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  • #1053
    TracyTracy
    Participant

      “What are we going to do now, Bea? This is dreadful news! I can’t bear the thought of moving again!” Leonora started to cry. “I can’t believe the landlord is coming back so soon. I like it here! I thought we were settled, for once, just for once, settled, stable….”

      Bea groaned. “Don’t, Leo! Stop snivelling for god’s sake, get a grip woman! We’ll just throw our stuff into some plastic bin bags and move somewhere else! How difficult is that, fer chrissake? I bet there’ll be another finca right close to here and it won’t be any trouble at all.”

      “What about the door!” hissed Leo. “Have you forgotten the door?”

      “What door?” asked Bea.

      #1050

      Leörmn was erring through the corridors of his draggilish mind. Some of them were nicely painted he’d found, but apart from some friendly glukenitch glowing droppings, it all seemed a bit empty.

      Of course, connections were ever there, floating around, and could be summoned as easily as a pleasant memory in the spacious eternal present. But those were not memories the dragon wanted to interact with.
      Since they all had made that move of the cave anchoring point to the past, nothing was quite as it was. A truism of course, but sometimes you can’t do much more than state the obvious first, to be able to change it.

      The remnants of the dynemotical ström (another word for wortex, or intercrossing of dimensions, or whatever you want to call this mess) was only starting to fray, and it had left them all in a kind of depressed mood. Depressed, as in less pressure, and a bit deflated.
      As soon as he imagined the words, they became reality, for dragon speech is about the very essence of things, and it can make things be what they are said to be.
      And so he was now morphed into a deflated rubber skin of a dragon, sliding inside the tunnel doing proutish sounds that he tried to put together into harmonious music notes, to entertain the schpurniatz colonies.

      The notes started to take some funny foggy shapes and, using the painted walls as a partition, arranged some pretense of a sentence.

      Words seem lamp; gives lost Malvina soon damn door, telling unexpected…

      Mmm, a door? Of course, little sweet Arona had been painting a door, but why couldn’t he use it too?

      The key was in bridging with the past now… that much he could tell, and perhaps that door may help.

      #1044

      Just behind the plumpy panting woman who was coming to the campfire, Balbina could see the most interesting waddling goat she had ever seen coming along.

      “And I suspect the goat talks too?” Balbina asked Yuki.
      “Oh, yes… lots even… But don’t expect to understand all she says” Yuki added with a bwink.

      Hahaha, Balbina was amazed. That place was the most delirious dream/out-of-body projection she’d had in a long long time. How entertaining.

      “Beh, don’t be fooled, Balbina dear, it’s all real. And you’ll know very soon.” the goat started to greet her.
      “And you are?”
      Rafaela, at your service.”
      “How many more like you are there here? I’ve never seen such a funny zoo…”
      “A great deal actually” answered Yuki “but not so many of them are focused in this form. You still have to meet our dear Armowlle, who is doing some spying business and occasional rescue missions on the island, and our soft Arailynx who is on more subjective missions currently…”

      Balbina was wondering “and why did you say I’ll know very soon?” she asked the goat.
      Rafaela answered with a mysterious smile “Because I’m planning to communicate a way out of this island to two of my little protégés, and I expect some of these people will follow. And you are very likely to meet them in the flesh when they get there.”
      “Really?!” Balbina was amazed. This dream was taking qualities of realness she wouldn’t have suspected the least it to have.

      “Now,” Yuki cut short the amazement moment “we need to have those among our friends willing to leave, to be prepared to leave at dawn.”

      “Okay” Anita, who had been seated on the sand quietly till then, rocking gently from side to side in a calm meditation, said softly.

      “Oh, she really can feel us talking…” Balbina said more to herself than to anyone else. And looking closely at the girl’s energy field, she could see how expanded it was, reaching those of Yuki, Kay the spirit dog, and Rafaela and even hers in luminous threads.

      “Not all of them are leaving tonight” answered Yuki to her unspoken question. “I think Anita and her parents will, but it’s more than probable than the others will stay. Some have business to do here, and others are in vacations huhu…”

      “You’re right, seems like the one with the strange energy field is gone already?”
      “Oh Claude, you mean. Yes. His mummification experience wasn’t too pleasant, and he has unfinished business with the people of the island; no wonder he prefers to stay here on his own.”

      (on the beach, around the campfire, in Regional Area 1, or physical reality)

      Awww, plane-crash you say? ‘ow wonderful… Mavis was chatting with Akita. Ye need to come with me, ye can’t stay ‘ere all night. Besides, Shar and Glaw will be so thrilled to see you. And we were starting to think it was all boring ‘ere; didn’t know they would have real survivors like on real-TV!

