Search Results for 'calling'

Corrie:

I woke up this morning with an idea in my head, and I don’t know if I was dreaming about it or if it just popped in, in the brief moments between sleep and waking. I made a connection with the topic I was doing an anthropology report on, and something I’d forgotten. No, not forgotten, it wouldn’t be true to say I’d forgotten it as it was always there at the back of my mind niggling at me that there was more to it somehow, but I hadn’t made the connection so obviously with the current project.

My research was about disconnection, and the separation agenda of the American channeling dream. At first I felt driven to explore particular areas and then piece by piece the puzzle that had nagged at me for years ~ I say years, it felt like years, but maybe it wasn’t so long ~ started to fall into place.

At first when I woke up the idea of censorship was in my head and the idea to start a petition and public awareness campaign about certain channeled texts that were withheld from public viewing, despite repeated requests for them to be public along with all the other texts. But then it occurred to me that censorship and omission wasn’t always deliberate. I mean, not a conscious choice to keep information secret, but something else. Almost like a case of some information not being seen clearly through the filters, yet for some reason dismissed as not fitting, and pushed away, almost unconsciously, and suppressed.

The text was about disconnect mainly, and there was some stuff about Nazi’s although the part about animals was the part that had stuck in my head, probably because I felt more connected to animals than Nazi’s. There were more animals growing up here than Nazi’s after all, Nazi’s was only something I’d heard about. But then it occurred to me that I’d been hearing more and more about Neo Nazi’s, in Europe mainly, forming groups and having protests. So that got me wondering about that too.

Anyway, the disconnect part: it was the reaction on the American channeling forums to the Ferguson riots that started me on this project, and Aunt Idle was full of encouragement when I started to explain to her what I was noticing. She said she had noticed similar things in her remote viewing circle online. Everyone seems to think Aunt Idle is losing her marbles, but don’t you believe it. She seems vacant and scattered but that’s only because her mind is occupied elsewhere.

The gist of this suppressed text was extreme separation, but it was the part about using words to seem enlightened to hide extreme disconnect that seemed to fit my project.

I did have to chuckle though, I wondered if I was being a racist by calling Americans disconnected as if it was a racial characteristic. More of a cultural thing, I suppose, can one be called a culturalist as if it’s a bad thing? I don’t see how you can study anthropology without a certain degree of separating into cultural groups though, even if it is shift anthropology. I’ll think about that a bit more later.

Aunt Idle:

Really, the old girl is getting worse. Calling me a tarty trollop in front of the kids, it’s a damn shame nobody thinks of the children around here except me.

“I heard Mater calling Aunty a trollop,” announced Clove ceremoniously.

“What’s a trollop when its at home?” Corrie looked up with interest.

“A tart I think. Prune! get away from the door. I might not be able to see you but I can smell your stinky feet. Go have a bath or something.”

“Ye are the stinky tarty trollops” said Prune, feigning stately dignity as she poked her head around the door. “Dunna yer spake that way to her whose feet yer not fit to touch or nothing! Ye tarty trollops,” she added for good measure.

Aunt Idle:

Those maps got me remembering all kinds of things, not that I was fretting about the note because I wasn’t, but once I’d quit flapping about the note, all kinds of things started popping into my mind.

Odd little cameo memories, more often than not a mundane scene that somehow stuck in my head. Like that cafe with the mad hatter mural, mediocre little place, and I cant even remember where it was, but that number on the mural was just wrong, somehow. It’s as clear as a bell in my memory now, but not a thing before or after it, or when it was, other than somewhere in New Zealand.

I kept getting a whistling in my left ear as I was recalling things, like when I remembered that beach on the Costa del Sol, with a timebridgers sticker in the beach bar. I can still see that Italian man walking out of the sea with an octopus.

I can still see the breeze flapping the pages of a magazine lying on a bench in Balzac’s garden in Paris, something about a red suitcase, but I can’t recall what exactly.

A motel in a truckstop village in California…the sherry was making me drowsy. I almost felt like I was there again for a moment.

Conjure up a bowler hat, he said, while you’re out today. I forgot all about it (how often I thank my lucky stars for having a bad memory, I much prefer a surprise) and saw a delightful hurdy gurdy man wearing a bowler hat (In June! I do recall it was June). My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, he was playing. I’m sure to have forgotten that, but I made a video recording.

