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  • #7881

    Mars Outpost — Welcome to the Wild Wild Waste

    No one had anticipated how long it would take to get a shuttle full of half-motivated, gravity-averse Helix25 passengers to agree on proper footwear.

    “I told you, Claudius, this is the fancy terrain suit. The others make my hips look like reinforced cargo crates,” protested Tilly Nox, wrangling with her buckles near the shuttle airlock.

    “You’re about to step onto a red-rock planet that hasn’t seen visitors since the Asteroid Belt Mining Fiasco,” muttered Claudius, tightening his helmet strap. “Your hips are the least of Mars’ concerns.”

    Behind them, a motley group of Helix25 residents fidgeted with backpacks, oxygen readouts, and wide-eyed anticipation. Veranassessee had allowed a single-day “expedition excursion” for those eager—or stir-crazy—enough to brave Mars’ surface. She’d made it clear it was volunteer-only.

    Most stayed aboard, in orbit of the red planet, looking at its surface from afar to the tune of “eh, gravity, don’t we have enough of that here?” —Finkley had recoiled in horror at the thought of real dust getting through the vents and had insisted on reviewing personally all the airlocks protocols. No way that they’d sullied her pristine halls with Martian dust or any dust when the shuttle would come back. No – way.

    But for the dozen or so who craved something raw and unfiltered, this was it. Mars: the myth, the mirage, the Far West frontier at the invisible border separating Earthly-like comforts into the wider space without any safety net.

    At the helm of Shuttle Dandelion, Sue Forgelot gave the kind of safety briefing that could both terrify and inspire. “If your oxygen starts blinking red, panic quietly and alert your buddy. If you fall into a crater, forget about taking a selfie, wave your arms and don’t grab on your neighbor. And if you see a sand wyrm, congratulations, you’ve either hit gold or gone mad.”

    Luca Stroud chuckled from the copilot seat. “Didn’t see you so chirpy in a long while. That kind of humour, always the best warning label.”

    They touched down near Outpost Station Delta-6 just as the Martian wind was picking up, sending curls of red dust tumbling like gossip.

    And there she was.

    Leaning against the outpost hatch with a spanner slung across one shoulder, goggles perched on her forehead, Prune watched them disembark with the wary expression of someone spotting tourists traipsing into her backyard garden.

    Sue approached first, grinning behind her helmet. “Prune Curara, I presume?”

    “You presume correctly,” she said, arms crossed. “Let me guess. You’re here to ruin my peace and use my one functioning kettle.”

    Luca offered a warm smile. “We’re only here for a brief scan and a bit of radioactive treasure hunting. Plus, apparently, there’s been a petition to name a Martian dust lizard after you.”

    “That lizard stole my solar panel last year,” Prune replied flatly. “It deserves no honor.”

    Inside, the outpost was cramped, cluttered, and undeniably charming. Hand-drawn maps of Martian magnetic hotspots lined one wall; shelves overflowed with tagged samples, sketchpads, half-disassembled drones, and a single framed photo of a fireplace with something hovering inexplicably above it—a fish?

    “Flying Fish Inn,” Luca whispered to Sue. “Legendary.”

    The crew spent the day fanning out across the region in staggered teams. Sue and Claudius oversaw the scan points, Tilly somehow got her foot stuck in a crevice that definitely wasn’t in the geological briefing, which was surprisingly enough about as much drama they could conjure out.

    Back at the outpost, Prune fielded questions, offered dry warnings, and tried not to get emotionally attached to the odd, bumbling crew now walking through her kingdom.

    Then, near sunset, Veranassessee’s voice crackled over comms: “Curara. We’ll be lifting a crew out tomorrow, but leaving a team behind. With the right material, for all the good Muck’s mining expedition did out on the asteroid belt, it left the red planet riddled with precious rocks. But you, you’ve earned to take a rest, with a ticket back aboard. That’s if you want it. Three months back to Earth via the porkchop plot route. No pressure. Your call.”

    Prune froze. Earth.

    The word sat like an old song on her tongue. Faint. Familiar. Difficult to place.

    She stepped out to the ridge, watching the sun dip low across the dusty plain. Behind her, laughter from the tourists trading their stories of the day —Tilly had rigged a heat plate with steel sticks and somehow convinced people to roast protein foam. Are we wasting oxygen now? Prune felt a weight lift; after such a long time struggling to make ends meet, she now could be free of that duty.

    Prune closed her eyes. In her head, Mater’s voice emerged, raspy and amused: You weren’t meant to settle, sugar. You were meant to stir things up. Even on Mars.

    She let the words tumble through her like sand in her boots.

    She’d conquered her dream, lived it, thrived in it.

    Now people were landing, with their new voices, new messes, new puzzles.

    She could stay. Be the last queen of red rock and salvaged drones.

    Or she could trade one hell of people for another. Again.

    The next morning, with her patched duffel packed and goggles perched properly this time, Prune boarded Shuttle Dandelion with a half-smirk and a shrug.

    “I’m coming,” she told Sue. “Can’t let Earth ruin itself again without at least watching.”

    Sue grinned. “Welcome back to the madhouse.”

    As the shuttle lifted off, Prune looked once, just once, at the red plains she’d called home.

    “Thanks, Mars,” she whispered. “Don’t wait up.”

    #7877

    Helix 25 — The Six Spinster Sisters’ Will

    Evie keyed in her login credentials for the sixth time that afternoon, stifling a yawn. Ever since the murder case had wrapped, she had drifted into a lulling routine—one that made her pregnancy drag on with excruciating slowness. Riven was rarely around; he’d been commandeered by the newly awakened Veranassessee for “urgent duties” that somehow never needed Evie’s help. And though she couldn’t complain about the ship’s overall calm, she felt herself itching for something—anything—to break the monotony.

    So she’d come to one of the less-frequented data terminals on Helix25, in a dim corner off the main library deck. She had told herself she was looking up baby name etymologies (her mother would have pressed her about it), but she’d quickly meandered into clinically sterile subfolders of genealogical records.

    It was exactly the kind of aimless rummaging that had once led her to uncover critical leads during the murder investigation. And if there was something Helix25 had in abundance besides well-recycled air, it was obscure digital archives.

    She settled into the creaking seat, adjusting the small pillow behind her back. The screen glowed, lines of text scrolling by in neat greenish typeface. Most references were unremarkable: old Earth deeds, ledgers for farmland, family names she didn’t recognize. Had she not known that data storage was near infinite, due to the excess demands of data from the central AIs, she would have wondered why they’d bothered stocking the ship with so much information. Then her gaze snagged on a curious subfolder titled “Alstonefield Will—Gibbs Sisters.”

    “Gibbs Sisters…?” she murmured under her breath, tapping it open.

    The file contained scans of a handwritten will dated early 1800s, from Staffordshire, England. Each page was peppered with archaic legalese (“whereupon the rightful property of Misses Mary, Ellen, Ann, Sarah, Margaret and Malové Gibbs bequeathed…”), listing items that ranged from modest farmland acreage to improbable references of “spiritual confidences.”

    Evie frowned, leaning closer. Spiritual confidences? The text was surprisingly explicit about the sisters’ lives—how six women jointly farmed 146 acres, remained unmarried, and according to a marginal note, “were rumored to share an uncanny attunement of thought.”

    A telepathic link? she thought, half-intrigued, half-smirking. That smacked of the same kind of rumor-laden gossip that had swirled around the old Earth families. Still, the note was written in an official hand.

    She scrolled further, expecting the record to fizzle out. Instead, it abruptly jumped to an addendum dated decades later:

    “By 1834, the Gibbs sisters departed for the Australian continent. Certain seeds and rootstocks—believed essential for their ‘ancestral devotions’—did accompany them. No further official records on them remain in Staffordshire….”

    Seeds and rootstocks. Evie’s curiosity piqued further—some old detail about hush-hush crops that the sisters apparently treasured enough to haul across the world.

    A flicker of movement caught her eye. Trevor PeeTP” Marshall, her faithful investigative hologram, materialized at the edge of her console. He adjusted his little pixelated bow tie, voice brimming with delight.

    “Ah, I see you’re poking around genealogical conundrums, dear Evie. Dare I hope we’ve found ourselves another puzzle?”

    Evie snorted softly. “Don’t get too excited, TP. It’s just a random will. But it does mention unusual circumstances… something about telepathy, special seeds, and these six spinster sisters traveling to the outback. It’s bizarre. And I’m bored.”

    TP’s mustache twitched in faux indignation. “Bizarre is my lifeblood, my dear. Let’s see: six sisters of reputed synergy… farmland… seeds with rumored ‘power’… Honestly, that’s more suspicious than the standard genealogical yawn.”

    Evie tapped a fingertip on the screen, highlighting the references. “Agreed. And for some reason, the file is cross-referenced with older Helix25 ‘implied passenger diaries.’ I can’t open them—some access restriction. Maybe Dr. Arorangi tagged them?”

    TP’s eyes gleamed. “Interesting, indeed. You recall Dr. Arorangi’s rumored fascination with nonstandard genetic lines—”

    “Right,” Evie said thoughtfully, sitting back. “So is that the link? Maybe this Alstonefield Hall story or the seeds the sisters carried has some significance to the architectural codes Arorangi left behind. We never did figure out why the AI has so many subroutines locked.”

    She paused, glancing down at her growing belly with a wry smile. “I know it might be nothing, but… it’s a better pastime than waiting for Riven to show up from another Veranassessee briefing. If these old records are tied to Dr. Arorangi’s restricted logs, that alone is reason enough to dig deeper.”

    TP beamed. “Spoken like a true detective. Ready to run with a half-thread of clue and see where it leads?”

    Evie nodded, tapping the old text to copy it into her personal device. “I am. Let’s see who these Gibbs sisters really were… and why Helix25’s archives bothered to keep them in the system.”

    Her heart thumped pleasantly at the prospect of unraveling some long-lost secret. It wasn’t exactly the adrenaline rush of a murder investigation, but in these humdrum days—six months after the last major crisis—it might be the spark she needed.

    She rose from the console, smartphone in hand, and beckoned to the flickering detective avatar. “Come on, TP. Let’s find out if six mysterious spinsters from 1800s Staffordshire can liven things up for us.”

    #7875

    Mars Outpost — Fueling of Dreams (Prune)

    I lean against the creaking bulkhead of this rust-stained fueling station, watching Mars breathe. Dust twirls across the ochre plains like it’s got somewhere important to be. The whole place rattles every time the wind picks up—like the metal shell itself is complaining. I find it oddly comforting. Reminds me of the Flying Fish Inn back home, where the fireplace wheezed like a drunk aunt and occasionally spit out sparks for drama.

    Funny how that place, with all its chaos and secret stash hidey-holes, taught me more about surviving space than any training program ever could.

    “Look at me now, Mater,” I catch myself thinking, tapping the edge of the viewport with a gloved knuckle. “Still scribbling starships in my head. Only now I’m living inside one.”

    Behind me, the ancient transceiver gives its telltale blip… blip. I don’t need to check—I recognize the signal. Helix 25, closing in. The one ship people still whisper about like it’s a myth with plumbing. Part of me grins. Half nostalgia, half challenge.

    Back in ’27, I shipped off to that mad boarding school with the oddball astronaut program. Professors called me a prodigy. I called it stubborn curiosity and a childhood steeped in ghost stories, half-baked prophecies, and improperly labeled pickle jars. The real trick wasn’t the calculus—it was surviving the Curara clan’s brand of creative chaos.

    After graduation, I bought into a settlers’ programme. Big mistake. Turns out it was more con than colonization, sold with just enough truth to sting. Some people cracked. I just adjusted course. Spent some time bouncing between jobs, drifted home a couple times for stew and sideways advice, and kept my head sharp. Lesson logged: deceit’s just another puzzle with missing pieces.

