Search Results for 'late'

Fiona had more or less given up on getting the pebbles from Yann, deciding they must have got lost in the post, so that evening when she happened to check the mailbox when walking past she was very surprised and delighted to see a package from him. It was way too late for the postie to have been, so she was intrigued as to how they had got there and where they had been all this time.

The three pebbles, well a couple of them were more like small rocks really and she was most impressed that Yann had sent them, were from the cave in Scotland he had visited a few months ago. Yann said the small one was from the cliff, the red one was one of the pebbles outside the cave and the grey one was from the stream inside the cave.

Fiona held each of them in her hand and got quite a strange feeling from them, and some interesting pictures came into her head…..

Yann had also sent a furry toy, a little scottish hairy cow. Apparently on his trip these hairy cows had reminded him of her. Fiona was a little perplexed by the seeming similarity but decided to believe it was a good thing. how quaint! she thought bless him

After Sanso heard the voice “the reason you are looking for is right under your nose” he thought he had better go and have another look at that smelly, well was it smelly? hmmm perhaps not, just a bit mouldy, old cape. Just in case it was a clue and he had missed it.

He was surprised and delighted to see Arona, who was still sitting quietly meditating.

Oh, goodness, said Arona startled, Who are you?

I am Sanso and some people call me a wretched outcast madman wanderer, and Sanso laughed heartily.

Arona laughed too, out of politeness and a bit hesitantly, unsure if Sanso was joking or not. Well your words not mine she said

Sanso laughed heartily again which Arona found a bit odd. My words indeed he said And who are you and what brings you to explore this cave?

I am Arona, and this is Mandrake. I popped in to find the source of the beautiful music I could hear, but my overall mission is learning about magic.

Sanso had stopped listening and was gazing at the round glass ball filled with the sand shapes.

Good Lord! he gasped, Is that a sabulmantium ! And a very early model too. This is a classic! The later models are much more complex, this is very fundamental, but beautifully made.

Oh really, well it is great fun

Sanso explained to Arona at length the more technical details of how a sabulmantium worked, and how it could be used like a compass.

Fascinating she said, and Mandrake rolled his eyes.

Arona and Mandrake sat side by side looking into the glass ball filled with sand. They had been practising for some time, and had both become quite proficient at shifting the sand.

So what shall we make now Mandrake? Something we both like maybe?

A fish perhaps? suggested Mandrake

Oh excellent idea! and no sooner was it thought of than the sand would shift accordingly.

Scrambled eggs I think too, on chunks of homemade bread, said the still hungry Arona, and chocolate!

Some milk for me, said Mandrake

Hmmm not sure about that Mandrake. Lots of cats have allergies to cows milk.

Mandrake rolled his eyes And chocolate might make you fat, he said, but was I so rude as to mention it? and Mandrake created a hairy cow, and a farmer to milk the cow.

Arona laughed, and created a little sand langoat, just in case the stubborn Mandrake changed his mind. Langoat’s milk would be much better for him she thought.

The glass ball was now filled with a miniature world of sand objects.

Arona leaned back against the wall and stroked Mandrake. She felt very fond of the grumpy cat. The feeling of being able to create whatever she wanted had been fun. Perhaps, she thought, her creations were rather rudimental at this stage, but then already she could feel bigger things brewing within her as her confidence grew. She felt as though the sand game had focused her, like a beam of light which shone only on that which was intended.

Arona closed her eyes and allowed her mind to open and reach out, something she knew she had always been able to do easily, but her fear of the “madness” had made her cautious and hide these abilities, till she became unsure of them. The “madness” was the term the people in her Village had given to the poor wretched wandering ones, who claimed to hear voices and communicate with Gods. Once as a child she had seen the Villagers drive one of these poor souls from the Village, shouting and abusing him. She did not really understand what he had done, only that the Villagers were afraid of him. So Arona had felt it was better to keep some things to herself.

Arona left her mind open and allowed images to enter. Some of the images she did not understand, and she let them flow on, enjoying the energy of them notwithstanding. She saw a dragon, it was not the one with the mouthful of riddles, but another one, a baby one she felt. Her ability to see pictures was quite rusty, but she felt a connection with this baby dragon and a great fondness for it.