      Aaron and his familythey would probably need some better shelter, I assume. This probably would be best for us to come with you… Akita answered. And apparently, Claude has left, so that’s just us…

      Owlright then! Mavis beamed, come with me handsome! she said, clutching the soldier’s muscular arm under hers.
      Don’t worry Akita, we’ll follow you, said Anita to the soldier who was visibly appealed by the woman but was also weary to leave Anita alone with her sleeping parents. Besides, we can see the lights behind the trees, it’s very near…

      See you there Anita! Akita said to Anu
      Bye Akita! And don’t worry, Kay is always with you she said with a mysterious smile.

      As they walked side by side to the facility, Mavis said “Kay? A friend of yours?”
      “Oh, my lost dog… Nothing to worry about” answered Akita absently.

      #1043
      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        Serendib Facility, Sri Lanka ~ (2036)

        Becky had been strangely shaken when she saw appearing in the last word cloud “dead becky” in huge letters.
        Surely she was not scared by death, as dead was only a different term for a different life, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to croak so young!

        Perhaps she died in childbirth; after all, it wouldn’t be so surprising because then the Serendib Facility looked very much like an eerie transitioning place. She tried to remember… When was the last time people had surprised her; done something unexpected, something she couldn’t have calculated. She thought Tina perhaps… Well, on the holographic visiophone, Becky had seen her with utmost details rolling her eyes, thrice even, at the mention of the ménage à trois… But of course,… that hardly counted as a surprise.

        She was starting to freak out. Gayesh! GAYESH! she called out running in the corridors of the facility barely managing to get a bewildered look from the nurses apparently now accustomed to her antics.

        A few moments later, she was comfortably seated in Gayesh’s office, with a warm cup of coffee in her hands. Aaaah, she loved that scent, the warmth that goes right to her heart. She felt comforted. At least if she was dead, the coffee seemed real enough.

        Gayesh had taken an undecipherable look once she had told him of her… premonition. She intuitively felt that there was something he wasn’t telling.

        She almost gurgled her last coffee sip uttering to the doctor “If I’m dead, then spit it now!”

        The laugh from Gayesh came as a surprise to her. “Ahaha,” she couldn’t help but notice, “a surprise !”

        Looking straight into her eyes, he told her “Well, perhaps your premonition has some deep meaning Becky dear, but you look quite alive to me, and with a constitution like yours, likely to live till 157 years old, if you ask me.”

        Becky was greatly relieved, even though she still had the hunch that the mysterious handsome doctor wasn’t telling her all the truth. “I think that idle life is making me insane… I need to see some real dusty rocky stuff; all those projections won’t do for the rest of my life. All the more since I’m supposed to live that long!”

        Gayesh was looking more and more preoccupied.

        “What is it, dear?” Becky asked, starting to feel the pangs of angst coming back at her. (she whispered to herself some of her favourite mantras: stand behind the short wall, breathe, breathe, yes, YES, it’s not your energy…)

        “You see Becky dear,” Gayesh answered after a minute of silence, “there is still some issue with the cloning process; until we find some advanced way of doing it, the clones need some of your cells regularly to be kept in good health, otherwise, I can’t really promise Becky Tooh (that was how the clone#2 was nicknamed) a life as good as yours. That’s why I’m a bit reluctant at letting you go on some errands…”

        Well, if she’d wanted some surprise to see that she was alive, there she got more than enough, Becky thought.

        #1041
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          “I want to go home”, sighed Jose. “I just want to go home.” He sighed again as he stood looking out of the cabin. What a mess it all was. Cyclone Ycart had left a trail of mangled wreckage in her wake, but it wasn’t just the devastation on the island, it was the atmosphere, the feeling of chaos, the sense of hidden turmoil permeating the place that made him weary and homesick.

          “Ah, JoselitoPaquita whispered softly, stroking his hair gently “Why do you want to go home? What about the treatments?”

          “Oh, bugger the treatments!” Jose frowned. “I don’t think I want the treatments any more, you know.” He looked at Paqui’s face. “I never even notice your skin anymore, I like it just the way it is. I don’t even worry about my scars any more, either.”

          “I know what you mean” Paqui smiled. “I’m not worried about it either, anymore. I’d like to go home too now. The question is, though, how do we get off this god forsaken island?”

          Jose sighed again. “God only knows”

          Paqui took Jose by the hand and led him back inside the cabin. “Remember what I was telling you about the ancients dreaming together? How the tribe would dream together, plan where to go next? How they would work things out in their dreams? Let’s try it. Let’s go to sleep and when we wake up we’ll compare notes, and see if we can come up with a solution”

          Jose smiled a crooked smile, thinking that sleep sounded as good as anything else he could think of to do. Well, perhaps there was one other thing. Jose winked at Paqui as he closed the door behind them.

          :fleuron2:

          When they woke up the sun was low enough on the western shore to cast long umber shadows across the cabin floor, and dust particles danced in the golden sunbeams. Jose woke first and lay still, savouring the remnants of dream images. He felt good; the indescribable sense of having accomplished some meaningful communications with known but elusive others that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, yet couldn’t deny the validity of. It was some minutes before he remembered the plan to dream of a solution to the problem of how to get off the island, and in an instant the well-being evaporated as he struggled to recall any useful details, and frustratingly found that he couldn’t recall a thing.

