Search Results for 'child'

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.

Have you ever dreamt that you forgot to put your pants on to go to school or to go to work? How did you feel in the dream ? Ashamed ? At ease ? Were you wondering how you got there in your undies ?
Dream memories were flying in Madam Li’s head. It had been a recurring dream in her childhood and her most dreaded fear. She had always checked on twice before living her house that she had a dress or trousers long enough to hide her ankles.

Her cell phone didn’t have any battery left and she was late. She would have to find one in the street. She ran out of her apartment after having checked her outfits twice and reassured took the elevator. She had her bags with warmer clothes inside for when she’d arrive in Harbin for the ice festival. She looked nervously at her cell phone again, still no battery of course. She put it back in her handbag. Someone entered the elevator, 30 more floors to go. She gasped when she realized the man, a westerner, had no pants on. She looked away quickly. Was he not aware of the missing element in his outfit ? She decided to make as if everything was normal.

Things went worse when she got out of the elevator. There were two men and a woman waiting at the check out desk, and they had pink underwears. Apparently the first man didn’t know them and the service apartment employee behind his desk didn’t seem at all surprised by the situation. When it was her turn, he looked at her, and at her long dress. She gave him the keys and as he turned away to put them back on the wall, she noticed that he was bare legs too. Something was wrong. Was it a surge in the population ? Would she have to stay here longer ?

The blizzard mircaulously stopped as soon as the fountain erupted, and the icicles on the trees in the square twinkled, casting long blue shadows on the snow. Mari Fe and Pearl had just finished a second helping of cake, and were feeling optimistic and relaxed in the warm cafe.

Mari Fe sighed in contentment. “You know what Pearl? I’m considering retiring early. Because quite frankly, I prefer eating cake.”

“Can’t you eat cake and carry on? You’re eating cake now, and you haven’t retired yet.”

“Well I suppose that’s true enough. And shopping for flying carpets is hardly grueling labour. But all the sudden portalings, and the problem of weather, and clothes…it does get tedious. The evenly temperate global climate is a long time coming!”

“It’ll come alot quicker if we do well at our job!”

“I suppose there is that…”

“Take a look out there, Mari Fe ~ look at the weather in the square now! Sun’s shining, birds are singing, children are coming out to play…but it’s still snowing in Moscow.. Come on, let’s go and see about the carpets, and make tracks for Moscow.”

“What’s the cake like there?”

“Sweet, beautiful, as light as air, just like the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova?”

Notwithstanding the child who was asking questions to his nanny just behind them, the flight to Taipei has been rather quiet. It was a three hours flight, quite short compared to the twelve hours ones Yann had been doing lately between Paris and Shanghai. Fortunately, the seats of the Dragoneer company were big enough, which was another strange element of these Chinese planes. Instead, the French Airways’ ones had narrow seats with so little room for one’s legs. He slept for most of the trip. Awoken merely when the flight attendant brought the food. Some rice dish again.

As soon as they landed, they were welcomed by a troup of taichi dancers, resembling Tahitian dancers with their loincloth. It was hot. The weather of course, not the taichi dancers who seemed unaffected by the temperature. Their slow movements were relaxing and a bit hypnotic. It was a contrast with the rapid dance of Tahiti Yann remembered from their last trip.

A woman in a red coat and sunglasses was walking behind them, looking around suspiciously.

Falling…
Falling…
Falling…
Like an overdue meteorite that suddenly usurps the earth’s unaware atmosphere, Jennifer and her greatly interested boyfriend suddenly found themselves on the filthy ground, after the tree in which they were concealing their frivolous touches of childish passion gave in to the ground on account of an astonishing hole manifested the earth.

“Canaria,” Jennifer whispered as she dusted herself, resurrecting her fallen self from the earth. Jon had informed her that it was due to rise any moment after the great meeting of the Tw’Elves, but she wasn’t expecting it to occur so suddenly. Jon was the physical host of a channeled entity that synchronized itself with the initial dimension and the alterversity. She had first encountered this entity while wandering around in a dream, looking desperately for lucidity. It was like a vision: there was a blinding flash of purple light, and then when it fizzled, a gentle, yet booming voice manifested itself in the atmosphere and enlightened her of the shift in physical and metaphysical consciousness that was going to occur in the form of risen continents (five in total)- a shift in consciousness that would even out the blurring lines between illusion and reality.
The young, nameless one stood up, uttered an awkward cough and muttered: “What?” but Jennifer was already walking in the opposite direction, towards a large, circle rock she termed “Sepritrella”, meaning “place of silence” in the language of the Tw’Elves. “Jenni-” the young man called out hopelessly, thinking that somehow his voice would bring her back to him. Little did he know…

“I must call an emergency OOB meeting at the library,” she whispered as she placed herself upon the rock of Sepritrella and begun her meditative state. She fell into a relaxed trance, and suddenly her token colour of blue beamed itself loudly, zooming towards the Vatican Library to meet the others.