    A hiss behind the wall cuts into my thoughts—pipes complaining again. I spin, scan the console. Pressure’s holding. “Fine,” which out here means “still not exploding.” Good enough.

    I remember the lottery ticket that got me here— 2049, commercial flights to Mars at last soared skyward— and Effin Muck’s big lottery. At last a seat to Mars, on section D. Just sheer luck that felt like a miracle at the time. But while I was floating spaceward, Earth went sideways: asteroid mining gone wrong, panic, nuclear strikes. I watched pieces of home disappear through a porthole while the Mars colonies went silent, one by one. All those big plans reduced to empty shells and flickering lights.

    I was supposed to be evacuated, too. Instead, my lowly post at this fueling station—this rust bucket perched on a dusty plateau—kept me in place. Cosmic joke? Probably. But here I am. Still alive. Still tinkering with things that shouldn’t work. Still me.

    I reprogrammed the oxygen scrubbers myself. Hacked them with a dusty old patch from Aunt Idle’s “Dream Time” stash. When the power systems started failing and had to cut all the AI support to save on power, I taught myself enough broken assembly code to trick ancient processors into behaving. Improvisation is my mother tongue.

    “Mars is quieter than the Inn,” I say aloud, half to myself. “Only upside, really.”

    Another ping from the transceiver—it’s getting closer. The Helix 25, humanity’s last-ditch bottle-in-space. They say it’s carrying what’s left of us. Part myth, part mobile city. If I didn’t have the logs, I’d half believe it was a fever dream.

    But no dream prepares you for this kind of quiet.

    I think about the Inn again. How everyone swore it had secret tunnels, cursed tiles, hallucinations in the pantry. Honestly, it probably did. But it also had love—scrambled, sarcastic love—and enough stories to keep you wondering if any of them were real. That’s where I learned to spot a lie, tell a better one, and stay grounded when the walls started talking.

    I smack the comm panel until it stops crackling. That’s the secret to maintenance on Mars: decisive violence.

    “All right, Helix,” I mutter. “Let’s see what you’ve got. I’ve got thruster fuel, half-functional docking protocols, and a mean kettle of tea if you’re lucky.”

    I catch my reflection in the viewport glass—older, sure. Forty-two now. Taller. Calmer in the eyes. But the glint’s still there, the one that says I’ve seen worse, and I’m still standing. That kid at the Inn would’ve cheered.

    Earth’s collapse wasn’t some natural catastrophe—it was textbook human arrogance. Effin Muck’s greedy asteroid mining scheme. World leaders playing hot potato with nuclear codes. It burned. Probably still does… But I can’t afford to stew in it. We’re not here to mourn; we’re here to rebuild. If someone’s going to help carry that torch, it might as well be someone who’s already walked through fire.

    I fiddle with the dials on the fuel board. It hums like a tired dragon, but it’s awake. That’s all I need.

    “Might be time to pass some of that brilliance along,” I mutter, mostly to the station walls. Somewhere, I bet my siblings are making fun of me. Probably watching soap dramas and eating improperly reheated stew. Bless them. They were my first reality check, and I still measure the world by how weird it is compared to them. Loved them for how hard they made me feel normal after all.

    The wind howls across the shutters. I stand up straight, brush the dust off my sleeves. Helix 25 is almost here.

    “Showtime,” I say, and grin. Not the nice kind. The kind that says I’ve got one wrench, three working systems, and no intention of rolling over.

    The Flying Fish Inn shaped me with every loud, strange, inexplicable day. It gave me humor. It gave me bite. It gave me an unshakable sense of self when everything else fell apart.

    So here I stand—keeper of the last Martian fueling post, scrappy guardian of whatever future shows up next.

    I glance once more at the transceiver, then hit the big green button to unlock the landing bay.

    “Welcome to Mars,” I say, deadpan. Then add, mostly to myself, “Let’s see if they’re ready for me.”

    #7859
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      Godfrey,” Liz peered menacingly over her spectacles at her increasingly rogue editor, “Are you trying to replace me? Because it won’t work, you know.”

      “You won’t be able to replace me, either,” Finnley called over her shoulder while sweeping up mouse droppings.

      “I too am irreplacable,” shouted Roberto who just happened to be passing the French windows with a trug of prunings.

      On impulse, Liz dived through the French windows onto the terrace and snatched the secateurs from the trug over Roberto’s arm.  In a trice she had snipped through Godfrey’s cables.

      “Pass the peanuts,” intoned Godfrey mechanically, deprived of electricity and with a low back up battery.  It wouldn’t be long before he was silent and Liz could get back to the business of writing stories.

      “I’ll plug you back in, in a minute,”  hissed Finnley to Godfrey, while Liz was diverted with returning the secateurs to the gardener.  “Once she’s settled down.”

      #7857

      Helix 25 – Onto The Second Murder Investigation

      Very strangely, it was a lot less chaotic in the Lower Decks, while the Upper Decks were having a rave of a time with the moon and mood swings.
      Evie stood over the diagnostics table, arms crossed, watching as Luca Stroud ran his scanner over Mandrake’s cybernetic collar. The black cat lay still, one eye flickering intermittently as though stuck between waking and shutdown. The deep gash along his side had been patched—Romualdo had insisted on carrying Mandrake to the lab himself, mumbling about how the garden’s automated sprinklers were acting up, and how Luca was the only one he trusted to fix delicate mechanisms.

      It had been a casual remark, but Evie had caught the subtext. Mandrake was no ordinary ship cat. He had always been tied to something larger.

      “Neurolink’s still scrambled,” Luca muttered, adjusting his scanner. “Damage isn’t terminal, but whatever happened, someone tried to wipe part of his memory.”

      Riven, arms crossed beside Evie, scoffed. “Why the hell would someone try to assassinate a cat?”

      Luca didn’t answer, but the data flickering on his screen spoke for itself. The attack had been precise. Not just a careless act of cruelty, nor an accident in the low-gravity sector.

      Mandrake had been targeted.

      Evie exhaled sharply. “Can you fix him?”

      Luca shrugged. “Depends. The physical repairs are easy enough—fractured neural pathways, fried circuits—but whatever was erased? That’s another story.” He tilted his head. “Thing is… someone didn’t just try to kill Mandrake. They tried to make him forget.”

      Riven’s frown deepened. “Forget what?”

      Silence settled between them.

      Evie reached out, brushing a gloved hand over Mandrake’s sleek black fur. “We need to figure out what he knew.”

      :fleuron2:

      It had been Trevor Pee—TP himself—who first mentioned it, entirely offhand, as they reviewed logs of the last places Mandrake had been seen.

      “He wasn’t always on his own, you know,” TP had said, twirling his holographic cane.

      Evie and Riven both turned to him.

      “What do you mean on his own, I though he was Seren’s?”

      “Oh, no. He just had a liking for her, but he’d belonged to someone else long before.” TP’s mustache twitched. “I accessed some archival records during Mandrake’s diagnostic.”

      Evie blinked. “Mmm, are you going to make me ask? What did you find?”

      “Indeed,” TP offered cheerfully. “Before Mandrake wandered freely through the gardens and ventilation shafts, becoming a ship legend, he belonged—as much as a cat can belong—to someone.”

      Riven’s expression darkened. “Who?! Will you just tell?!”

      TP flicked his wrist, bringing up an old personnel file, heavily redacted. But one name flickered beneath the blurred-out sections.

      Dr. Elias Arorangi.

      Evie felt her heartbeat quicken. The name echoed faintly familiar, not directly connected to her, but she’d seen it once or twice before, buried in obscure references. “Dr. Arorangi—wait, he was part of the original Helix design team, wasn’t he?”

      TP nodded gravely. “Precisely. A lead systems architect, responsible for designing key protocols for the AI integration—among them, some critical frameworks that evolved into Synthia’s consciousness. Disappeared without a trace shortly after Synthia’s initial activation.”

      Riven straightened. “Disappeared? Do you think—”

      TP raised a finger to silence him. “I don’t speculate, but here’s the interesting part: Dr. Arorangi had extensive, classified knowledge of Helix 25’s core systems. If Mandrake was his companion at that crucial time, it’s conceivable that Arorangi trusted something to him—a memory, a code fragment, perhaps even a safeguard.”

      Evie’s mouth went dry.

      An architect of Helix 25, missing under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind a cat whose cybernetics were more sophisticated than any pet implant she’d ever seen?

      Evie looked down at Mandrake, whose damaged neural links were still flickering faintly. Someone had wanted Mandrake silenced and forgotten.

      :fleuron2:

      Later, in the dim light of his workshop, Luca Stroud worked in silence, carefully re-aligning the cat’s neural implants. Romualdo sat nearby, arms crossed, watching with the nervous tension of a man who had just smuggled a ferret into a rat convention.

      “He’s tough,” Luca muttered, tightening a connection. “More durable than most of the junk I have to fix.”

      Romualdo huffed. “He better be.”

      A flicker of light pulsed through Mandrake’s collar. His single good eye opened, pupils dilating as his systems realigned.

      Then, groggily, he muttered, “I hate this ship.”

      Romualdo let out a relieved chuckle. “Yeah, yeah. Welcome back, Mandrake.”

      Luca wiped his hands. “He’s still scrambled, but he’s functional. Just… don’t expect him to remember everything.”

      Mandrake groaned, stretching his mechanical paw. “I remember… needing a drink.”

      Romualdo smirked. “That’s a good sign, yeah?”

      Luca hesitated before looking at Evie. “Whatever was wiped—it’s gone. But if he starts remembering things in fragments… we need to pay attention.”

      Evie nodded. “Oh, we definitely will.”

      Mandrake rolled onto his feet, shaking out his fur, a small but defiant flick of his cybernetic tail.

      “I have the strangest feeling,” he muttered, “that someone is still looking for me.”

      Evie exhaled.

      For now, with his memory gone, he would probably be safe, but a killer was in their midst and they needed to find out the truth, and fast.

      #7846

      Helix 25 — The Captain’s Awakening

      The beacon’s pulse cut through the void like a sharpened arrowhead of ancient memory.

      Far from Merdhyn’s remote island refuge, deep within the Hold’s bowels of Helix 25, something—someone—stirred.

      Inside an unlisted cryo-chamber, the frozen stasis cracked. Veins of light slithered across the pod’s surface like Northern lights dancing on an old age screensaver. Systems whirred, data blipped and streamed in strings of unknown characters. The ship, Synthia, whispered in its infinite omniscience, but the moment was already beyond her control.

      A breath. A slow, drawn-out breath.

      The cryo-pod released its lock with a soft hiss, and through the dispersing mist, Veranassessee stepped forward— awakened.

      She blinked once, twice, as her senses rushed back with the sudden sense of gravity’s return. It was not the disorienting shock of the newly thawed. No—this was a return long overdue. Her mind, trained to absorb and adapt, locked onto the now, cataloging every change, every discrepancy as her mind had remained awake during the whole session —equipoise and open, as a true master of her senses she was.

      She was older than when she had first stepped inside. Older, but not old. Age, after all, was a trick of perception, and if anyone had mastered perception, it was her.

      But now, crises called. Plural indeed. And she, once more, was called to carry out her divine duty, with skills forged in Earthly battles with mad scientists, genetically modified spiders bent on world domination, and otherworldly crystal skulls thiefs. That was far in her past. Since then, she’d used her skills in the private sector, climbing the ranks as her efficient cold-as-steel talents were recognized at every step. She was the true Captain. She had earned it. That was how Victor Holt fell in love. She hated that people could think it was depotism that gave her the title. If anything, she helped make Victor the man he was.

      The ship thrummed beneath her bare feet. A subtle shift in the atmosphere. Something had changed since she last walked these halls, something was off. The ship’s course? Its command structure?

