Search Results for 'unexpected'

When Balbina woke up from that which had been her longest and strangest projection out of her body ever, all the memories of this fantastic adventure were oddly still fresh and crystal clear in her mind.

She doubted that it may have been as real as she has perceived it to be; but the funny rabbit, before they all entered the long dark tunnel, had winked at her and told her there would be signs for her.

Outside the window, the sunlight was starting to show on the Cordillera de la Costa, the nearby mountains.
She was feeling strangely rejuvenated by this unexpected night spent in far-away travels, and it was almost as if her whole body was feeling better than it ever was.
But of course, it was more of the same. Fabella, the nurse would soon enter and great her with a…

“Did Madam sleep well?”
“Quite, yes”… Her voice was quivering. Hardly the youthful voice she had during her projections out of the body.

So, there she was again, in that old people house, and no way out of this mis…

“What?!” she made the nurse busy cleaning her instruments repeat —to which she was far too pleased to comply.
“Yes, Madam, your son phoned this morning and told he would come for you…”

Her son? That was most unexpected.

What did the rabbit said already? Help would come from the most unexpected corners… Well, she had almost forgotten that this corner still existed!

“Did he say something else?”
“Oh, I’m not really allowed to tell, M’am…”
“But of course, you can’t really resist (little goose)” simpered the old wincing lady in a whisper to herself.
Fabella was indeed continuing, unstoppable “… but he seems to consider it’s too expensive to have you here, and would love to have you home with him”

Well, of course, you can’t really expect him to be so generous for no reason Balbina was thinking… But anything would probably be better than this old fools’ home. Even her son’s home.

Besides, it was located outside Caracas, near the mountains… And if the funny rabbit’s directions were correct, it was very, very close from where her hosts (provided they existed of course) were to re-emerge.

She’d never imagined that falling into the abyss of sweet madness would be so exciting.

Lady Eagleston enjoyed staying in the warm potting shed, taking her time to enjoy, appreciate and admire the ecstatic beauty of the blooming orchids. She let her thoughts wander for a few moments in the pleasant place smelling of cedar.

Her old friend, Hector Coon had sent her a rather unusual present this morning: a few bits coming from a watermelon’s rind strangely carved with unusual symbols. What an eccentric charming old fool this Hector…
They both loved to do each other unexpected presents of which they would then try to find some underlying meaning. Not that there was any such meaning to be identified most of the time, but it was some time pleasantly spent.

So, she had thought the only place safe to bring the bits to was here — mostly to protect them from the furious cleaning practices of Finnley, who wouldn’t have the pleasure to throw them to the garbage this time. She had seen his disgusted look when she had opened the package with excitement.
Well, now what would he imagine she was doing in there?…

As she was sinking to the bottom of the raging sea, Madame Chesterhope first felt like a boiling rage inside her, at all the thwarted attempts, all the unfulfilled promises.
Not a solid thing on which to carve a few runes or symbols to get herself out, not a single living being to use at her profit, she was alone, at the mercy of gravity.
Not unexpectedly, flashes of her life, of her many lives, flickered like incoherent pieces of an unfinished mosaic in her mind.

When did it went wrong? she thought… When did she lose touch with her magic.
Not the mundane magic, not the one she used for these parlor tricks devoid of meaning, like that beautiful flying motorbike which was drowning even faster than her… She was speaking of her inner magic, her sense of connection with the elements, with herself, Phoebe.

What had become of the frail grey-haired lady the apparency of whom she was so fond of taking years ago?
She was tempted to blame many things; the twenty-first century of her own dimension, for one, which had made her rough and tough, out of need perhaps, and perhaps a bit out of laziness. It was out of tiredness mostly, tiredness to have to constantly justify her appearance to others, that she had chosen a more convenient one; that of the crone with more rotund forms, of whom one would only expect austerity and strength.
You can see where it had led you. she was thinking.

A few more miles further down, and perhaps she would meet the mermaids, like the guy said in that Big Blue motion picture…
Maybe there was some purity left in her heart, that would make the inhabitants of the depths greet her wretched soul. Or perhaps they all died before her, from the pollution of this strange world mutating in pangs and spasms of a painful childbirth.

And what would you do now, if you have the choice? that sweet voice, like that of a thin grey-haired mermaid, was it her own, testing herself?
The quest for magical artifacts seemed so far away at this moment. It had begun a long time ago, led her to discover new other-dimensional places… new tricks, all of them for what? To gain control over the elements, the others, everything that could threaten her, force her to change. How ironic. That the fear of change made her change so drastically.
She wanted to make peace with all of that. The mermaids weren’t coming, but her own voice was still there for her. Perhaps she could muster the strength. To continue…

Mustering all her force, she forcibly expressed the most propelling “prout” she’d ever made. Of course, she’d been learning a few tricks from the legendary Fartiste back in her youth when she went to Paris to perform at the Moulin Rouge… Sweetest time of her life, she had to admit…

On the surface of the waters, bubbles started to form.

