88 Take A Chance On Me
“The trouble with falling in love is that it’s not a conscious thing, it’s not a decision. It’s a decision that’s made for you and it isn’t always good.”
Maya Fey and Mildred Latrine
March 9, 2025, 2:22 PM
Maya never dreamed that the day would come when she would have to eat humble pie pertaining to the Dragon Lady. Yet that was exactly what happened when she’d had to contact the despised village elder concerning her newly altered matrimonial stance.
Consequently, long after Sasha had left, taking her magical transforming shears with her, the village leader had sat in her room brooding while waiting for Mildew to return her call.
She nearly gagged at the notion of how the village elder would revel in triumph upon discovering the Master had done a complete turnabout, barely a sennight after the dramatic stormy refusal in the Meeting Hall – and within moments of receiving a life-altering, impromptu hairdo-do-over! – and was now meekly admitting to not only being wholly on board with the entire matchmaking proposal but most keen on being found a suitable suitor!
Her phone rang just then. As she lifted it to her ear, the caller at the other end spoke briskly before she could even utter the first hello.
“This better be a matter of utmost importance, Mystic Maya,” Mildred stated crisply, without preamble. “Sister Bikini insisted it was a most pressing issue, which I assume it would have to be, to make you disrupt the most important task you had personally assigned me to!”
Despite the dire straits that had led to this moment, the diviner couldn’t resist the audible smirk resounding in her voice as she spoke.
“And how was that latrine digging?” She asked sweetly, ensuring her voice was as innocuous as possible. “The good nun did assure me you were going all gangbusters with this latest outhouse lot … pray tell, just how entrenched did you make the required holes?”
“I dare say at least 30 hands deep! I sincerely hope that would be good enough for the esteemed Master?” The old woman snapped, obviously most displeased at the reminder of the coarse, degrading chore she’d been subjected to. “Now was there a point to this phone call, or shall I save you the niceties and just flat out inquire as to whether or not there’s a point to this asinine conversation?”
“I can assure you, with utmost sincerity,” the Kurain head reassured dryly. “I did not call to shoot the shit!”
“I must say, Master, your sense of humor truly knows no bounds,” Mildew deadpanned. “But at the risk of sounding belligerent or impudent, I have yet again to enquire as to what pleasure I owe this phone call?”
The psychic took a deep breath and expelled it slowly as she gathered her wits about her.
“I have had a change of heart, and I want you to contact your matchmaker. I’ve decided that I wish to be considered for a suitor as initially recommended.”
There was a pregnant pause on the line.
“Well, I say – this is a most unforeseen, not to mention, unexpected about-face on your part.” The initial surprise evident in the Dragon Lady’s voice was slowly being replaced by a gloating nuance. “May I inquire exactly what brought about this sudden, if not completely out of the blue, change of heart, Mystic Maya?”
“No, you may not,” she replied archly. “Suffice to say that, as you’ve pointed out, such is an ancient, revered tradition for the Kurain Master to marry before her third decade. This past week, I’ve had a chance to clear my mind, and am now opting to do what is best according to scared custom, which will, in the end, be best for the village.”
“But what about your dear friend, Mr. Wight?” Her nemesis asked slyly, a knowing nuance in her tone now. “Won’t he quite taken aback, and not just merely surprised, by this hasty change of heart?”
“Perhaps,” the necromancer returned crisply. “However, I suspect that Sister Iris can certainly help cushion the blow of any shock to the system, as she is the current keeper of his heart. Therefore, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, tell me, how soon can you fix me up with my first match? My only stipulation is that while I will allow you to present me with suitable contenders, I shan’t agree to any of them blindly. I wish to first converse with them, and if that goes well, meet with them myself. Ultimately, if I do happen to find one of these selections favorable, and wish to wed, it will still be a man of my choosing, is that understood?”
Yzma incarnate decided not to press her luck with a further “I told you so” even though she was inwardly cackling with euphoric glee. And here she’d thought she would be forced to either indeterminably postpone, if not entirely put the kybosh, on all her hard efforts and plans! She’d been wondering if she’d be forced to be resorted to further risky and improbable manipulations, which would have taken God only knew how long to put into fruition, or just throw in the towel … yet the fates had turned the tides in her favor after all! It all turned out even better than she could have hoped, with that good-for-nothing Phoenix Wright (the elder wasn’t foolish enough to think he wasn’t a key factor in Maya’s abrupt 180!) doing all the hard work for her and taking coercion entirely off the table, and thus making the Master come to her …willingly!
