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AuthorSearch Results
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March 13, 2012 at 11:27 pm #1293
In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“Are you flaming daft? I ain’t giving no bloody stranger my precious poodlekins!” The woman grabbed the poodle and clutched it protectively to her ample bosom.
Luigi sighed. He found other people somewhat baffling, and a tad unaccommodating, to say the least. He searched back in his memory, but could not for the life of him recall where the ointment originally came from
… a nice lady gave it to him? …
No, it was gone; there was just a gaping hole in his mind. He pondered the matter for a few moments, then decided he was done pondering and would be better served giving his attention to the light ship, which had also disappeared.
“How odd” he muttered.
“I beg your flaming pardon! I’m not the bloody odd one I’ll ‘ave you bloody know … ‘ere, I know what this is.” The woman’s face lit up and she leaned forward provocatively, “You’re making some of them bloody advances at me ain’t you?”
March 13, 2012 at 10:23 am #1464In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“King Apil-Sin, king Apil-Sin!” Smuftar shouted, as he smashed through the royal palace doors.
“I bring grave tidings. We have word that a great bright flash-of-a-light came swiftly down from the heavens and into our kingdoms gardens. Our armored men were so scared that they lost their bowls in an instant, and ran into the hills screaming.” exclaimed Smuftar.
“I see. That must have been Zu-the winged lion.” sighed king Apil-Sin.
King Apil-Sin pondered for a moment, and then some more, and then decided he was done pondering.
“That explains the disappearance of the purple flowers.” exclaimed king Apil-Sin!
Smuftar tilted his head.
March 13, 2012 at 5:47 am #1512In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
King Apil-Sin of Babylon looked mournfully at his garden.
“Red flowers, blue flowers, yellow flowers … but where are all the purple flowers?” He sighed sadly. He thought enviously of the purple flowers he had heard rumours of, and which were reputed to adorn the King of Elam’s prize winning gardens in great abundance.
March 11, 2012 at 4:14 pm #1929In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
“The interesting thing about the Godfrey2012 meme” Elizabeth said, “is that it seems to have completely backfired. In much the same way that your cunning plan to try and corral me into continuity by being unravellingly discontinuous failed.”
“Pass the peanuts” sighed Godfrey. “What are they saying now?”
“Well, what happened next, notwithstanding real, perceived, imagined, distorted or merely misinformed sequence, what appeared to happen next was that the plan completely backfired, although one does have to wonder if anything backfired when it appears to have worked out perfectly”
January 14, 2012 at 9:58 am #2843In reply to: Tales of Tw’Elves
His immediate impulse propelled him to lunge forth and discover the contents of the book that was strewn purposefully on the floor of aisle 57, but he remembered the dire foreboding of the cardinal Timoteus: “Do not read any of these books, not so much as even possess the desire to peer into the covers, on pain of your own death.”
He shook his head and shuffled back towards his monitor screen, but his arthritic hand was convulsing so violently, at the events he witnessed, that the black coffee was jumping and spilling out of the polystyrene cup as he creaked to the monitor. He eventually reached the solace of the table, and in a moment of exhaustion heaved himself upon the small wooden chair, taking a deep breath. 4:45- 4:45?? How was this possible? Had all of the events transpired in less than a minute? The beams of light, the book falling, his slow shuffling towards his desk- one minute?
He rubbed his eyes, and stood up to refill his cup of coffee. As he walked, he couldn’t help but ponder the contents of the open book, and why the cardinal forbade him- and anyone else- from touching the book without permission. As he was filling his cup with the blackest of coffee, another beam of light- of energetic light- flashed right before him, leaving him temporarily blinded. He dropped the cup, staggered across the room and knelt on the ground. When he regained sight, he was smack in front of the open book, and the words were as clear as daylight: CANARIA.October 27, 2010 at 4:06 pm #2481In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
Unable to hear, see, smell or taste in the usual manner, they sensed sound, aromas, sights and flavours with the sense threads that hung from their shoulders. Unfortunately sense threads were out of fashion this season and the aliens had plucked them all out, not wishing to appear passe and frumpy. Without their sense threads, however, they failed to notice that their appearance would no longer be appearing in any sense whatsoever to any of their friends. The senseless endeavour remained unsensed entirely, until the appearance of Eggboot, who immediately sensed (using a variety of sense apparatus) that this was all a strange kind of none sense party.
October 18, 2010 at 6:40 pm #2730In reply to: Strings of Nines
Mandrake rolled his eyes, something he had learned from Arona, which made Yickesy chuckle.
