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Sleep wouldn’t come, and the narrow wooden pew was hard. Cedric had shifted to every possible position trying to get comfortable, and succeeded only in cricking his neck. He eased himself off the pew and crept outside. It was a clear crisp night and the moon shone brightly in the chapel yard. A broad flat tomb beckoned him, looking more promising to stretch out on than the wooden seats inside. It was the tomb of the 14th century mystic (often called witch) , Marguerite Isabeau. Many had claimed to see Isabeau flying around at night, draped in white robes.
Lying flat on his back on the tomb, with his cork bum as a pillow, Cedric wrapped the voluminous white choir boys robes around his body. Despite the chill air, he dozed off, dreaming of lemon pavlova.

~~~~

Igor Popinkin kept to the darkness beneath the trees as he made his way towards the Folly for the rendezvous with Mirabelle. The moon was bright and it was imperative that he stay well hidden. The shortcut through the chapel yard was an open stretch of ground where he might be spotted, but it was unlikely for there to be anyone there at this hour. He was so close now that he mustn’t made any rash mistakes now and spoil it. Igor paused momentarily, reminding himself to be fully present at all times and paying attention. That’s when he noticed Marguerite Isabeau, risen from the grave again ~ although not very far from it, in this instance, as she was lying on top of it, quite motionless. As if drawn by a magnet, he inched slowly towards her, mesmerized by her ghostly beauty. Closer and closer, until he was standing over her, peering down at her scarlet lips. His hot breath and specks of dribble running down her chin woke her, and she opened her eyes.

~~~~

“Am I dreaming?” asked Cedric breathlessly. “Or are you an angel?”
“No, you’re an angel”, replied a baffled Popinkin.
“Why thank you sweetie, oooh, a Russian angel! Love your accent ~ fancy meeting you here!”
“Where were you expecting to meet me then?” Igor replied, even more puzzled. “You mean you were expecting me, Marguerite?”
“Marguerite who?”
“Isabeau. You!” Exasperated with the conversation and confusion, and remembering his rendevous with Mirabelle, Popinkin said “Look, I have to go, but meet me here at the same time tomorrow night.”
Cedric sighed, but he did note that his stiff neck had gone and he felt much happier.

flower synch! but her mind was dulled with tiredness and she could not explain, although they questioned her relentlessly.

“Just align with whatever path you are on… it is by far the easiest way” she whispered as she dropped off to sleep.

She woke to find herself on a path. It was dark and only the ground directly beneath her feet was visible. It was hard to move forward under these conditions and she desperately wanted to see more. She fought with the darkness until, eventually, she realised the darkness was an illusion. With that realisation she took hold of the darkness and it fell away in her hands revealing a stage.

The stage was bare, other than an old boot and a plain wooden chair. She sat on the chair and looked around.

“This is a bit gloomy” she said. “I want flowers”. And deep crimson wild sweet peas appeared. “I want lots of flowers! And I want blue sky and sunshine and a few fluffy white clouds and a gentle sun shower for me to dance in and a rainbow to fill the sky with wonder.” And as she wished, the bare stage was transformed to a landscape filled with a vibrant profusion of colour and life.

Sanso loved old maps, and was eager to help Vincentius spread the map out on the living room floor and have a closer look. It extended to a full 8 meters in length when it was rolled out, and Sanso and Vincentius had to kneel down and crawl over it to examine it. The map was like nothing they’d ever seen before, certainly it didn’t resemble the current state of the globe, although it had confusing similarities in places. Some of the names were familiar, but not in the usual locations, and there were some familiar land masses, but many were quite different.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen: “Take the lid off and have a look inside” urged Janet.
“YOU take the lid off, what if the mouse runs over my hand?” said Pearl. “I know, let’s get Ed to do it.”

Janet and Pearl were cackling and bumping into each other, Pearl holding the teapot outstretched in front of her, and neither of them noticed Vincentius kneeling just inside the living room doorway, hidden behind his invisibility cloak.

Vincentius looked up but was unable to move in time. Pearl tumbled over his back and the teapot flew out of her hand. Vincentius managed to catch the teapot but the lid flew off and hurtled across the room, catching Sanso on the side of the head. Janet fell over Pearl and landed on Sanso, although of course she couldn’t see him, as he was wearing the invisibility cloak. Vincentius looked on in horror, clutching the teapot close to his stomach, upside down. Bee was able to slide down the spout, straight down into Vincentius’ shorts. Bee let out a long whistle. She wasn’t called Belle Endwhistle for nothing, after all.

Pearl sat up and rubbed her knee, wondering why Janet was hovering in mid air, and the tea pot was upside down and apparently defying gravity too. “Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to have a tea break after all”. She wasn’t able to see Arona and Mandrake rolling their eyes, hidden as they were beneath invisibility cloaks. Pearl wasn’t able to see Mari Fe either, as she was too small, and appeared as no more than a dog hair covered bit of chewed up toy goat leg on the floor.

