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In reply to: Pop﹡in People Tribulations
Distraction always worked best when one was trying hard not to try too hard, and luckily for Lucinda, it came easy. She was a natural. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten her mission to find out more about those mysterious dolls and the twelve addresses, but the Roman themed birthday party was today, and that gave her plenty to occupy herself.
The costume was easy, just a folded white sheet and a number of nappy pins. The birthday gift was another matter. She still hadn’t bought one, and had left herself no option but to buy something on the way to the party on the other side of the city. Counting the money left in her purse, she decided to travel by bus rather than taxi. She would have to change at the central bus station, which conveniently had a craft and antique market on in the nearby park. If she left home a couple of hours early, she could have a look around the market.
Not to look for dolls! she reminded herself, her mind already imagining unlikely scenes.
Checking the mirror one last time to make sure her toga was securely arranged, Lucinda left the flat and made her way to the bus stop on the other side of the park. She had debated whether to take her costume in a bag and change when she got there, and decided to just wear the toga. It was a diverse multicultural city, and there were often people dressed as if they were going to a fancy dress party, in biblical looking robes and scarves, or exotic coloured sari’s. If anyone wondered about her outfit, they’d probably just think she was from one of those foreign middle eastern places.
In reply to: Pop﹡in People Tribulations
Hi, I believe you have information about a doll. Look forward to hearing more. Thanks! Ms M.
Maeve gave a loud breath out and pushed POST. She had first put a little message on findmydolls on May 22nd. She remembered the date because it was Fabio’s birthday and she’d been celebrating with a glass of wine which made her unaccustomably bold. She hadn’t expected to hear anything, although for a few days she did check the site regularly. And then forgot about it.
But what with Lucinda finding one of her dolls at the market and Shawn Paul’s mysterious package … well, she just felt like taking another look.
In reply to: Pop﹡in People Tribulations
The light in the apartment darkened and Lucida glanced up from her book and noticed the gathering clouds visible through the glass doors that opened onto her balcony. Frowning, she reached for her phone to check tomorrows weather forecast. The weekly outdoor market was one of the highlights of her week. With a sigh of relief she noted that there was no expectation of rain. Clouds perhaps, which wasn’t a bad thing. It wouldn’t be too hot, and the glare of the sun wouldn’t make it difficult to see all the the things laid out to entice a potential buyer on trestle tables and blankets.
Lucinda had made a list ~ the usual things, like fruit and vegetables from the farms outside the city; perhaps she’d find a second hand cake tin to try out the new recipe, and some white sheets for the costumes for the Roman themed party she’d been invited to, maybe some more books. But what excited her most was the chance of finding something unexpected, or something unusual. And more often than not, she did.
She added birthday present to the list, not having any idea what that might be. Lucinda found choosing gifts extraordinarily difficult, and had tried all manner of tactics to change her irrational angst about the whole thing. One Christmas she’d tried just picking one shop and choosing as many random things as people on her gift list. In fact that had worked as well as any other method, but still felt unsettling and unsatisfactory. The next year she informed everyone that she wouldn’t be buying presents at all, and asked friends and family to reciprocate likewise. Some had and some hadn’t, resulting in yet more confusion. Was she to be grateful for the gifts, despite the lack of her own reciprocation? Or peeved that they had ignored her wishes?
Birthdays were different though. A personal individual celebration was not the same thing as Christmas with all it’s stifling traditions and expectations. It would be churlish to refuse to buy a birthday gift. And so birthday gift remained on the shopping list, as it had been last week, and the week before.
A birthday gift had already been purchased the previous week. Lucinda glanced up at the top shelf of the bookcase where the doll sat, languidly looking down at her. She felt a pang of emotion, as she did each time she looked at that doll. She loved the doll and wanted to keep it for herself, that was one thing. That was one of the things that always happened when she chose a gift that she liked herself: she talked herself into keeping it; that it was her taste and not the recipients. That it would be obvious that she’d chosen it because SHE liked it, not keeping the other person in mind.
