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  • #4796
    F LoveF Love
    Participant

      “Get that maid and her tarts out of here,” said Finnley. She flung her suitcase at the ground. “And I don’t care what she calls them; do you know how many calories there are in one of those things?”
      “I could look it up?” suggested Godfrey, delicately wiping a blob of cream from his moustache.
      “Finnley, you can’t just come and go as you please and then start throwing luggage around,” said Liz.
      It was then that Finnley struck her winning blow.
      “You both look so well,” she said with a smile sweeter than the chocolate eclair. “Have you put on a bit of weight perhaps, Madame? Around the middle?”

      #4791

      Once he’d finished to tell the story, and let the kids go back to the cottage for the night, Rukshan’s likeness started to vanish from the place, and his consciousness slowly returned to the place where his actual body was before projecting.

      Being closer to the Sacred Forest enhanced his capacities, and where before he could just do sneak peeks through minutes of remote viewing, he could now somehow project a full body illusion to his friends. He’d been surprised that Fox didn’t seem to notice at all that he wasn’t truly there. His senses were probably too distracted by the smells of food and chickens.

      He’d wanted to check on his friends, and make sure they were alright, but it seemed his path ahead was his own. He realized that the finishing of the loo was not his own path, and there was no point for him to wait for the return of the carpenter. That work was in more capable hands with Glynis and her magic.

      His stomach made an indiscreet rumbling noise. It was not like him to be worried about food, but he’d gone for hours without much to eat. He looked at his sheepskin, and the milk in it had finally curdled. He took a sip of the whey, and found it refreshing. There wouldn’t be goats to milk in this part of the Forest, as they favored the sharp cliffs of the opposite site. This and a collection of dried roots would have to do until… the other side.

      To find the entrance wasn’t too difficult, once you understood the directions offered by the old map he’d recovered.

      He was on the inner side of the ringed protective enclosures, so now, all he needed was to get into the inner sanctum of the Heartwood Forest, who would surely resist and block his path in different ways.

      “The Forest is a mandala of your true nature…”

      He turned around. Surprised to see Kumihimo there.

      “Don’t look surprised Fae, you’re not the only one who knows these parlor tricks.” She giggled like a young girl.

      “of my nature?” Rukshan asked.

      “Oh well, of yours, and anybody’s for that matter. It’s all One you, see. The way you see it, it represents yourself. But it would be true for anybody, there aren’t any differences really, only in the one who sees.”

      She reappeared behind his back, making him turn around. “So tell me,” she said “what do you see here?”

      “It’s where the oldest and strongest trees have hardened, it’s like a fence, and a… a memory?”

      “Interesting.” She said “What you say is true, it’s memory, but it’s not dead like you seem to imply. It’s hardened, but very much alive. Like stone is alive. The Giants understood that. And what are you looking for?”

      “An entrance, I guess. A weak spot, a crack, a wedge?”

      “And why would you need that? What if the heart was the staircase itself? What if in was out and down was up?”

      Rukshan had barely time to mouth “thank you” while the likeness of the Braid Seer floated away. She’d helped him figure out the entrance. He touched one of the ring of the hard charred trees. They were pressed together, all clomped in a dense and large enclosure virtually impossible to penetrate. His other memories told him the way was inside, but his old memories were misleading.
      Branches were extending from the trunks, some high and inaccessible, hiding the vision of the starry sky, some low, nearly indistinguishable from old gnarled roots. If you looked closely, you could see the branches whirring around like… Archimedes Screw. A staircase?

      He jumped on a branch at his level, which barely registered his weight. The branch was dense and very slick, polished by the weathering of the elements, with the feel of an old leather. He almost lost his balance and scrapped his hands between the thumb and the index.

      “Down is up?”

      He spun around the branch, his legs wrapped around the branch. He expected his backpack to drag him towards the floor, but strangely, even if from his upside-down perspective, it was floating above him, it was as if it was weightless.

      He decided to take a chance. Slowly, he hoisted himself towards his floating bag, and instead of falling, it was as though the branch was his ground. Now instead of a spiral staircase around the trees leading to heavens, it was the other side of the staircase that spiraled downwards to the starry night.

      With his sheepskin and back still hovering, he started to climb down the branches towards the Giants’ land.

      #4788
      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        “Tikfijikoo? I’ve never heard of an island called Tikfijikoo…” Shawn-Paul said once they were seated in the airplane.

        “Really?” Maeve was surprised. “My childhood was full of stories that happened in that island.”
        She was distracted though. She was sure she’d seen the man in black follow them through the customs and sneak into the plane. She had a doubt though, how could he have followed, the planed seemed so completely packed, she even wondered how Fergus had managed to get them tickets during what was surely peak season.

        It’s probably all in your mind… she said to herself.

        “What did you say?” Shawn-Paul inquired, fingers full of salt and a grin on his face after a violent struggle with the little bag of roasted pistachios the attendant had given him.

        “I said, you better rest. The trip is long, and you won’t sleep much in the next plane to the island. It’s not going to be a big and comfy plane, I can tell you.”

