-
AuthorSearch Results
-
May 18, 2014 at 10:19 pm #3084
In reply to: The Time-Dragglers’ Extravaganzas
She Dreams
She dreams she is learning to fly. Over a green field with a band of trees to her left and a field of grazing cows to her right. Endless blue sky above. Nobody else in sight. She isn’t very high from the earth and she isn’t very fast. Her arms are outstretched for balance as she wobbles forward. It is exhilarating, but she is still glad there is no one but the cows to witness these first clumsy attempts.
She wakes and hugs her dream tightly. Going over the details so she will remember them later before she slips back into sleep.
Morning
It was 5:22am. Still over an hour before her antiquated alarm clock was due to go off; the clock was a relic she clung to more because she thought it looked cool on the shelf than for any practical reason. Sadie decided to get up anyway and use the extra time for meditating. She had a tough assignment ahead of her that day in Marseille and a bit of extra inner peace certainly wouldn’t go amiss.
Sadie worked as a private contractor for the HTB or Happiness Training Bureau. Their motto was Transit umbra, lux permeant. Roughly translated that meant Shadow passes, light remains. Nobody in the bureau knew who said it, although some sources attributed it to Ericis V Lemonista, the renowned scholar and educational reformer.
May 17, 2014 at 7:10 pm #3071In reply to: Rafaela’s Random Ramblings
Stonehenge had moved. Standing stone circles don’t usually move, but this one did. For the reason that nothing is cast in stone, I suppose. Not quite sure yet where to reposition it. There are four standing stones, now, and not five. Or you could say there are now six instead of five, but two are quite short now. After the branch pruning days (some pruned by the wind and some pruned by chainsaw) (when is a fig branch not a fig? when it’s a prune), today was a digging and planting day in the less shady garden. A previously unusable area was now liberated from permanent shade, and a particularly good crop of seedlings meant that it was immediately usable. Hence, the unceremonious removal of the ceremonial stones. The stone circle was now a pile of stones, a stone heap without a plan ~ but with endless possibilities.
February 10, 2013 at 11:21 am #2990In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Looking at the city illuminated by endless fireworks, Madame Li was almost glad to be back in Shanghai for the Chinese New Year. The vibrations, explosions and sparkling lights sent shivers of pleasure down her spine, reminding her of childhood excitement and of times before her awareness of such things as surges.
She wasn’t back for leisure however. A new snow surge had followed the air pollution surge. This was most unnerving, and she’d heard from Anita Charmpatti, her counterpart in India that a fog of pollution had hit New Dalhi as well.At the Long Poon Headquarters, against all expectations, a certain Lord Lemon had taken over the head of operations, flanked with two even older museum-worth pieces of antiquities (names Hyphen and Dash). All that had left Cornella utterly disappointed after her last past weeks of brilliant interim. Truth be told, without her scrupulous continuation in the footsteps of Steam, the Surge Team could have been no more. She’d managed to rally back Skye after her taking unnoticed leave of absence in Wales that could well have been an attempt at an early retirement. She also had talked back (and not without a fight) Pearl and Mari Fe in line of duty, and after the looting of the artefact chamber, the collection of rotes gathered after the past weeks contained surges made it look as if they were all back to business.
That Lord Lemon was an old bastard from the early ages of the Team. Usually, in that risky business, you weren’t expected to grow very old, much less to be able to retire. That one having been able to do both surely meant one thing. He wasn’t here to fool around with,… even though he looked capable of little less than managing his early bouts of Alzeihmer’s.
January 14, 2013 at 3:27 am #2967In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd?” a perplexed Lady Appleton turned to her husband (the fifth and last of them) Lord Appleton.
“Yes, I know, dear, it has been all so sudden…”
“What?”
“You mean, Ed’s death, don’t you?”
“Well, of course I do, but that’s not it…” She fidgeted the ornate golden disk at the center of the tall dark mysterious cabinet.
