Search Results for 'broke'

“Okay,” Al started.
“At the essence of I Ching, is the notion that everything is mutable, and changes. Everything changes, except the law that says that everything changes.
“In many ways, the I Ching is like a book where the pages numbering change every time you start to read it. Not unlike our story composition.”

“I get that,” answered Tina, interested by what would come out.

“So,” Al continued, always disagreeably pondering, Tina would say. “usually, when people are drawing to read from the I Ching, they have six numbers that give an hexagram. And these numbers are carrying into them their potential change, which usually gives another hexagram to read.”
“In our stories, the entries have a fixed identity, which is given by the system; this is our starting point. For your comments, this is ’4-191-328’.
“But as everything evolves, our entries are given an order in the book; this order is changeable, and that’s what I will use for the second hexagram; in your case it’s ’2-151-223’.”
“If you say so…” Tina sighed, a bit lost.
“Oh, I’m inventing the rules as we speak,” Al said trying to reassure her somewhat.
“I don’t know if that makes me feel better” she said.

“Okay. Now, I need to create the hexagrams; hexagrams are defined by six straight or broken lines; zero or one, binary system. Here, Chinese usually use the convention that odd is straight, and even is broken… Ahaha, doesn’t seem to make sense, but odd is male, unbalanced into action, and is associated with single, straight things. Broken is paired, complete in reflection, unbalanced in passivity.”

“And I wonder when we actually start to hear something that makes sense?” whispered Tina, a bit crossly.

“Okay, the thing I see, is that I have trouble making one hexagram with seven numbers, ahaha”, Al laughed a bit embarrassed.

“Oh, then no point in wiggling like that” said Tina very sweetly, “Scrap any bit that bothers you”.

“Okay, anyway we can go deeper into them afterwards if needed; I’ll scrap the first number rather than the last, because you see, 2 and 4 are both even, and thus there is no mutation here.”

“So here we are, if we scrap the bottom one, we get…”

— Bloddy lamp is it, you said? Can’t find any lamp missing in there!

CRASH!

— What happened! Mavis? Are you alright?
— Oh, I think I just slipped on that blue slime ‘ere… Crashed something have I?
— Yeah, that small table there, you almost broke it!… Just like Bruce Loo, but with your bum ahahah!
— What was that crushing sound Sha?
— That small lamp there… Oh, that sounds perfect… now we can just put that skullamp to replace it…
— Yeah, let’s do that… Can’t wait to go to some more honeycomb!
— You greedy pooh Glo huhu
— There’s a false contact or something, it blinks strangely, looks like a bloddy disco ‘ere!
— Yeah, looks way better that way. We’ll have to bring back some decent music too.
— Righty oh! I’ve got my old disc from the Bungles…
— Yeahoo! Walk like a Magician!…

— I think we should put back this funny UV lamp back to the tanning room, whady’a reckon Sha?
— Aye Mavis… Good thing those bloody magpies didn’t rip the metallic cap off it, doesn’t look like it’s well fixed…
— Better do that now before it’s all broken…
— Let’s go girls!

It had been more than a week now that Claude had broken loose from one captivity to fall into another.
Not that this gang of strange shape-shifting magpie beings seemed to consider him a captive, rather an impromptu host that they felt obliged to take care of. But Claude wasn’t duped one moment.

His precedent prison on Tikfijikoo had been relatively easy to break out from, thanks to that unasked for gift of preternatural strength he had gained from the experiments he had be subjected to. Actually, had he not almost been driven mad from pain, he would have been on the loose earlier. Thank the Magpies for his recovered sanity…
Security on the island facility wasn’t the highest and most difficult he had been confronted to. They seemed to consider the relative isolation of the island and its deadly sharp coral reef encircling it their main asset in keeping their experiments clear from outside interferences.

