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February 7, 2011 at 8:20 am #2827
In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
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]
October 27, 2010 at 11:06 pm #2482In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Interestingly enough (or oddly enough one would say), in such reality, the bodies alone were reproducing while the heads had to constantly find out new bodies to cling to — when they felt the desire for movement, that is.
At least, that’s what the Forehead was thinking while shaving — as it did not have enough appendages to be able to meditate while defecating, which was by far, it was told, the best method of enlightenment known to Peasmen and other sensible beings.
Anyway, how odder can it be, it thought again. It may well be time to shift all of this a bit — why would each head need such a renewal of bodies and thus incarnations (or more properly, “embodiments”) without itself changing. Funnily enough, the alien bodies had in fact no need for heads. They actually had more than one: one for each of the sensory tendrils coming out of their shoulders. And according to them, Peasland bodies could very well start their ®evolution just now.October 13, 2010 at 4:52 pm #2723In reply to: Strings of Nines
Minky suggested they continued their trip on camelephant’s back, a somewhat surprising mix between camel and elephant. She said her uncle had a special breed in a farm nearby and that she would be happy to take some news.
When Yickesy heard that, he thought that maybe they could jump on the occasion and maybe leave silently when Minky would be busy with her uncle.Arona was too busy with her chippendale tea set and mumbled something unclear that Minky took as a ‘yes’, and Vincentius rolled his eyes, as someone had to do it at that moment.
October 2, 2010 at 8:17 am #2716In reply to: Strings of Nines
Shelly Dwelling, horrifed ~ naturally enough ~ at the mention of butter and parsley, was immensely relieved to see Frobisher the frog gliding along in his electric wheelchair. “Hop on, Shelly!” he whispered urgently “My wheelchair is super fast, I’ll get you out of this pickle in a jiffy!”
“Frobisher! Oh my godfrogs, it’s good to see you! What timing! But I can’t hop!”
“Well neither can I now, without my legs” he replied, “But you can climb up my wheel, can’t you?”
“Well ok, but don’t move, I’m on my way, this may take a while…”
“Hurry, Shelly! Hurry up! I can smell butter melting, there’s no time to lose!”
Unfortunately for Shelly who was a quarter of the way up the left wheel, Frobisher engaged his electric motor and sped off into the long grass. It would have been far too risky to wait.
“Hang on, Shelly! This will be the ride of your life!” he called, as Shelly spun round the giant Ferris Wheel.
“I suppose this is why your name is Frobisher Ferris” she replied through gritted teeth.
September 29, 2010 at 8:39 am #2820In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
Looking outside, it seemed the sunflowers had burnt too. The unique huge seed they carried inside would surely taste good, grilled with salt and clarified butter, and would be enough to feed the village for a few months, and maybe a few satiated Murganians if need be.
[link: burnt stuff]
September 29, 2010 at 8:27 am #2704In reply to: Strings of Nines
Messmeerah started to carve the name of all the funny bunch on a huge jamón from the fifth leg (the meatiest) of a jelly boar of the steppes, starting with her own —name, not leg— as a reminder of the good time they had all together. She was thinking as well that it would taste lovely with some of these Jiborium’s truffles.
She was sad to had to let them go, but frankly her old routines were starting to get too scrambled. For one, she didn’t quite remember if Minky was still a redhair rat in her hair (now she thought of it, breeding tiny shrews in her attic didn’t really work so well), or was now back in his human form with a secret revenge of his own on his mind. But that would be maybe a slight stretch. And gosh, did she abhor stretch marks, even on her lovely brains.
— “Oh come on, dear,” one of the motley participants, a cheery big-boned and outrageously made-up of make-up woman said in a bizarre Lizabethian accent, with a hint of bossiness that showed she had not been used to being contradicted much in her life. “Join us on that trip to Mr Jiborium’s, you shall find yourself a use or two.”
Taken aback by the turn of the events, Messmeerah, also known as Winky, took the jamón under her arm, and against all common sense decided to join the crew —thanking the Mighty Mungibs for the improbable feat of continuity that had appeared as a sign.
— “Well, if you don’t mind…” Yikesy was starting to object, but realized some things are best left unsaid, and it would be easy enough now to slip out of their sight (and off the rapacious motherly attentions of Mrs Janet, the big-boned tasteless-bags lady with an accent.)
September 29, 2010 at 2:25 am #2703In reply to: Strings of Nines
Minky pondered for a long moment before coming to a decision.
“Right then let us all go to Watermelon and cavort with Mr Jib and the Consortium! “
Yikesy sighed loudly. Normally good natured, his patience was beginning to wear thin. Having counted the letters between “W” and “N” and, even making allowances for a degree of “give or take”, he didn’t believe that Watermelon could possibly be the secret destination where they would find Mr Jib. If indeed they even wanted to find this Mr Jib, whoever he may be … and was Watermelon even a destination?
