Search Results for 'mean'

Forums Search Search Results for 'mean'

Viewing 20 results - 381 through 400 (of 972 total)
  • Author
    Search Results
  • #4366
    ÉricÉric
    Keymaster

      It’s all a bit quiet there, where have they all gone again? One could hear plants growing in that silence.

      Finnley!” she shouted across the mansion, pondering at what demoniac activity the maid was devoted recently.

      She hadn’t seen the maid in the all of the week, but somehow they had been communicating in a sort of eerie telepathic way, by subtle positions of objects in the house. A piece of clothe in this or that position would mean, please wash it hasta pronto, but if it was slightly above ground, she somehow would get it was meant to be just folded for another use. There had been a silent tug of war as to where the towel would dry, as she didn’t like it to be in the humid bathroom. And for every lunch, she would find something prepared in the fridge, ready to be heated in the microwave oven.

      But she had to tell her, that was enough with chicken and grilled aubergines. A little variety would go a long way…

      #4364

      Rukshan had stayed awake for the most part of the night, slowly and repeatedly counting the seconds between the blazing strokes of lightning and the growling bouts of thunder.
      It is slowly moving away.

      The howling winds had stopped first, leaving the showers of rain fall in continuous streams against the dripping roof and wet walls.

      An hour later maybe, his ear had turned to the sound of the newly arrived at the cottage, thinking it would be maybe the dwarf and Eleri coming back, but it was a different voice, very quiet, somehow familiar… the potion-maker?

      He had warned Margoritt that a lady clad in head-to-toe shawls would likely come to them. Margoritt had understood that some magical weaving was at play. The old lady didn’t have siddhis or yogic powers, but she had a raw potential, very soundly rooted in her long practice of weaving, and learning the trades and tales of the weaving nomad folks. She had understood. Better, she’d known — from the moment I saw you and that little guy, she’d said, pointing at Tak curled under the bed.
      “He’s amazing,” she’d said “wise beyond his age. But his mental state is not very strong.”

      There was more than met the eye about Tak, Rukshan started to realize.
      For now, the cottage had fell quiet. Dawn was near, and there was a brimming sense of peace and new beginning that came with the short silence before the birds started again their joyous chatter.

      It must have been then that he collapsed on the table of exhaustion and started to dream.

      It was long before.

      The dragon is large and its presence awe-inspiring. They have just shared the shards, each has taken one of the seven. Even the girl, although she still hates to be among us.
      The stench of the ring of fire is still in their nostrils. The Gods have deserted, and left as soon as the Portal closed itself. It is a mess.

      “Good riddance.”

      He raises his head, looking at the dragon above him. She is quite splendid, her scales a shining pearl blue on slate black, reflecting the moonshine in eerie patterns, and her plastron quietly shiny, almost softly fiery. His newly imbued power let him know intimately many things, at once. It is dizzying.

      “You talk of the Gods, don’t you?” he says, already knowing the answer.
      “Of course, I am. Good riddance. They had failed us so many times, forgot their duties, driven me and my kind to slavery. Now I am free. Free of guilt, and free of sorrow. Free to be myself, as I was meant to be.”
      “It is a bit more complex th…”
      “No it isn’t. It couldn’t be more simple. If you had the strength to see it, you would understand.”
      “I know what you mean, but I am not sure I understand.”

      The dragon smiles enigmatically. She turns to the lonely weeping girl, who is there with the old woman. Except her grand-mother is no longer an old crone, she has changed her shape to that of a younger person. She is showing potentials to the girl, almost drunk on the power, but it doesn’t alleviate her pain.

      “What are you going to do about them?”

      The Dragon seems above the concerns for herself. In a sense, she is right. It was all his instigation. He bears responsibility.

      “I don’t know…” It is a strange thing to say, when you can know anything. He knows there are no good outcomes of this situation. Not with the power she now possesses.

      “You better find out quick…” and wake up,

      wake up, WAKE UP !

      #4350
      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        Those things people discard… in his life as the rubbish collector, Pepe had seen many. The unusual large package was just one of the highlights of the day; it’s like Providence meant for him to have this thrown away parcel.

        Curious they didn’t even bother to open it, though he thought as he put it on the front of the truck. He probably would keep it for awhile, to see if anybody claims it back. You’d never know with the lot of crazy hoarding people in this lot. It was not the first time their batty help threw stuff away.

        If not, whatever that was inside would probably join his large collection.
        Over 20 years of gathering discarded books, he could almost open a library. And it didn’t matter how much he would give away, more would come back. It was a blessed curse, he used to say.

        #4340

        Eleri’s eyes began to feel heavy and she blinked, trying to resist the increasingly strong urge to nod off to sleep, as a gust of wind rustled the branches overhead allowing the moonlight to illuminate something that looked very much like dragon scales. Eleri blinked again and shook her head slightly to shake the illusion back into some kind of realistic image. The sudden wind had dropped and the trees were motionless, the path below them dark. It was impossible now to even see what had looked like dragon scales in the brief flash of moonlight. All was still and silent.

