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May 10, 2008 at 7:35 am #845
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
She put down the plate of honeycomb and turned round slowly, her calm exterior belying the fear which had suddenly gripped her insides.
He had called her Agent V!
She had to stay calm, think quickly.
And why is that, Jarvis?
Jarvis, what did she know about him? He had been employed by Dr Bronkelhampton, although Veranassessee had resisted the idea vigorously. The fewer people on the island the better as far as she was concerned. But the doctor had insisted he needed someone to tend the gardens, and in the end she had decided it wasn’t worth making an issue of.
I think I might be able to answer that question. Agent Gabriele entered the kitchen. His sudden presence had almost as disconcerting effect on Veranassessee as the revelation that Jarvis knew her identity.
A little sideline of our beloved Doctor is to experiment with honeybee mutations. Isn’t that right, Jarvis? And in the process he has discovered a way to alter the chemical composition of the honeycomb. It looks and tastes like honey, but too much of it is deadly.
Veranassessee turned to Jarvis. You knew this Jarvis …. but then why leave it in the fridge … and why warn me?
Wasn’t me left it in the fridge. I saw it there earlier. I figured the Doctor left it there. Buggered if I know why. He’s an odd one that one. Getting odder by the minute too.
A loud clattering outside and they all turned.
Winds getting up quickly, said Agent Gabriele in clipped tones. Secure the hives Jarvis. God knows we don’t need mutated bees on the loose. V tell the guests to stay in their rooms and away from the windows, and then meet me in my room. I’ll deal with the Doctor.
Bloody windy here aint it. Thought I was coming to a bloody tropical paradise! Mavis was looking outside anxiously.
Oh this aint typical. The weathers been grand. We’ve been out bloody sun baking most days.
Oh we have! The sun and airs got special beauty qualities here. That Vessie told us that. Encourages us to get out and about.
Ere I know what will cheer you up. Lets get a snack from the kitchen. There’s some special ureu beauty biscuits in the pantry, and the chocolate brownies are bloody delicious. Who’d have thought chocolate had special beauty qualities eh. She’s a genius that Vassie. Oh I tell you what, I found some lovely honeycomb in the fridge this morning! Sharon licked her lips in anticipation.
Oh I’m bloody drooling here, Sha! You’re a bloody genius you are
May 8, 2008 at 11:13 am #835In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Some sort of bug may have landed on his nose, provoking one of the most astounding sneezing the twins had ever heard.
Irtak was busy scratching his nostrils while Heckle and Jeckle were trying to find out where they could possibly be, what was that reality again? It felt familiar but different.
Well, the sky was quite cloudy, and they remembered that they were in the Marshes of Doom, in a different time period than their hatch time.
Heckle stretched his long neck and sniffed the loaded damp smells.
Jeckle bent his neck, he had found something odd… could that be a dragon egg? That was quite fitting with the brown soil. It was looking like a normal stone. It wasn’t ready to hatch soon. He felt Irtak was intrigued by his discovery, though his twin was already distracted by a huge dragonfly, a blue one with golden shades.Should we bring it back with us, asked Irtak.
The puzzled look of his friend was enough… He wouldn’t be able to tell if it was there before they arrived. He wouldn’t be able to tell since when they were at this place… all his memories were blurred since they left the cave. There was no feeling or urge though, no feeling of being late. His attention gradually drifted away from the egg and they eventually decided to come back to Malvina and the travelers.
April 26, 2008 at 11:17 am #828In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
What really was Salitre’s mound? For most people around this valley, who had forgotten about the old times, it was nothing more than a rocky and steep piece of earth, barely good enough for Barbary sheep and piglets.
In fact, when you were coming from the new macadamized roads encircling the mountains, it could almost slip unnoticed. But when, like Granny Mosca, you knew the paths for having worn countless shoes walking on them, you could no longer ignore the towering presence of this place.
For her, it was a magical realm, a doorstep truly.Granny Mosca was the official owner of this place, though she preferred to think of it as being the gatekeeper.
She kept a few animals up there, and went everyday here to feed them, pacing up and down the treacherous paths despite her old age.Something you couldn’t really realize until you first reached the top of the mound was that the mound was at the center of the valley, giving an impressive view miles and miles around. In that land of mountains, it could be just another peak among others, but when you were here, you knew it wasn’t.