      And, most importantly—
      Who had sent the signal?

      :fleuron2:

      Ellis Marlowe Sr. had moved swiftly for a man his age. It wasn’t that he feared the unknown. It wasn’t even the mystery of the murder that pushed him forward. It was something deeper, more personal.

      The moment the solar flare alert had passed, whispers had spread—faint, half-muttered rumors that the Restricted Cryo-Chambers had been breached.

      By the time he reached it, the pod was already empty.

      The remnants of thawing frost still clung to the edges of the chamber. A faint imprint of a body, long at rest, now gone.

      He swore under his breath, then turned to the ship’s log panel,  reaching for a battered postcard. Scribbled on it were cheatcodes. His hands moved with a careful expertise of someone who had spent too many years filing things that others had forgotten. A postman he was, and registers he knew well.

      Access Denied.

      That wasn’t right. The codes should have given Ellis clearance for everything.

      He scowled, adjusting his glasses. It was always the same names, always the same people tied to these inexplicable gaps in knowledge.

      The Holts. The Forgelots. The Marlowes.
      And now, an unlisted cryopod with no official records.

      Ellis exhaled slowly.

      She was back. And with her, more history with this ship, like pieces of old broken potteries in an old dig would be unearthed.

      He turned, already making his way toward the Murder Board.

      Evie needed to see this.

      :fleuron2:

      The corridor stretched out before her, familiar in its dimensions yet strange in its silence. She had managed to switch the awkward hospital gown to a non-descript uniform that was hanging in the Hold.

      How long have I been gone?

      She exhaled. Irrelevant.

      Her body moved with the precise economy of someone whose training never dulled. Her every motion were simple yet calculated, and her every breath controlled.

      Unlike in the crypod, her mind started to bubbled with long forgotten emotions. It flickered over past decisions, past betrayals.

      Victor Holt.

      The name of her ex-husband settled into her consciousness. Once her greatest ally, then her most carefully avoided adversary.

      And now?

      Veranassessee smiled, stretching her limbs as though shrugging off the stiffness of years.

      Outside, strange cries and howling in the corridors sounded like a mess was in progress. Who was in charge now? They were clearly doing a shit job.

      Now, it was time to reclaim her ship.

      She had questions.
      And someone had better start providing answers.

      #7844
      Jib
      Participant

        Base Klyutch – Dr. Markova’s Clinic, Dusk

        The scent of roasting meat and simmering stew drifted in from the kitchens, mingling with the sharper smells of antiseptic and herbs in the clinic. The faint clatter of pots and the low murmur of voices preparing the evening meal gave the air a sense of routine, of a world still turning despite everything. Solara Ortega sat on the edge of the examination table, rolling her shoulder to ease the stiffness. Dr. Yelena Markova worked in silence, cool fingers pressing against bruised skin, clinical as ever. Outside, Base Klyutch was settling into the quiet of night—wind turbines hummed, a sentry dog barked in the distance.

        “You’re lucky,” Yelena muttered, pressing into Solara’s ribs just hard enough to make a point. “Nothing broken. Just overworked muscles and bad decisions.”

        Solara exhaled sharply. “Bad decisions keep us alive.”

        Yelena scoffed. “That’s what you tell yourself when you run off into the wild with Orrin Holt?”

        Solara ignored the name, focusing instead on the peeling medical posters curling off the clinic walls.

        “We didn’t find them,” she said flatly. “They moved west. Too far ahead. No proper tracking gear, no way to catch up before the lionboars or Sokolov’s men did.”

        Yelena didn’t blink. “That’s not what I asked.”

        A memory surfaced; Orrin standing beside her in the empty refugee camp, the air thick with the scent of old ashes and trampled earth. The fire pits were cold, the shelters abandoned, scraps of cloth and discarded tin cups the only proof that people had once been there. And then she had seen it—a child’s scarf, frayed and half-buried in the dirt. Not the same one, but close enough to make her chest tighten. The last time she had seen her son, he had worn one just like it.

        She hadn’t picked it up. Just stood there, staring, forcing her breath steady, forcing her mind to stay fixed on what was in front of her, not what had been lost. Then Orrin’s hand had settled on her shoulder—warm, steady, comforting. Too comforting. She had jerked away, faster than she meant to, pulse hammering at the sudden weight of everything his touch threatened to unearth. He hadn’t said a word. Just looked at her, knowing, as he always did.

        She had turned, found her voice, made it sharp. The trail was already too cold. No point chasing ghosts. And she had walked away before she could give the silence between them the space to say anything else.

        Solara forced her attention back to the present, to the clinic. She turned her gaze to Yelena, steady and unmoved. “But that’s what matters. We didn’t find them. They made their choice.”

        Yelena clicked her tongue, scribbling something onto her worn-out tablet. “Mm. And yet, you come back looking like hell. And Orrin? He looked like a man who’d just seen a ghost.”

        Solara let out a dry breath, something close to a laugh. “Orrin always looks like that.”

        Yelena arched an eyebrow. “Not always. Not before he came back and saw what he had lost.”

        Solara pushed off the table, rolling out the tension in her neck. “Doesn’t matter.”

        “Oh, it matters,” Yelena said, setting the tablet down. “You still look at him, Solara. Like you did before. And don’t insult me by pretending otherwise.”

        Solara stiffened, fingers flexing at her sides. “I have a husband, Yelena.”

        “Yes, you do,” Yelena said plainly. “And yet, when you say Orrin’s name, you sound like you’re standing in a place you swore you wouldn’t go back to.”

        Solara forced herself to breathe evenly, eyes flicking toward the door.

        “I made my choice,” she said quietly.

        Yelena’s gaze softened, just a little. “Did he?”

        Footsteps pounded outside, uneven, hurried. The clinic door burst open, and Janos Varga—Solara’s husband—strode in, breathless, his eyes bright with something rare.

        Solara, you need to come now,” he said, voice sharp with urgency. “Koval’s team—Orrin—they found something.”

        Her spine straightened, her heartbeat accelerated. “What? Did they find…?” No, the tracks were clear, the refugees went west.

        Janos ran a hand through his curls, his old radio headset still looped around his neck. “One of Helix 57’s life boat’s wreckage. And a man. Some old lunatic calling himself Merdhyn. And—” he paused, catching his breath, “—we picked up a signal. From space.”

        The air in the room tightened. Yelena’s lips parted slightly, the shadow of an emotion passed on her face, too fast to read. Solara’s pulse kicked up.

        “Where are they?” she asked.

        Janos met her gaze. “Koval’s office.”

        For a moment, silence. The wind rattled the windowpanes.

        Yelena straightened abruptly, setting her tablet down with a deliberate motion. “There’s nothing more I can do for your shoulder. And I’m coming too,” she said, already reaching for her coat.

        Solara grabbed her jacket. “Take us there, Janos.”

        #7828

        Helix 25 – The Murder Board

        Evie sat cross-legged on the floor of her cramped workspace, staring at the scattered notes, datapads, and threads taped to the wall. Finding some yarn on the ship had not been as easy as she thought, but it was a nice touch she thought.

        The Murder Board, as Riven Holt had started calling it, was becoming an increasingly frustrating mess of unanswered questions.

        Riven stood nearby, arms crossed, with a an irritated skepticism. “Almost a week,” he muttered. “We’re no closer than when we started.”

        Evie exhaled sharply. “Then let’s go back to the basics.”

        She tapped the board, where the crime scene was crudely sketched. The Drying Machine. Granary. Jardenery. Blood that shouldn’t exist.

        She turned to Riven. “Alright, let’s list it out. Who are our suspects?”

        He looked at his notes, dejected for a moment; “too many, obviously.” Last census on the ship was not accurate by far, but by all AI’s accounts cross-referenced with Finkley’s bots data, they estimated the population to be between 15,000 and 50,000. Give or take.

        They couldn’t interview possibly all of them, all the more since there the interest in the murder had waned very rapidly. Apart from the occasional trio of nosy elderly ladies, the ship had returned mostly to the lull of the day-to-day routine.
        So they’d focused on a few, and hoped TP’s machine brain could see patterns where they couldn’t.

        1. First, the Obvious Candidates: People with Proximity to the Crime Scene
          Romualdo, the Gardener – Friendly, unassuming. He lends books, grows plants, and talks about Elizabeth Tattler novels. But Herbert visited him often. Why?
          Dr. Amara Voss – The geneticist. Her research proves the Crusader DNA link, but could she be hiding more? Despite being Evie’s godmother, she couldn’t be ruled out just yet.
          Sue Forgelot – The socialite with connections everywhere. She had eluded their request for interviews. —does she know more than she lets on?
          The Cleaning Staff – they had access everywhere. And the murder had a clean elegance to it…
        2. Second, The Wild Cards: People with Unknown Agendas
          The Lower Deck Engineers – Talented mechanic, with probable cybernetic knowledge, with probable access to unauthorized modifications. Could they kill for a reason, or for hire?
          Zoya Kade and her Followers – They believe Helix 25 is on a doomed course, manipulated by a long-dead tycoon’s plan. Would they kill to force exposure of an inconvenient truth?
          The Crew – Behind the sense of duty and polite smiles, could any of them be covering something up?
        3. Third, The AI Factor: Sentient or Insentient?
          Synthia, the AI – Controls the ship. Omnipresent. Can see everything, and yet… didn’t notice or report the murder. Too convenient.
          Other personal AIs – Like Trevor Pee’s programme, most had in-built mechanisms to make them incapable of lying or harming humans. But could one of their access be compromised?

        Riven frowned. “And what about Herbert himself? Who was he, really? He called himself Mr. Herbert, but the cat erm… Mandrake says that wasn’t his real name. If we figure out his past, maybe we find out why he was killed.”

        Evie rubbed her temples. “We also still don’t know how he was killed. The ship’s safety systems should have shut the machine down. But something altered how the system perceived him before he went in.”

        She gestured to another note. “And there’s still the genetic link. What was Herbert doing with Crusader DNA?”

        A heavy silence settled between them.

        Then TP’s voice chimed in. “Might I suggest an old detective’s trick? When stumped, return to who benefits.”

        Riven exhaled. “Fine. Who benefits from Herbert’s death?”

        Evie chewed the end of her stylus. “Depends. If it was personal, the killer is on this ship, and it’s someone who knew him. If it was bigger than Herbert, then we’re dealing with something… deeper.”

        TP hummed. “I do hate deeper mysteries. They tend to involve conspiracies, misplaced prophecies, and far too many secret societies.”

        Evie and Riven exchanged a glance.

        Riven sighed. “We need a break.”

        Evie scoffed. “Time means nothing here.”

        Riven gestured out the window. “Then let’s go see it. The Sun.”

        Helix 25 – The Sun-Gazing Chamber

        The Sun-Gazing Chamber was one of Helix 25’s more poetic and yet practical inventions —an optically and digitally-enhanced projection of the Sun, positioned at the ship’s perihelion. It was meant to provide a psychological tether, a sense of humanity’s connection to the prime provider of life as they drifted in the void of the Solar System.
        It was a beautifully designed setting where people would simply sit and relax, attuned to the shift of days and nights as if still on Earth. The primary setting had been voted to a massive 83.5% to be like in Hawai’i latitude and longitude, as its place was believed to be a reflection of Earth’s heart. That is was a State in the USA was a second thought of course.

        Evie sat on the observation bench, staring at the massive, golden sphere suspended in the darkness. “Do you think people back on Earth are still watching the sunrise?” she murmured.

        Riven was quiet for a moment. “If there’s anyone left.”

        Evie frowned. “If they are, I doubt they got much of a choice.”

        TP materialized beside them, adjusting his holographic tie. “Ah, the age-old existential debate: are we the lucky ones who left Earth, or the tragic fools who abandoned it?”

