Kolya wondered about the plane, and that the bird is a plane. He takes another sip of stale lemonade on top of his birdbath, wishing he could meet up with that magical turtle again — Meanie, he thought — to get a fresh one.
“Yelloo!” still knife challenged Lemon said in greeting upon entering the scene. “Welcome!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0205, Nautilus, NORTH, Upper Austra^
He suffered a bad, maybe fatal wound to the back in the action, but Not Jon Deere, as we’ll keep calling him, was dead; killed by the same butcher knife that might do him in. The larger forest entity knew he didn’t have much time before rejuvenation, drew his trusted stabber, pounced on the little yellow fellow, tried to make him his subordinate. But the lemony dude was slippery, harder to catch and pin down than NJD remembered. Pear had taught him some evasion tricks before he left the woods for greener pastures. And Tomato showed him how to fake wounds to seem more injured than he really was: down in the red barn he was still, just over the ridge. Lemon (as they called him — true name: George Meanie) was ready for a confrontation, as ready as he’ll ever be, they declared. Then girlfriend Grape cried and cried, saying he *wasn’t* ready and that she loved him still despite their very different personalities, as far across the spectrum as one could possibly get, she gathered. The gals she surrounded herself with — her bunch — warned her of the differences. Better to stick with a red, like Tomato down there over the ridge in the barn. Or even greener Pear. Choose wisely, they warned. But Grape would have none of it; followed her heart to his glaringly yellow side, proposed to him in a role switcheroo right then and there. “Train him up!” she commanded to the others. “We have a common enemy to our marriage and our community as a whole. Some say he is Jon Deere, the 420 God. That bony, skull topped *deity* is *not* Jon Deere, thank you very much. We’re on the wrong side of the continent.”
And so it went, and so it keeps going. Knife still in back — his little stubby yellow arms not long enough to retract it — Lemon (George) kept going, heading toward the former lair of NJD to see what disgusting secrets lie within. NDJ’s skeleton corpse lay slumped against the rocks below. He starts counting Mississippis to prolong his life, postpone death as long as possible. 3 Mississippi, 4… but energy was ebbing out, vim receding, vigor draining. If only, if only there was something (huff) in the lair (puff) to save him (*collapse*).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0114, Mississippi, Nautilus, Upper Austra^
He clinks his bony fingertips together in thinking mode. What ill to bring down on the world that will do it justice? he ponders. A decision is made. The soured entity begins to move out of his small forest near the center of Nautilus — not *at* the center, because that would be too obvious to his enemies. Just a little to the west, close enough to still feast on enough energy to fulfill his plans.
Moving in the right direction. Or make that *wrong* direction, just as he is *not* Jon Deere. All Orange was mistaken. This was worse.
I see you there little fellow, he says to himself while passing the much smaller forest spirit. You can’t stop me now. I have *energy*.
“Halt!” It was as much vim as the other woods entity could muster. He was spent, but he was quick to rejuvenative, the great advantage of the wee ones. Would take a minute, though, a minute he might not live through.
“Yelloo, what’s this?”
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0028, 0113, Nautilus, Upper Austra^
We pulled into town right behind the policeman, who, without turning, provided us a notecard about the rules. No children or even teenagers allowed within the city limits. No experimenting with avatars much at all, she feared. And yet, right before her, an apartment that was at the upper limit of their range at 200 per.
They could stay here for a time; disguise themselves as the local. But, yeah (she countered), this wasn’t going to really work long term. She looked down: was even *this* acceptable, this hamburger girl outfit as bazooka toting guardian Dinner Girl sometimes called it? Certainly not very human still, quite cartoonish, and, yeah, disguising the real person underneath, the one *still* married to Santa suit wearing Jeffrie Phillips. She had a feeling camouflage was only going to go so far in this town that Baker B. thought might be the seed of his sought after Middletown. This wasn’t Middletown. But, if not… then why did the Oracle point it out? *Must* be more here.
“Look, Kolya. There’s one of those realistic beaches you like to hunt shells on,” she tossed back like a tasty treat to a trailing toddler. That’ll keep him busy for a spell (she figures) while I try to find the source of that bewitching music in the distance. He may be underaged anyway, or at least his mind is with all the holes in it.
Holes, hmph, she contemplates. Like this town will have in its *mature* form, at least according to Baker. Master Baker? Jon Deere? What happened to his wings, then?
Yeah, just keep turning your head, copper, she thought while passing.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0027, 0203, Metropolis, Nautilus, Upper Austra^
At 4:13 in the morning, Duncan had something. He sat in a chair in Leemington above Necrotee above Yelloo, high in the sky like (on) a ship or a plane. Pilot Tickie was around, he knew, who wasn’t a bad meanie at all, not any more. He sat with his prescient turtle staring south east. Duncan was here to talk about the turtle.
But then it wasn’t a turtle any longer. It was a lemon. With legs. And they were staring at 2.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0026, 0413, Heterocera, Lower Austra^, Nautilus
I looked at the ship as if entering from below. I had been here before, she said. This W. “Now you know; now you are beginning to see,” she furthered, walking away from me, having given me enough information for the time being. Tick-like Tickie, the blue being, perhaps the blue meanie, pointing a magical turtle in my direction, which is south from him at the time in the back of the ship we sat, he on a break from driving. But not for dining. For *divining*. Turtles have a long history with magic, as in squares, as in other shapes. But, for now especially, squares. Saturn. Southward turning. Malefic as opposed to Jupiter’s benefic. Admittedly jovial blue Tickie north of me was trying to tell me something. I listen to his mouth, which moved in slow motion which was, before that, sped up, making the sound even more lo-fi. I needed definition to understand. I decided to go back to Yellow Submarine. After all, we all live in one, each and every one of us. So says Lemon.
So I began studying turtles and magic squares, immediately coming to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo_Shu_Square
A Chinese legend concerning the pre-historic Emperor Yu (夏禹) tell of the Lo Shu, often in connection with the Yellow River Map (Hetu) and 8 trigrams. In ancient China there was a huge deluge: the people offered sacrifices to the god of one of the flooding rivers, the Luo river (洛河), to try to calm his anger. A magical turtle emerged from the water with the curiously unnatural Lo Shu pattern on its shell: circular dots representing the integers 1 through 9 are arranged in a three-by-three grid.
I checked the turtle still physically in front of me, ignoring the blue being and his slow moving mouth behind it for the moment. No grid patterns, but… something was there.
“Jerrrrrry,” I then heard it hiss. Channeling through the turtle? Yes, Tickie was channeling through the turtle, I answer myself. I refrained from asking who Jerry was in this post.
(to be continued)
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0026, 0105, Lower Austra^, Nautilus
Sunklands 