Core-Alena can travel through *centres* (resonance).
But only for short stints.
Something was different today in evergreen packed Purden.
Settlers. Several precious trees missing. Core-Alena was restless in anticipation of even more.
She-he was being forced to turn into something else.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0011, 0202, Mountain Lake, Purden/Snowlands
“But how??” Jacob I. couldn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing. Core-alena had returned to the center of Second Lyfe!
A red handed Duncan Avocado begins his confession. “Lovely and beautiful, yes,” he said, echoing some of Jacob I.’s earlier talk about Snowlands and Second Lyfe overall. “But ultimately doomed to failure, just like Laura in the Twin Peaks enterprise. Unless I restored the center. There was only one way to do it. Move Wheeler away from the tree at the weakest point of her existence. Which was right here. In Cloudmont, just before she arrived at Purden Castle. Do you remember? She was with Snowmanster, who is also actually you again at the core. They had walked a great distance and Snowmaster was purposefully draining her of energy. She had to jettison the Old Grey avatar and become herself again. Lovely and beautiful, yes, but subject to decline and death in that moment. *This* is the ring.”
“You killed her,” spoke Jacob I., staring at Duncan’s red extremities. “You murdered her with your own bare hands. That kept her away from the tree (Core-alena), in the first place. Woody Woodmanson warned us of her aberrations that very night in the castle. It was all set up.”
Duncan Avocado allowed Jacob I.’s inaccurate theories to thread out before responding. “*Jeffrie Phillips* set it up. He appeared in the center of Gaston tonight, right where I was attempting to teleport in. I didn’t recognize him at first. He was a black man, like myself. But there was no murder involved. Just a movement. My hands have always been red. It’s a medical condition.”
“Interesting.” Jacob I. shakes his head. “Jeffrie Phillips.” He then begins his own confession. “Broken Heart and I have tried and tried to stabilize Collagesity through various gimmicks since arriving through that portal last October. Each one doomed to failure: Wheeler and The Musician — doubled bed trick failed. Spookmobile — stolen once again and then again; no ‘Pumpkintwisters’ meeting finalized. Then Hucka Doobie was pushed into the first Hunt collage which was not the first Hunt collage before this happened. Collagewold,” Jacob I. emphasized. “He’s inside now. That was the way out all along.”
“Yes,” affirmed Duncan. “You must go back to Gaston and set me free and allow me to do what I just did in the past and future as well as the present. Else it is all for naught. Your precious Sugar Dumpling awaits you. All the Berries. You *do* miss that life there, don’t you? Broken Heart can accompany you back, of course. And there’s *pot*. Pot galore, thanks to Leona Lei and the Hilltoppers.”
“Leona! I knew she’d come through.” Jacob I. whirled around in his tracks. “You hear that Broken Heart?”
Duncan disappeared from in front and Broken Heart appeared behind. “I hear ya!” She was already counting how many times she could get high in one day.
END OF COLLAGESITY 2017-2018 WINTER!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0007, 0617, Purden/Snowlands
“Uh huh.” More buzzing/squeaking from the floor. “I see.”
“What’s she saying?” asked a slumping Broken Heart from the other couch. She was pretty stoned.
“Hold on a minute.” Tina speaks again in her minute, tinny voice, understandable only to Jacob I. in the room. Perhaps it is because he’s closer to her, however, or just actually paying attention. The lawnmower continues to interact with the tiny being. “Alright, I guess we can do that.” Tina replies. “No, we don’t have the equipment or manpower for that, Tina.” After a small pause, Tina squeaks and buzzes for about 30 seconds more. “You take care as well, friend.” She scoots rapidly across the floor and out the door.
“So… what’s she saying?” queries Broken Heart again while remaining in a slumping position. She didn’t even realize Tina had left the scene.
“Jeffrie Phillips, that’s what,” replied a frowning Jacob I. “Centre,” he added.