          “Focus on the feeling, Joselito” a voice in his head said. The voice had come through loud and clear, a deep male voice with a hint of a merry chuckle. “Ha ha ha!” The voice boomed again, as if in response to Jose’s awareness of him. An image of dusty reddish skin, swathed in indigo blue cloth flashed through Jose’s mind, and then vanished like a particle of dust moving out of the sunlight into the shadows.

          Paqui was beginning to stir, and started mumbling. “The pool, the rock pool, there’s a cave under the pool, hold your breath it won’t be long and out the other side…” She opened her eyes and sat up. “There’s a pool, Jose, and under the pool there’s a tunnel. That’s how we get off the island.”

          Jose frowned. “Paqui, this island is in the middle of the ocean, miles from anywhere. Even if there is a tunnel, and even if it goes anywhere at all, it would take months to get to the mainland on foot!”

          “Focus on the feeling, Joselito ~ Ha ha ha!” That voice in his head again! Jose was starting to think he was going mad. Suddenly he was filled with doubts and hopelessness. Everything seemed so utterly ridiculous. God, what was he doing here on this island! Everything was crazy here. If only he could just go home!

          “Focus on the feeling, Jose.” The voice was gentle now, and kind. “The feeling will take you home”.

          “I don’t know what you mean!” cried Jose in exasperation. “How can a feeling take me home? It’s not logical!”

          Paqui smiled a wise old smile and said “If you can’t trust yourself, dear one, then trust me for now. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

          “But we don’t even know where the pool is! What if we can’t find it?”

          “Focus on the feeling Jose, and trust that we will.”

          #1039
          ÉricÉric
          Keymaster

            Fumbling through the huge pile of paper, Elizabeth cried in anguish “it’s oowful, there’s too much stuff in those jumbled foolders!

            Her cry had made some of the tiny goats faint and as she started to look around, she found herself in the middle of what looked like a battlefield from the Rooman times, with Robert the magpie dancing gleefully on goats all four legs in the air.:goat: :yahoo_silly: :yahoo_sleepy:

            Nervously, she reached for her cigarettes, only to send the pack flying in the trash with her chaotic movements. “booger, booger!”. As she went crawling under the desk, she saw that tooday’s newspaper had a chubby statue on the front page ( Oostrians fete voluptuoos, prehistoric Venoos ).
            “What’s that? She looks familiar that one” thought Elizabeth, the form of the statue vaguely reminding her to go check with her aesthetic surgeon if any more work needed to be done since the last time, three weeks ago.

            And now, look at that, it’s almost like in dear Harry Pooh’ter
            That Venoos is made from oolitic stone (meaning egg stone)… “ :yahoo_thinking:

            But seeing the cinders of her freshly lit cigarette were almost lighting up a fire from her notes, she almost forgot to put that new thing in her clooh box.

            #2151

            In reply to: The Story So Far

            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              The Wrick Saga

              We become involved in the Wrick saga with the great-grand children of Lord (Hilarion) Wrick, living currently in Orkney Islands in 2057: India Louise and Cuthbert.
              The family has a long intricate story, but roughly we know:

              • Margaret, first wife of Sean Wrick (unique son of Lord Wrick) died in a tragic accident somewhere in the past, and now Sean can talk to her most of the times.
              • Sean has a penchant for strong spirits, but in an interesting twist of fate happens to meet and fall madly in love with older Becky (Vane), step-daughter of Dory, during the inauguration of the T.R.A.P. (transfocal reality attraction parc or something) in flooded New York (New Venice). They wed in a hurry (insert connection to Russia and old friends in the business of frozen reindeer meat) and plan a trip to Sri Lanka. Becky who has become pregnant from a “time-traveler” (Chris Robin) gives birth to her three first children, and seems to get cloned in a secret facility to pursue more noble ideals.
              • Lord Wrick dies after getting reconciliated with his son Sean. His fortune is inherited by Cuthbert who seems reluctant to bear the charge. His sister India Louise is pregnant with a son from the traveling painter Bill Jobsworth who was painting the family portraits and was involved in some unusual experiences during his stay at the castle (mummies and stone heads)
              • Later in the Wrick Saga, is born Midora, who gets the books from Cuthbert and India Louise and investigates them.

              The books are thought to be energy deposits of this story, initially started in our timeline by Dory, Finn, Yann and Yurick. The story then was rediscovered by Becky, who initiated a Reality Play with her friends Tina, Sam and Al.

              #2149

              In reply to: The Story So Far

              ÉricÉric
              Keymaster

                Tikfijikoo Island (continued)

                (synopsis)

                It starts with the Dr doing some evil tests on that remote island; he’s with the nurse Bellamy, whose forte is coconut tree frog-leaping, and Veranessesseesessesses with her impossible name (V’ass)
                We then learn the Dr is mad, and his researches are financed by an occult organization, who V’ass is working for, to check on their assets; he’s mad but brilliant.