All these locations were holes in the maps, those ripped up maps the girls brought home from the Brundy place, just after I got that note. I was beginning to see a pattern to the connecting links between the letters ripped out of the map locations, and the wording in the note (which was made of ripped out letters from place names on a map, and glued onto the paper, as anyone who is reading this will no doubt recall). The pattern in the discovery of connecting links was that the pattern is constantly changing, rendering moot the need to decipher a plot in advance of the actual discovery of spontaneous development of the shifting patterns of discovery, and deliverance of the decipherable delegation of the delighted, promptly at noon.

Mater:

The stranger arrived as I was setting off, but I didn’t have time to stop. By the looks of him he had been on the road for a while. I called out to him that if he was after a room he had better go and bang on the front door, but he might have to knock loudly because they were all asleep.

I shrugged off a vague feeling of guilt.

Not my problem; let someone else deal with it. Early to be calling though.

It wasn’t long before I was wondering dismally whether my mission would need to be aborted. It was only 7:00am, but already the heat was stifling. I was considering my various options, none of which seemed that attractive, when Bert pulled up next to me in his van.

“Where are you off to, Mater? You want a lift somewhere. Hop in.”

I hopped in. I liked Bert, although he wasn’t one for conversation. He was about my age, maybe a few years younger. Hard to tell with the men around here, they all looked like aged leather. He raised an eyebrow when I told him where I was going, but otherwise didn’t comment. We drove in comfortable silence.

“Not far now, Mater. You want to stop for a coffee? It’s still early.”

“Are you asking me on a date, Bert?”

There was an awkward moment while he worked out I was teasing him, then his face cracked into an amused smile.

“Can you cook?”

“Burnt toast is my speciality. If you are lucky I would open a can of spaghetti.”

“You’ll do then I guess, even if you are a crazy old coot out walking in this heat.”

Mater:

I feel myself moving slowly today. The thought of death and my poor little guinea pig is still nagging. It occurs to me that perhaps I am walking slowly because I don’t want to move too fast into the inevitable.

Or perhaps it is just that I did not sleep so well last night. It is so damned hot and night time offers little respite from the heat.

At least the kids have stopped fighting. I worry about them. Always shut away in their rooms on that internet thing.

I am so tired. More tired than I should be. It is not the usual aches and pains. Something feels wrong. I have made up my mind to go and visit Jiemba, the local aboriginal healer. It is a wee bit of a walk, so I will need to start early, before the heat gets up. I don’t want to ask Dido to take me. “Just go and see the doctor in town!” she will say to me. For all her alternative ways, Dido can still be pretty closed minded about some things—and she thinks I am a crazy old fool anyway.

But I think Jiemba has the gift—special healing powers—and he comes from a family of aboriginal healers. His father was a healer and his grandfather too. I went to see him once, his father, years ago. My back was bad and the doctor in town said I would need an operation. He did some chanting, calling up spirits I think, put his hand on my back and pulled out a stone. He said the stone was the sickness causing my back pain, or some such thing. I was sceptical at the time, but my back never did give me any more bother. I’ve read up on it since then and I think there is something in it all. The older I get the more I realise I don’t know it all.

Besides, there is something else I want to ask him about and I don’t know who else I can talk to. That’s the problem with getting old—one of the problems anyway—people tend to assume you are losing your marbles if you say anything out of the ordinary.

But I think the Inn is haunted.

“Just wait a minute for Mater to join us, kids. The dinner will wait a bit longer,” Aunt Idle said, while scraping the bottom of the pan, filling the kitchen with the smell of blackened burnt stew.
“But she’s late again, and we’re hungry now!” I said, and Clove chipped in “It’s fucking almost ruined now anyway.”
“Hey! less of that rude language, Clove,” Aunt Idle said, so I asked her why a word is ruder than being late. “Yeah, and why is barging in to her room ruder than being late?” my sister added. “Why haven’t you taught the old bag some manners, Aunt Idle?”
“Clove, really!”
“What old bag?” asked Mater, crashing open the door with her stick.
“You” replied Prune, “They’re calling you a rude old bag. OUCH! Clove just kicked me!”
“Aunt Idle, Mater didn’t say sorry for being late, isn’t that rude?”
“Only when you do it, now shut up and eat.”

