Bulby, St. Dennis style.
I believe this is where he came from. Another portal, then!
It all really got started with the breaking of The Bottle in The Barroom.
But which one?
Prognostication:
Tag Archives: Molly Parrot^^
Humanvillians no more
“So tell me more about this young girl you met. Corvo, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, well you *know* her name. Supergal Ruby. And you know she’s engaged… or reengaged to be more exact,” he tried to reassure his wife. “Her and Greg Ogden had been married before. But…” Herbert Glenn Gold wasn’t sure he wanted to bring up the death of Greg’s interim lover Mr. Babyface in that Korean Channel water funnel. Simply because he wasn’t sure he was really dead.
“But what, dear?” April Mae said in the gap. “Is… is there a problem in paradise?” This was what she sometimes said when she sensed trouble in a relationship. And this one, she felt, threatened hers. She had been quite insecure — and understandably so — since the Merry Goldbusk debacle over in NWES City. And now they’ve returned to the same continent of the indiscretion — probably adds to the paranoia a bit.
“I don’t think so. Anyway, that’s why I invited them both here,” he followed up on earlier conversation. “Greg is happy painting so I provided him with models.”
“Models, hmph. Is that what you call them?” She was usually more tolerant of Herbert’s eye wanderings but her biorhythms were on the downswing today. Perhaps too much tea lately. But Albert makes such a fine pot!
“Now now, April Mae. They’re only cheap mesh statues really. Like all those ones standing outside Baker has lined up for potential use later on.” They were on the wrong side of the house to look at all that mess so April Mae didn’t try. Flesh and mesh, she thought here. Unreal but still tempting, she felt.
“Soo… she was just here to pick up the 2 coins and then leave. And you said she knows what to do with them.”
“She knows. But she just has to remember. There’s 2 directions here,” he says as he cuts another piece of pizza and gobbles it down. “She can pawn off the golden coins for quite a small fortune actually.”
Unwise, April Mae thinks here about his earlier actions. Risky and unwise.
“*Or*,” he continues, “she can use them as *evidence*.”
“Atlantis, right.” She cut her own piece, she accomplished her own gobble. “And what about Bermuda?; you mentioned a Bermuda. From the way you described it it sounded more like a person than a place.”
Thinking of her newest dress with all the parrots, Herbert Glenn Gold decided to deflect here again. “No, it’s a place. A triangle, actually.”
Another funnel, he then realized.
—–
“I’ll take everything you have,” she said shortly after entering the store and the introductory chit chat was over with Hector Big Parrot Bird Guy. “Including these 3. Including *you* if you wish, she thought but didn’t say out loud. There had to be limits to all this silliness.
“Molly, Polly and Folly are *not* for sale,” he returned in a haughty voice more human than bird. “They’re my friends. They keep me company. I can’t be entertained by reading all the time.” He finally looks up from the book about non-parroty things, stares into her eyes. “But the rest are yours. Take them, I don’t care. I’m just an unpaid employee minding the shop while the owner is away. I don’t know when he’ll be back. He’s been gone for days, maybe years even. I don’t care,” Hector reiterates.
“Free?” she said.
“Free.” I can replenish the stock in a blink of an eye. *Those* parrots aren’t real; mere 2d replicas. Only these three here are real. My friends, as I said.”
Molly emitted, “You’re darn tootin,” to this.
Polly squawked loudly as if in agreement.
But, without chatter herself, Folly just looked around from her own perch at everyone involved. She personally had her doubts that *any* of this is real, pet shop and all. And where was Victor Ratt the owner? Rumor has it that he’d been kidnapped by pirates.
Only the unreal parrots in back knew for sure and they weren’t talking either.
(to be continued)
trance dance
Ted just liked to watch. He told his crooked blackbird on his shoulder to simmer down as the lights dimmed and the band took the stage. With the dancer. Light of His 2nd Lyfe. Why he was in Flamerider in the first place, although it was always nice to visit with his old friend Sissy. He pondered again a possible connection between her and another Sissy he knew over in Comma Islands, the one who lived on an actual top of one of Corsica’s famous standalone granite peaks instead of just below one — in the shadow of one — like here.
Then, surprising him, Sissy came out from behind the bar and crawled into the cage beside him, starting to gyrate herself to the beginning trance music. What was he thinking? There *was* no dancer onstage. Just here. His eyes had been opened. But to… what?
“Squawk!”
“Shhh, simmer down, I said.” But Blackey 02 had spotted it first. Another caged bird emerging from the shoe, a parrot it appeared from his angle, pink in color again. Like Sissy; the dancing had caused this.