Claude snapped back from his thoughts and gazed fixedly at a tender green sprout at his feet while humming a nursery rhyme. An effective trick.
He had to be more cautious… He knew they could read his surface thoughts…
Apparently, he could come and go as pleased him, but as he had tried to find his way back to the island facility, he had discovered that the landscape was changing each time he felt close to it. And soon enough, he was finding himself back to the hidden settlement. He knew enough to suspect his affable alien hosts of playing tricks on his mind to keep him in check. Perhaps they were even bending space around their settlement, as far as he knew…
Not intrusive, and yet not a very different treatment from the inhumane experiments. Except he had no mummy bandages this time…

Know thy foe so went the adage, and Claude was determined to know enough about his new captors to escape and complete his mission.
From what he was guessing, as they had not killed him, they probably would release him (if he was lucky) as soon as their mission would be completed —a mission which was most probably the same as his own. Snatching the crystal skull he knew was there somewhere. He could sense they were after it too.
He was wondering who had hired them to retrieve the thing. Obviously they were not from the common lot of thieves, most certainly not even from this planet, and anyone who had hired them must have been in dire need of the thing.
He had been told by the Baron that the crystals were storing ancient vast knowledge and that accessing it had been only possible since a few decades, actually since the discovery of coherent beams of light (laser). But even accessed, the information stored remained vastly incomprehensible, and deciphering it could take another millennium without appropriate knowledge of its holographic proprieties.
The Baron had told humanity was like a child being given a box of books on relativity… And even the mad transvestite doctor was only toying with the tip of an immense iceberg.

Those Magpies were far more advanced, Claude could see it clearly, and he wondered how he could outdo them, if that was possible. Quite frankly he didn’t know why they had not yet retrieved it. Perhaps they were having trouble locating it too…
That would mean he still had a head start, however short.

A faint barking sound seemed to echo in his head… It was apparently coming from… the gnarled trunk of an old majestic tree… Whispers seemed to come from it too, like a child talking with an adult, and whispers around them…
The tree seemed wide enough for him to enter into the biggest crack of its bark…
Could it be one of their secret entrances and exits? There had to be coordinate points were they could get out of this warped space… What was he risking to try?

— Arona, my dear?

The silky voice of Malvina resounded in Arona’s ear, while she was meditating on the implications of the story Vincentius had told her.

— Yes?
— May I borrow you Buckberry and your sabulmantium for a few moments?
— Oh sure, no need to ask… Though I don’t think you require my permission for Buckberry, isn’t he free as I am?
— Oh yes he is, exactly as you said, free as you are

Arona could have sworn she felt a winking energy rippling through her flesh, making some unfamiliar electrical currents crawl underneath her skin. She would have said she was thoroughly disliking it, though she wasn’t really sure if she was.

— Oh, Malvina added as if an innocent afterthought, we are moving by the way, perhaps you may find interesting to join us for the homationing ceremony. You may learn some more about your sabulmantium.
— Well, why not, answered Arona having no idea of what a homationing ceremony could be…
— Very well, please join us in the main entrance, where I am playing the harp. We will be waiting for you.
— I’ll be there in a second.

So, they were moving? Speak about implications… Arona muttered, stroking dozing Mandrake, who had feasted on too many of the moorats crawling inside the moisteous cave tunnels.
I guess I’ll take this astounding elan as a hint that I’ll be going alone she said. A yawn for all answer.
Considering it was Mandrake, that was almost a mark of distinctive affection… or was it rather of affectionate distinction?

Moving? She didn’t want to move, not yet, not like that… And to be honest, with all the stuff in that cave, she sure didn’t want to help pack all of this, be it by magic. What an impossible task.

Vincentius the nanny was taking care of Yikes, so she was confident should anything happen, he would be alright.

On the outside of the cave, the dragons were all lined up, as if waiting for some unknown signal. Leormn first in shades of teal, and his spawns, Buckberry, with the most florid and baroque hues of purple that one could imagine, and the two facetious Heckle and Jeckle in shades of emerald, looking unusually calm.

Malvina, with Leo the little marmoset on her left shoulder, was playing her harp, while Irtak was accompanying her playing a mouth harp.
Some drums had been disposed around, and quite naturally, Arona felt like beating the measure on these, getting slowly and slowly relaxed by the music and guttural sounds produced by the throat singing dragons.
She almost laughed and broke the meditating pattern when she let the memory of Sanso come into her awareness. What a shame he’d missed that, that would have fitted him better than her.