Granny Mosca had felt it many times, this surge of energy, almost as if there were streams flowing down the surrounding slopes, up to the top of Salitre’s mound. At special times of the year, it was like you could feel the dwellers of the past moving around… At this very spot were almond trees were now growing.Those tourists who came a few days ago where funny. Especially the blond woman, with the high-pitched laugh who had come a few times here already.
For sure Granny Mosca didn’t fear that they discover anything, as the place had knew how to shroud itself without her for ages, even before she was born. In fact, it was the contrary. She was willing to share some of the secrets to people daring enough and open-minded enough to crack some of these nuts of wisdom.
The land would tell them…That is… unless they left the bag of almonds to the dogs…
April 21, 2008 at 1:27 pm #827In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
The sun had just come back on the Andalusian mountains. After a day of frying sun on the beach, and showers of cats and dogs (especially dogs), everything was still for a moment.
It’s been a few days that Yurick and Yann had arrived at Dory and Dan’s house near Gibraltar, and they were beginning to feel like fishes in water —a little bit like smoked hot pink salmons somewhat.
Last night was full moon, and among the howling of dogs around the room, they could at times feel the presence of their friend Finn who had promised to appear as a fishnet stockings sun-glassed trenchcoated sexy spy pop-in. So far, they only had got clues as to her presence, though they got the distinct feeling she was drawing closer each passing hour.
In any case, life was different here, slower, and peaceful. The endless trail of pyramid shaped green mountains and rocky serpentine paths seemed to be each leading to a hidden network of long-lost treasures.
Only Flove knew what they would discover on their way to Salitre…April 17, 2008 at 11:42 am #1784In reply to: Synchronicity
I read this tonight on yahoo news:
Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery. Now unexpected powerful tunes have been discovered in this hum. These new findings could shed light on the source of this enigma.
seem to have been many humming synchs the last few days
April 11, 2008 at 6:42 pm #824In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Midora was perplexed. These books were like an open-ended uncharted territory. That territory was so vast and fractal-like in nature that each attempt at following a single thread seemed daunting. There were always details growing like a reckless plant from the entry points where she started her investigations. Badul seemed lost in this jungled maze.
Last time she’d tried to connect, she ended up with another focus of his, a child, vaguely related to the crystal skulls hunt.All it requires is a proper compass to navigate the thought suddenly appeared in her mind as clear as daylight, carrying with it a trail of concepts and clusters of associated ideas.
One in particular…
She’d had that book of designs she’d always loved to read when she was a child. It was full of colorful symbols which were called by the authors “tiles”. The authors associated some properties to them, and she remembered one which was about a compass…
So she had found a compass… Now, she would have to learn how to use it. The introduction of the book said:The tiles presented in this book all have different functions; they can be primarily understood as focal points which enhance specific uses of energy. […] As far as we know, they can be discovered in many situations, either objective events (e.g. something that catches your gaze in the street) or in the subjective (dreams, visions, inspirations etc.). In both cases, the recognition is instantaneous, as each tile carries a distinctive energetic signature which is the essence of its “function”, so to speak.
As such, it can be used theoretically in both situations (subjective and objective), though, as far as we have explored, subjective interaction with them seem to be the easiest and most quickly rewarding way of accessing them.Subjective interaction, yes that was child’s play, she would have said, though she could vaguely understand why people before the Shift completed had more trouble accessing it. Objective wasn’t so difficult, once you get to the idea that it’s all one, and you can easily switch from each of the attentions used to focus on them.
The only thing that doesn’t seem to change, she thought, is the numbering. Even when the events shuffle through the pages and reorder themselves, or even when the very energy of the event subtly changes, their numbers were the same. She could start with that.
She cleared her mind, envisioning the compass, then took a deep breath and asked herself a question, Where do I find Badul?
Slowly, the compass started to shift and turn, while numbers started to roll in front of her mind’s eye, and like a lottery, at each draw a number appeared, slowly revealing a number: 1-2-3-8She eagerly leafed through the books to find the reference. Well… that was more perplexing than ever, that seemed like a totally unrelated story.
