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It took Akita a few minutes to come back to himself, and a few more to make sense of the situation.

At first he thought a huge six-eyed hairy creature was staring at him, but then the blur started to dissipate and he recognized by order of appearance, Sharon the divine, Gloria the brave, and Mavis the eloquent.

— Shtttt! He’s coming back!
— Are you okay? How many fingers do I have?
— Oh, shut up Glor, we’d better be quick before they all come back from lunch; rather carry him on my back than having to eat their bloody penguin grub once again!
— Oh, all my fur for a few scones with a cup of Earl Grey!

“Mmmm…” Akita managed to say “Where on Earth did you get those expensive fur coats? and why are you keeping them under your blouses?!”… “And where was Kay when he needed it?” he asked to himself.

“Oh, bugger it” shouted Sharon “no time for explanations, let’s move now! Chop, chop! Glor, you take the snet and the ropes, Mav’ all the watermelbombs you can get; and don’t blow yourself up; I’ll take Akitoo. To the snow scooters’ hangar! Now!”

Georges and Salome’s journal

From Salome’s account of her introduction to the Turmak People (Part 4)

Legends of the past can tell you a lot more on the present than what sometimes is actually revealed by present events. I discovered the truth of this statement when we arrived with Cil at the capital of Tùrmk. As Cil was discussing with officials of the Turmaki Gatherings, I was offered to go to their House of Remembrance. It was, I gathered, a sort of physical repository of the knowledge of the Turmaki that would allow me to bridge the gap of my abysmal ignorance of their history.

I was only barely starting to understand the odds of the physical configurations of space in this dimension, and I was nonetheless more than eager to add history to my previous geography lessons.
Turmaki are living in a sort of interesting land forming a sort of circle at the centre of which lies the most beautiful sea I have ever seen, with a very subtle and vivid shade of deep indigo blue. Most of Turmakis’ activity was directed inward of the circle, and the outer sea wasn’t a matter of interest to them. Later at the House of Remembrance, I learned that there had been an agreement in the past with the other sentient races to not mingle, so even if there was not physical barrier, all they focused their attention upon was their land, and theirs only.
Their Capital City, Tùrmk, may probably be seen as a very rudimentary city by all Earth-biased accounts. However, at that time, I had not really seen much of the Earth to be blasée anyway, so I was quite receptive to the beauty of its simplicity. It was located at the foremost point of an inner peninsula known as the Nirgual’s Head, facing twelve beautiful islands on which sacred temples had been erected.

My fascination for the beauty of these islands led me to discover more about their significance. In the House of Remembrance, a similar structure of twelve doors led me to learn that the twelve families held significance even here and throughout Alienor as well. Representatives of the families were chosen among the Guardians, as I remembered Georges had discovered and interestingly some of them had had quite an influence upon the history of the various people of Alienor. I couldn’t really trace it back to tangible proofs, but as I said, some legends are quite telling — thus corroborating Cil’s earlier statements.

I have not much time left to start telling them now, but I will probably tell more about the Legends of the Six ‘Fudjàhs’ —or Power Objects.

(Part 3)

It felt like she’d been projecting for hours —in and out of her body, often brought back by the incomfort of the warm and moistly room, where the rheumatic fan was blowing a measly wind full of humidity.

The rabbit she’d seen a few hours ago was ‘wanishing’, like a gentle feeling of pure joyful happiness holding by a thread that you try to reminisce before lapsing back into the old patterns of self-doubts.

She didn’t have to strain herself so much, she suddenly realized; it never worked well when she tried to push it. She wanted the clarity of the projection to be deeply anchored within herself, and not some stroboscopic view of her grim reality sandwiched in glimpses of blissful clear lightness.

So, she decided to wait for the moment to be back. Time didn’t really matter once you projected, but here in this reality time still mattered, and you had to find the proper exit-way. Not all moment seemed to work well.
There were old books in this room, most of them, her son probably did pile up without even reading them. Some of them evoked the the birth pangs of the new era they were still building, which had started about 30 years ago. Now, in 2038 she was old, but back then she was in her mid-life and fully aware of the good aspects and not so good aspects of this life. She had yearned for the changes, and it had come; she had outlived most of them, and the books probably wouldn’t tell her much that she had not actually lived. Probably her son was keeping them because of his beliefs on wasting his investments.
She, for one, couldn’t care less about them.

