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Naasir then exhaled slowly, until all in the cave was still.
The End

— “What?”
— “That can’t be true?”

The twins were outraged. The book couldn’t stop now, there was so much left they wanted to explore. Watermelons, mummies, secret islands… even aliens would be a fate better than a dreaded “END”!

Lord Wrick smiled at them.
“Dear ones, you knew all along that there was no third book, and that it would end at some point, didn’t you?”

A stubborn silence greeted his deep raspy voice.

He continued unfaltering “Let us see it another way. These stories are like a breath.
You take breath without thinking of it. It feels good to have the air flow into your lungs and make you feel so full of life.
But you know without even thinking when it’s time to release. You can try to hold the air indefinitely in your lungs, but soon it’ll become painful. The air is all around you, you can release the tiny fraction you think you hold without a worry. All you will have to do is breathe again.
These books will change over time, they are not finished. They are only closed. You can open them again anytime, and reinvent them. I trust your imagination on that.”

Bronkel was stern as ever, yet you could feel in his eyes that he was troubled.

— “What? That’s roobish, isn’t it?”
— “No! Elizabeth! Not at all! It’s your best book in years! Poople will want more!”
— “Well, we’ll see… For now, I think my moose needs some rest”

Her detox had done her great. Her beautifool violet eyes weren’t as bloodshot as before, and she could even see some of her hair grow back in places. Elizabeth in some surge of energy had collected all the bits written here and there, loose paper flying at times with some missing (perhaps used during her poohnuts hazes to light fires in the office).
Some of these paper she wasn’t even sure were hers, or writing attempts by Finnley, but she didn’t care; they were all so funny and interesting.

For instance, she wasn’t too soore that she’d have Veranassasss —whatever her bloody name was— go off with the pilot of the plane, but that sounded nice for her. So she’d used that part too.

Of course, the Spanish couple, Paqui and Jose had reemerged at the boulder moving party after a long trip in the underground space-traveling tunnels. Leo and Bea were not so glad they’d reappeared so early, but had found it was time to move on, and continue their quest for more bizarre and entertaining artifacts. And they wanted to go to Morocco anyway, in this gorgeous blue city…
Young Becky decided she wanted to go abroad to travel the world. “And study too” had said Dan who wasn’t as shifty as Dory, a thing for which she thanked heavens profusely every day.

Sharon, Gloria and Mavis after some more bizarre adventures among the Masai tribes finally found their way back home, while Akita continued his explorations of this strange shifting world of the 21st century.

Even the bizarre animals stories in the ZOO she’d kept. They’d even found Arky the Aardvark. He had been accidentally buried under Oligan the Oliphant’s pile of poop. The poor Oliphant had suffered from an excess of mangoes in his diet, and Arky was so eager to collect poop for his garden of flowers that he hadn’t noticed the harbingers of it.
Pawanie the lady Panda and Barry the White Bear had since then decided to take care of the little Aardvark, and provide it with their own poop to fertilize the flower garden. Theirs was a garden to behold, with the most beautiful flowers to be seen in miles. Attracting creatures from all over the place.

There were a few points Elizabeth had left deliberately unanswered; the mad doctor, who was probably still alive somewhere, and most important of all… if, after all this children bearing with Sean, Becky ended up with Sam or not.
One thing was sure though, they were all moving to the City. The sooner the better.

Leormn was glad to be back in his cave.
The trip with the twins and Irtak had been very interesting for all of them; it had expanded their knowledge of their world, and the young Irtak was allowing his desire to be expressing his playfulness with dragons more and more.

Leormn could foresee he would become a great dragon breeder, and the dragons once again would reappear with times of peace.

For now, he and Malvina were packing again. It was time for them to move the rookery, and find another spot where they could alter the stuck energies by simply being there. They were like roots in the ground, they were unseen to most, but they were moving, and changing the quality of the soil, enriching it, bringing lightness to it.

Irtak and the twins would start their own path, they had learned so much. They were heading to the South deserts, the land of the gripshawks, and other less known creatures. Irtak wanted to see the seal-men, too wherever they were, in between the Icy Lands and the Southern shores. He wanted to explore everythere.

