& nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Jemma, better known to those closest to her as Jem, felt it was time to go quickly and joyfully but she had to think hard first; after all she was old enough now, she thought she didn’t want any extra time like some others – it had all been done long ago, wrapped up in the bag:  A life governed by solving great mysteries, learning about accomplishments and delineating all the moral arguments by heart.  By now she was plain fed up, she wanted a quick change without the accompanying modal strain constantly quickening her horizons.  She felt she had to avoid thinking too deeply about whatever.  Unfortunately her mind forbade any call to abstraction or quick destinations in her thought processes.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  She had been quite a dainty old lady sitting up against the chair provided; trying to knit her life together around a pattern she couldn’t readily recognise anymore now, but it could have been an amazing code for something new; though she knew it never would though.  Meanwhile, her lament was long and curious, while her reach into the past was fostering resentment she could not grasp completely around it.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Desolate Jem had lost most of her family during the Second World War, mainly in a bombing raid over her local town.  They were all at church watching the clergy prepare for mass when the engines stopped.  The priest wafted down the isle, slithering gently into a ready-made bolthole under the church floor, leaving the others to be smashed completely by the delayed missile.  It was rather remiss that he did not secure the flock’s safety or to rely on his sense of conscience to secure a quick exit for everyone around.  Jem knew all this through the continual observation that was now her habit to explore intermittently, whenever the occasion arose, subject to frequently occurring boredom levels as she sat up cross-legged in that waiting room for the last time.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Later she uncovered what she felt her own nubile vulnerability in her mind and remembered how she once was not yet quite that old, and, when she could readily succumb to male beauty as it infested her global vision.  Her eyes met with so many fine gentlemen wrapped in garments that were true to their nature, expensive, bold and carefully cut.  Most were snobs; they were careless in attitude outside their own dimensions, yet mentally flawed, suffering from avarice, cowardice, and deception in all parts.  It would not be long until all these qualities gravely took their turn on Jasmine, who cooed at them every day from the brick wall, when she had the time from the menial totality that had set the regime around the house she worked.  It would not be long before she was less vain about these prying visitors.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  They all watched her in her daily endeavours and laughed in her face when she fled back into the house after just a mutual acknowledgement.  But, they persisted – they would not let go, indeed it was a necessity to badger her whenever they travelled past the villa where she worked.  It was a challenge to beguile her assertively and to dangle her at the old yarns end.  This was better than another yawn down the club terraces, besides the liquor had become expensive during the wartime conditions.  So it was not by chance that they frequented this street seeking rapture so often and when they could.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  She fingered the bracelet a boy called Cyrelle had offered her and actually felt the rough trim around the side, though it was years old, it was still suffice to be wielded now and again, if only for her singular love or nostalgic value.  This costume jewellery was a worshipful gift and Jem wanted to remain the goddesses surrounding its’ virtues.  When one looked at the shape, it was hard not to be prepossessed with the elegant curves that embodied the frames length, cut half way with a jagged letter C.  Again she examined it over and fondly imagined the guy that had lavished this gift upon her nature.  At the time, his love was molten, and now it had been set into this trinket for her to watch over and call her own.  She too had been set into the frame of her own body, now she had endured being old, and there was no reversal.  She was certainly no jewel anymore, which upset her invariably, until she really wished to flee but became ensnared; gravity kept her down realistically so she could not even draw breath without despondency.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Jem once wore an ocean of golden ringlets that neatly folded onto her shoulders; her hair was nowadays more like chewed wire that strung round like a dishevelled may pole.  It was never seemed quite the same as the picture showing her intact youth and now being marooned here she dispelled her past as a ruin.  She could never talk it up, as there was none to listen. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  First arrived one panic and then another and then panic after panic after panic, until her memory ran out and the merry-go-round eventually stopped.  It was hideous to recall every moment that prefaced her break down and it was a lasting scare that afflicted her continuously; she ended whispering to herself vulgarities as if mad.  It had caused her closest allies to shun her whenever they had cause to witness her presence, for reasons that were even unknown by the untrusted priest.  Perhaps it was that her once gorgeous looks had become wan and she had began to stare longingly into nothing, exacting her distress.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  It was on the day that he had handed her petals from a brightened chrysanthemum that she cried softly because she knew he would leave her.  The relationship had folded and her love had dwindled into the shade.   She previously craved to always envisage Cyrelle in her imagination.  His elfin features gave his slight appearance some sort of appeal but she didn’t like him solely for that.  It was his mysterious approach that attracted her attention, sometimes when she was outside once again, pinning up the washing on the crooked line straddling two great big metal hooks; then he would wave and smile with neat curves from the chin.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Cyrelle was the one to save her from the crashing church walls.  She never went there again, not even to pray casually as the experience had cancelled out any faith that she had. The barbarous explosion in the chapel had wiped out half the village in one fail swoop, except for the priest who had been silenced through grief by this tragedy.  There were many casualties that day and they carried out dead folk that had been so dear to the mistress that it had been days before Jem could coax her out of bed or to sup, meanwhile she continued to tend the house and govern in her mother’s place until such time she could be relieved adequately.  So everyone noted Jem’s glowing face much more until she eventually disappeared from people’s consciousness altogether.  On that final day, Cyrelle appeared with his flowery gift, and having been refused this once, he too faded into nothing just like the flowers he originally offered her.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  She didn’t suffer much as she was carried away from her living self but that was not all of it, she felt nothing as she drifted to her terminus without such trouble that had barged frequently into her life.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “Have you finished”, asked the sentinel at the waiting room door; Jem’s approach to death had been expected today.  Her reflective period was nearly over – they had allowed her ample time to tie up her final thoughts.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “I will be the last of your vision as eternity cannot keep you”, he added but Jasmine was already drifting off back in time again, though she did not realise it.  These days she could never tell if she was asleep or the more habitual slumber that all would endure at life’s end.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “It is important that you speak now before I switch off the lights,” he carefully added but the scene had changed to her father who was demanding to protect her from the visiting strangers, the same expectant lovers that had come looking for her quite unashamed on a nearly daily basis. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  The father wanted to know names so that he could match his fist to their faces.  He had to pay them out for what they had eventually done to his daughter, who he had tried to fence off from many prying suitors, although he never quite succeeded as there was some degree of infiltration even after the father had personally remonstrated with them to go no further.  Unfortunately, the visitors paid no heed to his request and kept harassing the poor wench, proffering gifts, asking for reciprocation to their lustful exchange, even laughing when she refused to physically commune with any of them under no circumstances whatsoever.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  So the crazy father fixed a leering gargoyle to both gateposts outside the house, except these appendages had no effect on the streaming humanity that frequented the streets in the immediate vicinity.  It didn’t stop the men spitefully cutting them away to wear as masks so that they could scare the mistress when she threw open the window, as she was her habit every morning throughout the year.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  On one occasion, Jem had fled the desperate wooing scene, to seek her beau Cyrelle, who was propping up a bar with nonchalance; floating nervously in front of the bar maid as there was no one else to talk to at the time.  Jasmine saw him through the frosted window – she certainly knew who it could be.  He always hunched over the bar and fiddled with his hair every so often; an action that always distracted her but no one else seemed to mind.  It only seemed decent that she would pop in and greet him courteously and let him know that she was still contriving escape away from amorous attention forced on her by the gentlemen who would not leave her alone anymore for anything.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  To a certain extent, Cyrelle existed in an opposite pole to Jem, but silent and lonely his brittle conscience awoke to her but through creeping time not all at once.  It had been a gradual journey before he sensed even her presence, mesmerised and yielding to the glories that arose from her expressionless face and tidy complexion, though her toothy grin might be supposed as quite memorable to someone so susceptible. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  They were both impressionable but she had decided that she needed to create a character out of him from her whim, only a few months after discovering his timidity at close quarters, roaming near her without speaking every time she had to fetch her father from the pub, who indignantly carried out his ritual drinking shift bang on Sunday dinner time. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  It was Jem’s job to ensure her father respectfully turned up to this family occasion cap in hand, plucked from the bosom of his drinking cronies.  It was altogether a tumultuous task and she never took less than an hour to gyre his loins away from the bar stools, persuading him back to the kitchen chairs.  Nowadays, Cyrelle just made sure he was there every time she entered and gazed endlessly from the other end of the pub until she addressed him.  He would never be the first to start a conversation, just continually convincing himself that he could have nothing to do with her.  However, he kept a silent vigil until they were almost on speaking terms, though only just – as there was no sound.  It was always a sad reunion, as they both knew they could have nothing from each other, basking in their own separate universes that disallowed unions that were anything too tangible.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Cyrelle always glided around his own space and became almost transparent to the normal regulars but Jem could see him, and mostly all the time towards the end - especially when she was sat praying in the church or walking through the cemetery close to the boarders around the town.  The tombs were packed tightly into a small earth bundle and sewn into a handy plot that the villagers called “The Keep”, but it was a place that many darkness’s ago was said to be a giant factory with chimneys that ejected hatred and all the little lives under its’ care were stolen for commercial use.  Now it was a palace for the dead and their private dormitories.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  As she entered the pub, Cyrelle turned around quickly and adamantly shook his head while pointing backwards towards the outside as if he was asking her to fetch a ball from the rose garden adjoining the building.  It was hard to understand what he wished for as he spoke hardly above a whisper, actually making his views categorically known mostly through physical gesture: He needed her to follow him out around the back in preference for quietness.  Now she felt nervous - he was clawing his way around the oak door to await her pleasure outside somewhere.  She knew she must follow but dared not face him away from the more hospitable shadows inside.  She got scared about conversing with the air, although she alone felt Cyrelle’s energy strongly around her, by her side, tangible and embracing the air with his calmative reverence.  What unimaginable thing did he have to tell her?  What light would shine through his eyes with meaning?

