Search Results for 'water'

The whitewashed blue trimmed village by the sea had an air of tranquility despite the abundance of colourful beach dresses and accessories draped outside the shops, and the red and blue parasols shading the cafe tables and chairs. Locals and holidaymakers strolled about, unhurried and relaxed, and the blue sea twinkled enticingly beyond, as if the street disappeared into the ocean. Mirabelle imagined shoppers carrying bags of vacation purchases wandering right into the water, perhaps to continue their strolling on the seabed, idly perusing it’s treasures and trinkets; wandering back out again on to another street somewhere, dripping at first and leaving little puddles in their wake.
I wonder how deep you could go? she wondered, If you could walk on the ocean floor for as long as you liked?
Lisa, however, was more interested in the shops and had disappeared into one of them, lured by the gaily coloured scarves. She chose two and held one in each hand, wondering which one would be more reassuring, more comforting. A scarf is something to hold on to in a storm, she thought ~ and then wondered where the thought had come from.

Consuela’s eyes were as round and big as life savers as she tried to absorb everything she was seeing in the underwater cave. Every tile, every key, every shell contained layer upon layer of images and information like great piles of slippery transparent slides. Multiple luminous trails floated from each layered image, intertwining with other layers. Her three dimensional land vision struggled to hold on to something familiar, something to balance, and failed. Consuela lost all sense of direction and perspective in the cacophony of data, knew not which way was up, or down, or sideways or any of the other directions presenting themselves. She started to tumble and roll, gasping and flailing and snatching at the water but there was nothing to hold on to.

Terry had always been sort of a follower type of person. The trouble was when her friends were going in two different directions, or like now in one direction and one stay-still. Which one should she follow ? Consuela was a small dot of plancton in the immensity of the ocean, and yet she dared launch herself in the unknown. The others were sticking together, kinda. Sadie was desperately trying to send messages or to receive instructions, it wasn’t very clear, and Maurana was pouting since Consuela was gone.

That’s not a real profession, Amar, she got startled when she heard her dad’s voice as if he was just behind. She turned with a jerk of her right hip, but no sign of him.

That was as if she’d been stung by a bee. She’s been waiting all her life, now she wanted to move. Without warning to her friends, she began to follow the trail of bubbles left by Consuela. The others could follow if they wanted, but she wouldn’t left her friend alone in the dark water.

It wasn’t important to the techromancer how long he had been living in this hut in Hawaii. A very special hut connected to many realities and times at once, a perfect representation of his mind. People would get lost in it, they did not understand how it worked. He just had to emit the intention of whenre he wanted to be and let his body follow the sound patterns. It worked very similarly to that sarcophagus in Giza. He helped in its making.

For now, he simply wanted to take a bath. He didn’t like being in contact with too much light, which always triggered a benign itching, soon spreading across his pale skin, erupting in red patches that only long immersion in water would sooth. His little sister used to say he was a dollfinn. It seemed strangely distant and yet close to this time-space reality.

The roughness of his rags didn’t help with the itching. He liked to think of them as his Jedi costume. The fabric, plain and rough, helped him remember that he was also made of flesh. A most difficult idea to keep in mind, as his was expanded in many times and realities at once. It helped cover his pale skin from light contact as well as create an aura of mystery with the few people who managed to find him. He had been most surprised by the last one, Sadie was her surface name. Memories of futures past rushed through his mind hut, momentarily disrupting the sound flux leading to the bathroom, and amplifying the itching. Now was not the right time and place.

Darkness and stillness are the basic components of awareness, he focused on that simple thought that would bring him peace and stability of mind. Keep the floughts away. It was easy to understand that for him darkness was as light is for us.

The bathroom he had chosen was in almost total darkness, for us. Even if it had a window, it was night outside. The window was only for the gentle breeze. He didn’t need light as his inner vision could see the patterns of movements of his reflected mind. He took off his rags. In the absence of light, his pale silhouette was almost glowing. The patches of red now looked like continents on a ocean of milk. One could notice a dark spot on his sacral bone. The tattoo of a black scorpio with a red dot. Red was also the color of his eyes. He was an albino, with red eyes like a rabbit.

He sank into the water with a gush of pleasure piercing through his mind. The multidimensional walls of the hut trembled.