        #4786

        Shawn-Paul was quizzing Maeve who remained silent as a dignified statue of old, full of inscrutable enigma.

        “Come on Maeve, you know you can trust me. These secrets are killing me! It’s not like I’m going to write them immediately in my book you know. Believe me I’d like to, but I’m probably going to procrastinate anyway, so telling me is like going to a priest, your Uncle’s secrets are going to be safe.”

        She chuckled against her will. There was something endearing in the awkwardness of Shawn-Paul, and if anything he’d been a complete gentleman throughout their stay in the shabby Inn.

        She didn’t trust the paper-thin walls however. And especially after the incident where they all blacked out, she wasn’t sure whom to trust. Some of the guests had disappeared too. Highly suspicious.

        She’d decided to pack early. She’d found out later after the accident that her Uncle had managed to slip 2 new coupons for their next destination. One extra, in case she wanted to bring someone in.

        Two tickets, each one way to Tikfijikoo. Most probably the way to a second doll and its key.

        She wondered why it was at all important, she knew all the dolls and what they looked like. She’d made them!

        She realized, looking back at the doll she’d managed to steal back from Lucinda, that this particular doll… was not at all imaginary! She had in fact been standing right in front of her all along these past days before leaving off to the mines and disappearing with Mr Sanso: It was a spitting likeness of Ms Idle, the dry drunk hostess of the Inn!

        It seems… It was folly to imagine, but… Did she have the power to activate these dolls she’d made, and somehow materialize them?!

        She had to be sure.

        “Pack your bags, SP, and meet me in the lobby in ten minutes. The cab is picking us up to our next destination. Maybe you’ll get your novel done after all”, she added, with a wink.

        #4780

        “B’s in trouble!” Gloria cried out, waking up the two other snoring ladies who almost fell from their rocking chairs.
        “Whatcha sayin’ my Glor’?” Sharon was the first to react once she put her hand on her teeth.
        “Sayin’ that our B’s in trouble!”
        “Can’t let that be, cannit?” Sharon retorted “But where daya think you got your intel’ love, ain’t our B dead last year?”
        “Sure thing but I got up one my brainwaves, t’was vivid as day, like when I got my cataract all strung up and the good doctors lazered my eyes aye. She was stuck in a big ruby!”
        “Ahaha, that’s got to be a big ruby fossur’, remember ‘ow big our B was!”
        “Oh shush Shar’, lemme thing alright. Think it all links back to our beauty treatments I’m sure, hasn’t anybody answered our advert’?” Gloria asked Mavis
        “Oh bleedin’ hell no, I forgot to check, lemme get my spectacles, dear!” Mavis answered.

        THERE, THERE!” Mavis jumped at the article. “A time and location for a rendez-vous.” she said suggestively. “When do we sneak out?”

        “Tonight, tonight alright, all my store of Stillnox is already in the water supply, everybody’s going to snore in no time.”

        “Glor’, I think we’ll have a problem.” Sharon said plaintively. “I drank plenty of the ol’ water supply alright too, the doctor said I needed to drink plenty with my lady problems and all.”

        #4777
        prUneprUne
        Participant

          That was a first. I had no idea what just happened. And believe me, this girl has seen some serious hanky-panky going ‘round here. Starting with Aunt Idle and her hustling and lascivious seducing of the Middle Eastern pirate cosplayer we had as guest.
          But of course, that was nothing compared to how glamorous Mater looked in her red gabardine.
          Anyway, something odd happened, like everyone was zapped in a torpor after the Fergus guy arrived. We were all expecting a sort of big reveal, and he did drop some incoherent clues, nothing truly worth the wait sorry to say, so we all went upstairs to sleep.

          Blame it on the spiced lizard meat maybe, but I can’t figure what happened after that until I woke up. Everyone this morning was playing it by ear, as if everything was normal. But people are missing. Fergus and his motorbike, and the scarf girl with the young boy and their cat. Maybe others, I’ve lost count, and I’m done putting sticky notes for Idle (funny she insists being called that by the way… Maybe a side-effect of her medications).

          There was an Italian corvette parked outside, all black & white. It arrived during the night, it woke me up when it arrived, but I went back to sleep I think. I wonder if those are new tourist guests. The Canadian guests were a bit in alarm, especially after the Fergus reveals.

          Mater would tell me, “there is no cause for worry dear, mark my words, in an hour or less, it will all settle back down to the usual deadly boring as usual business.”

          I think that planned family time was a bit too much anyway. Or too little. Devan hardly spent an hour with us, he’s too obsessed with his lost treasure conspiracies. He’ll be doing great with Dodo and her friends from the journal. I think they all enlisted Bert for a trip to the mines by the way. For all the good it’ll do everyone to try to unearth old secrets. Might give Mater a serious heart attack, for real this time.

          As for me, I’ve had enough. I’m packing my bags and leaving with the first bus back to the Academy. There’s a mission to Mars to conquer.

          #4766
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            There had been no communications from either Connie or Hilda for some time. Ricardo went down the usual route of worrying that something had happened to them, and then it occurred to him to try out the remote viewing he’d been practicing. It was too easy to rely solely on technological means, he reminded himself, AI (short for Abnormal Intrusions) or no AI.

