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  • #4305

    Looking at what was left in his bag, it made Rukshan realise he was walking in the Dragon Heartswood for longer than he thought.
    It was a maze with layers of concentric circles of tree, and seemed far bigger and vast once you were inside that it should have been.
    He had been presumptuous to venture in it, without any guidance or map, knowing very well that most of those who had entered it, never came out. There was a magical distress beacon that was in the bag, but he guessed it would only help him retrace his steps back to where he entered. He didn’t want to use it. He could still feel the glowing confidence infused in his heart by the potion, and now, it was as though it was telling him to do nothing, and just not worry. So he chose one of the trees, to just sit under, and meditate for a while.

    There was a bird, high in the small patch of sky that the treetops didn’t cover. Or at least, it looked like a bird. I had been there for a moment, as if watching him.

    “Don’t you like birds?” the voice said “They are my favourite creatures, so smart and graceful. Ah, and the joy of the flight!”
    He wouldn’t open his eyes, not sure the feminine voice was in his head or not. She was one and the same with the large bird hovering —it was one of her projections, but she was human.
    “You know who I am, Rukshan, you have been searching for me.”
    “You are the Hermit, aren’t you?”
    “Yes, and here I am, saving you a long trip to the mountains.” There was a smile in her voice.

    He didn’t know what to say, but feared to open his eyes, and risk the spell to vanish.

    “You can open them, your eyes. They are deceivers anyway, they are not the senses that matter.”

    She was there, in front of him, looking ageless. There was no telling if she was a projection or real.

    She had put something in front of him. A sort of flat braid, not very long, and made with different threads of diverse nature and impractical use, yet artfully arranged, revealing clever and shifting patterns.

    “It is for you Rukshan, to help you remember. I have worked on it for the past days, and it is now ready for you.”

    He looked at the patterns, they were clear and simple, yet they changed and seemed to elude understanding. The braid was only loosely attached at the end, and threatened to unravel as soon as moved.

    “These are your lives, intertwined. You and six others. You don’t know them, in this life —however long yours has been. But you are connected, and you have know each other before, and you have intertwined before. Some of these past stories can be read in the patterns, and some are tragic, and they all bear fruits in this life and the next. It is no mystery why you have been attracted to the Heartswood, because it is where the Sundering started, and where you and the others have left things unresolved. If you don’t look deep now, and take steps to correct course, you will go from this life to the next and repeat your torments and endless search.”

    While Kumihimo spoke, Rukshan had fleeting images and impressions, some linked to the visions the gingkos and the trees had sent him before, of the others, linked to his quest.

    “Yes, you are starting to remember… That day, when you and the others tried to rob the Gods of the flame of creation. They cursed you, even their pet Dragon who was supposed to guard their treasure and sided with you against them.”

    She showed him the ring of charred trees that marked that particular period in the middle of all the rings for each ages of growth of the Heartswood.

    “The Sundering” he spoke softly, reminded of fables in the legends of the Fae. That was the ancient age, when most of the Gods had disappeared, some said, gone through the doorway that was at the very heart of the Heartswood, the very source of life and death, and creation. There had been new Gods after that. They also possessed great powers, but none with the aura of the Old Ones —no Old God would have been trapped in stone by a mere witch’s enchantment.

    Rukshan turned to the Hermit with deep pondering. “What can we do?”

    She was starting to fade away, turning again into a bird. “Each of you has a special power, that you stole in that past life, and with each new life, you carry it with you, and with it, its curse. Find who you were, find what you stole, and give it back. Then the threads will unravel and the knot of all the curses will be undone.”

    #4269

    The cave’s entrance was glowing in a golden light. The fresh snow had blanketed the entrance that the midday sun was bathing with warm rays through the fog.

    The cave was hanging perilously on the precarious slopes of the mountainous ranges, where only a few woolly goats could safely reach its heights without fear of breaking their necks. It was a safe haven for the Hermit.
    Below the cave, the vast expanse of the Forest was almost entirely white, except for its fringe, far from the mountains, where the cities had flowered, and except from its center, the darker Dragon Heartwood with its reds and greens that seemed almost black in contrast.

    She was known as the Hermit by most of the Faes living in the forest, a honorary title if not slightly belittling when they called her that. To others, she was often known by different colorful names. Sometimes when she was seen flying in her bird skin, accompanying the giant raptor birds from the plateaus with her long white hair flowing to the wind, surveying from above the life of the land, she would gain other names as well.
    Her shaman name was Kumihimo, or weaver of threads. In the cave, many threads were carefully hanged onto a long line, without particular noticeable pattern, either by colors and material. All were different. Her birds friends, big or smaller would often bring her threads from many great distances. She would hang them here, without particular care, or so it seemed to the naked eye.

    It had been a long time she had weaved any of them, or had the impulse to.
    But she had dreamt.
    She never dreamt. To dream for her was a matter of crucial importance.
    She had dreamt of seven threads.
    It was time she made a new braid.

    #4264

    Yorath was still trying to explain the nature of forests, the rekindled understanding of the woodland habitats, the memory storing capacity of the vegetation in a vast network of twining tendrils and roots and so on, when Lobbocks burst into the room. Leroway had been finding himself unable to detach the workings of his mind from the contraptions he could assemble himself to control the natural states, and welcomed the interruption. If only Yorath would get to the point, he’d thought impatiently, then I could prepare to devise a solution ~ thereby entirely missing the point, although he didn’t realize it.