She picked a little book, with a few words and mostly drawings and symbols on it, and she smiled. She’d seen some of these symbols in her dreams, she related to them; she didn’t need the words explaining them; words were just the authors’ translations, and she trusted her own before them. But the book was making her feel good.

She leaned back in her bed, maneuvering the rolling bed to be in front of the last beams of light of the day.
She could see the full moon rise, and she felt peaceful.

When she noticed she was in front of the cave, she wondered how long she’d been out of her body without knowing.
She could see the moon higher in the sky than when she was in her room, and she could feel an energy of excitement.

Anita was finally coming out of this underground trip with her parents. Seeing the little girl in the flesh would be such a revelation for her, she was thrilled to the point of even forgetting her doubts about the possibility that she was really becoming insane.
She didn’t know why or how, but she would convince her son to offer them some shelter, so that they could settle before getting home. She had so much to learn from the little one she could feel. She was really wise beyond her age…

Voices where starting to fill the silent space:

“Anu! It’s been hours now we’ve been in these damp corridors, are you sure you know the way?”
“Yes Mum, we’re almost there…”
“Here, I can see the light Lily!”
“Yes, I can see it too Aaron!”
“Wow, the moon is full, it’s so lovely”

After the couple had emerged, Balbina could see Anu wink at her. She was seeing her! Now, she only need show her the way to the house!

Frankly, Elizabeth didn’t know what had prompted her to start this little fable about talking animools.
It seemed so ridiculoos, and yet, she couldn’t help continuooing.

She sighed a breathe of relief thinking of all the amount of twooddle she’d written in the past and managed to boost into best-sellers. Of course, that was probably thanks to the commercial genioos of dear ol’ Bronkel. She may have been making a dear mistake in firing him just because Piggy Sooffleston (she couldn’t even write his name prooperly) had a catchy name and a nice smooking suit.

“Always the troolloop you little devil”, she chuckled to herself.
“But now, look at this… The critics will lacerate me if I can’t make it more appealing… I can’t really resort to that old soox trick again; it will all start to look a bit oosy; ahhaah, oozy poosy, she was funny…”

Let’s see what Lemone had to say for tooday:

It’s all what the plumbing part is about actually; why it feels significant to me now: it’s the connective aspect…

It was in his last inspirational work “Tools for the Cooties” and it had the wooirdest drawing together with it. Something looking like a woman’s broo, or a piece of white plastooc ploombing… She would have preferred some coonnected watermeloons instead…

Oh this one looks better; her to a Tooh!

Modesty is when you know you are perfect, but you never go further than telling that.

When the two strangers were gone, the silents observers were left with many new questions.

“This was important for you to see,” finally conveyed N’meôrl to them. “Now,” he continued “let me bring you back to your own timeline, on that same location, many many years after these events; this will make it easier for you to rejoin your home. You will travel safely into my own awareness.”

And as they had understood what was to happen, they all felt stretched around, and the scenery started to flow away like a purple sand dune moving under strong winds.
Moments later, they were still on the Kandulim, though the scenery felt distinctly more focused than before.

Leormn was back, at the place where the giant bird-like creature once was.

Arona was fretting.

“Now, what is this all about? Can someone explain me? The purple sand is pretty, the green sky too, however it looks just like an insane dream from a deranged mind having abused smoke of robjane leaves.”

Framing Irtak —who was having a funny pout on his face— the dragons Heckle and Jeckle were too busy considering with an amused attention the new form and energy field that their progenitor had taken.

No words were spoken to answer Arona’s plea for answers, but answers were starting to come to them in the form of a bundle of energy which would be difficult to translate in a linear manner.

They started to understand a few things. That for one, N’meôrl the Nirgual was not here by chance, at this place and time. Again, they had travelled far in the past of the history of their dimension, and events of great importance were in motion, that they were given to witness.

At first, the flow of information they were having was like a stream they thought they had no control of, but as questions were forming they noticed that it was altering the flow which was then encompassing the answers to those questions.

Like when Jeckle wondered if he and his twin had big birdies counterparts like this one to merge with, and got the following answer “No. For you are quite new essences fragments, and thus do not yet hold focuses in similar extent to your progenitor.”

Arona was quite pleased by this new mode of getting answers, especially as she could visibly get the answers she was genuinely looking for, not those coming from questions she was only remotely interested in.