In an effort to shake off the troubling feelings that lingered long after she awoke, Mirabelle went to find Jack to tell him about her dream. She found him hunched over his computer, frowning.
“Ah, Mirabelle, pull up a chair and let me tell you about the strange dream I had last night.”
Intrigued, Mirabelle listened, saving her story until after he had finished relating his.
“There are too many coincidences for this to not mean something ~ something important. The parallels are everywhere! Look!” he said pointing to the screen.
“Crumbling cities, structures smashed to smithereens and clouds of dust, facades of houses blown off revealing ordinary objects and furnishings in hideous juxtapositions, and crazy angles. And look here” he said, “ nothing as far as the eye can see but rubble, but one wall left standing, almost intact, with the map still hanging on the wall.”
Jack turned to Lisa with a tear in his eye, and with a shaking voice he said, “I dreamed of a city like this last night, with all the facades blown off the constructs, and all the people were faceless as if they were wearing masks, but no! not like masks, there were empty holes where the faces had been, like bottomless black holes that made me dizzy to look at them.”
“But it was just a dream Jack” replied Mirabelle, wondering if she was reassuring Jack or herself. “It doesn’t mean anything, probably that cheese you had for supper.”
“Lisa was in the dream” Jack replied. “And Ivan, and Fanella.”
Mirabelle shivered. “They’ve been gone a long time, do you think something’s happened to them?” she paused and then added, “I had a disturbing dream too. It was my parrot, HuHu. He was calling me, oh! he was calling and calling, but I couldn’t see him in the fog, as I tried to follow the sound of his squalking in the swirling mist, I’d hear him behind me ~ no matter which way I turned he was always behind me, as if I was always facing the wrong way.”
“Well” said Jack, squaring his shoulders. “Faced with these two dreams, and with the delayed return of Lisa, Ivan and Fanella, I think we should face up to it and send a search party to the island. Now, enough of that long face, Mirabelle! Run along now and find Igor, and tell him to prepare for teleporting. He can go with you.”

Dark clouds had gathered in the sky, the temperature had dropped of several degrees, making the breeze feel colder. The group had been walking for hours in the bog toward the elusive temple. With the darkness of the clouds, its mirage had begun to fade away. Greenie had said they’d better stop when the image was gone because they could become lost.

They had managed to make a wet campfire, and were trying to get warmth from the fleeting flames.
“I had a strange dream last night”, said George to Arona who was sitting next to him.
She smiled politely, not sure she wanted to hear about the winged man dreams. She considered standing up and being rude.
“I was a teenager”, he continued, wrapping himself into his wings.
Arona rolled her eyes inwardly, looking around for help. Mandrake was sleeping under her cape.
“An island appeared one day on the coast, people thought it was an ancient magic island and feared to approach it. It was visible only for a couple of days. It was such a weird dream.”
“Maybe you should write it down”, said Arona.
“Oh! Probably not, if the P’hope gets hold of it, I have the feeling it’s not in my interest.” He grinned like a kid. “Anyway, I knew in the dream that the island was still there, it was still reachable. So one day I took my father’s boat. It was a small boat, not made to go too far from the coastline. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I went into the mist, completely trusting I would find this island that everybody feared. It was rising tide, and I had to fight the current pushing me to the shore. I think it’s a dream who brought me there, a dream of a girl calling me in a garden. George”
“Is that all?” asked Arona after a moment of silence from George.
“Yes, it’s most certainly a silly dream, I’ve lived in Karmalott my entire life.”
“You’ll have to work on your dream telling, pal”, said Mandrake, “the punchline is missing.”

Nobody noticed how the flames of the fire were dancing into the green girl’s eyes.

Noticing the distinctive odour of unwashed hair, Finnley looked around cautiously. Perhaps there was an intruder hiding somewhere. Of course, Finnley reasoned, it could be that Sadie had returned early, and had brought an unsavoury visitor with her who had left the lingering, but never the less pungent aroma. It surely couldn’t be Sadie, who was usually so scrupulously clean and sweet scented. Unless Sadie was poorly and had been too unwell to bathe.

Her concern about Sadie over riding her fear of a possible intruder, Finnley checked the bedroom, calling out softly to Sadie, but there was no sign of her in there. Next she checked the bathroom, tapping gently on the closed door, and then cautiously pushing it open when she had no reply.

Eventually, after checking everywhere and finding no sign of Sadie or any indication of an intruder, Finnley decided she was being over anxious ~ Sadie must have had a guest, and they had recently left the building together. She started to clean, methodically and efficiently. But her unease escalated as the more she cleaned, the stronger the smell of unwashed hair grew, and she was unable to pinpoint where the smell originated from ~ it seemed to be moving around, following her.

With the aid of the holographic map, Irina, Mr R and little Greenie have been exploring the island.
The next day they found a crashed plane from Aeroflot, not very far from their own landing spot. It was half burried in the mud and covered in green mossy vegetation. The doors were open as an irresistible invitation to enter.