But now, she was not so sure about that, as she read the entry and wondered about the fact that it seemed once again different from the first time she’d read it.And now, she marveled as a new entry started to write itself under that one. It was the first time she actually saw an entry write itself. Those she had spotted that were not here before, she just assumed they had appeared instantaneously. But not this one… and it started to link Franiel’s and Badul’s explorations…
April 11, 2008 at 4:47 pm #823In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
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?March 24, 2008 at 2:00 am #810In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Quite frankly, Midora didn’t know how and where to look for Badul. She had spent lots of time delving into the labyrinth of chapters that composed the book, at first to no avail.
Only after some familiarization with the narrative had she come to roughly understand that the two books where rewriting the pages —or even, rewiring them— so that each time she started over, it was like a similar yet different story. Most of the alternate versions did occur within the same kind of environment, or the same dimensions as the previous ones, but there were always all kinds of small hints that made her get a small hunch that it was not quite the same story she had read before that was taking place now.
She had even become quite good at tracking down these flimsy moments where she found herself wondering what felt “different”, at odds, or simply not quite at the same place. Like in her dreams, these were precious cues telling her to pay attention. More than simple cues, of course some of them where howling at her face that something required her attention. The additions made by her distant relative Dory, or later on by her step-daughter Becky were compelling cases of such occurrences. Asynchronous apparitions of mummies sometimes reminded her of stories told by one of her father and where more generally speaking of symbolic death and regeneration, but when all of these cues where as many portals the details of which she could lose herself in…Naasir had told her to find Badul. She knew Badul… Like Midora herself, Badul was a facet of the dreaming dragon who was exploring the many facets of itself in an intricate play, and it felt to her that Badul was stuck somewhere in the process and required some attention. In fact, she remembered that in all the versions of the stories that she had read about, Badul’s history was never ended. Each time, he was on his way to explore the new land he had discovered, and somehow, he just never get there.
When she was trying to get to the rest of the story, as much as she would search for it, there were only blank pages.
Perhaps it was for her to write them, like Indy did after she encountered that mummy decades ago, not necessarily to exorcise the experience, but rather to learn more about her connections.What were her own connections? She wondered.
What did happen to Badul on his way to the clandestine traveling portal of Gralm Tur? And why did it matter? Did he found something about the network, and some link to the skulls which have been an obsession for quite some time for some of the major and most intriguing characters of this inter-dimensional sopoohpera?Truth was, Badul felt a bit like an oddball to her. She didn’t know how to get close to him. Apparently, when she had read the early articles from her great-uncle Cuthbert, she had found out that he had connected quite well to the daunting character. As a matter of fact, most of his comments had helped flesh out the character, while most of the other participants in the books had been only remotely observing his deeds. However priceless these clues were, Midora knew by now that they were not absolute, and would rewrite differently if the story was asking for it. And in fact, perhaps her own addition would change whatever his fate would have been.
Midora could feel Badul differently now… a young boy, whom she is babysitting, in another life.
Bastian is baby Badul’s name and he’s a toddler, a toddler exploring an unknown world made of colourful toys.
Midora (her name’s Ada in that focus) likes to work for little Bastian’s family. The woman, his mother, looks a bit odd like Morticia Addams, or like a Cher just out of her bed, but Ada likes her. She’s busy traveling alot, and doesn’t have much time to care for the baby.Midora thinks she has read about his woman somewhere in the books…
Could it be that? Yes,… there is little doubt about it.
It seems like she’s just run into young Carla…March 9, 2008 at 12:27 pm #1911In reply to: Rafaela’s Random Ramblings
BADUL
or
the CREATIVe Act
Badul could be a fiction character.
It has its own independent entity, although it has no defined
personality.Badul is the action-space-time unit
and an harmonic fluid of generating rhythmBadul is a scale, a range,
the (one and only) scale, palette. It’s the power to choose, no
limits, no catalogues.The day I discovered Badul I was unconscious. I only knocked at a door
without knocking.
And it came to light the pure
action-creation.Maybe a
dimensión?
The consecution of acts, part of arevelation?Badul is finding, fruitful searching, the living blow.
If you know it,
you’ll recognize it.