Pearl wrapped the jars of apple pie moonshine carefully inside a beach towel, and placed them in the middle of her suitcase. Her flight was at midnight, and eveything was ready for her trip to Andalucia to assist the surge team on the night of the three kings parade. But there was a problem: the snow had all but submerged her house, her car was nowhere to be seen beneath the white drifts, and the roads were silent and impassable. Pearl called Skye in London, and asked her to send a red car.

The cellar underneath the river island was a hive of activity. The Replicator was churning out little red amphibious flying cars like there was no tomorrow, which indeed would have been the case if the recent apocalypse hadn’t been deftly diverted in the nick of time. At high tide, when the Eyot was encircled with water, the cars would slip out of the ancient portal and drive out of the river onto Chiswick Mall, and on towards the various locations of the surge diversion team members. Those that were destined for locations other than London used the portal to exit via rivers in other places, such as Brattleboro, the Huangpu River, the Guadalquivir, or the Grand Canyon.

She was right. Maybe he needed a job as a janitor instead, and draw on walls, or write some sotteries pardon my Medieval French.
“I’m leaning towards valuing the imagination parts of me.” he’d answered, not quite convinced, as though it were told by someone else, or something he’d read earlier somewhere, on a wall probably.
The vole was still there when she’d left. She’d kept moving back to give it space to run off up the dry road, but no, the little thing even held its hand up when she tried to pick it up as if to say NO! thank you I’m fine.
He too was fine, surrounded by converging ripples of emotions, but oddly calm.
“Too neatly organized stuff gets dusty and boring” he’d said to her.
“I know,” she’d answered, ending their brief encounter with a limerick

The housekeeping lady of China,
Said she’d never seen anything finer,
than a wacom of dust,
that she sponged and brushed,
that housekeeping lady of China…

“Uh Oh Godfrey, now we’re in trouble, there’s a typhoon in the random daily quote! We really must improve the weather before all hell breaks loose!”

But Godfrey’s mind was on other matters and he wasn’t paying attention to Elizabeth.

“GODFREY!!” she shouted “This is serious! Pay attention, do!”

“I really must say, Liz,” Godfrey shuffled the papers he was reading into a neat pile, “That when it’s too elaborate, it’s too weirdo, and when it’s pure delirium, it’s increasingly rubbish.”

“Who else?, as a matter of fact, Dr Whoohelz,” he winked unapologetically.

“Oh, that?” he added knowingly to the glaring lady. “Did you know pink tutus made from pink panthers’ hides are a symbol of power in most old African countries.”

Meanwhile, Luigi, the hapless driver and his scooter, and the land beneath them had moved and groaned a good few meters further away from the doctor.

Whether or not Arachne was actually better at weaving than Athena is still a mystery, or perhaps it is a moot point and no mystery at all. Weaving is by no means a solitary endeavour, as Blithe found early one summer morning. The river mist was rising and the air itself was dancing in droplets. It was hard to determine if the droplets were falling or rising, or simply milling around on the air currents. Hard green oranges (clearly oranges had been named in winter, or they would likely have been called greens) were festooned with silver threads, linking orange to orange, orange to tree and tree to wire fence, and back again. It was debatable whether or not the individual spiders were aware of the grand overall design of the early morning web links of the orange groves, just as it was equally debatable whether or not the inhabitants of the various Gibber realities were aware of the network of waterpipes that connected the other inhabitants to themselves and each other, and to the other Gibber worlds. Individuals were individuals, whether they be spiders, or Gibblets, and individuals generally speaking were focused on their own part of the tapestry (and often those of their immediate neighbours). Spider 57 on the east fence might be positioned to catch the first rays of sunshine in the mornings, but Spider 486,971 over near the dung heap was in a better position to catch the afternoon flies. And so on, as somebody famous once said.

As Blithe prowled around the orchard capturing potential clues on her Clumera she inevitably became part of the laybrinthine web of sticky threads herself, as they attached themselves to her hair and clothing. All of the gaps between the solids in the field were joined together with spun filaments, just as the Gibblets were joined together with fun spillaments (although leaking waterpipes were sadly misinterpreted as not-fun all too often, despite that they could be used as an opportunity to view the connections of the Waterpunk more comprehensively.)

The individual spiders lacy parlours were framed in wire squares, several hundred, if not more, along the perimeter fences. Not every wire fence square was filled; there were many vacant lots between established residences ~ whether by practical design or mere happenstance, Blithe couldn’t say. Many of the individual webs were whole and perfect, like the windows of Lower Gibber whose inhabitants kept their lace curtains clean and neatly hung. Many of the webs on the wire fence were not perfect in the symetrical sense ~ some had gaping holes, and there were those that appeared to be unfinished, despite showing great potential. Others appeared to be abandoned, hanging in shreds, not unlike many of the residences in Upper Gibber.