She felt a great peacefulness in her body, a knowledge that walking in the world of magic would be easier from now on

Yann have been working on the drawing sporadically, several subject were coming to his mind at the same time and he wanted to treat them all… All what he could do for the moment was just draw some sketches of all that… there was that scene with his niece and the dragon-boy, and that other scene where he could see that man on a dinosaur-like mount…

At times he could also feel the gentle energy of his dear friend Amanda. He’d wanted to meet her in Vienna in June, but unfortunately she couldn’t attend the meeting. She was participating in his current exploration of art. It was like he could feel many energies from different people and different beings and he could choose to express them as he wanted.

Some could be translated just in movement, like just drawing lines and create a harmonious disposition and interactions between them, suggesting other lines that weren’t fully expressed or weren’t expressed at all.

Some others could be translated as colors and shades, contrast and iridescence… possibilities were infinite.

He was wondering how he could introduce the gentle energy of his friend, but maybe it had already been incorporated.

Salome was feeling a draw to the cave…

She was focusing her energy slightly differently now, in order to manifest in this dimension an aspect of herself.

Bill, the itinerant artist commissioned to paint portraits of the Wrick family, was uneasy. While he’d been staying in the castle with the eccentric family, he’d lost all track of linear time. It had been altogether too confusing, and his head was spinning. Manon the cook had sent a tray up to his room, with a pot of Earl grey tea, and a plate of Yorkshire parkin for his supper, when he’d claimed to be developing a mysterious ailment and begged leave to retire to his room.

Bill splashed some malt whiskey into his cup of tea. A good long sleep was what he needed, and with a sigh he drained his cup and climbed into bed, pulling the heavy eiderdown up over his chin. He lay there for awhile staring into space, not really aware of his thoughts. An owl hooted from the oak tree outside his window. Twit whoohooo twit whoo hooooooo…

Bill blinked and then frowned. On the top of the Queen Anne highboy facing the end of his bed was a large carved stone face. How odd, he thought, I don’t recall seeing that there before.

Fiona was feeling a bit weird.

She was wondering what was real. Was she real? Wow I am starting to sound like Dory she said and then laughed

Oh my goodness and now I am laughing out loud and talking to myself. Jarrod does that and they put him on medication for it.

And were her online friends real? I mean what evidence did she have. There were these pebbles of course Yarn said he was sending, but where were they?

The other day she had been talking to her friends via the internet, and she found herself telling this ridiculous bird story, which basically boiled down to “I saw a bird and a cracked egg shell”

AHAHAHAHAHA

Ooops better stop laughing out loud so much. But at the time of seeing the bird it had felt really significant, as though something of importance was being communicated to her.

And the online story they had all been writing — well was it all of them, or was it really just her writing it? — whatever, it was getting weirder and weirder and quite rude at times too actually. Or was it??? Was that her imagination again?

And lately she kept winking. Good grief, I never wink, what is all that about? What the does a wink mean anyway?

Fiona patted her dog George. He was so funny and uncomplicated. All he wanted to do was eat and play and have as much fun as possible… so cool. Actually that is all I want really too, she decided, and felt much better.

Fiona woke up smiling from her dream.

She had been in a new house, scrubbing the wooden floorboards, rearranging furniture. There was a nice garden, very green. Anyway all these ducks flew into the garden, well ducklings really, because they were cute and yellow, like cartoon ducks.

It had been drought conditions for so long that Fiona was concerned for them. So she filled a glass with water and threw it over them. She kept doing this, and the ducks were hopping happily around in the water. Then they all started clapping their wings together to thank her.

Fiona had been having lots of duck imagery lately. A funny thought crossed her mind as she thought of Rose, a friend of Dory’s who was into birds. Well she was a friend of all of them, but Fiona associated her with Dory, because Dory was always saying “Rose said this… or Rose said that”…

Quintin said ‘ducks and drakes’ was a game where you threw pebbles into the water or something. This cast a slight shadow over Fiona’s day thinking about it, because sadly her pebbles had still not arrived from Yann.

Anyway when they did get there, no way would she be throwing them away into the water. Not after this long a wait.

What was the time anyway? she wondered looking at her watch 1:11, cool time for some more housework.

Arona hummed happily to herself. She felt so light without the cape and the tunnel was bathed in the gentle light of many glukenitches. Mandrake the cat followed along too, much to Arona’s delight, although she was a little hesitant to tell this to the grumpy cat

Magic magic magic magic she hummed to herself

Arona almost skipped along the tunnel, and, so wrapped up was she in thoughts of magic, that she tripped and fell heavily, hurting her left hand as she put it out to save herself

Ouch, hells bells and warty wizards, she muttered, for it did hurt quite considerably… and then she had some scarey thoughts. She looked around and realised that really, the fact of the matter was, undeniably, that she was still lost in the darkish tunnel.

