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  • #3265

    “Yes, I could be able to plot a new course, without doubt, even with that tile missing” Belen said to one of the dolphins of the neighbourhood who had come for an update on the stranded ghost galleon.

    I was weeks of Simultaneous Time, and being stranded was particularly difficult for a Conscious Breather such as Belen, even if the ghost whale now didn’t really need to breathe, the force of habit was strong.

    Peter, his usual jovial self had said nothing, and had merely enjoyed some forays inland, looking for the tile and the conch, occasionally bringing news from the strange neighbours of the nearby village.

    In the end, Belen couldn’t really remember who was who in the strange tales he made of it, there were so many humans involved and truly, their earthly concerns weren’t relevant to hers, and there was only little they could do to help with the situation.

    The Harmonium Convergence was about to start, the crystalline aquatic organs would start to play the tunes for the new dreams of the new era to be sung.
    And yet, the so-called magical conch was still missing. Belen dreaded coming back ashamed to the Youngers without the ancient divination tool. Frankly, it was more of a permission slip, as her orca friend Batshatsassani called it. She would say to her that “every modality, every ritual, every tool, every technique is a permission slip that allows yourself to give you permission to be more of who you are.”
    She knew she didn’t need it really, but she liked the rituals of old, and to be honest was a bit fearful of not only revealing they were not that important, but more, introducing new ones… Would the whale and whole cetacean family be ready for such an end to the religious era?

    While she was struggling with the thoughts, she managed to guard them from the psychic prying of her dolphin friend, by misleading him on meanders of the endless memory halls that she was guardian of.

    Peter suddenly appeared with a popping sound. “I think I found the conch!” he exclaimed with glee in his eyes. “Yes, it’s Igor, you know Igor…”
    “What about Igor, darling, you know I lost complete track of all these landers strange names”
    “He’s the guy who stole the…” Peter stopped realizing this wasn’t really a question about Igor. “The conch, he brought it back with him!”

    Then to his and her own surprise, Belen replied
    “Forget about the conch, darling, I’m sorry I’ve led you to believe it was important, but it’s not, not really. It’s just a ordinary object to lead the philistines astray. It’s not more powerful than the whiffling of a shillelagh. The true treasure is always within ourselves.
    Gather the birds, and let us prepare to leave in the next hour, the Harmonium Convergence is about to start in 2222, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

    Baffled by the revelation, Peter knew enough to not contradict his whale partner, and went merrily with the new flow which seemed so full of excitement and potential new science revelations.

    Belen had a thought “Actually Peter my dear, any other conch we can find will do just as well. Just pick one on the beach before we leave. Dipping it in the Time stream will crystallize it just as well.”

    Peter replied excitedly “Whale that. Let’s spanghew that boat to 2222!”

    Just as a thought of love for the gift of such inner revelation, before she left the nice spot of the Spanish coast, Belen cleared her throat and :yahoo_sick: retched the most lovely green scented blob of ambergris on the beach, next to the spiral made of broken white shells that some drifters had drawn on the beach a few days ago.

    #3262

    After they’d jumped in the robot (which had shapeshifted into a sand buggy big enough for them), they had to cling tight to the railing of the light vehicle, as the robot was driving recklessly into a jungle of unexpected leaves and green vegetation tentacles.
    It wasn’t long before they were back on the gorgeously rugged Hawai’ian beach, taken on an unexpected dune racing along the coast.
    The queens looked exhilarated, but Sadie was a bit overwhelmed, especially after what the Techromancer had told her.

    The wetsuits fitting session passed in a blur, as the breathable elastic material was made to adapt to their bodies. Really, the only thing left to choose would have been color, but it was able to change itself at will, with very little shades it couldn’t replicate to perfection, even the Bollywood shine and twinkle that was all the craze in the 2019s.

    “But we’re in the 2222s now!”, Maurana had voiced her disapproval of her choice of glittery fashion. Little did Sadie care about it. Her mission seemed to stretch to sidetracks and unneeded distractions on her path to Great Happiness.

