Search Results for 'hardly'

That was a first. I had no idea what just happened. And believe me, this girl has seen some serious hanky-panky going ‘round here. Starting with Aunt Idle and her hustling and lascivious seducing of the Middle Eastern pirate cosplayer we had as guest.
But of course, that was nothing compared to how glamorous Mater looked in her red gabardine.
Anyway, something odd happened, like everyone was zapped in a torpor after the Fergus guy arrived. We were all expecting a sort of big reveal, and he did drop some incoherent clues, nothing truly worth the wait sorry to say, so we all went upstairs to sleep.

Blame it on the spiced lizard meat maybe, but I can’t figure what happened after that until I woke up. Everyone this morning was playing it by ear, as if everything was normal. But people are missing. Fergus and his motorbike, and the scarf girl with the young boy and their cat. Maybe others, I’ve lost count, and I’m done putting sticky notes for Idle (funny she insists being called that by the way… Maybe a side-effect of her medications).

There was an Italian corvette parked outside, all black & white. It arrived during the night, it woke me up when it arrived, but I went back to sleep I think. I wonder if those are new tourist guests. The Canadian guests were a bit in alarm, especially after the Fergus reveals.

Mater would tell me, “there is no cause for worry dear, mark my words, in an hour or less, it will all settle back down to the usual deadly boring as usual business.”

I think that planned family time was a bit too much anyway. Or too little. Devan hardly spent an hour with us, he’s too obsessed with his lost treasure conspiracies. He’ll be doing great with Dodo and her friends from the journal. I think they all enlisted Bert for a trip to the mines by the way. For all the good it’ll do everyone to try to unearth old secrets. Might give Mater a serious heart attack, for real this time.

As for me, I’ve had enough. I’m packing my bags and leaving with the first bus back to the Academy. There’s a mission to Mars to conquer.

Probably afraid to catch the floo, Muriel had packed in a jiffy, and left the place without saying much more than a few admonitions.

Fox winked at Glynis. “Good job at faking it! You should have done it a long time back. I still wonder how you managed to get all the hues right in the snotting potion. Look at those greens!”

Glynis atchooed some more, in case Muriel was still within earshot, then laughed heartily. It was good to laugh. She disliked the saying that you always laugh at the expense of someone, but in that case it felt splendid. Muriel had been such a bag of chips on her shoulders, with her moaning and complaining and her hardly lifting a finger.

After all the belly laughing was done, and some more for good measure, she looked at Fox’s wrinkled nose, and laughed some more: “the loo is still in a dire situation though!”

He tittered jollily, hooting his reply “For sure! All the purple cabbage you fed that harpy didn’t help!”

Ric knees were shaking. He fumbled with the door knob, his voice barely audible as he faced Miss Boddy —he meant Bossy.

“We, we, we… We’re not seriously torturing poor old sweet Sophie, are you?”

Miss Bossy looked at Ric quizzically. “That’s what you thought we were doing? Do you think me demented?”

“Surely not, no! You’re very determined, distinguished… But demanding,…”
“Demented, Ric, please keep track, will you.”

She sighed, and dropped the wires. “Of course! This is a line that can’t be uncrossed.”

“And surely Sweet Sophie doesn’t need torture to spill the beans.”

“Why do you keep talking about torture? I was just rewiring the dual light switch. The electrician did such a poor job, the wires were all crossed, and it was driving me mad, you know. Having one switch up, and the other down… One up, the other down… Aargh!”

Ric’s face was mixed with relief and complete puzzlement.

“Enough talking about my OCDs, why Sweet Sophie isn’t here yet? Of course, we don’t need torture to get her to talk. That’s all she does besides sleeping. The tricky part will be to get her to focus of course. Can’t have her babble about WWII now, can we. That and her endless talking about time travel… Speaking of time, there’s hardly any to waste, there’s a mad Doctor on the loose doing awful human experiments on unsuspecting frail women to flush out, need I remind you.”

It had been a day of full work for Ricardo, rather than his frequently dull work at the paper.
Connie and Hilda were crazily busy bouncing off bits of odd news to each other and it was a sort of playful banter that even had Sweet Sophie come out of her pre-lunch-post-lunch slumber that occasionally trailed until tea time.

News of the Rim had been scarce, there was no denying. Honestly, he wondered how Bossy M’am managed to still pay the bills and their wages, however meager those (or his) were. He giggled thinking about how she probably scared the debt collectors off their wits with her best impersonation of Johnny Depp playing Jack Sparrow playing Tootsie meets Freddy Krueger.

Speaking of which, he couldn’t help but eavesdrop, while pretending to clean the coffee cups and the butter knives full of vegemite and scone crumbs.

