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In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
some writing by Twilight
Jo fixed me up a swing. It hung from the old elm tree out the front. That’s my favourite place. I just sit there rocking and thinking, and thinking and rocking. Sometimes I would weave stories or sometimes I would dream about when I am real famous. I know I will miss Jo and Elroy, but then I cheer myself up thinking how, when I am rich, I will visit them and give them money and presents and how fine that will be.
Elroy and Jo don’t know about my stories or how I love to write. I ain’t much good. I didn’t get much schooling but Elroy helped me some and then I would try and teach myself the rest. The only book we have is a big old bible. That is written in real fine words. The part I like the best is a song that Solomon wrote. I don’t know how the tune went but the words are real nice. It is real romantic too. I dream one day some man will use words like that to me. Not like those drunken slobs round these parts. Anyway, that’s how I know I am not much good, because I can’t write nothing like Solomon. But I try anyway.
Yesterday I was sitting out on the swing rocking and thinking and young Dan from the ranch over the way turned up on his horse. He looked real hot and red and sweaty. Mostly though, he is real fine looking, and I confess I have a soft spot for him. So I leapt off the swing real quick and straightened myself up and bit my lips to make them all big and red. I wanted him to see I had developed some in the last little while.
Where’s your brothers, Twi? he said to me.
I felt he didn’t seem to be giving me the appreciation I hoped for, so I did a little flick of my head and gave him the look I had been practising. I had seen the other girls do this look to the men at the saloon, and it seemed to work a treat. I gestured at the same time, real slow and casual, and I said “Out the back, Dan.” in a honey voice.
He started to ride off, like he was in a hurry. But then he stopped. My heart did a little flutter. He said to me, “You know Twi, the boys at the ranch were talking about you. And it wasn’t the sort of talk should be said about a lady”.
When Dan said that, I felt he had kicked me in the guts. I wanted to gasp. But I am plenty used to putting up with things and not showing my true feelings, so I just looked at him real cold. Then I spat. I have been practising my spitting and I can do it real good now. Nearly as good as Jo.
“I am just telling you Twi” he said. I thought he would say more, but he seemed to reflect for a moment, then shook his head and off he went in a hurry to find the boys.
Elroy and Jo looked real bothered when I saw them later. I knew when to hold my tongue so I did not give them no smart talk, and I cooked up a real fine bean dish for their supper. It was real quiet over the table that night. Truth was, I still felt mighty bad over what Dan had said.
I confess I felt some cares and sadness on me that evening when I went to bed, and found I could not sleep. I got out my diary and thought I would do some writing.
I tried to write what my name, Twilight, means to me. My real name is Tina Willemine Ivy El Disperso. I always been called Twi. Then Hank at the saloon, he says one night, “I am calling you Twilight” and that sort of caught on. It made me feel special, having my own stage name.I started writing. Lavender blue sky bleeding into the dark. I thought that sounded quite a good start to my writing, so feeling a bit encouraged I went on some more: Twilight is a magic time. It is the time I see things that aint there, but maybe they could be. My eyes play tricks on me in the half light and I feel like I could be anyone. I feel like I could be someone who I isn’t. Twilight is the time of promises. The promise and mystery of the night to come. It is inbetween time when you know the ordinary stuff could be magic.
I stopped. I weren’t never going to be able to write like Solomon. I knew that and I felt real bad. At least I could dance though, and that was going to make me famous. But that thought could not cheer me up this night and I confess I cried myself to sleep like a baby.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
When Cuthbert came back to bed after having had his cup of cocoa, India Louise was awake too.
— I saw him too, she said to her brother.
— I don’t want to see him again, these books are scarey.
— It’s intriguing, I want to know more, India Louise said, egging on him.
— When I close my eyes, I got all these roots and webs crawling, it’s mad… I can’t…
— He has found a friend to help him cross the Dark Forest to the traveling portal.
— A friend?
— Yes, a friend. She’s special.
— Tell me more…
— She’s a white unicorn, only him can see her.
— Wow…
— She’s named Mirÿnda. She’s glowing white, and he hears her speak in his mind, she shows him the way through the forest…
— Mirÿnda?! A fool in saffron robe gallivanting in the forest with a unicorn now? That’s all you could find?
Tina was taken aback…
— Well, I could have used a grizzly bear too, now I think of it… Al answered flippantly.
— Tsk tsk, replied Tina a bit annoyed. And why not a humpback whale, or an arctic lemming, or even… why, a leopard gecko for that matter?… And who’s that Mÿrinda anyway? — I don’t know any Amanda, Fiona said to Quintin that night. Don’t really know many of Michaela & Elias’ students. She’s Yann friend, right?