N’meôrl was showing them also, that unlike him, they were not quite physically focused into that environment, and were not noticed by the small surrounding creatures like the little red scrabs crawling in the sand. They were mainly there to observe and draw their own conclusions, as soon some events would occur.

As they’d finished absorbing the information, they started to notice a feeling of expectation in the air. N’meôrl conveyed to them that they would have to stay quiet in his peripheral awareness for “they” were coming, and he was on a delicate mission.

Footsteps on the beach.
A man approaching. He looks like Irtak and Arona, as if he had just come into this alien world from the same door they had taken. But he fails to notice them.

He stays, facing the deep green waters of the ocean brushing the shore, as if expecting someone.

A strange buzz starts to fill the space. A point of focused light the size of a pinhole appears in front of him, expands quickly with an elastic quality, and pops with a soft sound, revealing an improbably tall figure under a cloak.

The man greets the new-comer with deference
“Master Sinadron”
“Jarvis, my good friend.”

They start to walk on the beach at the unspoken invitation of the one with the smooth voice named Sinadron.

“So, I’ve been told our little matter is going very well.”
“Yes, very well, Master; I am deeply grateful for your intervention; without your help I’ve been told, my dear would not have been allowed to…”
“Let’s not talk of such things any longer; it was such a delight to help two sweet young souls so deeply in love”

Somehow, despite the words of kindness which are slithering with ease, the invisible witness got the uncanny feeling that they are but a deceptive fragment of the truth.

“Now. Tell me”, the one named Sinadron continues in a mellifluous voice “Why have you called me for?”
“The settlement you have suggested us to start on this land…”
“Yes, I am aware, please go to the point instead of labouring things I am well aware of.” The voice had sharpened a bit.
“I am sorry Master.”
“Continue”
“There is a growing dissent that…”
“And from who that shall come?”
“Err… I hear Pelorus has spoken to the Zentauras…”
“Pelorus is but a nuisance.” The voice wasn’t asking for contradiction, though an imperceptible grin was floating on the half-hidden face.
He continued “But I shall help you, once again”
“Master, you are too generous…”
“Let me finish. I will provide you with more men and women, willing to start a new life under your command, to help you grow your settlement. There are a few slaves on the Duane, that place from where you come who will do great.”
“Master…”
“They will be there in an hexade. Make sure you stand your ground until then, even if that means confronting those nasty Zentauras.”

And without waiting for the confused thanks, he disappeared, grinning widely.

“I told you, you shouldn’t have told them”
“Shut up! You’re not even real, none of this is real…”
“Well, I don’t know for you, but I feel real enough to be able to annoy you”

Akita wasn’t sure if those hallucinations were due to the shock of the freezing temperatures of the Antarctica base, or to the medications they’d given them since the military troops had landed on the shores of that island to place it under strict quarantine. All of that was a bit fuzzy afterwards.

He barely remembered how he’d been brought here. Someone had probably noticed the high energy vortexes occurring on the island, or perhaps someone in high places had been tipped about all the weird stuff that had occurred there. He couldn’t tell for sure.
However, something strange had occurred. He had started to be able to see Kay, his spirit dog, reappear soon after.
And that’s when everything started to go in a hellish downward spiral.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have tried to convince the medics in the first place. Now he wasn’t so sure the dog wasn’t all but a figment of his imagination, which was all fine for him, but he had to know.

“Has this… err… dog that you see speaking to you, has it ever told you anything you couldn’t have known yourself?” the medic had been asking him.
That’s what had the doubts start to creep. Perhaps he was just another traumatized war veteran, like a few others, creating funny speaking critters in his mind to cope with the amount of trauma he went through. That would be quite possible.

“Oh, come on Akita, you know I’m real, and everything we’ve gone through was real. Those friggin’ drugs they’ve given to you ain’t helpin’ you know”.

Kay was right about that. He was slurring his words, and could barely stand on his own. They had to escape from here; real, unreal, it didn’t really matter; but he was sure of one thing; it wasn’t feeling good. Not feeling good in the least.

“Kay?”
“What?”
“I suppose you got a plan, you sly dog?”

Balbina had had a quite difficult week. Feeling cold, having trouble to find sleep, not even speaking of being unable to do the kind of out-of-body travel she had managed to do last time.
She was almost starting to doubt she could redo it again.