Pseu deciphered laughter and a rather strange phrase in the burbling language, wondering if she had translated “get your mermaid shoehorns here” correctly. She decided to remove the protocol blindfold for a moment, just to be sure.
It was a strange sight that met her eyes, and she paused for a moment to get her bearings.
Consuela appeared to be in an underwater cave, full of gurgling bubbling creatures the likes of which she had never encountered before. The cave was bright with thousands of crystals, filled with the sweet sounds of music from a multitude of conch shells, chandeliers dripped with hundreds of magical looking keys, and the furnishings were tiled with a million unusual tiles forming a mosaic of endless connecting links.

This is a different kettle of fish altogether from my last diving experience, Consuela was thinking. Why, this is such fun, I can not resist exploring further. Bugger those elusive tentacles, I simply must see what’s around the next bend in this watery tunnel.
Right or left? she wondered when a side tunnel branched off. She had a vague idea that turning left was perilous, so she turned right, and shortly came to a junction of eight cave tunnels leading up, down and sideways. One of the tunnels had a sign over the entrance crafted from purple limpets, saying “Get Your Mermaid Shoehorns Here”. Another tunnel entrance had a sign made of artificially manipulated pink coral saying “Willy Wave’s Wigs ~ new tentacle and seaweed designs” which was tempting, but it was the “Bloater’s Floater Bar” that seemed the most attractive choice of the moment. Consuela was curious to meet the inhabitants of this unexpected world, and the enticement of a “free cork floating bums with your first plankton smoothie” was hard to resist.

Pseu realized with an unpleasant jolt that she had been neglecting the dragglers for far too long while she’d been sojourning in the City, and for one dreadful moment realized that she had completely lost track of them, and that they might be in danger. She excused herself politely, not that a polite excuse was necessary amongst such wide and weird souls, and sent some tentacles of attention in search of the dragglers.
She heard sounds of watery warbles and burbling blips like farts in a bath and wondered for a moment if all was well and she was being intrusive. Bathrooms were generally considered out of bounds, particularly when time travelling or remote viewing pre 2020. But something about the sounds started to register as a language, and Pseu continued to listen, though still observing the protocol blindfold, as it were, not wishing to disturb anyone’s private bathing rituals. Were farts in a bath a kind of language, she wondered? Had she been missing out on potentially valuable information by not paying attention?

When Lisa eventually came out of her altered state, she was tired and perplexed. The last words she had heard had been “ I’m sorry I’ve led you to believe it was important, but it’s not, not really. It’s just a ordinary object to lead the philistines astray.” How depressing! she thought. How unutterably depressing! If nothing was important, then what was the point ~ of anything? If being led astray wasn’t an opportunity for another voyage of discovery, then what was the point? If everything was wrapped up and tidy with no mysterious paths to explore, then where did Story fit into the picture? A dull story indeed with no tentacles.
“We may as well just go home and water the garden. Come on Mirabelle.” Lisa’s shoulders sagged dejectedly and she sighed deeply.
“Oh no, not so fast! This doesn’t sound like you, Lisa! Has someone put a spell on you? Snap out of it!” Mirabelle considered whether slapping Lisa soundly would help break the spell, but decided to throw some bottled water in her face from a safe distance instead.
The shock of it, welcome actually, cool and revitalizing, made Lisa laugh at the absurdity of ~ well, everything.
“Oh fuck it, we may as well go and get some octopus tapas while we’re here. Let’s just pretend we’re ordinary people on an ordinary holiday and go to the beach.”

“Adeline, where is Mirabelle? I’ve come back for her again.”
“Igor! Not you again, so soon!” Adeline’s hand flew to her mouth and she flushed in confusion. “She’s not here.”
“Where is she? I must find her!” He began to wring his hands, or he would have if he knew what it meant. What he actually felt was a yellow knot in his solar plexus tightening, more like strong alien rubber hands wringing his stomach out as if they were squeezing the last drops of water out of a yellow dishrag.
“Steady on, Igor!” said Adeline, a little alarmed at the unexpected display of passionate angst or anxious passion, or perhaps it was merely fear and exhaustion. Then she remembered her earlier vows and added, “I will pray for you, my friend.”

Igor rolled his eyes, momentarily forgetting about the yellow dishrag in the warm peach glow of exasperation.