    All four of them clad in their fancy bathsuits and looking more like hippy frogs than sassy mermaids, they followed the robot on the miles-long deck that led to the horizon.

    After half an hour of walking on the narrow bridge, they were at a good distance from the coast and Terry started to pant and breathe heavily in her green sardine scales costume.
    “Stop! I got to catch my breathe, how long it’s going to be now? We were promised a soirée! Not a walk on the wild side!”

    The robot, rolled back a few steps, and turned briskly.
    “Actually, Sir, this is a perfect spot for your whale training”

    And before they realized, the robot had opened the deck under their feet, plunging all of them in the ocean screaming.

    Thanks to her excellent training and natural sharp reflexes, Sadie was the first to realize a few things.

    • They were all alive
    • They were able to breathe underwater
    • Their suit enabled them to talk and understand each other in what sounded like whale-speech.
    • A looming shape was quickly closing on them, looking dangerously like that of a giant toothy white shark.
    • Her mind was a mysterious thing.

    Why? Simply because the previous thought was coinciding with another one which was saying unequivocally that she still hadn’t found a proper dragqueen’s name for herself, and yet another one, even more funny than all others, saying in between bursts of infectious laughter that her last words could well be whale speech, and would make a hell of an epitaph.

    She floated for a time moment stretched into an eternity, weighing all the rippling probabilities and wondered what her next move would be, as she was in the void of creation, hovering under a vortex of thoughts, with a sea of twinkling stars beckoning her further down the ocean’s clear bottomless depths.

    #3259

    The early morning sea mist was evaporating as Fanella strolled around the village picking up dog shit. She reminded herself to fully appreciate the damp coolness, before the scorching summer sun enveloped them in a bone warming blanket, and then reminded herself to appreciate the bone warming effects of the full sun later. As she retraced her steps she noted how differently everything looked on a return journey, how piles of dog shit had escaped her notice while going one way, but were obvious on the way back. It reminded her of something she’d read recently in one of the books that Lisa insisted she read to improve her English ~ A Field Guide To Getting Lost . Hah! Had there been a cruel irony in that choice of book? Fanella had felt lost ever since she arrived in 2020. But according to the book, getting lost wasn’t a bad thing, not at all.

    To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.

    Fanella sighed. All sounds very philosophical, but I’m still stuck in the wrong time zone.
    Another passage from the book popped into her head:

    We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the desire between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.

    Fanella gazed up at the sky ~ the blue of longing was taking over, as the white wisps of clouds dispersed.

    The people thrown into other cultures go through something of the anguish of the butterfly, whose body must disintegrate and reform more than once in its life cycle…. how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly….No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

    Charming, Fanella thought, just bloody charming. Rotting soup of change, that just about sums it up. No wonder I wake up every morning with my bones feeling like mush.

    #3257

    “You look just like your father” was Lisa’s mother’s only remark when Lisa had thoughtfully sent her a couple of photos from Portugal. No compliment coming from her, thought Lisa, rolling her eyes. And it wasn’t even true ~ she looked nothing like her father, something else must have triggered her mothers comment, some other association.
    “Remember your new policy, dear, don’t take it personally” Mirabelle reminded her. “Just another cranky old crone stewing on an old trigger. Besides,” she added, “What about Frank and Molly? Can you get a more specific remote view? Stuck in a carob tree could be almost anywhere.”
    “You’re rather sweet for such a bossy tart” replied Lisa with a grateful smile. “Shush now then while I access their location.”
    Lisa closed her eyes and waited for the images to appear. There was an explosion of purple and a great deal of static before an image began to appear of carob pods on a car windscreen. As Lisa viewed the glass a strange thing began to happen and she started to focus on the reflections. There were dozens of people approaching, all wearing brilliant white robes trimmed with gold. The robes were short, and revealed a considerable amount of tanned muscled leg, and a murmur of appreciation escaped her lips. What handsome fellows, she thought, but there’s something odd about them. Either this is a fancy dress party on a dry dusty hill, or another time zone.