        With nothing to see in the darkness and nothing to entertain her, Eleri’s mind started to wander, wondering if her grandmother being a dragon (as her father had often said) meant that she was one quarter dragon herself. It occurred to her that she very rarely thought of the dragon that was her grandmother, and wondered why she was thinking of her now. She had been a strong woman, who would fight tooth and nail to get what she wanted, always on the move wanting to get her teeth into a new project, leaving discarded suitors along the wayside as she swept along, grandly announcing to all and sundry, “Do you know who I am?”

        Formidable armed with a rigid crocodile (possibly baby dragon skin) handbag and matching shoes, stately and considerably girthy notwithstanding the stiff corset, her grandmother was not one to easily ignore. Dressed in dragon scale twinsets, in no nonsense crimplene navy blue and white, many were quite charmed by her forthright manner and the spirited ~ some would say arrogant ~ toss of her peroxide lacquered waves. Others were not so enchanted, and found her imperious manner unpleasant.

        It was a simple matter of teeth, when it came to disabling her. The difference was remarkable. There was no actual reason why her lack of teeth should change her so ~ she still had the matching shoes and handbags, but the regal stance and the arrogant tilt of her chin was gone. Not having any teeth made her seem shy and evasive, and she mumbled, saying as little as possible. She lost the power of manipulation along with her teeth, and although nobody really understood why, many wished they had thought of hiding her teeth years ago. It was such a simple solution, in the scale of things.

        And the moral of that story is, Eleri concluded with a wry but not too dentally challenged smile, Toothless Dragons Don’t Bite.

        #4333
        F LoveF Love
        Participant

          Finnley, who had also just then re-entered the room, saw her chance to not only get her own back on Godfrey and prove to him her meanness was not a facade, but also an opportunity to get some peace and quiet.

          “Take those two,” she said, pointing towards Godfrey and Liz. “They are bound to know something.”

          Godfrey paled and Liz let out a little gasp.

          Finnley, how can you do this!”

          “Oh bugger it,” sighed Finnley, despondently wondering if she really was a nice person after all.

          “She’s in the attic.”

          “The attic? I didn’t know we had an attic,” exclaimed Liz. “How absolutely wonderful! I do hope you are keeping it clean, Finnley. Attics are notoriously bad for attracting dust.”

          #4331

          “What was in the bag, Finnley, tell us!”
          Everyone was looking at the maid after the Inspector had left hurriedly, under the pretext of taking care of a tip he had received on the disappearance of the German girl.

          Godfrey was the most curious in fact. He couldn’t believe in the facade of meanness that Finnley carefully wrapped herself into. The way she cared about the animals around the house was a testimony to her well hidden sweetness. Most of all, he thought herself incapable of harming another being.
          But he had been surprised before. Like when Liz’ had finished a novel, long ago.

          “Alright, I’ll show you. Stay there, you lot of accomplices.”

          Godfrey looked at Liz’ sideways, who was distracted anyway by the gardener, who was looking at the nearby closet.

          Liz’, will you focus please! The mystery is about to be revealed!”

          “Oh shut up, Godfrey, there’s no mystery at all. I’ve known for a while what that dastardly maid had done. I’ve been onto her for weeks!”
          “Really?”
          “Oh, don’t you give me that look. I’m not as incapable as you think, and that bloodshot-eyes stupor I affect is only to keep annoyances away. Like my dear mother, if you remember.”
          “So tell us, if you’re so smart now. In case it’s really a corpse, at least, we may all be prepared for the unwrapping!”
          “A CORPSE! Ahaha, you fool Godfrey. It’s not A corpse! It’s MANY CORPSES!”

          Godfrey really thought for a second that she had completely lost it. Again. He would have to call the nearby sanatorium, make up excuses for the next signing session at the library, and cancel all future public appear…

          “Will you stop that! I know what you’re doing, you bloody control machine! Stop that thinking of yours, I can’t even hear myself thinking nowadays for all your bloody thinking. Now, as I was saying of course she’d been hiding all the corpses!”
          “Are you insane, Liz’ —at least keep your voice down…”
          “Don’t be such a sourdough Godfrey, you’re sour, and sticky and all full of gas. JUST LET ME EXPLAIN, for Lemone’s sake!”

          Godfrey fell silent for a moment, eyeing a lost peanut left on a shelf nearby.

          Conscious of the unfair competition for Godfrey’s attention Elizabeth blurted it all in one sentence:
          “She’s been collecting them, my old failed stories, the dead drafts and old discarded versions of them. Hundreds of characters, those little things, I’d given so many cute little names, but they had no bones or shape, and very little personality, I had to smother them to death.” She started sobbing uncontrollably.

          That was then that Finnley came back in the room, panting and dragging the sack coated in dirt inside the room, and seeing the discomfit Liz’ with smeared make-up all over her eyes.

          “Oh, bloody hell. Don’t you tell me I brought that dirty bag of scraps up for nothing!”

          She left there, running for the door screaming “I’m not doing the carpets again!”

          And closed the door with a sonorous “BUGGER!”

          #4313
          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            “I had the most awful nightmare”

            Godfrey was taking his morning ginger tea, and talking to himself as usual, although it may have seem he was taking to the new gardener who had come inside for a glass of lemonade. The gardener raised his head, not sure what to answer.

