Search Results for 'late'

“Feels a bit empty now, doesn’t it? A bit of bloody hoarding wasn’t all that bad after all,” Elizabeth now mused amused, while her newly acquired pet lemur was massaging her cheeks with velvety paws.
swat
All had been oddly strange lately. She’d even felt in the mood for some sweeping,… not to mention managing to remind something to her editor.
swat
That was a first, as memory matters had usually been all shades of grey for her.
swat SWAT!
What next she would create, she wondered.

The drowsy lemur voiced a shriek of panicked anguish when she abruptly left her armchair.
“Oh, you bloody shush now, don’t get all bossy on me just because I forgot where I put my bloody satisfied-or-your-money-back coupon.”
Malicious as it were, the lemur had been for a purpose, and was quite good at it. Fly swatting. She wasn’t getting a refund on the rascal, dead flies were piling around, almost blocking the door, and that was a sight she reveled in.

In the corner of a nearby street, Todd reverted back to his prefered form. That of a brown dwarf. His dream was to be a star, so he liked the irony of it.
“Finally done with this irritating ex-pron star and her antics” he said chewing on a bone leftover while heading for his ride, a red convertible, gift of the Sh’elves. “She had it coming after all, she should have libned quietly like she was supposed to.”

Next on his plans was to liaise back with Neb, but he feared his friend had not in him to complete his mission. Hopping in the car, he wished he wouldn’t be too late on his way to the ranch, with all those cracks and holes in the road.

Wiping his mouth still full of blood, an insidious concern crept into his mind. What if he too had been affected by the bloody fwicking kraken disease. But that was too early to say.

“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…”

“Now what? T-R-E-X ? To be serious?…” Eliza was patronizing again. “What’s a Trex, by all means? That’s not even in the dictionary, I’m sure!”
“As if you’d started to care” Flinella rolled her eyes, while at the same time managing to discreetly wink in passing at the little reptile whose tail was wrapped around her neck as though it were the latest fashion. “By the way, it spells T-Rex, you dimwit.”
“Well, good for you sweetie, it only scores a measly 21 points.” Eliza bit her lip ignoring the offending remark. Then hit by a sudden realisation, she stopped dead in her tracks, all thoughts of vexation lost in the current wave of thought.
“Wow, I’d never thought of that, but just imagine the size of those dinos’ fleas … Makes me shudder at the thought of it.”

“Sorry, for the tardiness dear” the dragon coughed in a midget voice. Lowering its voice, he added “I’ve been busy honing my herding sheep skills.”

“Well,” Flinella said “at least you’ve came. I was starting to think you were crushed under piles of dirt or something. Things have been rocky of late on this island…”
She looked inquisitively at the familiar snout “and I suppose you’ve smoked those poor sheep, haven’t you? The S’elves won’t be pleased.”

The dragon, actually a rather small dragon by all standards (the bane of his life was to be constantly mistaken for a karma chameleon), took the last remark in without retorting. That was ominous enough for Flinella who wasn’t accustomed to such absence of quick wit from his part.
The S’elves were a dissident faction of the Tw’elves. More ancient, some had said… though not as ancient as the Sh’elves —those went extinct or ascended a long while ago. Flinella was posted on the island to report on the shift progress and if possible, wreck havoc on any attempt at continent inuity.

“So far, so good…” she smiled pleased at her progress.

late
looking already far tunnel
random open cave suddenly
eventually strange taking fun photos
whistling garden white front
entirely others
odd

“Yet another splendid piece of synchronicity!” The Leprechaun praised himself, while eyeing the delicious-looking chocolate cake with three layers of vanilla cream that simply willed itself into different flavours before his delighted, excited taste buds. Just as he was about to take his first bite into the scrumptious cake, a multi-coloured portal opened before his very eyes. Unsurprisingly, the host of elves, each in a different physical manifestation, jumped out of the portal and dusted the stardust off their garments.

“Mr Leprechaun,” one elf began. He took the form of a Spanish gentleman by the name of Raul Iniesta. “Raul” (as he will be called for the time being until he shifts shape) had long, black hair that he had no intention of bounding, instead allowing its blackness to flow freely upon his neck and over his shoulders like a nightly waterfall of moonlight and starry gazes. He had an almond-shaped face, and his skin was gently golden-brown, as if his physical birth took place on a beach at sunset. His eyes were sea-blue, glimmering gently in the luminescence of his own aura. He spoke in a gentle voice that was mightily influenced by a touch of spanish mixed with french accents.
“I see you have taken the form of a Leprechaun-” Raul stepped closer to observe the essence’s current physical. “How quaint.”
The Leprechaun dryly stared at Raul. “I don’t see anything wrong with my physical form Mr INIESTA,” he replied, placing emphatic strain on ‘Iniesta’. “Would it have made any difference if I were a flower?”
“If you were a flower you’d fit perfectly with my body of hair!” Raul exclaimed. The Tw’Elves laughed heartily at the joke, and an iridescent beam of energy simultaneously rose from their esoteric beings, giving forth a ray of happiness, albeit for a short while, towards the inhabitants of the sleeping dimension.

