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January 16, 2013 at 9:31 am #2982
In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t be sure…
Josephinella, the train station cleaning lady, was on night duty. And she was tired of waiting for that damned train with that irritating French accent in her ears, her lungs filled with the engines’ fine coal dust and her nostrils irritated by the pigeons’ smell.
But tonight was going to be her night, she would get drunk on fresh air, her hair whipping her face, bugs biting her eyes, while she would sing elated woohoos launched at full speed on the last commuter train left unattended by drunk Freddie. That was such a beautiful plan.“ Another Dreamliner scare… and a train crash coming your way!”
“Sounds like a transportation surge to me!” Björk replied on the internal chatting system to her African Twa colleague Kiki Razwa. Björk was not her real name though —it was just a moniker given to her because she liked eccentric costumes. Her real name was Mæja Valbjörnsdóttir,… so ‘Björk’ was better for everyone in that international team, she’d tried to convince herself.
“Doesn’t internal policy says two makes a clue, three makes a surge ?”
“Oh, who cares… For me it smells dreamception transportation surge.”
“Better that than this Mercury retrograde crap, at least that’s more fun to hunt.” Kiki’s reply came up on the screen.
Björk had come to realize that she would probably have to cover for Mari Fe who was elsewhere but at her post. The last surge being in Europe, so she was in for a trip at the taxpayers’ expense… Not so bad actually, since nothing ever happened on her faraway island.January 15, 2013 at 10:08 am #2981In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
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 ?
January 14, 2013 at 3:27 am #2967In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd?” a perplexed Lady Appleton turned to her husband (the fifth and last of them) Lord Appleton.
“Yes, I know, dear, it has been all so sudden…”
“What?”
“You mean, Ed’s death, don’t you?”
“Well, of course I do, but that’s not it…” She fidgeted the ornate golden disk at the center of the tall dark mysterious cabinet.
“What it is my dear? We can very well continue with the plan notwithstanding his unexpected demise…”
“Oh sure, that we can, so long as Cornella remains unaware of it… Last time was too close… But anyway, that wasn’t what I meant at all. You see, if Ed was really dead, one would expect he would take no time contacting us. I wonder if he’s stuck in transition, or if the surge’s energy had something to do with this improbable leave of absence…”January 11, 2013 at 6:12 am #2959In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Humans were not the only one worried by all the surges or strange events happening on Earth, or under Earth. I’m not talking about Lemurians or Atlanteans having taken refuge in the center core of the planet or anywhere else. I’m talking about a people counting more individuals than humanity could ever add up.
Ant 23532353577321 of the colony under the hill didn’t have a name. But it had been chosen for a very important purpose by the Queen. At first it wondered why it was so that such a small ant among the countless other ants would be chosen. Its little brain even began to wonder about chance and probability, but in the end when the Queen summoned it, she told Ant 23532353577321 that something happened when she expelled the 23532353577321st egg. An impulse of the Queen that she herself didn’t quite understand. And the Queen was quite intelligent because she could use the countless minds of her ants to think and to analyze and to evaluate. But an impulse, she couldn’t understand because everything she ever did was calculated and carefully thought.
Anyway, that impulse led to a change in her hormonal system at the very moment that she designed the egg. It was not a worker egg, neither was it a soldier egg, nor a prince or a princess. The Queen herself didn’t quite know what it was but she was sure Ant 23532353577321 was special and doted of unknown qualities. During the few ant years that had gone by since that moment, the Queen’s gigantic mindnetwork came to the logical conclusion that it could be a consequence of the surges. BUT, the smal spark of Ant 23532353577321’s mind, introduced the unexpected in the equation and the reflection, and the Queen wondered if Ant 23532353577321 came here for a purpose. Logically, another question followed : what purpose ?
March 16, 2012 at 5:00 am #130In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“ ‘Allo, ‘allo, what’s going on here then?” said Seargent Ted Marshall, “Those look like the crown jewels stolen from King Apil-Sin of Babylon, around about the same time his purple flowers went missing!”
“Curses!” muttered Fray, “It’s the steely-eyed and ever-vigilent Seargent Ted Marshall! What’s he doing here?” Instantly he regretted his spur-of-the-moment decision to gird his loins and enter the bun fray wearing only a frayed white loin cloth.
January 25, 2012 at 9:23 am #2746In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die…..”After Petronella’s resounding success with the remote view and the head spinning afterwards as she pondered the possibilities, she spent a couple of hours randomly roaming around the internet, noticing how many synchronicities kept popping up.
“Come be part of the adventure, and help mold the destiny of the Multiverse in the greatest story that is being lived and not told. Come participate in Chapter One, the Revealing and discover the secrets that have been only guessed at till now.
The Isle has a plan for all…
Wounds Heal, Scars Fade and Paradigms Shift,
but GLORY is FOREVER!”Even the Rosehaven team were starting a new chapter.