                He’s a bit of a transvestite too (fullname Chris Bronklehampton)
                The organization has given him a machine in which there is a crystal skull, unknown to him. This crystal skull seems linked to spiders somehow and his researches on spiders genome (blue bonnet), but we only know it’s coveted by many people. It’s all happening in our dimension, roughly at our time.

                (Where Leo and Bea are renting Jose’s house and they are Dory’s and Dan timeframe ie: now)

                The first experiences give dreadful results; there is Sasha (mummified by the doctor) who’s dead, and now speaks with the Dr; and there is Claude, who gained super strength and madness, and escaped the island facility.
                Claude is one of those working with the Mad Baron ; he’s on a undercover mission to get the skull
                (The false Viscountess —lady in salmon— at the auction was also working for the baron)

                So Claude escapes but there is another mysterious person looking for the skull; it’s Madame Chesterhope, and she’s sent the magpies to steal it. The magpies are from another dimension, they are famous stealers.
                Claude encounters the magpies on their mission. He’s captured in an energy labyrinth they have set on the island temporarily, to cover their tracks.

                Meanwhile, Sha and Glo have arrived. Dory wanted to go but she couldn’t find the airline (bag lady)…
                And Mavis later explains in a comment (555) how they all got involved in that adventure. She takes some time to convince her husband, and get to go to Tikfijikoo too. During the flight correspondence, she gets to know Paquita and Joselito.

                On the island, the Dr is losing it seriously. He talks to the dead mummy, and had blond wig and stuff.
                V’ass is reacquainting herself with the Italian of her secret organization, to report on the Dr. (insert steamy sex scene :)) ) )

                Dory is back at Gib, with Dan and young Becky and later, her friends Yurick and Yann came to visit; go see Salitre :)
                She has knowledge of Leo and Bea (Fletcher) – at whose place there are skulls too.

                On the island, everything starts to get crazy; since Sha and Glo arrived
                The magpies are ready to strike as a cyclone is coming.
                Claude has recovered his memory and is no longer mad; but he’s still trapped and tries to find an escape in a strange tree. He goes into another dimension, the giant spiders’ one.
                In this dimension there are a few human survivors. There is young Anita, and her mummified parents, but still alive from a plane crash; and a stranded soldier from WWII, named “Akita”, who’s got a spirit dog with him he’d found on the spider island.
                They somehow managed to survive in the giant spider’s jungle (the island is on top of a sort of Bermuda triangle).

                Anita is in communication with our four essences, who can manifest easily in this spider dimension and our essences are aware of an dimensional gate opening (the cyclone).
                All this people get together and succeed in escaping through the wortex.

                So now, that explains the people around the campfire on Tikfijikoo. It was all relatively brief, during the storm, where the others were sheltered on the facility (thanks to V’ass who cared for the careless Sha and Glo)

                Sha and Glo find out the magpies trying to pry the computer open where the skull is hidden; they crush the magpies with coconuts bra slings (exit the magpies in purple blood ;)) )
                They find the strange crystal skull they mistakenly think is some apparatus like an UV lamp. They take it to the UV room and plug it; it starts to project all sorts of lights
                They want to dance, because it’s like a disco.

                Meanwhile, one giant spider has managed to sneak through the portal, and goes close to them, but she gets sidetracked by the lightened skull and gets shrunk to a small size… and gets crushed by Sha and Glo (they’re the heroines of the day, but they don’t know squat ;)) )

                There is also a honeycomb subplot with a man named Jarvis on the island, with beehives.

                Now: Sha and Glo are dancing, Mavis is going out attracted by the campfire, finding out the survivors (The campfire was there because it’s night, and Claude is wary of the island’s owners, because he was abducted and mummified). The Dr is mad as ever.
                The skull is in the UV room, but they don’t know what it is — only Madame Chesterhope and Claude are knowing (possibly Jarvis and V’ass); but Mme Chesterhope is flung into the ocean crashing into Mahiliki’s plane recently :))

                #1027

                She was the first to notice.

                First there was a loud bang, that she perceived as a shock wave rippling all around.

                Then, she felt a strange flabby thing with bat arms fall into the ocean, while the other energy was coming their ways. “Wow,” she couldn’t help but think; “they’re having unusual nightly activities around for such a small isolated island.”

                The dog resting by the fire got alerted then, and tried to wake up the others. But apparently, they seemed oblivious to it.

                Then, something stranger happened. The small white rabbit started to talk, as if it had been aware all along.
                “It’ll take a while for him to see you again Kay, just don’t yap like a silly dog… Besides, you’ll disturb our guests”
                “Guests?” the dog answered back.

                The moment after, the rabbit had disappeared from the girl’s lap, and was standing between her and the dog.
                “Welcome, Balbina”, he told her.