    #3256
    Jib
    Participant

      Linda Pol was struggling with the contracts formulation. Things had evolved almost too swiftly in the past —or should she say future, it could be confusing at times—, and now they had to rephrase a few paragraphs. Of course, the herd of lawyers were doing all that, but she had to check after them, she had to be sure they didn’t make a mistake.

      The e-zapper buzzed. First, Linda Pol dismissed it as she would have done with a fly of no importance. But you know how flies of no importance can really bother you when they keep buzzing around when you are trying to focus on something arduous. The fly kept buzzing until Linda Pol couldn’t stand it anymore. She looked at the name on the transparent screen and caught herself whining inwardly.

      It was her mother.

      She breathed deeply twice and prepared herself. All that took a lot less time that it took to write it. She answered with a deep male voice.

      “What do you want mum ?”

      “Your father and I…”
      Linda Pol shrieked silently. It wasn’t good when her mother began her conversation with those words. But she waited patiently.

      “… have been discussing about this book you told us to read. The Sands of the Species I think it was.”

      “Spices”, Linda Pol corrected automatically. And she winced about that. She could see her mother smile triumphantly. She had her son’s attention.

      “Well, that’s what I said.”
      No point arguing with that, Linda thought, _you know that’s what she’s looking for.

      “Anyway”, continued her mother after a pause, “your father and I have been discussing about who the grand-father really is. He thinks that it’s the main character’s mother after her operation and time travel, but I’m sure it’s his second grand son that was also his uncle and his niece.”

      Linda sighed, they already had that conversation before, and he struggled not to use that excuse with her mother, which would certainly start an argument, and he didn’t really had time for that with the new contracts. His mind noticed that it had started to rain. The drops rhythmically punctuating her mother’s sentences at the beginning, and then as the one way conversation went on, one drop per word. She always had a sense of rhythm, it was in her genes. Or that’s what people said anyway. Unfortunately, with his mother, that sense was mostly coupled with irritation and restraint.

      But the brain works in almost magical ways, and the rhythm of the drops associated with his assistant’s bum made him thought of something.

      “Mum”, she said when she could place a word, “I’m sending you a link that explains it all. Sweet dreams, I love you too.” She hanged up quickly. Don’t let her place one more word.

      The drag asked her e-zapper to find the link and send it to her mother. It’ll keep her mother busy for a moment, enough for Linda to finish her reading the contract. She realized that it made a lot more sense now.

      #3255

      By the time Lisa and Mirabelle arrived in Lisbon, it was too late. Frank and Molly were already heading south in a stolen car, the whale portal tile on the back seat, next to an assortment of other tiles of various colours and sizes. They were approaching a small town not far from the coast when Madam Li the navigation robot said turn left at your peril in Chinese. Frank hadn’t mastered the arts of intonation fully in his efforts to learn the language, and merely heard “turn left” and something else as incomprehensible to the ear as any other Portuguese town, and besides, the narrow goat track looked marvelously less traveled and enticing.

      #3254

      Ten meters in the aforementioned direction, after the light drizzle had stopped back to a wondrous sunny blue sky and slight freshening breeze, the robot was waiting for them.

      “Ms Merrie, I am your hosts’ robot, also at your service for the duration of your stay in 2222.”
      Maurana whispered not very subtly “and how are we supposed to call the tin can?” unaware of the sensitive remote hearing function of said tin can.
      “Monsieur can call me anything he likes, but my master usually calls me among many rude manners simply Varjis.”
      All three queens looked a bit offended
      “Did it call you Monsieur? How rude, your queen bikini was so fitting.”

      “As Ms Merrie mentioned, we will be late for the wetsuit fitting and the soirée on the coast, before our trip on the master’s submarine. If you would follow me.”