            Ricardo found himself in a moonlit sweeping landscape, with some dark indeterminate built structure shapes. Oh, very helpful, he snorted, and then reminded himself to simply observe. Then he saw the woman, dressed in gauzy floating white, and found himself sneering at how corny the image was, like a new age art poster woman, beautiful and ethereal in a moonlit scene.

            Stranger still was the next thought to waft through his wandering mind. Maybe he inserted that corny woman to distract any remote viewing spies, and throw them off the scent? Suddenly there was a crash behind him. Another picture had fallen off the wall, he assumed. But nothing was out of place. He looked again, sure that something had fallen to the floor to make such a noise. But there was nothing to see. He shrugged.

            Later, he wondered: what had made that noise?

            #4761

            Barbara’s office was dead silent apart from the regular bips of the machines. The whiteness of the painted walls made it feel like a psych ward. She shivered away the memories that were trying to catch her attention.

            It’s been two hours since the Doctor had locked himself up in his rage-release room, a spacious soundproofed room with padded walls. Not even a small window to look inside and check if his anger had subsided. Barbara clearly preferred the trauma of the shouts and cries and the broken plates that were hidden here and there for him to use when he needed most. But when he started his therapy with the AI psych module, the damn bot suggested he built that room in order to release his rage in a more intimate framework.
            Now the plates collected dust and the sessions in the room tended to last longer and longer.

            Today’s burst of rage had been triggered by the unexpected gathering of the guests at the Inn. The Doctor was drinking his columbian cocoa, a blend of melted dark chocolate with cheddar cheese, when the old hag in that bloody gabardine started her speech. The camera hidden in the eye of the fish by their agent, gave them a fisheye view of the room. It was very practical and they could see everything. The AI engineer module could recreate a 3D view of the room and anticipate the moves of all the attendees.

            When that girl with the fishnet handed out the keys for all to see and the other girl got the doll out, the Doctor had his attention hyper-focused. He wanted to see it all.
            Except there had been a glitch and images of granola cookies superimposed on the items.

            “Send the magpies to retrieve the items,” he said, nervousness making his voice louder.
            “Ahem,” had answered Barbara.
            “What?” The Doctor turned towards her. His eye twitched when he expected the worst, and it had been twitching fast.
            She had been trying to hide the fact that the magpies had been distracted lately, as she had clearly been herself since she had found that goldminer game on facebush.
            No need to delay the inevitable, she had thought. “The magpies are not in the immediate vicinity of the Inn.” In fact, just as their imprinting mother was busy digging digital gold during her work time, the magpies had found a new vein of gold while going to the Inn and Barbara had thought it could be a nice addition to her meager salary… to make ends meet at the end of the month.

            It obviously wasn’t the right time to do so. And she was worried about the Doctor now.

            To trump her anxiety, she was surfing the internet. Too guilty to play the gold miner, she was looking around for solutions to her boss’s stress. The variety and abundance of advertisement was deafening her eyes, and somewhere in a gold mine she was sure the magpies were going berserk too. She had to find a solution quickly.

            Barbara hesitated to ask the AI. But there were obviously too many solutions to choose from. Her phone buzzed. It was her mother.
            “I finally found the white jade masks. Bought one for you 2. It helps chase the mental stress away. You clearly need it.” Her mother had joined a picture of her wearing the mask on top of a beauty mask which gave her the look of a mummy. Her mother was too much into the woowoo stuffs and Barbara was about to send her a polite but firm no she didn’t want the mask. But the door of the rage-room opened and the Doctor went out. He had such a blissful look on his face. It was unnatural. Barbara had been suspecting the AI to brainwash the Doctor with subliminal messages during those therapy sessions. Maybe it also happened in the rage-room. The AI was using tech to control the Doctor. Barbara would use some other means to win him back.

            OK. SEND IT TO ME QUICK. she sent to her mother.

            #4760

            Aunt Idle:

            The old ruse was still working, so I continued to use it. Only way to get a bit of time to myself, especially lately. A bit of quiet time, to think. And there was so much to think about, what with all these people around. I wasn’t put on this earth to make beds and pander to tourists, and the clues were coming in thick and fast. Oh yes, some of these new guests were thick, and some were fast. Anyway, I pretended to be inebriated again and did a pretty good imitation of a lurching drunk to throw them off the scent. They always fall for it.

            After turning the key in the lock of my bedroom door, I leaned my back against it for a minute and closed my eyes. It was the bird flying in the window at the crack of dawn that got me worried. Now I’m not a superstitious person by any means, but there have been times when a bird in the house has been followed by a death, and things like that stick in your mind. The sight of Mater in that red pantsuit had etched itself on my mind as well, which was almost as worrying as the bird.