                “How do you know my name?” she was aghast, unable to say if it was for the talking rabbit, or for the fact it knew her name.
                Unperturbed, it continued “It’s a busy night. There are lots of things happening, and we hope you’ll stick around. It may be helpful for our friends here.”
                “Er… why not… I mean, yes, sure. And you are?”
                Yuki, at your service. I’m not really a rabbit of course, but that form is convenient”
                “And cute too…” she said tentatively
                “Thank you”

                Balbina had never thought a rabbit could blush, but she would have bet it was the closest thing to a blushing rabbit she had just witnessed.

                “Sorry to interrupt you,” Kay said, but who are the other guests?

                a shrilling voice came as an answer OOOOooohh a campfire! How cuty pooh! Wait till Sha and Glo see that, we could have some roasted marshmallows and pork chops! I’m feeling soooo hungry…”

                “Great… So much for our little secret expedition,” Claude sighed as he woke up.

                #1024
                Jib
                Participant

                  Dory was digging in her garden. Today was hot and sunny, but she was an archeologist, she could handle it!
                  She had a dream last night about a little bird talking to her and telling her there was something precious buried in her garden… well it was something like that, she couldn’t really remember… maybe it was in another dream… did she watch a series last night? The boys were still sleeping soundly, so she’d ask later maybe.

                  The ground of the garden was tough! no wonder she never dug it before, or even did any gardening.
                  Crap! She was wondering where the treasure could be, her garden was big, and she had begun under a tree, but maybe it wasn’t there… it seemed to her the perfect location though… it was like an X showing the place. It had always seemed a bit crooked to her anyway. She could get rid of it shortly with a truck… She’ll ask the boys later for that… maybe near the portal stones?
                  She left here digging under the crooked tree and started removing the stones of what she used to call the portal.

                  #1022
                  F LoveF Love
                  Participant

                    Arona put down her paintbrush and sighed loudly. She did not want to paint the walls of this damn cave. She wanted to find her friends.

                    She closed her eyes and listened to the silence. She listened until she felt the edges of her body disappear and begin to merge with the darkness. And still she listened.

                    At last she heard the voice.

                    It’s easy. Just move.

                    She felt the question start to form in her mind. As she asked it the edges of herself once again began to separate from the cave.

                    Shhhhhhhhhh she whispered, because she liked this feeling of being part of the All.

                    And without questioning, at least for now, she began to move.

                    #1014
                    TracyTracy
                    Participant

                      “Oh just leave the reader to do the proof reading, Yurick! If ‘there are no accidents’ then a few misspellings or a bit of mangled grammar might contain a clue for someone somewhere, somewhen….
                      it might be best to leave them in. You never know, you know… and anyway, I have this funny feeling that the pages aren’t quite as officially fixed as we might be inclined to think. Not quite cast in stone, as it were….Don’t ask me what I mean, Yurick,” Dory said with a laugh, “Because I can’t explain it.”

                      Yurick knew better than to ask Dory to explain anything, and remained silent, with one eyebrow raised quizzically as Dory rambled on.

                      “It’s like the branches of a tree,” Dory continued, with a faraway look in her eyes. “The branches on a tree look like such a tangle, but they are all connected to the trunk ~ the roots might look like a hopeless tangle too, if we could see them, but they do know what they’re doing ~ feeding the trunk or the core which sprouts out all over the place. There’s a bird in the tree, hopping from branch to branch. Does he care if he hops from one branch to another? No! Imagine if the bird was so rigid that he had to hop all along one branch from start to finish before changing to another branch.”

                      “Hahahah,” Yurick laughed, “A Sumafi bird?”

                      “You might say the little bird is the present moment, free to hop onto any branch at any time, or even fly to another tree…” continued Dory, who hadn’t heard Yurick.

                      “Another tree?” asked Yurick with a mock pained expression. “I have enough trees on my plate already.”

                      “And the thing is with trees, there isn’t really a place to start hopping or a place to stop hopping, from the birds perspective.”

                      Dory turned to Yurick with a grin. “It’s a book that you can read from any starting point. No beginning, and no end… maybe we can have all the pages loose with no numbers on, sort of a do-it-yourself assembly…”

                      Yurick laughed, a trifle nervously, and asked Dory if she would like a cup a coffee.

                      #1010

                      She was squatting on the sand beach, near the now calm ocean. The light was so dim that she barely could see the devastation, shards of coconut and palm trees spread on the shore, but the sound of the ocean was soothing.

                      Aaah she had hold that pee for too long.

                      “MAaaAVIS!” That suave authoritative voice must have been Sha’s.
                      “COooOMING!” Tsk. One can’t have a pee alone…

                      While she was readjusting her two pieces bath suit, ready to come back to the improvised discotheque, her attention was caught by something on the beach. A fire?
                      She squinted her little beady eyes to discard any of the hallucinatory visions that sometimes she had.

                      “MA-VIS!”
                      BLODDY COMIN’!” a hint of exasperation. “Mrs Sharon Stone, you ain’t the queen here” she thought. “I can go look for adventure meself, if I want to”.
                      Besides, the fire didn’t seem to be too far away.

