Search Results for 'dying'

When he had been hit by the blow of the watermelbombs and the furious lady he had come to rescue, Akita found himself in a strange peaceful place. He was getting bits of what was happening, but the will to resist and fight seemed vanished in a distant scene he was only distantly aware of.
He was seeing Kay, his spirit dog beside him, beckoning him to another place of white luminous and warm peacefulness.

“Am I dying” he asked, feeling the answer to the question wasn’t very important.
“Don’t be silly” the dog said mentally “Just let go for a moment, it’ll make things easier for you to get out of this place to another one you’d prefer”
“I’m not sure going anywhere is so important, being here reminds me of something long forgotten”
“Yes, you know this place, you’re drawing to you some memories of others of your focuses, explorers from your time and also ancient dwellers, in a very very distant past. These living memories will help you.”
“You were there too, configured differently but I remember you from there”
“Yes” the dog nodded “you had a pack of dogs in one of these explorer focuses. I was the alpha one, see…”

Some scenes moved in the white foam sprinkled with diamond dust like he was seeing through openings in a crystal cave. All was so clear it was elating.

“But we’re never going to get out of this place, not without a boat, a plane, not without a compass… and not without a brain!” he was being drawn back to where his body was, wrapped in the warm snet, jumping on the back of the snow scooter. “These women will lead us to a sure death, and pretty fast!”
“Just relax, even if they don’t give that impression, they know what they are doing. They focus on what they want, and they trust. They can’t see the dead-ends you are seeing. Sometimes you get caught up in those other memories of yours. You’ve read adventures of Antarctica explorers, most of them were drama, but it doesn’t have to be the same broken record now, you’re going to love that time if you choose to…”
“They’re so focused on themselves it’s hard to believe you. They wouldn’t see a leopard seal as a threat even if it was at their throats!”
“But they wouldn’t even draw the predator to them in the first place.” Kay was saying warmly “Have a little faith in them, there is a surprise coming along that’ll show you beyond a shred of doubt that their allowing for miracles is fairly titanic.”
“Titanic, yes… Now tell me I shouldn’t worry with all those icebergs!”
“Indeed” Kay said with a hint of mischief in its ethereal voice “Now, let’s wake up and have some fun!”

Fabella had just entered the room. She was chatting noisily, as if someone would answer to her. The sound of her footsteps was playing strange ripples on the wooden floor which were mesmerizing to look at.

“Years ago, I’d have felt obliged to answer her” she was thinking, as she was hovering over her body looking at the freckled nurse.
“I’d felt obliged by some nonsensical politeness to give her the impression that I was, somewhat, paying attention to her as a person —if not to her chatter.”
She laughed wholeheartedly.

“Oh, you’re smiling Madam, but that ain’t the whole thing, you know! Would you imagine that Miss Elena, after such an outcry would have become wiser, but no…”

The voice was continuing an endless litany of gossips.
It was obvious that the nurse wasn’t trying to get any answer, much less a conversation from the old body she was giving her daily injection to, she had found out. All the more since that body was so weak and talking was taking more energy than she was willing to give to this action. It was so much more exhilarating to play out of it.
She was proud of herself, having come to a place not only to feel accepting of that bodily condition that had left her riveted to her chair and bed at an early age, but more so, to feel grateful for it.

The first steps had been the most difficult: a whole new world so vast it was feeling as wide as a crocodile’s mouth menacing to engulf her. But like the crocodile’s mouth, it was easier to shut it close than one would think, and she had found out that she would snap back to her body each time she was distressed. Quite the opposite of what an adventurous mind like hers would endeavour to conquer. She had no care for her dying body, not with this new-found freedom.
Perhaps it was a mere springboard for her to get accustomed to death. That’s what her brother had told her once. But he was so fully soaking in religious beliefs that she didn’t know how to handle that he had merely said to her as a gift.
All that was important was the exploration, which was real to her. And it was, not only to her, but to others too.