If her brittle old bones have allowed it, the harridan would have broken into a happy dance at that moment! But she figured she would work on her jig later. Right now, she sensed outward rejoicing would rock this precarious boat, which had just been tipped in her favor, and thus would need to tread cautiously.
“Quite understood, loud, and clear,” Mildred replied serenely, affecting her most humble and helpful tone. “I am merely going window shopping for you, Mystic Maya, with a general list of what I think would make a good buy, which will be based partially on your desires as well. Of course, it is entirely up to you to decide if you wish to purchase. I shall take note of any particular wants and stipulations right now, even as we speak.”
She paused for a moment to pretend she was getting a paper and pen, then returned to the line.
“Just so I have a general idea of your tastes, what sort of man are you looking for? Are there any particular physical traits or characteristics you find favorable or unfavorable?”
“I honestly don’t care,” the spirit medium stated flatly. “I shall leave it to your discretion to determine what you think is best for this village in the long term.”
After all, my recent history would dictate that my judgment in men of my choosing is sorely lacking! She thought bitterly. Why not let Mildew do her thing? Any prospective Future Significant Other can’t possibly do any worse damage than the last one!
The village elder was dumbfounded. She hadn’t expected it to be quite this easy! Her foe was all but begging her to deliver Longines Beaugosse on a silver platter!
However, she had to be careful. Much like buying a car, people didn’t tend to settle for the very first model they set their eyes on, no matter how much they liked it! They tended to have an innate need to test drive several different models first, as though to reassure themselves they hadn’t been impulsive, or were settling …or simply because they didn’t trust their intuitive judgment that the right model had come along first and foremost after all!
This was the case with Maya, who was suddenly, for some reason or other, now skeptical about her ability in choosing the right suitor for her, and was openly admitting to it as much. If Mildred didn’t despise the other woman as much as she did, she would have been touched and flattered that the Master was humbly putting her faith and trust in her.
On the other hand, Mildred supposed it was nice to at last be acknowledged that as a revered elder, she was indeed older and wiser. At the end of the day, the inevitable conclusion was obvious she also knew what was best, for both the village leader as well as Kurain! Any man would a step up from that no-goodnik disbarred lawyer, after all! What could that penniless, worthless bum have ever had to offer any of them but eternal headaches, shame, and despair? He was Sister Iris’s cross to bear now. That jailbird daughter of Morgan’s had zero need to be as selective with her choice of mates, anyway, and given her checkered history, obviously knew she had to take whatever she could get! Good riddance, truly!
Nevertheless, the elder knew she still had to at least ease her way in slowly. After all, even the most successful car salesman couldn’t compel a client to buy a Ferrari if said customer had her heart set on some sort of Japanese or German sedan! This wouldn’t be too difficult a feat, though. No doubt though, the village leader’s standards weren’t too high.
After all, if the disgraced Phoenix Wright could be likened to an automobile model, Maya had almost settled for a complete lemon with irreparable and liable collateral damage and nigh no hope of reparation or increase in value whatsoever!
“Surely…” Mildred began cautiously. “The Master must have some inkling of what she could and could not tolerate. Naturally, the bare essentials would be a man who is at least established and successful, so we know he has only eyes for you, and not the wealth and power a woman of your esteemed stature would wield.”
“Fine. That sounds good,” the Kurain head responded dully. “I guess the definite basics, then? No mental health issues or criminal records. And a lack of drug or alcohol abuse history should be a given…”
“That goes without saying!” Mildred sounded completely affronted at the notion. “I was thinking more along the lines of what traits you would find most compatible, not merely eliminating the obvious deal-breakers, Mystic Maya! Ah, is there a certain type you would find particularly pleasing, physically? Slim? Toned? Blond?”
Silence on the line.
“Or brunet?” The elder added hastily, not wanting to make it too glaring about the fact that she’d just fully described Longines to a T! “Er, muscular? Brown, blue or green-eyed? Tall? Short?”