    But here was Lobbocks, announcing a problem that required a solution, which was much more in line with Leroway’s thinking. As he listened to the tale of the stone statue now animated and angry, he immediately started to plan a device to capture, restrain and subdue it, to keep it from harming any of the citizenry.

    Eleri, however, revealing herself from her eavesdropping position behind the door, had other ideas.

    “I must speak to him!” she said. “I must know how he animated himself, without the aid of any of my ingredients.”

    “Not to mention his vengeful attitude,” added Yorath. “Imagine if this happens again, to other stone statues and creatures.”

    “Indeed we do, Yorath! I had considered the animation, purely from a physical capacity for movement standpoint, but I had not given much thought to the emotional condition in a reanimation process after a prolonged inanimate state. Oh hello, Leroway,” she added, noticing his look of surprise.

    “Should I get a posse together to follow him then,” interjected Lobbocks, as Leroway and Eleri exchanged banal pleasantries about how long it had been since they’d met, “Because I think he’s looking for your workshop in the valley.”

    Eleri ignored Leroway’s suggestion that she stay in the village while he conducted the mission to capture the statue, stating that she was leaving for home immediately, gratefully accepting Yorath’s announcement that he would accompany her. She went back up to attic to fetch her things, and stood at the window for a moment, looking up at the castle walls.

    Wouldn’t it be easier to just walk in the other direction, and not look back? The temptation hovered, almost as tangible as the scent of orange blossom in the air. What was it that was keeping her here all these years? She was a wanderer by nature, or at least she had been. Were those days really gone? While everyone around her had been lightening their loads, ridding themselves of unnecessary baggage, loosening their ties, she’d done the opposite.

    Sighing, she picked up her bag. She would return home.

    #4233

    By the following spring, Trustinghampton had fifty seven inhabitants. Under the leadership of Leroway, all had comfortable homes and enough to eat. There were numerous workshops, a bakery and communal brick oven, vegetable gardens and a traveling scavenging team with a mule cart. It was Lobbocks who had suggested a distillery: what we need now is a pub, he’d said. Somewhere to party.

    And that is how Leroway became the Lord Mayor. When the first spirits and wines were ready, the villagers held a party. The scavengers had found, among other things including additional wines and spirits and party drug stashes, a vast collection of clothing of all kinds, and so they had a fancy dress party. For fun they had a competiton of the best costumes, and Leroway and Jolly won, with their royal robes and tiara crowns. Eleri won second prize for her fetching maids outfit.

    Lest anyone be confused as to the nature of the workings of the village, there was no hierarchy and no laws. It was a mutual cooperation under the obvious and natural leadership of Leroway. The villagers were fond of him and grateful for the part he played, and Jolly was popular with everyone. The First Party was such a success and everyone loved their costumes so much that they continued to wear them, and play the parts. Thus, Leroway and Jolly became Lord Mayor and Lady Teacake, and Eleri played the part of their maid, although nobody was dictating to anyone else as it was just a game.

    It was the maids outfit that led Leroway astray. Try as he might, for he was devoted to his wife, he couldn’t subdue the flames rising in his purple clad loins. Eleri deftly avoided him as best she could, for she too was devoted to her friend Jolly. Had she fancied Leroway at all, she might have considered approaching Jolly with a view to an amicable ménage à trois, but the fact was, she didn’t. She had eyes for the latest arrival, the mysterious Mr Minn.

    #3811

    In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

    Master Medlik, looked distractedly at the messages left on his aura during his last simulation. One in particular that looked uncalled for jumped at his attention for some reason. Everything was a message of the Universe in the eternal now, wasn’t it.

    The Top 10 Cloud Myths
    Don’t let myths like these slow you down:

    • Cloud is always about money
    • You have to be cloud to be good
    • Cloud should be used for everything
    • “The CEO said so” is a cloud strategy
    • We need one cloud strategy or vendor

    Lead your enterprise to a smarter cloud strategy.

    He could see some vague fractal pattern surrounding, a reflection of the vastness and wisdom of the Universe in shards and fragments of mirror-like substance.
    If only one thing, that was all the Cloud was supposed to be about, the purpose of its being created… Or so he was told.

    Maybe his views about the Cloud needed revising…

    #3800

    In reply to: Mandala of Ascensions

    Dispy was starting her own secret Descended Dissent Classes.

    It was not long ago that she had a very sudden and all-encompassing revelation at one of her flights above the great tundra of Siberia, which she liked for some reason to fly over, counting the red spots made by the fly agaric mushrooms in the tundra.

    She’d been very disturbed by the revelations about her assignment to the Mars mission. She’d genuinely thought she was in for the support of the greatest advancement of humanity since quite many decades, and to realize it was all a quite twisted experiment made her uneasy at her core. She had some profound respect for her teacher, and despite her usual impulses to immediately confront Medlik for the inherent contradictions in his self-professed compassion and wisdom talks, something in her had told her to remain quiet and observe. And more surprisingly, she had complied. And observed very attentively.

    During her flight afterwards, the same strong impulse had told her to land in the tundra, right next to a very nice patch of red. Being ascended had the wonderful benefit she wouldn’t feel the bone chilling cold, and she could just immerse herself in the joy of the scenery, and at the same time felt all very quiet and full of love and, strangely, a sort of distant regret for not being able to feel more of the cold and the whole scenery. And in the silence, she had a sudden unraveling of reality like never before. She could see the contradictions she noticed, one after another, destroying every layer of what she thought she knew, only to be left as a silent, quiet and very aware presence. She could have stayed like this a long long time, but she felt the call for the next Ascended class, for which she was late, as usual.