Arona had found her way to the cave, and since Malvina was moving again, she had decided to stay there with her newfound little strange, but delightful family. Ikesy would probably go in a few years to fulfill his own destiny, but for now, the Ugling raised by an Oddling was doing well.
Having seen the interesting properties of her painted door (yes, the “peace off” magic door) she had finally acknowledged her talent, and decided to devote her time to take up her art. Of course, Mandrake was encouraging as ever (refraining to comment at the beginning), but she had no doubt her dedication would conquer his and her own doubts.
After all, her magic was strong; if anything needed to be drawn out of this adventure that was it. And Buckberry her own artist dragon was a remainder of that.

With the flood of water that was spilled on the land after the crash of the plastic-wrapping-the-now-melted-iceberg-ship dragged along by the strong pull of the engine for miles inside the lands, a huge pool had started to form that began to gather animals around.

The blessings of the fresh water was in fact such that, not long before they managed to have their feet back on terra firma, the three valiant musketeers Sharon, Gloria and Mavis with their chivalric Akita and his faithful spirit dog Kay were surrounded by the most diverse fauna they’d been seeing in days.

— Lookit that! Can ye believe it?!
— Zebra, zebra,… ZEBRA!
— What’s up with your underwear Glor’?
— Zee-bras, no bloody brassieres! See?!
— Well, no bloody wonder, it just looks like the Serengeti
— What bloody gothic serum?
— Jeeze, Serengeti! In Tanzania… Africa, the land of the Maasai, bloody Lake Victoria et cætera
— Oh, you don’t start getting that snotty tone again…

Leaving for a moment the ladies at their cultural talks, Akita went for a walk with Kay, looking for some clues on how to get moving in this faraway place. He’d hoped to reach Egypt and the Suez Canal to get the ladies back to Europe, but obviously the single-use strange iceberg-ship was planned for Africa, and not much further.

Kay always had most puzzling associations to bring up in their conversations. “Well,” he’d say “besides all these blue bulls isn’t it funny that the zebras are a variety of indigo’s…”

“You’re a funny dog”, Akita told him “what is that supposed to mean?”
“Obviously it’s an analogy…”
“A bit too bloody subtle” Akita was starting to talk awfully like the ladies…
“Zebras are symbols for a people who have a funny way of blending in… Or actually to not blend in. They’re symbols of the weirdos of your societies. Affectionately said, of course. I do consider you and your girlfriends a bit on the weirdo side by the way…”
“Well, that’s nice… I suppose?”
“It’s all symbols, and it’s dream-time, so pay attention dear one.”
“If you say so” Akita said with a shrug
“It is not uncommon to find in dream interpretation books some funny sentences like

Dreaming of zebras running fast indicates you are interested in fleeting enterprises. If you dream of a wild zebra in its native environment, you might try a pursuit that could bring unsatisfactory results. Beware of those with multicolored stripes.” The Everything Dreams Book

“Now,” Kay was continuing his near-monologue as they were still walking “what is that supposed to mean; if that were a dream you were dreaming, would you use that one-fits-all approach to interpret that zebra dream?”
“Who cares, really, it’s not as if I’m dreaming anyway…”
“Of course, you’d know better; but anyway, that brings me to the multicoloured zebras. There are children who have started some years ago to manifest en masse on this planet with different views, a wildly different approach on life. People around your world have started to label them “indigos”, another shade of blue if you will. I wouldn’t be so circumspect in my dealing with funny coloured animals, if I were you…”
“I’ll be damned if I understood a word of what you just said… Perhaps you’re right and I’m dreaming after all…”
“You can say that again.”

Salome was recalling her first steps on the Murtuane as she was fondly turning a small pale greenish stone into her palm. The stone was smooth, with a milky shine and had a diffuse warmth.

It was carrying many of her memories of this time. She’d taken it from the shores of the Kandulim that first night, taking the rough stone as something to cling on, and firmly grasp, to bring herself back to her own senses, and drown her fearfulness and disorientation in the strong presence of feeling alive.