“The Unbound, Cadamus the Artificer, entered Rosehaven. “
Cadamus? The name sounded familiar. Could it be Toobidoo, in disguise?
March 17, 2011 at 8:32 am #2830In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
For once, Arona was completely unconcerned about continuity.
“I wonder if we could harness the power of the wind to create a flash mob to amuse and entertain me?” she suggested.
Vincentius pondered for a moment “I did once employ a hamster to power a night light, so I don’t see why not.”
link – breeze?
February 7, 2011 at 8:20 am #2827In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
Young Neb entered the vast openness that is, with a faint whooshing sound.
whoooooooosh
“Hello?” squeaked Neb in a curious fashion. Neb, wearing a curious face, drowns in the quiet of his own presence.
“Is there anybosy out there?” asked Neb in a slightly less squeaky tone than his last vocal utterance.
Neb ponders his latest mote, and questions its validity.
“Well, I am just as curious as you are, and I am not entirely sure of this reality… if you are interested in interacting with me, and perhaps answering some of my questions, we may create a fantasy worth.. well it is what it is, isn’t it?” resounded Neb with a faint puff of cigar smoke trailing up and out of his mouth.
Neb ponders, and then begins to sleep.
[link: squeaky]
November 16, 2010 at 10:53 pm #2489In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
The Strawberry Aliens entered via the portal near the effigy in Bristol Cathedral. Although they were invisible to the unshifted eye, and their actual entrance had gone entirely unnoticed, Lilac knew they had arrived, and wept.
The world had gone mad overnight.
October 13, 2010 at 6:46 pm #2724In reply to: Strings of Nines
Mandrake sighed. That trip on dragon’s back was a fast and bumpy ride. They’d landed right in the middle of the group of tourists in no time at all, and surprisingly Arona, still high on Nhum spiked tea had failed to notice much of what had just happened, let alone that her progeny was in the midst of them.
Even more surprisingly, the tourists had failed to notice their colourful, noisy and dusty landing, not to say the purple dragon itself that Vincentius had to refrain eating one of the big two-humped beasts. That dragon cloaking magic, was a hell of a powerful jinx.“Strange,” Arona said in her mild stuporous state “am I missing some events there? and… is it me, or that travel guide is a cross-dresser?”
And casting a suspicious look at Vincentius, almost blushing “and how did I enter into that hot pink bikini?”
October 13, 2010 at 8:49 am #2722In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Oh, that’s just because I was making you side-dishes for your breakfast, sweetie”, a Vincentius arms full with fresh fruits of improbable sizes and colours said as he came out of the nearby grove. “Though, I beg to differ with Mandrake, a bottle of Nhum would go great with those, especially the grogonuts.”
“Then, we can go find Yicks’.”Despite all his best efforts, Yickesy had not yet managed to escape the crutches of chatty Minky who was herding the disparaged group of tourists to weirder and weirder spots.
October 1, 2010 at 4:08 pm #2821In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
“Well, it clarifies one thing, if nothing else” Frond, the curator of the Murganian Distortium, said drily, “Cleary, this is nothing but a pack of seeds.”
Alfred, preoccupied with worrying about his overdue library book, entered the door of the Murganian Distortium by mistake, which was next door to the Murgatorium Library.
{LINK: CLARIFIED, SEED}
August 29, 2010 at 3:01 pm #2814In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
While Yuhara and Sylvestrus were exploring Second Life worlds (Frolic Caper~Belle was still on an extended leave of absence), Blithe Gambol, although she didn’t entirely realize it at the time, was exploring First Life worlds on the Coast of Light.
Blithe and her partner Winn set off for the drum festival in the late afternoon heat, with the intention of reaching the Light Coast before sundown. The strong low sun flickered on and off as it hid behind trees and hills, and the hot dry wind whipped Blithes hair into her eyes, leaving the heavy heat of the Coast of the Sun behind and tranforming it into a light bone dry atmosphere that seemed to suck the air out of Blithe’s lungs. She filled the vacuum with smoke, listening to the words of the music playing ~ must be a reason why I’m king of my castle….king of my castle…it reminded her of Dealea’s story about King Author.
When they reached Vejer de la Frontera they made a wrong turning, although they were well aware that no turning is a wrong one. The new direction took them in a circle behind the Vejer promontory, through the umbrella pines along the coast. The sky was golden yellow behind the black sillouttes on one side, with a periwinkle sea on the other, rocky pale grey outcrops blushed with pink paddling in the gently lapping waves.