A rustic, bent-bladed sword lies lazily upon my lap, its strap dancing with it, enticing it to be sheathed. I am gingerly distracted from my thoughts by this interesting tussle between master and holder, and it reminds me of a poem I once read, of a book and a pen sharing secrets, keeping secrets from their own wielder; how two objects that synchronise with each other to serve a bloody, yet noble purpose is a very… quaint concept to say the least.
Nevertheless, my thoughts return to the current scenery, of a bloody ground, the blood of twelve elves glistening in the late African afternoon sun- what are elves doing here? I rise quite slowly, and proceed to walk towards the slumped body of one of the elves. His head was slightly severed, and his white hair was blackened by dried blood that sprayed from his one wound. I kneel down, and silently recount the tale of these twelve elves, and how they came about to fall upon my assassin’s blade…

“Interested in interacting with you?” replied Mc Tart, “I should co co! Like a bloody morgue around here lately.”

“Er, who is Co Co?” Neb inquired politely.

Mc Tart grinned impishly. “A new character? I meant to say, I should think so! Although whether or not Co Co should think so is another matter entirely.”

“What might be the worth of what Co Co should think?”

“Good question, Neb!”

{link: worth}

Young Neb entered the vast openness that is, with a faint whooshing sound.

whoooooooosh

“Hello?” squeaked Neb in a curious fashion. Neb, wearing a curious face, drowns in the quiet of his own presence.

“Is there anybosy out there?” asked Neb in a slightly less squeaky tone than his last vocal utterance.

Neb ponders his latest mote, and questions its validity.

“Well, I am just as curious as you are, and I am not entirely sure of this reality… if you are interested in interacting with me, and perhaps answering some of my questions, we may create a fantasy worth.. well it is what it is, isn’t it?” resounded Neb with a faint puff of cigar smoke trailing up and out of his mouth.

Neb ponders, and then begins to sleep.

[link: squeaky]

By the time the peeping peaslander had finally come round, more than a week later, the aliens had gone. Lilac sat up slowly, rubbing her head. Where am I? she frowned. WHERE AM I?

Blithe, affectionately known as Blinky, had to admit that the very idea of anyone licking Arona’s toes was too bizarre to comtemplate, notwithstanding she had been unable to get the image out of her head since she first heard the rumour.

There was no place like home, notwithstanding that home could be considered to be anywhere at all. Home in this case was Blithe’s patio one balmy September evening. Citronella candles flickered on the table, and coloured fairy lights strobed in strings along the facade of the house. A rosy glow emanated from the bedroom window and Blithe took a snapshot, noticing later the fly screen visible, overlayed onto the bedroom scene. Not only was the view of the bedroom limited by the width of the camera lens, it was also limited in the sense that the wire screen was obscuring almost half of what would have been visible if the photograph had been taken from the other side of the screen, or, with no screen at all in between the lens and the view of the room. However, despite having such a partial view of the whole, the remainder that was viewable was still identifiable as a bedroom.

Blithe wasn’t about to remove the screen however, because it was doing its job of screening, or filtering out, the unwanted insects. That wasn’t to say that she was denying the existance of those insects, or that they weren’t welcome on the other side of the screen, just that she was selectively screening the unwanted items from a particular scene. If, for example, the room was full of insects, Blithe might have been preoccupied with them, to the exclusion of whatever else she might have preferred to focus on within the bedroom. Out on the patio, however, the insects were, if not always entirely welcome, appreciated. The praying mantis and the dragonfly were welcome, and the butterflies and moths were always welcome, because Blithe had associated the energy of those insects with familiar welcome energies. The wasps, flies and ants were not translated in the same way, but were appreciated for entirely different reasons, being an aid to exploring such issues as irritation (and occasionally, pain). Blithe had to admit that despite the praying mantis and dragonfly being welcome, it would not be true to say that they were welcome in the bedroom, however.