The entrances to Faerie (and indeed to other alternate realities and dimensions) had been shrouded in disbelief for several centuries, but times were changing and the fog of scepticism was dissipating, evaporating like river mist on a hot summer morning. Looking for the entrances deliberately, Blithe found, wasn’t the most efficacious method. Sat Nav alone would be unlikely to reveal them, unless the locating device was used in conjunction with impulse and intuition. Any device and method could be used effectively when combined with random impulse, even Google Earth or Google Moon. Blithe’s friend and colleage Dealea Flare was making good use of this device on her travels, using it as a personal non physical airline and space shuttle service. Dealea could get from A to B and back again in no time at all, or even from A to well beyond Z and back again in no time at all using this device in conjunction with impulse and large dose of intention and focus. Blithe had the impulse down pat but still had difficulty with the focus, which was largely a case of having too many intentions at once, most of them somewhat vague.

The more random and impulsive Blithe was, the better her investigations went, often leading her into a new and exciting exploration which may or may not be linked to the current intention. Such was the case when she went on a mundane shopping trip to the Rock of Gibber. As she sat sipping coffee at the Counterpart Cabana sidewalk cafe listening to the locals conversing in Gibberish, she noticed the extraordinary tangle of pipework on the building opposite. It reminded her of the steampunk world she had been investigating in her spare time. The text book steampunk world was intriguing to say the least, but rather grim, and tediously full of victims and fear. The inhabitants always seemed to be running away from someone. The steampunk world she was beginning to sense in Gibber was quite different in that it was a sunny cheerful alternate reality held together with a vast labyrinthine network of water pipes, scaffold, and connecting cables.

Blithe paid for her coffee and strolled off, noticing more and more scaffolding and tangles of pipes as she climbed the warren of narrow winding streets. The air was different the higher she climbed up the winding uneven steps, the sunlight was sharper and the shadows denser, and there was a crackling kind of hush as if the air was shimmering. Cables festooned the crumbling shuttered buildings like cobwebs, and centuries of layers of crackled sun faded pastel paint coated the closed doors. Open doors revealed dark passageways and alleys with bright rectangles of light glowing in the distance, and golden dry weeds sprouted from vents and windowsills casting dancing shadows on the uneven walls.

The usual signs of life were strangely absent and present at the same time; an occasional voice was heard from inside one of the houses, and there were pots of flowers growing here and there, indicating that a human hand had watered them with water from the pipe network. There was no music to be heard though, or any indication that the cable network was in use, and there were virtually no people on the streets. A lady in a brilliant blue dress who was climbing the steps from Gibber Town below paused to chat, agreeing with Blithe who remarked on the peaceful beauty of the place. The lady in blue said “Si, it’s very nice, but there are many steps, so many steps. If you are coming from below there are SO many steps!”

There was a boy watching a white dog watching an empty space on the pavement, so Blithe stopped to watch the boy watching the dog watching nothing. Eventually Blithe inquired “What is he looking at?” and the boy shrugged and continued to watch the dog watching nothing. Blithe watched for a little while, and then wandered off. A small child was giggling from inside a doorway, and a mothers voice asked what he was laughing at. The child was looking out of the door at nothing as far as Blithe could see.

As the sun climbed higher, Blithe began to descend into Gibber town, winding and weaving through the alleys, wondering how she had failed to notice this place half way up the Rock until now. She came to a crumbling wall with a doorway in it that looked out over the bay beyond the town below. This must be one of the entrances, she deduced, to this alternate world in Gibber. “Entrance”! Blithe had a revelation. “I never noticed that the word ENtrance and enTRANCE are spelled the same.” Later, back at the office, Frolic Caper-Belle said she thought it was probably a very significant clue. “I’ll file that in the Clue Box, Blithe”, she said.

{link: entrance}

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.

“Really, Godfrey, do you think it’s wise to let the children play tea parties down there? Every time I take a peek, it looks like they’re making a hell of a mess,” asked Elizabeth with a worried frown. “Just look at the mess they’re making with that cake. I dread to think what will happen when they ice it.”

“I think part of the problem” Godfrey replied wryly “Is that they iced it before it had finished rising.”

Arona kept a firm hold on Yikesy’s hand. It was strange, unfamiliar terrain they traversed, and she was taking no chances, especially now she knew that horrid Minky was after the child.

“The dream of caves in which I wander comes nightly now. Minkah has never appeared again.”

“He never did, did he?” interuppted Godfrey. “Minky I mean.”