Arona sighed, rolling her eyes twice and asked: “So who want some Nuhm tea?”
“Where does that tea set come from”, asked Vincentius.October 13, 2010 at 6:46 pm #2724In reply to: Strings of Nines
Mandrake sighed. That trip on dragon’s back was a fast and bumpy ride. They’d landed right in the middle of the group of tourists in no time at all, and surprisingly Arona, still high on Nhum spiked tea had failed to notice much of what had just happened, let alone that her progeny was in the midst of them.
Even more surprisingly, the tourists had failed to notice their colourful, noisy and dusty landing, not to say the purple dragon itself that Vincentius had to refrain eating one of the big two-humped beasts. That dragon cloaking magic, was a hell of a powerful jinx.“Strange,” Arona said in her mild stuporous state “am I missing some events there? and… is it me, or that travel guide is a cross-dresser?”
And casting a suspicious look at Vincentius, almost blushing “and how did I enter into that hot pink bikini?”
September 29, 2010 at 8:27 am #2704In reply to: Strings of Nines
Messmeerah started to carve the name of all the funny bunch on a huge jamón from the fifth leg (the meatiest) of a jelly boar of the steppes, starting with her own —name, not leg— as a reminder of the good time they had all together. She was thinking as well that it would taste lovely with some of these Jiborium’s truffles.
She was sad to had to let them go, but frankly her old routines were starting to get too scrambled. For one, she didn’t quite remember if Minky was still a redhair rat in her hair (now she thought of it, breeding tiny shrews in her attic didn’t really work so well), or was now back in his human form with a secret revenge of his own on his mind. But that would be maybe a slight stretch. And gosh, did she abhor stretch marks, even on her lovely brains.
— “Oh come on, dear,” one of the motley participants, a cheery big-boned and outrageously made-up of make-up woman said in a bizarre Lizabethian accent, with a hint of bossiness that showed she had not been used to being contradicted much in her life. “Join us on that trip to Mr Jiborium’s, you shall find yourself a use or two.”
Taken aback by the turn of the events, Messmeerah, also known as Winky, took the jamón under her arm, and against all common sense decided to join the crew —thanking the Mighty Mungibs for the improbable feat of continuity that had appeared as a sign.
— “Well, if you don’t mind…” Yikesy was starting to object, but realized some things are best left unsaid, and it would be easy enough now to slip out of their sight (and off the rapacious motherly attentions of Mrs Janet, the big-boned tasteless-bags lady with an accent.)
September 29, 2010 at 2:25 am #2703In reply to: Strings of Nines
Minky pondered for a long moment before coming to a decision.
“Right then let us all go to Watermelon and cavort with Mr Jib and the Consortium! “
Yikesy sighed loudly. Normally good natured, his patience was beginning to wear thin. Having counted the letters between “W” and “N” and, even making allowances for a degree of “give or take”, he didn’t believe that Watermelon could possibly be the secret destination where they would find Mr Jib. If indeed they even wanted to find this Mr Jib, whoever he may be … and was Watermelon even a destination?
“Cheer up!” encouraged Minky. “Mr Jib is a delightful gentleman. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t have the odd truffle in his pocket either.”
August 22, 2010 at 6:39 pm #2811In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens
It was hot, although not as hot as usual for the month of August on the southern slopes of the Serrania de Ronda. It had rained, the black clouds and thunder a welcome respite from the searing dry heat of an Andalucian summer, plumping up the blackberries and washing the dust from the leaves of the fig trees. Blithe Gambol hadn’t seen her old friend Granny Mosca for months, although she wasn’t quite sure what had kept her from visiting for so long. Blithe loved Granny Mosca’s cottage tucked away in the saddle behind the fat hill and there had been times when she’d visited often, just to drink in the magical air and feast her eyes on the beauty of the surroundings. Dry golden weeds scratched her legs as she made her way along the dirt path, and she was mindful of the fat black snake she’d once seen basking on the stone walls as she reached into the brambles to pluck blackberries and take photographs.
Rounding a corner in the path she gasped at the incongrous and alarming sight of a bright yellow bulldozer just meters from Granny Mosca’s cottage. The bulldozer was flattening a large area of prickly pear cactuses. Unfortunately for the cactuses, it was fruiting time, and Blithe wondered if Granny Mosca had first picked the fruits and suspected that she had, those that she could reach. Nothing that could be eaten was left unpicked ~ Blithe remembered the many sacks of almonds that Granny had given her over the years, very few of which she had bothered to shell and eat.