She’d kept it for a while, and then had started to learn how to use stones to encode certain information. Of all the shiny crystals that she could have used, she’d preferred to keep the rough unpolished stone because of its genuineness.
Encoding it wasn’t as easy as for more regular crystalline structures found in more precious stones, yet it was almost as if she’d wanted this one to bear the mark of her mastery at this art.

She wasn’t very educated, and had not seen much of the Earth, but she had known at once that this place where they had docked the dinghy after that epic escape from the Sultan’s palace wasn’t like anything she could have found on Earth. Somehow, even her own body had begun to reflect that alien-ority to her.

The stone was showing her scenes she had conveniently let slip away from her current focus. As she was seeing them, appreciation was overflowing her heart. It had taken her a while to get accustomed to this place and eerily enough, despite that lack of familiarity, she’d had a knowing that she was meant to be there.

Her thirst of discovery was as immense at that time —not that it was less at the moment, but the contrast between her ignorance and the things she knew she could access had been stark and bitterly felt.

She couldn’t help but smile at the scene of her past self learning to read and write. When Madame Chesterhope had taken her under her wing in her schemes to approach the Sultan with a worthy price, she had begun to learn from her a modicum of English language, but she would never have dreamt of learning how to read.

And there, how ironic that the first place she would learn that, of all the many languages she would learn over the course of their explorations with Georges, was a place from another dimension, with a language she only started to feel she could utter the sonorities of.

It was no mistake Leonard had brought them here first. Now she was thinking back, reminiscing this period of time, she recognized how much she loved the languages of the Turmakis. For her, it was as close as “home” a foreign culture could be called.

“Oh great!” Dory felt relieved when she saw Dan on the muddy yellow tractor coming up the hill.

She’s been boulder-moving with the neighbours for hours now on Salitre, to remove the blocked entrance of what was believed to be an ancient opening to a cave, or better, a tunnel full of mysteries. And despite her unwavering enthusiasm, she started to show signs of tiredness.

“Whose truck is that?” asked Dory to Dan who was grinning on top of the monster
“The old folks at Juan’s pueblo; I figured out they got that tractor that hasn’t been used since Jose and Paquita inherited their millions and buggered off a while ago…”
“Bless them!” sighed Dory in relief, reaching for another cup of the warming mulled wine that Leonora had been preparing for the Yule Boulder Party.

Australia, Uluru, Dec. 2035

Sam wasn’t very fond of the Ooh dimension adventures; he didn’t yet have inserted a focus (or foocoos) here for that matter. And he was too engrossed in the City creation planning to design a few parks there anyway.

He just had his first night under the stars, on the freshly built wooden floor on top of a jujubaobab tree in the middle of the park where he could see the patterns he wanted to insert on the gardens. It looked a bit like the French gardens in the Versailles gardens most of his focuses liked so much in the past. He was aware of Yann, his shifting focus, who was precisely visiting the gardens at that same simultaneous time, with friends and family.
He laughed when he projected to him, and overheard a discussion where Yurick was pointing to a typo he made about the Jeff Kuuntz expo that was there. Decidedly, Yann had the same dislike of the Ooh dimension, preferring the Uuh’s.

When he started to go to sleep, the feelings started to blur in a strange mixture of imageries…

Jeff had strange dreams that night. He was singing Tumuuld to a certain Elizabeth who was speaking all funny, and playing djudjuriduu on the treetops, surrunded by inflated magunta colured balluuns…
Sometimes it tuuk his breathe away how life was strunge, but cuul.

That was it. She had enough for the time being. Ever since the management had agreed to hire him for the new show, the Freakus was not as Fabulously Great as it once was.

Not that he was a bad guy, but he was all so closeted, he was imprinting it to the circus, and she wanted to breathe some different kind of air. Of course, never been a freak himself, Morgan the Mentalist wouldn’t ever come close as to understand what having been closeted your all life would mean. Being the Lobster girl of the show, she knew quite a bit about that.
It had took her awhile to know that there wasn’t anything wrong with her expression, so no one would told her how to express. Not the Mentalist of all others.

