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Aum Geog spent a long time seating motionless before the piece of parchment which had just been delivered by a specially trained fincheon.
Fincheons were not particularly elegant, (not to say downright ugly) one had to admit, but they were very convenient, once you noticed that their feathers were a special shining tint of grey which almost made them invisible. They always knew how to fly back, and this one had made no exception.
But it was a bearer of annoying news for the newly appointed Elder of the Monastery who was trying to curb his irateness by staying still.

This… he was at a loss for words. Breathe, breathe he exhorted himself.

A few months ago, when he was appointed Elder, his patient work of diligence seemed to have just paid off. He had thought he would be given the keys, and more importantly, the chalice.
But that sly dog of Hrih had decided otherwise. He had transmitted the chalice to that irresponsible and naïve novice Franiel, while giving him a bunch of rusted keys he didn’t give two poohs about.
Of course, it was only a matter of time before he could get it back, all he had to do was to make Franiel uncomfortable enough that he willingly relinquish the ownership to someone… someone like himself of course!
The annoying thing about this damn chalice you see, is that it won’t properly function with anyone else than the rightful owner (except for small uninteresting tricks). Obviously, Hrih didn’t want him to have access to its powers, but that old monkey was now gone, and there wasn’t much he could do about what was going on.

In fact, the plan was nearly perfect. Two birds, one stone. Bring Franiel to have some appropriate spell modifications carved onto that chalice, and have him give it back to the Elder, Aum Geog himself.
Obviously, he couldn’t just let go such a precious artifact in the nature without appropriate stealthy surveillance. Thanks to one of his faithful servants, Brother Derwish, he was kept informed of the progresses. A former master of disguises that a other-Worldly experience had him join the orders, Brother Derwish was no short of brains nor tricks in his bag, and that parchment was another proof of it.
If he had renounced to contact Elder Aum Geog directly through the glowing balls, and take the risks of unexpected delays, it was because they were most probably watched and their communication monitored.

So here went the news:

SPARFLY HAS MADE CONTACT WITH BIRD OF PREY. EGG DISAPPEARED.
NESTING CHANGED TREE. GNAT STICKS TO THE POOH.

Brother Derwish imaginative poetry could mean but one thing. Or two perhaps.

The little twit had been watched by someone else who had showed him some of the powers of the egg… err, the chalice. It would have partly activated the chalice, and make it disappear unless its owner needs it enough to have it appear again. Obviously, without chalice, or thinking it was lost, he had changed his course to another place.
Hopefully, Brother Derwish was following his trail closely.

If more disastrous news had to come, Elder Aum Geog would have to summon his char of marmoths (big toothed hibernating woolliphants) and go there by himself.

Leonard was content. It had not happened exactly as he had thought, but as he had explained to Malvina, the only wise thing to do was to teach the boy about the powers of the chalice. That would active its self-protective cloaking power, and have the boy temporarily relieved of this burden.
For if he had been entrusted the chalice by the old Abbot, that was surely for a good reason.

As Franiel had been moving, Leonard had had Moufle watch over him. Apparently, Leonard and his dog weren’t the only ones on his trail… The wiry gangly tonsured guy clothed in a potatoes sack didn’t seem to be here by chance either…

Sam looked puzzled at the flurry of new comments that had appeared like a cluster of ripe “groiselles”.
Having been plugged on the Reality Play Channel, he had been enjoying the activity like a buzzing hive of frantic bees in the background, but decided to get back to his forging of a Jedi light saber.
The recent didjeridoo adventures had given him some particular insights on how sounds could be manipulated to model matter, and he had decided to adapt a tutorial he had found on the network on how to craft a light saber from carton wraps and glowing sticks. Except that he would do it almost from scratch, starting with a jar of vegemoth…

As for Al, as he couldn’t resist a peek, he started to wonder what this red currant frenzy was all about. He knew well enough “groseilles”, as his aunt would make delicious red currant jelly in the bayou. But “groiselles”, he checked quickly seemed to be an ancient variation of the word… How odd… Becky’s clue-sowing (a bit Cluseau-ing, indeed ) talent was really shining in her typos…

What really was Salitre’s mound? For most people around this valley, who had forgotten about the old times, it was nothing more than a rocky and steep piece of earth, barely good enough for Barbary sheep and piglets.
In fact, when you were coming from the new macadamized roads encircling the mountains, it could almost slip unnoticed. But when, like Granny Mosca, you knew the paths for having worn countless shoes walking on them, you could no longer ignore the towering presence of this place.
For her, it was a magical realm, a doorstep truly.

