Category Archives: Western Hills

March 14, 2024 · 4:07 am

00420305 (blow the doors off something (also: Rabbit))

Time for Mary Ball and Pitch Usurpius Darkly to move on to the next leg of their extended fishing vacation…

…. Fox Island at Endlessly Antipodal. Note that Antipodal is very close to antipoison, almost as if it was in the same jacket near the same pocket. Juliet-like, balcony standing Sepisexton we’re talking about here again and her hidden vial of the latter. Just in case, as she puts it. The former is included in picks by not one but two Yellowmoon Ridge landowners who seem unconnected to each other, er, otherwise (where we’ve just seen Shelley and Arthur). That’s why I knew I had to send the Darklys or someone else in my family of avatars there to check it out, interact with the landscape and perhaps the residents, if any exist.

Everything in Our Second Lyfe is connect to each other as if in a fractal environment. It all drills down to the same thing over and over. Only Outside can save us, something beyond Our Second Lyfe. Haze County where I actually live up in the Real World is an obvious, top level way to escape this void. Similarly virtual but much more intensely verisimilitudinous Red Dead planet too — if I can figure out how to get Jim Randolph the Bastard Pirate out of that fox body and into a human one again in St. Dennis, its only full fledged city and what some call the 8th wonder of that world. GoogleEarth and associated Street View is yet another way to latch onto something more real. Thing is, Our Second Lyfe is losing energy as games keep developing way above and beyond it. If it weren’t for the ability to create. Oh, and also the avatar customization and the incredible creativity of Our Second Lyfe residents in designing clothes, buildings, vehicles, all sorts of things. I seem to need to relay this to the reader of my blog to illustrate that I’m in sort of a tug of war between it and the rest of reality, including even other virtual worlds (and specifically, at least at this point, Red Dead Redemption 2, even though I don’t yet own the game itself, ha).  I mean, right now in one of my other computer windows I’m looking at something that shouldn’t be possible. Something in Mary Ball’s old Killing Shack now located at the bottom of a lake in Decker on the original Bellissaria continent. How did I get to this point?


Then there’s the problem of OSL laaaggg.

So here we finally return to Pitch Darkly and Mary landing in their small fishing boat on what’s called Fox Island in the River of Bear. Of course it has other names — no surprise there — including Squirrel Island. Because of this little fellow, currently surrounded by sniffing foxes checking him out. But he’s actually a chipmunk; that’s what the foxes have surmised as well, being versed in Endlessly Antipodal geography and the naming of local things. “We’re still okay; still on top,” one speak-thinks to the other, actually being a part of one soul beneath the separate exteriors, a distinct advantage they have over humans.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so hasty in switching Jim Randolph the Bastard Pirate back into a human body himself. See what he can still uncover as an urban fox.

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September 15, 2023 · 9:32 am

Rocky Comfort

The mouse already had a rat and he was she. Giant monster Albert couldn’t get inside this time. The girl was safe. For now.

Made it! Butt… where am I??

She eventually makes her way through all the other rooms to the bathroom. And the scales, but something was different from before, although they still registered zero just like she was a kidd again, a baby, an infant, a… fetus. We couldn’t see the tub ducks so no yellow in the picture now. Definitely changed, although the observer still observed from atop the falls.

She wakes up in bed, cow patterns to the front, cow patterns to the side. No noise.

Where is everyone? she asks herself after sitting up and scratching her head in confusion. Flown away?

Turns out it was so.

Butterfingers appear in a cave.

Pink sees yellow again (and wants).

We’re back on the correct timeline.

(to be continued)

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September 5, 2023 · 8:12 am

00390706

They walked away from the peak overlooking Coyote Pass, not holding hands yet but feeling closer than ever because of what they’d just witnessed, the girl for the girl and, likewise, the boy’s death for the observing boy. Deep down, they realized it could have been them. Oh, not by hypnotizing orange trees like with humans Al and Sarah, but something else Mid-Hazel could have concocted especially with mechanoids in mind. And they also came to realized they were suppose to replace these 2, just from the act of being witnesses to the awful spectacle. Tom knew what could come to pass — at the Pass — when he lured them here. “Take a well deserved vacation,” he said to the 2, fresh off their saving of River by turning everything dark and muddled there into light and clear and *clean*. No more chocolate mess. They had worked together there and they would work together in the future to handle a bigger crisis. The pollution of the whole original Bellisseria continent by evil forces of sickening sugary designs much vaster.