            “The neighbour had left corpses in front of the house, and I had to bury them so people wouldn’t think we’d killed them. It was night, but then I realized it was our dear friends, one had lost an arm even. I then realized they were after the money, and has simply settled there in their place. And then I woke up wondering why is that I hadn’t just called the police instead of making it more of a mess than it was.”

            The gardener was still at the door, unsure if the pause meant he could finally go outside.

            “Truth is, by burying the corpses, I not only became complicit, but also probably made the murderer’s work easier…”

            “I’m sorry Sir, but I have to go back to work now,” the gardener finally said rather awkwardly. “Your bossy maid has ordered me to bury a rather large sack in the garden. I can’t let it sit in the sun like that.”

            Godfrey looked at the gardener in mute horror.

            #4311

            Glynis knew just the potion required to counteract the living stone spell.
            She was not sure however if it was wise to apply it to the large stone parrot. If her dream was any indication, it was meant for her. And who wouldn’t want a large joke telling parrot for companionship? Really?

            Anyway, she sighed, that was probably the only option to learn more about this particular thing and the mysterious sender.

            Wiping the flour off her brow, she started to gather the herbs, bones, bezoar, and the nugget of precious elerium needed for the potion.

            #4306

            The drizzle wasn’t meant to last. At least that’s what the smell in the air was telling Fox. With the night it was getting colder and the drizzle would soon turn into small ice crystals, and maybe worse.
            “We should get going,” Fox said, enjoying the last pieces of rabbit stew. The dwarf had been busy looking around in the leafless bushes and behind the tree trunks. He had been silent the whole time and Fox was beginning to worry.
            “What have you been doing anyway?” he asked. “Are you hunting? You can still have a piece of that stew before I swallow it.” He handed his bowl toward the dwarf, who grumpfed without looking at Fox.
            “I don’t eat. I’m a stone dwarf. I think I get recharged by daylight.”
            Gorash kept on looking around very intently.
            “We should get going,” repeated Fox. The weather is going to be worse.
            “Grmpf. I don’t care. I’m made to stay outside. I’m a stone statue.”
            “Well even stone gets cracked with the help of ice when temperature drops below zero. How am I supposed to carry you if you fall into pieces,” said Fox. He thought his idea rather cunning, but he had no idea if Gorash would be affected by the bad weather or not, since he was not really like stone during the night.

            “And what are you looking for? It’s winter, there’s not much of anything behind those naked bushes.”
            “It’s Easter. You had your rabbit. I want my eggs,” said the dwarf.
            “Oh.” Fox was speechless for a few moments. He too had been thinking of the colourful eggs of the dwarf’s friend they had left in the witch’s garden. He wondered what had happened to it? Gorash had been gloomier and gloomier since they had left the garden and Fox didn’t understand why. He had thought his friend happy to go on a quest and see the outside world. But something was missing, and now Fox realised what it was.

            He didn’t really know what to say to comfort the dwarf, so he said nothing. Instead he thought about the strange seasonal pattern shifts. If it was Easter then it should be spring time, but the temperatures were still a havoc. And the trees had no leaves in that part of the forest. Fox remembered the clock tower of the city had had some problems functioning recently, maybe it was all connected. The problems with the bad smell around the city, the nonsensical seasonal changes and that gloomy quest… maybe it was all connected.

            Fox gulped the last pieces of rabbit stew without enjoying it. He licked the inside of the bowl and put it in his backpack without further cleaning. He had suddenly realised that it was not much use to ask Gorash’s permission to leave as Fox was doing all the walk during the day anyway. So he could as well do it at night. He didn’t have as much difficulties to put out the fire as he had lighting it up. He cleaned the place as much as he could and then looked around him. The night was dark, the drizzle had turned into small snow flakes. Fox smelled the air. It would soon turn into bigger flakes. The dwarf could stay outside if he wanted, but Fox needed to move. Let him follow if he wants to.

            #4293

            The night was almost there, the dwarf would come out of his heavy daysleep any minute now. Fox had been collecting mushrooms along with twigs and branches to make some fire. He hoped the constant drizzle of these last few days had not rendered them too wet.

            The differences of his needs and cravings depending on his being a fox or a human had always amazed him. When he was a fox, he feared fire and would avoid it at all cost. When he was a human, he couldn’t spend a night out in the cold without a fire. His body was simply not good at keeping warmth inside when he had no fur. Today was no exception and Fox was certain the dwarf would also appreciate it to get rid of the cold of the stone.

            After piling up the wood for the fire, Fox smelled his harvest of fresh mushrooms. He imagined them accompanying a good rabbit stew and felt saliva water his mouth. His diet as an animal was mostly meat, whereas as a human he was oddly attracted to vegetables, and even enjoyed the taste of mushrooms. He might not enjoy them so much had he not met a girl once, so long ago when he was a still a cub learning to transform into a human. He remembered the girl had said she was called Eleri, which he had found amusing because in French “Elle rit” means “she’s laughing”.

