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There was a lot of commotion that night.

It all started a little bit before 6 PM, while the winter sun was very pale and slowly rolling behind the horizon. Jean-Pierre Duroy of the Royal Intendancy had the maids rounded up in matching uniforms to finish the cleaning of the Opera House, and ready to start to light the thousands of beeswax candles with almost military precision. This didn’t go without hiccup of course, but they did mostly well, and the Opera House was ready for the comedians before 5:55, leaving them with 5 spare minutes to catch their breath before the eighteen rings of the bell.

Even a little bit before that, Nicole du Hausset who had spent the whole dreaded day in anguish about the Queen’s lost ferrets, while attending to Madame’s every whims, realized after scouring through the Palace and hearing through the grapevine of the maids’ ring of deals in stolen goods that she should slide a word to the Royal Intendant through some unofficial channels (she knew well Helper, who was a great influence on Cook, who then could talk discreetly to Annie Duroy, of the Royal Pastries and Cookies) so an investigation could be carried out without any particular mention of the ferrets. As she would realize later the morrow, not only would the ferrets be retrieved at the Opera House and the Royal Chapel, one for each location, except slightly lighter and cut open, an act that would be seen as a hidden message and possible attempt on the Good Queen’s life, and dealt with appropriately by a specially appointed Inquisitor —but also, and notwithstanding any longwindedness, that it would make little difference as the perpetrators would be nowhere to be found the next day, having vanished, it seemed, in the ensuing confusion (of which we will come to in a minute), stealing in the process the Royal Balloon and a few chouquettes from the Royal Cuisines.
Her duties fulfilled, and being now on the other side of the fateful date of Jan. 5th, 1757, at 17:57 without any significant change to her reality or life, she deducted her mission as the safekeeper of the time-smuggled ferrets was by then accomplished, and she could focus on her more pressing duties.

It was only 5:57 PM shy of a few more seconds, that Madame Pompadour, powdered like there was no tomorrow, would be helped by her two maids into her gorgeous John Pol Goatier designer dress, and her lambswool petticoats. She was dressed to kill, and that made her all the more suspicious in the minutes to come, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Madame de Pompadour’s schedule for the soirée was very precise. At 6 PM, she would greet her guests, and the King back from his afternoon at the Parliament at the entrance of the Palace, so they could all head to the Royal Opera, passing through the Chapel into the brightly candelight-lit half-built building where the show would take place.
There was to be a toast first, from fine champagne delivered the morning in zebra carriage (one of the Queens’ daughters idea, which had pleased enough the King that he’d booked them for an evening ride into the Gardens). She was all set, and with great dignity and carefulness, arrived at the spot a mere seconds after her Grace to great the King.

At the same time, Jean-Pierre Duroy, who had not seen them as he’d passed through the Chapel the first time (ungagged but still under sleeping curse and tucked in the corner of the stained glass windows depicting the martyrdom of Christ), and as he was getting anxious at the lack of punctuality of the comedians whom he’d thought sleeping in their trailer parked nearby, was notified that the trailer had been found empty by the bellboy he had sent to remind the comedians to be ready in 10.
A man of great resources, always ready with plans B to Z (he wouldn’t boast, but the zebras being one of such past plan Z, second only to an unlikely belching toad plan, the details of which we won’t get into just now), the Royal Intendant was ready to put in motion said plans, but the comedians suddenly emerged from the Chapel slightly groggy but apparently ready to take over their duties —especially the two ladies, who were bickering with the two men about being the Controllers of the Ascension. Little did all of them know at this moment that the hot air balloon was being highjacked by a team of rogue maids in cahoots with the Russian Ballet props technicians who had arrived some days before the bulk of the Russian troupe trainees.
The Russian ballet dancers were indeed still stuck in the heavy snows somewhere along their trip to Versailles, so the four comedians with their balloon and tricks were technically, already a Plan B.

By then, it was well into 5:59 PM, and the next minute would seem to stretch forever, but for the sake of a patient audience, we will not make it over 10.