The bulldozer was making an entranceway to the tiny derelict cottage that was situated next to Granny Mosca’s house. Granny had asked Blithe if she wanted to buy it, and she had wanted to buy it eventually, but the purchase of a derelict building hadn’t been a priority at the time. Now it looked as if she was too late, that someone else had bought it, perhaps to use as a holiday home. Horrified, Blithe called out for Granny, who was often in the goat shed or away across the hidden saddle valley cutting weeds to feed the poultry, but there was no sign of her. Two alien looking turkeys gobbled in response, and the black and white chained dog barked menacingly.
As Blithe retraced her steps along the dirt path it occured to her that whoever was planning to use the derelict cottage might be a very interesting person, someone she might be very pleased to make the acquaintance of in due course. After all, she had noticed that the holiday guests staying at the casitas on the other side of the fat hill were all sympathetic to the magical nature of the location, many of them arriving from a previous visit to a particularly interesting location in the Alpujarras ~ a convergence of ley lines. When questioned as to why they chose the fat hill casitas, they simply said they liked the countryside. Either they weren’t telling, or they were simply unaware objectively of the connection of the locations. Blithe could sense the connections though, both the locations, and that the people choosing to vacation at the fat hill were connected to it.
For one hundred and forty seven thousand years, Blithe had had an energy presence at the fat hill, although it was half a century of her current focus before she remembered it. She had felt protective of it, when she finally remembered it, as if she had a kind of responsibility to it. This place can look after itself quite well on its own, she reminded herself. The fat hill had watched while Franco’s Capitan looted the Roman relics, and watched as Blithe stumbled upon the remains of Roman and Iberian cities, and the fat hill had laughed when Blithe first tried to find the entrance to the interior and got stuck in thorn bushes. Later, the fat hill had smiled benignly when Granny Mosca led her to the entrance ~ without a thorn bush in sight. The cave entrance had been blocked with boulders then. Blithe had given some thought to an excavation, wondering how to achieve it without attracting the attention of the locals, but now she wondered if one day, when the time was right, she would find the entrance clear, as if by magic. Magic, after all, was by no means impossible.
{link: feast for the birds}
July 30, 2010 at 1:50 pm #2472In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“Well, those were not my balls, mind you, but the cute little rabbits I bought to entertain the miniature giraffes which looked awfully bored making the goats faint over and over.”
Godfrey wouldn’t admit he was slightly taken off-guard, being reminded of a dream of late, where he was in a bollocks museum, with grapes of pairs hung all over the places in a sort of disturbing triball art arrangement, fig-like and glossy in nature.
“Anyway,” Godfrey continued, putting the soft hairy rabbits aside, “speaking of cloth, or ball of yarn, or whathaveyou… I was about to suggest we do some snowflake experiment…”
He looked at Dory-Ann and sighed a grey smoke of mild disparaged despair, “… but I guess we should have to start it all over”.“You’ll find me on the other side” were his last words while he jumped off the twenty third level of the building, disappearing in mid-air, never to be seen again, or from this side of the thread at least.
April 24, 2010 at 1:20 pm #2466In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
After his failed attempts to gain control over the Land of Peas, and his being thrown out of the Majorburghouse body first and framed head second by an angry mob of infuriated Peaslanders (which was something to be noted, since Peaslanders were usually quite the happy bunch), the Majorburgmester now bereft of anything but his will, was thinking it was high time for a u-turn in his carreer.
His dear blubbits had apparently mostly vanished out of sight, some said trapped in a blinking giant spider’s cobweb blinked out of Peasland, some others said suffocated under shiny duct tape, and even some said baked in ashes and almonds — those last obviously were the maddest of the lot.
It seemed like all the Dimensions had conspired to his defeat.Now hardly a Majorburgmester, the title having now been offered by the cheerful crowd to the raucous and unexpected hero (after they hesitated for a good hour if it should be given to the herald of the liberation, that stupid Gandfleur whatever its name of a dog), he was now again known as B. Weazeltweezel (the B. standing for Bartabous, his mother having a fondness for names in “-ous” like Precious, his elder sister, and Pulpous his second sister; a chance his father was a man of more common sense, otherwise he surely would have been named Houmous himself).
The newfound venture didn’t wait long to manifest. In the not so distant past, he had already suspected something fishy about Lady Fin Min Hoot and now he knew. She was a high member of the Bridge Tarts Order, and though it was a secretive and feminine order, he had always loved a challenge.