Damo, the guy who was setting up the tents had seen her leave the Freakus without a word, her little piece of luggage on her “normal” hand, while her claw-like one was tucked in a glove under her bosom. Sweet-hearted as he was, he had tried to convince her to stay, that surely there was some misunderstanding.
“Lyla, don’t be stoopid, ain’t got nothin’ fur you out there” he’d said to her.

She didn’t know how to tell him that all was good. She didn’t want to tell too much either, for Fama, his teen daughter wasn’t really loving the life at the circus either, and would easily have taken the bait to get out of there too. So she had moved saying that she would come back, “when it’s safe for kids” she’d added mysteriously.

Strange at it seemed, it was like taking a breathe of air, and yet, she couldn’t help but think over and over at how she could have changed anything in what had happened. Perhaps it was just a pretext for her to do her next step.
When Morgan first came to the show, he wasn’t in a good shape, and had begged Pat Elson to hire him. As he was kind of smart guy, he didn’t stay long in Damo’s team of workers. Pat saw his potential as a sort of empathic guy, and devised the Mentalist act with him.

He was good at cold-reading, mostly guessing at people problems; in the beginning, some of the freakus’ people would play a part with him, to amaze the audience, but it became less and less necessary, and he would do a nice job buy himself, with lots of “it wouldn’t happen to be that your mother gave the watch to you? No… not your mother… but someone close… I can feel blah blah” and then picking on the subtle hints the guy was giving off unwittingly.

Lately, he had started to kind of feel stuff for real. And he started to freak out. After all this time, not many people remembered Morgan as he first came to the circus, and for most he was the Outstandingly Great Mentalist. Yeah, he had been pimping up a bit his name too… Those things happen in the milieu.
But Lyla remembered. She was a girl at this time, but your work at the circus starts very early when you’re a freak.
She had seen how he gained a little confidence in himself, as long as it stayed within closed tents and half-lit veils. He was truly a master of illusion games, and he didn’t want people to see him differently than the way he was presenting himself. He’d first tried his little games of séances with some close trusty friends, and Lyla had been quite encouraging; he deserved to blossom his potential; no one deserved to be maintained at a place where you can’t reach your highest.

A few days before, Lyla had had the pleasure of seeing Jenny, who’d been snake charmer many years ago, and had quit to become a singer in a bar: “tired me to travel so much, ya see” she’d said to Lyla “Now my life ain’t so complicated”.
Then Jenny had then asked about the guys she’d known in the freakus, first of all was Morgan the Mentalist. “How’s that old fart of Morgy?” she’d asked with a giggle “still scamming around?”

Lyla had said innocently that he’d been practicing doing it more genuinely, even to some success with local peasants in a few séances. Jenny had greeted the news with a cheer. “Wonderful, hey!”

The next day, Lyla had had the Mentalist erupt in the caravan she shared with Zarafina and Venus, since Twi had gone to sing too. He was looking furious and once they were out of earshot (how could there be any need of making secrets with the others, Lyla had wondered, they shared everything, even the tiny bar of soap) told her with his sweetest voice how he appreciated Jenny. Of course she wasn’t a Mentalist, but she knew when someone was beating around the bush; and she needn’t be Moses to know the bush was smelling of burning.

“I greatly appreciate Jenny, but I’d love to choose when I disclose my information to her” that’s what he said. At first, she’d thought, well, why the theatrics? Cool for you guy, peace off now. Then she slowly understood that he wanted to tell her to shut her mouth. How could she know what part to shut and which to tell? She hadn’t done anything wrong did she? Why was he having the same tone than the frigging priests with their sermons telling that you’re sinful, and when you’ve got a crooked arm, it’s because you’re born evil and such guilt shit.”

Well, she didn’t want to stay in a position where she had to figure out which of his sharing was a real sharing or was not. So she better bugger off, take some fresh air.

She thought how she loved to hear the radio, and her lifelong dream was to work there, in a place where people would hear her before judging from her appearance… Maybe she would thank Morgy in the future for giving her the last excuse to do what she wanted.