Lisa was delighted when she woke up the next morning recalling a dream. She had just joined the new dream group despite hardly ever remembering dreams in the hopes that the pooling would improve her recall. In the dream she had been going on a trip with a few friends, and was waiting for the ferry to leave. The boat was on the beach instead of in the water, and there was thick fog but a number of people on the beach, so she went for a wander around and saw a man stretched out on his back, fully clothed, reading a book, the surfboard gently rolling in with the tide, and out with the tide, and back again. When she returned to the ferry it had turned into a building, the interior quite different from the ferry, and her friends were gone. Lisa checked her bag for tickets and camera, but they were missing, and the bag was full of plastic forks and spoons instead. Bloody Adeline! she thought. Plastic spoons and forks but no camera and no tickets!

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.

With years of intense Happiness training, and being herself a certified Happiness Coach™ in Rainbow Unified Bliss®, Lisa was reasonably adept at dispelling the occasional bouts of frustration that the six time travelers were experiencing while familiarizing themselves with the new time frame. Learning the new languages, both the local Spanish and the common language of the village tribe, English, was of paramount importance, and Mirabelle in particular was having difficulties. A basic vocabulary was easy enough, but when it came to grammar, Mirabelle was hopeless. Thus her communications were of a very basic and rudimentary nature, and she often felt unable to express her feelings, or her thoughtful observations on the many nuances, similarities and differences and overlaps of the current time and 18th century France. Not only was she obliged to learn two new languages, but was also learning to read and write. Often it seemed like all work and no play, too much pressure to perform, to learn, to do well at her studies, and yet play breaks were always frustrated in some manner because of her difficulties in communicating clearly. The fact that the others were progressing better with the languages made her feel alone, adrift in a sea of her own unexpressed thoughts.
Adeline had a more relaxed approach to the language difficulties, less inclined to struggle with it and more likely to chatter endlessly to Boris instead, and ask him to translate when she needed some help. She had discovered an interest, and some considerable talent, in the art room, experimenting with the paints and materials, and spent many happy hours engrossed in her paintings and playful collages of mundane (but to her, bizarre) objects. She was like a magpie, collecting items that caught her eye. The bright colours and smoothness of plastic appealed to her, especially when transformed in shape by one of those odd little plastic fire making gadgets. Sunglasses were another favourite, especially the different shades of lens. It was not unusual to hear one of the villagers complaining that the lids to the tupperware containers were missing, or all the bottle tops had been removed, to find they had all been glued together, with the flyswatter, a few odd flipflop beach shoes and the mirror lenses out of someones shades. But the villagers were on the whole amused, generously indulgent, and good naturedley rolled their eyes at her creative curiosity.
Boris was practical and capable, and true to form, was learning rapidly. He had no particular desire to express vague rambling thoughts (indeed, he was not a vague and rambling man by nature) and turned his attention to more practical matters. When he wasn’t chatting to Adeline, he was watching Jack tinkering inside car engines, or playing with Pierre’s camera and had quickly learned how to upload and play with the images on the computer. Often in the evenings Adeline would sit beside him and watch drowsily as the images changed in front of her eyes on the screen.
Ivan and Igor were learning what they needed to learn while doing it ~ tending the goats and chickens, working outside on the land, or helping with various building projects. They had taken to the local bars like ducks to water, and spent the evenings downing copious amounts of beer and wine with the locals, all of them babbling and shouting incoherently, but seeming to understand each other in the camaraderie of inebriation.

“Over there” shouted Allegra. “Mama Mia! Did you see that?”
Her inebriated friends lurched to the railings of the cruise ship deck. The sea was like a sheet of molten gold in the light of the full moon, and the ripples from the waterspouts had left enormous interconnecting circles on the waters surface.
“What the…”
A moment after the flumes, the dolphins breached; glowing pink and draped in the voluminous skirts of the maids, they were an extraordinary sight.
“They’re mermaids!” said Alma in astonishment, “Obese mermaids! I’ve never seen such fat mermaids, well not on this side of the Atlantic, anyway.”

The Russians and the French maids were losing consciousness with the extreme cold of the waters of the Bay of Biscay, and the pink dolphins instantly and unanimously agreed to teleport them to warmer seas as a matter of extreme urgency. The rendezvous on the decks of the ghost galleon would have to be synchronized later.
The obvious choice of destination and time frame was Maria del Mar’s home base. The pink dolphins shape shifted their fins into tentacles with which to clasp their passengers, with strict guidelines not to engage in any hanky panky ~ everyone knew what dolphins were like with regard to coupling at any opportunity.
The warmth of the dolphins embrace started to revive them and they had regained consciousness as they arrived with a series of spectacular water displacement flumes in the bay of Gibraltar.