“I’m just over five feet, so finding a man taller than me shouldn’t be too hard unless you were planning on fetching me a Hobbit from Middle Earth,” Maya answered with a gusty sigh. “Um, now that you mention it, there is a particular type that I shall not consider in the least. I have as stemmed a decidedly strong aversion to any black-haired men! Also, I find dark blue eyes of any sort most abhorrent. But that is all. Otherwise, I’m most open-minded.”
Worriedly, the schemer’s mind flashed back to Longines’ open, honest, trusting cerulean orbs. The hair heir’s eyes tended to change color from sky to Lapis lazuli blue at their deepest, depending on his mood but were nowhere near the midnight blue depths of what the Master had just described. She also had a pretty good idea about who had inspired the underlying basis of these deal-breakers, though wisely kept mum.
“Duly noted.” Her tone was dulcet reassurance personified. “I shall keep my eyes peeled for men with hair no darker than chestnut in color and restrict my search to blond, brown-haired, and redhead only.”
“Thank you. I shall stand by in wait to see what results from these search perimeters.” Maya spoke quickly, then hung up right then before she could change her mind.
Ugh, I should have said no to redheads, the Master realized belatedly. The last thing I want is to give birth to some soulless ginger baby demon if folklore is anything to go by! After all, wasn’t Demoness Dahlia a redhead?
She snickered to herself at the thought.
Ah, what the hell, I don’t want to limit myself too much … red hair doesn’t have to mean freckles – hell Jamie Fraser on that British TV show Outlander is a total auburn-haired hottie!
Maya flopped down onto her bed and heavy a gusty sigh.
Besides, Mildew could walk across to the ends of the world and back without finding another Phoenix Wright – which is exactly what I’m hoping for! Besides, surely she’ll choose wealthy, ambitious men who can only benefit my reputation and with whom affiliations will only bolster, not tarnish Kurain in any way! Ultimately, anyone other than my derelict ex has got to be better in comparison! How bad could any of these guys be?
Maya Fey and Mildred Latrine
Fey Manor
March 31, 2025, 2:22 PM
Three disastrous weeks later, the spirit medium curtly commanded a completely bewildered Sister Bikini to summon Mystic Mildred to her office at Fey Manor immediately!
Steam was practically coming out of the Master’s ears as she impatiently drummed her fingertips atop her desk as she awaited the Dragon Lady’s arrival from Eagle Mountain.
“You wished to see me, Mystic Maya?” The elder asked sunnily when she arrived just over half an hour later.
“You better believe I wanted to see you!” Maya crossed her arms and glared at the old woman. “Did you know that the meaning of your miai’s name, Ketsuno Ana, loosely translates into an asshole in Japanese?”
“Does it now?” Mildred blinked, her expression one of utmost virtuousness. “How incredibly… ill-fated for her then –”
“Yes, it most certainly does!” Maya scowled. “And quite frankly, given the quality of the men she’s been hooking me up with, I wish to tell you that I find her unfortunate moniker to be most aptly fitting!”
“Woe is me to hear of such things, Master.” Mildred miraculously managed to keep a straight face. “Presumably you found these sought-out suitors to be somehow lacking? I can assure you that I did screen and further narrow down the selection myself, before presenting their profiles to you…”
“Then I don’t know which of you is more deserving of farting butt-hole translation!” The village leader shouted, sparks shooting out of her mocha eyes. “Shall I now begin regaling you about my video chat with bachelor number one? I have no qualms in telling you right now; he has already been voted off the island and will not be getting any sort of in-person date!”
“Er, that would have been Mr. Tuggley, correct?” Mildew cleared her throat and affixed her most sympathetic expression. “What faux pas was it that the gentleman is guilty of that shan’t even allow him the pleasure of an in-the-flesh introductory date with the esteemed Master?”
“Buck Tuggley is a compulsive sportsman – a noxious trophy hunter who kills animals purely for the bloodthirsty sport!” Maya shuddered at the thought. “If I chose to be with him, I would have to slog down every stream between California and New England, as it would entail spending the rest of my life in the hunting field! The other thing is he appears to be completely terrified of females! He is unable to make eye contact at all, and claims it’s perfectly normal for him to blush like a schoolboy in the company of pretty women … even though he’s pushing his fourth decade and we were only talking on Skype!”