      #3253

      “Raining?! At this time of year?” cried Lisa in alarm. “I will have to rethink my packing now!”
      Using her telepathic skills, Lisa was pretty certain that Frank and Molly were in Lisbon ~ and that they had been the ones who had stolen the whale vomit tile. Packing her case quickly and booking a flight, she was almost ready to set off to track them down. She remote viewed them again before setting off, and spotted them on a bridge near the Belen Tower, slick with rain.
      “Mirabelle, grab an umbrella, and get in the car. A change of scenery will do you good. No arguments!”
      What a bossy cow, thought Mirabelle, and they call ME a bossy tart!

      #3249
      TracyTracy
      Participant

        “Tuna wars!” Jack said as the alarm clock bleeped. “Tuna wars?” asked Lisa, but got no response; Jack was still asleep.
        There had been an impromptu gathering the previous evening, various friends had unexpectedly called round, some bringing their holiday visitors with them and they had sat drinking beer and wine on the patio until well after midnight. Lisa started clearing away the ashtrays and bottles, noticing the racket the sparrows were making ~ they seemed unusually agitated this morning, darting between the overgrown foliage flapping and shrieking. When Lisa had finished clearing up the debris, she kept looking around, wondering what was missing or out of place. Something didn’t seem right. What was it, what was missing?
        The tile! That strange convoluted tile shaped rock that she’d found on the beach was gone!

        #3248
        TracyTracy
        Participant

          The dogs barking woke Lisa up; at first she assumed she had woken up disorientated and disgruntled because of that, but then she recalled all the screaming, no, more like bellowing, she’d been doing in her dream. Intense passionate bellowing howls, like an expulsion of pained frustrated energy, of outrage. Frustratingly, she recalled no details. There had been a similar dream the previous Easter when she was sick ~ the same kind of howls, and she had felt much better afterwards, but she wasn’t sick now ~ in fact, she had been feeling better than she had in a long time.
          Sipping her tea and still feeling cranky at being woken up, Lisa recalled the strange phone call she’d received the night before, and had a feeling it might be an element of her dream. One of her neighbours from just outside the village phoned, Clarissa. Clarissa was a young widow; since her elderly husband had died some months ago, and she had lived alone with her eight dogs. There had been nobody to ensure she took the medication she needed for her condition, which had resulted in a series of challenging episodes, alarming the locals. A few weeks ago, one of Juan’s sheep had been talking to her and wouldn’t stop, so she killed it in the lane outside her house. The sheep kept talking to her, so she cut it’s head off (a gruesome struggle by all accounts, although thankfully Lisa hadn’t witnessed it herself). The severed sheeps head continued to talk to the troubled Clarissa, so she kept the head on her verandah. That was the last thing that Lisa had heard when she received the unexpected phone call.
          Clarissa was polite and friendly on the phone, inviting Lisa and Jack over for drinks ~ insisting really with an edge of desperation in her voice. Lisa declined the invitition, and omitted to mention that Jack was out playing poker. If it had not been for the sheep incident, Lisa might have responded differently, but her sense of responsibility to her own animals made her cautious. Then, to her horror, Clarissa offered to come round and feed Lisa’s dogs.
          As soon as the long and insistent phone call ended, Lisa gathered all the dogs up into the gated top patio; a little later she was gratified to hear a noisy game of football going on in the street outside. Had she over reacted? Should she have had more compassion for the distressed young woman? Lisa lit another cigarette, feeling confused. She had only met Clarissa once, many years ago, and had no idea why she had called her, or where she got her phone number from. She knew of her because of the convoluted connecting links between them ~ Clarissa’s husband had been her own friends father. And she had heard about the various incidents since he had died from other neighbours.
          Lisa had the unsettling feeling that she had refused a call for help. On the other hand, she felt that she had responded to the call for help in merely speaking to Clarissa on the phone. Lisa had been kindly towards her, although not encouraging of any physical contact.
          Lisa sighed. She felt a stronger connection to Clarissa now, but was unsure what it would entail.

