-
Search Results
-
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Mandrake sighed. That trip on dragon’s back was a fast and bumpy ride. They’d landed right in the middle of the group of tourists in no time at all, and surprisingly Arona, still high on Nhum spiked tea had failed to notice much of what had just happened, let alone that her progeny was in the midst of them.
Even more surprisingly, the tourists had failed to notice their colourful, noisy and dusty landing, not to say the purple dragon itself that Vincentius had to refrain eating one of the big two-humped beasts. That dragon cloaking magic, was a hell of a powerful jinx.“Strange,” Arona said in her mild stuporous state “am I missing some events there? and… is it me, or that travel guide is a cross-dresser?”
And casting a suspicious look at Vincentius, almost blushing “and how did I enter into that hot pink bikini?”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
“No good pulling that horrid face at me,” said Arona sternly. “The cheap copy of Nhum I bought in the market appears to have numbed my brain. Not to mention the strange hallucinations of a frog in an electric wheelchair I have been getting recently. “
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Messmeerah started to carve the name of all the funny bunch on a huge jamón from the fifth leg (the meatiest) of a jelly boar of the steppes, starting with her own —name, not leg— as a reminder of the good time they had all together. She was thinking as well that it would taste lovely with some of these Jiborium’s truffles.
She was sad to had to let them go, but frankly her old routines were starting to get too scrambled. For one, she didn’t quite remember if Minky was still a redhair rat in her hair (now she thought of it, breeding tiny shrews in her attic didn’t really work so well), or was now back in his human form with a secret revenge of his own on his mind. But that would be maybe a slight stretch. And gosh, did she abhor stretch marks, even on her lovely brains.
— “Oh come on, dear,” one of the motley participants, a cheery big-boned and outrageously made-up of make-up woman said in a bizarre Lizabethian accent, with a hint of bossiness that showed she had not been used to being contradicted much in her life. “Join us on that trip to Mr Jiborium’s, you shall find yourself a use or two.”
Taken aback by the turn of the events, Messmeerah, also known as Winky, took the jamón under her arm, and against all common sense decided to join the crew —thanking the Mighty Mungibs for the improbable feat of continuity that had appeared as a sign.
— “Well, if you don’t mind…” Yikesy was starting to object, but realized some things are best left unsaid, and it would be easy enough now to slip out of their sight (and off the rapacious motherly attentions of Mrs Janet, the big-boned tasteless-bags lady with an accent.)
In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
It was hot, although not as hot as usual for the month of August on the southern slopes of the Serrania de Ronda. It had rained, the black clouds and thunder a welcome respite from the searing dry heat of an Andalucian summer, plumping up the blackberries and washing the dust from the leaves of the fig trees. Blithe Gambol hadn’t seen her old friend Granny Mosca for months, although she wasn’t quite sure what had kept her from visiting for so long. Blithe loved Granny Mosca’s cottage tucked away in the saddle behind the fat hill and there had been times when she’d visited often, just to drink in the magical air and feast her eyes on the beauty of the surroundings. Dry golden weeds scratched her legs as she made her way along the dirt path, and she was mindful of the fat black snake she’d once seen basking on the stone walls as she reached into the brambles to pluck blackberries and take photographs.
Rounding a corner in the path she gasped at the incongrous and alarming sight of a bright yellow bulldozer just meters from Granny Mosca’s cottage. The bulldozer was flattening a large area of prickly pear cactuses. Unfortunately for the cactuses, it was fruiting time, and Blithe wondered if Granny Mosca had first picked the fruits and suspected that she had, those that she could reach. Nothing that could be eaten was left unpicked ~ Blithe remembered the many sacks of almonds that Granny had given her over the years, very few of which she had bothered to shell and eat.
The bulldozer was making an entranceway to the tiny derelict cottage that was situated next to Granny Mosca’s house. Granny had asked Blithe if she wanted to buy it, and she had wanted to buy it eventually, but the purchase of a derelict building hadn’t been a priority at the time. Now it looked as if she was too late, that someone else had bought it, perhaps to use as a holiday home. Horrified, Blithe called out for Granny, who was often in the goat shed or away across the hidden saddle valley cutting weeds to feed the poultry, but there was no sign of her. Two alien looking turkeys gobbled in response, and the black and white chained dog barked menacingly.