—–
15 minutes earlier in Gaston’s Central Park, Pretty Man puts on the green ring. Everything changes.
“Over here, punk,” he calls to Earie Chuck after the deed is done. “I made a small detour.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0006, 0207, Gaston+, Purden/Snowlands, Sansara
“We are at Purden Center, Snowmanster. But where are Core and Alena?”
“Yeah, right, I forgot about that too,” Snowmanster acknowledges. “I’ll have to leave you once more, just for a moment.” He puts his hand on the wooden man’s shoulder. “Woody, you’ve been a fantastical friend down through the years for me. You’ve endured great hardships and still have managed to make a place for yourself in this world. I am here to help now. Wheeler and I. And the children who aren’t children, now rescued from being X-ed out. We’re all in this together. You can ask your questions.” On the spot, Snowmanster changes into Core-Alena.
“Kneel down, Woody,” Core-Alena requests. “So I can speak with you… fellow wooden being. Here, let me turn just a little to the right so you can see me better. And I, you.”
Woody kneels. “Snowmanster? Is that you in there?”
“Yes. This is a core being as well but more than myself. *All* of us. Everyone in the Snowlands. Rich and poor. Good and evil. Male and female. We are them. They are us. As Snowmanster, I just had to commit to being here. With you and the others.” Owlie the 3rd eyed owl sitting on one of their branches hoots in agreement.
“So is this… the end?”
“Yes,” states Core-Alena. “We will go forward, obviously, but in a different setting, a different light. Mid-Hazel and her entrapping X’s, etc., have been defeated. We are one.
Woody gets on the ground and stares directly into the male-female eyes. He asks the final question. “Am I in there too?”
“Woody,” Core-Alena playfully smirks. “You are the key!”
END OF “COLLAGESITY 2016-2017 WINTER”.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0003, 0618, Purden/Snowlands, Sansara
“Wow, it’s really quite desolate in here,” says Wheeler, truly impressed with the views at Purden Center.
“I wouldn’t quite put it that way,” states a standing Snowmanster behind her, giving up the attempt to coax Core-Alena into speaking with them. “I think it’s a no go today, Wheeler,” he continues. “Sometimes that happens with the daytime talkie trees. They have good days and bad days, just like the rest of us. The night trees are a bit different, a bit more psychic and often, um, darker. Sinister I guess I should put it.”
“Where’s that dummy of yours?” Wheeler asks crudely of Woody Woodmanson.
“Dunno,” replies Snowmanster. “Perhaps in the gorge looking for frozen corpses. That’s where the Santas often dump them.”
“Interesting about all these Santas, some good some bad. Some kind, some evil. But mostly evil. That’s not what I’ve heard about your Christmas from sources.”
“Yes, they are probably the most popular demons of this Second Lyfe. Snowmen like me are up there as well. I think my snowy fiend-friend Chucky still lives over in Meribel.”
“Well let’s just go see the college over there,” suggests Wheeler. “Instead of just dawdling here getting cold. Let’s go see another ‘snowy’. Let’s *move*.”
“Alright, alright,” says Snowmanster, matching the tone of Wheeler’s voice. He then kneels down in front of Core-Alena again. “We’ll be back my friends. We need your help now to tell us where to go, what to do.”
“Please help us Core-Alena, you’re our only hope,” Wheeler mimics in a high pitch voice, and then titters. “Star Wars” was known all over the galaxy.
—–
Snowmanster was vastly disappointed to find Meribel College apparently no longer existed, grounds vacated. All that remained was Three Star Tree formerly standing outside the witches’ dorm. Three black stars. Wheeler stared at it for some time, deep in thought.