Quintin had answered distractedly, as he was engrossed by his last painting…
Later that night, he couldn’t find sleep, as the dragon he was painting was still expanding his web of roots and branches in his mind’s eye. He opened his computer to see that Malika was online.
She told him something that night, something Quintin found abysmally profound and perplexing about his dragon…
— Dragons can shape shift, into anything they want to. There are several doorways/portals that they use for travel into this dimension. Malika said
— Yes, said Quintin, this drawing has something to do with these portals initially, but I struggle a bit to represent them…
— Yes, so you can just depict it to be flowing, liquid-like energy in the center, when the portal is active.
There are some that are being shone to me on the bottom of the ocean floor.
What is being shown to me, is a dragon with a tail much like a mermaid, and hands with webs, big yellow eyes…Wow he had thought, she can really see.
Jadra, guided by Mirÿnda, had been moving quite easily through the Dark Forest. Of course, he wouldn’t have dared touch the holy creature, and so he was walking hesitantly behind, taking care of where his bare feet were touching the ground.
The Dark Forest was bordering the Marshes of Doom, and at times the limits between the two were almost indiscernible. It was said that every foul, err… fool… damn,…
— Will you stop being so buffoonish! raved Tina again.
— Perhaps I should let someone else continue then? said Albert.
— Well, that’s entertaining, replied Becky mechanically.
— OK. I’ll jump in, said Samuel, with a wide grin.It was said that every full moon, the Mighty Shrimp would come from the shores of the Southern Seas and haunt the Marshes in search for souls to be turned into krill, so that he could be the WALRUS (Wrathful Almighty Lord Ruler of Undersea Souls).
Well, at least, that’s what Jadra had heard in his youth, when you tend to believe everything… So he was weary of the hiki-hiki sounds in the night that might have been the dreaded call of the Mighty Shrimp.
Quintin was having a strange dream. He was a huge whale, along with another one he knew was Yann, swimming powerfully in the vast ocean, passing by strange creatures that could have been mermaids or improbable fishes, when his gaze was attracted by a stream of glittering particles of light.
The lights were enticing, he would have said even “mouth-watering”, had he not had the baleens full of water already…
Salome was moving through layers of consciousness, something humans focused in physical dimensions would have found difficult to grasp, as it was nothing that could be easily conceptualized. She was, as best as she could put, like a huge cloud of lightness coalescing into a form, when she decided to project her aspect.
Taking form into a dimension required no effort in actuality, the consensus reality created by all the essences focused into the reality making quite a strong pull. She only needed to move her attention to what she wanted to manifest. Altering her reality slowly around her, to move closer to the desired effect.
She was not only traveling through time and space, but also through multitudinous layers of dimensions unnoticed to many humans —in fact, she was not really moving, but that was a convenient way of telling things for humans…
She said “humans”, because she was fond of this particular dimension, where she’d had lots of experiences.
When moving through the dimensions, it had her projected focus of attention constantly and naturally adapt its form to the psychological environment.
Here, she had just moved through a honey-drops dimension, where focuses were drops of golden honey-like substance, and as she moved through it, her own aspect had changed to that of a sand-glass shaped drop of honey.
This was great fun for her to see the ease with which she could focus into this infinite variety of adventures, but for now, her pull was to some more complex physical dimensions.
She started to move again, de-focusing, past the lazy honey drops.
The honey drops were now shape-shifting to a whole immense field of snake-like strings of light, and they all started to converge to a direction. She knew the feeling. She followed the strong pull.
In reply to: Circle of Eights, Stories
When Dorothy Mc Leane, the imperviously impetuous and buoyant archaeologist, temporarily reduced to dust shawls in a small antique boutique of the coast of Madagascar, had been finally coming to her mind, she had felt so out of place.
She had been in many places at once, and these have hardly been vacations at all. Well, all she had wanted at first was to follow that funny lemur winking on a placard, which was hinting at a funny expedition in a cave.
But that may just have been phoney gooey advertisement, as she was now stranded in that shoppe with a stupid parrot. No-name parrot…
That’d make Fiona laugh for sure… she thought; she would say that she wasn’t doing things in halves. Can’t even think if I can find a postcard big enough to tell her everything, she had laughed.
— Well, you don’t have a name by chance? she suddenly asked the bright bird.
— Archibaaaaald howled the parrot joyfully.
Bugger this, I knew that… Dory couldn’t help but thinking.
— Aaaaaarchibaaaaald
Oh!, she had started to feel exasperated. Archibald would take care of the key anyway, no need to stay here any much longer.
And right after the parrot had flown through the window, as she was leaving the shoppe and heading to the mini-van where the distraught guide had been obviously looking for her since hours, she couldn’t help but wonder at the number of noisy Italian tourists who had just seemed to pop in, crowding the tiny shawl shoppe…
Wow… She could have bet they could have been as many as fifty seven…