Mildred just stared at her blankly. Incensed, Maya rose from her desk, placed her hands on either side of her head, and flung them forward with palpable disbelief as she shouted.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Stalin, woman! Your matchmaker literally set me up with the 40-year-old virgin!”
The old woman somehow managed a look of innocent confusion at the Master’s obvious ire.
“But I’ve heard he’s quite charming and nice, however. Moreover, he does have a lot of wealth and is of amiable disposition.”
“Nice?!” Maya shrieked. “He’s a complete bacon brain! I Googled the oily heir and rest assured, despite his riches and stature, Mr. Tuggley is neither mature, bright nor even an adequate hunter! When I questioned him about my findings, he finally confessed that the reason he still walks with a limp is due to a certain recent hunting accident. It appears he was startled by a deer, and accidentally shot himself in the foot last year! Were I to wed him, I would be a widow, by his own mark, surely, within a half-year, at most!”
She paused to take a breath of air into her starved lungs.
“His best friend, Phillip McCracken, due to the same incident, was hospitalized due to the ball from the rifle ricocheting off of a tree and hitting him in the arm! Jesus Christ on a stick dipped in cornbread fried in peanut oil and hocked at a county fair! If he doesn’t kill himself, then he shall surely maim or hospitalize me! Ergo, it’s a gigantic hell to the no on that one!”
“Alright, I can see why you may have an aversion to a virginal bad hunter with equally bad aim…” Mildred bit her lip as hard as she could to stifle her snort of laughter. “But surely the other two couldn’t have been as bad –”
“Bad?” The necromancer fumed. “They were worse if that was at all possible! Let’s take us to bachelor number two, the equally and aptly named Jack Knoff. That misogynistic nimrod is also an overdressed, egotistical, razor-tongued little gossip on top of everything else! I was aghast when he showed up for our dinner date by shamelessly admitting the more flattering photo I’d seen of him was over a decade old!”
“How much could a man possibly have changed within a mere decade?” Mildred defended, biting back a knowing smirk. “Surely looks aren’t everything?”
“If his disposition wasn’t as grotesque as his appearance, I would say surely not!” Maya agreed icily. “However, the foul, potty-mouthed swine of malodorous bodily stench is now gassy, fat, and balding! It was false advertising at its worst!”
“Oh, dear…”
“Oh, dear is right! That flatulent porker claims he is quite the catch and hence he refuses to settle, as he has yet to have found a woman who he thinks is worthy of him! He seems to look disdainfully upon all women, as opposed to fearing them! At 42, he still lives with his mother, who helped him start his urinal cake empire and he thinks no other female alive can hold a candle to Mumsy in comparison!”
Maya’s lip curled with disgust at the memories of the lecherous brute with the wandering elevator eyes.
“Between his inability to snip the apron strings and his narcissism, I was bored to near tears despite the admittedly succulent steak dinner – which the skinflint tried to make me go Dutch on! The man drones on about himself more than any flying remote hovering object ever could! And to boot, he appears to love himself the way Kanye West loves Kanye West!”
“I won’t even pretend that I know who that is.” Mildred was unable to mask her amusement any longer as she flashed a small, wry smile. “Although I shall gather it to mean his undoubtedly too many hugs received in childhood from his overly doting Mother must have made him unbearably self-enamored? Dare I ask about the final match? I can only assume that third time wasn’t the charm?”
The Master merely treated her to a lethal glare that would have stripped paint off a driveway in response and she shrank back slightly.
“Er, I guess not…”
“You guess correctly!” She muttered darkly. “Michael Easter, the granola crunching, tree-hugging hippie founder of Happy Hemp Production Products, who wore socks with his Birkenstock sandals, somehow saw fit to be my fashion critic! That blasted Jesus-bearded pothead had the gall to get high right before our date – then called me a square for not taking a hit off his bong with him! – and then, to add insult to injury, he mocked my Master’s outfit – saying I looked like an escaped nun on the run!”
“The bloody cheek of him!” Mildred shook her head in mock dismay. “How incredibly disrespectful! Um, mayhap he’s more level-headed when he’s not indulging in … the products his empire is built upon?”
“Not a chance! Easter is a total stoner pothead!” Maya snarled. “He was blasting 60’s folk music in his electric car the entire way to the restaurant, where he took the liberty of ordering for the both of us at Grassroots Eatery – let’s just say I’d rather have dry humped a cheese grater!”