          #3243

          “We’ll think about this later” continued Lisa brightly to the troubled girls. “Today we’re going out, so let’s think about that instead and start getting ready. Ignore and avoid what doesn’t make sense at first, I always say, and hope that it makes sense later, that’s my motto. Chop chop!”
          “Where are we going Lisa? I think I’ll just stay here and go for a walk in the woods instead.” replied Fanella, starting to feel anxious.
          “Oh no you won’t my girl, you need to get out and integrate more. You’ll enjoy it, it’s a music festival in the mountains.”
          Fanella groaned inwardly.
          “Will there be lots of plastic?” asked Adeline hopefully.
          “I expect so, there usually is” said Lisa.

          #3242
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            “Well, there’s absolutely no sign of him now” said Lisa, trying to work out what had been happening. “Igor must have been here, because this unusual shell is here, which wasn’t here before. But Igor, it’s as if he vanished into thin air. Jack’s been outside the front and he didn’t see him, Boris has been round the back, and he didn’t see him ~ it seems that you three are the only ones that saw him!”

            ~~

            Igor woke up in his bunk below decks, rubbing his cheek. The slaps to his face had seemed so real that it had woken him up, with the word “Ebanashka!” ringing in his ears. He sighed as he thought of the three girls, and how rudely they always treated him, as if he was a stupid good for nothing. He felt under his blanket for the magic conch shell. It wasn’t there!

            #3236

            Belen quickly found out there was something amiss in the usual navigational patterns from her tile guidance system.

            Her initial plotted course to jump from Bay of Biscay 1757 to Hawai’i 2222 was almost whale calf’s play. Relying on the tiles beacons, it was easy for her to hone to an intermediate time, at the same location, from where it would be easier to navigate the ghost whaling boat. 2222 customs clearance was always a bother, as soon as human had started to time-travel, they had put unnecessary barriers around some key timezones such as this one.

            Her favourite stopover was on the other side of Galicia on the Mediterranean coast del Sol 2020, but then…

            Peetee Pois as Peter was affectionately called by Belen was the first to notice the sails of Барк Крузенштерн, the Krusenshtern swollen by the wind, seconds before they came crashing onto it, launching all the birds in a massive flock around the town that the tall ship had just left (coincidentally with Igor on board as one of the newest recruits of the Russian sail training ship).

            :fleuron:

            Lisa was still arguing with Adeline in broken Spanglish when they noticed the flock of birds at the horizon.
            — Something’s happening on the beach, Lisa snapped, quick let’s go have a look.

            #3234

            “You’re better off without him, really” Adeline said. “Igor would never have settled down with the likes of you, Mirabelle”
            “What do you mean, the likes of me?” Mirabelle responded, wiping her eyes and sniffing.
            “You’re far too bossy for a man like that” replied Adeline tartly, pulling no punches.
            “But he needed someone like me to keep him in line! He goes off the rails quicker than a greased mermaid, always looking for trouble!”
            “Well, it’s too late now, he’s gone, and if trouble is what he’s after, then trouble he’ll find. Now, blow your nose and stop sniveling. Come on,” Adeline gave Mirabelle a quick hug. “It’s time for your driving lesson.”
            Mirabelle cheered up at that, she was enjoying the driving lessons. It was something she could excel at without worrying too much about languages and attempting to communicate vague rambling thoughts.

            #3231

            “I’m looking for crew” the stranger said with a thick Russian accent as he bought all the men in the bar a beer, “No experience necessary! I need strong young men to help me sail to the Big Island.”
            Igor had no idea where the Big Island was, or indeed how to sail a boat, but he felt a strong overwhelming urge to accept the strangers offer. “Count me in!” he exclaimed in Russian. What a relief it would be to speak in his native tongue. Russia seemed so very far away, both in distance and in time. There was something timely about this mans unexpected appearance in the village bar, something fortuitous. Igor felt it, but couldn’t explain it. All he knew was that he was destined to sail away with this stranger.
            In truth, Mirabelle hardly crossed his mind. Leaving her would not worry him, although telling her he was leaving worried him a great deal.
            “We leave now” explained the stranger, much to Igor’s relief. “No time to lose, the winds are favourable tonight. Let’s go!”
            And with that, Igor left the village, without looking back.

