I feel like I have failed them, thought Atlantis High Priestess (etc.) into the sacred flame from her space, communicating with the Beyond. They’re heading toward Shangri-La but don’t understand what they’re leaving behind, Black Maria and so on. It will happen, she knew.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0516, Maebaleia/Satori, RDR2, Redsland+
“If we discover a new land in the ship I think we should call it Redlands. After our current hangout. Whaddaya think?”
“How about *Black* instead. Er: Black Nation, say.”
With his quicksilver mind from all that pirating business down through the years, Red Dead Beardy Head thought of a compromise. “*Well*,” he started the new pitch. “Since red and black are both card colors, 50-50 for each, how about a card game. Say: Poker.”
Black Pearl laying beside him had to smile. He certainly was honoring both him and her with the name. But she couldn’t help countering with: “Black Jack. I say Black Jack. Fits the card part. 50-50 on the cards.” But my color up front and on top again, was the implied meaning.
“Okay, got another one. How about, say, *Hearts* — Heartsland. Like our two hearts are joined beyond just playing poker.”
“Awwww. How *sweet*.”
“Red on top, I know.”
“Yup,” she returned crisply, knowing the game was on again. “Spades,” she countered logically. The game of Spades, like we have the game of Hearts. Except, let’s see if I remember, *spades* trump everything; a black suit trumps everything.
“Okaay, but if I remember correctly (thinking quick again), Black Lady and Black Maria are variants of Hearts (game). So *if* we find new land, how about we stick with Heartsland — but the capital or the town we found there or whatever will be called Black Lady. I mean, Black Pearl of course.”
“Make it Black Maria and we’re good,” she finished the negotiation. Maria was her mother’s name as it turned out. Good to honor ancestors in a new land. Remember the past and roots while at the same time moving forward beyond them.
Heartsland, slightly changed to Heartlands, stuck. But Black Maria turned out to be Valentine.
(to be continued)
“I hear the perch is good here.”
“Don’t be silly, dear. They don’t serve fish this early. These are *landlovers*.”
“Oh.”
“So… *Libra*. Is it still Libra? I mean, since we’ve been walking? It was Libra about 10 minutes ago and I’m just wondering if the name still sticks.”
“You can call me such but, admittedly, I go by many names.”
“Yes, I’m seeing the bigger picture now.” She looked over the parrot dress, which Libra aka Atlantis High Priestess aka Bermuda aka Victor/Victoria redonned shortly after being released from jail by Officer Michelle Roundup. Some sort of pirate convention in town; they figured they would need the cell soon enough. Assign a hefty fine for the crime and move on.
“Where is our waiter?” asked impatient Red Dead Beardy Head. That man over there in the other room had been staring at him all the time. Is that our waiter on a break — taunting me? he wondered. Turns out it was.
4 handed Keat Owens, waiter/chef by day, private detective by night. He’d learned to sleep with his eyes open but he needed to wake up now and go to work again.
“I found the ship at a golf course sim which was closing up — got a cheap deal on it for that reason. Plus it was a mess, all cracked up on those rocks over there as you can see from the photo.” Black Pearl provided a photo to Red Dead Beardy Head much like the one below where she is finagling the deal with a woman named Libra Neptune who, of all places, had ties to Saint Dennis. So it seems like she has the power to manifest such realities. I, the writer of this here blog and attached current photo-novel, had no idea the Black Pearl ship would be here too. A gift, we can call it, ‘nother one.
“How ’bout Davy Jones?” said Red Dead still beside her in bed, although it was a different night than before. Plans had advanced. The restored Black Pearl, ready for space as it would ever be, parked in the vacant lot in back of downtown. They were staying in the captain’s cabin, testing it out. Well stocked with Caribbean White Rum — good start.
“Not needed in this story,” she replied plainly about Jones, knowing what he was referring to. *Her* Black Pearl was different from Sparrow’s. This was from a woman’s perspective.
—–
They were walking into town for a morning drink and a bit of breakfast when Black Pearl spotted her walking below Parrots for Pirates.
“Libra??”
Soon after leaving Aisle of Palms, the pirate ship ran into choppier waters rounding Thailand, encountering unexpected waves of stretch marks in trying to stick to the prepared dotted line of their journey. But this was only prognostication derived from the leg, with the actual voyage into space and not sea still lying ahead of them. Keeping with the body analogy, The Black Pearl was about to set sail for the fabled or perhaps fantastical Islets of Langerhans, said to dot the Pancreatic Sea in considerable numbers and whose shores are protected from harsher elements by huge ribs of sandbars, or so the legends go. The parallels to all this in space could only be guessed at (islets = asteroids? etc.).
Hopefully the sea and its islets haven’t been removed from the body in question and the dotted line they’re following turns out to be more akin to this, ick. In other words, the chest had been opened and the buried treasure within removed. Like coins in a gold bullion, maybe the islets themselves are this trove. We’ll work on it.