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  And now back to the present waiting room, she could just sit up, still an observer of things and be able to recall but never tempted to join in rapturously with life’s real tendencies; her image fading adjoined to this façade like Cyrelle’s had been, both their spirits casting about in there own substance but away from any authenticity that usually sustained for a lifetimes span.  She was now alike with Cyrelle, a ghost who was bound to comb the earthly state for clues to her past, even though she only now partially existed, on the brink of shutting up shop for good and joining her forebears forever - she had become tired from too much observation.  The sentinel would be but the last vision, and she would be finally locked away for eternity in some ethereal display cabinet, becoming part of a giant encyclopaedia encompassing all the dead souls that had passed beyond the brink instead remaining frozen in time as wandering shadows beyond the grave.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “I will be the last vision you will see”, the sentinel gently spoke yet again and for the final time – he would never reprise; she knew that well. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Its’ shape hovered above her buzzing around haphazardly, awaiting her response.  This was no time for meekness, as the oblivion would only cast its’ spell before she was ready and Jem as she was so often called would be forfeit her very final thought which would turn out to be the truth turning in her head, formerly neglected.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “Wait”! Jem yelled, holding up her bracelet she had been given in youth’s tide.  It began to slide down her arm where it belonged.  She was almost desperate but not quite ready still.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  She began to think carefully about her final consciousness.  It was important that she remembered what had happened in that rose garden.  Not just the superficial stuff but what Cyrelle meant to her, the secrets he divulged.  How she became to fall in love with him even though he was not real substance; how her pulsed raced indecently bounded in his aura – there was no way to grasp the situation in repose. 

      & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Outside in the rose garden, he likened an apotheosis unlike his inside visage.  The sunlight glided about through the trees, freely flowing through Cyrelle, whose body was now lightly crosshatched with the intersecting rays, digesting the intricate flickering light completely.  There was a silent smile on his mouth and he offered to take her but his guiding hand had already sliced through her own limbs – it could never touch.  Jem felt nothing except regret that she could not physically sense him and be comforted.  No contact could be sanctioned and the communal release that had been expected from both had failed to be contrived – the passion just a bitter nuisance as it had nowhere to go but inside under the skin, sinking towards the heart.  One solid tear approach her mouth and Cyrelle continued to gape at the sun over her shoulder, straight through the middle without having to recourse to filtering out the magnitude with his closing lids.  His gaze traced the detail around the corona, measuring its height along with the blue, red and yellow wash that the heavenly fireball spun out in disgust at the couple’s audacity. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  While there was no sign that their mutual desires would be matched by their free will, there was also a silent understanding between them, showing defiance towards the divine force driving them away from each other’s attraction.  Let down, they could never see through what they had initiated together – one a living being, the other a ghost, departing quietly without so much as an assuring whimper.  As the cloud turned onto the sun and Jem’s sob had become a wining cry, Cyrelle’s image folded in upon itself, reduced to nothing once the afternoon had waned permanently. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Soon after, so had she vanished, having resolved to return home to vanquish all her fears and face the relentless monkeys that had tempted her relentlessly.  She immediately set about showing no mercy to the unwelcome fence dwellers and the next morning refused to even look at any male despite their screaming impatience – Jem just focused on her washing and its uniform arrangement on the line.  It was important that she dispelled any remote hope from these haphazard fops who rallied against all sensible wisdom, paragliding into her back yard like dizzy primitives with motives beyond reason. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Lacking in concentration from the pressure, she shortly found that somebody had made her pregnant at speed, maybe from amongst the visiting men.  However, her motherly instinct wanted to save her potential child for a better life, certainly not run by the imbeciles that offered their faces quite literally to taunt her.  When the father had first heard this news he threw such a temper that made her shake from the after-shock.  Openly he went crazy and smashed up everything within reach, then later he grew more resigned because it was always up to the daughter what she did, whether it was right or wrong in his eyes.  Throughout the week’s duration, he spent in the cellar imbibing the heavy cocktails mixed from stale air and honey wine jars that regrettably showed age, nevertheless his taste buds were judged non-existent owing to their frequent working on strong liquor but it was the only way to cope for the old man. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Meanwhile his angelic child had decided to confiscate herself away from the roaming lads on a more permanent basis but it was not going to be that easy.  Cyrelle was always present, judging her, measuring her up to his higher unattainable moral standards and chiding her through his silent amour - he seldom took his eyes away from her.  But it was no good; Cyrelle faithfully watched as they hunted her throughout the town, launching at her at every spot; they wouldn’t let her go. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  The gentlemen tried to share her out culminating in an overwhelming altercation that resulted in Jem receiving a black eye, with heavy bruising to the shoulders without recourse to any justice but disgrace.   She covered her face for shame about several weeks subsequently.  Frequently upon a whim, they would shove her into a corner to stroke the contours around her face and solidly declare their despicable yearnings, not just in words but also in obtrusive actions that left her feeling degraded, at their mercy along with a feeling that totalled worthlessness.  Jem’s cry was a silent cry, sinking below the tide that the bullies had course to muster.  If only she was allowed to keep her unborn child as a mystery to be later solved or kept as a valuable item until she came into the arms of life’s end, then after she may read in its eyes all the answers to her longing pains.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Lounging in the street’s dirt Jem became bewitched, Cyrelle could not protect her and from week to week the laughing would not stop; the haranguing became perpetual; the sneers became even more indelible features on the men’s faces and nothing would keep the monsters docile.  It was sometimes in the early hours that these hounds would repair back to their lairs, only to meet and match the next day for more marauding around the neighbourhood.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Instead of letting her remain outside, the young men retaining infuriating audacity, would now come in and pluck her from within the sanctuary and seat her outside for further corruption, regardless that she was prettily crying, introverted and hiding behind her golden bobs.  Nobody pitied her, except for Cyrelle of course.  Jem’s father was far gone with his dreamy fascinations, acclimatising to various homespun liquors that helped him remain oblivious, happily sleeping from dawn to dusk – it masked his pain and he sought not one motive for these hazardous visitations, comforted by his idleness with out resort to action’s claim.  He slept like a child in bliss while his daughter was kept suppliant, suffering the barraging attentions in perpetual motion. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  And when their festival was over, the lads left a jeering legacy by uprooting all the garden flowers and fruit that Jem had so carefully nurtured so many springs, supporting their irresponsibility as all of their number was called up to the war without fail.  They spat out their past with fervour as they embraced with a new leaf what they thought was the glorious fight. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Jem was just left spread out all neat and tidy on the pavement to seek redress with the storm drains in the humdrum trafficking along her home sweet home, which bordered the garden she was brought up as an ordinary girl.  But, she would hang washing no more, now she was a living out a mental nightmare, never hoping to recover from what they stole – they were far over the north sea by the time her senses returned completely.  Cyrelle was left close by sympathetic, wanting amends but not having the means to do so, watching her crawl back inside the house to meet her fate quite considerably in the monstrous aftermath during her own personal street conflict.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  So it was Cyrelle who decided he too must depart for good but not before he spared her very life before the doodlebug flew by to crush the little village church.  He was there at the far back in the congregation, signalling desperately for Jem to get up and leave immediately – he said it all in his intensifying blue eyes, almost luminous in the church darkness.  And in her unhappiness she believed him, it would be a record that his affection had reached the zenith, just like the sun did that day in the rose garden – it was far as their attraction would sweep. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  She arose to her feet and curtly excused herself past all her neighbouring congregation, ardent not to catch anyone on her way out or to glance at anyone in particular – she had to avoid the stare from all those who had started life’s progress not dissimilar to herself, though these gentlefolk were still shining like the candles uprooted from around a holy font.  Jem was the only one who knew that they would be snuffed out and began to feel a guilty at her selfish desertion from what should be her friends.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Ash cornels swung through the mist and smoke plumes jettisoned from the torn masonry, like a giant storm awoken to invade the stricken village.  Cyrelle’s mousy curls were all that was seen over his delicate shoulders as he was wafted back to the grave yard where he mastered the will to rest, but it was still no guarantee he would sleep forever.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  For several days and nights they duly met, both Jem and he under the same circumstantial motives - it was interminable that they could not meet properly, both living in communal reflections and it became unlikely she would find solace in the relationship continuing so restrained:  Struggling to be more alive than the sun, he acted in wariness towards the real earth as their partial union had been an endless distraction when instead, deferring to the Sentinel’s will, Cyrelle decided to make his particular last metamorphosis.  So it was a sober occasion that eventually Cyrelle left dear Jem who had struggled hard but would let him go with a goodnight and a loving promise – she would find some way in her destiny to join him but for now sought sanctuary in the clauses set out in realities spectrum – she was alive and would remain so.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  It was then that Jem, left as lost property, felt she had abandoned by her pretty bulbul but the creeping sun was still there to substitute until she achieved equivalence with her beloved Cyrelle who rested beyond the mysterious village Keep on his infinite meanderings through the unconscious universe.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Jemma, better known to those closest to her as Jem, felt it was time to go quickly and joyfully but she had to think hard first; after all she was old enough now, she thought she didn’t want any extra time like some others – it had all been done long ago, wrapped up in the bag:  A life governed by solving great mysteries, learning about accomplishments and delineating all the moral arguments by heart.  By now she was plain fed up, she wanted a quick change without the accompanying modal strain constantly quickening her horizons.  She felt she had to avoid thinking too deeply about whatever.  Unfortunately her mind forbade any call to abstraction or quick destinations in her thought processes.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  She had been quite a dainty old lady sitting up against the chair provided; trying to knit her life together around a pattern she couldn’t readily recognise anymore now, but it could have been an amazing code for something new; though she knew it never would though.  Meanwhile, her lament was long and curious, while her reach into the past was fostering resentment she could not grasp completely around it.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Desolate Jem had lost most of her family during the Second World War, mainly in a bombing raid over her local town.  They were all at church watching the clergy prepare for mass when the engines stopped.  The priest wafted down the isle, slithering gently into a ready-made bolthole under the church floor, leaving the others to be smashed completely by the delayed missile.  It was rather remiss that he did not secure the flock’s safety or to rely on his sense of conscience to secure a quick exit for everyone around.  Jem knew all this through the continual observation that was now her habit to explore intermittently, whenever the occasion arose, subject to frequently occurring boredom levels as she sat up cross-legged in that waiting room for the last time.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Later she uncovered what she felt her own nubile vulnerability in her mind and remembered how she once was not yet quite that old, and, when she could readily succumb to male beauty as it infested her global vision.  Her eyes met with so many fine gentlemen wrapped in garments that were true to their nature, expensive, bold and carefully cut.  Most were snobs; they were careless in attitude outside their own dimensions, yet mentally flawed, suffering from avarice, cowardice, and deception in all parts.  It would not be long until all these qualities gravely took their turn on Jasmine, who cooed at them every day from the brick wall, when she had the time from the menial totality that had set the regime around the house she worked.  It would not be long before she was less vain about these prying visitors.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  They all watched her in her daily endeavours and laughed in her face when she fled back into the house after just a mutual acknowledgement.  But, they persisted – they would not let go, indeed it was a necessity to badger her whenever they travelled past the villa where she worked.  It was a challenge to beguile her assertively and to dangle her at the old yarns end.  This was better than another yawn down the club terraces, besides the liquor had become expensive during the wartime conditions.  So it was not by chance that they frequented this street seeking rapture so often and when they could.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  She fingered the bracelet a boy called Cyrelle had offered her and actually felt the rough trim around the side, though it was years old, it was still suffice to be wielded now and again, if only for her singular love or nostalgic value.  This costume jewellery was a worshipful gift and Jem wanted to remain the goddesses surrounding its’ virtues.  When one looked at the shape, it was hard not to be prepossessed with the elegant curves that embodied the frames length, cut half way with a jagged letter C.  Again she examined it over and fondly imagined the guy that had lavished this gift upon her nature.  At the time, his love was molten, and now it had been set into this trinket for her to watch over and call her own.  She too had been set into the frame of her own body, now she had endured being old, and there was no reversal.  She was certainly no jewel anymore, which upset her invariably, until she really wished to flee but became ensnared; gravity kept her down realistically so she could not even draw breath without despondency.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Jem once wore an ocean of golden ringlets that neatly folded onto her shoulders; her hair was nowadays more like chewed wire that strung round like a dishevelled may pole.  It was never seemed quite the same as the picture showing her intact youth and now being marooned here she dispelled her past as a ruin.  She could never talk it up, as there was none to listen. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  First arrived one panic and then another and then panic after panic after panic, until her memory ran out and the merry-go-round eventually stopped.  It was hideous to recall every moment that prefaced her break down and it was a lasting scare that afflicted her continuously; she ended whispering to herself vulgarities as if mad.  It had caused her closest allies to shun her whenever they had cause to witness her presence, for reasons that were even unknown by the untrusted priest.  Perhaps it was that her once gorgeous looks had become wan and she had began to stare longingly into nothing, exacting her distress.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  It was on the day that he had handed her petals from a brightened chrysanthemum that she cried softly because she knew he would leave her.  The relationship had folded and her love had dwindled into the shade.   She previously craved to always envisage Cyrelle in her imagination.  His elfin features gave his slight appearance some sort of appeal but she didn’t like him solely for that.  It was his mysterious approach that attracted her attention, sometimes when she was outside once again, pinning up the washing on the crooked line straddling two great big metal hooks; then he would wave and smile with neat curves from the chin.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Cyrelle was the one to save her from the crashing church walls.  She never went there again, not even to pray casually as the experience had cancelled out any faith that she had. The barbarous explosion in the chapel had wiped out half the village in one fail swoop, except for the priest who had been silenced through grief by this tragedy.  There were many casualties that day and they carried out dead folk that had been so dear to the mistress that it had been days before Jem could coax her out of bed or to sup, meanwhile she continued to tend the house and govern in her mother’s place until such time she could be relieved adequately.  So everyone noted Jem’s glowing face much more until she eventually disappeared from people’s consciousness altogether.  On that final day, Cyrelle appeared with his flowery gift, and having been refused this once, he too faded into nothing just like the flowers he originally offered her.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  She didn’t suffer much as she was carried away from her living self but that was not all of it, she felt nothing as she drifted to her terminus without such trouble that had barged frequently into her life.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “Have you finished”, asked the sentinel at the waiting room door; Jem’s approach to death had been expected today.  Her reflective period was nearly over – they had allowed her ample time to tie up her final thoughts.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “I will be the last of your vision as eternity cannot keep you”, he added but Jasmine was already drifting off back in time again, though she did not realise it.  These days she could never tell if she was asleep or the more habitual slumber that all would endure at life’s end.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “It is important that you speak now before I switch off the lights,” he carefully added but the scene had changed to her father who was demanding to protect her from the visiting strangers, the same expectant lovers that had come looking for her quite unashamed on a nearly daily basis. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  The father wanted to know names so that he could match his fist to their faces.  He had to pay them out for what they had eventually done to his daughter, who he had tried to fence off from many prying suitors, although he never quite succeeded as there was some degree of infiltration even after the father had personally remonstrated with them to go no further.  Unfortunately, the visitors paid no heed to his request and kept harassing the poor wench, proffering gifts, asking for reciprocation to their lustful exchange, even laughing when she refused to physically commune with any of them under no circumstances whatsoever.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  So the crazy father fixed a leering gargoyle to both gateposts outside the house, except these appendages had no effect on the streaming humanity that frequented the streets in the immediate vicinity.  It didn’t stop the men spitefully cutting them away to wear as masks so that they could scare the mistress when she threw open the window, as she was her habit every morning throughout the year.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  On one occasion, Jem had fled the desperate wooing scene, to seek her beau Cyrelle, who was propping up a bar with nonchalance; floating nervously in front of the bar maid as there was no one else to talk to at the time.  Jasmine saw him through the frosted window – she certainly knew who it could be.  He always hunched over the bar and fiddled with his hair every so often; an action that always distracted her but no one else seemed to mind.  It only seemed decent that she would pop in and greet him courteously and let him know that she was still contriving escape away from amorous attention forced on her by the gentlemen who would not leave her alone anymore for anything.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  To a certain extent, Cyrelle existed in an opposite pole to Jem, but silent and lonely his brittle conscience awoke to her but through creeping time not all at once.  It had been a gradual journey before he sensed even her presence, mesmerised and yielding to the glories that arose from her expressionless face and tidy complexion, though her toothy grin might be supposed as quite memorable to someone so susceptible. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  They were both impressionable but she had decided that she needed to create a character out of him from her whim, only a few months after discovering his timidity at close quarters, roaming near her without speaking every time she had to fetch her father from the pub, who indignantly carried out his ritual drinking shift bang on Sunday dinner time. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  It was Jem’s job to ensure her father respectfully turned up to this family occasion cap in hand, plucked from the bosom of his drinking cronies.  It was altogether a tumultuous task and she never took less than an hour to gyre his loins away from the bar stools, persuading him back to the kitchen chairs.  Nowadays, Cyrelle just made sure he was there every time she entered and gazed endlessly from the other end of the pub until she addressed him.  He would never be the first to start a conversation, just continually convincing himself that he could have nothing to do with her.  However, he kept a silent vigil until they were almost on speaking terms, though only just – as there was no sound.  It was always a sad reunion, as they both knew they could have nothing from each other, basking in their own separate universes that disallowed unions that were anything too tangible.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Cyrelle always glided around his own space and became almost transparent to the normal regulars but Jem could see him, and mostly all the time towards the end - especially when she was sat praying in the church or walking through the cemetery close to the boarders around the town.  The tombs were packed tightly into a small earth bundle and sewn into a handy plot that the villagers called “The Keep”, but it was a place that many darkness’s ago was said to be a giant factory with chimneys that ejected hatred and all the little lives under its’ care were stolen for commercial use.  Now it was a palace for the dead and their private dormitories.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  As she entered the pub, Cyrelle turned around quickly and adamantly shook his head while pointing backwards towards the outside as if he was asking her to fetch a ball from the rose garden adjoining the building.  It was hard to understand what he wished for as he spoke hardly above a whisper, actually making his views categorically known mostly through physical gesture: He needed her to follow him out around the back in preference for quietness.  Now she felt nervous - he was clawing his way around the oak door to await her pleasure outside somewhere.  She knew she must follow but dared not face him away from the more hospitable shadows inside.  She got scared about conversing with the air, although she alone felt Cyrelle’s energy strongly around her, by her side, tangible and embracing the air with his calmative reverence.  What unimaginable thing did he have to tell her?  What light would shine through his eyes with meaning?