In the first half of this fatefulest minute, Casanova had arrived with Father Balbi, his travelling companion, followed by none other than St Germain, all dapper and heavily scented. A score of less important nobilities the names of which we won’t go through were also here.
There were seconds enough in that first half minute, to rub cheeks and say plaisanteries and even utter a few rude witty comments with sweet tongues laced in vinegar, whatever that meant, and also enjoy the sparkling wine served at perfect chilly temperature.
It was only as we entered the second half of this minute that the King arrived, padded in heavy and warm coats and looking exhausted.
Seconds were spent in the same proceedings as above mentioned, if only in a slightly accelerated fashion, and slightly and almost unnoticeably higher pitched voices.

That’s only when the mission bell’s sang Welcome to the Eighteenth’s Hour et ali (for naught), in loud and ringing dongs that the unthinkable happened, living all witnesses traumatized enough that nobody could think of anything to do before the third dong had elapsed.
The King collapsed, a knife in his ribs. The perpetrator was caught by the guards before the end of the last dong.

While the King was rushed to the RER (Royal Emergency Room), and attended to by Royal Leechers and Clyster Masters who felt it was wise to call the Royal Priest seeing that there was little blood to leech, back at the Chapel and Opera House, the maids and Jean-Pierre were in a rush to blow out the candles, as it was obvious their attention was required elsewhere, and that the show would be cancelled.
Everyone would sigh in relief, but not before a few more hours of the drama, when they realized the King’s heavy padding had saved his life, and that the gapping wound everyone was dreading was no more than a pen’s prick. This would encourage Annie to admonish her children when they wouldn’t eat more of her delightful pastries.

Meanwhile, using one of the last candles, the maids and their Russian lovers had lit the tub of lard of the hot air balloon, which rose slowly in the night sky, out of sight when most of the attention was directed towards the King’s fate hanging on a thread.

The four actors where vaguely wondering if they were still dreaming when they saw the carriage of thousands of tinsy frogs croaking through a portal, with brightly coloured dressed lady-men inside, and driven by an unkempt man with a wild gaze and an air of sheer insanity.

Of course, by then, they knew better than to discard it as a mere dream.

Out-of-body invisible to-anyone-but-spirits Geoffrey was looking amazed at the scene in front of him. He was back in the Chapelle near his body when he witnessed the fit, which translated to him in French like “merde, merde, merdasse, merdum, merdarum” and latin-like declination of the word.

Some unspoken words of wisdom seemed to superimpose on the scene from many voices which roughly translated as “don’t say poop if you mean to say shit”.

As an actor, this was easy, he just had to follow the script, but as himself, he often bit his tongue when he wanted to say to Lison that she was hamming up the play just for fear to hurt her feelings being the star of the play (or to avoid creating even bigger bickering amongst the troupe).
When he’d wake up, he felt like encouraging Francette to be more daring on the stage and let her light shine bright. That should even the odds.

Finding a time smuggler on such short notice was near impossible, Linda Paul soon found out when she hit the web. There were sure long lists of pages offering the services at seemingly attractive prices, but then never covering all the highly recommended options, such as the time collision waiver, and collateral time damage waiver.
She had a pretty good idea of what she needed to smuggle back and when, but all the time pathways simulations seemed to run into a dead-end.
After a stroke of genius, realizing that the one-timeway drop-off prohibitive surcharge may be the reason why she couldn’t get decent tariffs, she changed her simulation for a return.

“Time and item of origin/return…” she muttered as she typed “Queen Anne’s crocheted ferrets, 1625, Louvres Palace”.

Of course, going forward in time was easy, so she would simply need to give specific instructions to the time smuggler to pass on those bloody ferrets along the timeline.

A click here, accepting the long conditions with hardly a glance, “blabla, not covering extra temporal charge… blabla… ensured discretion, yes, yes, service cannot be used to leave historical artifacts protected by the amendment on the … or any incongruent item blabla… smuggling service comes with no obligation of results…”
The rest was piece of cake.

She already had the perfect time mule in mind for the delicate mission of reintroducing the crocheted ferrets where her dragqueen competition was now held.