He felt he could muster all the tartiness and bridginess needed to be granted access to their secrets.Galvanized as he was, were he to successfully infiltrate the order, he knew he didn’t really stand a chance without something else. By nothing short of a synchronistic chance, Fwick, the saucerer had given him the leftovers of a potion he didn’t know what to make of.
In a gulp (and a few gargppls) Batabous was rapidly changed into a rather convincing dame matron, with slight mustache and ample bosom.
Tarty Bridgies, here I come… he said in a falsetto voice that needed work. … soon everybody will know about Lady… Bartaba
April 13, 2010 at 7:52 am #2686In reply to: Strings of Nines
“Fish” said Raxie when asked what she would like for her Fragmentation Day lunch. Fish synchronicities had been sprouting up all over the plaice, sturgeoning you might say, if you were wanting to include the word burgeoning, burgeoning like the gnarly old grape vines waking up and unleashing green on the chalky hills.
“The synchronicities and connections were like individual blades of grass turning into a meadow, singing and sighing as one in the breezes,” Elizabeth replied.
“Well this is my own personal meadow” Raxie pointed out “These are all mine”.
“Oops”
“Who said that?”
“Was it that guy over there in the bowler hat and checkered past?”
“Don’t mention checkered pasts!” Elizabeth exclaimed, “Or the Ooh Dimension! You’ll open the sluice gates….”
“Antidisestablishmentarianism”
“Who said that?” Elizabeth and Raxie exclaimed together.
“I don’t know, but that guy in the bowler hat’s disappeared, and can you see that fellow starting to appear over there? Must be a multidimensional Port Hole or something…”
“Well, we know what a Froopish and fabulously magical place this is, so it stands to reason…”
“Reason?” Raxie and Elizabeth were reduced to giggles at the very idea of reason having any standing.
“A portal to the Froop dimension, here? Wow! Can I see?”
“You’ll have to wear these goggles. And it will require some stamina, are you sure?”
“Of course I’m bloody sure” replied Elizabeth tartly. And then she began to intuit something.
“I don’t need googles*, silly!” she laughed. “I already AM multidimensional, I don’t need anyone elses googles. But it’s ok if you want to wear the googles” she added, not wishing to sound judgemental.
“Actually, I like this amethyst crystal myself, I like the frequency. I have dreams of amethyst sometimes, they are a delight.”
“Come and look at this sunset if you want to see a delight,” said Raxie, who was still a bit miffed about the goggles. “Who needs another dimension when we’ve got this one?”
Elizabeth sighed with speechless awe at the spectacular sunset, a reflection of all her colours, and all her dear ones colours, all blended together with magic aqua and sparks of blue and tones of orange blossom.
April 5, 2010 at 11:07 pm #2079In reply to: Scrying the Word Cloud
looking text wondered blubbit (usually blubbits)
gone…
random…
far…. mention? sighed shar “direction peasland”March 18, 2010 at 11:21 pm #2679In reply to: Strings of Nines
“You’re right… maybe” Arona sighed again, then spread her cape and took off above the hills in long soft flaps of her big molted cape wings.
March 14, 2010 at 11:15 pm #2677In reply to: Strings of Nines
Arona sighed and flipped randomly through the pages of her book. Try as she might she could not make any sense of it.
“You have a go, Yikesy,” she said. “See if you can figure out what it is about.”
March 14, 2010 at 8:27 pm #2676In reply to: Strings of Nines
Serenity gave her a handkerchief and sighed.
March 3, 2010 at 10:47 am #2434In reply to: The Eights’ Shift, Stories
“These old ezines and blogs are fascinating” remarked Periwinkle, passing the one she had just been reading to Daffodil. “Thank goodness some folks had the foresight to print some of them!”
“I know, imagine if they hadn’t. We’d have no artefacts for the collection. Well, we have all those flat discs, but no way to decipher them. Oh, did I tell you? Bignonia found something even older than the discs!”
“NO!” exclaimed Periwinkle “Do tell!”
“Yes, even older! Funny looking contraption, with two reels and a ribbon. An information storage device, so they say, although they haven’t discovered how to decipher it.”
“I wonder why we’re still not simply accessing that information without, well, without messing around with the physical contraption, you know?”
“Wouldn’t be any point in being here in the first place, if we weren’t going to mess around with physical things, silly” replied Daffodil.
There was no answer to that, so Periwikle didn’t answer. She continued to thumb through the printed pages.