Of course, the relocation at her son’s cottage was a source of much change in her habits, and although he wasn’t at home most of time, she wasn’t really feeling like she was ‘at home’. Strangest thing really, as for the time she was at the hospice she wasn’t feeling as much an alien as in this cottage. At least, at the hospice, she was in a sort of neutral environment, some place where she wasn’t undesirable (would it be asking for too much to actually be desirable at her age?). Here, the environment wasn’t neutral at all; everywhere everything reminded her of her son: his books, the posters, even the dust on the coffee table was almost looking as though it was his own.

So she had to adjust. Contort her energy to fit —to crumple herself!— into this place, as it would be likely she would spend quite some time here. She wasn’t asking for much really, as she wasn’t able to move from the bed he’d had installed in the spare room. Ghastly room, with a creepy wallpaper from a has-been era of the past days, year 2000 or close she’d guess, gaudy as it was… oriented to the south, with hardly bearable heat during the day. She would have loved to see the coast on the north, but instead, the only window was showing her the shade of the trees, and that ominous alligator-green mountain just behind.

If she couldn’t project in her dreams as she managed to do before, she would soon either die of boredom or of heat. She wasn’t too sure which one would be the most painless and efficient.

She pushed the button to have her bed roll a little closer to the window; once straightened up a bit, she was able to see the passageway to the mountain. She couldn’t explain why she didn’t like this mountain; it was quite beautiful; perhaps she feared to be lost and abandoned. All the more since she could feel so much presence in this environment. Unseen presence, and trickster ones too.

She was tired, and yawned so much her tense jaw’s muscles ached.

On the emerald path to the forest, a moving teal wisp of light caught her attention. Funny plays of light at this hour of the day. But the wisp was persistent, and it started to move towards her.

“Good day Balbina!”

The crazy rabbit was back again. And… she was sleeping? In or out?

“In or out, smell my foot, it’s your choice, and matters not
but be quick, and come forth, for Anita and her folks this wicked way come!”

“The tune is set, the tunnel is close
Of playfulness you’ll need a hefty dose”

After he sent his reply to Yann, Yurick took a deep breathe in appreciation of all that had been done the last past days.

However tedious, all in all, it had allowed him to stay away from other people’s trauma, and stay focused on his own issues. Now, the feeling of the energy at hand was starting to become lighter. Like a thin ray of light poking through a thick layer of rainy clouds, announcing that the silver lining was more than just a consolation. It was announcing the sun to come.

He took the book of stories that had been unburied (like his pleasure to write) from the bottom of the sofa’s cushions when they’d received hosts last week-end, and looked with amusement at the opening note about the “random quotes”.

A strong sense of an inkling started to dawn at him.
Thanks to the random quotes —or more appropriately said, to convenient synchronicities— “stuff” was never lost or buried in the insides of that ever-growing story, which was eating with gluttony at the edges of its expansion. Things were popping up here and there, reminding of old loose threads, or pertinent inclusions or links to be made.

But there was more. He, for a long time, had thought that imagination was expanding things to make physical reality look smaller in proportion than it was. Like when they’d looked at Dory’s pictures, and everything looked so big on them. Even the mere thought of nine dogs was huge. But when they’d met her, and Dan, and the dogs, it was all so much smaller. Even seeing Dory manage her dogs made having nine dogs seem manageable.
But the reverse was true: physical reality had its way of dwarfing imagination. Not so much making it smaller, but compacting it, making it fit in an unbelievably condensed and small space.

Take that book. Thousands of words, billions of probabilities, endless threads and hundreds of characters, all packaged in a small stack of inked paper. The trick was that when you look at it that way, when you got that small stack of paper in your hands, it all seems so manageable; one starts to get accustomed to it, then fails to see the newness in it each time it’s opened to tell a story.

Imagination is the true gauge of the vastness of the universe. It’s so easy to forget…

Antarctic Ocean, International subwaters

“ Good job my dear ones! “ the voice of the Baron was echoing strangely inside the metallic hull of the submarine.

In front of the screen, Pavel, Claude and Jarvis were sipping vodka martinis in celebration of their new crystal skull acquisition.

“It’s got a really extraordinary quality.” Jarvis answered after a moment of silence “I’ve been starting to study the skull and it’s taking some sort of aquamarine colour with the pressure variations, it’s impressive. And it seems we’re attracting an unusual amount of cetaceans in our trail too…”

“Fascinating! I can’t wait for you to bring it to me”

“Baron?”