            I went over to the window and pulled down the blinds. The bright sun was making my head hurt. I was thirsty, and wished I’d brought a cup of tea with me, but lurching drunks can’t be seen to be making plans for a quiet afternoon of sober contemplation. I tried valiantly to ignore my parched mouth, but it was no good. I put my ear to the door, and the coast seemed clear so I inched it open, looking up and down the hallway. I sprinted to the bathroom, unfortunately tripping over the vacuum cleaner that Finley had no doubt left there deliberately to trip me up. She was a dark horse, that one. Good at dusting, and reliable, so I suppose that was something. Hard to get hired help out here so we had no choice, really.

            I smashed my nose on Mater’s doorknob and skinned my shin on the hoover. My nose hurt like hell, and quickly spurted an astonishing quantity of bright blood, similar in colour to that ghastly pantsuit. My fall made a hell of a din so I staggered quickly to the bathroom wash basin for the much needed drink of water before anyone came to investigate the crash, hoping to get back to my room before anyone appeared on the scene.

            Had the water in the cold tap been cold, it might have been different, but the new water pipes were still above ground, and the cold water was scalding hot from the heat of the sun on the black pipes. I didn’t have a moment to waste, so drank some quickly, horrid though it was. The unfortunate side effect of the cold water being hot was that it encouraged and diluted the blood, making the overall effect look considerably more alarming. I was tempted to blame Mater for the whole sorry affair, for starting the red theme with that damn pantsuit. I actually said “bloody pantsuit”, which struck me as inordinately funny, and made it hard to get back to the bedroom quickly. I was still laughing hysterically, leaving red hand prints and strange red markings along the corridor wall, when Sanso appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

            “I saw cave paintings like that in Zimbabwe,” he said conversationally, taking a closer look at the bloody hand prints. “I’ve often wondered what the purpose was, the meaning.” He raised an eyebrow and smiled at me. “Have you interpreted these?”

            I was momentarily speechless, as you might imagine. Then I had an impulse, and grabbed his elbow and propelled him into my room, slamming and locking the door behind him. He was almost unnaturally calm and unperturbed, albeit looking as if he was trying not to smile too broadly, which was just the kind of energy I needed. My kind of man! I gave him one of my famous coquettish looks, which made him laugh out loud, and then I caught sight of myself in the wardrobe mirror and hastily grabbed an old nightgown off the floor and spit on it to rub the blood off my face.

            “My kind of girl!” he laughed. Oh, how he laughed.

            #4759

            While she was posing for Maeve’s sketches this first afternoon before the Landlady’s theatrical entrance, Arona had felt her usual distrust towards strangers melt.

            Her magical senses told her she could trust this girl. Maeve herself seemed still a bit on the fence, as though she was guarding a heavy secret, but she seemed to have moments of unexplained boldness and was not shy to engage either.

            Without thinking twice, Arona had drawn her key out, and produced it in front of Maeve’s almond shaped eyes.

            “Something tells me this is familiar to you; me and my friends are looking for what it is locking away.”

            Maeve initial reaction was shocked and her composure seemed to be shaken for a moment.

            “Mandrake, be nice to Maeve!” Arona called, as the cat had jumped on Mave’s lap and was starting to pur.

            “Don’t worry, I’m going to relax this precious moppet.” he replied back in purring meows only Arona could understand. “I heard that’s what cats do in this dimension when they don’t sleep.”

            Maeve replied “Don’t worry, I quite like animals, he seems well behaved too. And he’s so cute with his tiny boots.”

            Only momentarily distracted, and mildly relaxed by the cat’s purring, Maeve asked “how did you come by this key? It was not supposed to be found. I don’t know what it’s supposed to open, I suspect it was a fail-safe for my uncle, and I hid them in my dolls for safe-keeping.”

            “Them?” Arona asked, rather as a validation to herself.
            “As you suspected. There are more.” purred the cat harder.

            Maeve leaned in close, almost dropping her sketchbook’s coloured pencils on the floor, “I think some bad people are after it. I suspect that my Uncle sent me those tickets to Australia so I could retrieve this one before the bad people arrive to snatch it.”

            She jumped a little, realizing too late. “Wait? You don’t seem to be one of them… But what about all these other guests?”

            #4757

            The loud throbbing of a Harley Davidson interrupted the unexpected revelation moment.
            A few seconds later, the door banged open and a man with a long moustache, thick eyebrows and a rather bushy hair entered the Inn.

            “Fergus?” said Mater, frowning.
            “Uncle Fergus?” said Maeve.
            “You old bastard!” said Bert.

            Devan didn’t know the name of the man, but he did manage to infuse his wide open mouth with an interrogation.

            “Who’s Fergus?” asked Dodo, who didn’t want to be left behind.

            The fact that Mater was the first person to pronounce the name of the man didn’t escape Prune’s shrewd mind.
            “How do you know him?” she asked Mater who blushed and used another puff of dust to cough and avoid the question.

            But one surprised all the others, even Fergus.
            “My long lost brother!” said Sanso. He moved forward and hugged the newly arrived man. Truth be told, there was some ressemblance between the two of them.

            Mandrake was looking at Ugo who seemed rather focused on the scene. Something was off, he could feel it. He should warn Arona, but the darn lizard never left her side, or her hair. It was pretty annoying since she would not brush his fur very often now, and he certainly needed some refreshing with all the knots caused by the dryness of the climate.