Periwinkle and Daffodil sat together on the patio in the warm spring sunshine, sipping lemonade
and leafing through the papers. Bright white clouds in cartoon shapes romped across the blue sky,
and the birds chattered in the trees,
occasionally landing on the printed pages and cocking their heads sideways to read for a moment, before flying off to tell their friends, which was usually followed by a raucous group cackling.“Dear Goofenoff” read Daffodil, “This one looks interesting Peri, someone here is asking for advice on a problem.”
“What’s a “problem”, Daffy?” asked Periwinkle. “For that matter, what does the word “advice” mean? Oh, never mind” she said as she noticed Daffodil rolling her eyes, “I’ll look it up in my pre shift dictionary of defunct words.”
“She’s asking the Snoot too, about the same problem. Oh, I think I’ve heard of them! It’s coming back to me, the old Snoot’n‘Goof team, they were quite famous in the beginning of the century, I remember hearing about them before in a Shift History discussion.”
“Well, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of them, but then, I’ve never been into history like you, dear. So what is this “problem” all about, then?”
“I’ll read it out to you, it’s way too convoluted to put in a nutshell. Lordy, they sure did complicate matters back then, it’s almost unbeleivable, really, but anyway, here goes:
Dear Goofenoff,
I don’t know what to do! I am confused about which probable version of a blog freind, let’s call him MrZ, I have chosen to align with. The first probable version was ok, nothing to worry about, and then I drew into my awareness the probable versions of MrZ that some of my freinds had chosen to align with….”
“Blimey”, interrupted Periwinkle, who was starting to fidget. “Is it much longer?”
“It’s alot longer, so be patient. Where was I? Oh yes:
“….and while that was very interesting indeed, and led to lots of usefully emotionally heated discussions, I started to align with their probable version, at times, although not consistently, which led to some confusion. So then I had a chat with someone who was more in alignment with my original probable version, although there were aspects of that probable version that were a little in alignment with the other folks probable version, notwithstanding. I suppose I was still in alignment with the other folks probable version when it came to my attention that there was another individual that might be aligning with a probable version, and my question is, in a nutshell, is it any of my business which probable version the new individual on the scene is aligning with?”
“Well, I can tell you the answer to that!” exclaimed Periwinkle.
Daffodil rolled her eyes. “Yes, dear, WE know the answer, but the point is, SHE didn’t know the answer at the time, which is why she asked Goofenoff.”
“If you ask me, she knew the answer all along” Periwinkle intuited. “What did Goofenoff say anyway?”
“He said:
Are you requiring a short or a long answer?”
Daffodil turned the page to continue reading. She frowned, and flicked through a few pages.
“What a shame, some of these pages appear to be missing! Now we’ll never know what Goofenoff said.”
Periwinkle laughed. “Well, never mind that anyway, have you seen the random story quote today? Rather synchronistic I’d say, listen to this bit:
Illi felt much better, and was sitting at the breakfast table, basking in the warm shafts of sunlight filtering in through the window, and listening to the birds singing in the lemon tree outside.”
February 6, 2010 at 8:53 pm #2658In reply to: Strings of Nines
Messmeerah (Winky) Maymhe, High Priestess of the Pendulous and Loose Otherworldly Threading, was going for a bath into the Pool of Rejuvenation. Her ineffable beauty had started to show the early signs of time tampering —signs she’d learnt to notice as soon as they’d appear. Luckily, the moons were in perfect alignment for the rituals of Spring Beautusk*.
News were good, very good indeed —which would certainly help in maintaining her perfect brow and forehead in pristine smoothness.
News were so good that she’d sent her minion Minky fetch the boy just right after her white crow Saggin had came back with news of finding him… after all those years (not that years did matter to her anyway, she prided herself on that).It’d been close to an eternity, and she weighted her words… (in actuality it was a few teens and futile years at most) that she’d been trying to recover the boy, but the dwarfs had played her, and had managed to hide him from her sight.
She had not thought he could be concealed by anyone powerful enough, and it was surely not by the magic of that headless Malvina and her pesky dragons. In fact, the boy had been concealed even after Malvina and her menagerie had left the boy and his caretaker. She was thinking the caretaker in question had a concealment charm far more powerful she thought could exist.But Minky would surely take care of that.
—
- It should be said that one of the effects of the rituals of Spring Beautusk were a slight stiffness of the overall face (and other dipped body parts), which earnt Messmeerah the cute and albeit ironic sobriquet of Winky, as she hardly managed to blink and was often victim of bouts of winking when she tried too hard.
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AuthorSearch Results