R.I.P. O Fountain Pen!

I received a beautiful Waterman fountain pen for my sixteenth birthday. Since then the pen has been my constant companion: I guarded it all through high school; I brought it to college with me, where I flowed debate rounds and wrote a first draft of my senior thesis in elegant style; I brought it to graduate school, where it assisted me in making notes on the many, many books I read, and I have in file folders a complete fountain pen draft of each of my dissertation chapters.

I had my pen out last night as I was writing a lecture. I have up the ghost around 10 and went to bed, leaving the pen out on my desk.

Now His Royal Highness Prince Pepper has been disgusted with me for the last few days. I've been so busy with the start of the school year and all the work that entails that I have not, I regret, had much time to spend dragging around a bunch of feathers on a stick for HRH. This is an activity upon which we usually spend a half an hour every evening before I go to bed. Pepper was clearly angry at my lack of attention last night, for during the night he cleared my desk: he knocked off the papers, pens, coasters, books, articles, flashlight, and telephone. The only items remaining on my desk were my laptop and the desk lamp. Alas, on the floor this morning I found the battered corpse of my fountain pen. I'm not sure if the impact with the floor caused it to crack, or if Pepper took out additional frustrations on it after he had pawed it off the desk, but there you have it. I discovered it in a small puddle of (appropriately) red ink, looking like the mortal remains of a soldier abandoned on a battlefield.

I'm not sure how I'll write the Amazing Mr. Book without my fountain pen. I'm very distressed. And Pepper is...well, he's in the dog house for sure.