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  And now back to the present waiting room, she could just sit up, still an observer of things and be able to recall but never tempted to join in rapturously with life’s real tendencies; her image fading adjoined to this façade like Cyrelle’s had been, both their spirits casting about in there own substance but away from any authenticity that usually sustained for a lifetimes span.  She was now alike with Cyrelle, a ghost who was bound to comb the earthly state for clues to her past, even though she only now partially existed, on the brink of shutting up shop for good and joining her forebears forever - she had become tired from too much observation.  The sentinel would be but the last vision, and she would be finally locked away for eternity in some ethereal display cabinet, becoming part of a giant encyclopaedia encompassing all the dead souls that had passed beyond the brink instead remaining frozen in time as wandering shadows beyond the grave.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “I will be the last vision you will see”, the sentinel gently spoke yet again and for the final time – he would never reprise; she knew that well. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Its’ shape hovered above her buzzing around haphazardly, awaiting her response.  This was no time for meekness, as the oblivion would only cast its’ spell before she was ready and Jem as she was so often called would be forfeit her very final thought which would turn out to be the truth turning in her head, formerly neglected.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “Wait”! Jem yelled, holding up her bracelet she had been given in youth’s tide.  It began to slide down her arm where it belonged.  She was almost desperate but not quite ready still.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  She began to think carefully about her final consciousness.  It was important that she remembered what had happened in that rose garden.  Not just the superficial stuff but what Cyrelle meant to her, the secrets he divulged.  How she became to fall in love with him even though he was not real substance; how her pulsed raced indecently bounded in his aura – there was no way to grasp the situation in repose. 

      & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Outside in the rose garden, he likened an apotheosis unlike his inside visage.  The sunlight glided about through the trees, freely flowing through Cyrelle, whose body was now lightly crosshatched with the intersecting rays, digesting the intricate flickering light completely.  There was a silent smile on his mouth and he offered to take her but his guiding hand had already sliced through her own limbs – it could never touch.  Jem felt nothing except regret that she could not physically sense him and be comforted.  No contact could be sanctioned and the communal release that had been expected from both had failed to be contrived – the passion just a bitter nuisance as it had nowhere to go but inside under the skin, sinking towards the heart.  One solid tear approach her mouth and Cyrelle continued to gape at the sun over her shoulder, straight through the middle without having to recourse to filtering out the magnitude with his closing lids.  His gaze traced the detail around the corona, measuring its height along with the blue, red and yellow wash that the heavenly fireball spun out in disgust at the couple’s audacity. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  While there was no sign that their mutual desires would be matched by their free will, there was also a silent understanding between them, showing defiance towards the divine force driving them away from each other’s attraction.  Let down, they could never see through what they had initiated together – one a living being, the other a ghost, departing quietly without so much as an assuring whimper.  As the cloud turned onto the sun and Jem’s sob had become a wining cry, Cyrelle’s image folded in upon itself, reduced to nothing once the afternoon had waned permanently. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Soon after, so had she vanished, having resolved to return home to vanquish all her fears and face the relentless monkeys that had tempted her relentlessly.  She immediately set about showing no mercy to the unwelcome fence dwellers and the next morning refused to even look at any male despite their screaming impatience – Jem just focused on her washing and its uniform arrangement on the line.  It was important that she dispelled any remote hope from these haphazard fops who rallied against all sensible wisdom, paragliding into her back yard like dizzy primitives with motives beyond reason. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Lacking in concentration from the pressure, she shortly found that somebody had made her pregnant at speed, maybe from amongst the visiting men.  However, her motherly instinct wanted to save her potential child for a better life, certainly not run by the imbeciles that offered their faces quite literally to taunt her.  When the father had first heard this news he threw such a temper that made her shake from the after-shock.  Openly he went crazy and smashed up everything within reach, then later he grew more resigned because it was always up to the daughter what she did, whether it was right or wrong in his eyes.  Throughout the week’s duration, he spent in the cellar imbibing the heavy cocktails mixed from stale air and honey wine jars that regrettably showed age, nevertheless his taste buds were judged non-existent owing to their frequent working on strong liquor but it was the only way to cope for the old man. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Meanwhile his angelic child had decided to confiscate herself away from the roaming lads on a more permanent basis but it was not going to be that easy.  Cyrelle was always present, judging her, measuring her up to his higher unattainable moral standards and chiding her through his silent amour - he seldom took his eyes away from her.  But it was no good; Cyrelle faithfully watched as they hunted her throughout the town, launching at her at every spot; they wouldn’t let her go. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  The gentlemen tried to share her out culminating in an overwhelming altercation that resulted in Jem receiving a black eye, with heavy bruising to the shoulders without recourse to any justice but disgrace.   She covered her face for shame about several weeks subsequently.  Frequently upon a whim, they would shove her into a corner to stroke the contours around her face and solidly declare their despicable yearnings, not just in words but also in obtrusive actions that left her feeling degraded, at their mercy along with a feeling that totalled worthlessness.  Jem’s cry was a silent cry, sinking below the tide that the bullies had course to muster.  If only she was allowed to keep her unborn child as a mystery to be later solved or kept as a valuable item until she came into the arms of life’s end, then after she may read in its eyes all the answers to her longing pains.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Lounging in the street’s dirt Jem became bewitched, Cyrelle could not protect her and from week to week the laughing would not stop; the haranguing became perpetual; the sneers became even more indelible features on the men’s faces and nothing would keep the monsters docile.  It was sometimes in the early hours that these hounds would repair back to their lairs, only to meet and match the next day for more marauding around the neighbourhood.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Instead of letting her remain outside, the young men retaining infuriating audacity, would now come in and pluck her from within the sanctuary and seat her outside for further corruption, regardless that she was prettily crying, introverted and hiding behind her golden bobs.  Nobody pitied her, except for Cyrelle of course.  Jem’s father was far gone with his dreamy fascinations, acclimatising to various homespun liquors that helped him remain oblivious, happily sleeping from dawn to dusk – it masked his pain and he sought not one motive for these hazardous visitations, comforted by his idleness with out resort to action’s claim.  He slept like a child in bliss while his daughter was kept suppliant, suffering the barraging attentions in perpetual motion. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  And when their festival was over, the lads left a jeering legacy by uprooting all the garden flowers and fruit that Jem had so carefully nurtured so many springs, supporting their irresponsibility as all of their number was called up to the war without fail.  They spat out their past with fervour as they embraced with a new leaf what they thought was the glorious fight. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Jem was just left spread out all neat and tidy on the pavement to seek redress with the storm drains in the humdrum trafficking along her home sweet home, which bordered the garden she was brought up as an ordinary girl.  But, she would hang washing no more, now she was a living out a mental nightmare, never hoping to recover from what they stole – they were far over the north sea by the time her senses returned completely.  Cyrelle was left close by sympathetic, wanting amends but not having the means to do so, watching her crawl back inside the house to meet her fate quite considerably in the monstrous aftermath during her own personal street conflict.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  So it was Cyrelle who decided he too must depart for good but not before he spared her very life before the doodlebug flew by to crush the little village church.  He was there at the far back in the congregation, signalling desperately for Jem to get up and leave immediately – he said it all in his intensifying blue eyes, almost luminous in the church darkness.  And in her unhappiness she believed him, it would be a record that his affection had reached the zenith, just like the sun did that day in the rose garden – it was far as their attraction would sweep. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  She arose to her feet and curtly excused herself past all her neighbouring congregation, ardent not to catch anyone on her way out or to glance at anyone in particular – she had to avoid the stare from all those who had started life’s progress not dissimilar to herself, though these gentlefolk were still shining like the candles uprooted from around a holy font.  Jem was the only one who knew that they would be snuffed out and began to feel a guilty at her selfish desertion from what should be her friends.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Ash cornels swung through the mist and smoke plumes jettisoned from the torn masonry, like a giant storm awoken to invade the stricken village.  Cyrelle’s mousy curls were all that was seen over his delicate shoulders as he was wafted back to the grave yard where he mastered the will to rest, but it was still no guarantee he would sleep forever.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  For several days and nights they duly met, both Jem and he under the same circumstantial motives - it was interminable that they could not meet properly, both living in communal reflections and it became unlikely she would find solace in the relationship continuing so restrained:  Struggling to be more alive than the sun, he acted in wariness towards the real earth as their partial union had been an endless distraction when instead, deferring to the Sentinel’s will, Cyrelle decided to make his particular last metamorphosis.  So it was a sober occasion that eventually Cyrelle left dear Jem who had struggled hard but would let him go with a goodnight and a loving promise – she would find some way in her destiny to join him but for now sought sanctuary in the clauses set out in realities spectrum – she was alive and would remain so.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  It was then that Jem, left as lost property, felt she had abandoned by her pretty bulbul but the creeping sun was still there to substitute until she achieved equivalence with her beloved Cyrelle who rested beyond the mysterious village Keep on his infinite meanderings through the unconscious universe.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  It grew monstrously from a distant speck, a mere isolated blob had become a multiple barrelled space engine, barging its way through the portal quickly, landing plumb mid-deck.  There had been considerable distress as it was not known what it was at first but it was for definite now:  A cargo cast from people, presumably from all hurried democracies that had been unsympathetic towards the regime now started here on the great planetary plain.  They were the new chartists set to rebuke the new titans, whoever they were, for there was a current belief that nothing should be too strong or too weak within the powerful state.  Many had decided that the complicated balance of nature had to match the balance of humanity, otherwise there would be spreading chaos causing pain.  And so from the dormant doors issued the human remains that had fled further star systems feeling entrapped by major alliances that had formed themselves around the black hole vistas, now mining them for time travel, notwithstanding the ancient habits grown around the need for constant energy, exercise and recreation too.   

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  The countless meetings chugged along regardless, but nothing was ever settled satisfactorily.  Many delegates felt powerless to shape an effective response to complaints made officially to them about the general conduct surrounding the governorship.  Many masked interlopers listened in on their radio stems and found out what their critics were telling them but couldn’t act on it in case they were discovered as spies.  The whole affair was a mess.  However, this untidy diplomatic knot was far too extreme to be displayed within the public domain and needed a cautious approach beyond measure to unravel.  So the newcomers from the swanky space crawler were here alongside everyone else, just to sort things out.  But, it was not too long until trouble started again with the customary mayhem that always accompanied everywhere.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “So what’s the news”, chirped Ned in a rather cheerful manner, “Something is about to begin and I’m not letting it happen without my involvement”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “So what!  Can’t you keep out”, balled the other chap at the top of his voice canal, “It’s useless you being here.  You are not even eligible to be invited on board”!