“A surprise, Mr R. I thought that this place was on your map. If I remember well, it didn’t show such an object.”
“Forgive me, madam, indeed this plane wasn’t there when I triangulated the map I showed you.”
“You mean it’s fresh ?” Irina’s voice seemed to suddenly carry some interest. “Maybe we can find some survivors”, she added, already doubting it considering all the moss on teh metallic shell.
“I’m afraid we won’t, madam. I didn’t want to bother you with that little detail until I was sure. There are objects on this island that only appear after a certain date. Have you noticed it also happens with the vegetation and the insects ?”
Irina pouted, “I prefer leaving that to your expertise.”
“Of course, madam”, said the robot, affable. “The paradox is…”
“Another paradox ? How interesting.”
“…that it doesn’t seem to include us, or that little person.”
“Any idea what the implications are ?” Irina began to wonder if there was any danger of being stuck permanently on this island.
“I have several hypothesis”, he began, “The most probable is the lost room hypothesis. We arrived there through time space displacement and are not a natural part of this environment, hence we don’t change with its natural environment or inhabitants because we are not under it’s time sequence according to the Lehmon’s law.”

Irina pouted. She looked at little greenie and thought of the implications about how their new friend arrived there. Whenre did she come from ? For her to be a bog mummy, she must have been there a long time. Or did she arrived already bogged ?
Something caught her attention about the plane and distracted her of further thinking about the subject of their continuity risk in this place. The logo of the plane looked not so oldish.
“Mr R. ? What do you think the date of the crash was ?”
“The plane was lost in 2112.”

Without further thought about safety, she entered the plane, followed first by little Greenie as she have been calling her new protegee, and by the robot who despite still talking about technicalities of accidental space time crossing theory, had turned on his speleo lights.

Interestingly enough, Irina noted the clothes on the chairs or in the alleyways, here a pair of glasses, there a necklace, all layered as if the person wearing them had been puffed away.

“Well, well, what have we here ? The light Mr R, please,” said Irina with as much excitement as a snail. He obliged her with his usual professionalism, revealing a teal blue scarf with pistachio green spirals. She took the cloth and stretched it to have a better look. It was one of those artistic kind of hippy abstract patterns connecting you to the cosmos.
“I can’t think of anybody who would buy that thing, maybe she stole it from one of those duty free shops before they took off,” she said as petulantly as a pitfall trap.
“Come here little Greenie, it’s time to make you pretty.”

Irina did not have the chance to play with dolls when she was a kid, she didn’t know if she had some psychological lack or a bad doyle dating from that unremembered period of her life. She had compensated by toying with real people, playing with their emotions and deeper needs, or what they thought they needed. She became an expert at manipulating others, which gave her her first job in insurances, and then in the secret services. But then, she dealt with adults, showing emotions, or a certain level of brain activity. She wasn’t used to children stored in bogs.

She tried to put the scarf on Greenie’s head, and to smile like she had seen people do in the movies. Although something unexpected happened. Greenie became suddenly distressed and agitated. Then, she punched Irina in the face and began to mumble incoherent things.
That child is stronger than I thought. And at the same time, she noticed a name in that gibberish. Didnt she just shout : “I frigging love you, Sadie Merrie.”

“Her brainwave is showing unusual activity”, stated Mr R. “And my sensors indicate the presence has returned, with some friends. They just appeared outside of the plane.”

Their new found green protegee finally awoke thanks to Mr R. meticulous care.
They tried to talk but to Irina’s dismay got no reaction at all. After a few hours, the greenie, as she was calling the creature, was following Irina everywhere. Which could be quite irritating when she needed intimacy.

“Have you scanned its brain, Mr R. ?” asked Irina. “It doesn’t seem quite normal.”
“I’ve been monitoring her vitals ever since we found her. She’s in perfect health, but it appears that hearing us talk does not trigger the usual areas in her brain.”
“Are you sure it’s a her ?” asked Irina dubiously, “She doesn’t have boobs”.
“She’s a younger model, madam. It appears she was quite young when she was mummified, Probably around the age of ten to twelve. Young human female usually develop bosom after puberty.”
“I know that”, she snapped. “I just don’t remember myself without boobs.”
Mr R. searched in his databank for some smart reply, but he preferred not to offer her one of the latest memory treatment.

