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In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
The old man screeched to a halt, his car fishtailing wildly. His bad tempered frown at the slow moving traffic morphed in an instant into slack jawed eye popping amazement. The road had literally disappeared into an enormous hole. Good Lord! he shouted. Although he wasn’t a religious man he considered himself to be a gentleman, and didn’t swear in front of his wife. What the dickens is that? he asked her, but she was speechless with shock. The sports car they had been following, and the unmarked bus in front of it that had been holding the traffic up were nowhere to be seen.
~~
Connie Leadbetter was nervous. It was her first date with Chad Pickins and the first time she’d been in his flashy sports car. They were on their way to a festival in Hot Springs to celebrate the magic of nature, oddly enough. Connie’s nervousness had manifested itself as a digestive system upset, and to her horror, she farted and followed through on the soft pink leather seat of Chad’s car. Mortified, she passionately wished that the ground would open and swallow her up.
~~
The Tw’Elves, who weren’t allowed to talk on the bus, were busy discussing their situation telepathically. The previous week they had been arrested by Homeland Security as a threat to the nation, and were being transported to a detention camp in North Dakota. This eventuality wasn’t really part of their plan, but as so often happens, it slotted in nicely, albeit unexpectedly, with the Perforation Plans. Sink Holes had been appearing for some time in the middle of the north American continent, neatly following a north south line, stretching from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, so the Tw’Elves mentally punched another hole in the perforation line to fascilitate their exit from the doomed bodies they were wearing at the time. Thus, the separation of the two halves of the continent came one hole closer to fruition.
~~
The Energy Leprechaun gave himself a cake for another splendid synchronicity, seamlessly connecting Connie’s wish with the intention of the Tw’Elves.
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
Amarilla, the representative of the new eastern Atlantic continent of Canaria, called for an informal meeting in The Library. New S’elves would be remanifesting on the African continent, and indeed a new team would be remanifesting on the continent of North America too. The team of tw’elve there had disappeared into a fracking sink hole in Arkansas the previous week, and a consensus was to be agreed on the location of the next manifestation.
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Unable to hear, see, smell or taste in the usual manner, they sensed sound, aromas, sights and flavours with the sense threads that hung from their shoulders. Unfortunately sense threads were out of fashion this season and the aliens had plucked them all out, not wishing to appear passe and frumpy. Without their sense threads, however, they failed to notice that their appearance would no longer be appearing in any sense whatsoever to any of their friends. The senseless endeavour remained unsensed entirely, until the appearance of Eggboot, who immediately sensed (using a variety of sense apparatus) that this was all a strange kind of none sense party.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Arona had indeed been devastated by the loss of her chippendale.
“Oh, thank you Buckberry,” she exclaimed joyfully. “My great Aunt, twice removed on my father’s side, Auntie Shelly Dwelling, gave me this beautiful chippendale tea set when I was just a little girl … before she disappeared in very strange circumstances … or so the story goes. Clever you to find it. I can make Nhum tea now!”
“This makes no sense at all,” sniffed Mandrake, privately wondering if he had better dispose of the Nhum when Arona was otherwise occupied. He did prefer things to make sense and clearly this Nhum Bhum stuff was messing with Arona’s head. Which is silly enough at the best of times.
“Vincentius is taking a long time. Perhaps we should see if he is okay and then we can all have a nice cup of tea in my beautiful tea set,” enthused Arona.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“No good pulling that horrid face at me,” said Arona sternly. “The cheap copy of Nhum I bought in the market appears to have numbed my brain. Not to mention the strange hallucinations of a frog in an electric wheelchair I have been getting recently. “
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Messmeerah started to carve the name of all the funny bunch on a huge jamón from the fifth leg (the meatiest) of a jelly boar of the steppes, starting with her own —name, not leg— as a reminder of the good time they had all together. She was thinking as well that it would taste lovely with some of these Jiborium’s truffles.
She was sad to had to let them go, but frankly her old routines were starting to get too scrambled. For one, she didn’t quite remember if Minky was still a redhair rat in her hair (now she thought of it, breeding tiny shrews in her attic didn’t really work so well), or was now back in his human form with a secret revenge of his own on his mind. But that would be maybe a slight stretch. And gosh, did she abhor stretch marks, even on her lovely brains.