When Nicole du Hausset, widow of a poor noble man, one of the two femmes de chambre of Madame de Pompadour, first hear Madame talk about her first encounter with the Count in 1749, she remembered immediately about her mother, and grand-mother’s secret instructions.
A few nights later, she wrote down in her diary “‘A man who was as amazing as a witch came often to see Madame de Pompadour. This was the Comte de Saint-Germain, who wished to make people believe that he had lived for several centuries.”

For some reason, she was to find a way to give him two scrawny century-old (and quite frankly smelly) crocheted ferrets, as a token for the Queen.
She still had seven years or so to make it happen, that was time ample enough to do the deed, if the Good Lord would grant her enough life, or else she would need to pass the burden to the next of kin.
She’d never known exactly why this was significant, but she’d been told that her family’s past riches were due to the success of this task, passed on to the next generation until 1757.

It didn’t take very long. An elaborate and convincing lie did come easier to her than she would have known, and the Count swallowed it hook and sinker. Next thing she knew, she’d glimpsed the plush beasts in the midst of the menagerie of the Queen, and felt relieved of a life and generation-long burden.
She could now return to a simple and uncomplicated life, although she would sometimes wake up at night in cold sweat, having had dreadful nightmares that the ferrets had disappeared before the date.

They did only realize they got out of the tunnel when the dimmed blue lights faded completely. It was almost pitch black apart from a few braziers in a narrowing vaulted tunnel paved in the manner of a future metro line.
The passengers had noticed the transition from the smooth gliding gait of the zebras to the clopping of the hooves on the cobblestones. Sadie peaked outside of the carriage
“Have we arrived? Where are we?”
“Rightly so, darling. We’re under the grotto. Technically, it’s a chapel now. I did some adjustments underground.”
“Mmm…” Sadie nodded indecisively. She couldn’t find the least rude way to nod without letting her thinking it was utter rubbish show through. So she kept quiet for a moment and even refrained rolling her eyes. “So, we’re….?”
“We’re at the North Wing of the Palace, darling. It’s just nearby the Royal Opera House of the Palace, where your show will be held tonight, your e-flapper should have told you that. Don’t mind the construction work, it will give a steampunk feel to your show before it’s even invented.”
“Of course.” she said evenly. “The North Wing. Well, we all in need of sleep and refreshing before tonight’s show, so…?” trying to worm out meaningful words from Sanso seemed a futile attempt.
“Fancy that, darling, I have another delicate extraction of time stranders to go to,” checking a greasy paper from his shirt pocket,… “in last century or so, I can’t afford to be late. Let me help you lots out of here, leave it to Chair to take back those zebras to the Royal zoo and deliver that barrel of fine champagne, and you’re on your own.”

Before Sadie could tell the word rude, Sanso had folded the carriage back unto itself, pocketed it and disappeared in a wallmhole —leaving only beside herself, the mute Chair on top of a barrel of vintage champagne, four exhausted and pawing zebras, and three sleep-deprieved disheveled divas.

At least, the secrete cave of a Chapel is not overly conspicuous she said, trying to cheer herself up, remembering her training that light would prevail.

The parcel had been delivered to her house, and not to her new friend and neighbours house just down the road, for various reasons mostly to do with efficiency, post offices and lack of specific house addresses. The parcel containing the music had been sitting in her kitchen for almost a week, which oddly enough was probably as long as the parcel had taken to travel from North Carolina.
Trove (for that was her name) and Dude (for that was her partners name) played a tile game of rummy, and it was an unusual game that night. Dude noticed missing tiles on the table on at least five occasions, and not altogether unsurpringly assumed that Trove should have been wearing her glasses, instead of placing incorrect sequences with missing tiles. Trove on the other hand, bearing in mind that she was not in the habit of doing this normally, insisted that the tiles had simply disappeared, or changed somehow.

“Blimey! The Pope, eh? Are you teasing me again?”
Vera didn’t answer.
“Oh come on! Don’t give me that need-to-know-basis treatment, as much as I love a good riddle, I hate secrets! Are we going to look for the reincarnation of a famous Pope à la Little Buddha? Tell me, tell me!” Bouncing with excitement on the rolling Eggsway made her almost fall head over wheels into a flangeway carved into the muddy track that went deeper into the forest.