If you recognize yourself in it,
Badul will always be on your side.~~
I had a dream last night that Arkandin told me to pay closer attention to ‘pop-in’ websites
March 6, 2008 at 9:49 pm #1728In reply to: Synchronicity
Coinciding with Finn’s dream about the story, Yurick has got a dream this morning too, about Finn’s role in the story and they were exchanging about Finn’s new role as Captain Fraggart, a spaceship commander loosely based on Peter Quincy Taggart in the movie Galaxy Quest. Finn was having great fun with this character and his explorations of timespace travels, and discoveries of funny and nonsensical alien worlds.
More objectively, Yurick and Yann were having much less fun washing some “white square soft cushions” (sofa covers) this week, and tremendous fun growing plants of all sorts. Some were already sprouted up while others were patiently following their natural slow flow.
No rush…
March 6, 2008 at 4:37 pm #1910In reply to: Rafaela’s Random Ramblings
tjmarshall (3/6/2008 12:43): Here : Wrick!!!
Wyrick’s documented interests, besides mound exploration and surveying, included geo-magnetism, anomalous boulders, river terraces, beaver dams and sorghum processing. Wyrick is an archaeologist and had access to the site, he could easily place the stone in an area of his choosing and simply “discover” it the next day.
(Newark Decalogue Stone)
February 17, 2008 at 3:22 pm #1895In reply to: Rafaela’s Random Ramblings
I had no idea that Russian mushrooms would prove to be such an interesting subject…..
Vladimir Soloukhin:
While you are sorting out the mushrooms you recall each one, where you found it, how you first saw it, how it was growing beneath this bush or that tree. Once again you experience the pleasure of each discovery, particularly if they were rare and fortunate discoveries. Once again all the images of the mushroom forest drift through your mind, all the secluded wooded spots, where you are no longer, but where the dark firs still lour and the crimson-touched aspens speak their language in low breath.
February 9, 2008 at 8:47 pm #689In 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.February 5, 2008 at 5:27 pm #681In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
New Venice, February 2034
Al had finally completed his body experiments. The results were encouraging, and would probably help understand more of some bodily processes.
Obviously he’d had some fun with them, these past few years —it was a nice way to learn more about himself, and to bring some of that knowledge to other people. Essentially, it was mostly to show them that what centuries of so-called “modern medicine” had done was to make them defiant of their own bodies. The mass creations of all these diseases not so long ago was still very much embedded into people’s imaginations. How ironic was that most of these diseases were coming from the body itself.
So, what Albert was doing in his experiments was to push the limits to show how greatly adaptive the body structure was. It was nothing different than what scientists of the last decennia were doing on laboratory rats with many uncouth cocktails of injections —except that the trigger was for the most part an internal projection, no needing great amounts of artificial adjuncts.
Becky’s sudden and impressive illnesses, shortly before her wedding had not worried him too much, because he knew that at times the body needed to adapt to new settings and environments, albeit not always physical ones.
Another thing he knew well enough for having experienced it was that distrust was the most difficult part during this adjustment process. Distrust of the body, of self and of course of others. It was a delicate subject and most of their ancestors way of tackling the subject had been to reinforce the distrust in one’s own body. Pills and antibiotics could do wonders, but they were not that innocuous when they were used as ways to tell one’s own body it was not behaving the way it was supposed to be. As far as the symptoms were sometimes elusive, their physical effects could be quite unpredictable, depending on the patient’s state of mind.That reality play they were all writing to record their various connections has always been great fun. They had been toying with the idea of great changes, new frontiers of the mind and spirit and expansion of their consciousnesses.
It had started during Becky’s infancy, were she was inspired by her step-mother and a bunch of her friends who were doing all kind of meditations and strange “imaginary” stuff. And two years ago, she had found old digital archives and had been amazed at some of the changes that had occurred during so few of the past years of her own existence, much of them mirroring these “imagined” changes.
So, she had enlisted Sam, and Al and Tina to join in that reality play, to continue the projection into that “Shift” of the mind and see how farther it would take them.But there was something that Albert had always found a bit far-fetched was Becky’s confidence in such strides in their expansion of the mind. Doubtlessly he was acknowledging that things were changing —the last discoveries in how magnetic fields affected DNA and thus the bodies had been even compelling enough to have scientists reassess their stance on how DNA and evolution of species worked. But he doubted that everything would be a perfect utopia. And pain was such an inherent and useful part of their human experience that he was not conceiving how any consciousness expansion would get rid of it.