            #4747

            In reply to: The Stories So Near

            ÉricÉric
            Keymaster

              WHERE ARE THEY ALL NOW ? 🗻

              a.k.a. the map thread, and because everything happens now anyway.

              POP-IN THREAD (Maeve, Lucinda, Shawn-Paul, Jerk, [Granola])

              🌀 [map link] – KELOWNA, B.C., CANADA

              It looks like our group of friends live in Canada, Kelowna.

              Kelowna is a city on Okanagan Lake in the Okanagan Valley in the southern interior of British Columbia, Canada. The name Kelowna derives from an Okanagan language term for “grizzly bear”. The city’s motto: “Fruitful in Unity”

              Interestingly, Leörmn the dragon from the Doline may have visited from time to time : Ogopogo / Oggie / Naitaka

              FLYING FISH INN THREAD (Mater/Finly, Idle/Coriander/Clove, Devan, Prune, [Tiku])

              Though very off the beaten track, the Flying Fish Inn may be located near a location that was a clue left as a prank by Corrie & Clove on the social media to lure conspiracy theorists to the Inn.
              🔑 ///digger.unusually.playfully

              It seems to link to a place near documented old abandoned mines.

              🌀 [map link]  – SOME PLACE IN THE MIDDLE OF AUSTRALIA, OFF ARLTUNGA ROAD

              • Tiku, the local bush lady is living around the place.
              • The local shaman who rented the Jeep to Arona & her friends was nearby Uluru ‘s closest airport (Ayer’s Rock, Yulara). 🌀 [map link] : AYER’S ROCK, ULURU

              DOLINE THREAD (Arona, Sanso/Lottie, Ugo, Albie)

              This one is a tricky geographical conundrum, since the Doline is a multi-dimensional hub. It connects multiple realities and places though bodies of water, with the cave structure (the Doline) at its center, a world on its own right, where talking animals and unusual creatures are not uncommon.

              It has shown to connect places in the Bayou in Louisiana, where Albie & Mandrake went to see the witch, as well as the coastal area of Australia, where they emerged next in their search for Arona.

              At the center of the Doline is a mysterious dragon named Leörmn, purveyor of precious traveling pearls and impossible riddles. We thus may infer possible intersection points in our dimension, such as 🔑 ///mysterious.dragon.riddle a little North of Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

              However, the inside of the Doline would look rather like Phong Nha-Ke Bang gigantic cave in Vietnam.

              NEWSREEL THREAD (Ms Bossy, Hilda/Connie, Sophie, Ricardo)

              It is not very clear where our favourite investigative team is located. They are likely to be near an urban area with a well-connected international airport, given their propensity for impromptu traveling, such as in Iceland and Australia.

              For all we know, they could be settled in Germany: 🔑 ///newspapers.gone.crazy
              or Denmark 🔑 ///publish.odds.news

              As for the Doctor, we strongly suspect his current hideout to be also revealed when searching from his signature beautification prescription that has made him famous in connoisseur circles: 🔑 ///beauty.treatment.shot at the frontier of Sweden and Finland.

              LIZ THREAD (Finnley, Liz, Roberto, Godfrey)

              We don’t really know where the story happens; for that, one would need to dive into Liz’s turbulent past, and that would confound the most sane individual, starting with keeping count of her past husbands.

              As a self-made powerful best-selling writer, we could guess she would take herself to be the JK Rowling of the Unplotted Booker Prize, and thus would be a well-traveled British uptart, sorry upstart, with a fondness for mansions with character and gardeners with toned glutes. Of course, one would need the staff.

              DRAGON 💚 WOOD THREAD (Glynnis, Eleri, Fox/Gorrash, Rukshan)

              This story happens in another completely different dimension, but it can be interesting to explore some of its unusual geography.

              The World revolved around a central axis, and different worlds stacked one upon the other, with the central axis like an elevator.

              We know of

              • the World of Humans, where most of the story takes place
              • the world of Gods, above it, which has been sealed off, and where most Gods disappeared in the old ages
              • Under these two, the world of Giants exists, still to be explored.

              At the intersection of the central axis of the world and the human world, radiates the Heartwood, a mystical forest powered by the Gem of Creation which has been here since the Dawn of Times, and is a intricate maze, and a dimension in itself. It had grown around itself different woods and glades and forests, with various level of magical properties meant to repel intruders or lesser than Godlike beings.

              The Fae dimension is a particular dimension which exists parallel to the Human World, accessible only to Elder Faes, and where the race originated, and is now mostly deserted, as Faes’ magic waning with the encroachment of humans into the Forest, most have chosen to live in the Forests and try and protect them.

              #4746
              TracyTracy
              Participant

                The sense of being left behind had deflated Lucinda. Everyone off having adventures, and here she was left minding the dog. She liked the dog, but not the feeling of missing out on the excitement, and the clues she received were few and far between.

                “Come on, Fabio,” she said, and the little dog looked up expectantly and wagged his tail. “Let’s go for a walk down by the river. We can pick up some granola cookies on the way back.”