— “Oh come on, dear,” one of the motley participants, a cheery big-boned and outrageously made-up of make-up woman said in a bizarre Lizabethian accent, with a hint of bossiness that showed she had not been used to being contradicted much in her life. “Join us on that trip to Mr Jiborium’s, you shall find yourself a use or two.”
Taken aback by the turn of the events, Messmeerah, also known as Winky, took the jamón under her arm, and against all common sense decided to join the crew —thanking the Mighty Mungibs for the improbable feat of continuity that had appeared as a sign.
— “Well, if you don’t mind…” Yikesy was starting to object, but realized some things are best left unsaid, and it would be easy enough now to slip out of their sight (and off the rapacious motherly attentions of Mrs Janet, the big-boned tasteless-bags lady with an accent.)
In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
While Yuhara and Sylvestrus were exploring Second Life worlds (Frolic Caper~Belle was still on an extended leave of absence), Blithe Gambol, although she didn’t entirely realize it at the time, was exploring First Life worlds on the Coast of Light.
Blithe and her partner Winn set off for the drum festival in the late afternoon heat, with the intention of reaching the Light Coast before sundown. The strong low sun flickered on and off as it hid behind trees and hills, and the hot dry wind whipped Blithes hair into her eyes, leaving the heavy heat of the Coast of the Sun behind and tranforming it into a light bone dry atmosphere that seemed to suck the air out of Blithe’s lungs. She filled the vacuum with smoke, listening to the words of the music playing ~ must be a reason why I’m king of my castle….king of my castle…it reminded her of Dealea’s story about King Author.
When they reached Vejer de la Frontera they made a wrong turning, although they were well aware that no turning is a wrong one. The new direction took them in a circle behind the Vejer promontory, through the umbrella pines along the coast. The sky was golden yellow behind the black sillouttes on one side, with a periwinkle sea on the other, rocky pale grey outcrops blushed with pink paddling in the gently lapping waves.
As they entered the village of Canos de Meca, they slowed to crawl behind the inching cars, as tanned people in brightly coloured clothes wove in and out of the traffic, and in and out of the exotic looking bars and restaurants. Blithe remembered the Second Life worlds she had been exploring earlier that day, and wondered if Second Life came with the smells of sardines barbequeing on the beach, or a warm breeze wafting past laden with snatches of laughter and conversation. Visually, certainly, Second Life would be hard presssed to beat the visual appeal of Canos de Meca at sunset on an August evening. There were plenty of opportunities to observe the people and the hostelries, as the traffic got progressively worse until it eventually came to a standstill. The narrow lanes were lined with parked cars, and throngs of people carrying coolers made their way to the sand dunes near the lighthouse.
Eventually, after several slow drives past looking for a miraculous parking space that didn’t appear, Blithe and Winn found a restaurant in between the coastal villages that was strangely empty of people. Even Winn, who was much less inclined towards fanciful imaginings than Blithe, remarked on how surreal the place was. It could have been anywhere in Spain, so strangely ordinary was its appearance in comparison to the Moorish beach hippy style of the villages. They ordered food, and relaxed in easy silence in the oasis of calm ordinariness. Blithe wondered if the place actually existed or if she had created it out of thin air, just for a respite and a parking place, and a clean unoccupied loo. Another First Life world, perhaps, constructed in the moment to meet the current requirements of ease.
At 11:11, after another two drives through the crawling cars and crowds, Winn turned the car around and headed for home. At 12:12 they reached the Coast of the Sun, shrouded in sea mist, and at 1:00am precisely, they arrived home. Later, as Blithe lay on the bed listening to the drums playing on the music machine, she closed her eyes and saw the sunset over the Atlantic, and felt the ocean breeze of the fan. She projected her attention to the dunes of Trafalgar ~ which, incidentally, didn’t take two hours, it was instant. In another instant, she was back in her bedroom, sipping agua con gas on the rocks and chatting to Winn. Seconds later, she was in a vibrant nightclub overlooking the beach, dancing in spirit between the jostling holidaymakers being served at the bar. She imagined that one or two of them noticed her energy.
