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Franlise was pondering the distorted image she knew Ann had of her. Of course Ann was perhaps not the best judge of character. Her seven failed marriages bore testament to that indisputable fact.

It is a bloody good thing, she mused, that I am so confident of my own inner loveliness. All these disparaging remarks could really begin to get me down otherwise.

Casting an admiring sideways glance at herself in the large, and somewhat dusty, mirror hanging from the wall in Ann’s office, she hurried off for her 3pm meeting with the Fellowship.

Yoland felt tired and deflated somehow. Weary, perhaps that was it, weary of the way she always felt when the animals were sick or dying. It was all very well to look at it logically, that with so many animals with such relatively short natural life spans that there would always be some coming, some going, but it was the way it made her feel that was so tiring. Responsible, as if she could have done more, or guilty that they were reflecting her energy somehow. It was all very well to say that the animals were creating their own reality, that would be easy enough to accept in some cases such as old age and diseases, but Yoland almost wished she’d never learned that they reflect her own energy, that always made her feel even more responsible than she already did.

The black cat was dying. Yoland had made up her mind to take her to the vets that morning. That was another dilemma she’d faced often enough, too ~ would the animal prefer to die naturally at home? Or was it in too much pain, and would it prefer to end it quickly? How could she know? Yoland supposed she did always know, in the end, which was to be the choice, but there was always the agonizing period of time beforehand when she wondered which decision to make. But the black cat had disappeared and she couldn’t find her to take her to the vets after all.

When she’d made the decision to take the black cat to the vet that morning, Dean accidentally knocked a photograph of her first dog, Joe, off the wall. He was the first of her dogs to go, and a good age for a big dog, fourteen years old, and Yoland had known all along that he would die at home, and sure enough, he had. One day Yoland knew he was close to the end, and less than 24 hours later, he lay on his bed, and just gradually stopped breathing. Yoland hadn’t even been quite sure of the moment in which he went, as she held his head, she asked Dean, Do you think he’s dead? Dean replied, If he’s not breathing he is. It was a silly question, really, of course Yoland knew that if you weren’t breathing you were dead. As deaths go, it was peaceful and easy. They took him in the car to a place in the woods and buried him, somewhere where the ground was soft enough to dig; it was high summer and the ground was hard and dry. It wasn’t until Joe was covered with earth that Yoland cried.

Yoland cried again as she remembered Joe, and then she wondered if perhaps his photograph falling off the wall that morning was a message ~ perhaps a message that the black cat was choosing to die at home too, her own little niche somewhere, wherever that might be, wherever the roof cats slept. Maybe Joe was reassuring her that he’d be there when the black cat got there, in that field of flowers where the animals played while they waited for us to join them.

It was a comforting thought. Yoland reached for the tissues.

Taatje van Snoot was an eccentric character of indeterminate age. That she had been born Dutch was obvious, but when, nobody could tell. Nobody could remember when she hadn’t been an integral part of the Amsterdam scenery, even the most ancient citizens recalled Taatje being around. Nobody knew her well, it seemed, but everyone knew of her existence, everyone saw her from time to time. She never seemed to age, and she didn’t appear to work, for she was never seen doing anything in a routine manner. Sometimes, for example, she would be spotted drinking coffee every morning at the same place; the following week or years therafter, she’d be elsewhere, never visiting that cafe again. Taatje was a bit of a mystery, but a well loved one. She was jolly, always smiling, as she bustled about the city doing whatever she did, polite and charming, delightfully vague, and always endearingly dressed in a random selection of fancy dress outfits and carnival costumes.

Ann wasn’t altogether sure what Godfrey meant when he referred to her new interest in continuity. Ann had always been interested in connecting links, yes, of that there was no doubt, but with so very many connecting links, and so many possible strings of connecting links, with so many possible divergences into yet more strings of connecting links, Ann really couldn’t fathom how anyone could possibly keep track of all those threads of continuity. Even a seemingly discontinuous assortment of unconnected links, once connected into a nonsense thread, became another continuity string. Furthermore, Ann continued ~ in a continuous fashion ~ to ponder, if everything is connected, then what, in actuality, was all the fuss about continuity? What exactly then WAS this concept of continuity? It seemed to Ann to be more like a string of barbed wire, or one of those flimsy but effective electric wire fences, boxing in the free flow of continuity, so that the objectively perceived continuity stayed rigidly within the confines of the preconceived tale. The inner landscape knew no such boundaries, although admittedly the inner landscape was far too vast to map.