“What it is my dear? We can very well continue with the plan notwithstanding his unexpected demise…”
“Oh sure, that we can, so long as Cornella remains unaware of it… Last time was too close… But anyway, that wasn’t what I meant at all. You see, if Ed was really dead, one would expect he would take no time contacting us. I wonder if he’s stuck in transition, or if the surge’s energy had something to do with this improbable leave of absence…”January 13, 2013 at 6:06 pm #2964In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Interestingly, it seemed you had to be shrunk to be able to properly use the portable portal map, but once you were transported to your destination, there was no use of gum-bears or jelly babies to get back to your original size.
“How clever this is!” Pearl was the first to notice.There was another marvelous property of the Universe that Mari Fe didn’t count on, or maybe only vaguely so, but which did come in handy, once more: the Universe responded to the energy of her intention rather than to her words.
When they appeared at their destination, in the dead of night, it was not summer— but still winter. Which actually doesn’t really mean anything, because summer doesn’t even exist in some place, of course, and when it does, it doesn’t even occur at the same time in all places.
Actually, the Universe, or Pedro, as some like to call them, was aware that what Mari Fe meant when she said (repeatedly) “I want to arrive in summer” was in truth “I want to be warm.”
And curiously, winter in that place, as in Russia, had been exceptionally warm, as her colleague Katarina had noticed.January 10, 2013 at 5:40 am #2958In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
In the meantime in Long Poon, Cornella was irritated by her last Naza Fecebook update. It appeared THEY had noticed something about the sun that the Surge Team was not aware of yet. How could that be so ? She thought momentarily about the invitation she received last week about a costumed party in Tartessos (did she get the name right ?) and maybe too many of the operatives chose to take their vacations then. She would not be surprised if she checked on Maya, the vacation software of the company.
But the fact that was bothering her was that the sun wind was hotter that it should be. Wasn’t it a surge, for Roaster’s sake ? Her damn cell phone wasn’t working in the lab with all the security mesures and she wondered how she could have received the update from fecebook, but shit always finds its way, doesn’t it?
On her way to the lab, she was ranting about all that. And she had to go through the mist again. It was primarily intended for disinfection. An idea Ed got when he came back from a trip to France where it was customary to get sprayed on your face by the stewardesses before landing. And maybe he watched too much spy TV series, but that was another story Mari Fe told her once. How did she knew that ?
Blinded by the mist, she eventually found the door. She was holding her breath not to get too intoxicated and it was always a pain to type the code to get out. She’ll have to mention that to Ed soon. But she always forgot.
Taking a deep breath in, she didn’t notice Aqua Luna struggling with the keyboard of Cornella’s computer.
December 29, 2012 at 4:37 pm #2883In reply to: The Surge Team’s Coils
Snow had started to fall on the Egyptian Great Pyramid, alerting the team that some surge had reopened ancient portals meant to stay sealed.
December 2, 2012 at 2:24 am #2866In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“Solar flares alert at noon, take shelter” the electronic sign was saying when she left the building. Rubber masks coated with lead-like substance were designed to alleviate the exposure to what authorities qualified as dangerous radiations, but she was wondering what good it had brought her, listening to those darned authorities. Of course now, there was a variety to contend with every possible taste: one could find designer masks on the market, even ones that made you look like Jeanne Roberts, the famed actress from the naugthies québecquoise telly series “Sept ETs à la maison” (inaptly translated as “Sethies at home”).
However, dissident reports had transpired that the flares were not the health hazard they talked about, and maybe could actually be good for you. Theories were that they helped trigger beneficial mutations of your body, that would then go through a slightly disturbing period of adaptation and heightened hypersensitivity, but that later… your potentials would start to get limitless, well, whatever that meant.
She wondered what good becoming a limitless housekeeper would bring her… more bloody work, that one was certain.February 7, 2011 at 10:00 am #2828In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
“Interested in interacting with you?” replied Mc Tart, “I should co co! Like a bloody morgue around here lately.”
“Er, who is Co Co?” Neb inquired politely.
Mc Tart grinned impishly. “A new character? I meant to say, I should think so! Although whether or not Co Co should think so is another matter entirely.”
“What might be the worth of what Co Co should think?”
“Good question, Neb!”