Slowly the sounds stopped, and Malvina very gracefully rose from her stool, and greeted Arona with a loving hug. Her flowing robe was a tender orchid hue with laces of thistle pink, and her silvery peach long flowing hair were giving her the aura of a princess.

— Wait, where are Georges and Salome? She said, are they already gone?
— No, they are waiting for us at the new location, she said with a smile… Now, Leormn will start the ceremony.

Arona almost said Wait again, in anticipation of what was to come, and finally decided to let it flow. The serene look of Malvina and her motherly smile was of a nurturing reassurance.

Outside, in the grassy lands, the dragons had all grown wings and were apparently ready to take off. A pile of conic shaped dirty sand was standing in front of the entrance, that Arona had never seen before.

She could feel Buckberry answer her unspoken question without even a word being uttered. It is soil from the cave, and we will use it now.

Arona watched the dragons rise in the sky full of damp gray clouds, and wondered what they were doing.
They are doing two things, Arona answered Malvina (again that disagreeable habit of reading thoughts, couldn’t help but think Arona, wishing there would be some World around where such thing wouldn’t be so easy), first they are checking what kind of creature are staying with us and following the movement, continued Malvina, ignoring the remark, and second, they are drawing with that sand from the cave a circle to enclose the area we want to move

Arona didn’t dare say the explanations were making her even fuzzier, so she nodded as if abreast of what was going on.

Popping sounds of the dragons blinking in and out to get some more dirt almost made her dizzy, and she forgot the strangest feeling she had when she thought she heard “the area we want to move”.

— Now, continued Mavina, the sabulmantium.

The dragons were now all back, and the pile of sand had disappeared.
Arona’s attention snapped back to herself, and she handed the fine object to the lady. She couldn’t help but notice the glowing eyes of Irtak, who apparently was very eager to see what would happen.
So he will move too, she thought, hope his father won’t be too sad… Why did she felt it was a separation from this place she had found she was liking…

— If you look closely, said Malvina to no one in particular, but Arona took it for herself, you will see how easy it is to come back if you feel so inclined.

At her touch, the coloured sands in the sabulmantium’s transparent dragon shell globe started to move. And all could see the cave being formed, with all the little people, dragons, glukenitches and even Leo and Mandrake… They were all here, enclosed into a circle of sand.

— Now, if you will follow me… said Malvina who traced on the ground a curvy symbol.

And very slowly, as the whole sand scenery inside the sabulmantium was turning in a round, they all felt as though they were dissolving into the air. Yet, they were all solid, and the interior of the cave was still too.
The only thing that was moving was the exterior, twirling and changing, getting out of focus, and moving erratically at the beginning, and then getting close to a focal point. Some fine tuning was occurring.

And in a snap,
The landscape
Was
In all its splendor…

— Greetings! a smiling couple at the entrance of the cave said to the people inside.

Yesterday I was taking photos of broken statues at a ceramica shop, fascinated with piles of head and arms…..just saw the sync with Jib’s photos

Funny how the robber gang were all regrouping and conspiring to push the poor policeman onto the glass while my back was turned huh; all having so much fun with this focus while I lay punctured and deflated and alone BLIMEY O’RILEY where did that come from this is a very weird focus hunting exploration I must say and not one of my favourites and how do we make this one stop and can I have my lungs and ribs back in one piece now PLEASE

Somewhere during the 23 ^rd century

“aaa AAAA AAAAA Tcheeeew !”
…
“Hiiiiii?! Oh Fracking NOOOoooo!”

The shriek had been heard in the whole facility.

Phefia Beryl was the first on the spot where Vinya Grey had been playing so exuberantly with her vocal chords.

— Vinnie? Are you alright?… What just happened?
— Oh, Pheffy… I think I made an awful blunder…
— What do you mean?
— You know, my last experiment?
— The g…
— Yes!
— What?!
— They poofed away…
— Away?… You mean, all of them? Oh bugger…

A few minutes later, Vinya and Phefia were around a white table sucking on straws picked into white and red polystyrenoid balls.