So, back to Becky’s illnesses which were mirroring his owns, a great deal of them was also about accepting that pain not as a flaw in the way they were creating their reality, but as something real, useful as a mechanism of feed-back. Accepting it didn’t meant cherishing it and holding dearly to it, it merely meant they had to recognize it as a way of the body to bring back the diverted awareness into the body. Well, Al wasn’t sure it would always be necessary to have it, but for the moment, the species was not entirely accustomed to being present into the body. Perhaps when it learns that, pain wouldn’t be necessary…
To reassure Becky, he had reminded her of how as a child she had grown teeth, and that had been perhaps one of the weirdest most disturbing and painful experience children experience in relation to their bodies, but her parents had been telling her all along it was just growing. She just had to trust her body knew better. Or like Krustis the clown was saying, it sure won’t help a man if he notices a thumping sound in his chest to have it stop…Well, in a few days time, it would be Chinese New Year. The large Chinese population of New Venice made it a very loved holiday, and Becky and Sean had decided to wed on that day, February 19 th where they would all step into the year of the Tiger.
How funny, Al was thinking, leaning over the railing of the balcony, looking at the sunset reflecting over the waters… These funny people that Becky had known in her infancy, the original FGF, they had seen New York under waters in their meditations… And that yellow car…
They had discussed a lot about this event, and some had been disquieted by that fact, fearing some impeding catastrophe. But all in all it had been a smooth occurrence. Authorities had been aware of the issue, and though they did not yet know all the mechanisms at play, they had been preparing some measures to avoid the city being flooded.
There had been lots of debates, as most politicians were advocating of building of dams to prevent the rising sea levels to enter the city.
But the studies of Dutch experts had been the most convincing, and New York City official soon decided to follow the example of the implementation in Netherlands of moving and adapting structures, constructions of buildings and plains liable to be flooded, and even buildings and roads construction on stilts structures, which Dutch had come over time to prefer to the dams, no matter how technically efficient…
Another imagery of adapting structures with the flow…January 14, 2008 at 10:40 pm #664In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
In the creaking wooden caravan slowly moving its way on the dusty roads, Twilight was lost in deep thoughts, caressing mechanically the beautiful blond wig.
She had done it almost on an impulse, but like all impulses she’d ever had, it had always felt deeply true to her core and she had gone. Now, it felt a bit strange, and too rational doubts were creeping along like viscous bugs, and she felt like judging her behaviour over and over.
Of course, her brothers, Jo the first, and then Elroy, had been supportive, but they had always been that way. Even when their first reactions were to object to what she was doing, like dancing in the saloon, her determination was always winning them easily. She had promised to write often, and she would probably be back in a year.When the Freak Show had settled in town for a week, she had been at first almost grossed out by what was announced, and had not been her brothers to egg on her, she probably wouldn’t have been going to see them.
Pat Elson, the director of the Fabulously Great Freakus (or FGF), was a little dark-skinned man in an orange suit and top-hat, with a communicable enthusiasm and a sincere consideration for the people he called “his performers”. Very soon, rather than being repulsed by the differences, Twilight had been attracted by the way of life of these people, and was considering traveling with them as an opportunity to discover more about the world and about herself. Her inspiration to write was even tickling her fingers like an army of ants she had never felt before.
When she had said to Pat Elson that she was willing to travel and work with them, rather than laughing like he used to do, he’d taken a silent pondering moment to consider the options. Obviously Twilight wasn’t a freak herself, at least not physically freaky. But he couldn’t refuse help, as his business was growing every day. Venus, the armless woman, his best asset on the show, had been recently pregnant, giving birth to conjoined twins, and would surely appreciate two arms to give her a hand… so to speak.
So he had agreed.The babies started crying in the caravan drawing Twilight out of her reveries. Venus was sleeping nearby, still exhausted, and Zarafina, the giraffe-woman, started to groan annoyed by the noise.
Twilight hurried to cuddle the babies, checking that they were alright. All was right, they were probably only bugged by the bumps in the road. No wonder… she sighed.January 11, 2008 at 1:15 pm #653In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Mavis had not yet received any news from her friends Sharon and Gloria. She’d hoped she could have some postcard from them before she goes and join them…
Nearly two months… Two months since they had all received the exciting email from that Dr. Bronklehampton and had decided to take a leap of faith.