{link: worth}
September 27, 2010 at 7:04 am #2701In reply to: Strings of Nines
Suddenly the green fairy burst into tears. Yikesy wondered what to do however continued to smile in the meantime. A crying green fairy was unlike anything he had encountered before.
When the snail rolled her eyes Yikesy felt close to tears himself. It reminded him so vividly of Arona, who was taking such a very long time to rescue him.
“Last one to the emporium buys us all bowler hats!” shouted Minky, hoping to revive the morale of his motley tour group.
“I don’t want to go the emporium and I am not crying!” exclaimed the green fairy indignantly. “I have some bowler hat fiber caught in my eye”.
“I believe Mr Jib’s emporium is currently closed anyway,” interjected the parrot wisely. “I follow Mr Jib on Flitter and it seems he is part of a consortium currently cavorting in a secret destination which begins with the letter W and ends in the letter N and has 35 letters in between.”
“I am confused,” said the lost and confused Yikesy. “Are Mr Minky and the green fairy one and the same?”
“Hahahahahahahahaha” laughed Shelly, surprisingly loudly for a snail. “We are all confused! None of it makes sense so why bother trying. What good is sense anyway? Would you like them to be one and the same?”
“I don’t have an opinion either way really on that one” retorted Yikesy. “I suppose the less names I have to remember the better. What I would really like is a glass of pineapple juice and a dish of black truffles.”
September 5, 2010 at 1:49 pm #2815In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
There was no place like home, notwithstanding that home could be considered to be anywhere at all. Home in this case was Blithe’s patio one balmy September evening. Citronella candles flickered on the table, and coloured fairy lights strobed in strings along the facade of the house. A rosy glow emanated from the bedroom window and Blithe took a snapshot, noticing later the fly screen visible, overlayed onto the bedroom scene. Not only was the view of the bedroom limited by the width of the camera lens, it was also limited in the sense that the wire screen was obscuring almost half of what would have been visible if the photograph had been taken from the other side of the screen, or, with no screen at all in between the lens and the view of the room. However, despite having such a partial view of the whole, the remainder that was viewable was still identifiable as a bedroom.
Blithe wasn’t about to remove the screen however, because it was doing its job of screening, or filtering out, the unwanted insects. That wasn’t to say that she was denying the existance of those insects, or that they weren’t welcome on the other side of the screen, just that she was selectively screening the unwanted items from a particular scene. If, for example, the room was full of insects, Blithe might have been preoccupied with them, to the exclusion of whatever else she might have preferred to focus on within the bedroom. Out on the patio, however, the insects were, if not always entirely welcome, appreciated. The praying mantis and the dragonfly were welcome, and the butterflies and moths were always welcome, because Blithe had associated the energy of those insects with familiar welcome energies. The wasps, flies and ants were not translated in the same way, but were appreciated for entirely different reasons, being an aid to exploring such issues as irritation (and occasionally, pain). Blithe had to admit that despite the praying mantis and dragonfly being welcome, it would not be true to say that they were welcome in the bedroom, however.
There had been times when Blithe wished that the whole patio was enclosed in screens, but the trouble with screens was that they tended to filter out everything of a certain size, although perhaps that was more a beleif about physical screens than anything else. Was it possible to filter out flies and wasps, but allow dragnflies and butterflies? Possible surely, she thought, but perhaps not with physical wire screen devices and associated beleifs.
A few days previously Blithe had cleaned the mesh filter on her kitchen tap, unrestricting the flow. Coincidentally, her friend had also had a tap mesh restricted flow incident, and had removed the mesh filter altogether. Another friend had removed a window screen for cleaning, and had chosen not to replace it, as she was appreciating the allowance of much more light. And then another friend had mentioned a dream, of dragonflies under a screen that was covering a pool. She had lifted the screen in the dream, to allow the dragonflies to escape, and yet some of the dragonflies chose to stay under the screen.
Intrigued with the words screen and mesh, which meant the same thing in one respect, but not in others, Blithe investigated the definitions. To screen could be to filter out the unwanted, but to mesh was to weave together. But were they so different, really? A screen was also a blank place on which to project images ~ meshed and woven selectively screened and filtered images, perhaps.