— Vinnie, you look terrible… That last geomagnetic storm had not done very good on your DNA I’m afraid.
— And the worse is that each time I sneeze, I blow up wormholes… I thought it would go better very quickly, but last one was big and lasted long enough to let the whole experimental herd wander off in another time/space and/or dimension…
— Yeah, that’s pretty bad… But wherever they went, they probably will die very soon… Imagine… With their stiff legs anytime they see something frightening, I guess a mere mapgie could easily have them for dinner…
— Such a pity… I was close to doing something great with them… When we discovered these fossilized blue spiders, I knew it was the first step.
— Bwah, this rehydrated frogrog is the grossest thing I’ve ever drunk… But yeah you’re right, the first results were very promising. The spiders venom could provoke very random and deep mutations.
— And all we needed was a little more control on the direction of the mutations.
— Anyway they’re just goats… You possibly can’t have breached a cosmic law with a handful of GOATS…
— Hope so Pheffy, hope so…

San Demangelo, 1848

Elroy was laughing… Hey Joe, Twi! he shouted A letter from Uncle Ernie!

— Uncle Ernie? How’s the old bat doin’? asked Twilight
— He’s sending his greetings for the new year, and babbling about last dead people in the neighborhood. But there’s something funny. He’s saying that he’d just acquired some funny goats. Like popped in, out of nowhere. At first he’d thought of a joke, but apparently no one’s been claiming them. He’d thought them dead, they were a dozen laying stiff on the ground, but when they started to wake up, they went down again like broken dolls. Apparently the magpies on top of the tree had been scaring them. Ahaha… Where does he get such strange stories…
— Well, magpies are scarey, Twilight said meaningfully, with a side glance at Joe…
— Whatever… At least he’d been giving us a good laugh. He’s saying he’s gonna breed the horny beasts, and start a Fainting Goat Fair (or FGF) in Marshall County. Perhaps we could get there next Thanksgiving…
— Depends when the Freak Show’s coming to town, mused Twilight, I hope to see them soon…

I just love the image of all the broken plates and water stuff! What fun! I nearly choked to death once at a party, and nobody thought it was as serious as I knew it was. I was trying to demonstrate the Heimlich manouvre whilst dying; nobody knew what to do. Actually I think I have hundreds of dead probable selves!

Points Jib for following your intuition and bugger the plates!

— The legend of Mævel — (Part VII)

Today was the Day of the Forgotten. Mævel had slept well, nestled into the soft and warm depth of her dreams, her head resting on the short blue fur of the fox.
In sharp contrast with the lovely night, she awoke strangely irritated. Even the birds songs were like noise to her ears, and every sound of the forest she heard with acute intensity and a sense of being submerged by many sensory inputs.
Hopefully, the blue fox voice was still very comforting, and she started to wonder how they could come across a Forgotten One in need.

— I think I know where we can find some Forgotten One in need.
— Where? asked Mævel

The fox paused, then answered her question:
— Near your human parents’ home.

Mævel was surprised. She trusted the fox, and never had really questioned him, because more than that she trusted her own feelings, but now her feelings were telling her that there was something the fox had not told her. Or had told her partially. She was silent, pondering the unseen implications.

— Mæ, I’ll try my best to answer your questions, but remember I cannot tell you everything. I can help you remember some things, but there are things that my curse does not allow me to reveal. You have to find them by your own, in order to free us…
— Free us? I thought you were the one Cursed?…
— Yes I am, and…
— How do you know my parent’s home? How much do you know about me?
— I know you since you are a baby actually. And even before…
— Before? I don’t understand a thing… I feel there are some unseen links, that I cannot decipher, yet they are so close to…
— You’re right, there are links, links that are important, and that I cannot reveal.
— Why can’t you reveal them?
— Let’s go to your human parent’s home…
— Why do you always say my human parents?

The fox blew in front of him, creating a wobbling sound into the air in the form of a ring large enough for them to go through it. And he hopped inside, disappearing in mid-air.

Mævel was perplexed, but did not hesitate. She hopped too into the watery ring in front of her and found herself falling into a void, to reemerge on a bed of dry leaves in front of her parent’s home. Blohmrik the blue fox was seated in front of her, observing a shadowy form at a distance in front of them.

— Is that the Forgotten One we will help?
— Yes.
— Why do you need me? You could help her, couldn’t you?
— She wouldn’t see me, Forgotten Ones are usually obsessed by a few people, those who they feel can remember them, and don’t usually see other people. Their perception is quite different than ours.
— Hang on a minute… Why do you think she will see me?