            “How do you know French?” she had asked.
            “Oh! My master Gibbon teaches me French, he says it would give me another way of thinking the world.”
            “Your master must be fond of Romance stories,” she giggled.

            Fox didn’t really understood what she meant by that, and he thought it was not so important because what she had in her bag smelt so funny.

            “What’s that?” he asked.
            “You want some?” She handed a bunch of butterstache fungi to the handsome redhead boy. “I realise I don’t know your name.”

            “I’m Fox,” he said his eyes fixed on the strange looking things in her hands. He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “Is it safe?”

            He remembered the look of incredulity in her eyes, her beautiful eyes. She was the first girl he had seen. He didn’t know much about humans except what Master Gibbon had told him in French, which didn’t really make sense at that time.

            “It’s totally safe, you might only have some funny experiences if you take the wrong ones in the forest,” Eleri laughed and Fox remembered the meaning of her name in French. He thought the name suited her well. He accepted her gift, for her eyes, and for her sincere laugh.

            Since that time, eating mushrooms was always coloured with joy and a sense of daring. The last rays of the Sun faded away.

            “It smells like mushrooms, and butterstache if I’m not mistaken,” said the raspy voice of the dwarf.

            #4291

            Absentmindedly, Eleri put the bones in her pocket and continued to gaze down upon the valley, lost in thoughts of the past. What had that tree said to her, that day it came to life?

            Yorath sat quietly, watching her. He noticed the mushrooms growing on the exposed roots beside him, wondering if he had unwittingly crushed any when he sat down next to the tree.

            “Mushrooms,” he said quietly to himself.

            Eleri didn’t answer, wasn’t even aware that he has said it, but now she was remembering the days of the floods in the lowlands. The wet, dismal months and years when everything was damp, if not saturated or submerged, when mold grew on every surface. Bright green mossy mold, and slimy dank black mold, and fungus everywhere. Nothing would grow like it used to grow and the odour of rot permeated everything. The fruit trees crumbled in a sickly sweet stench into the mud, and the people named it keeg, and started wearing keegkerchiefs wrapped around their faces to keep the stink out of their nostrils.

            “Goodbye, farewell,” the tree had said to her. “We are moving north, migrating. But fear not, little one, there are mushrooms migrating here to replace us.”

            At the time Eleri had thought it was a ridiculous idea, imagining trees packing their trunks and pulling their roots out of the ground, and stomping off into the sunset. A few years later, she understood what the tree had meant.

            Before the last of the fruit trees crumbled into the swamps, the people has resorted to eating the snails and the mushrooms, unwillingly at first, missing the bright colours and refreshing juices, but as time went on, they found more and more varieties of fungi springing up overnight. There came more and more bright colours, and more interesting flavours. It wasn’t long before they noticed the healing and restorative properties of the new varieties, not to mention the recreational effects of some of the more elusive ones. There was no need for any organized farming of the fungi, because they simply sprang up overnight: the days menu would be whatever had appeared that morning.

            And so it was considered a gift from the gods in times of trouble, and the people were grateful. Their faith was restored in the earth’s capacity for magic and abundance, and they were inspired and rejuvenated. Eleri vowed never to forget the earth’s magic providence, in the form of mushrooms

            #4290
            TracyTracy
            Participant

              “But how?” asked Liz. “We don’t even know where she came from, or how she got here. I don’t think you can just banish characters that easily. Look what happened last time.”

              “What happened last time?” asked Finnley.

              “Oh, I don’t remember! Never mind that now! How are we going to get rid of that rude interloper?”

              Finnley snorted at the word INterLOPEr. “That was rather clever, Liz” she tittered.

              Liz couldn’t help but snigger too. “I didn’t plan that,” she admitted.

              “Do you mean the story character refugee crisis, Liz?” interjected Godfrey.

              “Yes! Of course, that was it.”

              “Well you can’t banish characters just because they’re rude, Liz,” remarked Godfrey, reaching for the cashew nuts.

              #4288
              ÉricÉric
              Keymaster

                “Jingle has always been very precocious” her proud grandmother, Mrs Bell told Liz and Godfrey over nougat and peanut cakes. “She has read all your books so many times, and really was ecstatic that you agreed to have her for a couple of weeks.”
                Ms Bell smiled at Godfrey “Obviously, it has nothing to do with it, but here is a generous donation that should more than cover the meals and lodging.”

                “As well as a score of bills fallen behind, I reckon” thought Godfrey while smiling at the oddly bespectacled and bejewelled woman, while grasping the edge of his seat in case Liz’ would realize it would mean to have a moody teenager over the manoir for the next days.

                “It is our dear pleasure to have this darling child,” Liz’ spontaneous answer astonished Godfrey by her graciousness. “Our Finnley will take care of her, she knows the ropes of writing better than my ropes of drying laundry, if you know what I mean huhuhu.”

                Mrs Bell nodded with a look of lost perplexity on her smiling face.

                #4276

                The garden was becoming too small for Gorrash. With time, the familiarity had settled down in his heart and he knew very well each and every stone or blade of grass there was to know. With familiarity, boredom was not very far. Gorrash threw a small pebble in the pond, he was becoming restless and his new and most probably short friendship with Rainbow had triggered a seed in his heart, the desire to know more about the world.

