As she sat staring at the unlit dials and gauges of the contraption in front of her, Elayne heard the distinctive sound of a frustrated bobcat coming up the ladder.
She peered over the glass tubes, coiled cables and cobbled-together controls and saw Olde emerge from below. He hadn’t looked his best when he went down with the last load of strange tools and equipment an hour ago. Now, he looked decidedly worse, his head as covered in grease as his paws had been before.
“Now?” she asked, knowing it would annoy him and he would make the face she never ceased to find amusing.
“Not yet!” Olde said for the tenth time that day, before waddling off to the storage room. “Now he wants the Mithrilene Injector that we bought at that yard sale last week!”
“I thought the new ones had been delivered.”
“Oh, they have!” Olde shouted from the adjoining room. “But he says the copper casing of the old ones looks better.”
He’s got a point, Elayne thought. There was something romantic about those old-school components. They might need a little more care than the shiny, new ones. And they might not work as well when it was too hot or too cold, too damp or too dry, too this or too that, but you couldn’t deny that they were classier looking. Sometimes, the old ways were best.
Olde returned to the ladder, the tarnished device slung over one shoulder. As he struggled to get his footing and head back down to the engineering deck, the tiny bobcat muttered, “I’m gonna have to be steam cleaned when this is done.”
Soon, Elayne could hear the clanging of hammers and the clicking of ratchets as the work below resumed. But this time, it quickly fell silent. That’s either a very good sign or a very bad one, she thought. Hesitantly, she looked back over the contraption at the opening to the lower deck. After a brief moment, Olde’s head popped up from below. A moment later, Zander joined him.
“Cross your fingers,” Olde said.
“Hit it,” Zander added.
Elayne took a deep breath and reached for the master switch. With one quick motion, she flipped it to the ON position. And after a few seconds of tense silence, the dials and gauges lit up, and they heard a familiar voice saying the words they’d all been waiting a year to hear once more.
“You’re listening to Fantasy Faire Radio.”
Elayne looked at Olde and Zander and smiled. “We’re back,” she said.
=^_^=
In partnership with Live365, Fantasy Faire and Fairelands Media welcome you back to Fantasy Faire Radio.
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Fantasy Faire 
Here we go again! I am excited as always, but also thankful to the entire team that puts this fantastic event together every year! *rushes off to make sure FFR is playing on her region*
YAY! I ♥ FFR
I loved your tale! It was a perfect start!