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Ned was determined not to be soaked in this barbed talk and mimicked his servant’s voice to cause further affront.  He was never very clever at out-speaking his opponents and so he forwarded a more sarcastic firing line every time he became thwarted.  He felt it was an authoritative echo but it didn’t rally back, reflecting badly on him every time he tried to throw his weight around.  Ned had become involved with the project in a rather loose respect at first but now he was heavily attached, furthering the, by now rather retarded, course to solving the human equation:  Technological competence equalling the potentially limited dimensions sustained by the human mind.  It wouldn’t be long until civilization would not need to evolve again, only for the more sobering peace that it would ultimately bring and serial contentment.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Ned finally dismissed his retainer with a sharp excuse that would most probably send him harkening back to his cronies for a sympathetic reception due to the derision. Meanwhile, the pimpled antagonized went to fleece someone else from their according self-dignity.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;   Ned didn’t really want to raise thunder but wanted to get on with his job without the controversial quirks that came with being an ineffectual line manager, a position foisted on him rather than attainably elected.  All in all, it left him in a very unbouncey way, a mogul for heartlessness amongst potential friendly faces attempting to mollify him.  But it was too late for that now, he had to cut it in the workplace or suffer his own humiliation from others above him.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;      & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Once in the past, he had been labelled as a criminal when he could read effectively human behaviour, now he had become respectable due to an inherent gap in his knowledge about human relations.  As presently he didn’t even know how to worship anything, he became the worshipped, accept like with all gods ancient and modern, he stood to be abused on a day-to-day basis by his own brethren.  No progress was made, as everyone was at perpetual loggerheads with his own dominatrix.  It could not work this hierarchy.  These revolving circles dominated everything and premeditated habitual procedure and etiquette in a society winding up on its’ own successful criteria, universally acknowledged.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Ned had a great deal to fear from the system that had torn him apart and then put him back together in its’ own image, after the dissemination had been completed through a gradual malign process that meant he was ascending the successful heights, at the expense of his disintegrating personality - the equation had been set.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Presently, they were all ordered to march out and meet the delegates from the dizzy star carrier that had halted there to sort things out with the black hole miners, who were just about to initiate a strike ballot.  Summing up a long and embittered argument, the miners were highly despondent following the vagaries issued everyday by their line mangers, having no idea what requirements from the top existed; nobody felt ready to plunge in and take charge effectively.  Greater authority was faceless, and from being faceless it created ultimate confusion around itself like a screening force field, screening its inner motives from those in the outside limits.  Ned, as with many others, became those tossed about like drift wood on this quantative power surge, unable to stop its channelling course, cancelling his own designs effectively in some elaborate quadratic equation that could not ever be solved.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  For this occasion, the hooded Doge walked out and blessed the crowd haplessly, dragging his feet along the dirty splintered floor in an effort to excommunicate his presence, away from the mumbling people who lined the chamber’s sidelines in rows and rows.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  “Open those doors and let them through”, he would say at last.  His only words would be the only concrete impression anyone would be tempted to contemplate for now, his tired actions, merely an inner reverberation.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Solid looking republican plasterboard pillars beaded a scene that was a solemn re-enactment from ancient Venetia, except with the regalia that a more modern setting could provide and for that matter manage, in its obscurity to the truth and acceptability suiting the relevance attributed to this present occasion.  The welcoming committee watched carefully for their cue in case it may have been forgotten in the tide governing the delegate’s progress throughout the giant space station, apportioned to this project’s secret yearnings:  To travel in time comfortably via the available black holes settled in this region.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  And then his mouthy orifice opened to charge the wind with heedless words to welcome and then to remonstrate that it had been far to long since they had last met in unison.  The crowd feigned listening to the august speech; unfortunately, the Doge was intoning his voided passion rather than being beguiling it with his own expression.  It was difficult to hear anything remarkable during the officiating, coloured deputations and silent salutations.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  He continued to declare openly that the mines would provide for a looser reality, describing a dimensional pull hovering above and below the surface, fusing at entry points in our known universe, magnanimous enough to envelope whichever visitor so happened to be travelling on that particular day.  He maintained this all throughout his soliloquising remaining frozen at the end, indicating his presence was indeed tremendously imposing.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  The Doge’s tranquil attendants, dressed like Venetian Priests complete with glinting shawls made drab by the muck stuck on the floor and now sticking to the bottoms of these clocks, showed the delegates where to walk; where to waggle their pride around the assembly; where to shoulder those influential they thought they ought to know immediately before the whole show swung into action, complete with ceremonial walks in and out through the black holes and after that at their own constant whim.  Ned just wanted to walk away from it all through the doors offered, down any shaft into a new dimension.  He had no place here amongst the spectators; he was an instigator after all.  He had to see one of these new worlds for himself and pronto, otherwise his life would secularise itself backwards into the womb without redress.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  He hovered around likely to pick up upon the important characters chosen to try the mines for size.  He would sniff out the main official person and get invited on board and peck at this person until he was finally granted full participation. It was more than likely that what prohibited his crew did not apply to him, yet he had put so much work into the project and needed instant recognition and gratification.  These salient dreams unfolded within his mind slowly, but they grew to such a size that the only way forward was to follow them.  Watching the mounting officials file away into a more intimate cordoned chamber away from the breezy crowd milling about the plasterboard jungle in huddled groups of assorted calibre, Ned was not as delighted as his fellow men.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Ned had not yet tested his vision adequately and so he strode away to find a route into the fantastic show that was passing him by without remission.  Otherwise, he was subject to his own critical reality, without so far nothing could escape, except through scientific acceptability:  The equation had now been set for too long and this new door was his only hope to muster a new life harvested on just dreams.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  It was unfortunate when the day first rung it tears from the sunset, another from his kind would broach the gap into the past that he insisted was reserved for him to goggle his eyes.  And at that moment’s apex, the magnificent arch was unveiled to the hierarchy present.  Then an orphan speech rolled forth yet again, while first the governors all spoke to frame the occasion, then beneath their gaze, the guarantors with all their mounting financial kudos replied with all the truthful virtues they knew, unless the very truth they owned be destroyed subsequent to their time travelling agonies, all spent away from reality’s realm; each felt in their fiery speak that there may be something to loose without securing any insurance beforehand.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  The other delegates were the last to pass the arching portal.  It was wonderful how they would be able to inflame their passion and bring back their message to the people - however for now the new dawn had begun.  A single man scuttled far behind, watching them disappear from the rear viewpoint.  He fully expected them to reappear almost immediately in calmative force to express their views about the abyss to the standing reporters but in actual fact, nothing developed or gave way or protruded from the archway door that had been tidied shut for good measure, like the reality he felt too ashamed to be part. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Ned remained enduring the nuisance hammering away within the main shaft, kicking out in tidal shock waves at regular intervals throughout the surrounding peace around the shaft entrance; the home reality had now been dissipated.  This clanking from the passenger pipe refused to die down without subsidiary interruption.  His top lip folded gently over his partner lip as to give him some dispensation for the agony caused by this irritating echo, rebounding across the room relentlessly.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  And they never came back, not at all.  None of the original expedition; though something returned on their behest - a raggedy creature whose jaw had been formerly severed and presently looked as if it had been sown on by several metal bolts, shining wickedly in the antechamber it had been born into, begat from the descending vault.  It had been cultured from naked skin above all, but metal rafters snaked around its’ torso repeatedly, spiralling and spiralling beautifully around immaculately in symmetrical sections, reflecting the light with effervescence.  It quickly gazed at Ned then abandoned its decorum to insist on a banquet and eloquently it felt that Ned would do as an available starter to the meal for its polite tongue, maintaining that it was for this that animals mostly existed from where it came from beyond the stars; they ate and ate and ate until suffice and after rolled over for a bit of a snooze.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  That was the inevitability, the sum of it all for these creatures – that is all they did from dawn to inky dusk – it was a necessity – a behavioural island that they collectively lived on to survive the longest in their homely reality plain, aeons into the future or aeons back into the past – you take your pick.  The silence after this was inevitable, while the new creature explored its’ new realm, baling its head back and forth in synchronicity with the alarm that shuddered into action, motioning a pack of more and other singular creatures arising from the time vault, many cackling like laden geese, fearful in their surprisingly assorted zoological surroundings but nothing like the supposed imaginations calculable from the denizens in this splintered nook indicating the home universe.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;  Mouths opened then sank into bare flesh and then these fleshy parts became a suppertime boon with furthermore food sought afterwards to increase the tote nourishment – it was a natural instinct, a base motivator to exist for these colourful invading species.  These creatures were not curious.