But that wasn’t the only thing confounding her this time. The doll wanted to stay with her, she was sure of it. It wasn’t just her wanting to keep the doll. It wasn’t any old doll, either. That was the other thing. It seemed very clear that it was one of Maeve’s dolls. It had to be, she was sure of it.
When she got home with her purchases the week before, her intention had been to go and show Maeve what she’d found. Then something stopped her: what if it made her sad that one of her creations had been discarded, put up for sale at a market along with old cake tins and second hand sheets? No, she couldn’t possibly risk it, and luckily Maeve didn’t know the birthday girl who was the doll was intended for, so she’d never know.
But then Lucinda realized she had to keep the strange gaunt doll with the grey dreadlocks and patchwork dress. She couldn’t possibly give her away.
I hope I don’t find another doll at the market tomorrow, and have to keep that as well! thought Lucinda, and immediately felt goosebumps rise as an errant breeze ruffled the dolls dreadlocks.
In reply to: The Chronicles of the Flying Fish Inn
Bert seems to be digging a very large hole. I mean, good grief, it’s just a veggie garden. I don’t think my cabbages warrant all that effort. I pull open the window—the latch wobbles precariously on its single screw—and call out to him.
“What are you doing, Bert? Digging a grave or something?”
My humour is clearly lost on him. He glances over in my direction, distractedly, before placing his spade on the ground. He then kneels down in the dirt and leaning right inside the hole begins scrabbling with his hands.
How odd!
I pull a jacket on over my pink floral onesie. The onesie was a birthday gift from the girls and was accompanied by rather a lot of silliness and giggling. However I was privately rather taken with my gift and with summer over and a cool chill in the air it was very handy to put on in the mornings. Completing my ensemble with an old pair of gumboots by the back doorstep, I go and join Bert in the garden.
“What’s that, Bert? What’s that you’ve found in there?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he replied. At least, I think that’s what he said. It was hard to hear him when he was hanging upside down in a hole.
I crouch down beside him, no mean feat at my age, and take a look.
All I can see are some bones.
“What is it? A dog or something?”
“Too big for a dog.”
“Oh my goodness!” I gasp. “Are those … people bones?”
Bert gently extricates an object from the dirt and pulling himself back up he perches down beside me. “Not unless they have a beak for a nose,” he says, gently dusting off the dirt and holding it up for me to see.
It was a giant skull. Like a strange giant bird.
“Dragon skull,” says Bert with a satisfied smile.
In reply to: The Precious Life and Rambles of Liz Tattler
That Liz had started to become a few sandwiches short of a picnic when she’d hit her 57th birthday was an open secret.
Her editor had to personally recruit frequent replacements for her dame de compagnie, whom, no matter how different they looked, she would invariably call ‘cleaning lady Finnley’, stuck with her remembrance of a certain period of her life.Godfrey often had wondered… were he to resign, and be replaced like so many Finnleys before this one, would she also call his replacement “Godfrey”? The though made him titter, as he put the kettle on the stove.
At times he wanted to scream that he wasn’t her bloody man-servant, but her personal doctor had made a point to explain to him that Elizabeth’s frail grasp on reality would only be strengthened if everyone continued to play the charade of her life.Truth was, she really did seem to grow younger as the years passed, and as she was bossing around everyone with great enjoyment, Godfrey had often wondered if she wasn’t in cahoots with her physician to have everyone believe she was truly losing it.
He had to admit, she was doing a terrific job at it.Topic: The Hosts of Mars
2049. 22 years after the original settlers had landed on Mars, where they had since been followed by more and more pioneers looking for the next frontier of civilization.
A lot had changed since they arrived, they were now a few hundred strong, and the first generation of Martian born babies were entering adulthood.
Maia would celebrate her 50th birthday tonight. In Earth years. By Mars’ count, she was younger by half. Still, she was the eldest of the mission, and had learnt so much during these years. Her son, John had grown into a fine young man. He was named after John Carter of course. He wasn’t the first born here, but was the first to have survived. He always had the will to explore more, despite the dangers, he wanted to make the planet his own.