Lisa was delighted when she woke up the next morning recalling a dream. She had just joined the new dream group despite hardly ever remembering dreams in the hopes that the pooling would improve her recall. In the dream she had been going on a trip with a few friends, and was waiting for the ferry to leave. The boat was on the beach instead of in the water, and there was thick fog but a number of people on the beach, so she went for a wander around and saw a man stretched out on his back, fully clothed, reading a book, the surfboard gently rolling in with the tide, and out with the tide, and back again. When she returned to the ferry it had turned into a building, the interior quite different from the ferry, and her friends were gone. Lisa checked her bag for tickets and camera, but they were missing, and the bag was full of plastic forks and spoons instead. Bloody Adeline! she thought. Plastic spoons and forks but no camera and no tickets!

Despite the wine and late gambling at the inn, Giacomo Casanova woke up refreshed and ready to go. In fact, if he hadn’t had his content of those two, he would not sleep well. Senator Bragadin had tried to warn him against excess, but God gave Giacomo a strong and robust constitution and an insatiable appetite for all senses matter.

Last night’s dream was disarming. He saw whales arriving at Gibraltar’s port. He had recognized the place from his numerous travels around Europe. It hadn’t really changed. Just maybe more monkeys than in his memories of the place. The whales were very colorful and they were asking for squirrels and keys in Russian. His training with the freemasons told him not to simply dismiss it as an after-party dream.

He heard someone snoring. A man, after the sound, how unusual, even if it happened once or twice before. He never attempted female conquest during a trip, he avoided easy or vulgar, and their current pace imposed a lack of commitment that wasn’t to his liking.

Father Balbi, a man in his fifties, didn’t seem to have the same luck with his constitution. The priest didn’t seem too keen on upholding his vows either. His face was red with bad wine and strong female scent might explain the dark circles around his eyes and the look of unattended tiredness. The man snorted in his sleep. It was also true they were travelling days and sometimes nights when they couldn’t earn their bedroom at gambling in the main room of the Inns. It wasn’t rare that Giacomo, despite his natural penchant, would lose everything on a turn, simply because he couldn’t stop a disastrous bet.

Just after their recent escape, Giacomo and Father Balbi didn’t want to attract too much attention with fancy clothes. Now they were far enough from Venice and their recent earnings allowed them to buy more suitable silk breeches and even wigs. His French gambling name was Jacques de Seingalt. He thought he had learned enough French during his previous visit to Paris, that he could be easily mistaken for a native. With women he learned the language of love, and with gamblers the language of the streets and when to keep his mouth shut.

Last night he not only earned their bedroom for the night, he also learned a few interesting elements. Nobles were at the Inn and they didn’t think of discretion as a virtue, nor did they refrain their bets at a good game. And Giacomo knew how to make games interesting. After a few turns at a card game, it wasn’t long before one of them told that there would be a party at Versailles the following day. Madame de Pompadour, patron of the arts, was giving a somptuous party. Looking at a few faces, it didn’t seem to be of everyone’s liking. But nobles were somewhat like cats, they didn’t care about what commoners did think.

Their first destination had been Paris, Giacomo wanted to meet with his friend de Bernis to help him find some regular income. Paris would have to wait. Versailles was calling. If Madame de Pompadour was giving a party, de Bernis would be at the Court. And that scoundrel Saint-Germain would be there too, he had a few masonic connections which could prove advantageous.

Was it a nightmare? It felt nightmarish, but why? How? What was the nightmare? Was she going mad, finally slipping, down down into the swarming fogs of fear? Making it up? A tormented sick April fool, a late fool, creeping around in the dark? She rubbed her ankles, cold as ice, achilles heels scorched from the lightning. Was she making it up? Lighting, like Victorian gas lamps, the flashing pinpoints on the grey neutral gridweave of perception, falling, falling, into the damp dripping mist. A howling beagle held tightly in the confines of a rigid box, surely she makes it up, but why? It doesn’t make sense, it’s too loose, she howls for the tight rigid box of perception, while the beagle howls to be released. Black drips, drips onto the stack of books, smelling of smoke, inky tar drip drip drip from the chimney pipe, it doesn’t make sense, there was no fire at all that night, where do the black inky drips come from? Is she making it all up, and if so, why? Behind the row of trees a voice calling, calling, the haggard face of a crone appears, offering the black and white puppy from behind the fence. Oh no, a black and white puppy, not black and white, no, she replied, no, no, averting her eyes from its innocent face. Layers of nightmares swirl in the river mist, and nothing makes sense. And it all makes sense, and she screams for the confines of the rigid box as the beagle howls for release.

meanwhile in South Africa, an alphabet slaughtering surge made landfall, scattering the inhabitants, celebrities and everyday heroes alike. Some suspected the elusive Wordblade

“Alliteration ascends the assonance of abseiling abstract aspects of anterior antiquities from ancient altars,
Bouldering down blocks of brooks that break the boring & bland borders of bondage,
And blinking through bleak and black boxes of brisk bravery.
Creeping into crops of crooked crocks with crotches of cockroaches cramming into cans of calamity, the crisp cat crackles the calling.
Dreaming of damning devils and demons dancing in droplets of dreary darkness drags the drunken diligence from the draught’s damnation,
Even the everlasting ethereal elves ebbed and eased into the effervescent eloquent estate of eternal elitism.