                It was a particularly muggy day and not ideal for a long walk. She felt listless and heavy in the humid air. Before walking very far at all along the riverside promenade, she felt clammy and tired, and found a bench under a shady tree to sit on. Fabio cocked his head to one side and looked at her. Lucinda closed her eyes for a few moments, and started to admonish herself for her lack lustre and frankly boring state. “Buck up, for Pete’s sake!” she told herself, but was interrupted by Fabio’s frantic barking and pullling at the lead.

                A man on stilts was coming towards them, wearing long shiny trousers in black and white vertical stripes. Lucinda started at him openly, somewhat shaken, but curious. She could have sworn she’d seen him in a dream the night before.

                The peace shattering sound of a loud motor boat engine intruded into the scene, and when Lucinda looked back to the stilted man in stripes, he’d vanished. The sound of the outboard motor receded as the boat disappeared around a curve in the river; the waves it created splashing on the river banks long after it had disappeared.

                #4739

                Hilda:

                I had my doubts about them deciphering the clues I’d sent, but pinned my hopes on Ricardo. “Unknowingly foci of arachnid so I…..” Made a really clever anagram I did, “Ahoy Inn Food Awful Sick Icon Grin”, in fact I was worried that it looked so legit that it would be taken at face value. The food was truly awful. Anyway, that was the first part. I wasn’t going to write the whole thing in the same message, obviously. And if Ricardo didn’t get it, well, maybe Lucinda would. I’ve been sending her messages as well. Keeping my options open, you could say. I wasn’t at all sure where this story was going, but it felt like a big one. Or even more than one. I think what I’ve been doing, truth be told, is tossing clues to the wind in the hopes that the answers may seed themselves along the way. Toss them here and there and see what comes back.

                #4733
                DevanDevan
                Participant

                  I have never seen so many guests at once at the Inn. Even old Bert is ferreting around, I’ve seen him many times near the shed or near the garage door. Mater knows about it of course. I’ve seen her looking at him from the corner of her eyes. I wonder if she knows about the hidden gold. I’m sure Bert knows, and that’s why he’s always been lurking around when we were kids.

                  Mater, she hadn’t said anything when I came back and took my old room as if I never left. She just grunted and gave me some work to do.

                  “It’s not good to stay idle all the time,” she had said, making me chuckle as I saw aunt Idle sneaking out to take care of her weed plot in the back yard. As if Mater didn’t know about it. I know she tried to chew some when Idle was in India and she didn’t like the taste of the raw plant, so I had showed her how to smoke it. After the coughing spell had passed, she had seemed to enjoy the experience then, but I don’t know if she had ever used some again afterward. She’s as stern as she used to be. But I like her that way. She’s the spine of the Flying Fish Inn. I’m not sure Idle could manage it all, especially I doubt Finly would stay more than a few days if Idle was the manager here.

                  Although, I’m suspecting Finly to sell weeds to the guests. She’s been acting weird and I’ve come upon her and Idle arguing in the kitchen upon a loafed bush lizard. Dido was accusing Finly of stealing her last crop and Finley… Well, I don’t really care about what they do.

                  I’ll just have to find some quiet time to go inspect the cellar. If what the man on the Harley had told me is true, I want to find the tunnels below the Inn.

                  #4729
                  Jib
                  Participant

                    The room was not oversized and not to bright despite facing south. It had the oddest strange decor Shawn Paul would have expected from that place. It seemed to come right out of a Victorian movie with the heavy furniture that took all the space in the room and the dark and overloaded wallpaper that sucked up the light coming through the velvet curtains.

                    Shawn Paul sneezed. It didn’t as much feel dirty as it felt old like his grand parent’s house. He wondered how often the Inn’s staff cleaned the room. He had to move his luggage in order to open the window to get some fresh air. It was so hot and dry. There was a drug store on the other side of the dusty road and a strange man was looking at him. A feeble wind brought in some red dust and Shawn Paul sneezed again, reducing the little enthusiasm he could have had left to nothing. He imagined his clothes covered with red dust and quickly closed the window. As the man was still looking Shawn Paul shut the velvet curtain, suddenly plunging the room into darkness.

                    His fear of insects crept out. He had no idea where the light was so he reopened the curtain a bit.

                    He then checked thoroughly under the pillows, the bedcover and the bedsheet, behind the chairs and in the wardrobe. Australia was know for having the most venomous creatures and he didn’t want to have a bad surprise. He looked suspiciously at a midge flying around not knowing if it was even safe to kill it. Shawn Paul had never been the courageous type and he began to wonder why on earth he had accepted that trip. He had never traveled out of Canada before.

                    Needing some comfort, he looked frantically into his backpack for the granola cookies he had brought with him. With the temperature the chocolate chip had melted and he wondered at how to eat a cookie without dirtying his hands.

                    Someone knocked at the door making him jump with guilt like when he was a kid at his grand parents’ and would eat all the cookies in his bedroom without sharing with his cousins.

                    “Lunch is served,” a woman’s voice said from the other side.