“Cheer up!” encouraged Minky. “Mr Jib is a delightful gentleman. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have the odd truffle in his pocket either.”
September 29, 2010 at 12:02 am #2702In reply to: Strings of Nines
— Of course, the secret location is Watermelon, interjected one of the participants rather bossily, one must say.
— Give or take a few letters…
— Or in Welsh maybe…August 25, 2010 at 10:39 am #2812In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
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}
August 22, 2010 at 5:03 pm #2810In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
Phlora was gathering sunflowers as she always did when they were at their yellowest in the midst of summer. Just before they started to wither and become a feast for the birds.
Her brothers Floywn and Hywrik were busy hunting with the family winged horse, and would be gone for the day. Maybe she’d bake a cake for when they’d return… She wondered were Phinny her sister had gone for so long. It had been almost a season she was off the green.[link:sunflower]
August 22, 2010 at 5:00 pm #2809In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
August 19, 2010 at 4:32 pm #2808In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
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]
August 13, 2010 at 10:02 pm #2693In reply to: Strings of Nines
Mandrake had been on Yikes’ trail for what seemed to be like ages, closely followed by Arona, the silly dragon and that demigod Arona seemed to have grown so fond of.
As they were walking, flying and hopping further North, they had passed the Forest of Endless Desolation, just through the Isthmus of Ghört’s Hammer where the whaling laments of the lamanatees were luring the careless travellers in pits of dark despair, only for them to sink in cores of boiling lava if they strayed too far away from the darken wizened old sticks that once had been luxuriant trees.
Mandrake would have made a meal of the dreaded lamanatees, but Arona had thought safer for them to plug their ears with candle wax and invoke their Mother guidance to help in their quest to find the lost boy. Little had she thought of the pain it would be to scrap it off his catly ears without turning wax into furballs, and his ears into a prickly mess.
These minor troubles apart, they had gone through Arona’s homeland, the pretty Golfindely, which was only a soft consolation before they got to the far ends of it, where land, water and ice meld and become one. It was the threshold, the passageway to the homeland of the dragons, where only Sorcerers and their likes were known to have been and returned.It was there that the sabulmantium had hinted Yikes would been found.
When Minky came finally back to the High Priestess of the Pendulous and Loose Otherworldly Threading —aka Messmeerah (Winky) Maymhe—, Messmeerah was taking a dip into the Rejuvenation Pool. Her last vials of bleufrüsh blood had been all drunk, and she was starting to get all sagging after mere hours out of the icy waters.
She welcomed with a large smile, the sack Minky was carrying as a treasure, where Yikes was calmly waiting.
“Thank you Miny” she said, throwing some ashes to the minion who, in a puff, instantaneously transformed into a large redhair rat, which disappeared behind Messmee’s luscious green hair.“There, there, there, look what we got…” she finally said ominously to the boy who was considering the naked green evil fairy in front of him with a rather interested and mildly amused glance. “Don’t you have anything to say?” she said, raising an eyebrow, maybe slightly disappointed at the lack of frightened reaction.
“Oh, looks like you’re a genuine green fairy, “ he said staring at her with a smile.
August 13, 2010 at 8:12 pm #2807In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
Everything was white, from the sky to the ground and the limit between them was not even discernible. Despite the lack of visibility, he felt confident that the house was near. His small feet were making crunchy sounds, and at times, between two gushes of wind, he could almost see the fur at the top of his boots.
At a distance, some woolly beast, a yak maybe, was making a muffled sound that resounded in the landscape, and like the beast, he was feeling strong against the elements. On his left were some black shriveled trunks of some small deciduous trees, and it looked like the only life around.
This was far from the truth; even if most of it was frozen in a deep slumber, there still was a lot of life underground.
He had been chasing a few rabbits, and though he had to compete with the lynxes at that game, he had managed to get one. That was why he was feeling so strong and proud. He could feel the still warm little soft creature against his belt, dangling at each of his steps. Soon he will be home…[link:white]
August 13, 2010 at 5:07 pm #2806In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
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]
July 31, 2010 at 4:52 pm #2802In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
After having had a wheel ride in the garden, Grandpa Wrick came back a little less in-tense.
“Mmm, I suppose this game isn’t as much fun as I expected. I want to give it another try, adding a little something more.” he said to the kids when their cartoon had finished. India Louise, Cuthbert, and their friends Flynn and of course Lisbelle (who had been quiet in the background, playing with her pet rabbit Ginger) started listening with a mild interest —the whimsical Lord Wrick having proved countless times he had no qualms at making a fool of himself, and thus at entertaining children.