“How about the Western Hills of Bellisseria?” he said to them in his office that morning, even providing the pair some scenic landmarks that he said Al had scouted out in his visit there (see first of this here photo-novel). Top of the list: Coyote Canyon Overlook. He *knew*. And so they saw. He didn’t tell them because all lie in a probable reality still, and, anyway, there was nothing they could do about it directly. “Just observe,” they can hear him say as an afterthought in their heads now, after the tragedy was over. Later on, through the pumpkins, they understood something else was involved: alien creatures of a high design indeed.

First up: Butterfingers.

END OF “SUNKLANDS 2023 MORE MIDDLE”!

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September 4, 2023 · 10:22 pm

00390705

“Do you see Mid-Hazel? Is she dancing?”

“No. Can’t see her.”

“How about the pumpkineaters?”

“Still under the orange tree. Like normal. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. Hazel is probably just inside stretching again. You know she has to do it every hour or she simply freezes up, probably dies as a result.”

“Every half-hour, I’ve heard. But no time for disagreements. I see movement!”

“Blue clad Sarah in front of the littler one.”

“This could be—”

“Aww MANNN. I didn’t need to see that. Here, Boyy, you take the binoculars and keep watch while I go throw up.”

“But you have no…” Boyy was going to tell Gurl she has no internal working parts to throw up with but too late. Dry heaves over there, purely an emotional reaction to what happened below. He dares to look. He increases the magnification to the max.

Blood on the ground but no sign of Sarah, with the littler one gone too. Maybe he drug her up in the yard to finish his consumption yeck, Boyy rationalized. And, oh boy, now Al is positioned in front of the bigger pumpkineater. Mid-Hazel is clearly seen behind this time. Gurl comes back and observes naked eyed. “Is Mid-Hazel… *naked*?”

“ZOWIE!!! My turn, Gurl,” and he hands the binoculars to her and rushes to the same place in the bushes.

Al is dead, Sarah is dead. Tom is not going to be happy about the news. Two of his best agents!

(to be continued)

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September 4, 2023 · 8:19 am

yes, it’s bad

She invited them into her trailer for more talk but there was nowhere to sit and they had to just stand and watch her accomplish her stretching exercises, saying she had to do them every half hour on the button (her archaic expression) or else her ancient body would simply start to freeze up. “A bit chained to the trailer, then,” she said. “I was just joking about the being away part before, lassie,” she spoke directly to Sarah. “I just don’t have a dot to be a presence.” Sarah checked the in-world map again in her head. Two green dots together apparently representing her and Al beside her in the sim of Coyote Canyon here. But no third. Mid-Hazel was right. What *were* they dealing with here?

“Beautiful, wasn’t I?” she said, apparently indicating the portrait of a young woman beside her, one of the few objects in the trailer besides the exercise stand and some random decorations. “Toast of Ghosttown, high in the sky it was. But not a skybox. A plateau.” She switched to about the 5th or 6th stretching position. “Almost done,” she excused the necessity. “But I may have to start again if you’re here long enough. Are you staying for dinner?” Mid-Hazel resisted the urge to joke that, “they’re it.” Plenty of time for macabre later on. Henry’s mouth outside was already salivating at the sight of the boy’s featured body. The girl he will leave to Junior (also salivating).

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September 4, 2023 · 7:00 am

no friend

“Do you like him dearest? I gave him my eyes. Well, I gave him eyes *like* mine to be specific. Buttons, see?”

Sarah jumped off the ground, turned toward the muffled voice speaker. She tried not to gasp at the sight. After all, Our Second Lyfe is full of strange avatars. But this one seemed different… realer. Scarier. “I’m… so sorry… miss. We didn’t, we didn’t…”

“See a green dot at the trailer?” Mid-Hazel completed Sarah’s thoughts, the counterpart to Al, the love of his life by now, even though she may have to be put in “storage” again until he can figure out how to get to the wedding part. He’s committed to a future date, though — whenever it can occur. “Thought you were alone at the place? Yeah, I just pop in now and then. Coincidence, we’ll call it I’m here when you’re here. Serendipity. *Synchronicity*. Are you aware of that term my dear? Do you know the meaning?”

“Yes,” she spoke, brushing her hair away from her blue eyes and trying to make herself more presentable to the… whatever it was she was facing. Old Hag? Witch? Maybe a combo of several archetypes… yes, another term she learned in her college psychology classes, Jung touched upon here there and there.

“Then you’ll know this is *fate*, this meeting is.”

Al appeared from behind some bushes. He’d heard voices but he had to finish his tinkle, nature being the harsh bitch she is (he was thinking at the time). Both turned toward him.

“Ahh, and the *man*. Always a man lurking around for a pretty thing like yourself, honey.”

