She was having that nightmare about blood spilling out an elevator.
Later, she really wanted to eat that piece of chocolate raspberry cake but didn’t have the stomach.
“You can have it Tess.”
“I ain’t hungry neither this morning, Mabel. Mud again,” she summarized her own nightmare.
It was all Robert’s.
“Gimme, gimme, gimme,” he cried while reaching.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0208, End of Time^^
“128, 128, Mr. Baker. I had to come out and talk to the tree.”
“Really, Ruby Fantasie?”
“*Noooo.*” But: yes, Ruby Fantasie had to come out to get further instructions from the tree. At the centre of the sim (Fruity Islands). She wasn’t going to let Baker know that, however. She splits in two.
“Let’s go back inside now,” she ordered after receiving.
—–
“Come on, come on, hurry it up.”
In a poof of pollen the vines part!
—–
“A choice here, Mr. Baker. I’ll let you choose.” For that is what the Ruby Tree told Fantasie to do.
Baker walks left.
——
“This pool is where we came in from the waterfall. Those torches over there mark the entrance. We’ll never be able to dry out today. Good thing it’s so hot; but not down here.” She sneezes. “Catching a cold, I believe.”
“Just beyond that bend behind the fruit bats, Fantasie,” Baker declared while pointing ahead, obviously in The Trance now. He doesn’t shiver atall.
—–
Inhabitants! thought Fantasie. Dear, lordy me. I’ve never seen *this* before. The tree was right!
Tessa.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0207, End of Time^^, Fruity Islands^^
“You’s guys look *different*. You’s just be passing through?”
“That’s right, um…”
“Jane.”
“Jane, yes,” replied Magus Ellen in an acquired accent. “We be seeking a man named Murdochh who liveth in the area.”
The bar goes silent. Jane stares at him steadily, perhaps even with fear in her eyes. Yes: fear. She immediately closes the bar, saying she has some restocking to do.
—–
Outside:
“We’ll come again tomorrow looking different, Sidechick. That’s your homework for tonight — to get a good disguise. Let’s head back to Nascera…”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0206, Rose Heaven^^
“He must have come here after walking across the bridge, Sidechick Corea. Hi Sammie!”
“Sammie seems to want us to go inside, Magus Ellen,” observes the younger man.
“Dog’s tale, yess.”
“We better change into something else.”
“What *you* got?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0205, Rose Heaven^^
“Methinks this is my kind of place.”
—–
In a related story, the body of a witch was found just outside her cabin in Wabe today. Authorities believe a rival practitioner of the Dark Arts threw her out the back window during an argument over possession of a cat.
But she’s okay.
—–
“There, there. Now, now.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0204, End of Time^^, Rose Heaven^^
“Very nice. This will do.”
“I get it, Magus Ellen,” Sidechick Corea shouted from below. “The rat tales are the 2 in the pictures, the first and last of the post. But the *same* rat tale. That of Reginald’s.”
Ellen walks out to the front stairs. “What was that, my friend?” But Ellen heard well what he said. No need to voice it, true, but no harm done. Here at least.
He listened patiently while Sidechick repeated his observations. Then: “Good, good.” He stares back inside the treehouse… “We’re almost ready up here.”… and then toward the cave mouth.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0203, End of Time^^
Dr. Brown knew a thing or two about sniffing out mysteries. He’d been doing so most of his life, especially a particular one involving the Cult of the Three Suns. Clues had been flying in from all directions recently. And now another had fallen in his lap: a pregnant Pat or Patrick Starr, connected with *North Yd* of all places (pronounced like “North Wide” just so you’ll know). Tilers, he thought from his secret underground lair, far far away (spatially and temporally) from the simpletons at Eotia Village. Squid people. Opposite sides of the circle, one dead and stuffed, the other living and breathing and… preaching. Vicious cycle — no, not vicious — *natural*, a comes around, goes around sort of idea. But now he had to find Tessa. She was the key.
Less than a half year ago; North Yd:
“The tile here indicates safety, however,” her grandpa reinforced. “Safe to split up, then. You examine the buildings that way,” — Grandpa Gold points behind Tessa — “and I’ll work my way around from this end — counterclockwise — until we meet up somewhere in the middle. Is that okay?”
—–
—–
I could spend the rest of my life staring at these walls and learning nothing else. I can’t believe all of the months from my past I did so. Nascera, he thought bitterly. Turns out nothing’s here. Nothing atall.
Even Reginald appears to be gone.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0202, Nascera^^, The Waste^^
“*Axis*, Zoidboro. That’s who *we’re* trying to defeat. We must make sure we don’t get this VD person to help us. Let’s see, V could stand for Val, Valerie, Valentine…”
“It’s *not* someone’s initials, Pat. Stop looking around. And don’t touch *anything* you don’t have to. Let’s just get you checked up and get outta here.”
After a pause, Pat whispers in Zoidboro’s ear. “I wonder if *he’s* hiding out from Axis too,” indicating the man sitting on the far seat from them.
“Stop — with the Axis talk,” Zoidboro reprimands out of the side of his tentacle covered mouth.
“Patrick!?” a suddenly appearing nurse shrills, making them both jump a bit.
“Um, that’s me.” Pat raises his hand. Zoidboro grabs it and shoves it back down.
“Right this way sir.” She looks at Zoidboro. “Are you his… guardian?”
“Yeah, we can go with that,” Zoidboro grumbles, and gets up to follow.
—–
“Say you come from a, quote unquote, mutanty place, huh?”
“Hambone, sir. That’s right. Zoidboro here lives in North Yd…”
“… but part of the same micro-continent,” Zoidboro further explained.
“Hmmm…” Doctor Brown taps his pen crisply against the report several times. “Well, sorry to break this to you Patrick — *Pat* — but it looks like you’re pregnant. 8 months so, in fact.” He stares at the dumbfounded Patrick, then at Zoidboro. “I, um, don’t reckon you’re the father?”
“N-n-no. No!”
But was he?
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0201, End of Time^^
“I’m telling you, Baker. This trees has eyes (!).” Ruby Fantasie turns. “And what is that ridiculous outfit of yours suppose to be?”
“I’m cold,” Baker states plainly, then fakes a shiver.
“Cold?? It must be 95 here! Take that silly thing off.”
“I… I haven’t got any underwear beneath it.” Baker blushes slightly.
“Well. I’ll turn my head until you find another outfit. We must talk!”
—–
“You scared Bob, Baker. That’s not a good sign.”
“Maybe I just took too long to change and he got bored.”
“No, there’s something more. I have other things to show you now.” She points down the clearing. “Geraldine. Counterpart to Bob. Let’s see what she does with you.”
—–
“Easy going fellow, eh?”
“But she’s not heading toward you still. Sideways at best.”
“What does that mean?”
“Let’s go to the waterfall,” Ruby Fantasie then declares. “Beyond the pool which is sort of a decoy, I suppose. You think: there can’t be another, hidden pool this close to an exposed pool. That kind of thing.”
“Lead the way.”
“We have to backtrack a bit.”
—–
There she is, Baker thinks. I feared I lost her again.”
—–
“The exposed pool,” Ruby Fantasie explains. She turns. “Then over there, behind some rocks: the hidden one.”
—–
“What now, Ruby?”
“We go down.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0012, 0116, Fruity Islands^^
Sunklands 