What if I don’t believe in magic? and her happy mood plummeted.

Oh fuch, she swore, and sat down on the cave floor. FUCH FUCH FUCH FUCH she shouted as loud as she possibly could, and in fact hurt her throat a little in the process and quite possibly the sensitive ears of many glukenitches.

This blessed cave is doing my head in. I want to see the sunshine, or the rain, no matter, I don’t care what the weather is doing I JUST WANT TO BE OUT OF THIS CAVE.

Ooops that was rather loud

After coaxing Mandrake back, as he had retreated quite some distance at her outburst, she sat down and put her head in her hands and tried to think. Did she believe in magic? Well of course she had no choice. Life without magic was inconceivable to her.

She felt a familiar tiredness sweep over her as she struggled to work it out. Perhaps I will just have a small sleep before I continue, and she curled up on the ground, wishing she had her heavy black cape to wrap around her.

As she gave up the struggle and let sleep come she heard some soft words

It’s easy Arona … magic is easy … it is the thread linking all to all

************

A short while later she woke from her sleep, feeling refreshed and ready to continue.

Fiona ed as she read the latest updates on Quintin’s website.

She felt the strong presence of her evil twin as she found herself compelled to play with some of the new features.

She hoped this would not make Quintin feel as really it had nothing to do with the story.

Or did it

Of course he can always delete it if he wants, she thought happily or make some rules, to stop this sort of thing happening in the future.

Becky noticed the round jars of coloured sand on the shelf as she went to look for some chocolate. She hadn’t known why at the time, but she’d followed the impulse to bring a little sand home with her from special places, usually scooped up quickly and a bit furtively in the clear plastic wrapper of a cigarette packet. They were all lined up in little round jars from a disused yogurt making machine in front of her unused cookbooks on the kitchen shelf.

Dory was secretly delighted Georges had drugged the coleslaw, despite appearing to be angry. She loved the way different things altered her perception, and even though she knew how to alter her perception without using a drug now, she also knew she was creating the drug and its effects, and that it didn’t much matter whether she did or she didn’t.

(Becky wondered if that principle applied to pain relieving drugs too, and decided that indeed it must. She wondered though if she really really believed it enough to trust herself to create pain relief WITHOUT actually swallowing a little ball of physical matter)

Dory was reluctant to admit it at first, but she’d also known all along that she’d created Georges appearing out of nowhere like that, and that she had in fact invited him. Sometimes it seemed easier to forget that and just grumble, which of course was acceptable too. Grumbling was fun sometimes, but it got awfully boring if she carried it on for too long.

The coleslaw was delicious.

Have some more, offered Geroges

(Becky made a note to change Georges name to Geroges. It was no accident that she kept typing it like that, and she was beginning to think correcting it all the time was futile, and that she was somehow missing the clue)

Dory munched the crunchy coleslaw.

(Without a moments appreciation for her lovely strong full set of teeth, Becky noticed)

Dory unexpectedly felt a moment of appreciation for her teeth. Wow, she thought, I never even think about that, but teeth are cool. She shuddered when she remembered an awful dentist dream she’d recently had.

Dory looked up at Geroges and smiled.

Got any chocolate?

“HAHAHA! it is your first step now. Let me just remind you that you need not play MY game, the game is yours, ever.” said Georges.

Dory was feeling a bit confused now. What was he talking about, what game? And first step to what? She couldn’t hold to the anger nor the irritation; all of that was feeling not real or not here, or not there for all she knew.

“The direction you follow is your choice, and where I come from is not relevant to this conversation. You may say I come from yourself and indeed you called me and I wanted company. Do you want more coleslaw?”

Without waiting for her answer he refilled her plate with the tasty food.

All those smells,… she could feel so many different things, things that appeared not to be here. A movement caught her attention in her periphery. As she turned her gaze whatever was there had vanished. And this humming, it was like music, but not very clear… if she could just focus more on it, yes like that, she was feeling sooo calm and she began laughing.

“Hahahah… haha. Did you drug the coleslaw?” She asked, trying to appear angry and unhappy, but all she could do was smile and laugh.