                      :fleuron:

                      With the darkness that made very difficult their progress, Akita had made them stop near the shore, where they would see any trouble coming and had ordered the small troop to collect twigs and bits of wood to light a fire.
                      The parents were still in a bit of a shock, and were staying with a blank gaze, looking with an air of wildness at the soothing sound of the waves. Anita was playing nearby, drawing things in the sand, muttering words to herself.
                      That was a good thing that Claude was there. Unlike the others, he seemed quite strong, and the adventure didn’t seem to have left him short of resources.
                      He had been on the island before, and had said they had to avoid the constructions, which were all owned by the same people.
                      For all that mattered, Akita wanted to get to the authorities as soon as possible, but he had to compromise: they would settle close enough to have a check around and see if it would be safe to go there.

                      In a minute, Claude had been roaming through the woods and had gathered a pile of wood. That guy was pretty amazing, Akita was thinking. Odd that he had retained his supernatural strength… At least, Akita had imagined that the guy’s strength was the result of the spider exposure, but now he started to doubt it. He had been sketchy to say the least around the circumstances of his presence.
                      As far as he himself was concerned, Akita wished he had retained somewhere his connection to Kay, wherever his spirit dog was. What the creature had said? That veils were thicker, but not impermeable… Or something around that.

                      I think they’re still hanging around

                      What? What did you say? But Anita didn’t answer. Perhaps his tired mind was imagining things.

                      With all that rain soaked wood, it would be difficult to get anything but smoke.

                      I’ve got a lighter Claude handed him an expensive ziraf that flashed moon reflection in his eyes.

                      Let’s get started then.

                      :fleuron:

                      What now?

                      A roaring sound of a flying thing startled Mavis, passing over her head.

                      Mmm… this island’s getting too crowded, me think. Must be another of Vessie’s guests… That gal sure’s got how to use her sex-apple.”

                      #1006

                      Bea sighed loudly, and dragged a tissue across her sweaty face. Leonora obviously hadn’t heard her, so Bea sighed loudly again.

                      What’s up with you now? asked Leo, who wasn’t really paying attention to Bea’s incessant whining.

                      Oh I dunno, I just don’t know what I want to do, Bea grumbled. My head’s in a fog. I’ve got hundreds of ideas, but I don’t want to do any of them badly enough to even think about starting anything. So then I try to sort a few thing out, you know, so I can bloody find things again, and I just end up with a big pile of bloody miscellaneous. It’s the bane of my life, all the miscellaneous stuff that defies categorizing. I should have been called Miss A. Laneous. I start to sort things out and then I get sidetracked; I never finish any sorting out, I just end up with more and more miscellaneous….her voice trailed off miserably.

                      Leo swiveled round in the computer chair, took off her glasses and glared at Bea. Bea, you know you always find what you need by trusting that you’ll find what you need when you need to find it. You’ve told me that time and time again. You’ve droned on and on about that, how you love finding ‘just the thing’ and ‘by accident’ and now you’re sitting there moaning and groaning because for some inexplicable reason ~ Leonora rolled her eyes ~ you think that having things neatly ordered would be a better way.

                      Well, it would be nice to be able to find what I’m looking for, Leo, Bea retorted.

                      Well if you found what you were looking for right away, you silly cow, you wouldn’t find all those other magical bloody surprises by friggen accident, now would you?

                      There’s no need to be rude, Bea said sniffily.

                      Now it was Leo’s turn to sigh. Why don’t you bugger off outside and find something to appreciate, you grumpy old bat. “Oh! look at this, Bea!” Leo exclaimed, “Look what I just found by accident!”

                      Leo swiveled the computer screen round so that her friend could see.

                      Illi sat up and surveyed her surroundings. The sky was a deep azure blue, the sun was making twinkling stars on the waters of the lagoon, a warm gentle breeze rustled the coconut palm leaves, and birds sang and twittered in the foliage. It was indeed idyllic, and Illi decided to simply enjoy it, while her new ideas formed into a reality.

                      Illi was enjoying a new found freedom in her contentment, in not pushing her energy in frustration, and meandered happily around the island taking mental snapshots of a thousand delightful and marvelous wonders, appreciating even the smallest most insignificant things. Time lost all sense of meaning: there were deep velvet indigo skies full of sequins, and there were abstract multicoloured sunrises and sunsets; there were cottonwool clouds in cartoon shapes suspended on a canvas of blue. It mattered not the day or night; there was no longer a sense of time passing, just a glorious collage of appreciation and beauty.”

                      Bea read the excerpt reluctantly, and harumphed.

                      Oh for Gut’s sake, Bea! Leo was getting exasperated. Try appreciating miscellaneous floundering fog then.

                      #1004
                      TracyTracy
                      Participant

                        Becky was undecided. Add to the last entry? Or start another? Grinning wickedly, she started another.