There had been times when Blithe wished that the whole patio was enclosed in screens, but the trouble with screens was that they tended to filter out everything of a certain size, although perhaps that was more a beleif about physical screens than anything else. Was it possible to filter out flies and wasps, but allow dragnflies and butterflies? Possible surely, she thought, but perhaps not with physical wire screen devices and associated beleifs.

A few days previously Blithe had cleaned the mesh filter on her kitchen tap, unrestricting the flow. Coincidentally, her friend had also had a tap mesh restricted flow incident, and had removed the mesh filter altogether. Another friend had removed a window screen for cleaning, and had chosen not to replace it, as she was appreciating the allowance of much more light. And then another friend had mentioned a dream, of dragonflies under a screen that was covering a pool. She had lifted the screen in the dream, to allow the dragonflies to escape, and yet some of the dragonflies chose to stay under the screen.

Intrigued with the words screen and mesh, which meant the same thing in one respect, but not in others, Blithe investigated the definitions. To screen could be to filter out the unwanted, but to mesh was to weave together. But were they so different, really? A screen was also a blank place on which to project images ~ meshed and woven selectively screened and filtered images, perhaps.

{link ~ weaving}

While Yuhara and Sylvestrus were exploring Second Life worlds (Frolic Caper~Belle was still on an extended leave of absence), Blithe Gambol, although she didn’t entirely realize it at the time, was exploring First Life worlds on the Coast of Light.

Blithe and her partner Winn set off for the drum festival in the late afternoon heat, with the intention of reaching the Light Coast before sundown. The strong low sun flickered on and off as it hid behind trees and hills, and the hot dry wind whipped Blithes hair into her eyes, leaving the heavy heat of the Coast of the Sun behind and tranforming it into a light bone dry atmosphere that seemed to suck the air out of Blithe’s lungs. She filled the vacuum with smoke, listening to the words of the music playing ~ must be a reason why I’m king of my castle….king of my castle…it reminded her of Dealea’s story about King Author.

When they reached Vejer de la Frontera they made a wrong turning, although they were well aware that no turning is a wrong one. The new direction took them in a circle behind the Vejer promontory, through the umbrella pines along the coast. The sky was golden yellow behind the black sillouttes on one side, with a periwinkle sea on the other, rocky pale grey outcrops blushed with pink paddling in the gently lapping waves.

As they entered the village of Canos de Meca, they slowed to crawl behind the inching cars, as tanned people in brightly coloured clothes wove in and out of the traffic, and in and out of the exotic looking bars and restaurants. Blithe remembered the Second Life worlds she had been exploring earlier that day, and wondered if Second Life came with the smells of sardines barbequeing on the beach, or a warm breeze wafting past laden with snatches of laughter and conversation. Visually, certainly, Second Life would be hard presssed to beat the visual appeal of Canos de Meca at sunset on an August evening. There were plenty of opportunities to observe the people and the hostelries, as the traffic got progressively worse until it eventually came to a standstill. The narrow lanes were lined with parked cars, and throngs of people carrying coolers made their way to the sand dunes near the lighthouse.

Eventually, after several slow drives past looking for a miraculous parking space that didn’t appear, Blithe and Winn found a restaurant in between the coastal villages that was strangely empty of people. Even Winn, who was much less inclined towards fanciful imaginings than Blithe, remarked on how surreal the place was. It could have been anywhere in Spain, so strangely ordinary was its appearance in comparison to the Moorish beach hippy style of the villages. They ordered food, and relaxed in easy silence in the oasis of calm ordinariness. Blithe wondered if the place actually existed or if she had created it out of thin air, just for a respite and a parking place, and a clean unoccupied loo. Another First Life world, perhaps, constructed in the moment to meet the current requirements of ease.

At 11:11, after another two drives through the crawling cars and crowds, Winn turned the car around and headed for home. At 12:12 they reached the Coast of the Sun, shrouded in sea mist, and at 1:00am precisely, they arrived home. Later, as Blithe lay on the bed listening to the drums playing on the music machine, she closed her eyes and saw the sunset over the Atlantic, and felt the ocean breeze of the fan. She projected her attention to the dunes of Trafalgar ~ which, incidentally, didn’t take two hours, it was instant. In another instant, she was back in her bedroom, sipping agua con gas on the rocks and chatting to Winn. Seconds later, she was in a vibrant nightclub overlooking the beach, dancing in spirit between the jostling holidaymakers being served at the bar. She imagined that one or two of them noticed her energy.