He was locked firmly into his work, tearing up the ground with his silver spade, splashing through the flying soil like a blade.  It wasn’t long before it was all done.  Sid’s monstrous garden had been dismantled and now it was ready to be turned into something renewed.  All the soil had been turned over several times and fresh manure had been applied to grow the plants, now it was for the ground to open up with contemporary growth that was promised by the season’s twist.  The frost had made the ground impregnable but spring had come along to loosen the concrete soil and fulfil its role as the universal midwife.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   But the stroll every day to the garden’s boundaries made Sid grow more thoughtful and forced him to procrastinate on his former glories, certainly not on this virtuous outing he made day in day out to wander around his crops.  As the day fared on with its rain and debutant sunshine, he began to consider his age and his own promised destiny.  What had he become now?  His mountainous body parts had turned into disarray; his gums had glued themselves tightly shut for more than a year and his legs now only allowed him to amble politely around his little pen containing all his worldly shrubs, yet it was never going to be more than that on his patch.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   Sid found that he could not promote his notional garden; he found it hard proving the potentiality his garden might be capable.  This small patch represented the dying functionality linked to the ploughed enclosure, not the modern outlay created to be more aesthetic.  His golden potatoes, his bobbing bulbs and his quality turnips would be gone very soon, brushed away with his impatience to continue another crop yielding next years precious victuals.  Nobody cared or bore witness to his interests and least of all did he care about the minor tantrums that appeared in the news, in the newspaper and most probably in the garden where Lilly Siedler lived, right next door to his chosen bunker retreat.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   She was a native within this long Island, although quite adequately equipped with worldly travel to hotter climates.  Lilly found it vital that she learnt to stay in one place for the current time franchise, especially as something shockingly brighter was now about to present it’s calling card upon her presence.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   It was curious to note the contrast between the hopelessness writhing amongst the immature botanical surplus that Sid had lately encouraged into a living state and the coming mystery that was fated to once more provoke Lilly’s revision as to her lifetime strategies; both extremes, the old man and the young lady, lie side by side in the smouldering semi detached jungle that were forever odorised by musty autumnal bonfires, heralding the darkness before the first school run at every weeks beginning.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   Despite the regular sequences that dictated events, Lilly thought about her multi-linked department, bought for her by semi-acquainted sponsors whose creed lay in badgering her for her company on demand.  It was not that she would not give it freely; it was more that she was a fashion item, not a woman, which earned her distain every time these people called in their little monetary favour.  They ignorantly imagined her flirtations and each dubiously thought her for themselves.  In actual fact she had no preference over which was more benevolent or consequently which was less bankrupt, though we do know they all tended to spill the alcohol most nights right until the bluey morning dawn came swinging on its hinges. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   One particular day, outside the house, the shadows lengthened casually in sink with the sun’s developed journeying over the horizon, and it loaded Sid’s garden with silhouettes, twisting out on the lawn’s surface like circuit wires.  He had been fixing a useful trestle, it had been a dreadful battle, but was now infecting the amounts of poisonous Ivy that had openly annexed his kitchen conservatory thus affecting his malice.

On the other side, Lilly was thinking deeply about how she first recieved her name:  Was it given to her deliberately to make her so old fashioned or did it suit her nicely?  She definitely felt it was a great deal better than Lillian or even the devilish Lilith, but she decided it was just Lilly without all the dressing up.  Now she was extremely cross with herself for having to sort all that out mentally and she mostly never wanted to venture in her head far from what was immediately transparently relevant to her, though something had hi-jacked her today, rebuking her usual habitual alignment.  If she sat here for much longer she could prejudice herself towards a strong action or to make a decision that would rebound back on her immediately.  She needed to escape these quandaries quick smart or take root to the spot and become a garden spirit instead.  That wouldn’t do and furthermore, it wouldn’t be so amusing if anyone she knew would espy her here alone, just idling the time cast away in deep contemplation.

She arose and felt slightly pleasant in her laziness; perhaps she thought she would just lie there for the rest of the afternoon, nothing else would matter.  She now resolved from that moment on not to think about anything too weighty or to think about any later developments that she might be engaged upon that day.  This was her inheritance for getting up happily each morning, a welcome afternoon snooze, barracked in within her own back yard.  It would not be long before her sponsors would be around to collect her for a little evening activity around the pubs and clubs that hung from the town in tassels.  Meanwhile, she would carry on rewarding herself for living such a worry free life style without the sex or harangue many colleagues would suffer by being paid off.  Her sponsors were extremely kind and hardly ever laid a finger on her.

“Bing – bong”, the doorbell was a distant echo around the lounge area, typical but a clearly an unmusical chime that all the doors along the street would open and slam shut to in unison, but with one exception:  The house opposite actually imitated Big Ben in an aggressively auditory manner.  Their difference was put down to the red light that shone out from their porch whenever the evening, with darkened coppery gown, walked in upon the fractured suburban landscape.  Unfortunately, these people were ordered to vacate within two months and Lilly looked forward to more comforting street companions, who would fit in more within the street’s outlay.

She stretched and entwined her hands around her bobble head but she would not leave it until the sound’s reprise. The glass door steamed up in the air and it was opened to a tall gentleman who barged his way through quite aggressively.  His hands brushed quite cynically through what had not been tied up in her hair and he sued her for an empty declaration of love, straining the air full with duplicity.  There was a silent understanding as their eyes met and their lips locked but it was not for long. Her mouth elongated with zeal from the kiss into a loaded smile.  She did not want to cope with a longer and sprightlier embrace, especially if her partner decided to take liberties that would leave her shabbily dressed instead.

“Go away to that chair and a wait”, she would say under her breath. 

It was not long until he was straining again to lever her away from a self-reliant standing position so that she would actually fall on him.  But it was not a thing the lady wanted to do and she just looked at him dreamily before loosing herself within the knick-knacks that had been stuffed into the fridge from a previous shopping spree around buildings that looked more like bomb shelters than places to buy things.

Everything in her room grew with foliage that extended about, as if it was distracted away from the earth in order to populate the air.  Some flowering bells were strikingly bulbous; others withered and shorn, inflicting their presence quietly but intimately on the watcher’s eyes that might be peeking from several angles, but never too closely, for that is what flowers are all about – they are decoration derived from creation.

She found no wine, so instead they hacked into the spirits instead.  After several hits they fell into each other’s again in order to summarise what they had done before now, and still other moments far back into the past.  It didn’t stop, as life itself was hopeless in stopping its own revolving outcomes.

“Oh fire maker, why do you crackle so”, he said.

“Because I have not yet been put out”, she replied to this onerous remark from her heaving lover. 

Her smile was now an actuality and not just an imagination by the man, as he covered her over with himself so that she would not be distracted anymore.  The crocus on the mantle looked on despotically, not wishing to lift its gaze anywhere about the room.  The colours pigmenting this pretended sentinel blended well into the patterns printed copiously onto the carpet and around the lounge walls.

“How long have we been asleep”, she arose to peer dimly at the clock that was not on the wall but carelessly bounding around her room out of reach from her arms length.  They had now both got up and he was now quickly tying his shoelaces delicately in an effort to disguise his emotions, if they would so dare to reveal themselves from the escapades consequence.  He managed that well and then quickly got as far away from the woman as possible, marching through the front door like a foot soldier, playing to his real self, not the shadow that had released its energy around her lounge area, hoping for love but never quite getting it in full measure.