She knew he was destined to greatness. She had a dream a long time ago, one dream that made her enlist into the program. She’d dreamt of Mars as a lush planet, that mankind had managed to terraform with a vaporous atmosphere, more dense than on Earth, but breathable. The light of the evening sky was misty and a pale grey-green. Maia hoped she would live to see her dream come true, that somehow they found a way to venture out and breathe the new air, having succeeded in making the best out of the immense resources of the red dust planet.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
“Dear Kitty, you didn’t think I would miss your birthday for all the world.” Anna Purrna handed out with a sappy smile an awful cupcake topped with a green butter cream that looked like come out of a toothpaste tube days ago. “Happy birthday Terry.”
She sent an icy glare at the others who took it as a cue to singing “Happy Birthday” in falsetto voices.
“Good. Now, back to business, chop chop.”
As soon as she was out of sight, they all looked with commiseration at Terry. Maurana even ventured a whisper “That was humiliating.” Consuela whispered too “Told you, you shouldn’t have accepted the bitch’s friend invitation on Flushbuck. Had to be a trap… Although saying no, would have meant… well, yes too, but no… Well, you get my meaning.”
The other looked at her with blank stares, stopped in their mopping. They promptly resumed making washing noises to avoid drawing back the attention of the dwarf queen.
“Girls.” Maurana said “Got nothing to do with being black and all, but I got to tell you this. Ain’t gonna be this bitch that’ll bring back slavery upon us AND child labor to top it. Trust Maurana on that. We got to wake up and strike back. That horrid cupcake was a declaration of war. We need a plan.”
“Agreed.” the traumatized Terry spoke her first words since the last minutes. “I think we may have to call Sadie for help, she was always the one with those ezapper plans, no?”
“I had some trenches and attrition warfare in mind, more like, but this plan is good as any, no?” acquiesced Consuela. “Let me make that call, I kept her emergency number next to mum’s”.In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
As distance grew between the P’hope and the city, the damage to the beanstalk had seemed to diminish. Funny how insignificant it seems when you looked at it from a distance, he thought. Unfortunately storks weren’t strong enough to fly above the clouds, and he had to go through a heavy rain above the Sea of Beliefs. Even if it was over now, his already heavy P’hopal robe was soaked, yet his mount was flapping its wings bravely to fulfill its duty.
Jube could see the temple ruins. Sandwiched between the coastline and the bog, it was surrounded by wall of mist. Inside, old stones and broken columns were scattered around a lake, a stepped pyramid in its center. It looked like the mist was dissipating following a trail near the south. The P’hope squinted and saw a bright orange spot where it would open. He took his magnifier made of calcite crystals and looked through it. He clenched his teeth. The King was there, two great wings on his back. Spoiled brat, why don’t you never do as you’re told, he thought. He looked at the others and almost fell off the stork when he saw the little green one.
Despite the change of skin color, he’d recognized her. So, Gwinie was alive. There was no time to lose. He suppressed a strong desire to confront them straight away, it would be counterproductive when he still had time to weave his web. He put the magnifier back in his bag and steered his mount toward the ruins.
There didn’t seem to be any entrance on the pyramid’s faces, the P’hope tried to make his mount land on one of the step, but the animal didn’t respond to his orders. Instead, it glided over the water toward the top of one of those big columns still standing, missed it, slumped down on a patch of grass, and decided to stay there. Ranting about birds and incompetence, the P’hope managed to extricate himself from the mess of feathers and legs. He sniffed with disgust. With the humidity, a strong smell of wet fowl had impregnated his robe. Feeling stuck and heavy, he considered getting undressed, he still had his silk gown underneath.
“Happy bird day!” said a cheering voice behind him.
The P’hope felt a sudden rush of panic, the voice sounded like his aunt Ursula. He looked around, guilt on his face as if caught a hand in his pants. He had forgotten it was his birthday, he had never liked birthdays. Who could possibly know ? It took a moment to his mind to make sense of what he was looking at. It looked like a pink zebra with a melting candle on its forehead, but the form seemed yet uncertain of itself. That was disturbing.“I’m Rene, I hope we can be friends,” said the pink zebra. The creature fidgeted as if it had drank too much from the moat. “We can begin the party now, or wait for you friends to arrive. I’m so excited !”
