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It had been many years since Eleri left the service of Lord and Lady Teacake to make a life of her own in the woods, but she continued to visit Lady Jolly from time to time, arranging her visits to coincide with the Lord Mayor’s trips abroad. It was not that Lord Leroway wouldn’t have made her welcome ~ rather the reverse ~ in fact he found it hard to keep his hands off her. Eleri had no reciprocating feelings for the old scoundrel, but a great deal of affinity and affection for the Lady Jolly, a kindred soul despite their seemingly different stations in the life of a small rural township.

Lord Leroway Teacake had not been born a noble, nor had the Lady Jolly. Leroway had a dream one night that he had been made the Lord Mayor of Trustinghampton in the Wold, and in the dream he was asking his teenage neighbour, Jolly Farmcock, for advice on what to say to the villagers in his inauguration speech. It appeared that the pretty girl with the curious eyes was his partner in the dream, and the dream was so vivid and real that he set his sights upon her and courted her hand in marriage. Jolly was bowled over by his ardent attention, and charmed by his enthusiasm. Before long they were married and Leroway was ready to continue his dream mission.

Leroway was tall and broad shouldered, and prematurely bald in an arrestingly handsome sort of way. Despite his size, he had a way with intricate mechanisms; he had the manual dexterity of a watchmaker, and a fascination for making new devices with parts from old broken contraptions. Had it not been for the dream, he would have happily spent his life tinkering in the workshop of his parents home.

But the dream was a driving compulsion, and he and his new bride set off to find Trustinghampton in the Wold, as the feeling within him grew that the villagers were expecting him.

“Where is it?” Jolly asked.

“We will know when we find it!” replied Leroway. “Hold on to my coat tails!” he added a trifle theatrically. Jolly smiled up at him, loving his exuberance. And off they set, first deciding at the garden gate whether to turn right or left. And this is what they did at every intersection and fork in the road. They paused and waited for the pulling. Not once did they have a difference of opinion on which direction the drawing energy came from. It was clear.

They arrived at the newly populated abandoned village just as the sun was setting behind the castle ramparts. Wisps of blue smoke curled from a few chimneys, and the aroma of hot spiced food hastened their steps. A small black and white terrier trotted towards them, yapping.

“We have arrived!” Leroway announced to the little dog. “And we are quite hungry.”

The dog turned and trotted up the winding cobbled street, lined with crumbling vacant houses, looking over his shoulder as if to say “follow me”. Leroway and Jolly followed him to the door of a cottage with candle light glowing in the window.

The dog scratched on the cottage door and yapped. Creaking and scraping the tile floor, the door opened a crack, and a young woman pushed her ragged dreadlocks over her shoulder with a grimy hand, peering out.

“Ah!” she said, her face breaking into a smile. “Who are you? Well never mind, I have a feeling you are expected. Come in, come in.”

The door creaked alarmingly and juddered as it scraped the floor. Leroway scowled at the door hinges, suppressing an urge to take the door off the hinges right then and there to fix it.

“My name is Alexandria,” the woman introduced herself when the travelers had squeezed through the opening. She kissed them on both cheeks and gestured them to sit beside the fireplace. “We haven’t been here long, so please excuse the disarray.”

Noticing her guests eyes on the bubbling pot on the fire, she exclaimed, “Oh but first you must eat! It’s nothing fancy, but it is mushroom season and I must say I have never had such delicious mushrooms as the ones growing wild here. Let me take your coats ~ I say, what a gorgeous purple! ~ sit, do sit!” she said, pulling a couple of rickety chairs up to the table.

“You are too kind,” replied Jolly gratefully. “It smells divine, and we are quite hungry.”

“How many people live here?” asked Leroway.

“Twenty two now, more are arriving every day,” replied Alexandria. “Eleri and I and Lobbocks were the first to come and we sent word to the others. You see,” she sighed, “It’s really been quite a challenge down in the valleys. Many chose to stay, but some of us, well, we felt an urge to move, to find a place untouched by the lowland dramas.”

“I see,” said Leroway, although he didn’t really know what she meant by lowland dramas. He had spent his life in the hills.