                Before he’d met the creature, Gorrash could remember the pain and sadness present in the heart of his maker. He had thought that was all he needed to know about the world, that mankind was not to be trusted. And he had avoided any contact with that dragon lady, lest she would hurt him. He knew that all came from his maker, although he had no real access to the actual memories, only to their effects.

                Gorrash threw another pebble into the pond, it made a splashing sound which dissolved into the silence. He imagined the sound was like the waves at the surface of the pond, going endlessly outward into the world. He imagined himself on top of those waves, carried away into the world. A shiver ran through his body, which felt more like an earthquake than anything else, stone bodies are not so flexible after all. He looked at the soft glowing light near the bush where Rainbow was hiding. The memory of joy and love he had experienced when they hunted together gave his current sadness a sharp edge, biting into his heart mercilessly. He thought there was nothing to be done, Rainbow would leave and he would be alone again.

                His hand reached in his pocket where he found the phial of black potion he had kept after Rainbow refused it. He shook it a few times. Each time he looked at it, Gorrash would see some strange twirls, curls and stars in the liquid that seemed made of light. He wondered what it was. What kind of liquid was so dark to the point of being luminous sometimes ? The twirls were fascinating, leading his attention to the curls ending in an explosion of little stars. Had the witch captured the night sky into that bottle?

                Following the changes into the liquid was strangely soothing his pain. Gorrash was feeling sleepy and it was a very enjoyable feeling. Feelings were quite new to him and he was quite fascinated by them and how they changed his experience of the world. The phial first seemed to pulse back and forth into his hand, then the movement got out and began to spread into his body which began to move back and forth, carried along with this sensual lullaby. Gorrash wondered if it would go further, beyond his body into the world. But as the thought was born, the feeling was gone and he was suddenly back into the night. A chill went down his spine. It was the first time. The joy triggered his sadness again.

                The dwarf looked at the dark phial. Maybe it could help ease his pain. He opened it, curious and afraid. What if it was poison? said a voice of memory. Gorrash dismissed it as the scent of Jasmine reached his nose. His maker was fond of Jasmine tea, and he was surprised at the fondness that rose in his heart. But still no images, it was merely voices and feelings. Sometimes it was frustrating to only have bits and never the whole picture, and full of exasperation, Gorrash gulped in the dark substance.

                He waited.

                Nothing was happening. He could still hear the cooing of Rainbow, infatuated with it eggs, he could hear the scratches of the shrews, the flight of the insects. That’s when Gorrash noticed something was different as he was beginning to hear the sharp cries of the bats above. He tried to move his arm to look at the phial, but his body was so heavy. He had never felt so heavy in his short conscious life, even as the light of the Sun hardened his body, it was not that heavy.

                The soil seemed to give way under his increasing weight, the surface tension unable to resist. He continued to sink into the ground, down the roots of the trees, through the tunnels of a brown moles quite surprised to see him there, surrounded by rocks and more soil, some little creatures’ bones, and down he went carried into hell by the weight of his pain.

                After some time, his butt met a flat white surface, cold as ice, making him jump back onto his feet. The weird heaviness that a moment before froze his body was gone. He looked around, he was in a huge cave and he was not alone. There was an old woman seated crosslegged on a donkey skin. Gorrash knew it was a donkey because it still had its head, and it was smiling. The old woman had hair the colour of the clouds before a storm in summer, It was full of knots and of lightning streaks twirling and curling around her head. Her attention was all on the threads she had in her hands. Gorrash counted six threads. But she was doing nothing with them. She was very still and the dwarf wondered if she was dead or asleep.

                What do you want? asked the donkey head in a loud bray.

                It startled the dwarf but it didn’t seem to bother the old lady who was still entranced and focused on her threads.

                Nothing, said Gorrash who couldn’t think of anything he would want.

                Nonsense, brayed the donkey, laughing so hard that the skin was shaking under the old lady. Everyone wants something. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something.

                Gorrash thought about what he could want, what he had been wanting that night. He remembered his desire to get out of the garden.

                And there you are, brayed the donkey head, that’s a start. What do you want then?

                Getting out of the garden?

                Noooo! That’s a consequence of a deeper desire, but that’s not what you want.

                I have never thought about desires before, said Gorrash. It’s pretty new to me. I just came to life a few weeks ago during a full moon.

                The donkey head tilted slightly on its right. No excuses, it spat, If you’re awake, then you have a desire in your heart that wants to be fulfilled. What do you want? Take your time, but not too long. The universe is always on the move and you may miss the train, or the bus, or the caravan…

                As the donkey went on making a list of means of transportation, Gorrash looked hesitantly at the old lady. She was still focused on her six threads she had not moved since he had arrived there.

                Who is she? he asked to the donkey.

                _She’s known by many names and has many titles. She’s Kumihimo Weaver of Braids, Ahina Maker of Songs, Gadong Brewer of Stews…

                Ok! said Gorrash, not wanting the donkey go on again into his list enumeration pattern. What is she doing?

                She’s waiting.

                And, what is she waiting for?