“Dolls! Are you daft? What about all those crop circles in France instead?”
“Listen, you decrepit tart, I’m telling you there’s plenty to investigate about this Findmy stuff group. Secret dolls scattered around the world, masonic occult secret symbols…”
“Hardly matter for an insert on 4th page, dear. While on the other hand, elongated skulls, secret underground bases in Antarctica…”
“We talked about this! Conspiracy theories are off limits! We only want the real stuff, the odd happenings that hits your neighbour that you wouldn’t have known about without us reporting it! But dolls! that’s something, no?”
“Flimsy at best…”
“What else then?”
“I don’t know, seesh, what about Hundreds attending two frogs wedding in India ?”
“Already covered, too mainstream…”
“What about the Mothman of Tchernobyl?”
“We stopped cryptozoology, remember, after that pathetic chase after the trenchcoat ape that got us torpedoed in the other paper rags when we reported it without checking our facts?”
“Facts! FACTS! Don’t you get me started about FACTS!”

Suddenly, they both turned simultaneously at Ricardo, seemingly realizing his presence.

“Ric’, this cuppa isn’t going to make itself, dear.” They both said like a couple of creepily synched automatons.

Margoritt Loursenoir wrapped a thick blanket around her shoulders. The window of her lodge was open to the chill outside, but she would keep the windows open as much as she could bear, for she’d missed the fresh air for a long time inside the city.
The view of the forest was also a renewed pleasure, she could stay in meditation in front of the window for hours, as if looking at a moving picture, a better work than any painter from the city would ever accomplish.
Besides, she liked being wrapped in a shawl like these women from the far away east she admired so much for their strength and independence.

She’d come there to rekindle her inspiration. In the City of the Seven Hills, she had risen to quite a fame with her literary works, even though her works were deemed fictional, and that she was a woman.
To her, they weren’t fictions. They were just the order of things revealed, the natural evolution of things, a glimpse of what was to come if the civilisation were to keep its greedy pace.

That rheumatism is killing me she looked at her hands, swollen after yesterday’s rain. An old lady like me, and that lifestyle… for how long… She would need to return for a needle session in the City. Already the supplies she’d brought were becoming scarce. She would go find some mushrooms and roots later, but for now she didn’t want to worry about that.
There was something irremediably irreconcilable about life here and life there. She was aware of the artificial nature of her escapades, but every time she moved out of the bustling city, into the enchanted woods, she would see it. Magic was still alive here, not as strong as before, but still very much alive.

Rising from her chair, she put the last of her bread’s crumbs on the windowsill. The crumbs she’d put yesterday were still there, untouched. There were hardly any birds left during winter, merely a few suspicious crows who never came too close.

It was time for her morning writing session.

Preparing the pages for the arrival of the Elders had taken him the best of the last two days. The younglings were rather immature and in need of training in the complex rituals and protocols. Most had come from good families, so they did possess the principles well enough. However, they often carried about them an indistinct arrogance that would be sure to irritate the Elders. Rukshan himself wasn’t good at being humble, but over the years had learned to dull his colours, and focus on his own centre.

He had hardly any time to think about the dreams, the book or the trees, although at times he could feel almost carried away, as though a swift and clear wind had swiped his head light, suddenly relieved from any burdening thought, almost ready to fly or disappear. Those moment rarely lasted, and quite frankly were a little unsettling.

And there was still his repressed memories about what he had discovered hidden under the Clock’s hatch. He wanted to believe there was nothing to worry about that, that the silent ghosts were part of the original design, but his intuition was fiercely against it.
In fact, his guts were telling him the same things as when he’d found out the pocket from his coat he’d just mended was originally wrongly attached inside the lining, (creating the rip at that exact spot, as if to catch his attention). Although he would usually have happily ignored it, this time he couldn’t let go, and felt almost forced to redo it, first unpick the seams he’d just sewn, then to finally detach the pocket from the inner lining and redo the mending —another indication that the living force that breathed through all wouldn’t let him eschew troubles this time.

Rukshan didn’t know when the book first appeared. His room wasn’t large, and he always took great effort to keep it organised and uncluttered. Well, it was hardly effort at all, more like a well ingrained habit.

Thinking about it, the book could have been put there by a visitor, that was the most evident explanation. But undoubtedly the nosy concierge wouldn’t have missed such opportunity to mention it when he’d come back from the Clock, even at the late hours of the day he’d come back lately.

Considering, his latest exploration of the basement of the Clock below the hatch had not been extremely enlightening nor completely in vain, if only for realising the fact that he was in dire need of more expert help. The Clock was old as the Town, and after generations of crafters jealously guarding of their secrets, the knowledge of its magic had been watered down to the bare necessities. And without proper care and maintenance, last incident could well reoccur at any time.
For now, he had to stop worry, it wouldn’t do his body any good, only manage to let his real age catch up with his now youthful appearance. He knew just the right way for him to get back to his centered balance.

Sipping his favourite brew of hot tulsi leaves tea, he sat cross-legged, carefully in the brown floor chair with the golden thread embroideries, and observed the large black book placed at an angle on the end table.