He tucked into his bowl of mushroom stew. There was plenty of time to find out. He was here to stay.

The North wind was cold on his cheeks. It was almost sunset, which didn’t help with the temperature. Fox was sweeping a street covered in autumn leaves. He couldn’t help but think it was useless. The wind was scattering away the leaves as soon as he had made a small heap. He already missed the quietness of his hut.

Mr Mole must have misunderstood, he thought, he appointed me caretaker of the city streets.
Fox took a whiff of city air. The cold bit his nose,but it was not enough to numb his sense of smell. The dragon breath was still there, even though the North wind had dispersed it a bit.
I’m not sure it will be enough.

He shivered, he never liked staying outside too long in his human form. Fox looked around. When he was sure nobody was in sight. As the sun disappeared behind the city walls, he allowed his true nature to the surface, just enough to enjoy the warmth of his red fur on his body. It was such a good feeling he almost didn’t stop in time. He touched his face, a moustache had grown on his upper lip, and his ears were a tad pointy. He passed his tongue onto his teeth; the length of his canines reminded him of chicken hunt in the nearby farms.
Don’t let yourself get carried away by the memories, he reminded himself. He took a deep breath. The smells of the city were stronger now, and it was as if someone had lit a light.

With his improved hearing, he caught up a strange noise coming from a nearby garden. It was like a faint pulse that was growing louder as the light diminished. A crack as soft as the whisper of stone. And the most unexpected words.

“Bloody bird shit ! Why do they always pick my nose ?”

Fox came closer to the small garden stonewall, as stealthily as he could, to see a gnome washing his face in a small basin. He suddenly caught sight of some wavering in the air, coming from a bush. The waves gradually took the shape of a strange animal, still rather translucent. Its fur behaving as if it was immersed into water, all wavy and floating.

“Ah! You’re here Rainbow,” said the gnome.
“Mrui,” answered the creature.
“Let’s get some potion for you, then.”
“Mruiiii.”

Fox looked the two of them walk silently toward the house. He could see the rays of light getting through the spaces of the wooden shutters. The gnome climbed on his friend’s back and took a bit of that translucent quality. He said something but it sounded like gargling. Fox almost expected to see his hair beginning to float in an invisible current. But it didn’t. And then they disappeared through the wall.

Fox dropped his broom, which bounced on the stonewall before falling on the floor. He waited, half expecting to hear a voice ask about all the noise. But the place remained quiet except for the wind. He jumped over the wall and waited behind a bush, his eyes on the wall where they had entered the house.

What if they don’t come out? he thought. But he remained there, his gaze fixed. He let his fur grow more. He wanted to be comfortable in the cold night.

Corrie’s findings from elsewhere:

“Mike wasn’t as courageous as his former self, the Baron. That new name had a cowardly undertone which wasn’t as enticing to craze and bravery as “The Baron”.

The idea of the looming limbo which had swallowed the man whole, and having to care for a little girl who surely shouldn’t be out there on her own at such an early hour of the day spelt in unequivocal letters “T-R-O-U-B-B-L-E” — ah, and that he was barely literate wasn’t an improvement on the character either.

Mike didn’t want to think to much. He could remember a past, maybe even a future, and be bound by them. As well, he probably had a family, and the mere though of it would be enough to conjure up a boring wife named Tina, and six or seven… he had to stop now. Self introspection wasn’t good for him, he would get lost in it in quicker and surer ways than if he’d run into that Limbo.

“Let me tell you something… Prune?… Prune is it?”
“I stop you right there, mister, we don’t have time for the “shouldn’t be here on your own” talk, there is a man to catch, and maybe more where he hides.”

“Little girl, this is not my battle, I know a lost cause when I see one. You look exhausted, and I told my wife I would be back with her bloody croissants before she wakes up. You can’t imagine the dragon she becomes if she doesn’t get her croissants and coffee when she wakes up. My pick-up is over there, I can offer you a lift.”

Prune made a frown and a annoyed pout. At her age, she surely should know better than pout. The thought of the dragon-wife made her smile though, she sounded just like Mater when she was out of vegemite and toasts.