                        Her second impulse selection was a slightly late coincidence, but a coincidence notwithstanding. It was about Sand Dragons . A Few days previously Becky had been to an auction. She bid for and won a first edition copy of Wisp magazine; it had cost her an arm and a leg, but she was delighted with her purchase. It would increase in value, and was a delight to read some of the first published articles of the many authors, poets, artists and photographers who would later become famous. The article about sand sculptures had reminded her of the T.R.A.P. day out.

                        Well, how about that! exclaimed Becky, reading the rest of the comment. Wish House is one of my most favourites, and I chose it by accident!

                        She read:

                        Illi used to play a game with Cranky (as she affectionately called nanny Chraddock) in the long months while her parents were away, called Wish House. Every room in the sprawling Elizabethan house was a different time and place, and the moment they entered the room they imagined themselves to be different people, in other times. Petunia Duster the maid loved to join in too; consequently not alot of housework got done, but with Gus and Flora always off travelling, nobody minded. Playing was, after all, so much more important than dust. In fact, a thick layer of dust made the rooms all the more mysterious and magical.”

                        Becky ran her finger along the dust on her desk and smiled.

                        OH! Becky jumped. I almost forgot to make a note of the number, now what was it? she mused, scratching her head. I think it was 171 :notepad:

                        Becky wondered whether or not to start another entry. Intuitively, she chose not to. Her third random choice was another synchronicity with the first edition of Wisp: it was about pyramids in Spain. The first edition of Wisp magazine was particularly valuable as it was the first mention in print of the discovery of the Iberian pyramid culture.

                        Number 835 she noted :notepad:

                        #998
                        ÉricÉric
                        Keymaster

                          “Okay,” Al started.
                          “At the essence of I Ching, is the notion that everything is mutable, and changes. Everything changes, except the law that says that everything changes.
                          “In many ways, the I Ching is like a book where the pages numbering change every time you start to read it. Not unlike our story composition.”

                          “I get that,” answered Tina, interested by what would come out.

                          “So,” Al continued, always disagreeably pondering, Tina would say. “usually, when people are drawing to read from the I Ching, they have six numbers that give an hexagram. And these numbers are carrying into them their potential change, which usually gives another hexagram to read.”
                          “In our stories, the entries have a fixed identity, which is given by the system; this is our starting point. For your comments, this is ’4-191-328’.
                          “But as everything evolves, our entries are given an order in the book; this order is changeable, and that’s what I will use for the second hexagram; in your case it’s ’2-151-223’.”
                          “If you say so…” Tina sighed, a bit lost.
                          “Oh, I’m inventing the rules as we speak,” Al said trying to reassure her somewhat.
                          “I don’t know if that makes me feel better” she said.

                          “Okay. Now, I need to create the hexagrams; hexagrams are defined by six straight or broken lines; zero or one, binary system. Here, Chinese usually use the convention that odd is straight, and even is broken… Ahaha, doesn’t seem to make sense, but odd is male, unbalanced into action, and is associated with single, straight things. Broken is paired, complete in reflection, unbalanced in passivity.”

                          “And I wonder when we actually start to hear something that makes sense?” whispered Tina, a bit crossly.

                          “Okay, the thing I see, is that I have trouble making one hexagram with seven numbers, ahaha”, Al laughed a bit embarrassed.

                          “Oh, then no point in wiggling like that” said Tina very sweetly, “Scrap any bit that bothers you”.

                          “Okay, anyway we can go deeper into them afterwards if needed; I’ll scrap the first number rather than the last, because you see, 2 and 4 are both even, and thus there is no mutation here.”

                          Original Mutation
                          8 ╌ 3 —
                          2 ╌ 2 ╌
                          3 — 2 ╌
                          1 — 1 —
                          9 — 5 —
                          1 — 1 —
                          4 ╌ 2 ╌

                          “So here we are, if we scrap the bottom one, we get…”

                          #989
                          ÉricÉric
                          Keymaster

                            Oh, he thought, at least Tina’s coming another 8 closer (then immediately thinking he was now changing it to another start of a cycle — another convenient way of saying he’d just blown this new magic occurrence of “858”, but wasn’t it how changes were supposed to be made?).

                            Now, what the cloud had in store for him, he wondered…

                            elikozoe sync closer especially dear ask soon suddenly began known difficult step”

                            OK, Al thought, now that’s interesting… this was no coincidence that “Elikozoe”, his nom de plume (he was born Albert (Al) Yokoso, from a father of Japanese descent and a mother of Cajun descent) would appear like that out of the blue…
                            As for “dear”, who else than “Dear” Tina :agreed:

                            #985

                            The door of the garage opened with a creaking sound, and Madame Chesterhope sped up into the gritty alley.
                            In that dimension where she had hidden her command base, people were a bit sloppy about roads and tarmac, so she had designed a little modification on her machines to be able to levitate in some of the less practical areas; but she had to admit,… she loved the vibrations and bumps that the motorbike created with the friction of the ground surface.
                            She started to giggle, all enthusiastic about the speed and the wind in her hair, that she ignored the road sign indicating that the road was flooded some miles ahead. The rain had been pouring cabbages all past hexades, so much so that her leather suit was in all honesty the best thing she could have worn, not to mention the fact of course, that it was making her totally sexy.
                            Two peasants were coming her way, looking at her with wild eyes like they had just seen something otherworldly. Ahahah she laughed, the fools would soon have forgotten everything about it (another handy and sly magical modification she nodded to herself). Looking in her rear mirror, she could still see them wiggle their hands in a frenzy… What the fl…!