    She continued to ponder while she teleported back, and without word (again, quite unusual), formed the resolve to expose more of the truth she’d grasped. Create a fifth column for the Descended, something her old friend who liked spy fictions would definitely have loved to hear about. But for now, she would have to keep it quiet, and maintain her cover at the Order of the Ascended Masters. She’d worked quite hard (well, not as hard as many, but that wasn’t the point) to get to her coronation, so she now had a nice Light Clearance that allowed her to tap into the Coloured Light Rays. This would be helpful.

    In the beginning, she’d thought naively that concealing her true motives and secretly recruit like-minded students would be terribly difficult, but to the contrary, she found the light to be very responsive and easy to bend into subtle illusions of the truth. In short, she could still lie very well, and quite effectively. As though the light helped her in her attempts.

    At the moment, she just had one student, Domba. They were meeting out-of-body at a hut in Chernobyl. The place was actually quite nice, and teaming with wildlife and surprisingly gorgeous nature. The perfect hideout.

    Her course, well, was a course in spontaneity mostly. She would help people question reality, and authority. Something she had been lightwashed to forget for awhile too.

    Domba had a pure heart, and was full of illusions. It had been easy to recruit him. She had to start with what he brought to her. At the beginning, mostly quotes of spiritual teachers. She had to teach him to question and see by himself.

    “The Buddha said that when we dedicate merit, it is like adding a drop of water to the ocean. Just as a drop of water added to the ocean will not dry up but will exist as long as the ocean itself exists, so, too, if we dedicate the merit of any virtuous deed, it merges with the vast ocean of merit that endures until enlightenment.” – Padmasambhava

    That quote he brought was interesting. The idea of being a drop of water lost in the ocean was enough to make her lightskin crawl. Because it reminded her all too well of the manipulations of the ascended masters. Twisting just barely enough the Love stream, so that It would be redirected just were they wanted.

    So they meditated on that for now.

    #3789

    In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

    ÉricÉric
    Keymaster

      When Eb woke up, there was a dozen messages left on his phone.
      He didn’t have to check to know.
      His mother wasn’t too subtle when he missed their weekly call.

      She now lived in a modest retiring home in Mississippi, spending most of her time on social networks exchanging links about anything from politics and revolution and anarchy, kittens and drugs. Oh, that, and politics too. And revolution.
      She was suffering from early stages of Alzheimer, but called it “transition” as the old-age hype advertised some decades earlier, and due to her refusal to take her prescriptions, it wasn’t improving much as time went by. But Eb’s prognosis was more like “selective Alzheimer”, as she would perfectly recall when (and how many times) he had missed their weekly calls.

      He could already hear her complain about how she was left out of the loop, that the world story would be over by the time she catches up with all the gossips they’d hidden from her. Often, she would become so agitated that Fancy, her nurse would come help her relax and stop waking up the others. Everything was much less confusing thanks to Fancy.

      After all that is said, he loved his mother deeply. She was always full of extravagant ideas and when she stopped doubting herself, she had her moments of sheer brilliance.

      Being his only son, that she’d taken care of as a single mother most of her life, he felt tremendous pressure to be worthy of her sacrifices. So talking about his job wasn’t really something he liked to explore with her. If she’d known what he did for a living,… he couldn’t bear to imagine the look of crushed hopes and expectations on her devastated face. Well, suffice to say her face needn’t any of it.
      Instead, he’d told her he was working in a tree nursery, working on pest control, with humane and eco-conscious methods. Which actually wasn’t too far off the truth. The pests were the glitches of the program, and the vegetables… well, that didn’t need much explaining.

      “Tricia speaking, who’s this?” Eb knew she knew perfectly well it was him, but the game was ever the same
      “Mother, it’s Eb”
      “Ebenezer, my dear boy, how kind of you to remember your old mother. What have you been up to? So many things happened here, with that new batch of decrepit old farts who arrived last month, so much drama. But you should tell me about you. Oh, makes me recall that stupid incident, a synch! I should tell Fancy about it! Fancy, Fancy!
      Oh dear… She’s gone cleaning up again. The last one who came in is a Chinese, and all his family is there, I bet she’s cooking some rice now, it smells funny. Fancy! Mind the rice! So well, it’s like the twins I talk with on the Internet, with funny names, Cilantro and Nutmeg, something like that, well, they have so many funny stories, like that meteor that dropped on Mars and blacked-out the TV show, they think it’s all bollocks. I told them I’d ask you about this, after all you did some studies in physics before becoming a gardener, you’ve always been the clever one in the lot, always helping with the dust stuck in my keyboard, and other IT problems. Oh dear… that was fun, but I think I must go, Fancy is waving at me, she says hello by the way! Oh, she rolls your eyes at you, how cute! Time for my siesta, … what? Oh, and change my nappies too, thanks Fancy, you’re precious, I keep forgetting everything. Talk to you soon my boy!”

      Well… If he hadn’t been so hungover, he probably would have tried to place some funny comments, or at least a well-meaning “hmmm hmmm”, to let her know he wasn’t just letting her monologue. Today was a good day notwithstanding, she hardly had a complaint. He should remember to send Fancy a card and a nice honey pot like he did every year, she was doing wonders at pacifying his mother.