She could kill Snowmanster right now, she machinated, slash his throat at almost the exact spot where she similarly killed Plain Wayne all those years ago. She helped Mid Hazel then and now the old witch is returning the favor in the present — finally. She failed the first time with the fire, but Snowmanster must die. He must never be reunited with his true family Spongebub and Snowbob. Because that might end the Green-White War which must go on forever and ever. And ever.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0003, 0608, Purden/Snowlands, Sansara
The next morning, Snowmanster and Woody were able to talk in private for the first time while Wheeler went back to Cloudmont to check out a forest oddity I’ll get to in a minute.
Woody spoke frankly. “Why would you bring such a person to this sacred realm, Snowmanster? You must feel the (bad) vibrations surrounding her.”
“I do, I do,” admitted the white being. “She’s been dwelling in a nasty place. You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
“I’ve been to college, Snowmanster,” declared the toy avatar proudly, tenor voice piping up. “Second in my class.”
“Of *five.*” Snowmanster then backtracked on his putdown, feeling the hurt. “Yes, yes it *was* a great accomplishment, Woody. I’m proud of you.”
“And I have a key because of it. I never let it go, not in sleep, not in travel, not in any circumstance. I am the first toy avatar of my clan to earn one.” He clutched the gleaming gold object even harder.
“Very proud indeed,” Snowmanster reinforced. He looked down into the vast Purden woods, containing perhaps five times the amount of trees as the Rubi Forest. He spotted the appropriate, sticky-outy tree from his perch.
“I suppose we’ll have to visit Alena next.”
“Of course,” replied the wooden man, also looking down. “And Core.”
“Of course.”
—–
Woody Woodmanson didn’t learn a lot about the current situation from surprisingly tight lipped Snowmanster. He was disappointed. He and Snowy went back a long ways now, all the way to the North Pole when Woody was still a twinkle in Old Kringle’s ancient eye. The first sound he remembers was cowbell. Woody would be different — a living toy to aid the elves’ arduous task of preparing for Christmas 11 3/4 months out of the year. After the event was over they’d get a week’s break until New Years Day. That was it as far as vacation, sick days, anything. There was a dark side to Old Kringle indeed. If you became unable to accomplish your tasks for any significant time (minus during the aforementioned break) you were sent away and replaced by another. Like numerous others before and after, this would be the fate of Woody at the age of 8 when he contracted elm disease. Rudolph the Reindeer, shiny red nose dulled with age, led him to the borders of the North Pole to say goodbye. Newly hewed Woody2, as they originally dubbed him, was already at work soldering together toy parts in the work shed behind them.
Snowmanster awaited beyond the boundary. He helped take care of those cast aside — helped them heal up if needed and then channeled them into different lives, better lives in some instances. Woody was very lucky. Master Luke Purden’s elf servant at the castle, another North Pole refuge, had just been destroyed by a rouge Yeti. Snowmanster put in a good word. He was there watching from the woods the day Woody’s limbs were attached to his body and the magic powder of life borrowed from Mid Rhonda over in Meribel was sprinkled over him head to foot. It was the first time Old Kringle involved himself with the dark arts, but certainly not the last. Woody Woodmanson knew well the feeling of evil and dread.
So Purden Castle, perched between eastward green Purden and westward white Cloudmont, became his home. Luke Purden died on March 17, 1968, the exact day the trees began to die over in the Rubi Woods far to the north. Woody’s inheritance enabled him to attend Meribel College and receive a degree in psychics. There was some overlap in his studies with the tiny witch “college within a college”, a separate entity from Meribel but paradoxically joined with it at the same time. This was the same internal college that produced Mid Hazel in 1972, one of two graduates that year. Snowmanster didn’t yet know this fact. Wheeler had slaughtered Plain Wayne too soon to find out.
Woody’s key vibrated abberantly as Wheeler walked back into the castle ruins from the west. “Even Whiter Walt, pheh,” she said, plopping her Bowie body down on the stone block next to them. “How many woods *does* he inhabit?”
“A lot,” answers Snowmanster. “I would even dare to venture: every one of ’em.”
What she’d been studying.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0003, 0607, Purden/Snowlands, Sansara
Sunklands 