            #3229

            It was said long ago that the role of the parrot is that of opening communication centers. When this totem appears, one should look to see if one needs assistance in understanding views that are different from one’s own.
            Huhu didn’t care about any of these human assigned meanings to its existence.

            When the grip of Irina’s mind over Huhu the parrot was suddenly released, it found itself out of sight of the floating balloon and struggled to glide over the oceans’ air currents without losing too much altitude as well as precious degrees.

            The air was cold and the ocean had no end in sight, and if a parrot knew despair, Huhu would have succumbed to it already. But it was a brave parrot, as though inhabited by some divine spark, and it continued bravely, only guided by his senses.

            When it was about to faint from exhaustion, and dive dangerously close to the sea, was the precise moment when it noticed fumes swirling around in strange vortices erupting from the sea.
            A strange boat appeared at the surface with a shining light.

            Little did Huhu know, but it was the ghost galleon Santa Rosa which had a special thing for birds in distress, and would appear at times of need, a haven of luxuriant foliage and birds cackle, a benediction of safety in the turmoil of the seas.

            Nobody knew clearly when the galleon sunk, one of the last of his kinds in the Old Continent, probably around the early 1111s, but one thing was sure, it was a ghost ship long before Huhu was born and brought to Versailles in 1757.

            A ghostly form picked his soft body from the ground, delicately removing the key entangled on its foot, then placed the bird with great care on a bed of moss.

            We can go now Belen said the man to the whale captain of the ghost ship.
            Whale that! came the answer.

            #3228

            The techromancer was living in a techut, with a teak deck.
            The secretary at the entrance, all clad in white, arose from the surface of her glamour egazine and eyed the four of them with a reproachful eyebrow.
            “Do you have an appointment?”

            Tricky question Sadie thought It may well be the Universe testing my resolve.

            “Of course we do” she said, removing her shades with a deft hand, and the most convincing impersonation of a rich obnoxious elite member she could enact.
            “Don’t you know who I am?”

            The secretary looked a bit puzzled, but before she could answer, Sadie continued
            “Is the big guy here?”
            She pressed inside, leaving the drags a bit surprised for a second behind her, who after a look at each others, followed on her trail toot suite.

            Well, that wasn’t difficult.

            After a series of cumbersome curtains which looked heavy, mouldy and slightly alive, she thought she’d arrived at the final room, but the last curtain opened to the back of the techut, in the garden from which they had entered.

            Mmm, this one has some tricks, but nothing that cannot be ezapsolved

            She placed the ezapper on living signal locate mode, and found that she may have made a wrong curturn.
            She almost bumped into the silently curious drag queens, and arrived in front of the room.
            She signaled her friends in tow to wait for their turns outside.

            A guy in a hood with dreadlocks covering his face and strange lighting coming from his belt was sitting there in a meditation posture, surrounded by big glowing crystals which looked a tad fake.

            #3224

            “What? You think I’m shallow? That I spend too much time on my appearance?”
            Terry Bubble paused a bit then said “Well, maybe a bit, of course yes! I guess that’s what being a drag queen means. You take care of yourself. You enjoy playing with your appearance. You can’t be amateurish about it, it’s about creating an illusion, it’s about making people believe for a moment,…” then he added pensively “and maybe yourself a little”.

            “If you ask me, big beautiful chocolate Maurana Banana, what others think about you is none of your damn nosy business.”

            The three of them crammed at the back of a tiny flying tuk-tuk with their glowing perspiration under the sunscreen and layers of makeup, attempting to keep the appearances up for as long as they could was extremely entertaining.

            “Get ready! We arrive at the drop-off in a minute!” Sadie shouted. At the front of the hovercraft, she was carefully guiding the driver through the jungle thanks to the energy map on the ezapper.