Prune started to have a sense of when characters appearing in her life were just plot devices conjured out of thin air. Mike had potential, but somehow had just folded back into a self-imposed routine, and had become just a part of the story background. She’d better let him go until just finds a real character. She could start by doing a stake-out next to the strange glowing building near the frontier.

“It’s OK mister, you go back to your wife, I’ll wait a little longer at the border. Something tells me this story just got started.”

“Aunt Idle was craving for sweets again. She tip toed in the kitchen, she didn’t want to hear another lecture from Mater. It only took time from her indulging in her attachments. Her new yogiguru Togurt had told the flockus group that they had to indulge more. And she was determined to do so.
The kitchen was empty. A draft of cold air brushed her neck, or was it her neck brushing against the tiny molecules of R. She cackled inwardly, which almost made her choke on her breath. That was surely a strange experience, choking on something without substance. A first for her, if you know what I mean.

The shelves were closed with simple locks. She snorted. Mater would need more than that to put a stop to Idle’s cravings. She had watched a video on Wootube recently about how to unlock a lock. She would need pins. She rummaged through her dreadlocks, she was sure she had forgotten one or two in there when she began to forge the dreads. Very practicle for smuggling things.

It took her longer than she had thought, only increasing her craving for sweets.
There was only one jar. Certainly honey. Idle took the jar and turned it to see the sticker. It was written Termite Honey, Becky’s Farm in Mater’s ornate writing. Idle opened the jar. Essence of sweetness reached her nose and made her drool. She plunged her fingers into the white thick substance.”

“But wait! What is this?

Her greedy fingers had located something unexpected; something dense and uncompromising was lurking in her precious nectar. Carefully, she explored the edges of the object with her finger tips and then tugged. The object obligingly emerged, a gooey gelatinous blob.

Dido sponged off the honey allowing it to plunk on to the table top. It did not occur to her to clean it up. Indeed, she felt a wave of defiant pleasure.

The ants will love that, although I guess Mater won’t be so thrilled. Fussy old bat.
She licked her fingers then transferred her attention back to the job at hand. After a moment of indecision whilst her slightly disordered mind flicked through various possibilities, she managed to identify the object as a small plastic package secured with tape. Excited, and her ravenous hunger cravings temporarily stilled in the thrill of the moment, she began to pick at the edges of the tape.

Cocooned Inside the plastic was a piece of paper folded multiple times. Released from its plicature, the wrinkled and dog-eared paper revealed the following type written words:

food self herself next face write water truth religious behind mince salt words soon yourself hope nature keep wrong wonder noticed.”

““What a load of rubbish!” Idle exclaimed, disappointed that it wasn’t a more poetic message. She screwed up the scrap of crumpled paper, rolled it in the honey on the table, and threw it at the ceiling. It stuck, in the same way that cooked spaghetti sticks to the ceiling when you throw it to see if it’s done. She refocused on the honey and her hunger for sweetness, and sank her fingers back into the jar.”

“The paper fell from the ceiling on to Dido’s head. She was too busy stuffing herself full of honey to notice. In fact it was days before anyone noticed.”

“The honeyed ball of words had dislodged numerous strands of dried spaghetti, which nestled amongst Aunt Idle’s dreadlocks rather attractively, with the paper ball looking like a little hair bun.”

““Oh my god …. gross!“ cackled the cautacious Cackler.”

““Right, that does it! I’m moving the whole family back to the right story!” said Aunt Idle, invigorated and emboldened with the sweet energy of the honey. “Bloody cackling nonsense!””

Aunt Idle was craving for sweets again. She tip toed in the kitchen, she didn’t want to hear another lecture from Mater. It only took time from her indulging in her attachments. Her new yogiguru Togurt had told the flockus group that they had to indulge more. And she was determined to do so.
The kitchen was empty. A draft of cold air brushed her neck, or was it her neck brushing against the tiny molecules of R. She cackled inwardly, which almost made her choke on her breath. That was surely a strange experience, choking on something without substance. A first for her, if you know what I mean.

The shelves were closed with simple locks. She snorted. Mater would need more than that to put a stop to Idle’s cravings. She had watched a video on Wootube recently about how to unlock a lock. She would need pins. She rummaged through her dreadlocks, she was sure she had forgotten one or two in there when she began to forge the dreads. Very practicle for smuggling things.