Granny Mosca was the official owner of this place, though she preferred to think of it as being the gatekeeper.
She kept a few animals up there, and went everyday here to feed them, pacing up and down the treacherous paths despite her old age.

Something you couldn’t really realize until you first reached the top of the mound was that the mound was at the center of the valley, giving an impressive view miles and miles around. In that land of mountains, it could be just another peak among others, but when you were here, you knew it wasn’t.
Granny Mosca had felt it many times, this surge of energy, almost as if there were streams flowing down the surrounding slopes, up to the top of Salitre’s mound. At special times of the year, it was like you could feel the dwellers of the past moving around… At this very spot were almond trees were now growing.

Those tourists who came a few days ago where funny. Especially the blond woman, with the high-pitched laugh who had come a few times here already.
For sure Granny Mosca didn’t fear that they discover anything, as the place had knew how to shroud itself without her for ages, even before she was born. In fact, it was the contrary. She was willing to share some of the secrets to people daring enough and open-minded enough to crack some of these nuts of wisdom.
The land would tell them…

That is… unless they left the bag of almonds to the dogs…

The sun had just come back on the Andalusian mountains. After a day of frying sun on the beach, and showers of cats and dogs (especially dogs), everything was still for a moment.

It’s been a few days that Yurick and Yann had arrived at Dory and Dan’s house near Gibraltar, and they were beginning to feel like fishes in water —a little bit like smoked hot pink salmons somewhat.

Last night was full moon, and among the howling of dogs around the room, they could at times feel the presence of their friend Finn who had promised to appear as a fishnet stockings sun-glassed trenchcoated sexy spy pop-in. So far, they only had got clues as to her presence, though they got the distinct feeling she was drawing closer each passing hour.

In any case, life was different here, slower, and peaceful. The endless trail of pyramid shaped green mountains and rocky serpentine paths seemed to be each leading to a hidden network of long-lost treasures.
Only Flove knew what they would discover on their way to Salitre…

It had been more than a week now that Claude had broken loose from one captivity to fall into another.
Not that this gang of strange shape-shifting magpie beings seemed to consider him a captive, rather an impromptu host that they felt obliged to take care of. But Claude wasn’t duped one moment.

His precedent prison on Tikfijikoo had been relatively easy to break out from, thanks to that unasked for gift of preternatural strength he had gained from the experiments he had be subjected to. Actually, had he not almost been driven mad from pain, he would have been on the loose earlier. Thank the Magpies for his recovered sanity…
Security on the island facility wasn’t the highest and most difficult he had been confronted to. They seemed to consider the relative isolation of the island and its deadly sharp coral reef encircling it their main asset in keeping their experiments clear from outside interferences.

Claude snapped back from his thoughts and gazed fixedly at a tender green sprout at his feet while humming a nursery rhyme. An effective trick.
He had to be more cautious… He knew they could read his surface thoughts…
Apparently, he could come and go as pleased him, but as he had tried to find his way back to the island facility, he had discovered that the landscape was changing each time he felt close to it. And soon enough, he was finding himself back to the hidden settlement. He knew enough to suspect his affable alien hosts of playing tricks on his mind to keep him in check. Perhaps they were even bending space around their settlement, as far as he knew…
Not intrusive, and yet not a very different treatment from the inhumane experiments. Except he had no mummy bandages this time…