As they entered the village of Canos de Meca, they slowed to crawl behind the inching cars, as tanned people in brightly coloured clothes wove in and out of the traffic, and in and out of the exotic looking bars and restaurants. Blithe remembered the Second Life worlds she had been exploring earlier that day, and wondered if Second Life came with the smells of sardines barbequeing on the beach, or a warm breeze wafting past laden with snatches of laughter and conversation. Visually, certainly, Second Life would be hard presssed to beat the visual appeal of Canos de Meca at sunset on an August evening. There were plenty of opportunities to observe the people and the hostelries, as the traffic got progressively worse until it eventually came to a standstill. The narrow lanes were lined with parked cars, and throngs of people carrying coolers made their way to the sand dunes near the lighthouse.
Eventually, after several slow drives past looking for a miraculous parking space that didn’t appear, Blithe and Winn found a restaurant in between the coastal villages that was strangely empty of people. Even Winn, who was much less inclined towards fanciful imaginings than Blithe, remarked on how surreal the place was. It could have been anywhere in Spain, so strangely ordinary was its appearance in comparison to the Moorish beach hippy style of the villages. They ordered food, and relaxed in easy silence in the oasis of calm ordinariness. Blithe wondered if the place actually existed or if she had created it out of thin air, just for a respite and a parking place, and a clean unoccupied loo. Another First Life world, perhaps, constructed in the moment to meet the current requirements of ease.
At 11:11, after another two drives through the crawling cars and crowds, Winn turned the car around and headed for home. At 12:12 they reached the Coast of the Sun, shrouded in sea mist, and at 1:00am precisely, they arrived home. Later, as Blithe lay on the bed listening to the drums playing on the music machine, she closed her eyes and saw the sunset over the Atlantic, and felt the ocean breeze of the fan. She projected her attention to the dunes of Trafalgar ~ which, incidentally, didn’t take two hours, it was instant. In another instant, she was back in her bedroom, sipping agua con gas on the rocks and chatting to Winn. Seconds later, she was in a vibrant nightclub overlooking the beach, dancing in spirit between the jostling holidaymakers being served at the bar. She imagined that one or two of them noticed her energy.
Clearly, teleporting from one place to another had its benefits. The question of parking, for example, wouldn’t arise. But Blithe wouldn’t have wanted to miss the late afternoon drive to the Coast of Light, and the golden slanting lightbeams flickering between the cork oaks making their cork shorn trunks glow red, or the ocean appearing over the crest of a hill. And if she had arrived in an instant at the location she was intending to visit, then she would never have encountered the sunset from the particular angle of the approach via the wrong turn. Variety ~ and impulse, and the opportunities of the unexpected turns ~ was the weft of weaving First Life worlds ~ or was it the warp?
link: weaving worlds
August 22, 2010 at 5:20 pm #1510In reply to: The Room of Requirements
picture code embedding:
place the image link between exclamation points :
!http://link.to/picture.jpg!
Place
p=.
at the beginning of a paragraph to center your paragraphand to link to a page from the picture, just use :
!http://picture.jpg!:http://link.to/the/page
August 22, 2010 at 5:03 pm #2810In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
Phlora was gathering sunflowers as she always did when they were at their yellowest in the midst of summer. Just before they started to wither and become a feast for the birds.
Her brothers Floywn and Hywrik were busy hunting with the family winged horse, and would be gone for the day. Maybe she’d bake a cake for when they’d return… She wondered were Phinny her sister had gone for so long. It had been almost a season she was off the green.[link:sunflower]
August 22, 2010 at 5:00 pm #2809In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
August 19, 2010 at 4:32 pm #2808In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
Yann had been in a box for quite some time, and the feeling was really not one of comfort. He wondered about the reasons for a moment but it seemed his mind was more on his new acquisitions, the bee hive and the sunflowers, they were quite busy and buzzy of course, but it was giving him a sense of warmth and of comfort he’s been lacking for so long.
He’s seen his sister the other day and she’d told him that she’d been on a revolution lately, she’d been throwing books away, something hardly possible to think of before, as books represented knowledge and were mostly revered in her family. That had made him think of his own rampages when he was young and the high respect and almost awe that he’d had about them before. But well it suddenly ended one day when he’d bought a book about biogeology… reading that book was one of the most wonderful experiences he’d had, very empowering actually. The content of the book was quite inept in itself, if you’d ask him, and he was so upset and angry that he’d bought that book that it gave him the guts to tear it apart and express those feeling of rage he’d been holding. He’d felt forced to adore books and show some respect for too long. Well that was old memories and now Yann was more in tune with what he wanted to read or not and also was more accepting of the myriad of opinions and ways of expressing them too.
He was looking for more creativity in his life and the hive was reminding him of that, a constant activity and buzzing, no question, but action… and that strong feeling of warmth and honey.
Quintin has planted some lavender too and a bush which name was like the word choice in French… very symbolic maybe, and also connected to his past. The very fact that he could allow his friend to plant that bush in their garden was a good reflection that he’s been more accepting of all the connections and that they existed and didn’t need to bear a strong influence on his actions now.