        Evie ignored him, glancing at the other ship residents in the chamber. Most people just sat quietly, basking in the light. But she caught snippets of whispers, doubt, something spreading through the ranks.

        “Some people think we’re not really where they say we are,” she muttered.

        Riven raised an eyebrow. “What, like conspiracy theories?”

        TP scoffed. “Oh, you mean the Flat-Earthers?” He tsked. “Who couldn’t jump on the Helix lifeboats for their lives, convinced as they were we couldn’t make it to the stars. They deserved what came to them. Next they’ll be saying Helix 25 never even launched and we’re all just trapped in a simulation of a luxury cruise.”

        Evie was shocked at Trevor Pee’s eructation and rubbed her face. “Damn Effin Muck tech, and those “Truth Control” rubbish datasets. I thought I’d thoroughly scrubbed all the old propaganda tech from the system.”

        “Ah,” TP said, “but conspiracies are like mold. Persistent. Annoying. Occasionally toxic.”

        Riven shook his head. “It’s nonsense. We’re moving. We’ve been moving for decades.”

        Evie didn’t look convinced. “Then why do we feel stuck?”

        A chime interrupted them.

        A voice, over the comms. Solar flare alert. 

        Evie stiffened.

        Then: Stay calm and return to your quarters until further notice.

        Evie raised an eyebrow. This was the first time something like that happened. She turned to Riven who was looking at his datapad who was flashing and buzzing.

        He said to her: “Stay quiet and come with me, a new death has been reported. Crazy coincidence. It’s just behind the Sun-Gazing chamber actually, in the Zero-G sector.”

        #7777

        The Survivors:

        “Well, I’ll be damned,” Gregor said, his face cracking into another toothless grin. “Beginning to think we might be the last ones.”

        “So did we.” Molly glanced nervously around at the odd assortment of people staring at her and Tundra. “I’m Molly. This is Tundra.”

        “Tundra? Like the frozen wasteland?” Yulia asked.

        Tundra nodded. “It’s because I’m strong and tough.”

        “Would you like to join us?” Tala motioned toward the fire.

        “Yes, yes, of course, ” Anya said. “Are you hungry?”

        Molly hesitated, glancing toward the edge of the clearing, where their horses stood tethered to a low branch. “We have food,” she said. “We foraged.”

        “I’d have foraged if someone didn’t keep going on about food poisoning,” Yulia muttered.

        Finja sniffed. “Forgive me for trying to keep you alive.”

        Molly watched the exchange with interest. It had been years since she’d seen people bicker over something so trivial. It was oddly comforting.

        She lowered herself slowly onto the log next to Vera. “Alright, tell me—who exactly are you lot?”

        Petro chuckled. “We’ve escaped from the asylum.”

        Molly’s face remained impassive. “Asylum?”

        “It’s okay,” Tala said quickly. “We’re mostly sane.”

        “Not completely crazy, anyway,” Yulia added cheerfully.

        “We were left behind years ago,” Anya said simply. “So we built our own kind of life.”

        A pause. Molly gave a slow nod, considering this. Vera leaned towards her eagerly.

        “Where are you from? Any noble blood?”

        Molly frowned. “Does it matter?”

        “Oh, not really,” Vera said dejectedly. “I just like knowing.”

        Tundra, warming her hands by the fire, looked at Vera. “We came from Spain.”

        Vera perked up. “Spain? Fascinating! And tell me, dear girl, have you ever traced your lineage?”

        “Just back to Molly. She’s ninety-three,” Tundra said proudly.

        Mikhail, who had been watching quietly, finally spoke. “You travelled all the way from Spain?”

        Molly nodded. “A long time ago. There were more of us then… ” Her voice wavered. “We were looking for other survivors.”

        “And?”Mikhail asked.

        Molly sighed, glancing at Tundra. “We never found any.”

        ________________________________________

        That night, they took turns keeping watch, though Molly tried to reassure them there was no need.

        “At first, we did too,” she had said, shaking her head. “But there was no one…”

        By dawn, the fire had burned to embers, and the camp stirred reluctantly to life.

        They finished off the last of their cooked vegetables from the night before, while Molly and Tundra laid out a handful of foraged berries and mushrooms. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to start the day.

        “Right,” Anya said, stretching. “I suppose we should get moving.” She looked at Molly and Tundra. “You’re coming with us, then? To the city?”

        Molly nodded. “If you’ll have us.”

        “We kept going and going, hoping to find people. Now we have,” Tundra said.

        “Then it’s settled,” Anya said. “We head to the city.”

        “And what exactly are we looking for?” Molly asked.

        Mikhail shrugged. “Anything that keeps us alive.”

        ________________________________________________

        It was late morning when they saw it.

        A vehicle—an old, battered truck, crawling slowly toward them.

        The sight was so absurd, so impossible, that for a moment, no one spoke.

        “That can’t be,” Molly murmured.

        The truck bounced over the uneven ground, its engine a dull, sluggish rattle. It wasn’t in good shape, but it was moving.

        #7776

        Epilogue & Prologue

        Paris, November 2029 – The Fifth Note Resounds

        Tabitha sat by the window at the Sarah Bernhardt Café, letting the murmur of conversations and the occasional purring of the espresso machine settle around her. It was one of the few cafés left in the city where time still moved at a human pace. She stirred her cup absentmindedly. Paris was still Paris, but the world outside had changed in ways her mother’s generation still struggled to grasp.

        It wasn’t just the ever-presence of automation and AI making themselves known in subtle ways—screens adjusting to glances, the quiet surveillance woven into everyday life. It wasn’t just the climate shifts, the aircon turned to cold in the midst of November, the summers unpredictable, the air thick with contradictions of progress and collapse of civilization across the Atlantic.

        The certainty of impermanence was what defined her generation. BANI world they used to say—Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible. A cold fact: impossible to grasp and impossible to fight. Unlike her mother and her friends, who had spent their lives tethered to a world that no longer existed, she had never known certainty. She was born in the flux.

        And yet, this café remained. One of the last to resist full automation, where a human still brought you coffee, where the brass bell above the door still rang, where things still unfolded at a human pace.

        The bell above the door rang—the fifth note, as her mother had called it once.

        She had never been here before, not in any way that mattered. Yet, she had heard the story. The unlikely reunion five years ago. The night that moved new projects in motion for her mother and her friends.

        Tabitha’s fingers traced the worn edges of the notebook in front of her—Lucien’s, then Amei’s, then Darius’s. Pieces of a life written by many hands.

        “Some things don’t work the first time. But sometimes, in the ruins of what failed, something else sprouts and takes root.”

        And that was what had happened.

        The shared housing project they had once dreamed of hadn’t survived—not in its original form. But through their rekindled bond, they had started something else.

         

        True Stories of How It Was.

         

        It had begun as a quiet defiance—a way to preserve real, human stories in an age of synthetic, permanent ephemerality and ephemeral impermanence, constantly changing memory. They were living in a world where AI’s fabricated histories had overwhelmed all the channels of information, where the past was constantly rewritten, altered, repackaged. Authenticity had become a rare currency.

        As she graduated in anthropology few years back, she’d wondered about the validity of history —it was, after all, a construct. The same could be said for literature, art, even science. All of them constructs of the human mind, tenuous grasp of the infinite truth, but once, they used to evolve at such a slow pace that they felt solid, reliable. Ultimately their group was not looking for ultimate truth, that would be arrogant and probably ignorant. Authenticity was what they were looking for. And with it, connections, love, genuineness —unquantifiables by means of science and yet, true and precious beyond measure.

        Lucien had first suggested it, tracing the idea from his own frustrations—the way art had become a loop of generated iterations, the human touch increasingly erased. He was in a better place since Matteo had helped him settle his score with Renard and, free of influence, he had found confidence in developing of his own art.

        Amei —her mother—, had changed in a way Tabitha couldn’t quite define. Her restlessness had quieted, not through settling down but through accepting impermanence as something other than loss. She had started writing again—not as a career, not to publish, but to preserve stories that had no place in a digitized world. Her quiet strength had always been in preserving connections, and she knew they had to move quickly before real history faded beneath layers of fabricated recollections.

        Darius, once skeptical, saw its weight—he had spent years avoiding roots, only to realize that stories were the only thing that made places matter. He was somewhere in Morocco now, leading a sustainable design project, bridging cultures rather than simply passing through them.

        Elara had left science. Or at least, science as she had known it. The calculations, the certainty, the constraints of academia, with no escape from the automated “enhanced” digital helpers. Her obsession and curiosities had found attract in something more human, more chaotic. She had thrown herself into reviving old knowledge, forgotten architectures, regenerative landscapes.

        And Matteo—Matteo had grounded it.

        The notebook read: Matteo wasn’t a ghost from our past. He was the missing note, the one we didn’t know we needed. And because of him, we stopped looking backward. We started building something else.

        For so long, Matteo had been a ghost of sorts, by his own account, lingering at the edges of their story, the missing note in their unfinished chord. But now, he was fully part of it. His mother had passed, her past history unraveling in ways he had never expected, branching new connections even now. And though he had lost something in that, he had also found something else. Juliette. Or maybe not. The story wasn’t finished.

        Tabitha turned the page.

        “We were not historians, not preservationists, not even archivists. But we have lived. And as it turned out, that was enough.”

        They had begun collecting stories through their networks—not legends, not myths, but true accounts of how it was, from people who still remembered.

        A grandfather’s voice recording of a train ride to a city that no longer exists.
        Handwritten recipes annotated by generations of hands, each adding something new.
        A letter from a protest in 2027, detailing a movement that the history books had since erased.
        An old woman’s story of her first love, spoken in a dialect that AI could not translate properly.

        It had grown in ways they hadn’t expected. People began sending them recordings, letters, transcripts, photos —handwritten scraps of fading ink. Some were anonymous, others carefully curated with full names and details, like makeshift ramparts against the tide of time.

        At first, few had noticed. It was never the goal to make it worlwide movement. But little by little, strange things happened, and more began to listen.

        There was something undeniably powerful about genuine human memory when it was raw and unfiltered, when it carried unpolished, raw weight of experience, untouched by apologetic watered down adornments and out-of-place generative hallucinations.

        Now, there were exhibitions, readings, archives—entire underground movements dedicated to preserving pre-synthetic history. Their project had become something rare, valuable, almost sacred.

        And yet, here in the café, none of that felt urgent.

        Tabitha looked up as the server approached. Not Matteo, but someone new.

        “Another espresso?”

        She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. And a glass of water, please.”

        She glanced at the counter, where Matteo was leaning, speaking to someone, laughing. He had changed, too. No longer just an observer, no longer just the quiet figure who knew too much. Now, he belonged here.

        A bell rang softly as the door swung open again.

        Tabitha smiled to herself. The fifth note always sounded, in the end.

        She turned back to the notebook, the city moving around her, the story still unfolding in more directions than one.

        #7707

        Matteo — Easter Break 2023

        The air in the streets carried the sweet intoxicating smell of orange blossoms, as Matteo stood at the edge of a narrow cobbled street in Xàtiva, the small town just a train ride from Valencia that Juliette had insisted on visiting. The weekend had been a blur of color and history—street markets in Italy, Venetian canals last month, and now this little-known hometown of the Borgias, nestled under the shadow of an ancient castle.

        Post-pandemic tourism was reshaping the rhythm of Europe. The crowds in the big capitals felt different now—quieter in some places, overwhelming in others. Xàtiva, however, seemed untouched, its charm untouched. Matteo liked it. It felt authentic, a place with layers to uncover.

        Juliette, as always, had planned everything. She had a knack for unearthing destinations that felt simultaneously curated and spontaneous. They had started with the obvious—Berlin, Amsterdam, Florence—but now her choices were becoming more eccentric.

        “Where do you even find these places?” Matteo had asked on the flight to Valencia, his curiosity genuine.