Jube shuddered, the animal had a crazy spark in his eyes that made him feel uneasy. He looked at the stork which hadn’t moved since the crash landing. No h’ope from Heaven.In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
Sadie was using the sewing app on her e-zapper to modify the horrible garments provided for them, when she noticed that the ferret was moving toward the chapel. She felt a rush of anticipation go through her.
”Okay, you guys, we need to hide. Someone is coming and it looks like they have a ferret on them!”
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”Oh Dear Blessed Mother Mary, and if there are any Saints or Angels listening, please help me. I have done something very bad and done an awful sin and and I don’t want to be beaten so please forgive me. I am so sorry for taking the little toy. It was for my little brother because it is his birthday coming up, but it is a sin to steal and also to think that the Queen is old and ugly and please have mercy on me and I promise I will never sin again and I will serve you the rest of my life. I won’t be rude to Mirabelle, even though she is a bad sinner and quite mean. I will only do good and smile and think good things. I will say my prayers every night. So please have mercy on me and make sure I don’t get in trouble. I am leaving the little toy here for you and you can do what you think is best. But don’t tell anyone I left it”
”Please.” she added again, for good measure.
Feeling satisfied that she had done all she could, Adeline placed the toy ferret gently in front of the statue of Mary, and silently slipped out of the chapel.
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
On this bright morning of 5 January 1757, Robert-François thought it would be his birthday in less than 4 days. He would turn 42, and had just been a domestic servant for his whole life. He was not prone to depression, but the thought was almost disheartening. His life had been full of turns of fate, like many he’d known, but with so little to show for it.
Sure, he could blame his hot temper for that, his nickname “Robert the Devil” was not for naught. Still, his wife and daughter loved him well enough, he wasn’t a bad person, pious even, after years spent with the Jesuits. So what made him so angry this morning, he couldn’t tell, maybe the moon a little too bright in the morning light, maybe the melted snow turned shit in the gutter of the streets and on his shoes…
His employers at the Parlement were right, something was rotten in the country, and the King and his whores were to be blamed for it. The butcheries at war he’d witnessed, all led by silly creeping courtesans in the name of of philandering godless king.
While walking in the streets, this bright morning, with his hat covering part of his face, he was muttering words under his breath and from time to time gave a brief thought to the kitchen knife tucked in his leather bag.In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
The youngest maid, Adeline, quickly placed one of the rat like toys at the bottom of the large basket of laundry she had come to collect.
The Queen has so many; she will not even notice this small one. And there are two of them. What does an old woman like the Queen want with toys? she reasoned.
It was Adeline’s small brother’s birthday tomorrow and there would be no fine party for him. She knew he would love this strange toy.The few measly coins she received each week for slaving over her mistress left nothing for luxuries. It was barely enough to survive. Although she knew she should be grateful she was not on the streets like so many others. She noticed a small tear in the seam of the toy. All the better! If she were found out she could say she was taking it to mend. She knew if she were not believed there would be a heavy price to pay.
In reply to: Rafaela’s Random Ramblings
After leaving the parcel in the capable hands of the Post Office staff (and while she was there remembering to send a cute birthday card with kittens on it to her friend Trove and a note to Jove and Erove saying how nice it was to see them recently) Flove was ready for her next assignment.
She was stationed in Rotorua and although the exact nature of the assignment had not been explained to her she believed herself to be there in a journalistic capacity. She found herself standing in the ocean with a group of people, strangers, watching a game of rugby. The rugby game was also in the ocean. She had some brief interactions with her companions and had to move away from a rather unpleasant man who was annoying her. After the match, they all walked back to a small town — via the ocean. It was dark and Flove was initially hesitant because she was not a good swimmer, but she felt some security as her companions seemed composed about the journey. The ocean was not as deep as she had anticipated. Even though the water eventually came up to her shoulders, she found she was able to walk the whole distance. At one point she noticed the fins of a shark swim by in the inky darkness of the water, but she regarded it with childish delight, rather than fear.