Clearly, teleporting from one place to another had its benefits. The question of parking, for example, wouldn’t arise. But Blithe wouldn’t have wanted to miss the late afternoon drive to the Coast of Light, and the golden slanting lightbeams flickering between the cork oaks making their cork shorn trunks glow red, or the ocean appearing over the crest of a hill. And if she had arrived in an instant at the location she was intending to visit, then she would never have encountered the sunset from the particular angle of the approach via the wrong turn. Variety ~ and impulse, and the opportunities of the unexpected turns ~ was the weft of weaving First Life worlds ~ or was it the warp?
link: weaving worlds
In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
Whether or not Arachne was actually better at weaving than Athena is still a mystery, or perhaps it is a moot point and no mystery at all. Weaving is by no means a solitary endeavour, as Blithe found early one summer morning. The river mist was rising and the air itself was dancing in droplets. It was hard to determine if the droplets were falling or rising, or simply milling around on the air currents. Hard green oranges (clearly oranges had been named in winter, or they would likely have been called greens) were festooned with silver threads, linking orange to orange, orange to tree and tree to wire fence, and back again. It was debatable whether or not the individual spiders were aware of the grand overall design of the early morning web links of the orange groves, just as it was equally debatable whether or not the inhabitants of the various Gibber realities were aware of the network of waterpipes that connected the other inhabitants to themselves and each other, and to the other Gibber worlds. Individuals were individuals, whether they be spiders, or Gibblets, and individuals generally speaking were focused on their own part of the tapestry (and often those of their immediate neighbours). Spider 57 on the east fence might be positioned to catch the first rays of sunshine in the mornings, but Spider 486,971 over near the dung heap was in a better position to catch the afternoon flies. And so on, as somebody famous once said.
As Blithe prowled around the orchard capturing potential clues on her Clumera she inevitably became part of the laybrinthine web of sticky threads herself, as they attached themselves to her hair and clothing. All of the gaps between the solids in the field were joined together with spun filaments, just as the Gibblets were joined together with fun spillaments (although leaking waterpipes were sadly misinterpreted as not-fun all too often, despite that they could be used as an opportunity to view the connections of the Waterpunk more comprehensively.)
The individual spiders lacy parlours were framed in wire squares, several hundred, if not more, along the perimeter fences. Not every wire fence square was filled; there were many vacant lots between established residences ~ whether by practical design or mere happenstance, Blithe couldn’t say. Many of the individual webs were whole and perfect, like the windows of Lower Gibber whose inhabitants kept their lace curtains clean and neatly hung. Many of the webs on the wire fence were not perfect in the symetrical sense ~ some had gaping holes, and there were those that appeared to be unfinished, despite showing great potential. Others appeared to be abandoned, hanging in shreds, not unlike many of the residences in Upper Gibber.
The wire framed residences of the field (and likewise the peeling paint framed residences of Upper Gibber) that appeared to be defunct were not quite as they seemed, however. They were simply being viewed from a different timeframe. It was quite possible to view each wire or peeled paint framed en-trance side by side, notwithstanding that they were, so to speak, located in varying timeframes. All that was required was a more flexible viewpoint, and an ability to view more than one timeframe simultaneously. It was all a question of allowing an entrance to en-trance ~ which was, after all, its function.
{link: misty morning; entrance}
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Mandrake had been on Yikes’ trail for what seemed to be like ages, closely followed by Arona, the silly dragon and that demigod Arona seemed to have grown so fond of.
As they were walking, flying and hopping further North, they had passed the Forest of Endless Desolation, just through the Isthmus of Ghört’s Hammer where the whaling laments of the lamanatees were luring the careless travellers in pits of dark despair, only for them to sink in cores of boiling lava if they strayed too far away from the darken wizened old sticks that once had been luxuriant trees.
Mandrake would have made a meal of the dreaded lamanatees, but Arona had thought safer for them to plug their ears with candle wax and invoke their Mother guidance to help in their quest to find the lost boy. Little had she thought of the pain it would be to scrap it off his catly ears without turning wax into furballs, and his ears into a prickly mess.