As a matter of fact, they had taken that leap of faith just before, and it was just a… “synchronistic confirmation that they were heading in the right direction”, that’s what old Harry had said… Or was it Joe? No, that was surely Harry.
Fred wasn’t very pleased.Bored by all the variations of dominoes and dices games at their third-age club, the three inseparable ladies had decided, in a bout of delightful unreasonableness, to embrace all that modern technology had to offer. Sharon and Gloria, being the devil-may-care as they were, got their computer first. Mavis had to convince Fred that he could make his horse-racing bets with that computer without having to go to the city, now that the last pub in the village wasn’t taking bets any longer… and even play poker! she’d said, bluffing so vehemently that she’d almost blushed in shame for fear of being wrong. But that last argument had convinced old Fred. And now, she was connected too. A second-hand computer, with a dusty old keyboard, but she’d let it soak a night in a soapy basin, and it was now shiny as a brand-new one. Except that it now kept behaving strangely…
In their club, they could boast that now they were connected all over the word, and all the old parakeets of the club had almost choked over their tea when they had heard all of what they had discovered.
Sharon had won most of the glaring bedazzlement. Wearing newly bought sunglasses, she’d said whispering like a conspirator that she had searched her name on a website and she had seen more than 7 million pages talking of her! Imagine! More than seven million people talking of her! And she had not known she was so famous… Hence the sunglasses, she’d added with a wink… there were probably a slew of paparazzi hidden somewhere to discover all that was to know about her… But you can’t fool dear ol’ Sharon Stone.
Gloria Fowles had been gathering almost 4,000 pages… But well, she had not the charismatic aura of Shah.
And Mavis Staples had got a hefty 470,000 pages!… Of course, she had not told Fred, who was already so paranoid about all of this stuff. When they had received the machine, he was convinced there were miniature cameras and transponders from the MI6 inside the PC and had spent hours disassembling and reassembling it.Very soon after they had registered for their free email address (the reseller had explained patiently that she couldn’t electrocute herself while licking the envelop), the next day to be precise, at 5:33 —that was the hour when Mavis had finished her routine dusting and breakfast preparing for Fred, and just before taking Gulp, the dog for a news reading (that was what Sha was saying “butt sniffing for dogs, is like news reading for us”), she had granted herself a little peek into the emailbox— she had seen something in the recipe folder.
She wasn’t sure why they had called that folder “meat” or “ham”… no that wasn’t “ham”… “SPAM” more like it… Anyway, in the recipes folder, she’d received her first email. She’d called eagerly Sha and Glo, and they had received it too, and had even answered it already, as they had spent the all night “surfing” as they said — which was a bit difficult for Sharon with her sunglasses in the dark.All three of them had received a free coupon for a massage and therapeutic rejuvenating treatments (and possibly some bonus organ enlargements free of charge) in Tikfijikoo Island!
Well, now Mavis was ready to go too, now that Fred had been mollified and she’d gathered the money for the trip.
In a sense, that was good she’d not received anything yet from Sha and Glo, it would allow her to imagine the wildest things!January 8, 2008 at 2:45 pm #645In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
As soon as she’d come back from her trip, Dory had planned to travel again very soon.
Of course, she had enjoyed tremendously being home, being with Dan and young Becky… yes, she had… the first day for sure…
Well… She was a born wanderer, she couldn’t do against her own nature, no need to beat herself for that, and feel guilty for leaving Dan and Becky periodically. Hopefully, Becky was very understanding, and perhaps that the fact that Dory was her stepmother made things easier for them both, without burdening their relationship with useless obligations towards one another.On the other side, many exciting destinations were on her list, and she barely knew where to start. One that had attracted her curiosity was the site of Jiroft in Iran, where the famed lost Kingdom of Aratta had been supposedly found very recently. Artifacts had been discovered on this site, predating our commonly supposed invention date of written language, which had fascinated Dory for a while, before she got lost amidst the wide spectrum of her other interests.
Well, all of this was of frenzying interest, but there were dogs and back issues…
Somehow, Dory had been struggling with lots of tensions in her back, and the more she forced herself moving, the worse the pain was. Finally beaten by herself, when no one else, friend, family or doctor could accomplish such a feat, she was stuck to a cushioned armchair for most of the day holding to her pain as to a stuck parasitic hated friend.