For instance, she was now walking, still around Fabella, observing the interplay of the nurse’s energy field with the other people around her, even though Fabella had finished dealing with her minutes ago.
In fact, she knew more about Fabella than she could have learned in years of monologues with her. Things like that Ricardo wasn’t the caring guy he was pretending to be with her. But then, she didn’t know how to tell her (and if she had even the right to). She had the feeling that perhaps Ricardo and Fabella’s stories were just distractions that she had found to limit herself in the familiar of her little explorations.
There was so much more that she could do, she could feel it. There were no boundaries to it.
She could will herself to be in any place, unnoticed by most.

Perhaps she could try a “jump” to another location. Trusting that she would come back, as she always had. If if she wouldn’t… well, that could well mean an improvement after all.
What about something easy? Like some uncharted paradisaical island in the Pacific…

The confusion that Claude had made on the spiders ranks had been all that Phurt had waited for.
In her agitation she hadn’t felt the signals that the Mother had been hurt during the fight.

The only thing that obsessed Phurt now was that a way was now clear for the giant spider to go nearer the “wortex”. She could feel it, it was coming from the elder tree, the roots of which went spreading miles and miles away.
Perhaps she could subjugate that raw power, consume it wholly and become one with it.

But, as she went closer and closer, she started to feel as if she wasn’t the one eating or absorbing it, but the reverse was true. She started to struggle as she felt sucked into the wortex, crying as she felt doomed to oblivion, as old Narani had been telling them. How stupid had she been, she should have heard her. And as the Mother was now dying instead of becoming the new Mother, she was now about to die with her.
But now was too late for laments. She had to embrace her destiny, and if it meant to die, she would, with pride.

They all had felt it simultaneously. Armelle and the Snoot on the borgulm tree, Yuki and Rafaela, waiting with Anita near the perimeter made by the spiders, and Akayli the werelynx, carrying the mummified parents.

— What’s happening Claude asked to the owl

— One of the giant spiders went through the hole, and we’ll have to follow her said Yuki to Anita.

— The good thing is that the turmoil will keep the wortex opened a little longer Akayli thought to himselves.

Armelle, go open the way now the Snoot whispered to the owl, then poofed away in a gurgling liquid sound.

The portal has opened, we must hurry said Araili

Araili had felt something more, that he didn’t want to share yet with Akita and his spirit dog Kay. He had felt that something, or someone was trying to make its way from the wortex. However, the whole area was tightly held in a sort of quarantine by the giant spiders. Their genetic ancestral memory was aware of previous huge bleedthroughs like this one, and they had what humans would call “prophecies” amongst their kin, of such occurrences being heralds of tremendous upheavals.
Araili, who was extending far beyond this guise of a lynx that he had taken now, smiled when he thought of how some of his earthly medieval focuses would have been similarly frightened by natural events like eclipses.

It did not take long to them to find Anita’s parents. They were right at the spot that the big arachnid had just left, wrapped in silky spider bandages with little skin left to breathe.

— They seem alive. checked Akita. Heavily sedated, but alive… Now, we’ll have to get them out of here quick.
— I think I have an idea smiled Araili.

Claude had finally came out of what he thought was just a strange tree, but then, his preternatural senses where telling him something was wrong. This place looked different. No, this place felt different.
And smelt different too.

There were soft sounds, crawlings he could hear, very near his place. They were coming from him, but he would fight.
He jumped on a tree, and in a few vigorous movements, was perched on top of it.
He almost gapped when he saw the black circle of huge spiderly creatures around his tree.

They were staying at a distance from the wortex. But for how long… He couldn’t wait for his death.

From the top of the tree, Claude jumped unscathed. Taking a look around, he found exactly what he needed.
Breaking a few sharp bamboos poles, he started his move to the black circle in a prodigious and accelerated run.

From atop a nearby tree, Armelle was considering the whole scene. The wortex would probably last a few hours, perhaps a bit more. Anita, Rafaela and Yuki were about to be here soon, she had warned them of the spider circle, so that they would hide until she has found them a way to get through.

She had not expected someone to come out of it. That may be her way…

Phurt was coming closer and closer now. She could feel the surge of power, and the trepidation raising all the hair on her legs. She couldn’t possibly confront all of the sisters. Not yet.
She had to find a way to get past.