As Blithe retraced her steps along the dirt path it occured to her that whoever was planning to use the derelict cottage might be a very interesting person, someone she might be very pleased to make the acquaintance of in due course. After all, she had noticed that the holiday guests staying at the casitas on the other side of the fat hill were all sympathetic to the magical nature of the location, many of them arriving from a previous visit to a particularly interesting location in the Alpujarras ~ a convergence of ley lines. When questioned as to why they chose the fat hill casitas, they simply said they liked the countryside. Either they weren’t telling, or they were simply unaware objectively of the connection of the locations. Blithe could sense the connections though, both the locations, and that the people choosing to vacation at the fat hill were connected to it.
For one hundred and forty seven thousand years, Blithe had had an energy presence at the fat hill, although it was half a century of her current focus before she remembered it. She had felt protective of it, when she finally remembered it, as if she had a kind of responsibility to it. This place can look after itself quite well on its own, she reminded herself. The fat hill had watched while Franco’s Capitan looted the Roman relics, and watched as Blithe stumbled upon the remains of Roman and Iberian cities, and the fat hill had laughed when Blithe first tried to find the entrance to the interior and got stuck in thorn bushes. Later, the fat hill had smiled benignly when Granny Mosca led her to the entrance ~ without a thorn bush in sight. The cave entrance had been blocked with boulders then. Blithe had given some thought to an excavation, wondering how to achieve it without attracting the attention of the locals, but now she wondered if one day, when the time was right, she would find the entrance clear, as if by magic. Magic, after all, was by no means impossible.
{link: feast for the birds}
In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
The wind was blowing strongly between the leaves, making ruffling sounds that were almost intelligible.
The leaves were talking, like a chatter in a room full of people. He could hear them talking, saying various things.
The smell of smoke of a nearby field, and the muffled sound made him long for a fresh beer at the local tavern.
He could hear the voices becoming stronger, and as he walked under the becoming shade of the evergreens, he was hearing words and even sentences.
That one was talking about her grandchild, this one about the rain and the poor weather this summer, another one about bohaha, whatever that was. Another flute-like voice was softer yet stronger than the others, as though it was directed at him. It said “… and all you have to do, truly, is to feel yourself into the dream, then you’ll know intimately what the next door is, and where it is leading you…”
For him, it was to the pub.In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
After having had a wheel ride in the garden, Grandpa Wrick came back a little less in-tense.
“Mmm, I suppose this game isn’t as much fun as I expected. I want to give it another try, adding a little something more.” he said to the kids when their cartoon had finished. India Louise, Cuthbert, and their friends Flynn and of course Lisbelle (who had been quiet in the background, playing with her pet rabbit Ginger) started listening with a mild interest —the whimsical Lord Wrick having proved countless times he had no qualms at making a fool of himself, and thus at entertaining children.
“What I want to achieve, by playing this game of snowflakes,” he said after a pause “is paying more attention at your stream of consciousness.”
“You see, I’ve been reading the classical Circle of Eights countless times in my young age, and dear old Yurara didn’t have much interest in creating links between her narratives. This is what I want to do with this game: pay attention to the links.
In this game of snowflakes, the stories (flakes) matter less than the links you build between them, and thus the pattern that is created.
We have the choice to continue and detail the previous story, in which case, the link is obvious, or we may want to start another one. But we need to know what, from the previous entry, prompted you to create that special new story you are about to write or tell.Just like in a dream, when you explore a scene, some object will jump at your attention, and propel you to another dream story. Just like that, I want to spend more time exploring the transitions between each scenes and story blurbs that we tell. The links don’t necessarily have to be an object, of course not.
It can be an idea, a theme, a music, virtually anything, provided that it can make some sense as to why it is used as a transition…”Seeing the children waiting for more, he pursued: “a good introduction to this game would be for you to try to follow your train of thoughts during the day. Try to do mentally that small exercise before you go to sleep, and remember the transitions of your whole day, and you’ll see how complex it can become, how often you pass and zap from one thing to another.
Take even one event that lasts a few minutes like eating a honey sandwich at breakfast, can make you think of dozens of things like the texture of the bread, the fields of wheat, or the butter, the glass jar filled with honey and the bees that made it, the swarm of bees can carry you even further into another time, or towards a bear or into a movie maybe.
I want that you pause to take time to break this down, so that your audience can follow the transition from one story to another, and that it makes perfect sense for them.”