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.

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.

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.

When Becky had made her unexpected trip to Marseille just before her honeymoon, she warmly recommended Al to contact Leah’s brother, the renowned psychiatrist Dr. Lee Muir, who appeared to be living almost next door to them, in New Venice…
Their fields of study weren’t exactly similar, but they probably could mutually benefit from each other’s knowledge: for one of the mind, and the other of the body (all the more since Lee Muir was trans-gendered, and was now a woman by all means, which certainly was within Al’s field of studies).
Dr. Lee Muir was using what (s)he called “Fairly Graphical Fluid therapy” (or FGF therapy for short) as her preferred technique to help re-balance the mind of the most insane patients. It was a type of extreme reportage to the confines of the mind, as she would say.

Al had emailed the Doctor, and send her a copy of funny doodles in jest, to see what would come out of this.

This morning, Dr Lee Muir called him to schedule an appointment. Al could discern some anxiety in her manly voice… Could it be linked to this stupid doodle ?

New Venice, March 2034

After so many “haven’t been on my honeymoon yet!” ( ¹ – ² ) , Becky was relieved to see that she had fast-forwarded time so nicely that, finally, in a few hours of time now, they would depart for Sri Lanka.

Of course, the last events with her wavering in different probabilities, and manifesting more of what she had tried —almost by reflex— to avoid were still on her mind. She had felt a bit sorry for Sean, but she knew all along that the choices were hers, and worrying unduly about others, even if that was about her dear spouse, wouldn’t be efficient at all, needless to say not even slightly helpful.
She had to concentrate more on the way she wanted to express herself. That way, she knew she would draw to her the perfectly appropriate situations —while the less than appealing stuff would recede in the background under a good dose of acceptance fairy dust.

Though still a bit weary of her unexpected pregnancy from a future traveler who hadn’t even had the tact to propose her to elope with him, her minds were fresh and excited as ever at the thought of hopping like a daft goat on the Lion’s Rock in Sigiriya. And her good mood seemed to have an infectious effect on Sean who hadn’t even inquired of what local liquor there would be on the island. Perhaps the aura of the spiritual region had already blessed Sean with some renewed optimism.

As she was fondly stuffing her skimpy honeymoon outfit in the already ready to burst piece of luggage, she smiled blissfully, remembering all of a sudden how she had forgotten to be gentle with herself these past few days, and how nice it was to treat herself with shiny and twinkling shards of spicy new adventures.
She could indeed feel the excitement of doing some psychic archeology (as her step-mother used to call that) on these spots full of collective energies that she hadn’t had the taste of in many months.

Madame Chesterhope couldn’t believe her ears.

— WHAT?! YOU LOST IT?!
— Yes Madam, we lost contact, and we have reasons to believe that an unexpected well-planned counter attack on our team of magpies is to be blamed for…
— For that fiasco, Tfark! And where is the damn skull?! Will I have to go fetch it myself?
— There was report of a spy mottherfly that managed to escape by the wortex before it was closed. Nothing definite but we have reason to believe that the skull is still on the island. An agent of your old friend the Baron has been spotted heading back there.
— I will deal with it myself then.

The glow of the transmission ball went out in a whiff.

Ah, she hated to have to come back to that dimension, especially in this time framework where everything was so clouded in terms of potentials. But she couldn’t really trust anyone on that.

Passing through the security cordon of the giant spiders had been relatively easy, thanks to the indications telepathically passed down to them by the Snoot .
With Anita on her back, Yurmaela the gruffoon had come back to the borgulm tree where Claude had been left to watch. After a moment of surprise at the unexpected apparition, he didn’t take long to decide whether he wanted to stay or not and had jumped on the broad back with the little smiling girl who was grabbing on the coarse hair of the beast.

— Keep you energies and your attention close to us, said Yurmaela Just like Akayli is doing with your parents, Anu. Though they have plenty of eyes, the giant spiders mostly rely on their energy perception, and they won’t see you if you stay within our energy field.

A few minutes later, they were all standing in front of the growirling wortex, partially masked by the bark of the huge babul tree, which was standing out with its massive appearance. Flames of what seemed to be dark floating matter were pulsating very slowly, enhancing the thumping sound of their hearts.