As if Arachneiax, Goddess of her kind had heard and answered her plea, a dying cry, confusion, and call for help came to her senses from a border of their circle. A perfect diversion…

The glowing light was showing a familiar face…

— So the boy is wavering?
— Yes. He is uncertain of the path… Does seem to have difficulty to trust his calling and take responsibilities being the owner of…
— He’ll do that. We can’t let him run away from it, nor afford the time of little vacationing. Did you secure the item?
— Yes. But you know it is worthless unless willingly handed over by the previous owner, right?
— Certainly. But I feel he’ll soon wish it back.
— I have words of cankerous corruption, endemic to where he was sent.
— Precisely.

Glasgow, Scotland, February 25 ^th 2068, Wrick Fundation

— So Cuthbert has refused?
— Yes. With his sister busy with her first-born, she can’t take on that much responsibility either.
— This is most regrettable. Lord Wrick’s will was perfectly clear though. Should none of the twins accept running his empire, all of its wealth would be used for humanitarian projects of the Fundation.

A week before, Orkney Islands

— Cuthbert, you must accept.
— Please, don’t wear yourself out Pope. Your body is weak.

Cuthbert’s face was drenched by emotion. Despite his small frame and his scrawny body, Lord Hilarion Wrick’s strong will was still present, as if etched on his face by all the years of reign. He wouldn’t take a “no” for answer, even now he was dying, just as he had never accepted it in his nearly 120 years of existence.

— Cuthbert, listen to me. All this time you and your sister have spent at the Manor, all of the time I spent with you, this was not meant for naught, you know that. I was not some old decrepit rag of an elder waiting for his death cushioned between the laughters of his great-grand children. I noticed how you and your sister handled at an early age what I have been showing to you. The books,… the mummy even. This was only a test. What I had not found in Sean, nor in his son, I found out in you and your sister. Mind you, it took me that long, but it was worth the wait, and I know how to be patient.
— You’re repeating yourself Pope, I know this story. I am very grateful for all that you did, all the knowledge I owe to you, but I can’t accept. It’s just… too much! I just want to spend these moments with you.
— You just cannot whine throughout all of your existence Cuthbert. You chose to be born here, at this moment, in that family. There is no point in refusing what you have placed on your path.
— I’m not whining! It’s just that… I just want a normal life! answered Cuthbert vehemently
— Very well then. The face on the Lord was resolute despite his writhing in pain. You will have to see how much life is nothing meant to be normal. In the meantime, I would appreciate your letting me die alone.

So you have requested audience… a deep voice, hoarse as a water’s torrent running and jumping on a river bed smothered with pebbles, asked from the darkness.

Midora was not afraid of the darkness. As best as she could explain it, it was the void of creation, where everything came from, and where all was stripped of intrinsic meaning. It was from this place that she could reach for the answers.

She knew this place, she felt memories swirling around, as uncatchable as a swarm of short-lived sparkles born from the reddish embers of a dying fire.
In this lifetime, she was only a eleven year old girl, but she was as old as this voice within her. There was a time where she was playing with that voice, a time where her being was not yet, and yet a time which was in her future.
She was pure consciousness in that dream time space, and yet, she was feeling more comfortable with physical symbols around herself. So she focused on one of the symbols that she knew would help her stabilize her vibration, and in doing so, all the small particles of golden light around her started to swirl and coalesced into a dream body.

She was in front of a cave, in a mountainous area. This body provided her a slowing down of the stream of information that came to her, and she could manipulate more efficiently the interaction with that huge presence she felt. The precipitous rocky environment was a symbol of that steadiness and slowing down and also, for her benefit of her beliefs in that acquiring such information might be a difficult task.
Now she had identified it, she could more easily dispel the obstacles on the path to the cave. The cave of course, was her symbol for reaching into her deep inner nature. And the darkness was only a fitting blank canvas for herself to project and translate the energy interactions.
All of that she knew, as it was knowledge embedded into herself that she could more easily access into this trance-like state, in her room in that location in space and time of 2112 in New Venice. And she knew that also for she was taught by her parents, Bart and Oscar, on how to access it.

The voice was inside the cave. And no sooner had she thought of it that she was finding the whole place morphing into a vast room built into the rock, in the middle of which a majestic golden dragon was slowly breathing.
She had translated the vast energy as that of a dragon, but she knew when she felt into it that it had possible variations, one of which being that of a she-phoenix, of various sizes, where sizes where symbolic of its age and wisdom.