{link ~ weaving}
May 18, 2010 at 7:00 pm #2081In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
continuity dimension met answer
lavender yikesy clear meant
far strange light help speak magic
notwithstanding suddenly less
under eight full caveApril 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 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.
February 28, 2010 at 4:12 pm #2432In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Did you notice that, Pee? THE CODE HAS BEEN TAMPERED WITH AGAIN!
Isn’t it back to how it was in the first place, Doily? Pee scatched his, er, shoulders. (he couldn’t remember if he had his head with him or not)
NO! It bloody well isn’t, it’s a good jib I’m here with you, you’d have been hoodwinked just like the others. It’s MEANT to look like it’s as it was, but it isn’t, Doily said grimly.
What was it in the first place, then? asked Pee.
Buggered if I know, replied Doily, scratching her elbow.
February 12, 2010 at 1:35 pm #2665In reply to: Strings of Nines
They were thick as theives, freinds for thousands of centuries, or even more; sometimes thick, sometimes theives, and anything else you might imagine. They got together again and again in this time and that, here, there and elsewhere, just for the fun of it. There was nothing they liked more than a puzzling occurance, or a riddle, or a basket full of clues to ponder over, unravel, and turn around and around, toying with meanings until they found one they liked. They had a home in The City, sort of a home base so to speak, where they met regularly each night in the dream state, regardless of which time or place they spent their waking hours. It was sometimes a releif to meet up at home in The City and always a pleasure: sometimes it was hard to stay under the radar back down on the ground, it was part of the job to stand out in the crowd, which often resulted in a lynching, or a ducking, or the stocks, at the very least. All too often it ended up on top of a bonfire, tied to a stake.
One day in one of the Decembers, in amongst all the sweet dreams they often shared, they started having some unsettling group dreams, where they all felt like they were betwixt and between, falling through the cracks you might say. It was a feeling similar to dying of thirst, although it wasn’t really a physical thirst, it was more than that, a hungry yearning sort of thing. Some of them had strange nightmares, of a monstrous beast, and some of them actually saw beasts in the daytime too, especially on those falling through the cracks days. When they met up at home in The City, they compared notes about the beasts, and not always, but sometimes they found they were mirroring each others beasts. That often ended up in a heated debate, because the more mirroring that occurred, the more real the beast seemed. Some said that the beasts that appeared when you fell through the cracks were in a deep ravine, in a manner of speaking, and not of this plane at all. Others argued that if the beasts appeared through the cracks, then they were on this plane.
And so it went on, and on. There were many more puzzling occurances to come, and lots of meanings to be considered, rejected, or taken on board for the friends, as thick as thieves, to turn around and around, and hold up to the mirror for closer inspection and dissection. They were making a tapestry, a huge rich colourful tapestry, and all the puzzling occurences, and even the beasts, were depicted in the colourful threads and patterns. They were the warp, you might say, of the weave. Love was the weft.
“Congratulations, Liz” Godfrey remarked drily. “Are you supposed to use three months worth of creative writing challenges in one entry?”
“Don’t be silly, Godfrey, of course not. Rules are meant to be broken, that’s what they’re for.”
January 4, 2010 at 10:19 am #2396In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Meanwhile somewhere else in the Eight’s, where the cuckoo sang the new year’s song
Harvey had been quick to wish his friends Aspidistra a merry new year full of reindeer pee by the gallon dripping from the roof. That’s how they wished the best to their friends here. And sure he wanted the best for Aspidistra.
Now he had to find the shaman, because that shadow leaping on the wall was that much he couldn’t bear. He had to buy that new light sprayer and have it cursed by the shaman of the Space Bar of the Fool Breadth (or was it Foul Breath?) to have it move to the light, and quick, that frigging bugger of a shadow.
In the meantime, he firmly believed that were he to keep being merry, it would repel it away further and further.
So, his mood was twittery, and he felt like singing, and dancing, and hoola hooping with all the furniture and cutlery available in the mouldy cupboards all finely balanced on his nose and appendages, all the way down to the metro.December 17, 2009 at 5:45 pm #2377In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Oh, Doily dear, there thoo are!” Mewrich Peamon cried out at the sight of Dolores, almost losing his loincloth in excitement. ‘Doily’ was how he affectionately called Dolores, one of the most fervent admirer of his works, though he strongly suspected she didn’t quite understand them all.