— Ready to come back home sweet Anu? Akayli said fondly to the little girl?
— Yes, it was so much fun you all came to play with me… I’d want you to stay with me.
— What do you say? asked Claude They ain’t coming?
— This reality had a special design which allowed us to project very easily here said Yurmaela very softly in that reality of you, and Anita and Akita; as for now, the barrier in that reality is thicker than it is here.
— But we are always present around Anu, you know that said Akayli kneeling down to wrap his spotted furry arms around the little girl
— Yes I know she was smiling And I miss my parents too
— So let’s go, the wortex will close any moment now

Funny, thought Yurick.
A little bit earlier he had been distracted out of a sentence by an eerie outline of New Zealand islands on the front of a shop in a nearby street, which had reminded him of their friend Finn.

But now his attention was unexpectedly caught as he was passing by the bank’s corporate logo in the other side of the street.
That creature looks oddly familiar …

— Will you stop the jig now! You want to make us both end up in a tree or what? an exasperated Armelle snapped at her uncooperative passenger who stopped as soon as the clear voice of the owl had been heard.
— A talking owl now? Is that a bad spoof of Jurassic Park?
— Oh stop the sarcasm Armelle said, rolling her eyes almost by reflex at the remark, and quickly coming back to her sense after she started to lose direction in an unexpected loop stunting, scratching her wings in low branches and ending on all fours on top of a big borgulm tree .

Greetings little poohs, the grinning Snoot, all liquid fur red with the juice of the fruits greeted them. The Snoot has been expecting you and you

Aum Geog spent a long time seating motionless before the piece of parchment which had just been delivered by a specially trained fincheon.
Fincheons were not particularly elegant, (not to say downright ugly) one had to admit, but they were very convenient, once you noticed that their feathers were a special shining tint of grey which almost made them invisible. They always knew how to fly back, and this one had made no exception.
But it was a bearer of annoying news for the newly appointed Elder of the Monastery who was trying to curb his irateness by staying still.

This… he was at a loss for words. Breathe, breathe he exhorted himself.

A few months ago, when he was appointed Elder, his patient work of diligence seemed to have just paid off. He had thought he would be given the keys, and more importantly, the chalice.
But that sly dog of Hrih had decided otherwise. He had transmitted the chalice to that irresponsible and naïve novice Franiel, while giving him a bunch of rusted keys he didn’t give two poohs about.
Of course, it was only a matter of time before he could get it back, all he had to do was to make Franiel uncomfortable enough that he willingly relinquish the ownership to someone… someone like himself of course!
The annoying thing about this damn chalice you see, is that it won’t properly function with anyone else than the rightful owner (except for small uninteresting tricks). Obviously, Hrih didn’t want him to have access to its powers, but that old monkey was now gone, and there wasn’t much he could do about what was going on.

In fact, the plan was nearly perfect. Two birds, one stone. Bring Franiel to have some appropriate spell modifications carved onto that chalice, and have him give it back to the Elder, Aum Geog himself.
Obviously, he couldn’t just let go such a precious artifact in the nature without appropriate stealthy surveillance. Thanks to one of his faithful servants, Brother Derwish, he was kept informed of the progresses. A former master of disguises that a other-Worldly experience had him join the orders, Brother Derwish was no short of brains nor tricks in his bag, and that parchment was another proof of it.
If he had renounced to contact Elder Aum Geog directly through the glowing balls, and take the risks of unexpected delays, it was because they were most probably watched and their communication monitored.

So here went the news:

SPARFLY HAS MADE CONTACT WITH BIRD OF PREY. EGG DISAPPEARED.
NESTING CHANGED TREE. GNAT STICKS TO THE POOH.

Brother Derwish imaginative poetry could mean but one thing. Or two perhaps.

The little twit had been watched by someone else who had showed him some of the powers of the egg… err, the chalice. It would have partly activated the chalice, and make it disappear unless its owner needs it enough to have it appear again. Obviously, without chalice, or thinking it was lost, he had changed his course to another place.
Hopefully, Brother Derwish was following his trail closely.

If more disastrous news had to come, Elder Aum Geog would have to summon his char of marmoths (big toothed hibernating woolliphants) and go there by himself.

Leonard was content. It had not happened exactly as he had thought, but as he had explained to Malvina, the only wise thing to do was to teach the boy about the powers of the chalice. That would active its self-protective cloaking power, and have the boy temporarily relieved of this burden.
For if he had been entrusted the chalice by the old Abbot, that was surely for a good reason.

As Franiel had been moving, Leonard had had Moufle watch over him. Apparently, Leonard and his dog weren’t the only ones on his trail… The wiry gangly tonsured guy clothed in a potatoes sack didn’t seem to be here by chance either…