      #3758

      In reply to: The Hosts of Mars

      ÉricÉric
      Keymaster

        Mother Shirley had realized the truth.

        How could she have missed it before, with the discontinuity, and impossible timelines. There was only one explanation at Lizette’s reappearances, and the Aurora’s strange incidents.

        There was no Mars, no space travel, much less any artificial intelligence, all was an elaborate simulation, designed to make them stay in the illusion — an illusion that was showing at the seams. Lizette was probably a distracted agent of the Orchestrators.

        In all likelihood, they were all in some secret base in a desert, maybe under a large dome and had never left Earth.
        She’d laughed before about the nuts who believed that there had been no moon landing, that satellites didn’t exist, that oceans couldn’t stay stuck on a spinning ball, and that humans never managed to actually go into space…

        Well, creating a vast space comedy was a better way to make everyone believe we’re the only sentient creatures in the universe; a vast and well-known, if not almost and reassuringly empty, Universe.
        All that was better than knowing you are a being in a farm-ant, with Flove knows what peering at it from outside…

        That or she was completely mad. She couldn’t tell, or they would lock her up, blame it on space travel disease. But she had to tell, had to convince them the comedy was over, they could all go home, and build a new world.
        But who could she tell, when all had been seeing a cave’s shadows all their lives?

        Good old organized religion and metaphors maybe could help, after all… The wave wasn’t over for a reason. She just had to repurpose the tool.

        #3481
        Jib
        Participant

          Second Journey ~ August 24th, 2014

          Duration 24 minutes

          Directions : Meet with your power animal, ask them to lead you to the upper realm to meet with your guide. Ask the name of your guide and what they will be likely helping you with. Ask them for your personal symbol and how you can use it. Then follow your power animal into showing you the potential development for the stories.

          Accounts

          Eric
          My snake animal guide appears very fast, I see its eyes first. It shifts into a powerful cobra, and fans out its hood into multiple heads, like Ananta (Shesha Naga), and says I can call him Nagini (like in Harry Potter, that’s also the playful name I give to the plush snake at our doorsteps).
          It wraps its multiple heads around me like a ball, and we woosh into the ground to what I guess is the underworld, it seems like a long coiled path around a sort of vortex, after a few moments in a sort of crystal cave, I’m a bit skeptical what we’re doing there, I catch a glimpse of a white horse from the back, so I guess Jib’s Conan is checking on us, and restate my intent.
          I go though the light of one of the brightest glowing crystals, and the travel resumes, this time like the giant snake wraps ourselves in coils around a column of rocks, and we climb that high mountain very fast. It reminds me of Mt Meru in Buddhism or the Immortals palace in the Chinese Buddhist tales (like in the 2014 movie The Monkey King).
          The place is like a beautiful platform/palace of giant proportions, with a golden light. When we arrive, the snake becomes much smaller, and golden too, and wraps itself around my left arm. It guides me to explore different places, a temple, a place over the clouds where there are dances, etc. I decide to rest under a tree and meditate and be open to possibilities.
          The snake shifts around in various forms as if to reflect the nature of my mind, a giant parasol, or a stream of many paths at my feet. It connects me to a picture I saw of a Buddhist painting where the mind represented as an elephant is led by the monkey brain around a snake-like path. I realize the person I saw briefly earlier is the guide that helped Sunwukong (the monkey king) and seems to be the guide I’m looking for.
          (I find the name later is Puti or Subhuti).
          When I mentally ask for a name, the name Pachacamac comes strongly. He shows me many things related to my symbol. As a spinning cube with the floating feather in the middle and the arrow pointing towards the heart. The spin of the cube creates illusion within illusion, the arrow wobbles but stays towards the heart.
          He shows me a chasm and how to create a bridge over the clouds, by showing me the mirror image in my heart chakra. The bridge is built inside. At the same time, I was trying to focus on the music to deepen the trance, and realized outside (one storey below) was Jib’s music played on the speakers, aligned with the one playing in the headset, although a few seconds off, the rhythm was perfectly in synch…
          He also shows me another image, of a deep well deep inside the mountain that we can see from above the clouds. The image inside is dark and fluctuates with the water’s surface, and also reflecting quite a small portion of the beautiful landscape around.
          He explains that the well is the world we create, the mind and the perception is the water’s surface. It’s the external world, while the heart is all that we perceive as we discuss.
          There are other things shared at a subjective level.

          Francie
          After I connected with my power animal, we went to the upper world. We went through water to get there until we came to land.
          I asked for my main guide.
          I think I took on the characteristics of my guide. by that I mean I felt myself become a different being, and then switched back and forwards between myself and the other. It was very clear. The other was masculine, strong, very alert, very watchful, powerful.
          I asked for the guide’s name and received the answer, Carlos.
          I asked for the area which the guide would work with me. I have had a sharp pain in my left abdomen under my rib for half an hour. I felt my guide reach in and do something energetically in that area. The pain left and has not returned.
          I asked for a symbol and saw what looked like a key-hole shape.
          There was a key too.
          It was a very particular shape.
          There was a door. And the key hole was up very high in the door.
          I had to reach up high to get to it. And I put the key in.
          I wasn’t sure if those were symbols.
          The key hole and the key were shapes.
          I was tracing them with my hand.