And then, there was the dogs.
As she was barely able to move, Dan had renounced to have her come with him and Becky to see Sabine, Becky’s mother, in Mallorca, where she had invited them for the Epiphany.
Secretly, Dory was happy to have to stay at home, and not to have to make pleasing faces to the horrid obsessive woman she could only stand a few minutes without having to go out and empty a whole pack of cigarettes to calm her down.
The only little drawback was that she had to take care of the dogs… And she was running short of dog’s food…Before leaving, Dan had left her a phone number of their new neighbours, a batty couple of Brits who had just rented the farm nearby, and with whom Dan was occasionally playing golf and lending a hand in small DIY work.
Reluctantly, Dory took the post-it and smiled at the familiar handwriting of Dan…BEATTIE & LEONORA FLETCHER : 933-157-821
She composed the number in a deliberate slow motion, which strangely felt very empowering.
— Hello! a quavering male voice answered
— Err… Mr Fletcher?
— Ms Fletcher,… herself, what can I do for you?
— I’m Dorothy Mc Leane, one of your neighbour, you probably know my…
— Oh, yes! Dorothy, may I call you Dorothy, Dan spoke of you so much that we were very eager to meet you, weren’t we Leo?A ruffling sound behind Beattie Fletcher seemed to approve.
— And is there anything we could do for you?
— Well, I’m awfully embarrassed to have to ask you, but I’m stuck at home, and my dogs don’t have much food left…
— Oh my dear! You did so very well to call us, didn’t she Leo? We’ll be at your home in a few minutes!
— But…
— Oh, no need to thank us for that, it’s all natural, after all that your delightful husband did for us! We see you in a moment…And with that the line was cut. Dory was a bit disconcerted by the strange couple, but decided to dance with what was coming to her doorstep (wishing it would not be flamenco), seeing that having placed these quaint people in her reality could not entirely be a stroke of wild madness… If only…
January 8, 2008 at 11:06 am #644In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
Back in the depths of the water, Aglaë was thinking of a way for her to move easily on the other world.
There was a legend of her people, a legend which was told to the children. It promised pain and an accursed half-life to those trying to disown their heritage, and live outside of the life-sustaining element of water.
For most of the children, such an idea was incongruous at best, and none would have thought of breaching the taboo simply to try something different and potentially lethal.
But to Aglaë, all that it meant now was that such a thing was possible.
In that legend she had been told when she was young, there was a prince, who betrayed his people, and was condemned to an exile outside of the oceans. So that he would not die an immediate and atrocious death on the dry surface, but rather suffer even more, by not being able to come back to the depths, he was given a mixture of plants to ingest. A deadly algae which grew in the cemeteries of the Holders of Dreams, on the carcasses of the Wise Ones, mixed with an herb from the lands.Aglaë did not know how and where to gather the plants… She was hesitant to do such a thing, for it would surely infuriate her father… But she was willing to do it. She would have to find a naïve ally to help her in her task, because she was seeing her half-brother Pelorus becoming suspicious and she did not want to have him discover her plans before she could realise them.
Pelorus was very close to their father, who had made him Captain of the Tritonic Guard. Though he was not having a slithery serpentine tail like her own, he was very agile and swift in the waters with his tentacles, and was very respected, as he had a reassuring presence, radiating might and power.January 5, 2008 at 2:39 pm #632In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
The movements of the marmoset were swifts and effortless. The creature was moving through space and not in the jungle. That Kay was another expression of consciousness. It was not a creature, it was not of essence. They had not recognized its nature as quickly as they could have if it wasn’t merged so intimately with that focus of Blöhmul. The little mass event of this pursuit was tremendously fun, and they were all getting closer to Anita. The aspects of the 4 essences still focused with her were still. She had just awaken from her last dream with her parents. And was telling it to Yuki and Armelle. The Lynx was sleeping on a rock outside, enjoying the warm feeling of the sun on its fur, and the Goat was busy eating the grass around the camp so no creature or human could hide and sneak around without being noticed. Armelle hooted with amusement. They all reintegrated the aspects they had put together to create that marmoset.