— You may call me Naasir the dragon grinned at Midora. You are right, in a sense, you can consider yourself being born from me, though in your true form, you are equally august and splendid as I am. You will, in time, have access to that form, again. But for now, I can provide some answers to your questions. The only thing is… Are your questions up to the challenge? he added with the most benevolent smirk his wide toothed grin could convey.

Midora pondered for a moment, beholding the perfection of her translation of the energy. Each scale on the body of the dragon was a work of art. His half-closed eyes, with an amber shiny center, and teal border were equally mesmerizing.

— What is the significance of these books I have inherited from my parents?

— As you know, this place is the place were significance fades away, or radiates, depending on the direction in which you look, only to be replaced by fulfillment. Your… books hence, have no significance, I would say, for me at least. What do you want to know about them?

— They were passed from people to people, and as far as I understood, they started to be imprinted with these people’s stories, starting from my grand-parents Indy and Cuthbert. But there are still blank pages inside them, and no seeming order from one page to the other. I think that’s why my grand-parents grew tired of it.

— Continue…

— What I mean is… I feel attracted to them, and yet I don’t understand how they work…

— These… are not mere books as your ancestors understood them. In fact, they were crafted by a distant civilization, not denizens from this dimension in which you are presently focused, but travelers, with whom you can still interact by means of this device. When the “books” traveled into this dimension, they retained their initial properties and functioning, but their initial shapes were translated into something as close as you could understand so that you would allow them to appear into your reality. This knowing might help you unravel their true nature.

Another thing. Books are energy deposits, in your reality. There was a misunderstanding in that they were thought to be able to liber or to free your memory by imprinting it into the pages, but memories are alive and not separate from you. They live as you live and change them. So, the books are still being written, and that which you can read is the part of the book which is the most probable story in which you choose to insert yourself, so as to explore it. You can alter these probabilities, even if you might doubt it, but as you chose them, they are much a part of your design of your reality, that which you chose to explore. In short, a complete book means the end of your exploration, and prompts for a disengagement for you to continue other explorations, and on the contrary, a blank books means a boundless realm of probable explorations.

— Can you tell me why there are two of them?

— They are more than a couple. These ones are the only known ones that your ancestors happen to have found. Most of them have been destroyed over time in this dimension, as their possibilities were heavily cloaked. They are all linked together, as you will find out. You may gather some answers in finding Badul…

And with that, Midora was once again floating in an intermediate state hung between space and time, longing for her physical body. She woke up strangely energized…

There is a time where reality and fiction bleed into each other so much exquisitely that they soon become indiscernible one from another. Such a time is not in a distant future. The time is now.

Elizabeth started to munch on her black and white quillipooh. Her yawning had made one of the mini-goats faint and drop on the floor stiff as a board… Light as a feather, looking at the quillipooh, stiff as a board looking at the goat. Light as a feather, another look at the quillipooh, stiff as a board, look at the goat…

She wasn’t sure waking up in the middle of the night to write the tiny bits of sentences she’d heard were very useful.

Light as a father, staffed as a motherboard…, Late as a feature… stuffed as a bugger…
Eyelids becoming heavy and slowly dropping over her eyes, she was also feeling her body starting to vibrate violently… Her nerves, probably dying for a nicobeck fix.

She reached out for her bedecked beckelite cigarette holder, her eyes still half-closed, but it wasn’t here… For all matter and purposes, the table wasn’t here either…
She opened her eyes fully and almost got a shock. She was floating a feet above the floor, like cushioned in layers of air. Was she dreaming already? Wow, in any case, this… experimentation was hunky-dory!