          Jib
          I settle in myself and arrive directly in a kind of lava world. There are stalagmites and magma puddles, it’s very fiery and earthy. Then I call my horse who just nudge my left shoulder, he was already there.
          I ride him first and take time to bond with him. Then ask him to take me to the upper realm to Michel. Without much transition I am there, I feel a definite difference of feeling and texture. I say hi and ask Michel if he can show me the use of my personal symbol or particular aspects to it.
          The he focuses my attention to the octagon and the connection with the number eight. He shows me how it connects with the musical octave and sounds as a resonator. It can also be used like the shamanic drum. The coil inside is connected with the circle, the spiral and the labyrinth. My symbol is a kind of labyrinth with the diamond representing the central room where the graal is, so to speak.
          He shows me other stuff that I don’t recall at the moment.
          When I realize that it will be all, I ask my guide if he can introduce me to another guide that can help me with the use of my symbol. He sends me in a direction that goes up in a cave world. There are faceless figures, I don’t pay much attention to them. When I arrive, the guide sits me on the ground and a journey inside my symbol begins. With the octagon connecting quite strongly with the lava and earth again. I am in a lava world again, which is strange. I ask the guide what is his name and I suddenly understand it is Athumbra the Dreamwalker from whom I’m fragmented.
          He shows me the connection of my symbol to the fire and earth, and the depth of the world. He suggests me that instead of focusing on the shape of the symbol I connect with how the different parts connects together and to other aspects of consciousness, and how they are representative of my own energy personality. Not try to look outside for an answer in a way at the moment.
          So I begin to experience the shapes, and it turns like a clock, take different colors, etc.
          This will be something I’ll have to do again.
          Then I ask my power animal to show me what would be interesting to me to explore in the story now.
          He shows me a nest and I connect it with the stork nests I’ve been talking about in the last comment and that I used in the quote of the week picture. Without consciously connecting the two. I’ve written the comment before making the picture.
          It will have to do with how the nest is comfortable but don’t make you learn much about life and your potentials.
          Then he showed me something related to ants and colonies, that I connected with Mars, the colonies of Mars. There is something about community and social network for me to explore.
          Then I asked him to help me decipher the energy transmission Eric sent to me the other day, and it had something to do with networks again and how we create a space of something through our relationships, the space of love, the space of friendship, and we create fields and connective tissues that we nourish through experience and attention and involvement.
          At some point in the beginning I briefly wondered what was happening with you guys and felt propelled into something like water and impression of struggling with current, there were two moon crescents holding together by their “backs”, and purple or pink colors.

          Tracy
          The Zebra walked towards me across a grassy plain then I circled him, floating, and we went down a slope through the trees, an old road paved with stones. We wound down and came to a great expanse of metallic pink water, like a wise (typo! wide) river.
          There was a guy in much heavy stone coloured rough clothes on with a very old face who didn’t look at me, he was on a raft with a long pole for steering. Asked his name and got Frudo. (was slightly skeptical that I got the name right) The symbol was like a clubs of cards, 3 circles interlocking with an in flow of the stem part. Domain was water, flow and fluidity (and dams, apparently).
          We went down with the raft on the wide pink river, and the pace increased and there were people of all kinds lining both banks, watching. The wide river came to an immensely steep and deep waterfall, but there were pools and much smaller waterfalls on either side of it. All the water was pink.
          We navigated from pool to pool on the right of the waterfall mostly, each pool had people, some of the pools were dammed, and some were more open and easily flowing to the next pool. Some dams were high and some pools had people looking over the edge at the waterfalls below their pools.
          In a pool on the right, a very fat pink baby was sitting in the middle, I picked him up and held him and asked his name and it was Ezekial.
          Then a fly landed on my right shoulder and I looked to the right and saw a scrunched up face of my mother, with a tight smile. My breathing started to get constricted and I saw mustard yellow mangle of tubes like intestines in that pool.
          Then there was a lot of fingers stroking and pulling threads out of the dam around that pool, like pulling soft pink wax. Breathing continued to be restricted, and some becoming vapour or mist stuff that wasn’t very clear or droplets leaping from pool to pool as an alternative route to surface pools and waterfalls….
          Then went down down down into a vast pool of pink water, faster and faster towards a narrow tube at the bottom, and then flipped over onto my back and saw the sun far above and rose slowly floating towards the surface.
          Several times I saw purple and light green.
          The breathing thing was interesting if not so pleasant.
          The personal symbol may be connected to the flow from pool to pool somehow.

          #3438

          A man on a donkey making his way through the dust and rubble of the crumbling city elicited no attention, it was a common sight that attracted no attention. Sanso covered his hair and face with a blue shawl, more to keep the acrid cement dust out of his eyes that for purposes of concealment.
          The destruction was appalling, but wonderfully symbolic ~ there were buildings still standing like lone sentinels amid the piles of smashed grey blocks and mangled steel girders, but the huge gaps where the great wall had been allowed a view of the rolling plain beyond. The heat shimmered across the golden dry vegetation, silver grey olive trees gnarled haphazardly on the gentle slopes, and far off a milky haze rose above the distant sea.
          The donkey picked his way nimbly though the wreckage, scurrying figures clutching babies and assorted items rushed towards the holes in the perimeter wall, where the ragtaggle crowds fanned out as they ran through to the other side, as wild shouts of jubilation ~ as well as plaintive cries for loved ones lost in the chaos ~ ricocheted through the gutted buildings.
          The donkey stopped at a site of devastation indistinguishable from all the others, and indicated to Sanso by bucking him off his back that this was the ruined tile factory, and then Lazuli shapeshifted back into his usual human form ~ short but stocky, black haired and brown eyed, with eyebrows that met in the middle ~ for ease of communication.
          “Over there, look!” Lazuli pointed to wisps of dust rising from a depression in the rubble.
          Shading his eyes from the glare of the sun, Sanso could make out four bent figures searching the debris, pulling out stones and tossing them aside, evidently searching for something.
          Fanella! I have come back for you!” Sanso cried, stumbling and banging his shins as he rushed over to her.
          “And I have come for you too!” added Lazuli, following Sanso, and hoping to make a favourable impression on the girl, smitten with her long golden hair, elfin features and slender body.
          “About bloody time, Sanso” said Lisa tartly, easing her aching back into an upright position. “You may as make yourself useful, and help Pseu find the tile she’s looking for and then we can get out of this godforsaken hellhole. Jack will be wondering where we are.”