Know thy foe so went the adage, and Claude was determined to know enough about his new captors to escape and complete his mission.
From what he was guessing, as they had not killed him, they probably would release him (if he was lucky) as soon as their mission would be completed —a mission which was most probably the same as his own. Snatching the crystal skull he knew was there somewhere. He could sense they were after it too.
He was wondering who had hired them to retrieve the thing. Obviously they were not from the common lot of thieves, most certainly not even from this planet, and anyone who had hired them must have been in dire need of the thing.
He had been told by the Baron that the crystals were storing ancient vast knowledge and that accessing it had been only possible since a few decades, actually since the discovery of coherent beams of light (laser). But even accessed, the information stored remained vastly incomprehensible, and deciphering it could take another millennium without appropriate knowledge of its holographic proprieties.
The Baron had told humanity was like a child being given a box of books on relativity… And even the mad transvestite doctor was only toying with the tip of an immense iceberg.

Those Magpies were far more advanced, Claude could see it clearly, and he wondered how he could outdo them, if that was possible. Quite frankly he didn’t know why they had not yet retrieved it. Perhaps they were having trouble locating it too…
That would mean he still had a head start, however short.

A faint barking sound seemed to echo in his head… It was apparently coming from… the gnarled trunk of an old majestic tree… Whispers seemed to come from it too, like a child talking with an adult, and whispers around them…
The tree seemed wide enough for him to enter into the biggest crack of its bark…
Could it be one of their secret entrances and exits? There had to be coordinate points were they could get out of this warped space… What was he risking to try?

A man was walking on the narrow path shaded by the tall pandanus trees.

Mahiliki was coming back from the sawmill where he worked, smiling to the people he met on his way back home. The island of Fikitupi was a small island in the Pacific, and he knew most of the people living around this small corner here.

An old wizened lady with a toupee was busy weaving pandanus dried leaves into baskets and mats on the front door of her small house, while children were running to and fro among noisy chicken all around the place.
Mahiliki smiled, fond as he was of Nanaiis, whom all children loved deeply, for she always had new tales for them to hear, and cheering words to share. She was quite intuitive, and had said to him years ago that his new girlfriend wouldn’t stay around and have lots of children.
He didn’t want many children anyway… but as Nanaiis had said, Vera had left, not without saying she would come back though.
Mahiliki didn’t count much on it, but he had all the time to wait for her. Life was calm and sweet here, and its appeal was great.

At a short distance, he could spot the hut of O’panié and Twahissi. They were some funny strange hoots these two. Twahissi was the light-haired niece of O’panié and she was sharing with him her love for otherworldly matters. Twahissi’s parents had left her in his care, when they left to open a shop in the main island of the archipelago, and frankly, Twahissy was far more comfortable staying in Fukitupi where all felt magic to her.

Mahiliki smiled when he finally understood they were trying to bury something near the culvert on the side of their hut. For apparently no reason, a month or two ago, O’panié had become interested in old papers and had become convinced that the date line was not only passing on the island of Fukitupi, but even more, it was passing right through his hut, and thus might explain his apparent sudden feelings of time loss.
Some educated people had tried to reason him, but he’d stood fast in his opinion. Sightings of rainbow bubbletons by his niece Twahissi had him convinced even further that there was the possibility to improve this technique of time-travel. For as he crossed the bedroom he could step one day forward or backward! How thrilling it all was!
Guess only the Elders knew what he was trying to bury now…

Mahiliki could not but agree with him, as they were giving the whole village some pleasant laughing, and he had to admit that his enthusiasm was winning him more and more people to his quest. He wondered what sweet Vera would think of all of that, Cartesian as she was…

Quite frankly, Midora didn’t know how and where to look for Badul. She had spent lots of time delving into the labyrinth of chapters that composed the book, at first to no avail.
Only after some familiarization with the narrative had she come to roughly understand that the two books where rewriting the pages —or even, rewiring them— so that each time she started over, it was like a similar yet different story. Most of the alternate versions did occur within the same kind of environment, or the same dimensions as the previous ones, but there were always all kinds of small hints that made her get a small hunch that it was not quite the same story she had read before that was taking place now.
She had even become quite good at tracking down these flimsy moments where she found herself wondering what felt “different”, at odds, or simply not quite at the same place. Like in her dreams, these were precious cues telling her to pay attention. More than simple cues, of course some of them where howling at her face that something required her attention. The additions made by her distant relative Dory, or later on by her step-daughter Becky were compelling cases of such occurrences. Asynchronous apparitions of mummies sometimes reminded her of stories told by one of her father and where more generally speaking of symbolic death and regeneration, but when all of these cues where as many portals the details of which she could lose herself in…