        She grinned, pulling out her phone and scrolling through saved videos. “Here,” she said, passing it to him. “This channel had great ideas before it went dark. He had listed all those places with 1-euro houses deals in many fantastic places in Europe. Once we’re ready to settle” she smiled at him.

        The video that played featured sweeping shots of abandoned stone houses and misty mountain roads, narrated by a deep, calm voice. “There’s magic in forgotten places,” the narrator said. “A story waiting for the right hands to revive it.”

        Matteo leaned closer, intrigued. The channel was called Wayfare, and the host, though unnamed in the video, had a quiet magnetism that made him linger. The content wasn’t polished—some shots were shaky, the editing rough—but there was an earnestness to it that immediately captured his attention.

        “This guy’s great,” Matteo said. “What happened to him?”

        “Darius, I think his name was,” Juliette replied. “I loved his videos. He didn’t have a huge audience, but it felt like he was speaking to you, you know?” She shrugged. “He shut it down a while back. Rumors about some drama with patrons or something.”

        Matteo handed the phone back, his interest waning. “Too bad,” he said. “I like his style.”

        The train ride to Xàtiva had been smooth, the rolling hills and sun-drenched orchards sliding slowly outside the window. The time seemed to move at a slower pace here. Matteo’d been working with an international moving company in Paris, mostly focused to expats in and out of France. Tips were good and it usually meant having a tiring week, but what the job lacked in interest, it compensated with with extra recuperation days.

        As they climbed toward the castle overlooking the town, Juliette rattled off details she’d picked up online.

        “The Borgias are fascinating,” she said, gesturing toward the town below. “They came from here, you know. Rose to power around the 13th century. Claimed they were descended from Visigoth kings, but most people think that’s all invention.”

        “Clever, though,” Matteo said. “Makes you almost wish you had a magic box to smartly rewrite your ancestry, that people would believe it if you play it right.”

        Juliette smiled. “Yeah! They were masters cheaters and gaslighters.”

        “Reinventing where they came from, like us, always reinventing where we go…”

        Juliette chuckled but didn’t reply.

        Matteo’s mind wandered, threading Juliette’s history lesson with stories his grandmother used to tell—tales of the Borgias’ rise through cunning and charm, and how they were descended from the infamous family through Lucrecia, the Pope’s illegitimate daughter. It was strange how family lore could echo through places so distant from where he’d grown up.

        As they reached the castle’s summit, Matteo paused to take it all in. The valley stretched below them, a patchwork of red-tiled rooftops and olive groves shimmering in the afternoon light. Somewhere in this region, Juliette said, Darius had explored foreclosed homes, hoping to revive them with new communities. Matteo couldn’t help but think how odd it was, these faint connections between lives—threads weaving places and people together, even when the patterns weren’t clear.

        :fleuron2:

        Later, over a shared plate of paella, Juliette nudged him with her fork. “What are you thinking about?”

        “Nothing much,” Matteo said, swirling his glass of wine. “Just… how people tell stories. The Borgias, this Darius guy, even us—everyone’s looking for a way to leave a mark, even if it’s just on a weekend trip.”

        Juliette smiled, her eyes glinting with mischief. “Well, you better leave your mark tomorrow. I want a picture of you standing on that castle wall.”

        Matteo laughed, raising his glass. “Deal. But only if you promise not to fall off first.”

        As the sun dipped below the horizon, the streets of Xàtiva began to glow with the warmth of lamplight. Matteo leaned back in his chair, the wine softening the edges of the day. For a moment, he thought of Darius again—of foreclosed homes and forgotten stories. He didn’t dwell on it, though. The present was enough.

        #7701
        F LoveF Love
        Participant

          Amei attached a card and ribbon to the last of the neatly wrapped gifts and placed it under the tree. This one was for Paul—a notebook with a cover of soft fabric she’d block-printed with delicate, overlapping circles in muted blues and greens. The fabric was left over from a set of cushions for a client, but she had spent hours crafting the notebook, knowing all the while Paul probably wouldn’t use it. He was impossible to buy for, preferring things he picked out himself. Tabitha had been far easier: Amei had secretly made a dress out of a soft, flowing fabric that Tabitha had fallen in love with the moment Amei showed it to her.

          The house felt calm for the moment. Tabitha had gone out earlier, calling over her shoulder that she’d be back in time for dinner. Amei smiled at the memory of her daughter’s laughter. Her excitement about Christmas was palpable, a bright contrast to the quietness that had settled over everything else. Amei used to feel like that about Christmas too. This year, though, she was only making the effort for Tabitha.

          Somewhere down the hallway, Paul’s voice murmured on a call—distant, like everything about him lately. The air smelled faintly of cinnamon and cloves from the mulled wine simmering on the stove, but even that warm, festive scent felt like it was trying too hard.

          The house felt big, despite the occasional bursts of life it saw on days like this. It had felt that way for months now, the weight of unspoken things pressing against the faded walls.

          She sighed and reached for the decoration box, pulling out a small clay angel with chipped wings. The sight of it made her pause. Lucien had given it to her years ago, one Christmas, and declared it “charmingly imperfect,” insisting it belonged at the top of her tree. She smiled faintly at the memory, turning it over in her hands. Every year since, it had held its place at the top of the tree.

          “Still not done?” Paul’s voice cut into her thoughts. She turned to see him standing in the doorway. At the sound of Paul’s voice, Briar, their elderly cat—or technically Paul’s cat—emerged from behind the curtain, her tail curling as she wove around his legs. Paul crouched slightly to scratch behind her ears, and Briar leaned into his touch, purring softly

          “She thinks it’s dinner time,” Amei said evenly.

          “You always go overboard with these things, Amei,” Paul said, straightening and nodding towards the gifts.

          “It’s Christmas,” she snapped, the irritation slipping through before she could stop it. She turned back to the tree, her fingers moving stiffly as she busied herself with strands of sparkly tinsel.

          Paul didn’t respond, but she could feel his gaze linger. It was the silence that had grown between them in recent months, filled with everything they couldn’t bring themselves to say…yet.

          The sound of the front door banging shut and brisk footsteps broke the tension. Tabitha burst past Paul into the room, her cheeks flushed from the cold. “Hey, Paul. Hey, Mumma Bear,” she said brightly. Her eyes lit up as they landed on the tree. “The tree looks gorgeous! Don’t you just love Christmas?”

          #7682

          Matteo — Autumn 2023

          The Jardin des Plantes park was quiet, the kind of quiet that settled after a brisk autumn rain. Matteo sat on a weathered wooden bench, watching a golden retriever chase the last of the fallen leaves tumbling across the gravel path. The damp air was carrying scents of the earth welcoming a retreat inside, and taking the time to be alone with his thoughts was something he’d missed.

          His phone buzzed with a notification—a news update about the latest film adaptation from a Liz Tattler classic fiction. The name made him smile faintly. Juliette had loved Tattler’s novels, their whimsical characters, and the unflinching and unapologetic observations about life’s quiet mysteries and the unexpected rants about the virtues of cleaning and dustsceawung that propelled the word in the people’s top 100 favourite in the Oxford dictionary for several years consecutively.

          “They’re so full of texture,” Juliette once said as she was sprawled on the bed of their tiny Parisian flat, a battered paperback in her hands. “Like you can feel the pages breathe.”

          His image of her was still vivid, they’d stayed on good terms and he would still thumb up some of her posts from time to time —but it was only small moments rather than full scenes that used to come back, fragmented pieces of memories really —her dark hair falling messily over her face, her legs crossed in a casual way.

          Paris had been a playground for them. For a while, they were caught in a whirlwind of late-night conversations in smoky cafés and lazy Sunday mornings wandering the Seine. They’d spent hours in bookstores, Juliette hunting for first editions and Matteo snapping pictures of the handwritten notes tucked between the pages of used novels.

          A year ago, a different park in a different city—Hyde Park, London. She was there, twirling a scarf she’d picked up in Vienna the weekend before, the bright red of it like a ribbon of fire against the soft gray skies. They had been enamored with each other and with the spontaneity of hopping trains to new cities, their weekends folding into one another like pages of a travel journal. London one week, Paris the next, Berlin after that. Each city a postcard snapshot, vibrant and fleeting.

          Juliette would tease him about his fascination with the little things—how he would linger too long over a cup of coffee at a café or stop to photograph a tree in the middle of nowhere. “You’re always looking for stories,” she’d said with a laugh, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Even when you’re not sure what they mean.”

          “Stories are everywhere,” he would reply, snapping a picture of her against the backdrop of the park, her scarf billowing in the wind. She had rolled her eyes but smiled, and in that moment, he had believed her smile was the most perfect thing he’d ever seen.

          The break-up came unannounced, but not fully unexpected. There were signs here and there. Her love of the endless whirlwind of life, that was a match for his way of following life’s intents for him. When sometimes life went still during winter, he would also follow, but she wouldn’t. She had insatiable love for a life filled with animation, bursts of colours, sounds. It had been easy to be with her then, her curiosity pulling him along, their shared love of stories giving their time together a weight that felt timeless. It was when Drusilla’s condition worsened, that their rhythms became untangled, no longer synching at every heartbeat. And it was fine. Matteo had made his decision then to leave Paris and bring his mother to Avignon where she could receive the care she needed. Those past two weeks that brought the inevitable conclusion of their separation had left him surprisingly content. Happy for the past moments, and hopeful for the unwritten future.

          He could see clearly that Juliette needed her freedom back; and she’d agreed. Regular train rides to Avignon, the weekends spent trying to make the sparse walls of his mother’s room feel like home as she started to forget her son’s girlfriend, and sometimes even her own son.

          Last they were in this park together was one of their last shared moments of innocent happiness ; It was a beautiful sunny afternoon —or was it only coloured by memories? They had been sitting in the Jardin des Plantes, sharing a crêpe. Juliette had been scrolling through her phone, stopping at an announcement about an interview with Liz Tattler airing that evening. “You should watch it,” she’d said, her tone light but distant. “Her books are about people like us—drifting, figuring it out.”

          He had smiled then, nodding, though he wasn’t sure if he’d meant it. A week later, she told him she was moving back to Lille, closer to her family until she figured out her next step. “It’s not you, Matteo,” she’d said, her eyes soft but resolute. “You need to be here, for her. I need… something else.”

          Now, sitting in the park a few weeks later, Matteo pulled his phone from his pocket and opened his gallery. He scrolled through the pictures until he found one from their weekend in London—a black-and-white shot of Julia standing in front of a red telephone booth, her smile sharp and her eyes already focused on the next shooting star to catch.

          Julia was right, he thought. People like them—they drifted, but they also found their way, sometimes in unexpected ways. He put on his earpods, listening to the beginning of Liz Tattler’s interview.

          Her distinct raspy voice brimming with a cackling energy was already engrossing. Synchy as ever, she was saying:

          “Every story begins with something lost, but it’s never about the loss. It’s about what you find because of it.”