[link:buzz,bees,leaves,book]
August 13, 2010 at 10:02 pm #2693In reply to: Strings of Nines
Mandrake had been on Yikes’ trail for what seemed to be like ages, closely followed by Arona, the silly dragon and that demigod Arona seemed to have grown so fond of.
As they were walking, flying and hopping further North, they had passed the Forest of Endless Desolation, just through the Isthmus of Ghört’s Hammer where the whaling laments of the lamanatees were luring the careless travellers in pits of dark despair, only for them to sink in cores of boiling lava if they strayed too far away from the darken wizened old sticks that once had been luxuriant trees.
Mandrake would have made a meal of the dreaded lamanatees, but Arona had thought safer for them to plug their ears with candle wax and invoke their Mother guidance to help in their quest to find the lost boy. Little had she thought of the pain it would be to scrap it off his catly ears without turning wax into furballs, and his ears into a prickly mess.
These minor troubles apart, they had gone through Arona’s homeland, the pretty Golfindely, which was only a soft consolation before they got to the far ends of it, where land, water and ice meld and become one. It was the threshold, the passageway to the homeland of the dragons, where only Sorcerers and their likes were known to have been and returned.It was there that the sabulmantium had hinted Yikes would been found.
When Minky came finally back to the High Priestess of the Pendulous and Loose Otherworldly Threading —aka Messmeerah (Winky) Maymhe—, Messmeerah was taking a dip into the Rejuvenation Pool. Her last vials of bleufrüsh blood had been all drunk, and she was starting to get all sagging after mere hours out of the icy waters.
She welcomed with a large smile, the sack Minky was carrying as a treasure, where Yikes was calmly waiting.
“Thank you Miny” she said, throwing some ashes to the minion who, in a puff, instantaneously transformed into a large redhair rat, which disappeared behind Messmee’s luscious green hair.“There, there, there, look what we got…” she finally said ominously to the boy who was considering the naked green evil fairy in front of him with a rather interested and mildly amused glance. “Don’t you have anything to say?” she said, raising an eyebrow, maybe slightly disappointed at the lack of frightened reaction.
“Oh, looks like you’re a genuine green fairy, “ he said staring at her with a smile.
August 13, 2010 at 8:12 pm #2807In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
Everything was white, from the sky to the ground and the limit between them was not even discernible. Despite the lack of visibility, he felt confident that the house was near. His small feet were making crunchy sounds, and at times, between two gushes of wind, he could almost see the fur at the top of his boots.
At a distance, some woolly beast, a yak maybe, was making a muffled sound that resounded in the landscape, and like the beast, he was feeling strong against the elements. On his left were some black shriveled trunks of some small deciduous trees, and it looked like the only life around.
This was far from the truth; even if most of it was frozen in a deep slumber, there still was a lot of life underground.
He had been chasing a few rabbits, and though he had to compete with the lynxes at that game, he had managed to get one. That was why he was feeling so strong and proud. He could feel the still warm little soft creature against his belt, dangling at each of his steps. Soon he will be home…[link:white]
August 13, 2010 at 5:07 pm #2806In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
The leaves were dry. They’d started to change to a brownish hue at the tip, then rapidly withered. They’d hoped it wouldn’t affect the whole crop, and when the first tea bush went down, they quickly uprooted it, for fear it would spread to the whole hill.
But despite their best efforts, the tea bushes went down, one by one, as though engulfed by a deadly plague. He and she were worried for their next year income, as their tea field was their main source of revenue. The highlands had always been favourable to them, and it seemed such an unlikely and truly unfair event given that the beginning of the year had brought an unexpected bounty of huge tea leaves.
What had happened? He was quite the pragmatic about it: disease, pests, too much sun, over-watering, over-pruning… nothing extending outside the visible, the measurable. She was the mystical: core beliefs, did she worry too much about that sudden wealth and made it disappear, the evil eye, greed and covetousness, celestial punishment.It never occurred to her she could reverse it as easily once she understood what it was all about.
Well, she almost started to get an inkling of that thinking about warts. How efficiently she got those growths when she was so troubled about them, and how they all disappeared when she forgot about them. How not to think about something that’s already in your head? In that case, distraction never worked; it was a rubber band that would be stretched then snapped back at the initial core issue.
Snap back at yourself.
>STOP< – She stopped. Time to read that telegram delivered to oneself.
Everything still, for a moment. Dashed.
She started to look around.
The air was still, hot and full of expectation.
Almost twinkling in potentials.
Like a providential blank page, in the middle of a heap of administrative papers full of uninteresting chatty figures.
The pages are put aside, only the blank page is here.
She can start to populate it with colours, sounds and life, anytime. Lavender maybe. Soon.
But not yet now.
She wants to breathe in the calmness, the comfort of the silence. Even the crickets seem to be far away.
She was alone, and impoverished…
She is alone, and empowered, … in power.[link:leaves]
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