It reached its hand to grasp an borgulm fruit from the upper branch of the borgulm tree. The Snoot was quite fond of these juicy and intermediate fruits. They were always containing alcohol to various degrees, never the same. They were quite colorful also, many shades that you would discover only when opening them. And the Snoot liked to be surprised. The juice was coloring its liquid fur as soon as it had been absorbed. The Snoot had usually no name. They were quite solitary creatures. Expressions of different aspects of consciousness from an ancient civilization, as some would tell you. The Snoot noticed some alteration of the air. Different elements of the whole were coming… they felt quite different from what it was accustomed to. A strong curiosity motivated the Snoot which was altering his liquid fur and becoming translucent, transparent, almost invisible, and it began to focus on these strange arrangements of consciousness that were so noisy.
Kay saw the marmoset disappear just before they reached a clearing where a Lynx was sleeping and yet not sleeping, a Goat was eating the grass and esthetically shaping the clearing, and inside a hidden bubble were an Owl and a Rabbit that seemingly were listening to a little girl giggling and babbling.
January 4, 2008 at 12:47 pm #1316In reply to: Yuki’s Livrary
January 4 th, 2008
A communication about legends, to complement what Yurick had connected to during his sleep, with ties with the dimension of Alienor, and possibly counterparts within his dimension
Starry sky, eternal and boundless waft of dreams and legends…
Many if not all of the physical dimensions possess legends. Legends of their beginnings, and legends of their ends.
The language which legends speak is a language of symbols, and though many of the receivers of legends are prone to erect them as absolute and faithful accounts of historical soundness, they are much more mutable and protean than what may be commonly thought of them.
They are connections, bridges from a locus (point in time/space) drawn as a frontier between what is known of the now, in which civilizations of these worlds are thriving, and a locus which is forgotten, or beyond the commonly perceived world.
As such, they essentially represent boundaries.And of course, boundaries are only boundaries because they serve a purpose. Much like boundaries drawn on maps are not necessarily representing actual obstacles which cannot be physically crossed. These are mere perceptive frontiers, which tie in the various developments of history and societal relationships.
When the civilizations, or species, as you understand them, come close to one of these perceptive boundaries, there is an interaction with the very nature of the boundary, which is receptive to the inception of volition to cross the perceptive limitation.
And a process of reshaping and expending the borders takes place, by means of insertion of new legends.Legends, in that way of seeing things, are not necessarily old dusty accounts sung by blind bards with jovian white beards. Not quite. They are much alive. They are created and recreated in the instant where boundaries of perceptions are being tempered with. Which makes it important to notice that they are translations of much wider movements in consciousness, spanning more than the physical dimension in which they manifest.
Many of the legends that humanity is aware of are very similar accounts, throughout your globe. And they are also projected in other dimensional areas vibrationally close to your manifestations.You are currently fiddling with the legends of your ends of times, and that is the reason why at the same time, you are starting to create new legends. Legends of new beginnings.
In actuality, this is done oftentimes; each time a perceptual limit is crossed and seen beyond. The only difference here would be the unprecedented span of the process which is occurring now. The point where you are standing, prodding into the interactive frontier you have come across is not a single mere frontier, but a converging point of many of tinier, shorter ones. This also creates a singularity which makes the frontier respond with a sort of inertia. In fact, it is like a wide net of fine threads, which possess altogether a high absorbing potential for small energy bumps. Nonetheless, it will give way to a vastly expanded perception, as soon as the collective energy is focused upon, and steadily moving into the direction of pushing that protective envelop.That process never ends, and during that process, new legends are being remembered. For the lands beyond the frontiers exists when you are aware of it, which in retrospect also means, it is created, or inserted as you are prodding the frontier.
In fact, you are, as you stand before that specific nexus point, being creating new legends, in that you are evaluating the potentials that you see fluctuating as a shadow world through the layer of a soap bubble, and have them blend with legends that you know of.
Your very lives become the legends of these potential worlds, and thus is the importance of your being at that locus of transition. You indeed come at that point, as much for making it possible but more so, to experience the transition and alteration of the legendary landscape. You are the bridges between a future which you are creating as you remember it, and a past which contains the clues that will be seeds for your new discoveries.
And that is a most rewarding travel, as you will come to see… -
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