                She’s waiting for the seventh thread, brayed the donkey head. I’m also waiting for the thread, it whined loudly. She won’t leave my back until she’s finished her braid. The head started to cry, making the dwarf feel uncomfortable. Suddenly it stopped and asked And, who are you?

                The question resonated in the cave and in his ears, taking Gorrash by surprise. He had no answer to that question. He had just woken up a few weeks ago in that garden near the forest, with random memories of a maker he had not known, and he had no clue what he desired most. Maybe if he could access more memories and know more about his maker that would help him know what he wanted.

                Good! brayed the donkey, We are making some progress here. Now if you’d be so kind as to give her a nose hair, she could have her last thread and she could tell you where to find your maker.

                Hope rose in Gorrash’s heart. Really?

                Certainly, brayed the head with a hint of impatience.

                But wouldn’t a nose hair be too short for her braid? asked the dwarf. All the other threads seemed quite long to him.

                Don’t waste my time with such triviality. Pull it out!

                Gorrash doubted it would work but he grabbed a nose hair between his thumb and index and began to pull. He was surprised as he didn’t feel the pain he expected but instead the hair kept being pulled out. He felt annoyed and maybe ashamed that it was quite long and he had not been aware of it. He took out maybe several meters long before a sudden pain signalled the end of the operation. Ouch!

                hee haw, laughed the donkey head.

                The pain brought out the memory of a man, white hair, the face all wrinkled, a long nose and a thin mouth. He was wearing a blouse tightened at his waist by a tool belt. He was looking at a block of stone wondering what to make out of it, and a few tears were rolling down his cheeks. Gorrash knew very well that sadness, it was the sadness inside of him. Many statues surrounded the man in what looked like a small atelier. There were animals, gods, heads, hands, and objects. The vision shifted to outside the house, and he saw trees and bushes different than the ones he was used to in the garden where he woke up. Gorrash felt a strange feeling in his heart. A deep longing for home.

                Now you have what you came here for. Give the old lady her thread, urged the donkey. She’s like those old machines, you have to put a coin to get your coffee.

                Gorrash had no idea what the donkey was talking about. He was still under the spell of the vision. As soon as he handed the hair to the woman, she began to move. She took the hair and combined it to the other threads, she was moving the threads too swiftly for his eyes to follow, braiding them in odd patterns that he felt attracted to.

                Time for you to go, said the donkey.

                I’d like to stay a bit longer. What she’s doing is fascinating.

                Oh! I’m sure, brayed the donkey, But you have seen enough of it already. And someone is waiting for you.

                The dwarf felt lighter. And he struggled as he began levitating. What!? His body accelerated up through the earth, through the layers of bones and rocks, through the hard soil and the softer soil of years past. He saw the brown mole again and the familiar roots of the trees of the garden in the enchanted forest.

                Gorrash took a deep breath as he reintegrated his stone body. He wobbled, trying to catch his ground. He felt like throwing up after such an accelerated trip. His knees touched the ground and he heard a noise of broken glass as he dropped the phial.

                “Are you alright?” asked a man’s voice. Gorrash forced his head up as a second wave of nausea attempted to get out. A man in a dark orange coat was looking down at him with genuine worry on his face.

                “I’m good,” said the dwarf. “But who are you?”

                “My name is Fox. What’s yours?”

                #4275

                There was no way around it. As hard as he would have tried, he couldn’t reach the peaks of the mountain without crossing the part of the Enchanted Forest which the Fae called their own. There was no way for him to avoid paying the price, or to avoid facing the Court.
                Rukshan wished there was an easier way, but trying to avoid it would only delay the inevitable. Besides, he would need provisions to continue his journey —that is, if they’d let him.

                The first signs of the enchanted signposts had appeared two days ago. He’d been walking through the silent and cold forest for close to ten days already. His progress was slow, as the days were short, and the nights were better spent recuperating.
                The early signs that he was approaching the Fae land wouldn’t have been noticeable by any other than those with some Fae blood in their veins. Some were as subtle as enchanted dewdrops on spiderwebs, other few were watcher crows, but most of the others were simply sapling trees, shaking at the slightest change of wind. All of them silent watchers of the Forest, spies for the Queen and her Court.

                From the first sign, he had three days. Three days to declare himself, or face the consequences. He would wait for the last one. There was something magical about the number three, and anything more hasty would only mean he was guilty of something.

                Like improper use of magic he thought, smiling at the memory of the oiliphant. The Queen was clutching at a dwindling empire, and magic sources gone scarce meant it had to be “properly” used.

                He never believed such nonsense, which is why he’d decided to live outside of their traditions. But for all his disagreement, he remained one of them, bound by the same natural laws, and the same particularities. Meant to reach extremely old ages while keeping an external appearance as youthful as will is strong in their mind, able to wield strong magic according to one’s dispositions, ever bound to tell the truth (and becoming thus exceptionally crafty at deception), and a visceral distaste for the Bane, iron in all its forms.
                Thus was his heritage, the one he shared with the family that was now waiting for his sign to be granted an audience in the Court.