          #7662

          The Waking 

          Lucien – Early 2024 Darius – Dec 2022 Amei – 2022-2023 Elara – 2022 Matteo – Halloween 2023
          Aversion/Reflection Jealousy/Accomplishment Pride/Equanimity Attachment/Discernment Ignorance/Wisdom
          The sky outside Lucien’s studio window was still dark, the faint glow of dawn breaking on the horizon. He woke suddenly, the echo of footsteps chasing him out of sleep. Renard’s shadow loomed in his mind like a smudge he couldn’t erase. He sat up, rubbing his temples, the remnants of the dream slipping away like water through his fingers. The chase felt endless, but this time, something had shifted. There was no fear in his chest—only a whisper of resolve. “Time to stop running.” The hum of the airplane’s engine filled Darius’s ears as he opened his eyes, the cabin lights dimmed for landing. He glanced at the blinking seatbelt sign and adjusted his scarf. The dream still lingered, faint and elusive, like smoke curling away before he could grasp it. He wasn’t sure where he’d been in his mind, but he felt a pull—something calling him back. South of France was just the next stop. Beyond that,… Beyond that? He didn’t know. Amei sat cross-legged on her living room floor, the guided meditation app still playing its soft tones through her headphones. Her breathing steadied, but her thoughts drifted. Images danced at the edges of her mind—threads weaving together, faces she couldn’t place, a labyrinth spiraling endlessly. The meditation always seemed to end with these fragments, leaving her both unsettled and curious. What was she trying to find? Elara woke with a start, the unfamiliar sensation of a dream etched vividly in her mind. Her dreams usually dissolved the moment she opened her eyes, but this one lingered, sharp and bright. She reached for her notebook on the bedside table, fumbling for the pen. The details spilled out onto the page—a white bull, a labyrinth of light, faces shifting like water. “I never remember my dreams,” she thought, “but this one… this one feels important.” Matteo woke to the sound of children laughing outside, their voices echoing through the streets of Avignon. Halloween wasn’t as big a deal here as elsewhere, but it had its charm. He stretched and sat up, the weight of a restless sleep hanging over him. His dreams had been strange—familiar faces, glowing patterns, a sense of something unfinished. The room seemed to glow for a moment. “Strange,” he thought, brushing it off as a trick of the light.
          “No resentment, only purpose.” “You’re not lost. You’re walking your own path.” “Messy patterns are still patterns.” “Let go. The beauty is in the flow.” “Everything is connected. Even the smallest light adds to the whole.”
          The Endless Chase
          Lucien ran through a labyrinth, its walls shifting and alive, made of tangled roots and flickering light. Behind him, the echo of footsteps and Renard’s voice calling his name, mocking him. But as he turned a corner, the walls parted to reveal a still lake, its surface reflecting the stars. He stopped, breathless, staring at his reflection in the water. It wasn’t him—it was a younger boy, wide-eyed and unafraid. The boy reached out, and Lucien felt a calm ripple through him. The chase wasn’t real. It never was. The walls dissolved, leaving him standing under a vast, open sky.
          The Wandering Maze
          Darius wandered through a green field, the tall grass brushing against his hands. The horizon seemed endless, but each step revealed new paths, twisting and turning like a living map. He saw figures ahead—people he thought he recognized—but when he reached them, they vanished, leaving only their footprints. Frustration welled up in his chest, but then he heard laughter—a clear, joyful sound. A child ran past him, leaving a trail of flowers in their wake. Darius followed, the path opening into a vibrant garden. There, he saw his own footprints, weaving among the flowers. “You’re not lost,” a voice said. “You’re walking your own path.”
          The Woven Tapestry
          Amei found herself in a dim room, lit only by the soft glow of a loom. Threads of every color stretched across the space, intertwining in intricate patterns. She sat before the loom, her hands moving instinctively, weaving the threads together. Faces appeared in the fabric—Tabitha, her estranged friends, even strangers she didn’t recognize. The threads wove tighter, forming a brilliant tapestry that seemed to hum with life. She saw herself in the center, not separate from the others but connected. This time she heard clearly “Messy patterns are still patterns,” a voice whispered, and she smiled.
          The Scattered Grains
          Elara stood on a beach, the sand slipping through her fingers as she tried to gather it. The harder she grasped, the more it escaped. A wave rolled in, sweeping the sand into intricate patterns that glowed under the moonlight. She knelt, watching the designs shift and shimmer, each one unique and fleeting. “Let go,” the wind seemed to say. “The beauty is in the flow.” Elara let the sand fall, and as it scattered, it transformed into light, rising like fireflies into the night sky.
          The Mandala of Light
          Matteo stood in a darkened room, the only light coming from a glowing mandala etched on the floor. As he stepped closer, the patterns began to move, spinning and shifting. Faces appeared—his mother, the friends he hadn’t yet met, and even his own reflection. The mandala expanded, encompassing the room, then the city, then the world. “Everything is connected,” a voice said, low and resonant. “Even the smallest light adds to the whole.” Matteo reached out, touching the edge of the mandala, and felt its warmth spread through him.

          :fleuron2:

          Dreamtime

          It begins with running—feet pounding against the earth, my breath sharp in my chest. The path twists endlessly, the walls of the labyrinth curling like roots, closing tighter with each turn. I know I’m being chased, though I never see who or what is behind me. The air thickens as I round a corner and come to a halt before a still lake. Its surface gleams under a canopy of stars, too perfect, too quiet. I kneel to look closer, and the face that stares back isn’t mine. A boy gazes up with wide, curious eyes, unafraid. He smiles as though he knows something I don’t, and my breath steadies. The walls of the labyrinth crumble, their roots receding into the earth. Around me, the horizon stretches wide and infinite, and I wonder if I’ve always been here.

          The grass is soft under my feet, swaying with a breeze that hums like a song I almost recognize. I walk, though I don’t know where I’m going. Figures appear ahead—shadowy forms I think I know—but as I approach, they dissolve into mist. I call out, but my voice is swallowed by the wind. Laughter ripples through the air, and a child darts past me, their feet leaving trails of flowers in the earth. I follow, unable to stop myself. The path unfolds into a garden, vibrant and alive, every bloom humming with its own quiet song. At the center, I find myself again—my own footprints weaving among the flowers. The laughter returns, soft and knowing. A voice says, “You’re not lost. You’re walking your own path.” But whose voice is it? My own? Someone else’s? I can’t tell.

          The scene shifts, or maybe it’s always been this way. Threads of light stretch across the horizon, forming a vast loom. My hands move instinctively, weaving the threads into patterns I don’t understand but feel compelled to create. Faces emerge in the fabric—some I know, others I only feel. Each thread hums with life, vibrating with its own story. The patterns grow more intricate, their colors blending into something breathtaking. At the center, my own face appears, not solitary but connected to all the others. The threads seem to breathe, their rhythm matching my own heartbeat. A voice whispers, teasing but kind: “Messy patterns are still patterns.” I want to laugh, or cry, or maybe both, but my hands keep weaving as the threads dissolve into light.

          I’m on the beach now, though I don’t remember how I got here. The sand is cool under my hands, slipping through my fingers no matter how tightly I try to hold it. A wave rolls in, its foam glowing under a pale moon. Where the water touches the sand, intricate patterns bloom—spirals, mandalas, fleeting images that shift with the tide. I try to gather them, to keep them, but the harder I hold on, the faster they fade. A breeze lifts the patterns into the air, scattering them like fireflies. I watch them go, feeling both loss and wonder. “Let go,” a voice says, carried by the wind. “The beauty is in the flow.” I let the sand fall from my hands, and for the first time, I see the patterns clearly, etched not on the ground but in the sky.

          The room is dark, yet I see everything. A mandala of light spreads across the floor, its intricate shapes pulsing with a rhythm I recognize but can’t place. I step closer, and the mandala begins to spin, its patterns expanding to fill the room, then the city, then the world. Faces appear within the light—my mother’s, a child’s, strangers I know but have never met. The mandala connects everything it touches, its warmth spreading through me like a flame. I reach out, my hand trembling, and the moment I touch it, a voice echoes in the air: “Everything is connected. Even the smallest light adds to the whole.” The mandala slows, its light softening, and I find myself standing at its center, whole and unafraid.

          I feel the labyrinth’s walls returning, but they’re no longer enclosing me—they’re part of the loom, their roots weaving into the threads. The flowers of the garden bloom within the mandala’s light, their petals scattering like sand into the tide. The waves carry them to the horizon, where they rise into the sky, forming constellations I feel I’ve always known.

          I wake—or do I? The dream lingers, its light and rhythm threading through my thoughts. It feels like a map, a guide, a story unfinished. I see the faces again—yours, mine, ours—and wonder where the path leads next.

          #7661
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            Early May 2022

            “You don’t look like a physicist,” Florian said on their first evening together. Most of the day since his arrival that morning had been taken up with Elara showing him around the farmhouse and a stroll outside after he’d unpacked and showered.

            It was early May, Elara’s favourite time of the year, and the pandemic restrictions were largely over. An enthusiastic hiker and ardent lover of the countryside, Florian found his hosts running commentary as they walked the blossomy lanes a tonic after the grim scenesand mental anguish he’d left behind. Elara beamed at his evident interest and perspicacious questions, warming to him and realising how much she’d missed company and conversation during the lockdowns and subsequent limiting of social interactions.  It’s so nice to have a conversation in English, she couldn’t help thinking.

            Laughing, Elara replied that she’d never felt like a physicist either. “As soon as I started my first post after qualifying, I realised it wasn’t for me. I hadn’t really thought about the jobs, you know?”

            Happy to have such an attentive listener, the convivial glow of red wine warming her veins, Elara explained that she’d resorted to short term teaching contracts mostly, enabling her to travel. She learned Spanish when she moved with her father to Spain 30 years ago, working in an English school for expats, improved her French while working in Paris, moved to Warwick to be near her sister Vanessa thinking she would settle there, “Big mistake that was, best forgotten.”

            “I always wanted to travel a bit, but the wife always wanted to go to a resort to sunbathe,” Florian said, adding pensively, “I think the kids would have liked to travel though.”

            “I think you’ll enjoy your stay here,” Elara smiled, not wanting the pleasant evening to take a despondant turn. Florian was here to get over it, not dwell on it.

            #7657
            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              A list of events for reference (WIP)