In reply to: Rafaela’s Random Ramblings
Trove wondered if she had dropped enough hints about parcels yet and if everyone had remembered that it was her 57th birthday soon.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Sadness, whilst not being entirely unheard of, was alot more uncommon during the days of the Gardenation. The weather was kindness itself, and everyone, naturally enough, was at liberty to grow whatever they wanted in their gardens. There were no rules and regulations in the Gardenation; it worked on a sort of expanded “pay forward” system, not that there was any pay, or forward thinking for that matter, involved. The genesis of the new collaberation of independant garden nations (although it was actually more of a renaissance, simultaneous time notwithstanding) had come about as a result of the widespread discontent of the populace with all of the political parties, in just about every nation on the planet.
During a particularly wild and raucous bridge tart birthday party (they were always having birthday parties; it was always somebody’s birthday somewhere, after all) the avant garde shift pioneers, as well as the twelve Wisp rats, came up with a plan ~ of sorts. It was more of an imaginative play really.
One of the children had been bemoaning the fact that his friend in another nation could grow whatever he wanted in his garden, and he couldn’t, in his own nation. He asked the bridge tarts if they could create a new nation, from all the independant garden nations all over the world. The bridge tarts decided that it was a fine idea and set about bridging the independant garden nations all over the world together, in energy.
Some of the bridge tarts worked on the connecting links between the garden nations all over the globe, and some of the bridge tarts were instrumental in innovative new gardening ideas. One of them experimented with pulling funny faces at the seedlings, which resulted in bizarre comical blooms. New ideas bounced from one gardenation to another, originating you might say in all gardenations at the same time, so connected were they in energy.
Given sufficient motivation, the Gardenation might have started sooner ~ notwithstanding simultaneous time. Or perhaps they already did.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
West Cork, Ireland, Summer of 2051
As she walked along the rocky trail bordering the coast where occasionally whales could be seen at a distance, she was humming deep sounds and harmonies in the damp air filled with the echoes of the cool wind.
She was aware of distant focuses of herself, living around that place. Past focuses, in that land of the druidesses and druids, and another one, closer to her, in some probable future. Like this other focus, she loved the whales too, and she was able to communicate with her. Catherine Wrick would have loved to be able to live in such a crystalline place she could envision with her eyes closed.
Her woolen black coat would let the wind insinuate itself through the layers of clothes, and she was starting to feel a little cold now. Temperatures were colder than they used to be in the past, and even now in summer, they would rarely go higher than 15°C. It was time to get back home. She whistled Merlu, her golden labrador, back, and still nestled into her dream-like attention, slowly walked towards her house.
In the comfort of her dome house, she started to leaf through the messages and reminders that she had in a pile on the bed table. Nothing much of interest, except that in a few months time, it would be the first birthday of the twins…
Her step-mother Dorean had sent her two books, when she had learned of the birth of the twins. They were to return to them, when they would be seven, she’d say.
Why seven?, she’d asked… Dorean had answered that seven was the perfect age for them to get them back —their intuitive abilities would still had much potential, and they would be mature enough to understand and use the books. It was no use for herself to keep the books any longer.As she was going to sit in her antique rocking chair for a smoke, Catherine noticed a faint cracking sound. Perhaps Merlu was playing with those hard-boiled eggs she’d been painting recently, without much success, to try to reproduce the perfect glowing green colour of her grandfa… Another crack. She stopped and listened again.
It couldn’t be Merlu: the dog was now barking.She started to wonder Could it be?… After all those years of keeping them…
The sound was definitely coming from the reading room where the big eggs were put on display…
In reply to: Synchronicity
oh yes one more pink pixie synch … well it was more like a pink fairy … I did a series of children’s paintings ages ago and most of them I had given away, but I had one left. It is a pink pixie/fairy on a toadstool
and Katie told me it is Emily’s 3rd birthday on the 8th April, so now I have someone I can give it to.okay just one more birthday synch, the voucher is their father’s birthday and i just remembered it is my father’s birthday on the 6th April.