Naasir had told her to find Badul. She knew Badul… Like Midora herself, Badul was a facet of the dreaming dragon who was exploring the many facets of itself in an intricate play, and it felt to her that Badul was stuck somewhere in the process and required some attention. In fact, she remembered that in all the versions of the stories that she had read about, Badul’s history was never ended. Each time, he was on his way to explore the new land he had discovered, and somehow, he just never get there.
When she was trying to get to the rest of the story, as much as she would search for it, there were only blank pages.
Perhaps it was for her to write them, like Indy did after she encountered that mummy decades ago, not necessarily to exorcise the experience, but rather to learn more about her connections.

What were her own connections? She wondered.
What did happen to Badul on his way to the clandestine traveling portal of Gralm Tur? And why did it matter? Did he found something about the network, and some link to the skulls which have been an obsession for quite some time for some of the major and most intriguing characters of this inter-dimensional sopoohpera?

Truth was, Badul felt a bit like an oddball to her. She didn’t know how to get close to him. Apparently, when she had read the early articles from her great-uncle Cuthbert, she had found out that he had connected quite well to the daunting character. As a matter of fact, most of his comments had helped flesh out the character, while most of the other participants in the books had been only remotely observing his deeds. However priceless these clues were, Midora knew by now that they were not absolute, and would rewrite differently if the story was asking for it. And in fact, perhaps her own addition would change whatever his fate would have been.

Midora could feel Badul differently now… a young boy, whom she is babysitting, in another life.
Bastian is baby Badul’s name and he’s a toddler, a toddler exploring an unknown world made of colourful toys.
Midora (her name’s Ada in that focus) likes to work for little Bastian’s family. The woman, his mother, looks a bit odd like Morticia Addams, or like a Cher just out of her bed, but Ada likes her. She’s busy traveling alot, and doesn’t have much time to care for the baby.

Midora thinks she has read about his woman somewhere in the books…
Could it be that? Yes,… there is little doubt about it.
It seems like she’s just run into young Carla…

— Sorry for the confusion, the voice of Leörmn said, there may have been some traffic jam along the portal’s tunnel… I think we lost track of time somewhat.
— But we’re arrived, aren’t we? asked Arona, still a bit grumpy about the cave moving.
— Mmm, I suppose so. If my calculations are correct, we are. Although…
— What?!
Arona was starting to wonder what could possibly go more mind-boggling than it already was…
Leormn puffed into a small-sized teal-bellied gyucko (a sort a cutie reptipooh) and started to wiggle away…
— Have honey do’s, see you in a while!

— Grumpf, always wiggling out this one… grumbled Arona.
And where did they all go now? It seemed like once again, she had been left alone. Good riddance, better enjoy the calm before they come back.

Malvina was enjoying this new place where she was in. She had felt that, in other Worlds, some of her other attentions had been moving too. Especially one who was having great funnie in her new housie which was harbouring a portal in a very ancient tree. And for most of these attentions, it was also a time of reunion with dear ones, and reactivation of a new kind of power.
Perhaps the time was now for her too arrived, to reunite with her Sisters.

Only thing was that, where she was now at this precise moment, her Sisters were not yet born…
Interestingly, for a reason that only the mind of a century old wise dragon like Leormn knew —if she would trust it not to be a simple stroke of inattention and bad luck as he would try to make it appear— she was undoubtedly right where she had thought to be, a small island in the Eastern coastal area of Lan’Ork in the vicinity of the Marshes of Doom.
Except that it was the Legendary Past…