These minor troubles apart, they had gone through Arona’s homeland, the pretty Golfindely, which was only a soft consolation before they got to the far ends of it, where land, water and ice meld and become one. It was the threshold, the passageway to the homeland of the dragons, where only Sorcerers and their likes were known to have been and returned.It was there that the sabulmantium had hinted Yikes would been found.
When Minky came finally back to the High Priestess of the Pendulous and Loose Otherworldly Threading —aka Messmeerah (Winky) Maymhe—, Messmeerah was taking a dip into the Rejuvenation Pool. Her last vials of bleufrüsh blood had been all drunk, and she was starting to get all sagging after mere hours out of the icy waters.
She welcomed with a large smile, the sack Minky was carrying as a treasure, where Yikes was calmly waiting.
“Thank you Miny” she said, throwing some ashes to the minion who, in a puff, instantaneously transformed into a large redhair rat, which disappeared behind Messmee’s luscious green hair.“There, there, there, look what we got…” she finally said ominously to the boy who was considering the naked green evil fairy in front of him with a rather interested and mildly amused glance. “Don’t you have anything to say?” she said, raising an eyebrow, maybe slightly disappointed at the lack of frightened reaction.
“Oh, looks like you’re a genuine green fairy, “ he said staring at her with a smile.
In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
The leaves were dry. They’d started to change to a brownish hue at the tip, then rapidly withered. They’d hoped it wouldn’t affect the whole crop, and when the first tea bush went down, they quickly uprooted it, for fear it would spread to the whole hill.
But despite their best efforts, the tea bushes went down, one by one, as though engulfed by a deadly plague. He and she were worried for their next year income, as their tea field was their main source of revenue. The highlands had always been favourable to them, and it seemed such an unlikely and truly unfair event given that the beginning of the year had brought an unexpected bounty of huge tea leaves.
What had happened? He was quite the pragmatic about it: disease, pests, too much sun, over-watering, over-pruning… nothing extending outside the visible, the measurable. She was the mystical: core beliefs, did she worry too much about that sudden wealth and made it disappear, the evil eye, greed and covetousness, celestial punishment.
It never occurred to her she could reverse it as easily once she understood what it was all about.
Well, she almost started to get an inkling of that thinking about warts. How efficiently she got those growths when she was so troubled about them, and how they all disappeared when she forgot about them. How not to think about something that’s already in your head? In that case, distraction never worked; it was a rubber band that would be stretched then snapped back at the initial core issue.
Snap back at yourself.
>STOP< – She stopped. Time to read that telegram delivered to oneself.
Everything still, for a moment. Dashed.
She started to look around.
The air was still, hot and full of expectation.
Almost twinkling in potentials.
Like a providential blank page, in the middle of a heap of administrative papers full of uninteresting chatty figures.
The pages are put aside, only the blank page is here.
She can start to populate it with colours, sounds and life, anytime. Lavender maybe. Soon.
But not yet now.
She wants to breathe in the calmness, the comfort of the silence. Even the crickets seem to be far away.
She was alone, and impoverished…
She is alone, and empowered, … in power.[link:leaves]
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Well, those were not my balls, mind you, but the cute little rabbits I bought to entertain the miniature giraffes which looked awfully bored making the goats faint over and over.”
Godfrey wouldn’t admit he was slightly taken off-guard, being reminded of a dream of late, where he was in a bollocks museum, with grapes of pairs hung all over the places in a sort of disturbing triball art arrangement, fig-like and glossy in nature.
“Anyway,” Godfrey continued, putting the soft hairy rabbits aside, “speaking of cloth, or ball of yarn, or whathaveyou… I was about to suggest we do some snowflake experiment…”
He looked at Dory-Ann and sighed a grey smoke of mild disparaged despair, “… but I guess we should have to start it all over”.“You’ll find me on the other side” were his last words while he jumped off the twenty third level of the building, disappearing in mid-air, never to be seen again, or from this side of the thread at least.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Dealea Flare was usually one of the most accomplished bridge tarts, so it was a surprise to hear that she’d apparently disappeared whilst day tripping in the Neroli dimension.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Fish” said Raxie when asked what she would like for her Fragmentation Day lunch. Fish synchronicities had been sprouting up all over the plaice, sturgeoning you might say, if you were wanting to include the word burgeoning, burgeoning like the gnarly old grape vines waking up and unleashing green on the chalky hills.