For the feeble and fumbling fatuous frontiers, the folly frolicked and fornicated with the familiar friend from foes’ fervent fevers;
Greater than gradient grand gestures of gestaltic granite grasses,
The gruesome grizzle grabbed the gore by the gripped grunting.
Higher than homelands of hands in horizons,
Heavens and Hells or Hades hazily hear the honing of the horses and horns-
In internal infernos of inflicting infringes of institutional insurrections Interrogations instigated imminent innate innovations.
Jacknives of jaundiced and jilted jokers jabbed at the jumping jingles of the jesting jackals that jet over jerseys of jeering,
For the Killer Krakens kelp the kites from kids who keep kaleidoscopes of kind and keen keepers.

Longer than languid lads that laze in lost latitudes the lieutenant lounged behind lines of lingering losses-
Maids mellowed around mazes of men and manners of mad moments and made for mates on mattresses on mothered matrimony.
Noisy & never-ending neckties on nests of nicked numbers never nominated the nurses that nosed the nuns for nuns’ nihilism
Beyond the Oligarchs of overt operations of obligating omnipotence ostracizing the omniscience & omitting its ownership to the omnipresent order.
Pilgrims to pentagons by people from poached & palpitated places of placards of propaganda pondered their positions in this power polarity
When quivering quills of quavering queens quelled the quarterly quests of the quaint quarrels.

Because roving rivers of raging ravines and raving reviews raced to the rest of the ripped rampant ravages and revelled at the rambling randomness
Structured subsiding and subsidized societies should string the strongholds of the supreme sultans of seeded senses.
Taking the trusty treaty the trussed toppled truants took the trickling ticking of time to the tables of trampled trees of timber,
For under the ubiquitous umbilical umbrellas of ultra-sounds from upper-level ulcers underground underworlds underestimated the union.

Vivid visions of voracious vampires of vexing vacuum vortexes vilified the vindicated vindictives from the violent vapid vanity
While wild & wily whiskers of whispered whisky whisked the wailing widows
From the wells of wanting when the wanton warriors walked on waters.
Yards of years of yearning the yesterday’s yonder yarns of yellow yolk yawned Into the youth’s yoked yams
For zigzags of zapped zebras to zip the zest in zealous zones.”

The end of Being Veronica’s season four coincided strangely with the end of time day. She had eventually become a channeler. Still full of images and sounds of time travels, space projections and probabilities, Yann decided it was time for him to go fetch some Shanghainese food for the evening. They were going to Taipei for the week end with Yurick, meeting with an artist friend who’d promised to show them around.

Outside the air was chilly, it almost had that peculiar smell Yann associated with frost. When he first decided to come to Shanghai, it was with the secret hope it would be warmer than Paris, but currently it seemed to be as cold and chilly a city. At least, Taipei would feel a bit warmer, he thought with a misty sigh, the weather forecast announced at least 23°C. What better occasion for the beginning of the new timeline.

The store was not very far from the house, you just had to turn left at the corner and it was right here after the laundry service. It was a small shop, with only tangerins, oranges, a few apples and bananas. The shopekeeper and his wife greeted him. Yann was still feeling shy with the Chinese, mostly because he couldn’t speak their language yet. He’d begun taking lessons, but there was so much to learn. He smiled and quickly resumed his focus on the fruits. Some bananas were calling him, quite ripe actually. He hesitated, took them and almost put them in a plastic bag, but he noticed they were maybe too ripe, the skin was cracked in some areas and he could see the white flesh of the fruit turning brown. He nonchalently put them back on the stall as the shopekeeper was showing him the strawberries.

Yann smiled and he couldn’t remember how to say no, so instead he laughed and waved his hand in protest. The man didn’t insist and went back to the counter. He didn’t seem to be concerned by the end of time.

“Who are you calling dreary, you rude tart?”

Who are you calling dreary, you rude tart?” asked Lavender. “It’s YOU that’s never around when I am.”