“Oh yes he did!” replied Elizabeth, and continued to read the email from Hypatia. “ But each night I find myself lost there and each night I search for a child. So odd, so odd, as I know I will never give life to another.”

“Where is Yikesy, anyway?” asked Godfrey.

“With Minky, of course!”

Phurt knew there was something strange, her previous memory was that she was dead and now she seemed to be perfectly alive and alert.
The environment was strange, though. It was all full of little balls and she could see many headless people. Compared to them, her size was quite ridiculous and she prefered not to make her presence known for the moment. She will have time later for her projects of conquest of the world. But is what world was she?

All at her thinking, she didn’t see the creature coming and she almost died again out of fear when it began to breath in the air around. Maybe it was some kind of hoovering creature. She began to feel the vibrations as the dog (who has his head on for a change) began barking to notify his master that he has found the strangest little creature aroud. The master of the dog was a child of New Peasland and when he saw that strange little creature that he had never seen before, he called for his mother, who in turn didn’t know the little creature at all, and she asked her neighbor what it could be, but the neighbor didn’t know as well, so the went together to the mayor who in turn didn’t know what to think of it, but he was sure it had not been spotted before by a mayor of New Peasland, he would be the first, and he asked the kid to entrust him with his find and that he would tell him soon about it, thank you!

All alone in her matchbox, Phurt started to relax, the last few event had been frightening and she couldn’t do anything to escape her assailants, but the eventually let her alone, even if it was in some kind of jail.

MOUAAHAHAHAHAH, she laughed of her little spider laugh, which resembled more to a little squircking sound than to a laugh, especially in the New Peasland dimension. She had laughed because the walls of her prisons seemed quite tender and it would not demand her too much effort to get out. But for now, she was exhausted and needed some rest. It was not everyday that you found yourself alive again.

He was lying on her massage table, his nudity covered with a blue satin towel. Josephine had really soft hands and was a really good masseuse. Almondus Blondor had been waiting for so long for this massage that he wouldn’t let one bit escape his awareness; though, he was feeling as if he was inexorably slipping into the drum world, his heart was pounding, more and more present. His attention was merging with his old drum self, when he could remember clearly how it was before he came here through the portal himself.

Josephine was using the very potion she was preparing when she heard the tinkling sound… and she was unaware that her hand had taken a wrong ingredient, one of the most important ones. Even if she had known, she would have been unable to tell the consequences of the switch. Almondus could just disappear, melt, transform into a big giant dragonfly… at the moment, she was into a trance, far even from the idea that she could do such a mistake. She never did mistakes!

Bentworth Sadnick was all but confident in his new appointment by his peaster. He had never been alone at the portal before, and he feared most of all that someone would come ask a question. In his mind, it was unthinkable that someone would even dare ask to open the portal…

He was lost in his hamster wheel, too exhausted by the race to do the usual chores —sure his peaster would notice when he comes back. But what if some official came by? It would certainly be a disaster, Bentworth would be caught stammering and that would only add to his confusion. Wasn’t it hot here? So hot, maybe if he could just put his head aside for a few moments… no, it was forbidden, his peaster had repeated it thousands of times to him, and had him repeat it ten times more… though it could help, sure, release the pressure in his head. His hands reached the hook of his head-fastener and a sudden release of pressure popped into the silence, ending in a harmonious whistling sound.

Holding his head in his hands, face turned to his chest, he was unable to see the strangers coming from the distance. He sat on the first step of the stairs climbing to the portal, his head resting on his lap, looking at his belly button (his clothes were too short for him, and he was looking like a child grown too fast). Though he was the only one present and when he suddenly heard a raucous voice asking if he could make his bird sing, he feared that it was some kind of sexual offer and were his head on, it would have blushed, but it was still releasing pressure and the sudden squirck sounded like a yes.

That’s when he lost his head, he stood up briskly and his head rolled on the ground, hitting a stone in the process. His head was knocked out, and he couldn’t use it for the moment. What had his peaster told him so often: “Always do as if you know what to do! Don’t let people see you don’t know, even if you don’t… pretend that you have all the answers. You’re here the most trusted Peaslander and everybody will trust what you say.”

“Sh-show mme yu-your bi-bird!”

The Aunt and Dolores looked at each other… the others being headless it would have been pointless.
“Are you the Keeper of the Old and notwithstanding Great portal of Nibabuz.”

As he was about to say yes, another release of pressure from his unconscious head made a squirmish sound. As they were waiting, he said the word that would seal his destiny.
“Yeyes!”

That’s when Almondus, falling asleep, farted. Was it the mixture of Josephine? Was it that he hadn’t done a detox cure for centuries? Nonetheless, that had the disastrous effect of inducing Josephine in a lethargic state. She stopped massaging him and stood there still. Her spearit gone, far worse than if her head had popped out on its own.