Search Results for 'fire'

Fanella gazed into the dying flames of the campfire, while her toasted cheese cooled. “2121, here I come!” she said in a confident sounding voice, but she shivered in apprehension. 2121, 2121, she repeated, watching the flames, 21 21 12, 21 12 12 1212….21 12…1212…. her eyes were getting heavy and she started to drift off. Is that a tractor coming up the beach? she wondered, Or a motorbike? The very ground was starting to rumble and vibrate.
Suddenly she was wide awake, and the the flames were towering over her head. The heat was blistering and her head was filled with roaring sounds, and hissing snapping cracks. As she was standing there trying to make sense of her surroundings, someone slammed into her from behind, making her legs buckle ~ there were people running in all directions, carrying babies or buckets of water, portraits or small wooden chests or squalking chickens. It was mayhem in the narrow alleys between the burning houses, showers of sparks and choking blasts, ear splitting shrieks and blood curdling howls assaulted all her senses, as she spun around looking for a way out of this appalling scene.
“Surely this isn’t the island in 2121!” she exclaimed in anguish. “But if it isn’t then where am I? And when?”
“This is Southwark, wench, and I can’t believe we’re having another Great Fire already” replied a man in an arousing blue codpeice who was running along beside her. “If you want to get out of here alive, follow me!”
Fanella was not in the habit of running after strange men, but she couldn’t take her eyes off that gorgeous blue codpiece.

With years of intense Happiness training, and being herself a certified Happiness Coach™ in Rainbow Unified Bliss®, Lisa was reasonably adept at dispelling the occasional bouts of frustration that the six time travelers were experiencing while familiarizing themselves with the new time frame. Learning the new languages, both the local Spanish and the common language of the village tribe, English, was of paramount importance, and Mirabelle in particular was having difficulties. A basic vocabulary was easy enough, but when it came to grammar, Mirabelle was hopeless. Thus her communications were of a very basic and rudimentary nature, and she often felt unable to express her feelings, or her thoughtful observations on the many nuances, similarities and differences and overlaps of the current time and 18th century France. Not only was she obliged to learn two new languages, but was also learning to read and write. Often it seemed like all work and no play, too much pressure to perform, to learn, to do well at her studies, and yet play breaks were always frustrated in some manner because of her difficulties in communicating clearly. The fact that the others were progressing better with the languages made her feel alone, adrift in a sea of her own unexpressed thoughts.
Adeline had a more relaxed approach to the language difficulties, less inclined to struggle with it and more likely to chatter endlessly to Boris instead, and ask him to translate when she needed some help. She had discovered an interest, and some considerable talent, in the art room, experimenting with the paints and materials, and spent many happy hours engrossed in her paintings and playful collages of mundane (but to her, bizarre) objects. She was like a magpie, collecting items that caught her eye. The bright colours and smoothness of plastic appealed to her, especially when transformed in shape by one of those odd little plastic fire making gadgets. Sunglasses were another favourite, especially the different shades of lens. It was not unusual to hear one of the villagers complaining that the lids to the tupperware containers were missing, or all the bottle tops had been removed, to find they had all been glued together, with the flyswatter, a few odd flipflop beach shoes and the mirror lenses out of someones shades. But the villagers were on the whole amused, generously indulgent, and good naturedley rolled their eyes at her creative curiosity.
Boris was practical and capable, and true to form, was learning rapidly. He had no particular desire to express vague rambling thoughts (indeed, he was not a vague and rambling man by nature) and turned his attention to more practical matters. When he wasn’t chatting to Adeline, he was watching Jack tinkering inside car engines, or playing with Pierre’s camera and had quickly learned how to upload and play with the images on the computer. Often in the evenings Adeline would sit beside him and watch drowsily as the images changed in front of her eyes on the screen.
Ivan and Igor were learning what they needed to learn while doing it ~ tending the goats and chickens, working outside on the land, or helping with various building projects. They had taken to the local bars like ducks to water, and spent the evenings downing copious amounts of beer and wine with the locals, all of them babbling and shouting incoherently, but seeming to understand each other in the camaraderie of inebriation.

