“Is it really you, Mother?” he called from across the court. “Alive and in the flesh again?” Ted, aka Stitches, couldn’t believe his ever-wide peepers.
“Come to Mama,” she said to this, and he flew into her open arms, micronized in a flash. Microcosm. She had a subject after all.
And a new character. Ratcatcher of the Fracture. *Not* the Fissure. She extended the story backwards and forwards to give it solidity. Two caught rats in a backpack cage — *not* pets, even though she’d given them names by now: Billy and Corgan. Story about that too. “Pumpkintwisters.” And, come to think of it, two more subjects I suppose, if she wishes.
Noise from the “cafe”. Two people she’d missed before, making a plan Stitches told her in her mind. She couldn’t make out the conversation herself but she knew the ever-aware, lime green teddy would give details later if she’d just hold her position without being disturbed. Physically, not mentally, because it was too late for the latter. Better add another scar or three and maybe the same with the rats, she thought, looking at what was coming her way. Al and John the Mind Reader (aka Jed aka Incognito we think) were only the first to arrive. Weekly meeting of the Last Drop Gossipers we have here. Including long forgotten Jackson Bloch, no kin to Baker. And apparently Ted numbered among them too. How could she explain the micronization? Was that even a word?
“Don’t worry,” she heard him say, still one through it all. “They can’t see you while I’m with you. Just sit over there in the center and *listen*. Takes two to know.”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 