                    Shawn Paul remembered having said with Maeve they would meet at lunchtime so he closed his luggage with an extra padlock and made sure his door was safely locked too before going downstairs.

                    Anxiety rushed in when he saw all the people that were already seated at the only table in the lunch room. He might have gone back to his room if Maeve hadn’t come from behind him.

                    “Let’s go have a seat.”

                    He read between the lines what he was thinking himself: Don’t leave me alone. Whether it was truly what she had meant was not important.

                    #4725

                    A wild eyed crow was cawing relentlessly since the wee hours of the dawn.
                    Nothing much had moved since everyone arrived at the Inn, and in contrast with the hot days, the cool night had sent everyone shivering under the thin woolen blankets that smelled of naphthalene.
                    Deep down, Bert was glad to see the old Inn come back to life, even if for a little while. He was weary of the witch though. She wouldn’t be here without some supernatural mischief afoot.
                    He glanced in the empty hall, putting his muddy pair of boots outside, not to incur the fury of Finly. He almost started calling to see if anybody was home, but thought better of it. Speaking of the devil, Finly was already up and busy at the small kitchen stove, and had done some outstanding croissants. In truth, despite all her flaws, he liked her; she was a capable lady, although never big on sweet talks. No wonder she and Mater did get along well.
                    Bert started to walk along the hall towards the hangar, where he knew old cases where stored, one with a particular book that he needed. It was hard to guess what would happen next. He found the book, that was hidden on the side of the case, and scratched his head while smiling a big wide grin.
                    He was feeling alive with the kind of energy that could be a poor advisor were his mind not sharp as a gator’s tooth.

                    The book had a lot of gibberish in it, like it was written in a sort of automatic writing. For some reason, after the termite honey episode, Idle had started to collect odd books, and she was starting to see spy games hidden in the strangest patterns.
                    Despite being a lazy pothead, the girl was smart, though. Some of her books were codes.

                    Bert’s had his fair run with those during his early years in the military. So he’d hidden the most dangerous ones that Idle had unwittingly found, so that she and the rest of the family wouldn’t run into trouble.
                    Most of the time, she’d simply forget about having bought or bargained for them, but in some cases, there was a silly obsession with her that rendered her crazy about some of those books. Usually the girls, especially the twins, would get the blame for what was thought a child’s prank. Luckily her anger wouldn’t last long.

                    This book though was a bit different. Bert had never found the coding pattern, nor the logic about it. And some bits of it looked like it talked about the Inn. “Encoded pattern from the future”, “remote viewing from the past”, Idle’s suggestions would have run wild with imaginative solutions. Maybe she was onto something…

                    He looked a two bits, struck by some of the parts:

                    The inn had been open for a long time before any of the tenants had come, and it had been full of people once it had been full all day long.
                    She had gone back after a while and opened up the little room for the evening and people could be seen milling about.
                    The rest of the tenants had remained out on their respective streets and were quiet and peaceful.
                    ‘So it’s the end of a cold year.’
                    The woman with golden hair and green eyes seemed to have no intention of staying in the inn as well; she was already preparing for the next year.
                    When the cold dawn had started to rise the door to the inn had been open all night long. The young man with red hair sitting on a nearby bench had watched a few times before opening his eyes to see the man that had followed him home.

                    There was a young red hair boy that had arrived. He was curious as to the man following.

                    The other random bit talked about something else. Like a stuff of nightmares. And his name was on it.

                    The small girl stood beside him, still covered with her night clothes. She felt naked by the side of the road. There was nothing else to do.
                    In the distance, Bert could faintly hear the howling of the woods, as two large, black dogs pounced, their jaws ready to tear her to pieces. The young girl stared in wonder and fear before the dog, before biting it, then she was gone. She ran off through the bushes. “Ah…” she whispered to herself. “Why am I not alive?” She thought to herself: this is all I need.
                    If I am here, they’ll kill or hurt my kids. They won’t miss me for nothing.
                    She ran the last few kilometers to her little cottage; not long after, Bert heard the sound of the forest. He was glad it was.

                    Maybe the witch was not here for nothing after all.

                    #4722

                    It all started to feel insanely crowded and agitated in the Inn, it took me a while to check whether I was tripping on some illegal substance.

                    Truth was, the funny chicken was doing alright until Finly and Idle came back in a hurry, tried to make me puke and feed me charcoals, as if I’d been poisoned or something.
                    I overheard Aunt Dodo when she shouted at poor Finly “why would you put my stash with the lizard leftovers! It’s me-di-cine you old cow, not some bloody herb seasoning!”
                    Finly looked indignant, but she knew better than to argue. Besides, I’m sure her face was speaking volumes, something in the tune of “with the bloody mess of your stuff all over the place, why do you think?” Sure, there was some other profanities hidden in the wrinkles of her sweet face, but she would leave that to Mater to spell them out.

                    Anyways, I just maybe feeling juuust a little funny, but with years of bush food regimen behind me, my liver is surely strong as an ox and pumping all the stuff out of my system like a workhorse.