In reply to: Rafaela’s Random Ramblings
Not quite sure if there’s a story sync here yet, but there are a couple of Edward Gorey syncs: I read one of his books last week that I’d bought on impulse from the 2nd hand bookshop a few weeks ago, and a blog friend posted that today is his birthday. At Dale’s energy games last week I had a conversation with his pencil drawn characters…..Oh and half of the book of his that I read was written in Limericks…..
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
— These are MY eggs! Nobody touches my eggs!
— Oh come on, you’re not gonna make these ostrich eggs hatch Cathy… Better have them made into a nice big omelet for our guests… Fleur said with a tentative smile.
— And why use MY eggs for that?! Moooom, she’s trying to steal my eggs…— What’s with all that fuss here? a coarse, yet sensual female voice said in the background of the kitchen.
— Mom, she wants to make an omelet with the eggs that granddad gave me…
— Calm down Catherine, will you… Is that true Fleur?
— Err… Madam Wrick, I suppose it was only a stupid joke… Thing is that wasn’t such a bad idea… There will be quite a few guests tonight, and… she began to falter as the eyebrows of Dorean Wrick were taking a more severe look. Err… I’m sorry, M’am, I’ll send Raster fetch some food for a nice meat pie, will it be nice?
— Perfect. That settles the matter then… Catherine, go back to your room, and let Fleur work. I’ll send you a maid to help you be prepared for our guests arrival.
— Yes, Mum.What a silly idea Theobald, her father have had, to give her step-daughter those eggs for her birthday… Big funny green eggs. He’d said they were ostrich eggs, but there were no ostrich in Mexico, as far as she knew. Of course, now the little girl’s only idea was to have the birds hatch and to mount them and ride in the slopes of Ireland.
This family was definitely insane, Dorean was thinking.
At least, she had thought her own branch of the family tree had been spared by the folly of her relatives and their attraction for occult and intangible things, but with that odd gift, it seemed to her more than likely that her father had followed the steps of his wricked brother… Or perhaps it was only an old man’s way of passing time. But knowing her father down-to-earth nature, that was not like him. He didn’t do things out of a whim, and there was probably more than met the eye having to do with the funny eggs…A few days ago, shortly after New Year’s eve and stepping into year 2034, she’d had received an unexpected parcel from her cousin, Sean Doran. A couple of wrapped books, he was asking her to keep in store for him. She always had liked her cousin, though they had only met two or three times when they were children. Thing was, family matters were more a wrickage than anything else, and they had barely kept in touch over the years.
She had distractedly opened the big ornate leather-bound books only to discover they were blank. What was the purpose of all of this, she didn’t know. But unlike most people, Dorean wasn’t interested in others’ businesses. She would keep the books, whatever they meant.And she had more pressing matters now.
Her guest were coming. Elvira and her demented husband were moving back, and were due to arrive tonight after a rather long expatriation in the lands of Russia. Having met that strange and impressive individual, the perspective of getting away in a foreign land leaving all the past behind, all of this had most probably saved Elvira from her depressive mood…
But she had been so isolated from her past that Dorean suspected that these almost thirty years abroad would have changed her profoundly.In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Elizabeth Tattler gasped and clutched the right side of her chest. For a moment she wondered if the sharp pain she felt was a heart attack, and was greatly relieved when she realised it was located on the other side of her chest. After some investigation of her cluttered desk, she realised she must have fallen asleep on the pyramid shaped pencil sharpener her friend Yannie P had given her for her last birthday. It was made of fake blue diamond and was really rather beautiful; she could see thousands of suspended dust particles in it’s reflected light. But it was damn sharp! A thought flashed through her head, was the gift really a cunning plot to murder her? She shook her head at her own absurdity, anyway, fortunately the five layers of Angora-Mongoat wool jerseys she was wearing had protected her from more serious injury.
She could not help but notice how the consistently the quote of the day seemed so in tune with her moods. It was almost uncanny:
Bugger your feelings~ Tobipooh
Damn right! If she listened to her feelings she would go home and sleep for a week. No time for that, no time for a nana nap even! She had a novel to write.
In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
whith Quitin’s children??? did he had them with 