Barfly Sparrow has a secret.
“Hold *still* Prisoner Bermuda or whatever your actual name is while I take this final shot.” Officer Michelle Roundup had started at the end and worked her way back to the beginning. As shall we.
There. The Black Pearl is now in Aisle of Palms.
“No. *Not* like Blackbeard. It’s Red Head Beardy… shoot, let me start again. It’s Red *Dead*–”
“Why don’t I just call you Redbeard, eh?” she suggested with an interruption, hand laying on his chest. Red hair also there, she then realized, running her fingers softly through it; red hair all over, actually. “Or how about just Red?” Again, he’d heard this before. He’d turned in his hair. At a motel, he’s picking up. To be more myself, he thought.
“Oh *okay*.” He rolled over while taking her hand, looked straight into her pretty green eyes like a door or a phone. “*Black*,” he playfully chided with a return name. “Now about that ship?”
—–
She couldn’t find the free one in the inventory she had in mind, goofy looking but oh so reliable and roomy despite the odd shape. She decided to just let him have her own (The Black Pearl). On one condition: she goes too. Wherever this mysterious “X” spot is. He said there’s buried treasure to be found in the past there. 150,000 American dollars, which translates to roughly 5,000,000 dollars present day. “We just have to go there and find it in the center of the X, buy gold with it, and then come back here to cash in and spend — I’ve got it all mapped out. We’ll have to land in Mexico and take a smaller boat to the opposite shore. Or maybe just swim if the distance is not too prohibitive across the channel. How’s your swimming skills?”
“Let’s take the boat,” she said, dismissing the swimming part, not wanting to grease herself all up before going into town, this Backwater place, he said.
The name had been changed from before to protect the innocent.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0510, Mountain Lake, Omega, RDR2
“I came here looking for ship parts. Maybe even a whole ship. Instead I found an X. X marks the spot.”
“You’re in over your head,” she said back, the first female salvage related person he’d met. And the 1st person of color, period. She rezzed in to help, to be truthful. RDBH had the perfect angle for an opening shot. He didn’t want to mess it up.
“Or a spot marked by an X,” he changed the wording of his former sentence. Now that she had come he could look down.
Ah yes, a bunch of stuff named Mare: cigarettes, beer, ‘nother different kind of beer. “Why are you running an, er, eatery stand? Salvage person.”
“I have to make ends meet,” she said plainly, matter-of-factly. “Else how could I offer goofy looking scavengers like you such good prices, eh?”
RDBH looked over, took her in better. Pretty face. Jewels on head and body. Attractive. But the prices were still too expensive. More than one way to skin a cat? “What’s your name, dear?”
“Pearl. Black Pearl most call me. To differentiate from other types of pearls: grey, white, so on.”
“Black Pearl,” he parroted back, making the birds on his shoulders share a smile. He seemed to have heard the name before. But where?
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0509, Mountain Lake, Omega, RDR2
One needed parts and the other ran a salvage yard so it seemed these 2 characters pirated from other lands should get together.
“Flying ship, eh?” said one to the other. He turns. “What do you need? A propeller?”
“A crew, actually,” said Red Dead Beardy Head who we just met in that last post here, throwing a monkey wrench and all into our dialog. Building a space ship he is. Looks like a sea ship. Might be both. “I want to re-crew-t you.”
“Me?” Nick turns back to the bar, thinks about ordering another mug of Carribean White Rum from green haired Marcia with this. We’re from different lands, he ponders, *rival* lands. “You’re talking crossover here, you know.” He let the statement hang in the air, then: “You understand the consequences.”
“Yup.” One of the two parrots on his shoulders said, “Crossover, *squawk*” and the other said, “Consequences, *squawk*”.
The 3rd reddish parrot on the barrel beside him said nothing, biding his time. He was waiting for Nick’s 3rd line. It never came; Nick got up intending to leave this small parcel next to a road on the Corisca continent, never to return. Then he realized that Red Dead Beardy Head was the one who had to leave the property to properly end the scene, since he was the visitor. Embarrassed — turning red himself — he sat back down.
“Forget where you were, *who* you were?”
“Yup.”
(to be continued?)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0041, 0508, Corsica, RDR2, Storybrook-
We have a sign…
… and are directly tied into our neighbor’s road system to the south in two places. Super nifty!
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of downtown from the sign, we find a parallel Michelle Roundup examining another object. Just ribs now. But soon…
“Should be ready by the christening,” spoke mastermind Red Dead Beardy Head, a pirated version of himself from another open world game.
“But… how are you going to get it down to the sea?” she logically asks about the still skeleton of a thing.
“Don’t need to.” He turns and points up toward the circling seagulls. “Space.”
Sunklands 