Ann smiled to herself as she imagined trying to push pins into various inner landscape locations, tying strings from one to another, in an effort to map and label the inner continuity connections. Of course she was imagining it in a visual manner, because it was hard to imagine all those connections and strings being invisible and not taking up any space, and before long Ann’s inner map of pins and strings quickly resembled a tangle of overcooked spaghetti, perilously speckled with sharp pointy pins.

The image of the glutinous tangle dotted with sharp shiny pointers led Ann off on another tangent, but it was a tangent that soon became utter nonsense. Or was it, she mused. Perhaps it was those symbolically sharp pointy bits that in fact pointed out the immense variety of potential other continuity threads to choose from. Indeed, it could easily be said that having one of her characters dumped in Siberia in the previous story, painful though it was, was not unlike being pricked by a pin amidst the tangle of sticky pasta, a brilliantly effective pointer towards unlimited new directions.

Whichever way she looked at it (and Ann was aware that she might have gone down a side string) she simply couldn’t comprehend how anyone on this side of the veil could possibly even begin to understand the ramifications of the concept of continuity at all. Or how there could ever conceivably be a lack of it.

What was really intriguing Ann at this particular juncture of the experimental exploration of the story was the concept of the World View Library. This wasn’t unconnected to the continuity issue, far from it, it was all tied in (Ann sniggered at the unintentional pun) and connected. There were any infinite amount of potential continuity threads leading from, say, one persons desire or intent, to a particular world view in the library.

AHA shouted Ann, who at that moment had an ‘aha’ moment. Pfft, it’s gone, she sighed moments later.

Ann tried to catch the wisp of an idea that had flitted through her awareness. She had a visual impression of the library, endlessly vast and marvellously grand, with countless blindfolded characters dashing through, grabbing random pages or sentences, bumping into each other, snatching at phrases willy nilly, dropping notes along the way, and racing back out again into the ether. A stray thought here, a picture there, a name or a date, all on separate bits of crumbled paper clutched in the sweaty palms of the blindfolded characters as they rushed headlong back to their own realities to proudly share the new clues. Like magpies they were, snatching at anything that glittered brightly enough.

“I thought you said they were blindfolded?” interrupted Franlise.

Ann ignored the interruption, and continued ~ in a continuous fashion ~ to ponder the imagery of the library.

What the undisciplined purloiners of random snatches didn’t notice on their pell-mell excursions into the library were the characters in the library who weren’t wearing blindfolds. They smiled down from the galleries, calmly watching from above the mayhem that the news of the unlimited library access had occasioned, chortling at the scenes of chaos below. They smiled indulgently, for they too had first visited the library blindfolded, snatching at this and that, and racing home again to inspect the booty; they too had fretted and pondered over the enigmas of the incomplete snippets. Eventually (or not, it was after all a choice), they had bravely removed the blindfolds, slowed the mad race into a sedate stroll through the library, opened their eyes and looked around, sure of the way back home now, and not in a desperate hurry to blast in, snatch anything, and run back home.

After awhile, they began to realize that all the enchanting glittering jewels scattered around to catch their eye would still be there later, there was no urgency to grab them all at once ~ although, as Ann reminded herself, that too was a choice ~ some may well choose to be eternally snatching at glittering jewels.

Ann frowned slightly and wondered if she’d lost the thread altogether, and then decided that it didn’t matter if she had.

It was a choice, therefore, to remove ones blindfold, and stroll through the library ~ a choice to perhaps choose a book, sit down at a polished oak table and open it, a choice to stay and read the book, rather than ripping out a page and dashing back home. That would be one choice of continuity, a coming together of strings.

Ann wondered whether that would then be called a cable, or a rope ~ well perhaps not a rope, she decided, that had other associations entirely ~ but a cable, yes, that had associations of reliable and regular communications. There were always strings of continuity, then, strings of connecting links, between anything and everything, but when one stopped dashing about clutching at the sparkley bits, one might form a cable.

Or not, of course. Thin strings of continuity and connections were not ‘less than’ thick cables of reliable and regular communications. It has to be said though, Ann reluctantly admitted, that thick cables often made more sense.

She decided to hit send before embarking on a pondering of the meaning of Sense.

Franlise felt a change of energy and wondered if Dhurga was practising araiki movements. She certainly hoped so as she knew they were powerful movements and would help him express his intention. And when Dhurga expressed his intention and followed the flow of energy, the physical reality would match naturally and he would be provided for.

And Franlise firmly believed what was good for one was good for many.