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
The Cloud then spoke in a cloudy but clear (with slight chance of rain) tone:
“For Blubbits to get rid of
Master the art of Balance you need
But on your Head is the trick
Like Oolong is to a Tea”In reply to: Strings of Nines
Robin Peter’s wife, Felicity, was handing out sample bottles of shampoo on the opposite street corner. Felicity knew that fresh rain water was marvellous for the hair, and often wondered why so many people went to such extraordinary lengths to keep their hair covered during the rain. They ran across roads in front of traffic, and dashed hither and yon, tiptoeing through puddles, racing home to their houses and flats, and then went straight into the shower to get themselves wet ~ after they accidentally got themselves wet outside.
“There’s nowt so queer as folk,” as Felicity’s Granny always used to say.
In reply to: Strings of Nines
Robin Peter was handing out yellow sou’westers on the street corner. The Rain of Terra was just about to commence.
:weather-showers-scattered: :weather-showers-scattered: :weather-showers-scattered: :weather-showers-scattered:
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“There is one man to whom I am indebted,” said Shar, with a faraway look in her eyes.
“Blimey, who’s that then Shar?”
“Enric Lemoon is his name. One day he said words to me I will never forget, and at that moment, I knew that the most important thing in the world was that I learn to speak like him.”
“Oh you do tell a good story, Shar. Go on then! I am all goggle eared. What’d that Enric chappy say to you?”
“He said, the grumpy old cat must be white of old age by now.”
“Cor!” said Mavis in awe. “Bloody marvelous! Was it a code? You know, one of them brain teasers like?”
Shar looked at Mavis pityingly and shook her head. “It was poetry, Mavis. Poetry.”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
In the Eighth Dimension, Harvey was contemplating the destiny of his quantum umbrella. It was a sad thing enough to need an umbrella (it was starting to rain all sorts of stuff again), but a quantum umbrella was all the worse. It was never in a definite state, and would appear and disappear from one of its state to the other without any notice.
It had disappeared once again (to be left in the basket of a bicycle, Harvey believed) when Harvey noticed the detour it forced him to make to take cover had him pass in front of a board saying “The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line, it’s a dream (Indian Proverb)”
A gift of the quantum umbrella, no doubt.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
The pop-corn rain usually laid a crunchy crusty yellow blanket on the lands of Peasland, a mild contrast with the pea-green tint of the lands in the season of Spea’ing.
In late Summer, New Peasland’s weather used to be the season of subs-tractors, big-wheeled vehicles which harvested the blown up corn of the fields, one of the rare alternatives to pea soup and marmite. Sadly, with all the blubbits around, hardly a few popcorns were left for the noble people of Peasland to eat, spread in muddied pools tainted of blubbits poohs.“This has to cease!” Pee Stoll muttered after another raucous gurgling of his belly. The great portal of Nibabuz was a few days walk, and they would need all their strength to get there. Blessed was his dear Penelope, who’s been gleaning the few edible popcorn from the last shower and was feeding their heads on the mantelpiece.
In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Suddenly, they began to hear little muffled sounds coming from the roof.
“Oh! not that pop corn rain again…” sighed Mewrich Peamon.
If Silly still had her head on, she would have looked thrilled and excited by the anticipation of making a pop-corn-man or throwing pop-corn balls at her brother. Where was he? Oh here, just coming from the other other room. She couldn’t see the guilty look on his face, of course, as he got no head… but their mother could, and she was taking notes of all of it for when they’d be back.In reply to: Strings of Nines
One thing led to another, as it tends to do, while Sanso sat meditating on the enigma of The Dead Cow. Random and seemingly disjointed images flashed through his mind, not unlike a random google had been back in the old days, the first being an odd word, Kogaionon . Accessing further information, Sanso discovered that it was an ancient Transylvaniun skull. The link between the dead cow and the skull was clear ~ it was a bone sync, they both had bones, there was no denying it. Encouraged, Sanso continued to meditate.
After some images of a battle at sea , presumably Trafalgar, Sanso intuitively felt, he heard the words “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Wise words, he thought, and appropriate too. He popped these snippets into his indigo clue bag and continued to meditate. An image of a strange creature, half fish and half lion appeared next, a Merlion, which quickly morphed into an entertaining old movie playing across the screen of his minds eye, so to speak, in which someone who reminded him of Becky arrived in Paris during a rainstorm with just the clothes on her back ~ and interesting clothes they were, too! Sanso was glued to the screen, in a manner of speaking, and watched with amusement as a whole new wardrobe was delivered to the puzzled woman, followed by her mysterious benefactor: Georges.