The images around her were shape-shifting, there were many colors, some of them she didn’t know could be possible, the walls were melting of sort and becoming transparent, or just fluid maybe…

“Well you see how it’s easy to relax. Let’s see where you want to go now my dear Rafaela”, he said winking.

And everything turned into a great maelström but she felt secure and could feel his presence reassuring, and there were all those other faces and places, some felt very familiar, had she ever been there before?

Salome had felt Georges closer… he was coming, though not here entirely yet.

She was feeling like he was in between worlds. And there was that other energy personality with him, a bit confused but ready to move on.

Salome was about to meet with another close aspect of herself in this dimension. She knew the connections and her other self knew she was coming. Malvina was her name.

Salome was moving fast through the elements of this dimension… it seemed she already had experienced it before, but it was different. New energies and new aspects were adding to the experience and the diversity of it. A movement that could be translated as a big Cheshire smile rippled from her center throughout the entire dimension, and Malvina’s giggle responded in different times.

Salome was not yet fully focused on the time and space of the encounter, it was not yet necessary, though it has already been done and they were all meeting in the cave(s)… These caves were a translation of the interconnectedness of the dimensions and were constantly reshaping in the timeline of this dimension —though with the particular focus she could experience most of the ramifications.

She was in a manner of speaking waiting for someone, someone has yet to do a little thing before she would send a focus of herself in the joyful party.

>> <<

Never speechless for long, Dory wondered out loud if she should just hurry along into the cave and hope to catch up with some other expeditioners, or explore the area around the cave first.

Have a look around, a voice in her head said. Ever the wanderer, always curious to just see what’s around that next corner, and the next….Dory wandered through the strange tall rock shapes. In a sort of natural passageway between vertical rock faces she came upon a group of people squatting next to a large oblong hole in the ground. The womans shawls and headscarves were flapping madly in the wind as she conversed with a boy of about 13, and it seemed to Dory as though they were discussing moving something so that it wouldn’t be found. Dory stood perfectly still just watching, and somewhat strangely they didn’t seem to notice her standing there.

An older man with curly grey hair and a long maroon djelaba and a tall narrow brimless black hat started to hurry away, as if a decision had been made.

Dory watched him until he disappeared from view. When she looked back towards the hole in the ground, it had vanished, and so had the woman and the boy.

PPFFFT! Dory had been deserted again. She turned and headed back towards the cave. Suddenly she felt hungry, and an image of a plate of cool crunchy coleslaw popped into her head.

I hope they’ve laid food on in the cave, she said.

Fiona wandered slowly along the road to the supermarket in the Village, deep in thought, pondering a recent dream. In her dream she had been talking to someone from the power company. He was very chatty. Eventually he asked her if she had any issues with her power service. In her dream she had started to focus on some electricity issues she was experiencing. Well as a matter of fact I do, she had replied. At which point the man from the power company had abruptly cut the call short.

In her dream she felt a little put out, although resolved to let the power company know later.

The message of the dream felt clear enough, it was her focusing on the difficulties which cut her connection. Yet this presented Fiona with some difficulty, because she dearly loved to analyse even when this did mean focusing on not so pleasant things, though she had been aware for some time how this mental work would deplete her energy.

Actually there was almost a feeling of grieving in her. To let go of this part of her felt like losing something warm and comforting in it’s familiarity, like a well worn and loved article of clothing. It left her wondering a bit about her own identity.

On the way back home, laden with bags of shopping, Fiona saw Jarrod.

Jarrod was lying on a park bench conversing loudly to himself. Well, Fiona mentally corrected herself, to someone I can’t see anyway.

They just don’t understand reality he was saying vehemently they just don’t get it.

Fiona smiled to herself, noticing Jarrod getting a few concerned looks from the well dressed locals. With his bare feet, unkempt hair and long beard he would stand out even if he wasn’t shouting at the top of his voice. She decided to try and sneak past herself, he looked like maybe today he would not recognise her anyway.

FIONA!

She turned back.

Hey Jarrod

Fiona, here’s the thing. Here’s the question okay. Should we swim up-stream or down? Fiona what do you think? Should we head for the Source or the Ocean? Up river or down? We’re on the edge of a new era Fiona. So what will it be, the shallows or the rapids?

Before she needed to come up with an answer Jarrod’s attention was diverted by the shopping bags.

FOOD! Great is that for me Fiona?