She chuckled to herself upon overhearing Ann’s conversation with Godfrey in Noo Zooland. She had offered to proof Ann’s writings in order to give her easy access to the writings. It seemed prudent to leave the odd typo in order to allay suspicion .. after all she was only a cleaner.

Franlise had an outward beauty which matched the sweet loveliness of her inner being. Yes, she was a vision of pure loveliness, and many gallant knight had attempted to woo her away from her cleaning job. But Franlise knew that it was here, amongst the filth and dust of Ann’s office, that her true work was done. By day a cleaner, by night she toiled endlessly weaving Anne’s words into works of beauty. Words which would then go out into the world and give solace to many a despondent and lonely reader. To know that her words gave hope where once there was despair was all the thanks that Franlise needed.

Of course no one must know it was Franlise who was the true author. The Fellowship had insisted when they gave Franlise her mission that her part be kept hidden. Being humble, as well as outwardly beautiful and inwardly lovely, Franlise was happy to obey the wishes of the Fellowship in this matter. Besides, she knew that if Ann were to find out the truth, the pour deranged creature would probably be driven to place of complete madness.

Franlise shuddered at the thought.

“You never know where you’ll end up when you enter the Elsespace Arangement, Arona” Sanso remarked, ignoring Arona’s concern about the baby. “I wonder where Zhaana is though?”

“Never mind her, what about Yikesy?” retorted Arona.

“Godfrey, there’a technical hitch and I feel that it’s your department.” Ann was unable to link previous entries, and she knew what a stickler her publisher, Godfrey Pig Littleton, was for details and continuity. “I simply can’t get the thing to work any more!”

In the news, a 7-year-old girl helps people on the radio, telling “whatever comes into [her] head and people like what [she] sa<strike>”…

Sounds familiar?

Yann was excited, he just had a mail from the cattery “The Laughing Cats” telling him they would send him pictures of the new litter. The little kittens had just opened their eyes and apparently they were very cute.

When they went to that cat exhibition with Ewrick in March, Yann thought it was just to meet a friend of his who was a cat breeder himself, and they actually met him. His cat was gorgeous and seemed so comfortable that you could have thought he had been drugged. Yann’s friend told them he was always like a big stuffed toy.

They chatted a bit and Ewrick and Yann wandered about to have a look at the other cats, and that’s when Yann saw the Abyssinian cats of the Carnelian cattery. The cats were solar and majestic, their cinnamon coat were stealing Yann’s heart. He knew he would get one… soon.

After a few weeks looking on the Internet at the different catteries, the different websites about this particular race, Yann decided to take his phone and make a call. He’d selected a few numbers and decided to just have another look on the net and found the Laughing Cat cattery, they got new kittens since a few days only and there was one of them whose coat was cinnamon. It seemed it was the perfect one, so Yann called that cattery first and the guy told him there were no call for this one color yet though he had many calls from Russian or other European breeders for the others…

Yann asked if they already had pictures but apparently the kittens had still their eyes closed and he was waiting a bit to take pictures… “they looks like rats you know”… no matter, he’d wait.

And they had opened their eyes now, he’d get pictures very soon now.

Greve Bord was up Shift Creek without a paddle. Shift Creek was in Loo Mash, and Greve wanted to get to Well Flyers before sundown, but he was going upstream and everyone knew that Well Flyers was downstream.

And look at the funny messages her business cards have on them! Lavender pulled a selection of cards from her purse. I mean how weird is this:

Lester’s ex-wife keeps the milk cold. Batman316 is a nugget

and listen to this one:

We have a lot of fun doing it and you can too.

So I just knew it had to be some sort of clue. So you know me … I just had to make an appointment to see her!

Oh of course, agreed Decimus, scratching his ear. You don’t have a business card for Dr Limur in there by any chance do you?

oh no, sorry. Anyway, before I meet Annabel, I intend to go shopping for some new parasites. Aspidistra asked me to bring some back for her … and it is the least I can do really.

Yes, parasites sound great, sighed Decimus. You know the name of Annabel Ingram does ring a bell. Is she the one who takes guided tours of the Doorway of the Goddess Amarylis Moo Rue?

Oh! That’s right! that’s what I meant to tell you .. she exclaimed.

What? … oh and what IS your name, anyway? asked Harvey. We are such close friends, I sort of feel I should call you something.

Lavender ..funny, I thought you knew that .. well anyway, I forgot to mention, when they asked me what breed I would like for Essence I asked for a piglet. I asked for one with black and white stripes to take after Col. They are so cute aren’t they, and smart too! I hope Aspidistra likes pigs though …