                One more day, he thought…

                #4272

                Kumihimo was rummaging through the content of a wooden chest at the back of the cave. According to the smell it had spent too much time in the dark and humid environment. She might have to do some spring cleaning one day. But the chest was now too heavy for her to carry. I need an apprentice for this, she thought not knowing if if was a wish or a regret.

                In that chest, she had her many tools of the thread. Some were made of bones and she had carved them herself under the direction of her spirit guides. Each one had a specific purpose, either to catch, to extract, to guide, or to dissipate, and many more usages that even she had forgotten after so many years spent in that place.

                She had accumulated so many things in that chest. Fortunately she liked miniature, and most of her creations were seldom bigger than her little finger. However that made it difficult to keep things in order and finding something was often a real challenge. So she sang lullabies to lure the object she was looking for out of their sanctuary.

                Victory! she exulted in the ancient tongue, which would translate also as ‘I have done all that is necessary to harvest the benefits of the next crop’. Kumihimo liked simple things and she liked when one word could signify a very complex meaning. Under an old donkey skin that she often used to camouflage herself when she was going down in the valley, she had found the loom she had been looking for.

                The loom was made from the right shoulder blade of a bear. It was one of the first objects she had carved when she arrived in the vicinity. It had a yellowish patina and felt very smooth in her hands. Its shape was octagonal and each side had seven notches under which were three rows of symbols, some of the ink was gone after so many years, but she could still feel the groove where she had carved them. She smiled at the fond memories and at the dear friend who allowed her to take his bone when he died of old age.
                In the centre of the loom was a heart with a circular hole in it. It was where the braid would emerge.

                Holding the precious object, Kumihimo could feel all the braids she had already made and all the potential braids that waited to come into existence. She felt warmth bloom in her heart at the task at hand.

                Each notch corresponded at the same time to a time of the year, to a direction on earth and in the sky, and some rather obscure references to many other phenomenon and concepts. The weaving depended on very complex rules that she had discovered from experience. Actually the meaning weaved itself into the braid through a subtle interaction between her and Spirit. That way she didn’t have to bother about what to do or what notch to use as it would all unfold during the weaving.

                She stood up and walked outside. The day was still young and she had a lot to do. The weaving ceremony was an act of spontaneity, but it required some preparation. She put the loom on a round rock to dry in the Sun and went to examine the hanging threads. She had to choose carefully.

                #4268

                The seven little spheres had each a different colour. Gorrash looked at them with envy in his heart. He’d rarely seen colours as his life was mostly at night, under the moonlight or under the yellow tint of candles and gas lamps. However, the spheres had their own light from inside. And Gorrash couldn’t touch them as Rainbow was very protective, and it made the stone dwarf restless. He had tried once to take one sphere and he got a warning slap on his hand. Rainbow looked soft and gentle, but a whip is always soft and supple before it struck.

                The whole week they had been on the hunt for all kind of potions from the shelves of the dragon woman. Glynis, she had called herself during one of her monologues in front of the mirror. Her sadness and frustration toward her appearance resonated more than once with his own condition. He had felt guilty about their little thefts, but he had soon realised that nothing would stop Rainbow.

                The randomness of the creature’s choice of potions appeared to be not so random. Gorrash tried several times to help, picking up potions for his friend, according to the colours he liked or to the shapes of the phials that intrigued him, but the creature refused many times the offering.

                The colours mattered to Rainbow, apparently. It would never take black, Gorrash discovered. Only colours from the rainbow spectrum, a voice said inside him. He had learned to recognised it as the voice of his creator’s memories infused into the core of his matter. One thing he wasn’t sure though was about the process of his birth. Has he been carved out from a stone ? Has he been assembled like clay ? That was not part of the memories trapped into his stone body.

                Gorrash then tried to bring the creature colours from the rainbow, always glowing, never dull or matte. But then he discovered it had to be in a certain order. Everyday was different. One day it was in the order of the colour spectrum from red to purple, as his master’s remembered. Another day it had to begin with green or indigo. But always following the order of the colour wheel. If a colour was missing, then they had to wait until Glynis would manufacture it.

                And then, one day… one night, as Gorrash woke up from his rigid sleep, the seven spheres were there, and Rainbow was watching over them. Like a bird over its eggs, said the voice. Except they didn’t really look like eggs. Eggs don’t glow with different colours. Eggs have a shell. Those were translucent, glowing of some very attractive inner light, and looked like water spheres. Does that mean it’s a she? wondered Gorrash who had always thought his friend was a male. He gnawed at his lower lip. Anyway, it seemed that the hunting days were over as Rainbow didn’t show any motivation to leave her strange progeny, and Gorrash had no way to go past the walls on his own.

                Rainbow raised its eyebrows and looked at the dwarf who had come too close to the eggs for its taste. It gathered protectively the spheres which came as one in a big multicoloured moving spheroid. Gorrash could still see the individual light cores in it, they seemed to pulse like the growing desire in his heart. He swallowed. It tasted of dust.

                — I won’t take them, he said.

                His chest tightened as he saw suspicion in his friend’s eyes. Gorrash turned away feeling sadness and guilt. He needed to find some distraction from the attractive lights and the growing desire in his heart.