“The synchronicities and connections were like individual blades of grass turning into a meadow, singing and sighing as one in the breezes,” Elizabeth replied.
“Well this is my own personal meadow” Raxie pointed out “These are all mine”.
“Oops”
“Who said that?”
“Was it that guy over there in the bowler hat and checkered past?”
“Don’t mention checkered pasts!” Elizabeth exclaimed, “Or the Ooh Dimension! You’ll open the sluice gates….”
“Antidisestablishmentarianism”
“Who said that?” Elizabeth and Raxie exclaimed together.
“I don’t know, but that guy in the bowler hat’s disappeared, and can you see that fellow starting to appear over there? Must be a multidimensional Port Hole or something…”
“Well, we know what a Froopish and fabulously magical place this is, so it stands to reason…”
“Reason?” Raxie and Elizabeth were reduced to giggles at the very idea of reason having any standing.
“A portal to the Froop dimension, here? Wow! Can I see?”
“You’ll have to wear these goggles. And it will require some stamina, are you sure?”
“Of course I’m bloody sure” replied Elizabeth tartly. And then she began to intuit something.
“I don’t need googles*, silly!” she laughed. “I already AM multidimensional, I don’t need anyone elses googles. But it’s ok if you want to wear the googles” she added, not wishing to sound judgemental.
“Actually, I like this amethyst crystal myself, I like the frequency. I have dreams of amethyst sometimes, they are a delight.”
“Come and look at this sunset if you want to see a delight,” said Raxie, who was still a bit miffed about the goggles. “Who needs another dimension when we’ve got this one?”
Elizabeth sighed with speechless awe at the spectacular sunset, a reflection of all her colours, and all her dear ones colours, all blended together with magic aqua and sparks of blue and tones of orange blossom.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“These old ezines and blogs are fascinating” remarked Periwinkle, passing the one she had just been reading to Daffodil. “Thank goodness some folks had the foresight to print some of them!”
“I know, imagine if they hadn’t. We’d have no artefacts for the collection. Well, we have all those flat discs, but no way to decipher them. Oh, did I tell you? Bignonia found something even older than the discs!”
“NO!” exclaimed Periwinkle “Do tell!”
“Yes, even older! Funny looking contraption, with two reels and a ribbon. An information storage device, so they say, although they haven’t discovered how to decipher it.”
“I wonder why we’re still not simply accessing that information without, well, without messing around with the physical contraption, you know?”
“Wouldn’t be any point in being here in the first place, if we weren’t going to mess around with physical things, silly” replied Daffodil.
There was no answer to that, so Periwikle didn’t answer. She continued to thumb through the printed pages.
Periwinkle and Daffodil sat together on the patio in the warm spring sunshine, sipping lemonade
and leafing through the papers. Bright white clouds in cartoon shapes romped across the blue sky,
and the birds chattered in the trees,
occasionally landing on the printed pages and cocking their heads sideways to read for a moment, before flying off to tell their friends, which was usually followed by a raucous group cackling.
“Dear Goofenoff” read Daffodil, “This one looks interesting Peri, someone here is asking for advice on a problem.”
“What’s a “problem”, Daffy?” asked Periwinkle. “For that matter, what does the word “advice” mean? Oh, never mind” she said as she noticed Daffodil rolling her eyes, “I’ll look it up in my pre shift dictionary of defunct words.”
“She’s asking the Snoot too, about the same problem. Oh, I think I’ve heard of them! It’s coming back to me, the old Snoot’n‘Goof team, they were quite famous in the beginning of the century, I remember hearing about them before in a Shift History discussion.”
“Well, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of them, but then, I’ve never been into history like you, dear. So what is this “problem” all about, then?”