“What I want to achieve, by playing this game of snowflakes,” he said after a pause “is paying more attention at your stream of consciousness.”
“You see, I’ve been reading the classical Circle of Eights countless times in my young age, and dear old Yurara didn’t have much interest in creating links between her narratives. This is what I want to do with this game: pay attention to the links.
In this game of snowflakes, the stories (flakes) matter less than the links you build between them, and thus the pattern that is created.
We have the choice to continue and detail the previous story, in which case, the link is obvious, or we may want to start another one. But we need to know what, from the previous entry, prompted you to create that special new story you are about to write or tell.Just like in a dream, when you explore a scene, some object will jump at your attention, and propel you to another dream story. Just like that, I want to spend more time exploring the transitions between each scenes and story blurbs that we tell. The links don’t necessarily have to be an object, of course not.
It can be an idea, a theme, a music, virtually anything, provided that it can make some sense as to why it is used as a transition…”Seeing the children waiting for more, he pursued: “a good introduction to this game would be for you to try to follow your train of thoughts during the day. Try to do mentally that small exercise before you go to sleep, and remember the transitions of your whole day, and you’ll see how complex it can become, how often you pass and zap from one thing to another.
Take even one event that lasts a few minutes like eating a honey sandwich at breakfast, can make you think of dozens of things like the texture of the bread, the fields of wheat, or the butter, the glass jar filled with honey and the bees that made it, the swarm of bees can carry you even further into another time, or towards a bear or into a movie maybe.
I want that you pause to take time to break this down, so that your audience can follow the transition from one story to another, and that it makes perfect sense for them.”
April 27, 2010 at 10:46 pm #2688In reply to: Strings of Nines
With a temper he may have inherited from his mother (albeit adoptive), the shanghaied boy was proving to be quite a hassle to contend with. Minky was exhausted.
First Yikes (that was the given name of the boy) had cried, pouted, and when gagged enough so that he wouldn’t be heard, he had then refused to walk, and even threatened to hold his breath till he would die. Good luck with this one, had laughed Minky (who had tried it before, but it never worked, and bossy old Messmeerah had promptly kicked him back to work). Actually, he was more annoyed with the refusing to walk kind of tantrum, because that meant he had to trudge with the boy on his back or on a luge, all the way to the evil lair —which wasn’t that evil, by the way, if you managed to focus away from the bloody stained altar…
But there was something more serious he was quite anxious about —besides his bossy and irritable, though everlastingly beauteous, boss. He feared a certain purple dragon was on their trail…
If I were you, came the ruffled sound from the makeshift luge that wouldn’t be the dragon I’d be worried about… Yikes was inwardly beautifully laughing (a trait he may have inherited by osmosis from Arona) thinking of how terrible Mandrake could be if asked to fetch something —a task he was too proud to refuse, and yet that he loathed to accomplish, as it was more fit to a canine than to his subtle feline standard.
April 22, 2010 at 6:46 pm #2464In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
We may never know (or maybe we will) if it was the giant tea bag, or the duct tape, or indeed, the efforts of the Biotic Man, but a sense of normality was returning to Peasland.
April 21, 2010 at 10:14 pm #2463In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Meanwhile, Landelin was perfecting his blubbit duct-tape traps.
Landelin was a quite reclusive man, some Peaslanders considered him even a bit mentally challenged with a reputation for having teafing as a secondary hobby. Yes, secondary. Before teafing, came duct tape ; duct tape always came first.
Landelin had been fond of duct tape since he was a kid, since he’d glued his first nanny to the cellar door and then went off buying more duct tape at the local grocery store with the money he’d teafed from her. Teafing always came second.Plagued as all Peaslanders with blubbits, he’d reasoned, quite reasonably for someone as mentally challenged as him, that blubbits were like worries and warts (and he knew quite a bit about the former and the latter), and none could stand a chance if administered the right amount of duct tape. By right amount, he meant, as much as needed to cover them in silver linings and eventually, maybe erradicate them —but that was a bit besides the point anyway.
Pity there wasn’t more than a few blue pelts’ hair to teaf from a blubbit, he thought quite reasonably again, as his last prototrap worked like a charm and had a few blubbits suffocating under a fair amount of stickiness.
Well, from blubbits, perhaps not so much, but from Peaslanders waiting for naught but a savior, maybe… After all the other treatments have failed, they surely would turn, as they all do, willingly or forcibly, to the raw power of taping.
April 21, 2010 at 3:30 am #2456In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Lilac was rendered momentarily speechless by Nastytart’s words. Picking up her Lee Mon novel, “Making Sense in a Crazy World” she opened it at random:
Maybe you’re not ready for the profound revelation of utter sense?
Of course! That was it. She was not ready!
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