Clearly, teleporting from one place to another had its benefits. The question of parking, for example, wouldn’t arise. But Blithe wouldn’t have wanted to miss the late afternoon drive to the Coast of Light, and the golden slanting lightbeams flickering between the cork oaks making their cork shorn trunks glow red, or the ocean appearing over the crest of a hill. And if she had arrived in an instant at the location she was intending to visit, then she would never have encountered the sunset from the particular angle of the approach via the wrong turn. Variety ~ and impulse, and the opportunities of the unexpected turns ~ was the weft of weaving First Life worlds ~ or was it the warp?

link: weaving worlds

The entrances to Faerie (and indeed to other alternate realities and dimensions) had been shrouded in disbelief for several centuries, but times were changing and the fog of scepticism was dissipating, evaporating like river mist on a hot summer morning. Looking for the entrances deliberately, Blithe found, wasn’t the most efficacious method. Sat Nav alone would be unlikely to reveal them, unless the locating device was used in conjunction with impulse and intuition. Any device and method could be used effectively when combined with random impulse, even Google Earth or Google Moon. Blithe’s friend and colleage Dealea Flare was making good use of this device on her travels, using it as a personal non physical airline and space shuttle service. Dealea could get from A to B and back again in no time at all, or even from A to well beyond Z and back again in no time at all using this device in conjunction with impulse and large dose of intention and focus. Blithe had the impulse down pat but still had difficulty with the focus, which was largely a case of having too many intentions at once, most of them somewhat vague.

The more random and impulsive Blithe was, the better her investigations went, often leading her into a new and exciting exploration which may or may not be linked to the current intention. Such was the case when she went on a mundane shopping trip to the Rock of Gibber. As she sat sipping coffee at the Counterpart Cabana sidewalk cafe listening to the locals conversing in Gibberish, she noticed the extraordinary tangle of pipework on the building opposite. It reminded her of the steampunk world she had been investigating in her spare time. The text book steampunk world was intriguing to say the least, but rather grim, and tediously full of victims and fear. The inhabitants always seemed to be running away from someone. The steampunk world she was beginning to sense in Gibber was quite different in that it was a sunny cheerful alternate reality held together with a vast labyrinthine network of water pipes, scaffold, and connecting cables.

Blithe paid for her coffee and strolled off, noticing more and more scaffolding and tangles of pipes as she climbed the warren of narrow winding streets. The air was different the higher she climbed up the winding uneven steps, the sunlight was sharper and the shadows denser, and there was a crackling kind of hush as if the air was shimmering. Cables festooned the crumbling shuttered buildings like cobwebs, and centuries of layers of crackled sun faded pastel paint coated the closed doors. Open doors revealed dark passageways and alleys with bright rectangles of light glowing in the distance, and golden dry weeds sprouted from vents and windowsills casting dancing shadows on the uneven walls.

The usual signs of life were strangely absent and present at the same time; an occasional voice was heard from inside one of the houses, and there were pots of flowers growing here and there, indicating that a human hand had watered them with water from the pipe network. There was no music to be heard though, or any indication that the cable network was in use, and there were virtually no people on the streets. A lady in a brilliant blue dress who was climbing the steps from Gibber Town below paused to chat, agreeing with Blithe who remarked on the peaceful beauty of the place. The lady in blue said “Si, it’s very nice, but there are many steps, so many steps. If you are coming from below there are SO many steps!”

There was a boy watching a white dog watching an empty space on the pavement, so Blithe stopped to watch the boy watching the dog watching nothing. Eventually Blithe inquired “What is he looking at?” and the boy shrugged and continued to watch the dog watching nothing. Blithe watched for a little while, and then wandered off. A small child was giggling from inside a doorway, and a mothers voice asked what he was laughing at. The child was looking out of the door at nothing as far as Blithe could see.

As the sun climbed higher, Blithe began to descend into Gibber town, winding and weaving through the alleys, wondering how she had failed to notice this place half way up the Rock until now. She came to a crumbling wall with a doorway in it that looked out over the bay beyond the town below. This must be one of the entrances, she deduced, to this alternate world in Gibber. “Entrance”! Blithe had a revelation. “I never noticed that the word ENtrance and enTRANCE are spelled the same.” Later, back at the office, Frolic Caper-Belle said she thought it was probably a very significant clue. “I’ll file that in the Clue Box, Blithe”, she said.

{link: entrance}

It was hot, although not as hot as usual for the month of August on the southern slopes of the Serrania de Ronda. It had rained, the black clouds and thunder a welcome respite from the searing dry heat of an Andalucian summer, plumping up the blackberries and washing the dust from the leaves of the fig trees. Blithe Gambol hadn’t seen her old friend Granny Mosca for months, although she wasn’t quite sure what had kept her from visiting for so long. Blithe loved Granny Mosca’s cottage tucked away in the saddle behind the fat hill and there had been times when she’d visited often, just to drink in the magical air and feast her eyes on the beauty of the surroundings. Dry golden weeds scratched her legs as she made her way along the dirt path, and she was mindful of the fat black snake she’d once seen basking on the stone walls as she reached into the brambles to pluck blackberries and take photographs.

