Sharon ... ·
Tracy
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“It’s starting to look like the flashbacks are going to be more interesting than the start of the story, Liz,” Godfrey mentioned, while perusing Liz’s notes.
“Does it matter?” she replied crisply.
“What are you mumbling, Finnley? Soliloquy? What’s that?”
Finnley rolled her eyes, resisting the urge to snort lest it make her cough.Unknown to the family, Bert is Abcynthia’s father. Her mother, now dead, had an affair with Bert, so when Abcynthias left the town to go to university, she thought that both her parents were dead. Some of the remaining old codgers had their suspicions, but it was a well kept secret ~ not least, because of Horace Hogg’s (Abby’s father) violent and unpredictable nature. Fred’s family, Idle and his mother, are new to the town, coming only because Fred married Abcynthia (from now on known for short as Abby because it’s a fucker to spell)
Abby’s mother, Hannah Hogg, died in somewhat suspicious circumstances shortly before the mines closed.fred (and his) dear aunt (who wore a ) scarf (looked into the) distance (for) clues (for a) holiday (mere) seconds (before they) sat (on) rene (who was lying on the) floor (which) mysterious led (them to) Stuck Island (which was far) away properties (on a ) busy mystery pink (ocean) (more remote than) expected
impression: continued write story.
sun deep, showing shoulder wings ~
silently parrot strong mother:
tunnel anywhere!“You know what, Godfrey? I could just happily populate imaginary towns and then leave them all to get on with it, you know what I mean? I could call myself The Populator. My George, I think I’ve found my forte.”
“Well, you are known for an unbridled passion for introducing new characters that nobody understands, Liz.”
“Exactly!” she replied happily.Of the original inhabitants of the town, few remained. There were a dozen or so old codgers, too old for change, whiling away their dry days on the state pension. A handful of young families had attempted to set up an alternative self sustainable cooperative, forming a little enclave on the outskirts of town, raising chickens, rabbits and sheep, and lots of naked unruly brats with ankle bracelets. The solar panels looked incongruously shiny and sharp against the backdrop of dust and dilapidation.
Most of the houses in Bonemarsh were uninhabited, in various stages of dust and decay. A number of them had been left with their interiors intact though, as if the occupants had just not come home from work one day. Exploring the empty houses was a wonderful game for the few children left in the town ~ full sized play houses, complete with full sized toys. No tiny prams or miniature tools were required to play pretend with, as they had the real things at their disposal.
Exploring the wardrobes and trunks under the beds had given them many strange costumes and unexplainable objects to play with. The children didn’t really wonder about all the wigs, not at the time, they were just delighted to have so many to play with. Later, in retrospect, they wondered why a mining town had quite so many wigs.
“Godfrey, I do know what a window is.” Godfrey looked a bit miffed, so Liz added, “But thank you for the informative article notwithstanding.”
Finnley snorted, which made a dreadful mess all down the front of her overall.To look at the grizzled weathered face of Bert Buxton, sex might be the furthest thing from your mind. You would be unlikely to imagine him as a participant in outrageous kinky goings on in the back rooms and bedrooms of the local hostelries, or wild midnight romps under the stars, but things had been different in Bonemarsh when the mines were busy, when he was a virile young man.
The miners were a strange breed of men, but not all cut from the same cloth ~ they were daring outsiders, game for anything, adventurous rule breakers and outlaws with a penchant for extreme experience. Thus, outlandish and adventurous women ~ and men who were not interested in mining for gold in the usual sense ~ were magnetically drawn to the isolated outpost.
After a long dark day of restriction and confinement in the mines, the evenings were a time of colour and wild abandon; bright, garish, bizarre Burlesque events were popular. Bonemarsh, strange though it may seem, had one of the most extensive wig and corset emporiums in the country, although it was discretely tucked away in the barn behind a mundane haberdashery shop.
“I suppose we could give her the rest of the day off, but then who would do the cleaning?” Liz replied. “I think it’s always best to distract oneself and keep very busy when one feels under the weather. It would probably help if we gave her some extra work to do.”
“I see you are doing well with the exploration of playful spontaneity, Liz,” remarked Godfrey with a dry grin.
“Don’t you start, Godfrey. Everything has to be planned down to the last detail first.”
“Controlled spontaneity is it?”
“More of a solid base, a platform if you like, a launch pad for a cooperation of revelation and inspiration, a raft for the craft to avoid a sea of confusion. That sort of thing.”
“So, how’s it going?”
“Oh, it’s going very well indeed! I think we’re on chapter 57 of the plans already.”Fred poses as a teenager on Flitter social network and makes friends with his daughter Clove. Fred’s motivation was to keep abreast of the family news without eliciting any questions about his own whereabouts, and his intention was to remain a casual acquaintance merely, but Clove has developed a strong attachment to this “girl” and shares all her troubles and secrets with “her”. Fred struggles to remain neutral, and respond in the character of a teenage girl, but is emotionally unable to break the connection. Thoughts of his real identity becoming know to her appall him.