It took her longer than she had thought, only increasing her craving for sweets.
There was only one jar. Certainly honey. Idle took the jar and turned it to see the sticker. It was written Termite Honey, Becky’s Farm in Mater’s ornate writing. Idle opened the jar. Essence of sweetness reached her nose and made her drool. She plunged her fingers into the white thick substance.

The Continuing Adventures of the Three Time Traveling Maids From Versailles.

The three maids, Fanella (previously known, briefly, as Fanetta), Mirabelle, and Adeline and the three time travelling Russian stage hands, Igor Popinkin, Boris and Ivan, leave Paris in the 18th century via hot air balloon, heading for the Tower of Hercules on the Galician Coast, with Mirabelle’s parrot. Sporadically they are assisted by Pseu Dan, a cross between a sort of oversoul 8 and a future focus with cloaking abilities and other skills, who tends to be unreliable due to a fixation on building a folly of tiles in the City.
After a series of mishaps attempting to board the ghost galleon of Belen, an Amazonian shapeshifting timetravelling pink dolphin pod comes to their rescue, and they find themselves washed up on a beach near the Pillars of Hercules (Spanish side) in the year 2020 and are found by Lisa, a middle aged Englishwoman. She takes the six timetravellers back to her village, an experimental new kind of community in the orange groves not far from the beach.
Jack is Lisa’s partner, and other inhabitants of the village include Etienne and Pierre.

Mirabelle and Igor continue an on/off tempestuous affair, Mirabelle often considering Igor (somewhat unfairly) a feckless whoremongering cretin. Igor considers himself to be an average adventurous funloving young man willing to explore new opportunities.
Mirabelle, once considered to be the bossiest of the three maids, finds she has no need to control the others in the absence of the responsibilities of working long hours for others at Versaille. Initially she struggled with learning the new languages, but was easily diverted from the worry and thus learned with ease, after the unexpected trip to Portugal (looking for the stolen whale tile) with Lisa. Lisa finds herself strangely attracted to Mirabelle while under the influence of sangria.

Adeline settled into the new timeframe by pursuing her fascination with the unfamiliar multitude of coloured plastic objects, making them into sculptures. She and Boris have an easy ongoing friendship; Boris and Ivan settle into life at the village by taking an interest in car and tractor mechanics and farming, and digital photography.

Fanella was the most unsettled, yearning to return to the familiar hometimezone in Versaille. She found peace in solitude outside in natural surroundings, often practicing teleporting and projecting by the river or in the woods. She rediscovers her adventurous spirit after a series of teleport and time travelling mishaps. Her unexpected meeting with Sanso in the Great Fire of London in 1212 starts another chain of teleport and timetravel adventures, as she is now determined to reach the island in 2121 that she read about in an old book of Lisa’s called Circle of Eights and Other Stories.

books continued
dreamfarm airspace teamwatch sidelight tunnelmind surgefocus
dry appeared done, physical itself
north world turned bodies, case seemed portal

Minky suggested they continued their trip on camelephant’s back, a somewhat surprising mix between camel and elephant. She said her uncle had a special breed in a farm nearby and that she would be happy to take some news.
When Yickesy heard that, he thought that maybe they could jump on the occasion and maybe leave silently when Minky would be busy with her uncle.

Arona was too busy with her chippendale tea set and mumbled something unclear that Minky took as a ‘yes’, and Vincentius rolled his eyes, as someone had to do it at that moment.

There was no place like home, notwithstanding that home could be considered to be anywhere at all. Home in this case was Blithe’s patio one balmy September evening. Citronella candles flickered on the table, and coloured fairy lights strobed in strings along the facade of the house. A rosy glow emanated from the bedroom window and Blithe took a snapshot, noticing later the fly screen visible, overlayed onto the bedroom scene. Not only was the view of the bedroom limited by the width of the camera lens, it was also limited in the sense that the wire screen was obscuring almost half of what would have been visible if the photograph had been taken from the other side of the screen, or, with no screen at all in between the lens and the view of the room. However, despite having such a partial view of the whole, the remainder that was viewable was still identifiable as a bedroom.