          #3382

          The three travelers were not the kind of people to limit themselves to safety and comfort ~ indeed if they had been, Lisa would have stayed in the village, never having met Fanella who would have stayed in Versailles, who never would have met Ivan who would have stayed in Russia. They all had an underlying courage and sense of adventure to be on the island at all. They were not, however, inherently stupid. As they approached the great walls of Gazalbion, they became uneasy. It looked more like a vast open air prison than a welcoming city.
          “I’m not sure about this” Lisa whispered to the others, “Once we’re inside there, how will we get out? It might be a trap.”
          “But you’re always saying we create our own reality Lisa, how can anyone else trap us?”
          asked Fanella.
          “We create being trapped as a reflection of restricting ourselves, that’s how it works. It’s not always black and white. And it’s not always easy to resolve that in a demanding and unsettling situation. It would behoove us to proceed with caution.”
          “That doesn’t sound right Lisa, that doesn’t sound like trust, and you’re always telling us that trust is the key.”
          “And space” added Ivan, “Space is a key, too.”
          “Yeah but what does that mean exactly anyway?”
          “Fucked if I know” replied Ivan.

          Lazuli Galore noticed the hesitation of the travelers, and decided to change tactics. They were only a few hundred meters from the entrance to Gazalbion, and it was starting to look as if the new arrivals would not enter willingly. He dispensed with the elephant form, exploding it into a pack of grey wolves which circled behind the travelers, and chased them into the city.

          “Olution! Olution!” the crowd chanted, for there was always a crowd gathered at the gate to witness new arrivals. “Olution! Olution!”
          Nobody actually knew what the word Olution meant, but they had seen it on tv so many times that they simply repeated it, and the more people that repeated it, the more the frenzy grew.
          “Olution! Olution!” the crowd screamed and Lisa, Fanella and Ivan were surrounded by the people, thousands of them, all covered in colourless grey cement dust, even their hair and faces were a ghastly dusty grey.
          “Now we’re in trouble,” Lisa remarked grimly.

          #3344

          Fanella took Sanso’s advice and sobbed heartily. It released vast misty clouds of yellow and green energy that she had been bottling up during the recent traumatic experiences with teleporting. The coloured mist filled the room and poured out of the open window, tinting the sea mist pea green and bile yellow. Fanella was still hiccuping and blowing her nose when Sanso arrived, displacing the yellow green mist with a gust of orange red, and a foul odour.
          “Excuse me for a moment dear” he gasped, doubled over clutching his abdomen. “One can only cloak a signal for so long before it goes into spasm.”
          Fanella forgot her crying bout at the sight of Sanso on the floor imitating a sagging cow, but was glad she had a tissue handy to cover her nose with when the room suddenly filled with noxious orange gas, expelled with a trumpeting sound equal to the horns of Gabriel.
          AHHHHH” he said, smiling broadly. “I think we should get out of here now.”
          “Yes, let’s!” replied Fanella, trying not to choke.
          “What a relief! I wasn’t feeling my usual self, trying to digest that signal. Now I feel back to my usual stalwart and trustworthy self.”
          “Thank Flove for that!” responded Fanella, also feeling very much better, and ready for the next adventure.

          #3230

          The ghost captain of the Santa Rosa was an old Peaslander, Peter Pugh, otherwise known as Petit Pois on account of his vast girth. He’d had a fascination with whales all his life, admiring their immensity and smooth shapelessness, and had devoted his life to increasing his own blubber ~ unfortunately to the point where his legs failed to carry him further and he died, alone and frozen, on a cold winter Peasland beach. A particularly wild storm with immense waves had sucked him out to sea, taking most of the beach with him, but his spirit lived on, piloting the galleon for his ghostly lover, Belen. It was a match made in heaven ~ in their ghostly forms, they were vast but weightless, able to occupy the galleon fully, filling every nook and mossy cranny with their energetic formless bulk (but without sinking the ship or flattening the foliage).
          “Whale that!” he cried in response to Belen, excited to be teleporting to the balmy waters of the Pacific. The rough harsh climate of the Bay of Biscay reminded him of that cold winter in Peasland ~ he was looking forward to a tropical sojourn.
          “To the Big Island!” he shouted, and did a merry jig which caused a tsunami a few hours later on the Galician coast.

          #3201

          Jonbert had developed an interesting theory while doing his morning ablutions about time travel and catching butterflies. He had a gorgeous butterfly nursery inside the submarine, and got the strange idea that trying to fiddle with time was like catching a prized butterfly among lots of others looking alike.