              Date Matteo Lucien Darius Amei Elara
              Nov 2024 M: Working as a server in Paris; recognizes and cryptically addresses the group at the Sarah Bernhardt Café. L: Sketching in Paris; begins orchestrating the reunion by sending letters to the group. D: is back in Paris for the reunion A: visits Paris for the reunion E: visits Paris for the reunion from Churchill Guest House (Samphire Hoe), visits a guest house in Kent, back in England for a week weeks/months, all expense paid. Mrs Lovejoy the landlady.
              Spring 2024 M: In Avignon, works at a vineyard. Finds a map. Crosses path with Lucien. Moves to next job in Paris. L: Visits Avignon. Caught in debt to Monsieur Renard; creates labyrinthine sketches blending personal and mythical themes. Crosses path with Matteo. D: by June 2024 sends a postcard to Amei, Is seen in Goa A: Her daughter Tabitha is in Goa teaching E: is retired in Tuscany, living with Florian, a distant relative met through family research.
              Summer 2024 (Olympics) has a strange dream at CERN learning about the death of her mother who’d actually died in her youth.
              She reminisces about chalkapocalypse.
              Feb 2024 M:In London, works for a moving company. Crosses path with Amei and Tabitha. L: Is implied he is caught back into the schemes of M. Renard to pay his debts. D: A: Moves from her London home to a smaller apartment in London; reflects on her estranged friends and past. Crosses path with Matteo. E:
              Dec 2023 M:In Avignon, considers moving to a job in London to support his mother’s care. L: Going with the alias “Julien”, he is recognized in the streets, after 3 years of self-imposed exile, to escape M. Renard & Eloïse. D: Resumes his travels on his own terms A: Buys candles, reflects on leaving. E:
              Nov 2023 M: His mother requires more care, he goes to Avignon regularly where she is in care. Breaks up with Juliette end of summer. L: D: moves on from Guadeloupe, where he spent time rebuilding homes and reflecting. A: E:
              early 2023 M: Visits Valencia and Xàtiva, hometown of the Borgias with Juliette; she makes him discover Darius’ videos. L: D: Lives in South of France, returns to Guadeloupe after hurricane Fiona. A: E:
              Dec 2022 M: New year’s eve, Matteo discovers about Elara’s work on memory applicable to early stage Alzheimer with  sensory soundwaves stimuli and ancestral genetic research. L: D: Runs a wellness channel. Goes back to Paris, breaks ties with M. Renard & Eloïse. Receives an invitation to see friends in South of France A: Lives with Paul E:
              early 2022 M: Lives in Paris with Juliette, travels to many places together, week-ends getaways in London, Amsterdam, Rome… L: D: A: E: Early May, pandemic restrictions were largely over. Florian, her distant relative, moves in to Elara’s Tuscan farmhouse, where she is enjoying retirement.
              end of 2021 M: L: After the pandemic lockdown thinks of a way to escape. Goes by the alias “Julien” D: Locked down in Budapest; sketches empty streets, sends postcards to Amei to maintain emotional connections. A: E: Dec. 2021, first Christmas in Tuscany
              Nov – end of Genealogix royalties from her successful patent, taken over by more efficient AI algorithms. She gives the idea to Darius of looking for 1-euro housing.
              beginning 2021 M: L: Third & last wave of lockdown measures in France D: A: E:
              2020 M: L: D: A: E:
              beg. 2020 M: L: Pandemic starts – first waves of lockdown D: A: E:
              Nov 2019 M: Last group meeting before the Nov 2024 reunion L: Last group meeting before the Nov 2024 reunion D: Last group meeting before the Nov 2024 reunion A: Last group meeting before the Nov 2024 reunion E: Last group meeting before the Nov 2024 reunion
              2019 M: Plans for his mother / co-housing project L: Spring break in Andalucia with Elara D: Spring break in Andalucia with Elara A: Spring break in Andalucia with Elara E: Spring, before pandemic; visit in Andalucia to her father – joined by Lucien & Amei ; Darius tried to bring those people (M. Renard & Eloïse presumably) to see the hidden pyramid
              ca. 2014 M: L: D: A: E: chalkapocalypse, before Elara’s retirement. She is employed in Warwick.
              Before that, lived from short term teaching contracts mostly, enabling her to travel. She learned Spanish when she moved with her father to Spain 30 years ago, working in an English school for expats, improved her French while working in Paris, moved to Warwick to be near her sister Vanessa thinking she would settle there.
              2010 M: L: D: A: E: Genealogix became unexpectedly lucrative when it was picked up by a now-dominant genealogy platform around 2010. Every ancestry test sold earned her a modest but steady royalty, which for a time, gave her the freedom to pursue less practical research.
              2007 M: L: Meets Elara & Amei, Darius a concert of Eliane Radigue at Aarau, Switzerland D: Meets Lucien, Elara & Amei a concert of Eliane Radigue at Aarau, Switzerland A:Accepts Elara’s invitation to go to a concert of Eliane Radigue at Aarau, Switzerland, meets Lucien & Darius there. The group is formed E:Goes to a concert of Eliane Radigue at Aarau, Switzerland with Amei, meets Lucien & Darius there. The group is formed
              before 2007 M: L: D: A:Meets Elara at a gallery in London, Southbank E: Meets Amei at a gallery, London Southbank
              #7650
              Yurara FamelikiYurara Fameliki
              Participant

                Some elements for inspiration as to the backstory of the group and how it could tie to the current state of the story:

                :fleuron2:

                Here’s a draft version of the drama surrounding Éloïse and Monsieur Renard (the “strange couple”), incorporating their involvement with Darius, their influence on the group’s dynamic, and the fallout that caused the estrangement five years ago.

                The Strange Couple: Éloïse and Monsieur Renard

                Winter 2019: Paris, Just Before the Pandemic

                The group’s last reunion before their estrangement was supposed to be a celebration—one of those rare moments when their diverging paths aligned. They had gathered in Paris in late December, the city cloaked in gray skies and glowing light. The plan was simple: a few days together, catching up, exploring old haunts, and indulging in the kind of reckless spontaneity that had defined their earlier years.

                It was Darius who disrupted the rhythm. He had arrived late to their first dinner, rain-soaked and apologetic, with Éloïse and Monsieur Renard in tow.

                First Impressions of Éloïse and Monsieur Renard

                Éloïse was striking—lithe, dark-haired, with sharp eyes that seemed to unearth secrets before you could name them. She moved with a predatory grace, her laughter a mix of charm and edge. Renard was her shadow, older and impeccably dressed, his silvery hair and angular features giving him the air of a fox. He spoke little, but when he did, his words had the weight of finality, as if he were accustomed to being obeyed.

                “They’re just friends,” Darius said when the others exchanged wary glances. “They’re… interesting. You’ll like them.”

                But it didn’t take long for Éloïse and Renard to unsettle the group. At dinner, Éloïse dominated the conversation, her stories wild and improbable—of séances in abandoned mansions, of lost artifacts with strange energies, of lives transformed by unseen forces. Renard’s occasional interjections only added to the mystique, his tone implying he’d seen more than he cared to share.

                Lucien, ever the skeptic, found himself drawn to Éloïse despite his instincts. Her talk of energies and symbols resonated with his artistic side, and when she mentioned labyrinths, his attention sharpened.

                Elara, in contrast, bristled at their presence. She saw through their mystique, recognizing in Renard the manipulative charisma of someone who thrived on control.

                Amei was harder to read, but she watched Éloïse and Renard closely, her silence betraying a guardedness that hinted at deeper discomfort.

                Darius’s Growing Involvement

                Over the following days, Darius spent more time with Éloïse and Renard, skipping planned outings with the group. He spoke of them with a reverence that was uncharacteristic, praising their insight into things he’d never thought to question.

                “They see connections in everything,” he told Amei during a rare moment alone. “It’s… enlightening.”

                “Connections to what?” she asked, her tone sharper than she intended.

                “Paths, people, purpose,” he replied vaguely. “It’s hard to explain, but it feels… right.”

                Amei didn’t press further, but she mentioned it to Elara later. “It’s like he’s slipping into something he can’t see his way out of,” she said.

                The Séance

                The turning point came during an impromptu gathering at Éloïse and Renard’s rented apartment—a dimly lit space filled with strange objects: glass jars of cloudy liquid, intricate carvings, and an ornate bronze bell hanging above the mantelpiece.

                Éloïse had invited the group for what she called “an evening of clarity.” The others arrived reluctantly, wary of what she had planned but unwilling to let Darius face it alone.

                The séance began innocuously enough—Éloïse guiding them through what she described as a “journey inward.” She spoke in a low, rhythmic tone, her words weaving a spell that was hard to resist.

                Then things took a darker turn. She asked them to focus on the labyrinth she had drawn on the table—a design eerily similar to the map Lucien had found weeks earlier.

                “You must find your center,” she said, her voice dropping. “But beware the edges. They’ll show you things you’re not ready to see.”

                The room grew heavy with silence. Darius leaned into the moment, his eyes closed, his breathing steady. Lucien tried to focus but felt a growing unease. Elara sat rigid, her scientific mind railing against the absurdity of it all. Amei’s hands gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles white.

                And then, the bell rang.

                It was faint at first, a distant chime that seemed to come from nowhere. Then it grew louder, resonating through the room, its tone deep and haunting.

                “What the hell is that?” Lucien muttered, his eyes snapping open.

                Éloïse smiled faintly but said nothing. Renard’s expression remained inscrutable, though his fingers tapped rhythmically against the table, as if counting something unseen.

                Elara stood abruptly, breaking the spell. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “You’re playing with people’s minds.”

                Darius’s eyes opened, his gaze unfocused. “You don’t understand,” he said softly. “It’s not a game.”

                The Fallout

                The séance fractured the group.

                • Elara: Left the apartment furious, calling Renard a charlatan and vowing never to entertain such nonsense again. Her relationship with Darius cooled, her disappointment palpable.
                • Lucien: Became fascinated with the labyrinth and its connection to his art, but he couldn’t shake the unease the séance had left. His conversations with Éloïse deepened in the following days, further isolating him from the group.
                • Amei: Refused to speak about what she’d experienced. When pressed, she simply said, “Some things are better left forgotten.”
                • Darius stayed with Éloïse and Renard for weeks after the others left Paris, becoming more entrenched in their world. But something changed. When he finally returned, he was distant and cagey, unwilling to discuss what had happened during his time with them.

                Lingering Questions

                1. What Happened to Darius with Éloïse and Renard?
                  • Darius’s silence suggests something traumatic or transformative occurred during his deeper involvement with the couple.
                2. The Bell’s Role:
                  • The bronze bell that rang during the séance ties into its repeated presence in the story. Was it part of the couple’s mystique, or does it hold a deeper significance?
                3. Lucien’s Entanglement:
                  • Lucien’s fascination with Éloïse and the labyrinth hints at a lingering connection. Did she influence his art, or was their connection more personal?
                4. Éloïse and Renard’s Motives:
                  • Were they simply grifters manipulating Darius and others, or were they genuinely exploring something deeper, darker, and potentially dangerous?

                Impact on the Reunion

                • The group’s estrangement is rooted in the fractures caused by Éloïse and Renard’s influence, compounded by the isolation of the pandemic.
                • Their reunion at the café is a moment of reckoning, with Matteo acting as the subtle thread pulling them back together to confront their shared past.
                #7644

                From Decay to Birth: a Map of Paths and Connections

                7. Darius’s Encounter (November 2024)

                Moments before the reunion with Lucien and his friends, Darius was wandering the bouquinistes along the Seine when he spotted this particular map among a stack of old prints. The design struck him immediately—the spirals, the loops, the faint shimmer of indigo against yellowed paper.

                He purchased it without hesitation. As he would examine it more closely, he would notice faint marks along the edges—creases that had come from a vineyard pin, and a smudge of red dust, from Catalonia.

                When the bouquiniste had mentioned that the map had come from a traveler passing through, Darius had felt a strange familiarity. It wasn’t the map itself but the echoes of its journey— quiet connections he couldn’t yet place.

                 

                6. Matteo’s Discovery (near Avignon, Spring 2024)

                The office at the edge of the vineyard was a ruin, its beams sagging and its walls cracked. Matteo had wandered in during a quiet afternoon, drawn by the promise of shade and a moment of solitude.

                His eyes scanned the room—a rusted typewriter, ledgers crumbling into dust, and a paper pinned to the wall, its edges curling with age. Matteo stepped closer, pulling the pin free and unfolding what turned out to be a map.

                Its lines twisted and looped in ways that seemed deliberate yet impossible to follow. Matteo traced one path with his finger, feeling the faint grooves where the ink had sunk into the paper. Something about it unsettled him, though he couldn’t say why.

                Days later, while sharing a drink with a traveler at the local inn, Matteo showed him the map.

                “It’s beautiful,” the traveler said, running his hand over the faded indigo lines. “But it doesn’t belong here.”

                Matteo nodded. “Take it, then. Maybe you’ll figure it out.”

                The traveler left with the map that night, and Matteo returned to the vineyard, feeling lighter somehow.

                 

                5. From Hand to Hand (1995–2024)

                By the time Matteo found it in the spring of 2024, the map had long been forgotten, its intricate lines dulled by dust and time.

                2012: A vineyard owner near Avignon purchased it at an estate sale, pinning it to the wall of his office without much thought.

                2001: A collector in Marseille framed it in her study, claiming it was a lost artifact of a secret cartographer society, though she later sold it when funds ran low.

                1997: A scholar in Barcelona traded an old atlas for it, drawn to its artistry but unable to decipher its purpose.

                The map had passed through many hands over the previous three decades and each owner puzzling over, and finally adding their own meaning to its lines.

                 

                4. The Artist (1995)

                The mapmaker was a recluse, known only as Almadora to the handful of people who bought her work. Living in a sunlit attic in Girona, she spent her days tracing intricate patterns onto paper, claiming to chart not geography but connections.

                “I don’t map what is,” she once told a curious buyer. “I map what could be.”