The wire framed residences of the field (and likewise the peeling paint framed residences of Upper Gibber) that appeared to be defunct were not quite as they seemed, however. They were simply being viewed from a different timeframe. It was quite possible to view each wire or peeled paint framed en-trance side by side, notwithstanding that they were, so to speak, located in varying timeframes. All that was required was a more flexible viewpoint, and an ability to view more than one timeframe simultaneously. It was all a question of allowing an entrance to en-trance ~ which was, after all, its function.

{link: misty morning; entrance}

“We walk, Ia’eh and Minkah, Desher and I,” Elizabeth read the email from Hypatia, “ towards the dark ridge of stone where the books lie hidden, awaiting the day they should be found again…..When Cleopatra ruled, the books numbered 400,000…and this, I think, is true. By the time of Theon of Alexandria, an age in which the books were no loner in the Great Library of the Palace of the Ptolemies, which was also no longer, but housed instead the “daughter” library of the Serapeum, they numbered 360,000. Those lost to the Bishop of Theophilus amounted to a tenth of these. But no matter if full half were lost, that Minkah brought out from Alexandria so many amazed me then; it amazes me still. He not only carried them here, but brought back an account of where each cave was sited, and which jars were placed in which cave.”

“Godfrey, didn’t we know a Minky once, who was a sort of a servant?”

“We did indeed, Liz, you were the one who inserted him into the story, surely you remember?”

“Well, the name rings a bell, Godfrey, but where did we meet him?”

Godfrey snapped his fingers and as if by magic, an excerpt from the Reality Play appeared:

“Just then a funny little man with a huge cheeky grin appeared and held out a tray. Smoothies! Coconut and berry smoothies, and pink cakes, croissants”

“Croissants!” interrupted Elizabeth.

“… and oranges, and a box of cadbury’s chocolates…”

“Don’t remind me about Cadbury’s” groaned Elizabeth. “I simply can’t bear it that they’ve blinked into another dimension”

Godfrey continued: “ Dory slurped and munched and gobbled and slurped some more, and underneath where the chocolate was, she saw a brochure.
On the front cover was a picture of a cave. OOHH A CAVE! Dory loved caves! Let’s go to the cave today, Minky! she said to the funny fellow with the impish grin. Minky winked.”

“He was going to take Dory to the caves!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Why didn’t I finish that story thread!”

“There’s no need to wring your hands like that, Liz” said Godfrey soothingly. “You can continue it now!”

#1198
Al was visibly deranged finding Becky scantily clad. Well, wait for him to shave, he smiled. Becky might eat some nuts, wondering why she had not thought of that in the first place. Becky had always been reluctant, or perhaps just forgetful.

A clap made her moan in a silky voice, she felt energy crawl underneath her sabulmantium. It was Man, a distinctive pack of magic. What an impossible florid and baroque little marmoset playing a mouth harp.

Arona felt like beating dragons. She almost stopped in anticipation of a pile of conic shaped dirty sand, soil from the cave, the dragons doing. They are disagreeable kind of creature, made her dizzy.

The dragons had disappeared. Arona snapped to no one in particular, you will see how easy it is to come back if you feel so inclined.

At her touch, the dragon started to enclose a circle of sand, a curvy symbol.

The interior of the cave was out of focus, in all its splendor…

Fuck the babbled excuses, her own sloppy children wearing a potatoes sack. Sure Gabriele had noticed that nurse Bellamy in my room. Professional women made silky rope disappear.

Sure, more security, she had to be more careful about Barbella Bee-hive. I don’t like that Barbella. Perhaps it’s the kinky wrists tying games…

Zhaana was 18 years old and outwardly beautiful as well as inwardly lovely. Nine years had passed since she’d last seen Sanso on that extraordinary excursion into The Elsepace Arrangement, or so it would appear. That is to say, Zhaana had no recollection of what might have occured during those nine years, and the general accepted medical opinion was that Zhaana had suffered amnesia. She was found wandering the streets of Amsterdam in the spring of 2009, wearing about her outwardly beautiful body a few outgrown shreds of dusty indigo fabric. Fortunately the weather was mild, and when passersby did a double take, it was due to her looks and not her unsuitable garments.

When Taatje van Snoot saw the girl wandering aimlessly along the canal her left ear popped, indicating that she should pay attention. Taatje had been reading Lisp, the popular new magazine for new energy people with word issues, while sitting on a bench beneath the burgeoning green foliage, enjoying the warm spring sunshine. As the strange girl with the bemused and curious expression wandered past, Taatje rolled Lisp up and shoved it in her capacious carpet bag, and followed.

When Ann read about “that place lost between the pine trees” in The Play she started coughing again. She was beginning to wonder about her cough, after reading in the New Reality Herald last night about the man with a fir tree growing in his lung.

In tandem with her coughing, the ground started to tremble beneath Amarilla, The Forgotten Eggleton, and flecks of sun melted chocolate spattered the gravestones and pine trees.

It’s a lungquake, run for your lives! she shouted, but there was nobody there. The ground heaved and cracked beneath Amarilla and she lost her grip and plunged headlong into an abyss of vile sticky mucus.