          His thoughts were interrupted when the horn signaled they had arrived in 2222 in one of the blind spots of the ocean’s depths close to the particular spot where… some interesting butterflies would be attracted.

          The submarine was mostly entirely roboted. There was little for him to take care of, so instead of pacing around in his tartan kilts, he sat back in a comfortable 1980s garish sofa from his antique collections, and revisited his memories in his memory palace.

          He had taken him great patience and cunningness to hatch the plan. Through many of his Time Tourist outlets and a few shell corporations, the last of one which was named Vague, he had manipulated events to design and hire the Drag Queen time contest. Drag queens wasn’t the original plan, more of an unexpected deviation, not that it really mattered. All he needed was just one mission. Then, he only had to make sure the contestant would be diverted to a carefully selected time zone, and given a key to smuggle.
          The key wasn’t really important, what it collected along the way was.

          For him to be able to breach the Time wall of 3333, he needed vast amounts of gold, and to his knowledge, it could only be accomplished through true transmutation.
          Artificial gold, like artificial crystal wasn’t created as good as it gets in nature, and for some reason wouldn’t remain stable enough as the machines were propelled too far in time. Of course the irony of that was a conundrum in itself and wasn’t lost to him: after all, wasn’t transmutated gold just artificial too? After what centuries had managed to push as boundaries and envelopes, he wasn’t sure any longer what was artificial or natural. And it was his last ditch effort at living everlastingly.
          He didn’t care if he could just chose another of these holobodies to project his thoughts into, he was old school, and stubborn to a fault. He had to see it through, even if, and especially if so many before him had failed.

          The key was designed to capture a complete hologram of the person who seemed to have accomplished the transmutation recipe he desired: St Germain.

          #3018

          Special Detective Bryan Connor of the Third Task Investigative Unit of the Surge Team Force pored desperately over his case notes. He’s been tracking the elusive Wordblade ever since the Wordblade almost wiped an entire Verse civilization off the face of Demonta, where the surge began. He scratched his temple feverishly & clamped his eyes shut. The Wordblade’s latest massacre occurred on Twitter, where he publicly slaughtered the alphabet.

          “How is it possible that he cannot be caught?” He pondered aloud. “He commits deed after deed of expression & he cannot be accounted for.”

          Just then, Mari Fei strode through his marble-walled office. Her commanding stride elicited an aura of assurance and regal confidence, & Connor turned around & met it with relief sighing through his breath. “Ah, Professor Fei of the Institute of Spirit/Consciousness. I’m so glad to see you. Perhaps you could-”
          “Assist you in locating Wordblade?” She chimed in. She laughed heartily at the sight of Connor’s astonished & mildly bewildered expression.
          “Don’t bother yourself with asking me how I know. I just do.”
          “Ah, then I have no need to impress the severity of these circumstances. The Wordblade’s elusive deeds are overwhelming: he seems to be intently breaking every rule for the sheer fun of it & he doesn’t care.”
          Professor Fei slowly walked pass him & climbed up the spiral stairs that led to a balcony overlooking the vastness of the Murtuda Galaxy. The Murtuda was the biggest galaxy in the southern Universe, & by far certainly the biggest, boasting a total of 125 portal-highways that bore the blood of intergalactic travelling.
          “Bryan,” she sighed. “Don’t concern yourself with catching Wordblade or understanding his motives. That young man is a danger unto himself, so we just let him be.”
          “But if we let him be then we may never calculate the amount of havoc he could wreak!”
          “I know that, but the issue still-”
          “No!” He broke her off. “The Counsel always justifies his deeds as an issue of self-freedom. He’s out there slaughtering alphabets & kicking poets’ butts for being normal & the Counsel embraces that?”
          He became silent for a moment, contemplating the Professor’s response. He knew he took a bold step but the Surge Team was on the verge of capturing Wordblade & they needed as much help as they could.

          When the Professor turned around, she looked calmly at him.

          #2880
          TracyTracy
          Participant

            In the vast mudflats of the Guadalquivir river delta, a small group of mudlarks on a field trip from London examine strange geometric shadows of what look to be the remains of a ringed city. “L..l..l..la la la looks like that in in in ins suh suh suh insignia, d d d don’t it, mate?” stuttered Dennis.

            “The one we found on that old sponge in the mud of the Thames?” asked his uncle Bob. “It does, now that you mention it. Must be a connection. Ok lads, fan out and keep your eyes peeled. We must be close to finding the portal entrance, and we need to find it before the Three Kings parade.”

            #2827

            In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens

            benjaminbenjamin
            Participant

              Young Neb entered the vast openness that is, with a faint whooshing sound.

              whoooooooosh

              “Hello?” squeaked Neb in a curious fashion. Neb, wearing a curious face, drowns in the quiet of his own presence.

              “Is there anybosy out there?” asked Neb in a slightly less squeaky tone than his last vocal utterance.

              Neb ponders his latest mote, and questions its validity.

              “Well, I am just as curious as you are, and I am not entirely sure of this reality… if you are interested in interacting with me, and perhaps answering some of my questions, we may create a fantasy worth.. well it is what it is, isn’t it?” resounded Neb with a faint puff of cigar smoke trailing up and out of his mouth.

              Neb ponders, and then begins to sleep.

              [link: squeaky]

              #2721

              In reply to: Strings of Nines

              Arona had indeed been devastated by the loss of her chippendale.