            #3223

            A long deck was stretching and unfolding from the shore into the ocean, passing above the shallow plateau of sand bathed in aquamarine waters, and the coral reef.
            After stretching for about five miles and six feet, it was seemingly above open waters where schools of colourful fishes and placid turtles where swimming blissfully.

            The submarine broke the surface of the waters on the evening of January 18th, at precisely 17:56 HST, Hawaii local time, a handful of seconds too early (or a minute too late) for fetching a prized synchronicity.

            Jonbert soon realized that, as usual, it could only mean one thing: others were late, synchronistic timing notwithstanding.
            Of course, other being late meant timing couldn’t be synchrone, and all figures couldn’t align properly.
            The first mate robot reported back to him on the top deck where he was sipping his scotch and enjoying the late sun after months spent underwater.

            — “Dear sir…”
            — “Oh forget about the blasted dear, I’m nothing dear to you, you ingrate piece of rubbish”
            — “Of course sir. If I may”
            — “Blurt it out, goddammit! Where are they?”
            — “Their signal doesn’t register at the resort we have booked for them.”
            — “What?! And where is it now?”
            — “The ezapper have been geolocalized at 5.56 miles inland, sir”

            That darned missed synch again

            — “Then, bloody go fetch them!”

            #3222

            With years of intense Happiness training, and being herself a certified Happiness Coach™ in Rainbow Unified Bliss®, Sadie knew when to notice she was stuck and, even better, what to do about it.
            Techniques varied: some focusing on breathing, others on following impulse and all that, but most of them had in common that rabid thoughts had to be put to sleep, and the focus had to be kept on the immediate now.
            The beauty of the Hawaii island was easy on the eyes, although she could still find objections lurking in the corner of her mind that the beaches were scarce on this island, with many shores a blistering hot pan of molten lava rocks ceaselessly beaten by the waves.
            Then the sound of her companions came rousing some disturbance in her Rainbow thoughts, as she found out was mostly an annoyance with herself and her hair, the neat bowl cut starting to look a bit rugged on the edges.

            Again, the rabid thoughts were back. She had to go deeper, cling to a joyful experience, that pure moment of satisfaction. But the flow and inpouring of love stopped again like a sea anemone retracting at the light touch of a clown fish.

            She restrained the thought of loudly using the F word, and as well refrained herself from the desire to delete everything.
            She noticed a few tadpoles which weren’t here before, slithering in a little pool of water next to the spot where she was. She’d almost forgotten about the singing frogs. That such little creature could do so marvelous feats of logistics rekindled her spirits.
            What if she could just harness a little bit of her own energy. She started to list the things she was good at, besides haircuts.

            “I’m fucking good at limitations, and following other’s expectations” was what she came up with after some minutes listing some things without much conviction.
            “Bugger Linda Paul, and those ninc…” There it is she noticed again the thought.
            That’s what it’s about…

            You have to be nice and be quiet, Sadeline, the voice of her mean Breton grand-mother was saying. To which her equally loathable aunts would chime in religious rubbish of being nice and saintly and all.
            You have to be nice and be quiet, Sadeline, or go out of my way and die alone.
            She’d tried to exorcise the old goat, to rid of her, to appease her, to connect to the better version of herself that she is now since her transition. Well, nothing worked. She couldn’t find the angle. The old woman was still to her core a haunting and menacing presence with her mean irate insensitive lack of professed love.
            Maybe they’d developed better techniques in 2222, she suddenly thought. Of course…
            And then, Linda Paul wouldn’t have to know.

            “Girls?” she said in a sweet imperative voice (and slightly raucous, for the air was dry) “what do you think about having ourselves pay a visit to the local techromancer, I’ve seen the signs everywhere on the way to the beach. It’ll be a fun stop on our mission”.

            The three divas moaned under the sun, not specially enthusiastic at the effort, but then, Cedric, still himself haunted by the Russian’s vision managed to convince the others that some romance or exorcism or both, would do them great.

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