The cage began to expand, soon filling up space itself.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0036, 0402, Comma Islands^, Corsica, Northwest^
00320607
“I worry about Blue Rose Thorn, Mistress. I know he has become our friend Blue Bird but how does he change back?”
“Simple, my lovely Venus,” purred The Mistress, her great length folded into the rocking chair on the porch of their retirement home. “He has to find a plane that isn’t crashed and jump out of it, danger abated. That way he won’t need the wings any more. That way our friend Blue Bird can be returned to us, and Blue Rose Thorn to himself. That way…”
“… he can find his way back to being Jeffrey Phillips,” guessed Venus on the 1/2 Bed.
“Perhaps,” she answered, and unclasped her wing-like hands while settling back. The pink parrot behind her squawked softly; the first to hear. “That is not of our jurisdiction. We must first get to the Town on the Mount in the Air and see what happens.”
They sat quiet for a while, pondering all of this. Then: small rustlings in the jungle to their left. “Over there,” Mistress proclaimed, the first to see. “The future is now(!).”
“How?” Slack jawed Venus saw too. A familiar shape had emerged from the tropical leaves and bushes and walked toward a chair marking the edge of their land.
“We will let her answer that. Blue Bird!” she called over. “Come out of the shadows. Explain your presence!”
Afterwards
Lily finds that old rowboat in her inventory and promptly rezzes it on the newborn ocean in front of *their* cottage. She tells Jack to hop in and starts to row for them, being the considerably stronger of the two and in better shape. “I promise in a month’s time we’ll be switching places,” he adds while plopping down in the boat’s passenger seat, rocking it forward. Destination: Jack’s work shed at the other pole, to see what needs to be moved to the cottage. And for another reason Lily and Jack aren’t telling their “children”.
Bendy, Prissy and visiting Tony Tiger see them off as they sail past Peter’s submerged grave. Seems like months ago that Peter used his own burial spot as a portal into the celestial sphere then *inside* the moon (as well as outside, of course) to merge with Dr. Mulholland at the Blue Feather cube. The world ocean became stable after that, not fluctuating in level and remaining translucent. But it was only 4 days ago. Time’s indeed a peculiar thing.
Halfway to their destination they also pass a waving Tilie and his new assistant Molly. “Don’t worry about us getting in your way,” the wise parrot says, knowing more of what’s going on than at least Bendy and Prissy. “And happy honeymoon!” she added. Both Jack and Lily blush slightly. “Take care, Molly,” says Jack in parting. “We’ll see you in a bit.” She and Tilie head away from the ocean bank to parts unknown.
They arrive at their destination. The new world sea ends here in this direction, filling up Big Crevice separating the work shed and Cardinal Tree, Molly’s former fixed place of residence.
“She’s made sure no one bothers us here, you know,” Lily states as she gets out of the beached boat and stares toward the dead tree with its now empty limbs. “This is *our* spot presently, our private area.” Jack rubs his chin knowingly. “She’s a sharp bird indeed. She’ll help Tilie greatly in continuing to maintain our moon. Gravity’s omni-directional now. Much easier task than before. Molly may even have time to attend night school at Crabwoo University, since all that’s opened up again. That would be exciting for her.”
“Cool,” says Lily. “I’m sure she’ll do well.”
They enter the shed. “Do you think it will fit?” Jack queries.
“Well, we’ll obviously have to move your globe out of the way,” Lily responds. They both stare at the red pins marking the limits of what Jack could see of the celestial sphere from this pole. “And then your thinking chair and the books,” Lily says, as she continues to look around. “Everything, really, *including* the cat.” She and Jack turn toward it.
“I’m not having that thing stare down on us while we’re…”
“… completing our world?” Jack finishes.
“Exactly!” exclaims Lily, joyously leaping upon his back and seeing the whole ball of wax now.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0001, Heterocera, Rubi^
Goodbyes
The next morning Tony bade Jack, Bendy and Molly farewell as he continued his (to them) sideways journey around the moon, soon to be over, he claimed, as he circled back to the portal to his home world located in the next section called Farside. After watching him disappear into the drift that makes up the edges of any particular moon side, they moved toward the Cardinal Tree again and stood in front of it at an angle perpendicular to that of Tony’s exit. Both knew the time for dawdling was over.
Molly the parrot spoke up. “You will contact me, Jack, after you reach the next side. Tell me how Bart is. Tell me if Lily’s eucalyptuses are still visible just over the next edge at the South Pole. Tell me what is found on Minoan Radio. Yell and I will hear you. We may not be quite able to see each other but we will hear each other. If we speak loudly enough.”