Well, fancy Georges turning up again like that! Sanso was delighted. Perhaps Georges could shed some light on the mystery of the Dead Cow Blocking the Cave Entrance.
Sanso returned to his meditation and found himself eavesdropping on a conversation.
— Well, and Sanso, and Georges then, are they dead or what? How come Dory can see them?
— These ones are special, they have mastered the crossing of the Worlds, and can move through them. They move differently though. Sanso comes from a lineage of an ancient tribe of Zion, and had learn from them how to activate some portals, but only through the physical world of Dory, in their own time. He is not yet aware that he can also move through time as well, or even through other Worlds — worlds that he has no conception of yet.
Georges is more consummate in that art. Their meeting is not coincidental. You will see that.
— Thank you Grandad, it’s becoming a bit less confusing.
— Just flow with the story my little one, don’t hold on too much, or you will find it too difficult, and you will stop to find fun in it.“Their meeting is not coincidental” Sanso repeated to himself, popping it into his clue bag. “Well, I don’t know about Meanings, but at least I have a new bag of clues now!”
In reply to: Random RewrEights – The Del’Eights thread
Leo sighed, dropping her hairy butler, revealing her wrinkled scratched crotch…ruffled itchy body parts.
She drew a dangling deeply buried bosom, then stopped for a moment before unbuttoning her tight blouse and removing the corset that was constraining her breath.
Smiling wickedly, she recoiled ~ Lordy, what a stench! There’s no point in making over… I will soon be off.The pale figure whined, closing the wrong transaction.
Chris felt that there was more to grasp, and wanted to share, and he was alone. At least, It had all been a lot easier thinking a good victim act would soon make things wrong altogether. It was not about freedom and emotional blackmail, obviously, it had been the first time he had seen the girl unbearable. Who had any reason to be heard again? Somehow, Juan was a town gossip, not legally, but he had decided to take his Nicar Agua to Brazil.
But who really cared? Looking at trunk, It was a brief. It was linked to the old man…..In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
As far as the Ooh-dimension was concerned, the shift of Vowellness was probably complete
“Thank Flove for that!” Ann (or was it Elizabeth?) exclamied. She continued to read the contents of the large manila envelope that had been delivered several weeks late due to the postal strike.
“Postal strike?” Gordon (or was it Godfrey?) inquired sarcastically. “Ann ~ or is it Liz? ~ surely you just made that up! Do you need an excuse?”
LizAnn chose to ignore her old freind Pig Littleton and continued to read.
And she couldn’t find anything new being published by Ms Tattler in all now probable directions she was looking into.
LizAnn snorted.
She was of course ignoring the disrupted echoes from the Jumbled Eights thread, which were probably the brainstorming board of ideas of the writer, which she had the greatest difficulty to follow (she wondered if even the writer could).
Reaching for her handkerchief, LizAnn snorted again. “No the writer bloody can’t follow it” she muttered. “But does it bloody matter!”
Her own thread and the details of the history of the Wrick family was always sketchy and full of holes;
“Aha Ha Ha Ha”
she’d attempted at learning more about the elusive Becky , but she kept blinking in and out of continuity, too quickly for her to follow her anywhere in her explorations
“Yes, where the devil IS Becky, Gordfry? or is it Godon?”
In reply to: Strings of Nines
New Venice, October 2117
Now, where were we? Midora suddenly felt that the need for an agenda was called for. Spread out in front of her were a few collages and some balls of energy from all the links and connections she had found in the stories of her ancestors and gathered so far.
Since her fathers Oscar and Bart had adopted the twins Hari and Jacq, her usually tidy room had been a mess. Fortunately, the adoption was almost complete, and in a mere week, the twins would then be able to choose another family, which they made clear they intended to do. She felt so appreciative that adoption was no longer bound by traditional laws of responsibility of the parents and ridden by culpability; instead, it was a healthier cooperation between the parents and children, and children were free to go with other families if they felt the desire for a different experience.