                            :fleuron:

                            On the road, the two peasants wondered what in the name of Shaint Lejus was that rider… But worse, it was heading straight to the pool that the swollen river had made recently, outpouring on fields and little sniggly and thorny paths, like this one. Making desperate signs to be seen and warn it, they watched in horror the black podgy thing with flabby flapping schpurniatz arms sink straight to the bottom of the pool.

                            :fleuron:

                            The landing was a bit bumpy, but she found her balance quickly. Those transdimensional puddles were a bit rough to get accustomed to, but once you knew how to manipulate it, you couldn’t forget it.
                            Now, all she needed to got to the location she was heading to was to hop through a few more transdimensional puddles.
                            Actually, all sorts of puddles could do the job, water puddles, even oil puddles… or run-over poodle puddles for that matter. She preferred water ones, for the quality of water was very fluid, and allowed for easier defocusing. Lately she had tried transdimensional exhaust fumes clouddles, but that was a bit disorienting more than helping.
                            As far as she could tell, this first one had been projecting her to a dimension in between Earth and the Duane. Incorporating vibrational qualities of the two, with a little more rigidity though. The machine needed a little time to stabilize and get prepared for the next transdimensional jump.
                            As far as she could tell, she was in a place that was not unlike her birthplace, in the countryside of England. There were occasionally some giveaways that she still wasn’t quite there yet, like an erratic flying schpurniatz, but she was close now.
                            A few meters in front of her, she could see a lovely puddle that could do for the next jump. A bit small for her… well, motorbike, what were you thinking… but that would probably do it. She took another breath, then pushed the TDPP (Trans-Dimensional Puddle Propeller) button.

                            :fleuron:

                            Flof-flof-flof-flof…
                            Bugger, bugger…. What the bloody heck!

                            Straw was flying all over her hair, and obfuscating her vision… Darn last puddle had to much mud in it, and her concentration went off for a split second, heading her towards a field of barley.
                            Turning round and round for a moment in complete disorientation, she finally pushed the levitation button to take a little altitude.
                            Oh, now,… at least she could tell she was in England, because she knew that place.
                            How perfect! She could now just move into the dimension to the Pacific island. The GPS included in the modern expensive motorbike had been bipping as soon as it had found again the satellites, and it was now pointing the direction.
                            Giggling again, she pushed a new button and disappeared into the sky in a supersonic puff of smoke.

                            :fleuron:

                            a few days later, Chestershire, UK

                            AFP - 2008-07-21 - An new amazing design has been reported by eye-witnesses
                            on a crop of barley of a local farmer along with reports of strange booming sounds
                            and orbs of light. A sight to behold, the delicate intricacy of these interwoven
                            patterns is believed by many to be the work of the Crop-circle Makers, some
                            alien intelligence desiring to communicate with us. The theme of this crop-circle
                            is thought to be a variation on planet Venus cycles, and would be highlighting
                            the number of cycles lefts until the notorious end-date of Mayan calendar,
                            Dec. 21st 2012. Scientists have brushed off the allegations of elderly pranksters,
                            as this one seemed to have required levels of astronomical knowledge far beyond
                            human intelligence.
                            #983

                            Madame Chesterhope went to the garage, to get one of her preferred modes of transportation.
                            She had dressed for the occasion in black leather, shouting a spell in a hurry to the mirror which had been flippantly reflecting back at her some awfully podgy image. Voodoo mirrors weren’t the quality they used to be these days. Bloody buggers of Goblinkeas manufactors… She would have a word with them soon.

                            There it was. A shiny Farley Travinston motorbike.
                            With some magical modifications, of course, but it had retained overall form and purpose closely similar to the original design. How she loved those machines! She had started to gather them for centuries (in Earth way of counting time), and she could still remember her very first one, the wreck it was compared to this one
                            Of course, she had no use for them, but wasn’t that the point of decadent treasure piling up?

                            All geared up, she hopped on the seat, and started the trans-dimensional engine. Where was it already? Pacific island… That could sound like vacations she smiled to herself…

                            #973

                            It’s been now a few months Malvina had relocated the cave to a new place and she’d been starting to reunite with her sisters in unexpected ways.

                            But now, she was longing for something more. She wanted to find someone with whom to share more. To reflect the outpurring love.
                            Leormn was smiling as he reached for her inner dialogue. Ever since Georges and Salome had brought them to this new place, the dynamic had changed, and there were new adventures showing up.

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