Regaining her balance, she looked ahead to see Vera was already a few meters ahead — and navigating the Eggsway was becoming difficult. She knew she should have opted for the 4×4 model…
So… Vera wasn’t really paying attention, she would have to try another approach to worm answers out of her. What was so special about this place anyway? Lost continent of Mu, ancient architecture, maybe underwater tunnels… Nothing that would lead directly to the Vatican she surmised… Unless…

They arrived at a clearing in the forest, where blue glow sticks had been placed in a round pattern. Vera was standing there, after having carefully placed a glowing green rote at the center, staring at the middle of the light circle, and without turning her head to look at her, told Lulla “Here’s your answer coming.”

A huge buzzing throb started to fill the air, sounding to concentrate at a focal point not higher than 10 inches above the ground, at the exact center of the blue circle. It begun sparkling and * BooM *, in all its slimy tentaculeous glory, a spaceship was there.

“Special delivery from our alien friends” Vera said, finally deigning to look at Lulla.

The rather small spaceship started to slowly expand, becoming larger, until an opening appeared, letting a form emerge from the membranous appearance of the hull. The form which looked like some person was suddenly dropped unceremoniously with a * Plop! * while the spacecraft elastically recovered its initial shape.
Moments later, it was gone, and with it the buzzing sound.
The green rote payment was gone too. Greedy aliens.

“Come on, let’s bag this guy and bring him home for phase 2. A red convertible SUV is waiting for us at the portal’s entrance.”
So, that’s where I come in… Lulla was starting to wonder what was the use of her being here, since Vera was so bossy and secretive. But now,… Of course she was better at hatting, but she could call herself without bragging a real bagging specialist.

Liverworts had done wonder at the Vatican, actually.
That, and maybe the out-of-the-body sit-ins of the Occupy The Vatican Library Out of Body team too. So much so that the old cranky current tenant decided to leave his chasuble and tiara and go for more exciting adventures such as sky-diving and bungee jumping.

The Surge Team’s game was about to change to a whole new level they soon started to discover when their screens started to light up at the same moment the first news report came out with the scoop. Well, the second one actually, because the first reporter spoke only in Latin.

“So much red can only mean one thing,” a dejected Pearl mused out aloud at her screen.
“Chinese Bloody New Year?” a distracted Skye answered tentatively.
“Yes… but no, I mean, it’s not surges any longer… another Wave is on the making… And I fear they’ll overdo the religious stuff with that one.” she added gloomily.

“Oh, and by the way, anyone seen Aqua Luna recently? I’ve never seen my keyboard so bloody dusty in ages!”

While stroking his mustache fondly, Ed Steam had the clearest realization that although he’d done that quite a few times in the past mostly to his advantage, it was a lot of work to rewrite timelines and figure out the hows and whens of everyone in his team.
Maybe it was actually time for him to restore the original timeline while disappearing — by faking his own death to be certain nobody would thwart his carefully thought retirement plan. Then, he could also stop dyeing his mustache he figured… So many things to take care of, retirement would be so sweet.
Although the Egyptian timeturner gave him all the time in the world, he actually felt like he’d lost already a great deal too much of it, and started to enact his plan without further ado.

Procuring a body double was actually not so hard. The last surge had brought a few of them in Thrifteen’s Alley in their Moreguest Facility. A switch and a twist of the pocket portal and a zap and a blink of the miniaturizer was enough to get there and come back in seconds with a frozen pocket-size life-suspended body from the testing stock, with convincing enough miniaturized slim lips, safely put in a test tube in his waistcoat pocket.
A six-shot cudgel from his artefact war trove was all he needed to make sure the amateur assassin in red robes they’d hired would be taken care of easily.
Then, an enscombulator bedazzler ray spray would be enough to convince Mari Fe she’d managed to hit him, buying him time enough to then deminiaturize the thawed slim-lipped body double, to slip in his stead.
Last, but not least, he would then have a few seconds to discombobulize Mari Fe while disappearing with a backup transportable portal. The plan was perfect. The original timeline restored in pristine conditions.
Only for a few minor details of course. He’d almost forgotten to reprogram the mini-man in his pocket with enough memories for him to be a convincing Ed-himself sans la moustache of course. At least, for the short time he would survive (surge victims discovered still alive were placed in life suspension by the team, but this was mostly for medical analysis as they usually wouldn’t survive their conditions).
Oh, and the bloody mustache of course… A squeeze of foolicle solventilator would be enough to make it temporarily invisible.