Bert knows a thing or two about the past, the town and the family, but he says very little about it other than offering cryptic one liners and knowing looks.
He was a miner when the mines were open (and he could tell you a few things about the goings on), and never left the place, managing to scrape by on kangaroo and cassowary meat and doing odd jobs, sometimes finding a gold nugget and selling it on ebay. He has a soft spot for the children, especially the rude and contrary Prune.
Does he have a strange sense of responsibility to Abcynthia? He hangs around the inn, unofficially making himself useful with odd jobs, and lives in a shed out the back.
The Flying Fish Inn was passsed down to Abcynthia (the childrens mother) from her father, who had a boarding house during the gold rush. He died just after the mine closed and Abcynthia closed the place up and moved to the city where she went to university and met her husband Fred (name to be arranged later).
Fred was a journalist who aspired to write a science fiction novel. He convinced his wife to give up her career as a corporate lawyer, and raise a family at the old inn in the outback, while he write his novel and earned a rudimentary income from writing articles online, enough to live on. Just after their 4th child was born, Abcynthia had had enough, and left the family to pursue her career in the city.
Fred’s sister Aunt idle was at a loose end at the time, needing to keep a low profile and “disappear” for reasons to be discovered, and agreed to come and help Fred with the children. Fred’s cranky mother had already been living with them for a few years but was not up to the responsibility of the four children while Fred was busy writing.
A few months after Abcynthia’s disappearance, some unexplained incidents occurred in the area around the ghost town and the defunct mines ~ possibly connected to the sci fi novel Fred was writing in some way ~ which Fred wrote articles about, which went viral in the popular imagination and thirst for weird tales, and visitors started coming to the town.
Aunt Ilde started to informally put them up in rooms, and enjoyed the unexpected company of these strangers which relieved her increasing boredom, then as the visitors increased (not so very many, but two or three a week perhaps) decided to officially reopen the boarding house and a B and B.
Fred, though, must have had some kind of a meltdown because he left a cryptic note saying he’d be back, and to carry on without him for the foreseeable future. Nobody really knew why, or where he had gone.
Adele Delilah Dalgleish, more familiarly known as Aunt Idle, Clove and Corrie’s paternal aunt, and care giver and guardian of the twins, the son and the younger daughter. Aunt Idle has a colourful history of improbable temporary jobs and pursuits, and eccentric liasons with the shifterati of the day, including hypnotizing chickens in a travelling circus, and selling magic spells on Flukebook. From time to time a bizarre character from the past turns up on their smalltown outback doorstep, and for many diverse reasons. Aunt Idle loves to travel, but travel has been limited due to her responsibilities to her brothers children and their location, so she has been practicing projecting and out of body travelling religiously for some years, and is becoming more confident, although it’s all still fairly sketchy.
When asked about her brother and his wife, her lips are sealed. As long as somebody’s looking after them, so what? she’d say. If the children asked, she’d say How would I know? I haven’t seen them lately. As if they were asking about a dress she had 10 years ago, mildly puzzled at their interest. Or that was the impression that she gave. It was a small town, people wondered. Especially as they had disappeared right around when those “weird tales from the unexplained outback” had started appearing in the popular press.Clove and Coriander Curara, identical twin girls born in the year 2000, the year 2000 being easily remembered and open to symbolic interpretation, as indeed is the date of their birth, the Day of the Dead, November the first ~ at 19:19. Clove was born first but merely minutes and so none of the family made tired old jokes about her being the older twin.
max coffee
smell particular creatures, somehow
butt (silence ~ worry comes) elephant;
myself, understand techromancer needed feelings.
welcome arona! abalone according itself……Sharon, Gloria and Mavis continued to transition at various locations on the island, making very little progress in linear terms with belief shedding, as they were having so much fun conjuring up handsome Russian men, and then disappearing them when they were done.
“Where’d everyone go?” asked Sanso, laughing loudly and slapping his thigh. It amused him greatly to watch all the dramas and escapades of the fledgling teleporters, but in truth he wasn’t sorry to see them go. He fully expected to bump into them again, somewhere, somewhen, down a tunnel or strung along some thread in another story, woven into another crazy quilt of patchwork tales.
“I’m going down, old chum,” he turned to Lazuli Galore, who was looking glum. “Down the tunnel under the old temple. See where it takes me. Are you coming?”
“May as well,” replied Lazuli.
“Well buck up then, no long faces! Time to rekindle your sense of adventure, be playful my friend! A lightness of step, as we delve down into the depths of the next adventure. Come on!”
Lazuli made a rude gesture behind Sanso’s back, but he followed him down the old stone steps beneath the temple. Why not?