It’d been two hexades that the Abbot Hrih Chokyam Lin’potshee had been laying in bed in poor condition.
At first, he had wanted to be as strong as he had always been towards hardships, but he’d finally admitted that quelching the pain wasn’t doing any good to him. So he had agreed to be taken care of by a young monk, and to lay in bed as long as was necessary.
He knew that he was very likely not to get out of that bed but with his body covered by a white sheet, nevertheless, the thought was still something distant. The pain in his body was making him so present to himself that the only thing that was still blatant was that he was.
More than the body, it was all his faith that was shaken. He had thought he would leave this life without mess, without pain, probably very discreetly in his sleep… But now, his head was wincing at every noise, even the nature’s sounds that once felt like music to his ears, he was eschewing them now as much as he could. His very skin was hot and couldn’t bear even the soft contact of the bedsheets.
What was the point of all of this? He had never doubted that everything had its purpose, but now, he was doubting…
He was even trying to find some reasonable reasons for what was happening, he who never trusted in reasonable reasons in the first place. Perhaps that was because of his seating under the chilly air and the warm sun in front of the Meditation Wall, reading for all of the poems that had been written by the monks who had dared to write. Perhaps he had “taken cold”, whatever that means…
“Perhaps not” the voice kept saying softly in his head.

Now, his whole succession was feeling like a moot point. After all, he was not even capable of saving himself from anything, then how could what he created make the slightest difference? These were all like an extension of his body, bound to decay and come back to Earths.

Not so many monks had dared write upon the Wall about their highest truth. A few jokesters had begun at first, helping the others to participate.
One in particular had had Hrih laugh for quite a while.

A toad is a toad
Unless kissed
Endless Bliss

Then a dozen of others had flourished upon the wall, until Aum Geong decided to write his own. He’d not wanted to go first, to allow the others to express without the burden of comparison, and also to have some more time to write something deep and thoughtful. But that profusion of nonsense between some occasional pearls of wisdom made him write his own.

Unattainable is the Truth
For in the Dust of things
All in our View is bleak

Doing Wrong we forswear
For Dust to be lifted
And Wisdom we seek

In the deed of the Elders
And the Faith in the Community
Light and Trust bespeak

All the monks had been quite impressed, but Hrih had not been entirely satisfied by it… To be honest, he even completely disagreed with it.
Now, however, stuck in this bed, the poem was playing in his head and suggesting that the Worlds were something terrible that he had not yet understood, or be willing to avoid seeing. Perhaps Aum Geong was wiser than he was.
Perhaps all that Hrih had put as foundational to his life had all been Dust…
“There is no Dust, and you know that” the voice whispered softly.

Now that he is about to die, what difference will it make anyway…
He reach out for a bowl of water, and almost let it fall, as the weight of it surprised him. He was becoming so weak… He never had been so self-conscious in many many many years.

After he had propped himself up to drink a few burning swallows of the lukewarm water, he noticed something folded on his bedside, that had been put under the bowl… Young Franiel had been the one attending him with Jog Lam, so it must have been the doing of one of them. He intuited that was Franiel.

As he read the stanzas, tears were in his eyes…

I am the driftwood
the wave carried me
I was buried in sand

I am the flower
the butterfly touched me
I fell in love

I am the raindrop
the cloud released me
I became the ocean

The Young monk had probably not dared write it on the Wall, especially after most of the monks’ vocal appreciations of Aum Geong’s poem…
“Perhaps not” the voice again spoke.
Another reason for it formed into Hrih’s mind. Franiel perhaps didn’t feel ready for such responsibilities and his role and fulfillment in this community was not form rules nor to continue it.
It was more to inspire them, and perhaps to start his own discoveries.

Hrih wrote a note behind the paper. He wanted to leave something for Franiel, for him to keep faith in his coming adventures during these coming times of change.
After a deep breath, he took another paper that was with him for already such a long time, wrote down some words, and signed it, the aura of his hand burning a glyph that was his signature in the paper. He then called for Jog Lam.

— Jog Lam, my friend…
— Elder?
— I’m dying…
— I know Elder
— Let me continue. (Jog Lam nodded)
First, will you give that paper to Young Franiel after the cremation ceremonies. (Jog Lam nodded again)
Second, I want you to relay that I have made my decision, and that Aum Geog will succeed me (Jog Lam’s surprise was noticeable in his eye). He is, to date, the most adequate successor for this monastery.
— I will do as you want.
— Thank you my friend.
— Elder…
— Farewell, my friend, I am always with you.