                #4261

                The cry startled Lobbocks, who had been enjoying the long peaceful walk home through the forest, and instinctively he dived behind an uprooted tree stump. Peering between the fungi sprouting on the rotting limbs, he felt a moments disorientation as he identified the clumsy giant of a man as the statue of Hasamelis that stood opposite the town clock.

                For a moment he felt mildly irritated at the interruption. Lobbocks always found solitary walks soothing and beneficial, despite his sociable personality, and was by no means averse to chance encounters and surprises. But this felt a bit different, even before Lobbocks had identified the intruder into his forest space. Whatever part of the woodland paths he was on, he considered his forest space. He didn’t tend to think much about the rest of the forest, just the space he was in. But usually the surprises and encounters glided in, or flew in, to his space ~ this one had dive bombed in, somehow. And who was the lad with him? The lad seemed to have glided in, but the statue crash landed.

                For reasons he couldn’t fathom, although he didn’t wonder why at the time, he remained hidden. It simply didn’t occur to him to announce himself cordially, and simply ask a few questions of the fellow travelers, in an attempt to deduce the meaning of a statue relocating ~ and animating ~ in the middle of the forest.

                Lobbocks breathed a sigh of relief as they lumbered off back down the hill, in the opposite direction to his journey home to the mountain village. The last thing he heard before they moved out of earshot was: “That woman who turned me to stone, she was down by a river, down in the valley….”

                Aghast, Lobbocks started to understand why Hasamelis had felt so repellent. He was on a rampage of revenge and he blamed Eleri.

                Should he follow them, try to over take them somehow, and warn Eleri? Or go back to the village and confer with the others. Lobbocks didn’t know a thing about magic, but some of the others did. And this might be one of those kind of things. Not like intercepting Leroway, back in the old days, so Eleri could slip away….

                Lobbocks quickened his pace. Someone in the village would know what to do.

                #4260

                You’re a fool, Olli

                His mother’s voice, even now kept haunting him. Olliver was a bit of a fool, far too credulous at times.
                People would think him a simpleton, and, at 17, he would still arch his back when he was around others, maybe a little more now that he’d grown so much, always feeling awkward and unsuitable for anything.

                He wasn’t so clear how the foolish plan had hatched in his head, honestly, he wasn’t very clever. Maybe he was guided. There was no other explanation.

                Slowly, slowly his mother Ethely would exhort him, when he struggled to explain so many things in his head.

                There was the house first. They had come early in the day, paint it with the white triangle in a circle. That meant it was to be demolished soon. The Pasha wanted to remove the ugliness of the town, the old bazar and the cows and chickens pens out of the town’s wall. He wanted a nice clean pall-mall place for his games, with boring clean white walls, and fake grass, his mum told him.
                What is fake grass made of? he asked at the time. It was all he could think of. He hadn’t imagined they could tear down their neighbourhood, or their old familiar house.

                So first, the house. Then the precious package. He liked it, the gilded egg with the strange difficult name. Rukji (that’s how he’d told him to call him, it was more easy) had left a note for him. He didn’t write much, in large big letters for him to read slowly. He remembered the stories Rukji told him about the egg. He used to forget a lot of things, but the stories were always very clear in his head, and he never forgot them.
                Rukji said the egg used to transport people and things to distant places, at the speed of thought.
                Olli had laughed when he told him that, he’d said his thoughts were not very quick. Rukji had smiled, with his nice and a bit sad smile.

                So, he’d thought, maybe the egg could send his house and mum to a safe place, before they remove the house.
                He’d tried to think of it, touch the eggs and its gilded scales, but nothing happened. You’re a fool Olli his mother said, while she was gathering their few things in a large cloth and wicker basket.

                Then there was the tower. He’d thought Rukji would be there, still. He could tell him the secrets surely. But the stern man at the clock building told him he had gone.

                Olli didn’t trust the man, and went from the back-entrance he knew about, up in the tower, to see in case he was there. But he wasn’t.

                It was only the stroke of the 7th hour. And one of the mannequins from the tower moved as he would do, four times a day. Alone, at 7 in the morning, and 7 at night, and with everyone at noon, and midnight.

                Olli had recognized the god of travel, with a funny pose on his plinth. He called him Halis. He had trouble with remembering names, especially long names. Ha-sa-me-lis. Sometimes he would say the names out of order. Like Hamamelis, and that would make everybody laugh.

                That’s when something happened. He’d prayed to the god, to help his mother and their house. But the golden egg with his scales touched the statue, at a place where there was no pigeons stains. And zap! that was it.

                Black for a moment, and then he was in the forest.
                And he wasn’t alone.

                “Free! At last!” he’d shouted.
                Then he’d said “Ain’t that unexpected rusty magic… You tricky bastard managed to zap me out of my concrete shell! now, pray tell, where in the eleven hells did you send us, young warlock?”

                What a fool you are, Olli, you got us all lost he could hear her whisper in his head.

                #4255

                In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud

                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  young eleri spread meant close ones sapling seeing days
                  connie wild tart jar taking usually places world aware
                  nobody notice party

                Viewing 20 results - 381 through 400 (of 972 total)