                In 1995, Almadora began work on the labyrinthine map. She used a pale paper from Girona and indigo ink from India, layering lines that seemed to twist and spiral outward endlessly. The map wasn’t signed, nor did it bear any explanations. When it was finished, Almadora sold it to a passing merchant for a handful of coins, its journey into the world beginning quietly, without ceremony.

                 

                3. The Ink (1990s)

                The ink came from a different path altogether. Indigo plants, or aviri, grown on Kongarapattu, were harvested, fermented, and dried into cakes of pigment. The process was ancient, perfected over centuries, and the resulting hue was so rich it seemed to vibrate with unexplored depth.

                From the harbour of Pondicherry, this particular batch of indigo made its way to an artisan in Girona, who mixed it with oils and resins to create a striking ink. Its journey intersected with Amei’s much later, when remnants of the same batch were used to dye textiles she would work with as a designer. But in the mid-1990s, it served a singular purpose: to bring a recluse artist’s vision to life.

                 

                2. The Paper (1980)

                The tree bore laughter and countless other sounds of nature and passer-by’s arguments for years, a sturdy presence, unwavering in a sea of shifting lives. Even after the farmhouse was sold, long after the sisters had grown apart, the tree remained. But time is merciless, even to the strongest roots.

                By 1979, battered by storms and neglect, the great tree cracked and fell, its once-proud form reduced to timber for a nearby mill.

                The tree’s journey didn’t end in the mill; it transformed. Its wood was stripped, pulped, and pressed into paper. Some sheets were coarse and rough, destined for everyday use. But a few, including one particularly smooth and pale sheet, were set aside as high-quality stock for specialized buyers.

                This sheet traveled south to Catalonia, where it sat in a shop in Girona for years, its surface untouched but full of potential. By the time the artist found it in the mid-1990s, it had already begun to yellow at the edges, carrying the faint scent of age.

                 

                1. The Seed (1950s)

                It began in a forgotten corner of Kent, where a seed took root beneath a patch of open sky. The tree grew tall and sprawling over decades, its branches a canopy for birds and children alike. By 1961, it had become the centerpiece of the small farmhouse where two young sisters, Vanessa and Elara, played beneath its shade.

                “Elara, you’re too slow!” Vanessa called, her voice sharp with mock impatience. Elara, only six years old, trailed behind, clutching a wooden stick she used to scratch shapes into the dirt. “I’m making a map!” she announced, her curls bouncing as she ran to catch up.

                Vanessa rolled her eyes, already halfway up the tree’s lowest branch. “You and your maps. You think you’re going somewhere?”

                #7642
                TracyTracy
                Participant

                  It was the chalkapocalypse, which in actual fact occurred so close to Elara’s coming retirement that it hardly need have bothered her in the slightest, that had sparked her interest. She, like many of her colleagues, had quickly stockpiled the Japanese chalk, and she had more than enough to see out the remaining term of her employment at the university.  Not that she wanted to stay at Warwick, she’d had enough of university politics and funding cuts, not to mention the dreary midlands weather.

                  When at last the day had come, she’d sold her mediocre semi detached suburban house with its, more often than not, dripping shrubbery and rarely if ever used white metal patio table and chairs, and made the move, with the intention of pursuing her research at her leisure. In the warmth of a Tuscan sun.

                  Often the words of her friend and colleague Tom came to her, as she settled into the farmhouse and familiarised herself with the land and the locals.

                  Physics is a process of getting stuck. Blackboards are the best tool for getting unstuck. You do most of your calculations on paper. Then, when you reach a dead end, you go to the blackboard and share the problem with a colleague. But here’s the funny thing. You often solve the problem yourself in the process of writing it out.  You don’t imagine something first and then write it down. It’s through the act of writing that ideas make themselves known. Scientists at blackboards have thoughts that wouldn’t come if they just stood there, with their arms folded.

                  It was entirely down to Tom’s words that Elara had painted the walls of the barn with blackboard paint, and stocked it with the remains of her Hagoromo chalk hoard, as well as samples of every other available chalk.  She had also purchased a number of books on the history of chalk. She’d had no intention of rushing, and retirement provided a relaxed environment for going at her own pace, unfettered by the relentless demands of students and classes.  It was a project to savour, luxuriate in, amuse herself with.

                  When Florian had arrived, she was occupied with showing him around, and before long setting him to tasks that needed doing, and her chalk project had remained on a back burner. He’d asked her about the blackboards in the barn, and wondered if she was planning on giving lectures.

                  Laughing, Elara said no, that was the last thing she ever wanted to do again. She shared with him what Tom had said, about the ideas flowing during the process of writing.

                  “And while that makes perfect sense in any medium, not just chalk, it’s the chalk itself ….” Elara smiled. “Well, you don’t want to hear all the technical details. And I wouldn’t want to spill the beans before I’m sure.”

                  “It does make sense,” Florian replied, “To just write and then the ideas will flow. I’ve been wanting to write a book, but I never know how to start, and I’m not even sure what I want to write about. But perhaps I should just start writing.” Grinning, he added, “Probably not with chalk, though.”

                  “That’s the spirit, just make a start. You never know what may come of it. And it can be fun, you know, and illuminating in ways you didn’t expect. I used to write stories with a few friends….” Elara’s voice trailed off uncomfortably, as if a cloud had obscured the sun.

                  Florian noticed her unexpected discomfiture, and tactfully changed the subject.  We all have pasts we don’t want to talk about.  “Is the sun sufficiently past the yard arm for a glass of wine?” he asked.  “What is a yard arm, anyway?”

                  “A yard is a spar on a mast from which sails are set. It may be constructed of timber or steel or from more modern materials such as aluminium or carbon fibre. Although some types of fore and aft rigs have yards, the term is usually used to describe the horizontal spars used on square rigged sails…”

                  “Once a lecturer, always a lecturer, eh?” Florian teased.

                  “Sorry!” Elara said with a rueful look. ” I’d love a glass of wine.”

                  #7639
                  ÉricÉric
                  Keymaster

                    Work in Progress: Character Timelines and Events

                    Matteo

                    • November 2024 (Reunion):
                      • Newly employed at the Sarah Bernhardt Café, started after its reopening.
                      • Writes the names of Lucien, Elara, Darius, and Amei in his notebook without understanding why.
                      • Acquires the bell from Les Reliques, drawn to it as if guided by an unseen force.
                      • Serves the group during the reunion, surprised to see all four together, though he knows them individually.
                    • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
                      • Working in a vineyard in southern France, nearing the end of the harvest season.
                      • Receives a call for a renovation job in Paris, which pulls him toward the city.
                      • Feels an intuitive connection to Paris, as if something is waiting for him there.
                    • Past Events (Implied):
                      • Matteo has a mysterious ability to sense patterns and connections in people’s lives.
                      • Has likely crossed paths with the group in unremarkable but meaningful ways before.

                     

                    Darius

                    • November 2024 (Reunion):
                      • Arrives at the café, a wanderer who rarely stays in one place.
                      • Reflects on his time in India during the autumn and the philosophical journey it sparked.
                      • Brings with him an artifact that ties into his travels and personal story.
                    • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
                      • Living in Barcelona, sketching temples and engaging with a bohemian crowd.
                      • Prompted by a stranger to consider a trip to India, sparking curiosity and the seeds of his autumn journey.
                      • Begins to plan his travels, sensing that India is calling him for a reason he doesn’t yet understand.
                    • Past Events (Implied):
                      • Has a history of introducing enigmatic figures to the group, often leading to tension.
                      • His intense, nomadic lifestyle creates both fascination and distance between him and the others.

                     

                    Elara

                    • November 2024 (Reunion):
                      • Travels from England to Paris to attend the reunion, balancing work and emotional hesitation.
                      • Still processing her mother’s passing and reflecting on their strained relationship.
                      • Finds comfort in the shared dynamics of the group but remains analytical about the events around the bell.
                    • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
                      • (was revealed to be a dream event) Attends a CERN conference in Geneva, immersed in intellectual debates and cutting-edge research. Receives news of her mother’s death in Montrouge, prompting a reflective journey to make funeral arrangements. Struggles with unresolved feelings about her mother but finds herself strangely at peace with the finality.
                      • Dreams of her mother’s death during a nap in Tuscany, a surreal merging of past and present that leaves her unsettled.
                      • Hears a bell’s clang, only to find Florian fixing a bell to the farmhouse gate. The sound pulls her further into introspection about her mother and her life choices.
                      • Mentors Florian, encouraging him to explore his creativity, paralleling her own evolving relationship with her chalk research.
                    • Past Events (Implied):
                      • Moved to Tuscany after retiring from academia, pursuing independent research on chalk.
                      • Fondly remembers the creative writing she once shared with the group, though it now feels like a distant chapter of her life.
                      • Had a close but occasionally challenging relationship with Lucien and Amei during their younger years.
                      • Values intellectual connections over emotional ones but is gradually learning to reconcile the two.

                     

                    Lucien

                    • November 2024 (Reunion):
                      • Sends the letter that brings the group together at the café, though his intentions are unclear even to himself.
                      • In his Paris studio, struggles with an unfinished commissioned painting. Feels disconnected from his art and his sense of purpose.
                      • Packs a suitcase with sketchbooks and a bundle wrapped in linen, symbolizing his uncertainty—neither a complete departure nor a definitive arrival.
                      • Heads to the café in the rain, reluctant but compelled to reconnect with the group. Confronts his feelings of guilt and estrangement from the group.
                    • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
                      • Escapes Paris, overwhelmed by the crowds and noise of the Games, and travels to Lausanne.
                      • Reflects on his artistic block and the emotional weight of his distance from the group.
                      • Notices a sketch in his book of a doorway with a bell he doesn’t recall drawing, sparking vague recognition.
                    • Past Events (Implied):
                      • Once the emotional “anchor” of the group, he drifted apart after a falling-out or personal crisis.
                      • Feels a lingering sense of responsibility to reunite the group but struggles with his own vulnerabilities.

                    Amei

                     

                    • November 2024 (Reunion):
                      • Joins the reunion at Lucien’s insistence, hesitant but curious about reconnecting with the group.
                      • Brings with her notebooks filled with fragments of stories and a quiet hope for resolution.
                      • Feels the weight of the group’s shared history but refrains from dwelling on it outwardly.
                    • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
                      • Recently moved into a smaller flat in London, downsizing after her daughter Tabitha left for university.
                      • Has a conversation with Tabitha about life and change, hinting at unresolved emotions about motherhood and independence.
                      • Tabitha jokes about Amei joining her in Goa, a suggestion Amei dismisses but secretly considers.
                    • Past Events (Implied):
                      • The last group meeting five years ago left her with lingering emotional scars.
                      • Maintains a deep but quiet connection to Lucien and shares a playful dynamic with Elara.

                     

                    Tabitha (Amei’s Daughter)

                    • November 2024:
                      • Calls Amei to share snippets of her life, teasing her mother about her workaholic tendencies.
                      • Reflects on their relationship, noting Amei’s supportive but emotionally guarded nature.
                    • Summer 2024 (Olympics):
                      • Planning her autumn trip to Goa with friends, viewing it as a rite of passage.
                      • Discusses her mother’s habits with her peers, acknowledging Amei’s complexities while expressing affection.
                    • Past Events (Implied):
                      • Represents a bridge between Amei’s past and present, highlighting generational contrasts and continuities.

                    Key Threads and Patterns

                    • The Bell: Acts as a silent witness and instigator, threading its presence through pivotal moments in each character’s journey, whether directly or indirectly.
                    • Shared Histories: While each character grapples with personal struggles, their paths hint at intersections in the past, tied to unresolved tensions and shared experiences.
                    • Forward and Backward Motion: The narrative moves between the characters’ immediate challenges and the ripples of their past decisions, with the bell serving as a focal point for both.
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