When Jog Lam stoically left the room, Hrih Chokyam laid down, his eyes on the ceiling. His body was so weak that all he could do was to project behind his closed eyelids and see the starry sky, even if he would have wanted something different for his death. He would have loved something like a nap in a sunlit meadow with a little singing brook.
But seeing the actual World was something even more precious to him. The barren mountains of the icy season, the clear unclouded sky. His mind was so full of energy that his body lacked.

With a deep feeling of gratitude for his body, he bid it farewell.

Malika jotted down some notes on the chat window, depicting the images as they whizzed into her mind like the pages of a multicoloured flip-book

“As she swam swiftly to regain the spot of her observation, she skimmed almost to the surface, and as she did, she saw lights. She surfaced and heard sounds that resembled the music that she and her sisters played.
They held in their hands objects that projected sounds…”

As she swam swiftly to regain the spot of her observation, she skimmed almost to the surface, and as she did, she saw lights. She surfaced and heard sounds that resembled the music that she and her sisters played.
They held in their hands objects that projected sounds, and their echoes in the waters were projecting harmonious symphonies that were carried miles across the waters.

How odd that the sounds where so similar to the ones she had always known. But they were different, rasher, suffused of a violent nature which was so alien to the world she was coming from. It all was perplexing, and almost deafening to her. Her eyes getting slowly accustomed to the light could not yet perceive that there was no longer the life she’d felt on the strange floating body, but she knew it assuredly even without seeing it.

She plunged back into the waters, to reattain the gliding peace and softness that she had been missing so much already, even though she had been out of it for barely a few moments.

Where was the life she had felt… Gone in the strange world of the surface? She knew so little of that world, that she imagined that all their creatures could swim as easily in the airs as she could do in the waters. Was there a bottom to their environment?
All of these questions were erupting and expanding in her mind, when a sudden feeling got her forthwith.

She could feel him. Sinking slowly… and she could feel his pain inside, something else that was alien to her… He was so fascinating…
She swam fleetly to where he was.
She turned in small rounds around him, following closely his descent, not daring to touch him.
So alien, yet so beautiful.

She could communicate with him, as he was in something close to a deep slumber, and allowing for that exchange to happen. It was a breach of the rules, she knew.
She had been told not to interfere with things from the surface, yet she was interfering already, and she’d always been doing it in a sense… At what point did that breach leapt from her imagination to reality? She couldn’t say…

The light was casting a yellow radiance in the blue waters. A feeling of warmth and comfort surrounding them.
He was telling her he was dying, yet he was comfortable. Time meant nothing…
She conveyed to him that she could help him, bring him back to his floating station, where he could spring back into his world… She wanted to share so many things with him…

Valparaíso, Chile, November 1997
Cillian Mc Gaughran was finding that dying was longer than he expected. Since Fidelma’s death, twenty years from now, he would have vouched pain would get him on the other side quickly. But it was as if every object his wife had touched was letting him know of her presence. Perhaps they were holding him here…
He couldn’t wait to be reunited with his dear wife. Sixty six year-old wasn’t old enough to die for many people, but it was enough for him. The world was changing too fast. He decided he had to let go of all these objects. By and by, he had released every one of them… But one.

Of all of them, this one was very dear to him. An old family artifact that was handed down in the family for as long as he could remember. It was said to have been the property of a famous dancer during the Gold rush period and was rumoured to bring good luck… Lord knows how it came into the family…
It was dear to him because he had given it to Fidelma when she was having her chemotherapy, battling the blood cancer she had been diagnosed with. It looked wonderful on her delicate features. The wig had not aged since all these years.
It would surely finish him off to release that last object.

Cillian had heard some exuberant stories of a new company named eBargey where things were auctioned on the Internet. New technology he was finding a bit hard to follow the progress though he was not ignorant of it due to his years spent as a high rank officer in the US Army.
That could be a great way to release the wig. Auction it off, and see how high and how far away it could sell… Perhaps it would find a perfect match.

Chris Bronkelhampton had always loved to cross-dress since he was a child. He was a fine collector of wigs and had many lined up in his secret closet.

He had just managed to do a risqué plastic surgery operation on a kingpin that would grant him all he had ever dreamt of. He leaned comfortably on his chair, rubbing his hands gleefully.
Something on the computer screen caught his eye. On the newly auctioned items there was something that he wouldn’t have dreamt of acquiring in his wildest dreams.