“What on earth are you doing?” asked Cedric, watching with amazement as Pseu suddenly ran off towards the piles of construction materials near the Royal Opera House of the Palace.
“Shhh! I’ll catch you up in a minute.”
Pseu had received an urgent message from one of the other characters on her chaptershiftwatch, a young fellow in Grenoble called Jacques Coctuit. Jacques, like many of his friends and neighbours, was crouched on the roof, throwing tiles at the soldiers below. When Jacques ran out of tiles, his burning desire for more tiles blasted forth, and Pseu registered the request, and simultaneously broadcast a request for tiles.
The heaps of doubly fired tiles scattered around the building site of the new opera house would be perfect, and although their disappearance would be noticed, it would not create as much fuss as would any new materials disappearing. Nobody would mind much if a pile of rubble to be discarded went missing. Quickly and efficiently, Pseu teleported the tiles to the roof Jacques was sitting on, who noticed merely that there were more tiles than he thought, and would only later, after the adrenaline had worn off, wonder at how they had appeared in a pile by his side.
Pseu had one of the tiles diverted to The City as a memento, to add to her collection of Key Incident Link Tiles (or KILTs for short) for the new Teleport Folly at the Estate.

Dory was on her way to an local greening event, a sort of garden show and time manipulation in one, where contestants took turns demonstrating their skills in rapid~greening. A hideous concrete relic on the coast had been earmarked, and contestants from all over the world were to take turns covering the monstrosity in flowering greenery in the shortest amount of time possible. The events were usually held on a weekend, because everyone was busy vacationing during the week, so use of time manipulation was permitted, as long as it wasn’t too over the top, in other words, weeks and months were permissable, but not years. Except in special cases, such as in the cases where the contestants refused to follow the rules, which it must be admitted, was unsurprisingly often. Prizes were awarded to everyone who participated, really, there were 3D print your own prize stations scattered around the perimeter of the monstrosity site.
The half finished abandoned hospital that Dory had participated in the previous month had turned out spectacular, especially the mystical combination of tele ~imported prehistoric tree ferns, cherry trees and solar powered fireflies. The addition of ice cream and cupcake printers in the corridors had been the icing on the cake. Indeed the icing in what used to be the mortuary was rather pretty, especially when one hadn’t seen snow for decades, a cool crisp tundra scene with icicles and blue shadows on the snow covered slabs, with clumps of red spotted mushrooms for a splash of colour, not that the extra colour was needed as the very air was a swirling mass of colours.

Was it a nightmare? It felt nightmarish, but why? How? What was the nightmare? Was she going mad, finally slipping, down down into the swarming fogs of fear? Making it up? A tormented sick April fool, a late fool, creeping around in the dark? She rubbed her ankles, cold as ice, achilles heels scorched from the lightning. Was she making it up? Lighting, like Victorian gas lamps, the flashing pinpoints on the grey neutral gridweave of perception, falling, falling, into the damp dripping mist. A howling beagle held tightly in the confines of a rigid box, surely she makes it up, but why? It doesn’t make sense, it’s too loose, she howls for the tight rigid box of perception, while the beagle howls to be released. Black drips, drips onto the stack of books, smelling of smoke, inky tar drip drip drip from the chimney pipe, it doesn’t make sense, there was no fire at all that night, where do the black inky drips come from? Is she making it all up, and if so, why? Behind the row of trees a voice calling, calling, the haggard face of a crone appears, offering the black and white puppy from behind the fence. Oh no, a black and white puppy, not black and white, no, she replied, no, no, averting her eyes from its innocent face. Layers of nightmares swirl in the river mist, and nothing makes sense. And it all makes sense, and she screams for the confines of the rigid box as the beagle howls for release.

Aqua Luna was was mopping the floor of the Surge Team’s HQ. She was not strictly speaking a member of the Team, and the only sponge insigna she had was her mop and the few sponges she used to clean the keyboards and the screens of “the deck” as they called their room full of computers and screens and blinking red and blue lights.

She’s been here for ages, since Lord Ed Steam had founded the organisation actually. People didn’t usually pay attention to her and she could go everywhere. Almost. There was a room where she couldn’t go and she didn’t know what was in there. Only the higher ranked members could penetrate this secret room. She tried several times to cast a glance just before they closed the door, but there always was some bloody smoke coming out of the room.

Her mama had told her many times, ‘Aqua Luna, there is no smoke without fire’. There must be a huge fire inside that room for it’s always smokey.

The door opened again, but she was too far and she only could see the fumes again. ‘Could that be a dragon ?’, she thought. But what use could the surge team have of a dragon. Aqua Luna knew for sure that dragons were real. Her Mama had told her so when she was a kid, and she trusted her Mama, even when she was shouting at her. ‘It’s for your own good Aqua Luna”.