Rounding a corner in the path she gasped at the incongrous and alarming sight of a bright yellow bulldozer just meters from Granny Mosca’s cottage. The bulldozer was flattening a large area of prickly pear cactuses. Unfortunately for the cactuses, it was fruiting time, and Blithe wondered if Granny Mosca had first picked the fruits and suspected that she had, those that she could reach. Nothing that could be eaten was left unpicked ~ Blithe remembered the many sacks of almonds that Granny had given her over the years, very few of which she had bothered to shell and eat.

The bulldozer was making an entranceway to the tiny derelict cottage that was situated next to Granny Mosca’s house. Granny had asked Blithe if she wanted to buy it, and she had wanted to buy it eventually, but the purchase of a derelict building hadn’t been a priority at the time. Now it looked as if she was too late, that someone else had bought it, perhaps to use as a holiday home. Horrified, Blithe called out for Granny, who was often in the goat shed or away across the hidden saddle valley cutting weeds to feed the poultry, but there was no sign of her. Two alien looking turkeys gobbled in response, and the black and white chained dog barked menacingly.

As Blithe retraced her steps along the dirt path it occured to her that whoever was planning to use the derelict cottage might be a very interesting person, someone she might be very pleased to make the acquaintance of in due course. After all, she had noticed that the holiday guests staying at the casitas on the other side of the fat hill were all sympathetic to the magical nature of the location, many of them arriving from a previous visit to a particularly interesting location in the Alpujarras ~ a convergence of ley lines. When questioned as to why they chose the fat hill casitas, they simply said they liked the countryside. Either they weren’t telling, or they were simply unaware objectively of the connection of the locations. Blithe could sense the connections though, both the locations, and that the people choosing to vacation at the fat hill were connected to it.

For one hundred and forty seven thousand years, Blithe had had an energy presence at the fat hill, although it was half a century of her current focus before she remembered it. She had felt protective of it, when she finally remembered it, as if she had a kind of responsibility to it. This place can look after itself quite well on its own, she reminded herself. The fat hill had watched while Franco’s Capitan looted the Roman relics, and watched as Blithe stumbled upon the remains of Roman and Iberian cities, and the fat hill had laughed when Blithe first tried to find the entrance to the interior and got stuck in thorn bushes. Later, the fat hill had smiled benignly when Granny Mosca led her to the entrance ~ without a thorn bush in sight. The cave entrance had been blocked with boulders then. Blithe had given some thought to an excavation, wondering how to achieve it without attracting the attention of the locals, but now she wondered if one day, when the time was right, she would find the entrance clear, as if by magic. Magic, after all, was by no means impossible.

{link: feast for the birds}

Yann had been in a box for quite some time, and the feeling was really not one of comfort. He wondered about the reasons for a moment but it seemed his mind was more on his new acquisitions, the bee hive and the sunflowers, they were quite busy and buzzy of course, but it was giving him a sense of warmth and of comfort he’s been lacking for so long.

He’s seen his sister the other day and she’d told him that she’d been on a revolution lately, she’d been throwing books away, something hardly possible to think of before, as books represented knowledge and were mostly revered in her family. That had made him think of his own rampages when he was young and the high respect and almost awe that he’d had about them before. But well it suddenly ended one day when he’d bought a book about biogeology… reading that book was one of the most wonderful experiences he’d had, very empowering actually. The content of the book was quite inept in itself, if you’d ask him, and he was so upset and angry that he’d bought that book that it gave him the guts to tear it apart and express those feeling of rage he’d been holding. He’d felt forced to adore books and show some respect for too long. Well that was old memories and now Yann was more in tune with what he wanted to read or not and also was more accepting of the myriad of opinions and ways of expressing them too.

He was looking for more creativity in his life and the hive was reminding him of that, a constant activity and buzzing, no question, but action… and that strong feeling of warmth and honey.

Quintin has planted some lavender too and a bush which name was like the word choice in French… very symbolic maybe, and also connected to his past. The very fact that he could allow his friend to plant that bush in their garden was a good reflection that he’s been more accepting of all the connections and that they existed and didn’t need to bear a strong influence on his actions now.

[link:buzz,bees,leaves,book]