Simple enough… Well, sandbagging Mari Fe would have probably conveyed similar results with minimal efforts, although the elegance of his plan, as well as the fact that he was loath to hit ladies did unmistakably weight in favour of it.

And with that, he would be back in time for dinner.
In fact, he already was.

If there was one thing he’d never liked about the Surge Team, Goat was reminded as soon as he crossed the threshold, that had to be the Management.
Actually, the Management after years of past grandeur had been heftily trimmed down to just one person, an ageless expressionless Sinese-Bulgarian lady with a hairstyle as plain and ubiquitous as a bowl of steamed rice, the epitome of the chtonian tutelary deity, eternal Guardian of all thresholds.
“Good day Antonia.” Goat greeted her, faking the slightest bit of enthusiasm needed to sound polite. Of course, she didn’t answer. Like the Universe, looming and all powerful, all she needed was a request, or better, a long string of numbers from an obscure postal or bookshelf reference.
Chopping official documents, the lonely sound of a stamp etching the worn-out surface of her desk was all that troubled the dusty office reeking of onion.
“There’s been a delivery for me…” He waited patiently, savouring torturing her with his half-finished sentence. He didn’t have to wait for long though. Maybe she was in a good mood.
“Tracking number?” she grumbled without looking at him, fumbling into old logs and piles of carton boxes that may have been there, unclaimed since the time of Baltazar the Great.
“There” he handed her a torn yellow stained bit of paper where the numbers were written down in a ornate penmanship. The Management was a place of few words… and even fewer actions he bitterly thought.
Working her magic, she handed him the package, wrapped in old Sinese papers that smelt of decaying fish. He barely thanked her, without looking into her eyes, for he knew what was there to be read certainly had no lack of unpleasantness for him.

‘I had lived in Shanghai for about two months when I learned that behind every building which fronts the street is a second and far more enticing world: a labyrinth of winding lanes and alleyways that contains all kinds of eclectic little businesses and historic houses.’ Emily Prager failed to add that the second more enticing world of Shanghai, or indeed anywhere, was quite immune to the solar frights and rubber mutations of the disturbing period prior to the annual global rapture “fuck off to higher realms if you can” event. Behind every construction lies an intriguing world of signs, signs of the timeless, signs of the damp sometimes making landmass patterns on the peeling wallpaper, and signs of jubilation, coloured paper streamers fluttering in the tail end of the tornadoes, and floating on the subsiding waves.

“There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die…..”

After Petronella’s resounding success with the remote view and the head spinning afterwards as she pondered the possibilities, she spent a couple of hours randomly roaming around the internet, noticing how many synchronicities kept popping up.

“Come be part of the adventure, and help mold the destiny of the Multiverse in the greatest story that is being lived and not told. Come participate in Chapter One, the Revealing and discover the secrets that have been only guessed at till now.

The Isle has a plan for all…
Wounds Heal, Scars Fade and Paradigms Shift,
but GLORY is FOREVER!”

Even the Rosehaven team were starting a new chapter.

“The Unbound, Cadamus the Artificer, entered Rosehaven. “

Cadamus? The name sounded familiar. Could it be Toobidoo, in disguise?

The leaves were dry. They’d started to change to a brownish hue at the tip, then rapidly withered. They’d hoped it wouldn’t affect the whole crop, and when the first tea bush went down, they quickly uprooted it, for fear it would spread to the whole hill.
But despite their best efforts, the tea bushes went down, one by one, as though engulfed by a deadly plague. He and she were worried for their next year income, as their tea field was their main source of revenue. The highlands had always been favourable to them, and it seemed such an unlikely and truly unfair event given that the beginning of the year had brought an unexpected bounty of huge tea leaves.
What had happened? He was quite the pragmatic about it: disease, pests, too much sun, over-watering, over-pruning… nothing extending outside the visible, the measurable. She was the mystical: core beliefs, did she worry too much about that sudden wealth and made it disappear, the evil eye, greed and covetousness, celestial punishment.