              “Oh, thank you Buckberry,” she exclaimed joyfully. “My great Aunt, twice removed on my father’s side, Auntie Shelly Dwelling, gave me this beautiful chippendale tea set when I was just a little girl … before she disappeared in very strange circumstances … or so the story goes. Clever you to find it. I can make Nhum tea now!”

              “This makes no sense at all,” sniffed Mandrake, privately wondering if he had better dispose of the Nhum when Arona was otherwise occupied. He did prefer things to make sense and clearly this Nhum Bhum stuff was messing with Arona’s head. Which is silly enough at the best of times.

              Vincentius is taking a long time. Perhaps we should see if he is okay and then we can all have a nice cup of tea in my beautiful tea set,” enthused Arona.

              #2720

              In reply to: Strings of Nines

              Not far from there, Buckberry had found a nice shrub of ripe and juicy buckberries, probably the very last of the season, and he was torn between his duties towards sweet (albeit bossy) Arona, and his voracious appetite for said fruity treats.

              Not only that, but as improbable as it seems, he had managed to crack the riddle of the double U followed by strings of letters to finish in a N… He was actually going to collect Vincentius in the apparently good, but finally not so good place, and go to the true destination followed by Yickesy and the bunch. Surely, being a flying beast had its advantages, even compared to being a semi-god.

              Speaking of which, Vicentius was at the moment in hot waters, surrounded by a crowd of hapries (a merrier version of harpies), who were dying for a taste of the guy.
              Aaah, too bad for the juicy shrub, but surely Arona would be devastated by the loss of her chippendale, and even a dragon could not afford that.

              #2812

              In reply to: Snowflakes of Tens

              TracyTracy
              Participant

                The entrances to Faerie (and indeed to other alternate realities and dimensions) had been shrouded in disbelief for several centuries, but times were changing and the fog of scepticism was dissipating, evaporating like river mist on a hot summer morning. Looking for the entrances deliberately, Blithe found, wasn’t the most efficacious method. Sat Nav alone would be unlikely to reveal them, unless the locating device was used in conjunction with impulse and intuition. Any device and method could be used effectively when combined with random impulse, even Google Earth or Google Moon. Blithe’s friend and colleage Dealea Flare was making good use of this device on her travels, using it as a personal non physical airline and space shuttle service. Dealea could get from A to B and back again in no time at all, or even from A to well beyond Z and back again in no time at all using this device in conjunction with impulse and large dose of intention and focus. Blithe had the impulse down pat but still had difficulty with the focus, which was largely a case of having too many intentions at once, most of them somewhat vague.

                The more random and impulsive Blithe was, the better her investigations went, often leading her into a new and exciting exploration which may or may not be linked to the current intention. Such was the case when she went on a mundane shopping trip to the Rock of Gibber. As she sat sipping coffee at the Counterpart Cabana sidewalk cafe listening to the locals conversing in Gibberish, she noticed the extraordinary tangle of pipework on the building opposite. It reminded her of the steampunk world she had been investigating in her spare time. The text book steampunk world was intriguing to say the least, but rather grim, and tediously full of victims and fear. The inhabitants always seemed to be running away from someone. The steampunk world she was beginning to sense in Gibber was quite different in that it was a sunny cheerful alternate reality held together with a vast labyrinthine network of water pipes, scaffold, and connecting cables.

                Blithe paid for her coffee and strolled off, noticing more and more scaffolding and tangles of pipes as she climbed the warren of narrow winding streets. The air was different the higher she climbed up the winding uneven steps, the sunlight was sharper and the shadows denser, and there was a crackling kind of hush as if the air was shimmering. Cables festooned the crumbling shuttered buildings like cobwebs, and centuries of layers of crackled sun faded pastel paint coated the closed doors. Open doors revealed dark passageways and alleys with bright rectangles of light glowing in the distance, and golden dry weeds sprouted from vents and windowsills casting dancing shadows on the uneven walls.

                The usual signs of life were strangely absent and present at the same time; an occasional voice was heard from inside one of the houses, and there were pots of flowers growing here and there, indicating that a human hand had watered them with water from the pipe network. There was no music to be heard though, or any indication that the cable network was in use, and there were virtually no people on the streets. A lady in a brilliant blue dress who was climbing the steps from Gibber Town below paused to chat, agreeing with Blithe who remarked on the peaceful beauty of the place. The lady in blue said “Si, it’s very nice, but there are many steps, so many steps. If you are coming from below there are SO many steps!”

                There was a boy watching a white dog watching an empty space on the pavement, so Blithe stopped to watch the boy watching the dog watching nothing. Eventually Blithe inquired “What is he looking at?” and the boy shrugged and continued to watch the dog watching nothing. Blithe watched for a little while, and then wandered off. A small child was giggling from inside a doorway, and a mothers voice asked what he was laughing at. The child was looking out of the door at nothing as far as Blithe could see.

                As the sun climbed higher, Blithe began to descend into Gibber town, winding and weaving through the alleys, wondering how she had failed to notice this place half way up the Rock until now. She came to a crumbling wall with a doorway in it that looked out over the bay beyond the town below. This must be one of the entrances, she deduced, to this alternate world in Gibber. “Entrance”! Blithe had a revelation. “I never noticed that the word ENtrance and enTRANCE are spelled the same.” Later, back at the office, Frolic Caper-Belle said she thought it was probably a very significant clue. “I’ll file that in the Clue Box, Blithe”, she said.

                {link: entrance}

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