind a curtain just inside the palace’s upper room, and peeked out at Colleen. He couldn’t help looking at her, fascinated with her towering beauty, as she scooped away the last of the roof soil and put down the shovel. Then he saw her squat down and reach for something beside her. It wasn’t the reducing machine, as they were already tiny enough. It was some sort of container with a nozzle. Was she going to try to smoke them out with tear gas or something? Would the leprechauns be susceptible?

Colleen pointed her new piece of equipment into the cavern and squeezed the trigger.

A pink substance sprayed out in each direction, falling onto the leprechauns and remaining on them, leaving all of them as visible as Tarquin would have been, had he stayed out on the palace courtyard.

“Run and hide. She’s sprayed us with dye!” called the prince.

“Actually I thought food colouring seemed the most appropriate thing to use,” said Colleen, “Two of you came into my home last night. So I thought I’d return the favour.”

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