“I will,” promised Jack. Molly had become what is called a “fixture” element, unable or unwilling to move beyond the side they had settled upon. Molly and Cardinal Tree: perhaps united forever now on the North Pole of the moon as an animal-plant composite. On the opposite side of this pole, across the divide of Big Crease, Jack was and still is in danger of becoming the same with his work shed, his celestial globe, his skynoculars. Animal elements attach to inertial plant and mineral elements through imprinting archetypes. Jack’s particular Achilles heel is the passionate pursuit of star mapping above all else. He cannot see a small part of the sky situated above the south pole on the opposite side of the moon and that is his saving grace. This would be directly above Lily’s residence; this drives him on. Once in motion around the sides of the moon you cannot stop until you circle back to the beginning, as in the Ouroboros. And Jack must always move in one direction and one direction only. North to east to south to west. Going against the grain of the moon’s built in physics leads to inevitable danger and extinction. Nectar, Ginger and others had learned that the hard way.
Jack and Bendy nod at each other and then walk forward in tandem. Molly watches them as their legs, torsos and finally heads disappear below the ground before they reach Cardinal Tree. “Goodbye Jack,” she says as tears drop from her eyes into the sand below. “Circle back as soon as possible.”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0001, Heterocera, Rubi^
Wait
“We’re going to have to move off this tree sometime. Might as well be now.” He was examining the bends of his legs.
“Now is when it might as well be.” said Jack in reply to Bendy’s suggestion. It was a game they liked playing. Rearranging the words of what the other says to mean the same thing. They had quite a number of such games.
“Wait until daylight,” Molly the parrot wisely advised. And so they did.
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0001, Heterocera, Rubi^
Molly
It was well into the next day before Jack and Bendy caught up with each others’ stories. They ran out of gas at about this point where both were sitting on Cardinal Tree at the eastern edge of Jack’s north pole domain. The two were trying to delay the compulsory next step as long as possible, savor the moment. It was always unsettling to shift to different sides of the moon. They’d have to completely lose contact with the ground to reorient themselves; already to reach this tree Bendy was neck high in the drifts. Jack contemplated the four fold nature of the moon, the square like design.
“It was this way since time began. The moon of Second Life is actually older than Second Life itself.”
“Older than this tree?” asked Bendy, who was now climbing to the top of same.
“Older than this tree,” Jack reinforced. “Older than life itself.”
“I can’t see anything over there yet,” Bendy proclaimed, looking east and down from the tree’s highest point now.
“Careful up there,” said Jack looking up. “You may fall completely off the moon itself. Remember Nectar!”
“Oh right. Must be careful about that, yeah.” He quickly scrambled back down to the lowest limb again. “But have you seen anything?”
“You can clearly view Lily’s eucalyptus trees from the east pole. And I can look down at this tree from there too. But being bulkier I dare not climb up to where you were, although I am taller. Theoretically, I suppose I could see maybe the pointed top of the east pole. The short answer is that I don’t know, Bendy.”
“Good enough,” Bendy responded simply.
“Being lighter, I can fly completely around the moon,” chipped in Molly the Parrot, perched on the end of the lowest limb to Bendy’s right. Cardinal Tree was her home. “But I have to stay low to the surface. It’s not worth the risk any more.” She thought back to how her mate Ginger the Budgie didn’t come back from just such a trip around the world. She had lost someone in a similar way to Jack and Bendy.
“Yes, and you’re the only other living thing on this pole with me. Without you — and Bendy — to keep me company, I would be completely lost in my scientific thoughts. And that would be a bad thing.”
The three sat silent for a moment. Jack realized he was getting low on energy. It was time to think food into his stomach, a trick Molly taught him as well. He didn’t mention this to Bendy of course. Jack thought this thought to Molly, who thought back that she’d distract Bendy during the process.
“So… Bendy. I heard you saying that the love birds over at the fake moon have a cafe now.” Jack cleared his throat loudly. “Er, what I mean is that things are appearing over there from Collagesity. What will be next on top of the vegetable garden? A prominent collage gallery of baker b.’s? It’s interesting to chew over the possibilities.”
“I know what you’re doing,” said Bendy. “Jack’s thinking food into his stomach and you’re trying to distract me. And doing a *horrible* job of it, Molly.”
“Yes,” agreed Jack. “And I’m finished.”
Bendy crosses his arms. “I know you have a cracker or three always squirreled away in a hole on this tree. Because I bring them to you. Time to cough one up.”
Molly looks at Jack and Jack looks at Molly. “Din din time,” he says to the parrot. “Start thinking!”
Filed under **VIRTUAL, 0001, Heterocera, Rubi^
Sunklands 