Mævel looked into the eyes of the fox, and she knew.

— We are linked.

It was more an affirmation than a question.
Mævel wondered who that shadowy figure was. When she focused on her, the form was getting more solid, and she could catch glimpses of how she looked like. And she was surprised. She was about her age, with long blond hair as hers.
Mævel’s voice was broken:
— My parents had told me I was about to die when I was a baby, then by a sort of miracle, I became healthy… Was that true?… I mean… Was that a gentle way of telling me that I had a twin who died or…
— No, Mæ. She is not you. She is not linked to you by blood. You can talk to her, she will listen to you.

So Mævel went to see the shadowy figure. She had stopped wandering and trying to find an opening around the house, for there were none for spirits: all openings were locked by stripes of red cloth hung onto the doors and windows.
Mævel felt the pain of the Forgotten One as she approached her.

— Who are you? she suddenly asked Mævel, raising her head at her approach.
— I am Mævel.
— Mævel… It means marvel of Maÿ… I was born in Maÿ…
— What are you doing here?
— This is my parents’ home.
— How is that possible?
— Twenty one year ago, I was taken away from them, given to Shaint Lejüs in place of a fairy princess. But Shaint Lejüs was no fool, he had sent his apprentice to spy on the fairy king.
— Blohmrik?!
— Yes, Blohmrik… But Blohmrik disobeyed the Elder God, and when he saw the exchange that was about to happen, he let it happen. He wanted to protect the fairy princess from his master. Because Shaint Lejüs wanted the princess as a bride. Ahahaha, how disappointed Lejüs was when he saw that I could not perform the most basic magic spells. I was good at nothing, so he let me go wandering into his Realm. He’d just thought the half-fairy princess had inherited no magic from her father.
— How do you know all that?

— I told her, the blue fox said. I was hoping to bring her relief. But she started to look for her parents, and Lejüs discovered the truth… Because she was not looking for a fairy king. She was heading here, year after year.
— That’s the reason of your curse, is it?
— Yes. She can’t see me because I was Forgotten too, in that form of a blue fox. But as Forgotten Ones don’t forget, I didn’t forget. I couldn’t tell her, because she couldn’t see me.
— So, I am that fairy princess you are talking about… that strange idea was starting to dawn on Mævel.
— Yes. When Lejüs discovered who you were, he wasn’t interested in you any longer, because he thought your magical potential had been irremediably damaged by all those years spent in human company.

— Who are you talking to? the shadowy figure asked, bemused.
— Blohmrik, he is here. But it’s untrue, Mævel said, there is magic in me.
— Yes there is, answered the blue fox, and you can undo what has been done with it.

Mævel remembered the useless key she had manifested when she had tried to go out of her human parents’ house. She had not even looked at it closely.

— You can manifest it again Mæ, said the fox. It is with you. You are its lock.

And no sooner had Mævel thought of the big rusted key, than it appeared in her hand again. But this time the rust on it was crackled, and it started to disintegrate, and a brilliant shiny metal started to show beneath it.

Scratching what was left of the rust, Mævel started to look at the beautiful key, it was shaped as a musical note, and it had some word written on it, in an ancient language she didn’t know how to read. But she knew the sound when she ran her finger on the surface of the word.

« Araoni »

That was her. She was remembering, and everything started to change.

The wedding of the God Blohmrik, son of Mirÿnda, Goddess of Mirth and of Bälias, God of the Sparkles with Araoni, daughter of the Fairy Queen Theÿa and the Fairy King Aldurion was pronounced on a bright day of Maÿ, in a beautiful orchard in the presence of Araoni’s human parents and sisters and brothers.

Even Lejüs had been invited, even though he would have preferred to be Forgotten…

And so my story ends… said Captain Bone to Tomkin.

— And was the shadow remembered by her true parents? had asked Tomkin.
— Oh, yes she was… Of course. She just didn’t want to steal the limelight from Mævel, you see. Her parents were happy of course to find back their true daughter.
— You didn’t tell me the name of the true daughter, did you?
— No, I didn’t, said Captain Bone with a wink.