When they’d adopted Hari and Jacq, Bart and Oscar had wanted for a continuation of the experience of bringing up children, which they did not have for a long time with Midora, as she was quite independent from an early age. And in truth, Jacq and Hari were very interactive and playful, and to be perfectly honest, quite a handful; in a few weeks, the apartment would surely seem deserted and empty.So, during that time, Midora’s researches on the stories had been put to a halt, and a lots of her energy balls which were usually neatly ordered on her lightboard were now merged for some, changed of forms for others… all thanks to her half-bros. She barely knew were to start to get a better view of it now.
Let me see… there were a few threads going on there, and all we need is untangle some of them…
She’d had fun reconnecting with the “Island of Dr Transvestite” theme, but now she found out, her favorite characters Shar and Glor, were now disembodied, stranded in transition, and perhaps waiting to be reborn to a nine-titted alien in the Worseversity after failed attempts of channeling. So far, no signs of developments for them though.
As far as the Ooh-dimension was concerned, the shift of Vowellness was probably complete, and she couldn’t find anything new being published by Ms Tattler in all now probable directions she was looking into. She was of course ignoring the disrupted echoes from the Jumbled Eights thread, which were probably the brainstorming board of ideas of the writer, which she had the greatest difficulty to follow (she wondered if even the writer could).
Her own thread and the details of the history of the Wrick family was always sketchy and full of holes; she’d attempted at learning more about the elusive Becky , but she kept blinking in and out of continuity, too quickly for her to follow her anywhere in her explorations.
Oh, and the Alienor dimension was still going on, though most of its development wasn’t yet showing up. What had happened of Arona, Franiel, Irtak’s father, the gripshawk? And now that Malvina was gone too… She’d found Mrs Chesterhope after her strange amnesiac shapeshifting accident however; and that was encouraging.
So strange, all of these characters are so alive, she thought fondly, and yet none of them seem motivated enough to project themselves out with force and steadiness into her energy balls which still had a sort of blurriness and haphazardness to them.
She made the intent to project more energy in the direction of stabilizing the currents of the strands of stories, and the energy balls’ colors started to shimmer lightly. That was certainly the way to go. Which one would be the most alluring to explore and follow?
In reply to: Strings of Nines
After five years of training of the dragon twins, Irtak was to do for the first time an act that would finally make him not just a dragon rider, but a dragon breeder in his own right. He had to part ways with them.
It was harder than he’d expected. He knew that if he wanted to bring more dragons into the great stream of the Duane’s life, he couldn’t only focus on the two buoyant twins. It’d taken them that long to manage channeling the intense energy of the two, and balancing their thirst of discovery with patience and adequacy of action.
Parting now was almost heart-breaking for him, even though the dragons had been reassuring they were only longing for new adventures with new companionship.In fact, they were so longing that they would have almost gone with any stranger, or perhaps even just on their own —reluctant as they were to admit they also greatly enjoyed human’s company. However, Irtak wanted to make sure they would be taken care of by not just anybody; as powerful as dragons were, the two were almost innocent and very young for that race, and they would greatly benefit from some wise tutelage.
Now that Malvina had left the cave, he didn’t know who to turn to for advice, and was feeling a bit forlorn, though his glubolin was still working fine. He’d been thinking about it for quite some time, and realized that some travel would really do him good, so he finally began packing.
The Southern Shores of Lan’ork would make a great destination to find a proper owner for the twins, and an interesting starting point for new adventures.In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Though the more Ann thought about Monica, the funnier it seemed. Guilt was such a tiresome emotion.
“Fancy old Bronkel deciding to go for a sex change! I must have sensed something when I wrote him in as the crazy, brilliant, cross dressing Dr Bronkelhampton in the Island novel!”
She thought for a moment, “did I ever finish that novel?”
Ann sighed. What was she like eh! Always starting novels, never finishing them. No wonder old Bronkel, ahem, Monica, got so fed up with her.
Anyway, perhaps she would give Monica another chance as her pooblisher? He … she… was certainly much kinder and easier to deal with now. That Godfrey, or whatever the heck his name is, wasn’t doing much for her career.
The writer wondered again how to strike out text and correct the inadvertent slip into the Ooh dimension.
An idea for another novel was forming in the murky convoluted depths of Ann’s brain, something about a gorgeously cuddly big teddy bear man, with his unruly tumble of brown curls and his colourful FairIsle sweaters, who had flown the nest from a potato farm in deepest darkest Idaho to pursue his dream of being an Elsespace Guide at the Worserversity.
“Brilliant, Moonica will loove it!”