“That bad, was he?”
“The man is a complete vegan!” The Burger Queen wailed. “He ordered us tofu burgers! He legit grimaced when I dared ask for cheese as a topping, and then sanctimoniously and quite loftily preached anything consumed from an animal was barbaric!”
I saved the worst for last indeed! Mildred thought gleefully. Longines will be a shoo-in after this!
“Then he went on to lecture me by saying I was a soulless animal killer when he found out I like my burgers copious and juicy and my steaks rare and bloody!” Maya complained. “I’ve encountered less judgmental men in a court of law! I told him the only reason he was a vegetarian was he was a shoddy hunter and that Mike Easter could go right ahead and … kiss his own name before he even thought twice of calling me again!”
“I profess these suitors sorely misrepresented themselves and sound truly dreadful…” Mildred knitted her brow. “However, I must say you are being most particular Mystic Maya, and certainly not making the process very easy! After all, are you, or are you not breaking all your exact words to me, when you essentially asked me to just find you any match in the first place?”
“That’s not fair!” The Master puffed out her cheeks in frustration. “It’s not my fault these guys passed themselves off as normal on the phone with me and then duped me into agreeing to go out what wound up being the dates from hell! Stick a fork in me, because I’m done, you hear me? Done! Three strikes, I’m out! I give up! No more dates for me! I’ll just join Sister Bikini on the Nun Path and go without a husband. After all, it’s the path many of the village ladies have opted for, and they’re none the worse for wear!”
She let out a humorless laugh then and gestured to her flowing robes. “And evidently, I look the part, already!”
“I refuse to let you give up so soon!” Mildred insisted, putting on her most cajoling tone. “Life is not a game of baseball! I implore you to give it one more chance. There’s one more man whom the matchmaker has just gotten wind of, and I’ve thoroughly researched him myself as well. He is younger than the rest, only 30, and has no hygiene aversions or penchant for recreational substance abuse. Far from being self-centered and self-enamored, he and his family come from a long line of charitable philanthropists and he’s a self-made billionaire running an international chain of successful hair salons.”
“Self-made billionaire?” The diviner raised an eyebrow, intrigued despite herself. “Active in charity work? And he’s only three years older than me? Wherever did Ketsuno Ana find this elusive paragon?”
“He’s from Los Angeles, but he travels frequently around the globe, as he’s a very hands-on CEO,” Mildred replied honestly, for the very first time. “Meaning he’d be very understanding about your own hectic Master’s travels, which often take you abroad as well, and has no interest in your wealth whatsoever.”
“Hmm….” Maya cupped her chin in one hand and tapped her cheek thoughtfully as she mulled that over. Encouraged, Mildred hastily continued singing the blond man’s praises.
“And while his father was a wealthy politician who made his fortune in telecommunications, a decade ago he loaned his only son a small sum of start-up money to come up with a business plan and build his empire. Longines returned the full amount to his father within the first year, with interest, and tried to pay his father back, but he refused to accept it, so it was instead given to charity.”
“Hmmm … honorable and generous. He sounds … like he has potential. I wonder what this wingless angel looks like, though?” Maya murmured, almost to herself, sitting back down at her desk, her fingertips already poised over her computer keyboard as she went to her internet search engine. “What’s the name of this hair heir?”
“Longines,” Mildred purred, her thin lips curling into a supercilious smile. “Longines Diandre Crispin Beaugosse the Third.”
Maya Fey
Kurain Village
April 26, 2025, 5:40 PM
For the next four weeks, Longines and Maya played what appeared to be a never-ending game of phone tag. While they texted and emailed as much as possible, they were never in the same time zone to be able to have a live webcam or phone chat. However, the voice in the voicemails he left her, from his travels in Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji always sounded genuinely remorseful to have missed her, and his voice was kind, sweet, and sincere, much like his expression in every photo she found of him online.
Much to the Master’s surprise, the man in the corporate photo she’d pulled up on his company website looked every bit the clean-cut, pulchritudinous golden-boy Mildred had described him to be. Her further research also showed that despite his fame and famous parental lineage, the recently orphaned Longines Beaugosse kept a relatively low profile and had no black mark against his name whatsoever – not even a drunken bar brawl or speeding ticket. He led a healthy lifestyle, was very generous with his charity work and donations, and ran the most successful blow-dry chain in the country, which meant he was never kept in more than one place for long!