“What?”

“What do we do with your old friend?”

“Phoebe?”

“Yes. We made sure she was properly treated, as per your orders, and she’s got access to the bare minimum so that she doesn’t play any trick on us.”

“Good. Well, I suppose you can release her on any friendly coast of your liking. She is greatly able to go on from there, though she will probably not like having been outwitted in stealing abilities… Whatever. Do as I said, and don’t get too mollified by her apparent frailty, she’s tougher than she seems.”

“Okay. See you at the meeting point then.”

a hotel room in Auckland, New Zealand

Veranassesee closed her report silently.

What a mess it all had been. Given the circumstances, she had acted with unbelievable self-possessed strength and wit.
She had little doubt she would be fired though. The Confregation wasn’t exactly known for their blanket acceptance of excuses for people’s short-failures —or worse, for their lack of accepting their own responsibility. Quite the contrary.
She would be expected to resign, and even the smoldering hot and sexy Agent Gabriele’s intercession wouldn’t be seen with a complaisant eye.

“No matter…” She had managed to keep everyone she could out of trouble or certain death, and for that she was quite proud of herself. Even if her job was most of the time to actually make sure they would meet their death more quickly. Perhaps she was getting too soft for that job.

The phone rang abruptly cutting her off her trail of thoughts.

“Yes?” (…) “Mmmhhh mmmh” (…) “Okay. Fine. Thank you.”

She would be presenting her report’s conclusions at the hearing tomorrow, and then would be free to go. Start a new life maybe; or get back to Mahiliki who was for now confined with the aircraft’s pilot in one of the Confregation’s detention centers for interrogation. They’d say it wouldn’t be long; they wanted to make sure no crucial information had leaked.
She couldn’t really pity Mahiliki; he was cute… harmless in many ways; she was sure he would be out in a matter of days,… and unsurprisingly get back to his peasant’s life on Fikitupi.

As for herself… that may be a whole other story.

Elizabeth’s strange new way of spoocking Ooglish was starting to become oorie.

That is, until she found a recoonforting quote from Lemone, as usual:

“You all notice a change in vowellness of your Ooniverse. Even those who are unaware notice a changing shift in vowellness. This is a new emergence into a wonderful vowellness that you have all agreed and decided to accomplish.”

Some selected bits from one tag cumulo-cloud:

— “Matter (is) dimensional energies realized”
— “Expect Hector (to) surface, Rafaela!”
— “Leonora gets (to) keep saying ‘play attention!’”
— “Close rain, friend magic, hope water seeing”
— “Far within thinking, Arona sort days, (her) hold gives human comments great meaning”
— “Soon blue seconds, call straight (at the) door, met surely physical; notice move (of) essence (in) fat huge dreams”
— “Universe appear (in) book story”
— “Malvina line although familiar answered busy funny heading”
— “Tina looked love taking lots question indeed”
— “Word usually working (in) short shifting pooh adventure”
— “Seems Armelle starting soft reason; strange perhaps (in the) middle (of) rolling help (one may) spot dragons’ truth past spider times”
— “‘Tell inside reality’: three words step (to) creating”
— “Becky, allow yourself finding single beautiful playing light, dear”
— “Cloud impulse shall house explain surprised black connection”
— “Cool trust(ed) friends, portal plane”
— “Aliens coincidence next talking”
— “Walking arms seem flight silence; stone creature sound already entered field (of) aware(ness); scene trip apparently given reading”
— “Beyond rolled Theresa, lately cave telling unusual morning”
— “Wortex large, merely Glo”

“Companions, we should start an aaadventure!” Angela the White Goose stammered to her friends.

Freaky the Ferret couldn’t help but notice the stammering which heard like a typing typo. “Speaking of which, it’s been weeks we haven’t got any news from Arky the Aardvark, have we?”

“Go figure,… my bets are on an aliens’ abduction” said Weirdy the Weasel rather gloomily.

“Don’t tell that!” Angela’s look of horror on her face was leaving her paler than the white of her pristine white feather —if that would have been possible, of course.

“You know the aliens… Zey’ve started to move a few days ago… I heard the zoo-keeper tell about it” added Jobby the baby pygmy hippo with his most funny conspiratorial look.

“And they brought in a big lady anaconda, it came yesterday from nowhere!” Angela chimed in.

“Perhaps she knows something…”