This time it was that young woman, Cornella who went out. She seemed concerned and she was talking in her unicomp.

“Guess it was about bloody time I got back here” Franlise said, her feather duster firmly clutched in her left hand.
The matronly black woman started dusting vigourously, sending myriads of half-written papers flying in the air.
“My draaafts!” Elizabeth shriek was lost in the gusts of winds.

“Bugger, bugger, bugger” the impromptu cleaning lady started to enunciate in a most perfect Queen’s English. “Nothing like some good buggery bugger to start the day and clear the lungs. And many a little makes a damn buggery mickle, isn’t that right darling?”. She said, striking a pilates pose in between the cleaning.

Elizabeth stood aghast, not knowing what to say but a meek “Didn’t I fire you?” to which Franlise knew better than to answer with nought but a smile.
Drawing a sharp letter opener from behind her back, she nimbly leaned toward Elizabeth, with all her white teeth glowing in the dark apartment where even the aspidistras had long gone dried up and wrinkled, their pots now no more than mere ashtrays.

“Well, now, what shall we do about all that spider cobwebs you’ve got yourself wrapped in…”

They were thick as theives, freinds for thousands of centuries, or even more; sometimes thick, sometimes theives, and anything else you might imagine. They got together again and again in this time and that, here, there and elsewhere, just for the fun of it. There was nothing they liked more than a puzzling occurance, or a riddle, or a basket full of clues to ponder over, unravel, and turn around and around, toying with meanings until they found one they liked. They had a home in The City, sort of a home base so to speak, where they met regularly each night in the dream state, regardless of which time or place they spent their waking hours. It was sometimes a releif to meet up at home in The City and always a pleasure: sometimes it was hard to stay under the radar back down on the ground, it was part of the job to stand out in the crowd, which often resulted in a lynching, or a ducking, or the stocks, at the very least. All too often it ended up on top of a bonfire, tied to a stake.

One day in one of the Decembers, in amongst all the sweet dreams they often shared, they started having some unsettling group dreams, where they all felt like they were betwixt and between, falling through the cracks you might say. It was a feeling similar to dying of thirst, although it wasn’t really a physical thirst, it was more than that, a hungry yearning sort of thing. Some of them had strange nightmares, of a monstrous beast, and some of them actually saw beasts in the daytime too, especially on those falling through the cracks days. When they met up at home in The City, they compared notes about the beasts, and not always, but sometimes they found they were mirroring each others beasts. That often ended up in a heated debate, because the more mirroring that occurred, the more real the beast seemed. Some said that the beasts that appeared when you fell through the cracks were in a deep ravine, in a manner of speaking, and not of this plane at all. Others argued that if the beasts appeared through the cracks, then they were on this plane.

And so it went on, and on. There were many more puzzling occurances to come, and lots of meanings to be considered, rejected, or taken on board for the friends, as thick as thieves, to turn around and around, and hold up to the mirror for closer inspection and dissection. They were making a tapestry, a huge rich colourful tapestry, and all the puzzling occurences, and even the beasts, were depicted in the colourful threads and patterns. They were the warp, you might say, of the weave. Love was the weft.

“Congratulations, Liz” Godfrey remarked drily. “Are you supposed to use three months worth of creative writing challenges in one entry?”

“Don’t be silly, Godfrey, of course not. Rules are meant to be broken, that’s what they’re for.”

“Godfrey, don’t say I didn’t warn you! Have you seen today’s random quote?” Elizabeth said with increasing alarm. “Finnley! Put another log on that fire! And please put that bloody magpie outside!”

Finnley mumbled something about job description as she shuffled over to the log basket, and then Elizabeth could have sworn she heard her mutter something about basket cases, but she wasn’t quite sure.

“It’s a funny thing, you know Finnley” Elizabeth said “But yesterday Dan asked Dory if she remembered the ‘Fuck Wits’, those lads that came to visit them years ago, and not only that, yesterday I was thinking about the storm crew and I couldn’t for the life of me remember their names.”

“The Not-So-Random Daily Quote they should call it, eh, Liz” replied the good natured Finnley. “Oh by the way, I’d like shorter hours and more pay.”

“Of course dear, take whatever you like,” replied Elizabeth generously, “But be sure and take that magpie with you.”