According to a recent interview in Forbes Magazine the year prior, he was one of the Top 30 Under 30 richest men in the world and was looking to expand You Blo Me salons in the Southern Hemisphere, which was where he now was and had been the past month.
Ironically, the second week of April, the one week he’d been in town, had been when the Master and Pearl had gone off to a South American convention in Peru!
It seemed they were two ships in the nights that were doomed to pass each other and never to connect.
Then, to Maya’s great surprise, the weekend prior, Longines had emailed her and claimed that since she’d been so patient with his crazed schedule, he was going to make the effort to come up to Kurain to spare her any hassle and would be “enchanted” to make her acquaintance near month-end at any time she could spare.
So here Maya was, anxiously checking her reflection in her dresser mirror for the umpteenth time as she smoothed her satin ebony hair back with trembling fingers and applied another layer of pearly gloss to her lips.
Her innate nature fought shy against makeup, being fortunate enough even this late in her second decade to have smooth, unlined porcelain skin that needed no artifice. However, she did tend to put a dab of rouge on her already rosy cheeks and a flick of mascara on her long lashes whenever she went out to conferences away from the village so figured that bare minimum would suffice now as well. While she had no expectations from the meeting of suitor number four that afternoon – after all, hadn’t all the others seemed great on paper and photo then still been complete loser/idiot/morons?! – Maya sincerely wanted to put her best foot forward so that she could honestly tell Mildred that she, at least had made her most valiant effort!
Seriously, this was it, she’d informed the elder crossly. If this guy was the Mother of all Fart Knocking, Goat Blowers, then off to the nunnery she would go!
The spirit medium had decided to take a different approach in meeting Longines than she had with the other men. In all the former instances, she’d met them in Master mode: floor-length purple kimono, hair pulled back into its no-nonsense bun (which also hid the evidence of Sasha’s hack job until now!), and practical wooden sandals. This time, she was going to meet him not as Master Maya, but as Maiden Maya, a single woman who, when the effort was made, could be a creature of fetching nature indeed – something she’d not given even half a mind to since Phoenix had left her nearly two months ago. But now, things were different – she wanted, at the very least, for Longines to find her physically pleasing, as he was quite the looker indeed! She may as well use her feminine wiles now, while she still had them, and before she got too old and they shriveled away to non-existence, like the Dragon Lady’s!
Instead of her long robes, the dark-haired beauty had donned a somewhat daring, fitted baby-pink double layer, a cocktail dress that hugged her every curve, with a plunging open back. It was short with a flirty full skirt, silky double-layer voile, spaghetti straps with an adjustable back, with a matching thick sash tied around her narrow waist. Three-inch indigo stilettos completed the look. It was close to dinnertime, and Saturday evening. If the two hit it off, she hoped maybe they could grab a bite to eat somewhere or at least have a drink at a chic cocktail lounge where she could show off this racy little number she’d picked up on her last business trip in LA in February but hadn’t gotten a chance to wear. She’d been planning to wear it for Phoenix to knock his socks off on her birthday…
Maya bit her lip as she felt a stinging sensation prick the back of her lids. She hadn’t been down to the city since the breakup and any thought of it only made her think of her former lover, which only brought back the river of tears that still hadn’t fully dried up. But she fought back the urge to cry – she didn’t want to ruin her painstakingly applied eye makeup – and threw back her shoulders confidently and tossed her hair, letting the glossy raven strands cascade in a soft swish around her.
For a moment, her courage nearly failed her, and she flushed as she smoothed her hands down her hips, suddenly self-conscious of how much skin she was showing, even though it was a warm spring evening that would allow for such an ensemble. What if Longines thought she looked like a harlot? What if she didn’t find him aesthetic at all and the idea of his eyes seeing so much of her made her skin crawl more than tingle? Erring on the side of caution, she hastily threw a lavender cashmere cloak over her dress, which although shorter than her kimono, and showed off her bare, slender legs, was still longer than the mini itself, and fell just above her knees for modesty purposes.
There! Now it would be entirely up to fate to determine whether the lucky son of a bitch got to see what lay beneath! She giggled to herself and strode to the door.
Here goes nothing…
ABBA – Take A Chance On Me
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