Blithe wasn’t about to remove the screen however, because it was doing its job of screening, or filtering out, the unwanted insects. That wasn’t to say that she was denying the existance of those insects, or that they weren’t welcome on the other side of the screen, just that she was selectively screening the unwanted items from a particular scene. If, for example, the room was full of insects, Blithe might have been preoccupied with them, to the exclusion of whatever else she might have preferred to focus on within the bedroom. Out on the patio, however, the insects were, if not always entirely welcome, appreciated. The praying mantis and the dragonfly were welcome, and the butterflies and moths were always welcome, because Blithe had associated the energy of those insects with familiar welcome energies. The wasps, flies and ants were not translated in the same way, but were appreciated for entirely different reasons, being an aid to exploring such issues as irritation (and occasionally, pain). Blithe had to admit that despite the praying mantis and dragonfly being welcome, it would not be true to say that they were welcome in the bedroom, however.

There had been times when Blithe wished that the whole patio was enclosed in screens, but the trouble with screens was that they tended to filter out everything of a certain size, although perhaps that was more a beleif about physical screens than anything else. Was it possible to filter out flies and wasps, but allow dragnflies and butterflies? Possible surely, she thought, but perhaps not with physical wire screen devices and associated beleifs.

A few days previously Blithe had cleaned the mesh filter on her kitchen tap, unrestricting the flow. Coincidentally, her friend had also had a tap mesh restricted flow incident, and had removed the mesh filter altogether. Another friend had removed a window screen for cleaning, and had chosen not to replace it, as she was appreciating the allowance of much more light. And then another friend had mentioned a dream, of dragonflies under a screen that was covering a pool. She had lifted the screen in the dream, to allow the dragonflies to escape, and yet some of the dragonflies chose to stay under the screen.

Intrigued with the words screen and mesh, which meant the same thing in one respect, but not in others, Blithe investigated the definitions. To screen could be to filter out the unwanted, but to mesh was to weave together. But were they so different, really? A screen was also a blank place on which to project images ~ meshed and woven selectively screened and filtered images, perhaps.

{link ~ weaving}

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

Whether or not Arachne was actually better at weaving than Athena is still a mystery, or perhaps it is a moot point and no mystery at all. Weaving is by no means a solitary endeavour, as Blithe found early one summer morning. The river mist was rising and the air itself was dancing in droplets. It was hard to determine if the droplets were falling or rising, or simply milling around on the air currents. Hard green oranges (clearly oranges had been named in winter, or they would likely have been called greens) were festooned with silver threads, linking orange to orange, orange to tree and tree to wire fence, and back again. It was debatable whether or not the individual spiders were aware of the grand overall design of the early morning web links of the orange groves, just as it was equally debatable whether or not the inhabitants of the various Gibber realities were aware of the network of waterpipes that connected the other inhabitants to themselves and each other, and to the other Gibber worlds. Individuals were individuals, whether they be spiders, or Gibblets, and individuals generally speaking were focused on their own part of the tapestry (and often those of their immediate neighbours). Spider 57 on the east fence might be positioned to catch the first rays of sunshine in the mornings, but Spider 486,971 over near the dung heap was in a better position to catch the afternoon flies. And so on, as somebody famous once said.

As Blithe prowled around the orchard capturing potential clues on her Clumera she inevitably became part of the laybrinthine web of sticky threads herself, as they attached themselves to her hair and clothing. All of the gaps between the solids in the field were joined together with spun filaments, just as the Gibblets were joined together with fun spillaments (although leaking waterpipes were sadly misinterpreted as not-fun all too often, despite that they could be used as an opportunity to view the connections of the Waterpunk more comprehensively.)

The individual spiders lacy parlours were framed in wire squares, several hundred, if not more, along the perimeter fences. Not every wire fence square was filled; there were many vacant lots between established residences ~ whether by practical design or mere happenstance, Blithe couldn’t say. Many of the individual webs were whole and perfect, like the windows of Lower Gibber whose inhabitants kept their lace curtains clean and neatly hung. Many of the webs on the wire fence were not perfect in the symetrical sense ~ some had gaping holes, and there were those that appeared to be unfinished, despite showing great potential. Others appeared to be abandoned, hanging in shreds, not unlike many of the residences in Upper Gibber.