The tea was already giving off its soothing effects, and glinting, he could see the book almost vibrate.

The thought came back to him. The book was a memory, a memory that he’d brought back from a dream of last night. How peculiar, he thought. He’d heard about such magical powers that the Fays possessed, travelling between pocket dimensions, but it was almost part of the lore of old, nobody had witnessed such things —in human memory, at least.

Now he was curious to open the book. He probably would have to hurry before it starts to fade and vanish. He was glad for the tea, it was the perfect brew to avoid any excitement that would hasten the fading process.

Rukshan had hardly any time to think about the trees of his area of enchantment in the past days. Actually, he’d rushed to the Clock every morning at dawn, and was busy until dusk, after which he slept like a log, to start the cycle again.

As he looked into the mirror in the morning, observing the hints of fatigue under his green eyes dulling the glow of his dark olive skin, he realized that there was only so much that his morning yoga could do to help rejuvenate.
He sighed and tied his sleek dark hair into a top knot.

The trees and the profound wisdom of their calm silence was still here, at his fingertips, in such contrast to the daily activities, that he wondered if the workings of the heart completely eluded him. After all, he couldn’t say he loathed his overseeing and mending job, not could he say that he didn’t pour his heart in it. But still, something about it felt artificial in some ways.

When he arrived at the Clock Tower in the morning, the air was still fresh, and the stairs wouldn’t yet smell of the usual cat piss. The clock’s time was still a smidgen behind. Usually, he would just to the best he could, and just let things patch themselves up, but it seemed as though this time, the change of structure was more profound, requiring from him to go… for lack of better way to put it,… the heart of the matter.

From the top of the tower, he would usually hardly go lower than the first level where the 12 mannequins were stored and revolved around the central axis to appear at each hour, until noon and midnight were they would all play an elaborate dance.

Below that level laid the belly of the beast. An intricate assemblage of copper wires, brass mirrors, lanterns and scalipanders, accessible by simple steps coiled around the central axis, hiding below a round wooden hatch.

There has been a satisfying sense of getting back to normality, after Bea had moved into her personal equivalent of a Witsness Protection Program. (She had to keep the typo for clueing value).

That satisfying feeling did last, for somewhat longer than she had expected at first. Not by minutes, actually, but by months, if the old calendar was to be trusted.

She had swept a lot of the strange, mildly irritating, or concerning, or revolting occurrences under the carpet, like the old dust mites and bunnies, and discarded graham cracker’s packages. She didn’t mind the crunchy sounds of her carpets.
So, she would have been hard-pressed to tell what was the event that made her realise something was not as it should have been. There maybe wasn’t an event at all, maybe it was just the subtle movements of the heart itself.

At first, she had discarded the parting words of the techromancer as another type of mess-with-your-head mumbo-jumbo.
It was only last night that she had remembered something about her youth —she could hardly tell if it was a memory of an alternate timeline, or a true event, that really didn’t matter. For a little while, she had been drown into the feeling of innocence, kindness and expansion, the taste of which she had not felt for very long.

Out of the unexpectedness, out of the emptiness, she remembered the poem of Custard the Dragon. She was suddenly struck by an entire dimension that was opened through reminisced words “But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.”

Where had her inner dragon gone? Where did The Custard that gobbled a pirate go?

“Well, hello there! My name is Barbara, I will be your host during your stay at the Hidden People Estate of Genethic Rejuvenation. Welcome Ms and Mr Asparagus !”

Barbara’s luscious mane of blond hair was a sight to behold. Tina was almost jealous. She quickly remembered her guru’s words of the day.

“ Dogs bark at what they don’t understand: See the Positive “

So despite her hopes for a less effusive (almost annoyingly American) introductions, she got her critical mind busy with quickly finding five things to appreciate about Barbara. It was tougher that it looked. Well, for one, she liked the cleanliness of her white nurse blouse…

Barbara’s chatter seemed inexhaustible, as they coursed through the grounds of the Estate.
“Of course, we have arranged for your appointment with the best doctors, they will get you in tip-top shape in no time” she giggled irrepressibly.

Tina glanced at Quentin. Her cousin was calm as a clam, as usual. He didn’t even seem to register the strangeness of that establishment.

“I’ll be leaving you to have a hot shower, and refreshments, complimentary of the house of course, and I’ll be meeting you later. Dinner will be served at 7, please be on time. Tomorrow morning, breakfast is served from 7 to 9, and your appointment is at 9:30, with Dr B. In case you need anything, you have my number.” Barbara giggled again, blinking at Quentin in what could hardly be construed as flirting.

“I’ll skip dinner Q, see you at breakfast tomorrow”, Tina closed the door on her cousin without ceremony.

She finally collapsed on the bed, crushed by fatigue of the flight, jet-lag and all that road trip through small European winding paths. Made you almost miss Maine.

dream lack hardly beginning human
situation making thought
usually team water during run
became suitcase under discussion
listen energy reality himself