Once again Baker Bloch stares out at the Martian landscape beyond Collagesity. The town will have to start exploring that landscape soon enough, he thinks, but for now we have Dr. Blood’s fascinating tales to study. Better than Blood Curdling’s! he thinks further, but then regrets dissing his favorite book (“Blood Curdling Tells of the Rubi Woods”). Dr. Blood says the woods will come back, but not before we discover the beating heart of the red orange planet. Then and only then. He adds that Mars is an aggressive orb and leaves it there.
Baker can’t help but think Collagesity’s Stone 10 holds an important clue to the dilemma at hand.
“That pattern is hypnotic.”
His favorite seat in the Blue Feather club: inundated by Martian sand. He has to sit upstairs. Syd Barrett Gothic still doesn’t want to talk about the day Mars crashed into Collagesity. He remains traumatized. “The woods are gone, the woods are gone, the *woods* are gone,” he worries over and over. He’s having great difficulty accepting the fact that his old home has simply vanished into thin air seemingly. Truth is, the woods are still very much there. It’s all about perception and what we choose and don’t choose to see.
For example, Baker could certainly *choose* to see this row of eucalyptus trees along the northern edge of E-8 right now from his Blue Feather perch.
He could have chosen to view Winnie the Pooh and his honey wagon bumping along the Martian slope behind Stone 10 just moments back. He could decide to see the danger coming forth from atop what would later become known as Chesterton Knoll.
But he didn’t do any of these things. Collagesity remains shrouded in deep orange mystery.
Sunklands 