“I’ll read it out to you, it’s way too convoluted to put in a nutshell. Lordy, they sure did complicate matters back then, it’s almost unbeleivable, really, but anyway, here goes:
Dear Goofenoff,
I don’t know what to do! I am confused about which probable version of a blog freind, let’s call him MrZ, I have chosen to align with. The first probable version was ok, nothing to worry about, and then I drew into my awareness the probable versions of MrZ that some of my freinds had chosen to align with….”
“Blimey”, interrupted Periwinkle, who was starting to fidget. “Is it much longer?”
“It’s alot longer, so be patient. Where was I? Oh yes:
“….and while that was very interesting indeed, and led to lots of usefully emotionally heated discussions, I started to align with their probable version, at times, although not consistently, which led to some confusion. So then I had a chat with someone who was more in alignment with my original probable version, although there were aspects of that probable version that were a little in alignment with the other folks probable version, notwithstanding. I suppose I was still in alignment with the other folks probable version when it came to my attention that there was another individual that might be aligning with a probable version, and my question is, in a nutshell, is it any of my business which probable version the new individual on the scene is aligning with?”
“Well, I can tell you the answer to that!” exclaimed Periwinkle.
Daffodil rolled her eyes. “Yes, dear, WE know the answer, but the point is, SHE didn’t know the answer at the time, which is why she asked Goofenoff.”
“If you ask me, she knew the answer all along” Periwinkle intuited. “What did Goofenoff say anyway?”
“He said:
Are you requiring a short or a long answer?”
Daffodil turned the page to continue reading. She frowned, and flicked through a few pages.
“What a shame, some of these pages appear to be missing! Now we’ll never know what Goofenoff said.”
Periwinkle laughed. “Well, never mind that anyway, have you seen the random story quote today? Rather synchronistic I’d say, listen to this bit:
Illi felt much better, and was sitting at the breakfast table, basking in the warm shafts of sunlight filtering in through the window, and listening to the birds singing in the lemon tree outside.”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Ann felt rather put out.
“How jolly rude to disappear like that.” she muttered
The truth was she had been feeling a tad out of sorts lately, plodding along, day in and day out, doing the same old things. She was finding Lavender rather dreary too, partly because she never seemed to be there when Ann called round. So the idea of helping the exotic, headless stranger with his mysterious request for “pea sauce” assistance had felt rather exciting. Ann loved nothing better than a good adventure.
And now the bugger had disappeared!
In reply to: Strings of Nines
They were thick as theives, freinds for thousands of centuries, or even more; sometimes thick, sometimes theives, and anything else you might imagine. They got together again and again in this time and that, here, there and elsewhere, just for the fun of it. There was nothing they liked more than a puzzling occurance, or a riddle, or a basket full of clues to ponder over, unravel, and turn around and around, toying with meanings until they found one they liked. They had a home in The City, sort of a home base so to speak, where they met regularly each night in the dream state, regardless of which time or place they spent their waking hours. It was sometimes a releif to meet up at home in The City and always a pleasure: sometimes it was hard to stay under the radar back down on the ground, it was part of the job to stand out in the crowd, which often resulted in a lynching, or a ducking, or the stocks, at the very least. All too often it ended up on top of a bonfire, tied to a stake.
One day in one of the Decembers, in amongst all the sweet dreams they often shared, they started having some unsettling group dreams, where they all felt like they were betwixt and between, falling through the cracks you might say. It was a feeling similar to dying of thirst, although it wasn’t really a physical thirst, it was more than that, a hungry yearning sort of thing. Some of them had strange nightmares, of a monstrous beast, and some of them actually saw beasts in the daytime too, especially on those falling through the cracks days. When they met up at home in The City, they compared notes about the beasts, and not always, but sometimes they found they were mirroring each others beasts. That often ended up in a heated debate, because the more mirroring that occurred, the more real the beast seemed. Some said that the beasts that appeared when you fell through the cracks were in a deep ravine, in a manner of speaking, and not of this plane at all. Others argued that if the beasts appeared through the cracks, then they were on this plane.