                    So, yeah, I was maybe tripping a little. So many new people came in at the same time, it felt like a flashmob. They were probably real and not just hallucinations, since Dido dashed out to greet some of them.

                    I went upstairs and spied on them from there. I’m making also a list, mostly for Aunt Dodo, because if her heart is in the right place, her brain probably isn’t (or it’s a tight one).

                    So there, I wrote on a yellow sticky note:

                    Dido, if you're paying attention, here are the guests at this moment:
                    - Not counting PRUNE, and DEVAN who just texted me he's coming!!
                    - A jeep-full of loonies: A GIRL with red and white track pants and a
                    hijjab, a black CAT and a GECKO (wait, you can forget about the gecko),
                    a weirdo GUY in a fancy ruffle shirt and a little redhair BOY.
                    TIKU is here too, helping FINLY in the kitchen.
                    - Your old friend HILDA, and her colleague CONNIE
                    - Two townfolks Canadian tourists who argue like an old couple, but I don't
                    think they are, MAYV(?) and SANPELL(?) (sorry, couldn't catch their names
                    with their funny accent)

                    I guess breakfast is going to be lively tomorrow…

                    #4718

                    “Tsk tsk,” said Rukshan when he heard that the carpenter hadn’t done anything yet.
                    “At least the joiner came and fixed the mirror in the bathroom,” said Fox trying to sound positive.
                    They were in the kitchen and Glynis was brewing a chicken stew in Margorrit’s old purple clay pot.
                    Fox seemed distracted with saliva gathering at the corner of his mouth. Rukshan realised it was not the best of places to explain his plan with all the smells and spells of Glynis’ spices.
                    “Let’s go outside it’ll be best to tell you where we are going,” said Rukshan.
                    Fox nodded his consent with great effort.

                    “If you go out, just tell Olli to bring in more dry wood for the stove,” said Glynis as they left.

                    They took the Troll’s path, a sandy track leading in the thick of the forest.
                    “Are you sure we’ll find him there?” asked Rukshan.
                    “Trust me,” said Fox pointing at his nose.
                    “I thought you had abandoned the shapeshifting and using your fox’s smelling sense?”
                    “Well if you want to know, Olli is quite predictable, he’s always at the Young Maid’s pond.

                    “I realise I haven’t seen the lad in months,” said Rukshan.
                    Fox shrugged. “He’s grown up, like all kids do.”

                    They arrived at the pond where Olli was sculpting a branch of wood in an undefinable shape. Rukshan had almost a shock when he saw how much little Olli had changed. He was different, almost another person physically. Taller and with a man’s body. It took the Fae some time when he had to tell himself that the person in front of him was the boy that had helped them in the mountain. But Rukshan was not the kind to show many emotions so he just said.

                    “You’ve grown boy.”
                    Olli shrugged and stopped what he was doing.
                    “I’ve heard so,” he said. “She wants more wood?”
                    “Yeah,” said Fox with a knowing grin.
                    “Okay.”
                    Olliver sighed and left with supple movements.

                    When the young man was gone, Fox turned towards the Fae, whose eyes seemed lost in the misty mountains.
                    “So, what is the plan?”
                    “I’m thinking of a new plan that shall make use of everyone’s potential and save a young man from boredom.”

                    #4715

                    Miss Bossy Pants was losing patience. If it weren’t for the heat spell that made her cat-like reflexes duller than usual, she would have shredded the hippie yurt that Ricardo had built for Sophie, that useless temp too fast promoted.

                    She had to reason with herself, although she didn’t like that. Mostly because she always agreed with the devil on her shoulder. “OK, I’ll give them a chance to fish for key information.”

                    Truth was, there was already enough evidence that Sophie’s brain was mush, and probably heavily tampered with by the Doctor. Who knows what that maniac might have planted as post-hypnotic suggestions in such a suggestible mind. There was little doubt that if she’d escaped, she was actually probably still a pawn he could control.

                    She liked a worthy opponent. It would be so much more satisfying to crush him in the end.

                    Her phone buzzed.
                    “in oz, on ourwya to hippicenter gto grdbraeknig inforamton keep cool hilda &c.”

                    Well there was good news after all. She started to list them to give her heart:

                    1. Hilda remembered how to spell her own name
                    2. She had not lost or broken her company phone
                    3. They were not dead or maimed or enhanced yet, so clumsy as they were, they’d probably managed to stay off the radar of the Doctor.

                    Of course, the other things she’d learned in that short moment was probably outweighing the silver lining:

                    3. She had probably an insane roaming bill to the company phone
                    4. They’d continued to max out the credit card to pursue the topic
                    5. Clumsy as they were, it was surely a matter of time before they alerted the Doctor to their investigation.

                    She thought quick and fast, while waving her fan figorously (it was a modesty hiding fan). Punching the screen of her phone, she typed.

                    “Had breakthru too. Sophie was one of the dolls – need to find keys to dirty secrets & coded map to intercept = hashtag bigger than wee key leaks.”

                    There, that should keep them occupied and well on track with the wild goose chase, while she devised a plan B.

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