However the Saucerer was pleased to know the lady, who wasn’t shy of keeping her heads on her shoulders, a custom that most Pealanders would have found outrageously bold and casual, preferring to have their heads at home, (or) just in (suit)case.
“I was just about to tell your nephews and brother-in-law all about section three twenty one of the Art of Bird Swift Travelling Right Unto Sextion Eight (A.B.S.T.R.U.S.E), but surely you could indulge us in revealing the few caveats I was about to tell them about the beard.”
“Didn’t you mean bird?” Doily said with a interrogative pout which almost had her lovely green wig fall onto her eyes.
“Well, of course I meant beard, dear —and always glad to see we’re on the same page on this one!” “Though I fear we’ll soon have to turn to the next…” He added mysteriously.
December 14, 2009 at 2:19 am #2354In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
There was trouble in New Peasland. A plague of hungry blubbits had wiped out the pea crops. Peas being the main staple in New Peasland, usually mixed with marmite and made into a tasty sauce, meant that the future looked grim for the increasingly hungry New Peaslanders.
In desperation it was decided to send a volunteer through the portal to the Eigth dimension, where it was rumoured that the inhabitants were kind hearted but rather directionless and random, and would no doubt be happy to be given some pea producing purpose.
November 22, 2009 at 1:00 pm #2645In reply to: Strings of Nines
Sanso had been hanging around for far too long, trying to make sense of all the funny ideas that people have, and trying to get to grips with all their adventures and escapades, their convoluted ponderings, and all the friends and associates that were continually weaving themselves through the many threads. He’d all but forgotten that he was a wanderer by nature, used to travelling alone. Somehow he’d become stuck in their ways, despite not ever really fitting in completely, and he wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened. Perhaps it had been the broccoli. With a defiant devil may care spirit, he’d eaten the broccoli
from the jar marked “You Fool”, when all the others had chosen the broccoli in the jar labeled “Thank You”. Well, he’d chosen it, there was no blaming anyone else for it, after all. But the effects had all but worn off, and he was starting to get the old familiar itch to travel again, to explore.“You can go in any direction you want” he heard himself say as he mentally transported himself back to a scene in his Story. “You’ll always be at the centre of everything.”
How very strange that he’d forgotten that. That brocolli was powerful stuff.
“You interpret the signs however you want to…” the voice of Sanso In Another Scene continued, “and then you act on it. And I’ll tell you this as well, it’s about time you stopped rehashing Old Scenes and started exploring some new ones. Just go, go now! Put one foot in front of the other, and just go ~ go back into the cave.”
Sanso was on the verge of protesting that he didn’t have a plan, and then remembered how much he liked surprises.
For the briefest moment, Sanso wondered if he should leave a note for anyone, or get the laundry in before he set off, or pack a suitcase or something, but decided to start off as he meant to carry on ~ alone, impulsive and free to wander the world of his own making.
There was a large black cow blocking the entrance to the cave. The cow was dead and bloated, although it hadn’t started to smell yet. Sanso wondered whether it was a sign, and decided that it was. It would be rather pointless to create a large dead cow blocking the cave entrance if it had no significance to the story, he deduced, although he hadn’t yet worked out an appropriate meaning for the sign.
Weighing up his options, Sanso realized there were several choices he could make. He could delete the previous paragraph, and simply walk into the cave. He could wait until the cow decomposed, and then simply climb over the bones. He could wander around until he found another cave entrance, or simply teleport himself into the cave behind the cow.
However, the only option that he could think of that would include the Meaning of the Dead Cow Blocking The Cave Entrance would be to stay with the cow until the meaning had been found. If he ignored the cow, he might be Missing An Important Meaning. Notwithstanding, the meaning may turn up later, whether he forgot about it or not.
Sanso decided to sit and meditate on the Meaning of the Cow before proceeding. He could change his mind at any moment if he got bored.
-
AuthorSearch Results