The wire framed residences of the field (and likewise the peeling paint framed residences of Upper Gibber) that appeared to be defunct were not quite as they seemed, however. They were simply being viewed from a different timeframe. It was quite possible to view each wire or peeled paint framed en-trance side by side, notwithstanding that they were, so to speak, located in varying timeframes. All that was required was a more flexible viewpoint, and an ability to view more than one timeframe simultaneously. It was all a question of allowing an entrance to en-trance ~ which was, after all, its function.

{link: misty morning; entrance}

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

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

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

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

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

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

{link: entrance}

It was hot, although not as hot as usual for the month of August on the southern slopes of the Serrania de Ronda. It had rained, the black clouds and thunder a welcome respite from the searing dry heat of an Andalucian summer, plumping up the blackberries and washing the dust from the leaves of the fig trees. Blithe Gambol hadn’t seen her old friend Granny Mosca for months, although she wasn’t quite sure what had kept her from visiting for so long. Blithe loved Granny Mosca’s cottage tucked away in the saddle behind the fat hill and there had been times when she’d visited often, just to drink in the magical air and feast her eyes on the beauty of the surroundings. Dry golden weeds scratched her legs as she made her way along the dirt path, and she was mindful of the fat black snake she’d once seen basking on the stone walls as she reached into the brambles to pluck blackberries and take photographs.

Rounding a corner in the path she gasped at the incongrous and alarming sight of a bright yellow bulldozer just meters from Granny Mosca’s cottage. The bulldozer was flattening a large area of prickly pear cactuses. Unfortunately for the cactuses, it was fruiting time, and Blithe wondered if Granny Mosca had first picked the fruits and suspected that she had, those that she could reach. Nothing that could be eaten was left unpicked ~ Blithe remembered the many sacks of almonds that Granny had given her over the years, very few of which she had bothered to shell and eat.

The bulldozer was making an entranceway to the tiny derelict cottage that was situated next to Granny Mosca’s house. Granny had asked Blithe if she wanted to buy it, and she had wanted to buy it eventually, but the purchase of a derelict building hadn’t been a priority at the time. Now it looked as if she was too late, that someone else had bought it, perhaps to use as a holiday home. Horrified, Blithe called out for Granny, who was often in the goat shed or away across the hidden saddle valley cutting weeds to feed the poultry, but there was no sign of her. Two alien looking turkeys gobbled in response, and the black and white chained dog barked menacingly.

As Blithe retraced her steps along the dirt path it occured to her that whoever was planning to use the derelict cottage might be a very interesting person, someone she might be very pleased to make the acquaintance of in due course. After all, she had noticed that the holiday guests staying at the casitas on the other side of the fat hill were all sympathetic to the magical nature of the location, many of them arriving from a previous visit to a particularly interesting location in the Alpujarras ~ a convergence of ley lines. When questioned as to why they chose the fat hill casitas, they simply said they liked the countryside. Either they weren’t telling, or they were simply unaware objectively of the connection of the locations. Blithe could sense the connections though, both the locations, and that the people choosing to vacation at the fat hill were connected to it.

For one hundred and forty seven thousand years, Blithe had had an energy presence at the fat hill, although it was half a century of her current focus before she remembered it. She had felt protective of it, when she finally remembered it, as if she had a kind of responsibility to it. This place can look after itself quite well on its own, she reminded herself. The fat hill had watched while Franco’s Capitan looted the Roman relics, and watched as Blithe stumbled upon the remains of Roman and Iberian cities, and the fat hill had laughed when Blithe first tried to find the entrance to the interior and got stuck in thorn bushes. Later, the fat hill had smiled benignly when Granny Mosca led her to the entrance ~ without a thorn bush in sight. The cave entrance had been blocked with boulders then. Blithe had given some thought to an excavation, wondering how to achieve it without attracting the attention of the locals, but now she wondered if one day, when the time was right, she would find the entrance clear, as if by magic. Magic, after all, was by no means impossible.

{link: feast for the birds}