And so it went on, and on. There were many more puzzling occurances to come, and lots of meanings to be considered, rejected, or taken on board for the friends, as thick as thieves, to turn around and around, and hold up to the mirror for closer inspection and dissection. They were making a tapestry, a huge rich colourful tapestry, and all the puzzling occurences, and even the beasts, were depicted in the colourful threads and patterns. They were the warp, you might say, of the weave. Love was the weft.
“Congratulations, Liz” Godfrey remarked drily. “Are you supposed to use three months worth of creative writing challenges in one entry?”
“Don’t be silly, Godfrey, of course not. Rules are meant to be broken, that’s what they’re for.”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Messmeerah (Winky) Maymhe, High Priestess of the Pendulous and Loose Otherworldly Threading, was going for a bath into the Pool of Rejuvenation. Her ineffable beauty had started to show the early signs of time tampering —signs she’d learnt to notice as soon as they’d appear. Luckily, the moons were in perfect alignment for the rituals of Spring Beautusk*.
News were good, very good indeed —which would certainly help in maintaining her perfect brow and forehead in pristine smoothness.
News were so good that she’d sent her minion Minky fetch the boy just right after her white crow Saggin had came back with news of finding him… after all those years (not that years did matter to her anyway, she prided herself on that).It’d been close to an eternity, and she weighted her words… (in actuality it was a few teens and futile years at most) that she’d been trying to recover the boy, but the dwarfs had played her, and had managed to hide him from her sight.
She had not thought he could be concealed by anyone powerful enough, and it was surely not by the magic of that headless Malvina and her pesky dragons. In fact, the boy had been concealed even after Malvina and her menagerie had left the boy and his caretaker. She was thinking the caretaker in question had a concealment charm far more powerful she thought could exist.But Minky would surely take care of that.
—
- It should be said that one of the effects of the rituals of Spring Beautusk were a slight stiffness of the overall face (and other dipped body parts), which earnt Messmeerah the cute and albeit ironic sobriquet of Winky, as she hardly managed to blink and was often victim of bouts of winking when she tried too hard.
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
“Green years help often book!”
Elizabeth hand surprise.
Head Sanso: “Let dragons…..”
Finnley: “Dory fishes quickly!”
nothing answer…..
notice appeared remembered spiders,
speaking raucous Dolores:
“Stranger bird gift,
looks deep matter!”
“Write”, supposed young Phenol, whether himself less knows inside.
“Monica bloody apparently, probable cow”.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
The Peasland Majorburgmester rubbed his hands with an evil glee.
Fwick was knee deep in kneading for what appeared to be a lunatic idea bound to failure, and more importantly, it’s been weeks that no one had heard back from the expedition to the Eighth Dimension… And frankly, anyone having spent more than a few days in the Eighth Dimension usually was never to be heard of again —or heard speak anything intelligible for that matter, which didn’t make much difference either.
In fact, there had been some reports of sightings of the poor souls’ dog, what was its name already, Gandfleur or something equally ridiculous. But a single dog was hardly a problem, and now he couldn’t see how Peasland would be able to avoid the unavoidable blubbits dominion over Peaslanders.
He’d made that surer than sure; he’d gone again no later than yesterday, concealed under a waterproof floak (a floating cloak for inundated part of the lands), deep into the heart of Peasland’s plains now ridden in burrows to feed the breading mother of all blubbits a healthy dose of blunips. It had cost him most Mungibs he thought he would ever allow to part with, but it was Mungibs well placed. Soon people would plead for a real game changer. And he knew well who would step forward, and it was nothing like those headless twats.He was in such a jolly mood, he’d called for a party. Well not officially called that, of course —Peaslanders were such worryworts about their crops and the famine that may occur… But a little friendly gathering to celebrate their heroes gone to the Eighth for answers. What a masquerade.
He was indeed in such a jolly mood that he took the sinewy and allwardly beautiful Lady Fin Min Hoot by the waist, and invited her to a delirious dance —it was indeed a dandy day for dancing— and for a little after-hour in his carriage when they are done jiggling their bodyparts (at least in public).
That was then, all tied up in leather ribbons and pillows’ owl’s feathers, when he (and Lady Fin) heard the raucous voice calling.
Gnarfle !
Yes, that was it! that was the stupid name of the dog!…How come they’d managed to come back?!