Al walked up, confident that they had a right to be here because of the orange trees and because of what they found beneath them. More orange. Pumpkin orange. “I assume this is your land, um…”

“Hazel,” spoke Mid-Hazel. “The central one. Two on the end,” and she extended both arms and looked at each “hand” that wasn’t there, “but I’m the most important. They say if you’re in the middle that sometimes you’re simply in the way. And so it is.” She collapsed both extremities onto her heart to indicate herself, the center, the void in middle of it all — no hands to mask. Mid-Hazel, Witch Hazel to some, especially if you’re from the West Coast. “We were just talking about eyes, young man; my kind of eyes,” and she indicated the larger pumpkin creature again.

Suddenly Sarah was teleported about 10 yards away and then quickly walked back, thinking she did it to herself somehow. But she didn’t. She was simply standing a bit too close to him and he didn’t like it, this mustachioed fiend of the night.

(to be continued)

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September 4, 2023 · 1:39 am

00390702

“Orange trees,” spouted Al, still under a spell. “Just like the lights before, don’t you think? Come join me, Sarah, in celebrating the sight of our arrival.”

“Um… okay.” And she sat down beside him but not without internal considerations of the consequences of all this. Is she the only one between them who can see this could be a trap? Halloween was still almost 2 months away but for some, the few, the powerful, it has already start at the 1st of September. If Christmas can have the day after Halloween until sometime in January, then All Hallows’ Eve can have at least its 2 months as well before this. So says Hazel.

After about 15 minutes on the rock, he gets up. “Shall we proceed?”

“I… guess so.”

(to be continued)

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September 3, 2023 · 7:39 am

00390701

“It’s said in olden days, Sarah, that that square island-rock down there was used as a sacrificial altar. Some say it still is.”

“Pumpkineaters — yes I’ve heard of them. A hate group some call them. But not me.”

Al turned, but not to kiss this time. Kill? “Why not?” he said, disbelieving his ears. “I mean–”

“I know I know,” she tried to explain, wishing she’d never voiced her opinion on the subject now. “Little Jack Sprout.” Should she go ahead and say it? Why not (to echo Al)? “They never found the body.”

Al bounces up off the log, looks down on her. “They found his *clothes*. They found his little orange *hat*. Heck, they even found his *shoes*. No body?? Why would you even need a body with all that?” He turns toward the lake. “He’s probably at the bottom there, down in the rocks below where no one can see. Opaque Lake — not named that for nothing.” Even though, Al realized through the anger, that, yes indeed, he could see some of the bottom on the shallower side. Not quite opaque, although getting there. Maybe the sediment clouding the water has settled or something, he rationalized.

“And the gesture,” he continued, “the last gasp. They have it on film.”

“They have a re-*creation* of it on film.” Sarah had dug this hole, now she was going to stand in it. Fake footage we’re talking about here. Evidence split into 3, with the 1st conveniently missing and the second maybe conveniently faked, maybe the real reason for the 2nd even extends to the 3rd which would be the last, case, well, opened *up* again. She said all this to Al.

His love for Sarah already ran deep and clear. He started to reconsider.

(to be continued)

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September 3, 2023 · 12:53 am

00390616

“Such an interesting light show, Al.”

“I thought you might like this spot. Sarah.” He turns, leans in for a kiss.

In Coyote Canyon in the middle of these Western Hills of the 1st Bellisseria continent, Mid-Hazel prepares to die, as she’s done the past 100 years it seems. But, as visiting Herbert Glenn Gold speculated earlier in the present photo-novel — fast drawing to a close — this time it might be for real. Pre-Abyss Absorption here I come at long last, she might be thinking in the picture below.

She is not alone at her wannabe death bed trailer.

Hand in hand, the couple walks toward Opaque Lake in decreasing darkness.

Wait a minute: *pumpkins*??

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July 2, 2023 · 4:51 pm

eleven

“… closed for installation,” she reads just outside the property lines. And she was so looking forward to viewing art in one of the few “original” Bellissaria galleries left. She checks parcel details. Owned by Emerald, an alt of Diamond, so still the same as before. The avatar also owns property in Blung, oddly enough, which could be a past verb of bling if it were such, as in jewelry, as in, often, diamonds. You have to pay attention to synchy stuff like this, especially in synch friendly Our Second Lyfe. She remembers first visiting this gallery in July 2019 when it was presenting an exhibition celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon landing.

https://modemworld.me/2019/07/16/celebrating-apollo-11-in-second-life-and-sansar/

Prism decides to explore around the area a bit since she’s here, hating to waste such a long trip, and automatically heads toward the mountains instead of the coast, as is her wont. Let’s follow her there…

Cool! she thinks, going further in and up. Bucolic!

Winding around, she doesn’t want to go back to pavement and thus turns right on this ridge that eventually leads her to a mountain where a man called Tom. We’ve been here before.

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