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Hardhands does not like children. This dislike is nothing personal; he doesn't like chicken either, or rainy days, or socks that were too tight. In fact, if asked to rank dislikes he would have put these last three higher up on this list, easily. Maybe that was because chicken, rainy days and socks that were too tight intrude into his life. Children do not.  Still, his little experience with children, confined mostly to his dreadful niece—four years old and a red headed terror—have left him quite firm on the matter.

Hardhands does like dogs. He also likes sleeping late, double mochas and scrambled eggs, particularly the way that Paimon makes them, creamy and cheesy, and particularly on a late morning after a later night, after a particularly good show. Last night's show had more than particularly good, it had been fantastic, brilliant, fabulous, being superlative. The drums had rolled like thunder through the crowded club, crushing all before them, and his voice had balanced perfectly on the knife's edge of the guitar, cutting and quick. The invocation had been so superlatively heavy that the band had managed to manifest Forneaus, who had produced the most killer bass solo ever heard at the Octagon Theatre. The show was so fabulous that half the audience had staggered out into the early morning street with blood streaming from their ears, agog in bliss.
  
Now, still in afterglow, Hardhands helps himself to more cheesy eggs out of the silver chafing dish. He is humming the bass line to Bury Me in Immortal Oblivion. If he had been asked what could ruin his perfectly good mood, he would have said, in between egg and coffee, absfuckinglutely nothing.

 That was before his grandmamma joins him at the table.