It never occurred to her she could reverse it as easily once she understood what it was all about.
Well, she almost started to get an inkling of that thinking about warts. How efficiently she got those growths when she was so troubled about them, and how they all disappeared when she forgot about them. How not to think about something that’s already in your head? In that case, distraction never worked; it was a rubber band that would be stretched then snapped back at the initial core issue.
Snap back at yourself.
>STOP< – She stopped. Time to read that telegram delivered to oneself.
Everything still, for a moment. Dashed.
She started to look around.
The air was still, hot and full of expectation.
Almost twinkling in potentials.
Like a providential blank page, in the middle of a heap of administrative papers full of uninteresting chatty figures.
The pages are put aside, only the blank page is here.
She can start to populate it with colours, sounds and life, anytime. Lavender maybe. Soon.
But not yet now.
She wants to breathe in the calmness, the comfort of the silence. Even the crickets seem to be far away.
She was alone, and impoverished…
She is alone, and empowered, … in power.

[link:leaves]

“Do leaves really talk?” she wondered as the smoke of the herb tea dissipated off the kitchen’s mirror credence. “Let’s see about that,” she continued, carrying the tray with the cup of tea and the scones to the computer room, from where a few oink sounds were beckoning her.
Probably her friends asking for a chat, some random rubbish or the last juicy news about the president’s wife who happened to be visiting in the area. In truth, she wouldn’t have even known, had it not be for her foreign friends. The local neighbours really couldn’t give a fig. That was figuratively speaking of course. The fig trees were already full of green fruits, that if odds were good wouldn’t turn up as half-sodden half-rotten food for snails on the cobblestone pathway this year.

She added a zest of fresh lemon to the tea. She liked it bitter. The leaves were starting to settle at the bottom of the cup while she lit up a cigarette, throwing a cursory glance at the tens of messages waiting for her to peruse. Which was more interesting? She could figure out wavy things as feeble and changing as her cigarette’s smoke in between the leaves patterns, as well as in between the lines of haphazard messages from all the contacts. But those she loved the most were the pages she leafed through her books.

Yesterday, she started to do something purely daft, as she liked — a sort of challenge, if you will; or perhaps, a strong repressed desire. Sometimes it takes you years to do things you were thinking about when you were but a child. The moment you allow yourself the pleasure to indulge and overcome the resilient beliefs that it’s something forbidden or insidiously wrong is all the sweeter.
And she was tasting it like a sour sweet, with a touch of forbidden and the zest of excitement. Or more like horseradish. Ooh, does she live the green stuff too. Prickly at first, going up to your nose, and living you crying but begging for more. She makes a note to buy some next week (note that she’ll probably forget).
So what did she do? She took some of her precious books and started to tear up and cut through the pages. A blasphemy almost, for someone like her who revered books. Of course, at first she only took the bad ones, the romantic rubbish and the dog-eared now useless kitchen books, but then realized, what would be the point of gathering new information by assembling random pages cut off from a variety of books, if it wasn’t made from quality ingredients. Well, it surely stands to reason, even though her culinary reason had been on voyage the last twenty years as far as she knew. Anyway. Those leafs were starting to talk better than any bloody tea leaves could.

[link: talking leaves]

“Finally the answer we need! Let’s release the damn bird and get back home now! Besides its cage needs cleaning and it’s starting to smell, and I can’t stand this place any longer…” Doily couldn’t be stopped.

Foolishly getting by that that Doily had understood most and perhaps all of the Cloud’s mysterious riddle, and that she even had managed to remember it, by a chance even slimmer than that of crossing the Eight’s Portal alive, Pee agreed with a nod of his neck.

Once the birds’ released (with a good manly slapping as the feathery creature was a bit reluctant and groggy from being rocked in its cage), they were instantaneously and quite unsurprisingly back again near the Saucerer’s house, all safe in their beloved Peasland, ravaged by blubbits holes.