All that glitters is not gold.

The Warrior had been hunting for Ardua of the Potomac for months, ever since her flight from Washington.  The Warrior was over 400 years old and an experienced tracker, but she had proven elusive until now.  At last, he looked out upon the small body of water at Trump National Golf Club and realized that the great demon Ardua of the Potomac had become Ardua of the Pond.

"What's up, Tonto?"  Kevin "Monkey" Mundy was smirking at the Warrior.  (Mundy was not an experienced tracker:  he had simply used Google Earth imaging to look through the forests of Maryland and Virginia for an Indian to kidnap.) 

"This place has a great evil," said the Warrior.  "You should play golf elsewhere."

"Golf?!"  Mundy burst out laughing.  "I didn't come here to play golf!  I need you to show me where the gold is!"

The Warrior had not fielded an inquiry like this in over a hundred years, back in California.  "You already have enough gold," said the Warrior, pointing to Mundy's (cursed) Rolex.

"I need MORE!" shouted Mundy, losing his cool.  He suddenly pulled a handgun out of his jacket pocket and pointed it at the Warrior.  "Where is it, Tonto?!"

The Warrior, who had long seemed immune from dying, simply nodded.  "Down here," he said, starting to walk toward the water's edge. 

Mundy followed closely behind, then got excited when he saw something shimmering under a bush.  He rushed the bush, causing a mating pair of starlings to squawk and fly angrily out.

The Warrior hit Mundy on the back of his head with the blunt end of his tomahawk, and the DC Water employee crumpled to the ground.  The Warrior recognized this as the cursed Rolex, and it was more important to remove from Mundy than the gun, but he had to stop in his tracks when somebody behind him yelled, "Freeze!  Drop it, savage one!"

It was Barbara Hellmeister, along with her unborn child's father, Ernest Ironman.

The Warrior tossed aside his tomahawk, put his hands in the air, and turned slowly.  "There is a great evil here," he began, then he paused, seeing evil in the eyes of the Fourth Reich's erstwhile Adam and Eve.  "It is not safe here for the child," he said at last.

"It is not safe when an inferior race sneaks around!" cried Ironman (a great-grandson of Adolf Eichmann).  He pulled out his own gun and shot the Warrior in the stomach.  The Warrior crumpled to the ground without a sound, and the neo-Nazis stepped around him to examine the white man lying next to the bush.

The Warrior crawled quietly away until he found a golf cart.  He had never bled to death from a bullet wound before, but he was in some pain as he climbed in to make his escape. 

Meanwhile, a disappointed Giulianna Sunstream was coping with the fact that only four guests had shown up to her morning-after-the-White-House-Correspondents'-Dinner brunch in her NoMa loft.  "Have some more cherry blossom blintzes made with quinoa flour!" the lifestyle blogger cooed.

"Are you sure all the windows are closed?" asked one nervous visitor.  "The skies were filling up with clouds of toxic fumes as I got out of the Uber car!"

"No, no, no," said Giulianna.  "Those are just regular rain clouds!  The fumes from that toxic train derailment are blowing the other way from Rhode Island Avenue!"

"Then why's your dog wheezing like that?" asked another guest, referring to the toy Maltese.

"Vegas got a touch of hay fever on her morning walk--it's been like this for weeks.  She refuses to wear the face mask, and allergy medicines make her too jittery."

How am I going to blog about this?  She looked desperately around at her small number of guests.  Any really good jokes about politicians or reporters?  Unusual dates?  Maybe a fight will break out like that iPhone-snatching brawl at MSNBC's party at the U.S. Institute for Peace!

"I heard gold was recently discovered in Rock Creek," said a DC Water employee.  "Do you know a good way to pan for gold?"

"Gold!" said Giulianna Sunstream with some surprise.  "No, I don't, but let me show you how to safely mine platinum and rare metals from electronic equipment people just throw away!  Then we can make it into earrings or bracelets."

Up in Cleveland Park, Angela de la Paz was having a pizza party with Liv and Felix Cigemeier, who had adopted her baby boy.  Angela had chosen not to participate in his big turning-two celebration in March, opting instead for a more intimate gathering today.

"Here, Lucas," Angela said, handing him a gift to unwrap.  She carefully wiped the tomato sauce off his hands and took the dirty plate from the high-chair tray.

Lucas tore into the wrapping paper with delight, and found a shiny red firetruck inside.  "Fire!"  He exulted, and started rolling it around the high-chair tray.

"I've never seen him so excited about his other fire trucks," said Felix, who received a kick under the table from his wife for impolitely mentioning that Lucas already had trucks.

"I thought he might like a smaller one that he could hold in his hand," Angela said.  It was one of many conversations she had held with her son in the Dreamtime--he wanted a firetruck he could push around himself, rather than having to watch his father push the big ones around in front of him.  "And he can carry that with him to the park or on car rides."

"That was very thoughtful!" exclaimed Liv, tapping her husband again under the table.

"Yes!" said Felix.  "You always know how to make him happy."  Liv kicked him again under the table, thinking it an awkward thing to say to the young woman who had given him up for adoption.

"Every day you have him, he's been happy," said Angela, who still ached a little for her son but knew it had been the right decision.

Back at Trump National Golf Club, Barbara Hellmeister and Ernest Ironman were disappointed that the "inferior race" had escaped before they could conduct neo-Nazi experiments on him, but they were having an interesting time eating lunch with the recovering Kevin Mundy--who kept raving about gold and scratching under the (cursed) Rolex on his wrist.  He examined every piece of pond catfish carefully for gold before sticking it in his mouth to eat.  He also forked through the wild rice carefully, imagining glistening pieces everywhere.

"It's just because we cooked it in a copper pan," said Hellmeister.  "We filtered the water through flag canvas before using it to cook.  The copper makes the rice a little shiny."

Mundy made a mental note to look for this "flag canvas" later--probably covered in gold flakes.  "Well, what are you doing out here if you're not panning for gold?"

Ironman laughed.  "Do you think that is the only thing worth doing, DC Water man?"

"How else will the little people get anything in this world?!" exclaimed Mundy.  "I can't just wait around for another rich guy to flush his old Rolex when he buys a new one!"

"We are living off the land," said Hellmeister, half truthfully.  "We have built an underground bunker to survive the return of warm weather and hordes of golfers.  You can stay awhile if you like."

Ironman looked sharply at Hellmeister in jealousy, notwithstanding she was several months pregnant with his child.  "It's too crowded!" said the man who was playing hooky from his maintenance job at the U.S. Capitol.  He had kept her tied up before, and would not hesitate to do it again if necessary.

"No, thanks!" said Mundy.  "I need to keep my DC government health insurance until I strike it rich.  But I wouldn't mind visiting here on the weekends to pan for gold.  I'm pretty sure that's why Sitting Bull was here."

Over at the State Department, "C. Coe Phant" stopped by to taunt the Assistant Deputy Administrator for Hope.

"I hear thirteen is the iron drill bit anniversary!" sneered Phant, referring to the fact that President George W. Bush had declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq thirteen years ago today.

"We're not the ones who broke it!" retorted the A.D.A.f.H.

"You've had years to fix it!" said Phant.

"We've had years to fix it!"

"Oh, not me!" cried Phant.  "I had other assignments.  But if you need help evacuating the U.S. embassy away from those angry mobs, just give me a holler."

Outside the State Department, more pairs of starlings were mating in the bushes, their feathers shimmering in evil beauty.

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COMING UP:  
Dulles Samuelson starts his new life in Washington.