Lilly’s auburn hair carried off the sunshine that came arching through the window in a watery line past the bowing narcissus flower poised to forge the depths.  Besides looking at the cooker and being hypnotised by the dials for a few seconds, she flicked on the television set and began to watch whatever it was the dialectic broadcasters were prepared to broadcast at the time of day for public indifference.  It allowed her to deviate away from what she was really thinking and in comfort she found the pictures tranquillizing, never perplexing.  It was here that she found her assuring reality.

She deeply smiled to herself as she saw Sid eagerly reprise his weeding in his front garden patch.  Of course he would never swing his face her way, just in case she was able to read what emotions had been written all over it for most of that time that day.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Her heavily wrought corona bellied that she was infallible beyond irredeemable doubt.  She would never come to harm if she insisted on it and she would never permanently expire as long as she believed in her ability to live indefinitely long for a mortal.  So who was she really, for nobody became emboldened enough to request an answer from her tongue of any magnitude that would sort out any inquisitiveness resolutely.  It was a question that was just never asked anywhere, least of all in her own palace.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Just on the week’s cusp she threw out several guests who had invented an excuse to berate her wilfully, asking intimate favours she would not give in to any such person.  They had ceased an opportunity to engage the more ethereal aspect in her visage, duelling with her repose and delving into her hidden motivations that constantly remained unravelled.  After brushing these arbitrary people away into her all too saintly court, her designs flew forth from the present situation she had dominated for centuries, as it was long time again to fly and in that actual resolution, it was all too late for her invited suitors to fulfil desire’s faithful promise.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; She garnished herself overtly with egotistical trinkets, gauged into the body like bulbous diverts and wore assorted ring nuts all arrayed around multiples in three and six.  They were all devices designed to assault the mysterious pretensions flowing through the male transept towards beauty but were at this moment intrinsically designed to intimidate her immediate aggressors.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; And so it was time for her tortured foot soldiers to flood the plain as they prepared to move once more away from her terrible sphere of influence.  The novices first with their metallurgic pikes flashing in the dawn wind as they wound down the plain past the boulders they had hailed six years ago, quenching their impetuous curiosity to see the only feminine entity that had wrapped herself in a downy shawl that were surely her wings.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Her will was not remorse but to do what one must, quickly and efficiently in the face of an invading enemy from the south, who claimed their action every leap year.  The pike men would open hostilities while she made a stealthy exit back to her settled birthplace.  And in that way she was not infallible; she could be turned out onto the barren tundra to seek her penance elsewhere whenever the leap year turned its cycle into regular effect.  Now the dawn reigned down on her as she and her packhorses marched into exile for twelve month until at last she was allowed to return by the satisfied usurpers.  Fortunately for her, she was not aware that any humiliation had befallen her and fulfilled every detail in her role without due complaint and in true compliancy; She was graceful in the relinquishment regarding her inherited land fortress.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Carocco was one such novice footman who had been sent out with the other pikers to cause a diversion, while she escaped back to the provinces.  At this moment in time he was feeling rather too bitter about his treatment by his fellow officers.  His frustration was justified by his unequal treatment, without the qualified seriousness or respect that had quickly established itself around the other ordinary guard.  Indeed, he was the sovereign’s personal lackey, amounting not much more than a slave.  In another life he had been a warrior renowned for tremendous battle instinct but now he was just a tamed pet, reporting to her majesties domestic department as a lower functionary, unjustly enfeebled by his lowly status.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Oh for the arms of a welcoming party, hell bent to heal my pride”, Carocco shouted out into the open air.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; But they all intransigently ignored this gesture and covered themselves with their flustering wings so that he would not decide to talk with any face to face ad libitum.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Carocco’s rancour effaced by the situation increased while he was directly challenged to help carry the giant field cannon that was destined to be trained on the enemies marginal defences.  Openly he fought the decision but it was to no avail; he would have to apply his delicate limbs into carrying it over treacherous countryside terrain for the impending common assault.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It was discovered later on that he had instead decided to veer off for his own purposes, though it could be rightly said that the pikers were grateful for this departure because Carocco tended to weigh them down with his inability to fly like them - carrying baggage was to be entrusted to someone much more versatile to the job in hand.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; So aloft the pike men all danced, wafting on the wind as their flock flew in a stringent formation, their weapons at the ready to strike for only an instant in their need, and their wits as slight as their feared end.  They were all afraid and glassy eyed whilst the colder layers met them at attitude, feeding them with apprehension.  Up they moved to conjoin with the sky’s length, coiling around and around like sailors fighting turbulent seas, except this frothy ocean was drenched in vying dusty feather wings from all the people around.  They searched the heavens as labourers would for somewhere to build a solid formation but it was terrible weather in which they sought sanctuary and quite openly the gang developed nausea, for the heights attained and their feathered tips failed them in flight, sending them back to the mercy of the ground petrified in the rain’s severity.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Carocco’s back moulded itself into the bough’s frame as he watched them all float into the air and swim off into an unknown realm.  He too had arisen to a height but was in his case, was beholden to the tree’s branch holding his elevated position over gravity’s tyranny.  Sleep was not far off but resolve far more the more urgent course for consideration.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Oh travel gently my fellows, into the storm as they’ll cut you down surely once our enemies become maddened enough to strike heartlessly,” he mouthed silently.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; His calculated run for freedom had infringed compliance expected from him in a perverse run of things.  Despite never really wanting to look up, his relief forced him to meet the winking sun dressed in a small blue coverlet, then immediately looking away to grant an audience with a passing dove, which was as white as the singlet worn by the rising pike men and could be detected in the breath of sky immediately adjacent to this blue patch.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Oh my tender gals how I shall miss you now we are away again”, he voiced to the sun, who in recognition stepped out from its throne behind some foolish clouds, just managing to obscure its majesty but it still overtly manage to leak golden juice over the poor champion’s face, sitting there along the tree wondering what to do next. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Perhaps the sun reminded him that the Queen’s solace was similar to his own impregnable reserve.  Cocooned in her cosy palace of beautiful styles, she hardly knew anything about outside affairs, except as like now, she needed to flee her enemy’s sight for a very short period until it was safe again to return to normality under her own stealthy wings.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; From the father reaches Carocco grew more aware that an incredible lurching figure was picking its way towards him through the giant thickets, typical in such a baron dust bowl that was the region’s delight.  Carocco could not identify this approaching blob, though it seemed mad in its conscientious progress, flaying through the hostile undergrowth.  He slid down the arching trunk to meet this unknown person head on and to find out something more about this comical wayfarer.  It soon became obvious that this person was a piece of chaff disastrously walking about at random, or was he running away from something menacing by his own calling, Carocco could not tell which.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Dear sir can you tell me which is road that would link me to Breach Canyon”, he said in a fleeting lisp casually set on his tongue, twisting his mouth into a mechanical shape.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “The shapes of my Klan ventured in that direction, what of it”, was the retort from the equally strained Carocco, “what is your purpose in that special realm young sir”?

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “A blood relation to the queen”, he heaved back, “just visiting the good old lady soverign to purge a few sins”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; But he could not possibly know the queen’s qualities, besides she was a young lass, quite younger, younger then anyone else could remember.  Why would this stranger want to describe her so when she was clearly not?  Carocco felt suspicious and became doubtful because the queen was not a matter for common knowledge, and would never countenance such treasonous intrusion, especially not now when she was under a cyclical threat in the leap year. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Well I cannot detect any look that you may own that puts me in mind that you may be a true royal relation.  Cut your tongue if you propose to blaspheme longer blockhead”, as was said by what was now an overtly irritated Carocco. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; He could not read anything from the mazes within the crone’s hazel eyes and proceeded to rebuke him further as in punishment.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Your rude interjection will mean a dangerous presumption; find your way to a more considered opinion or I’ll have you hung drawn and quartered amongst the other rogues I mean to eliminate, for I’m more loyal than you suppose”, he beat back.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; And so they began their torrential quarrel that took hours to settle in the rain.  Carocco just would not let him pass muster for his lies and listened out to capture the whispered curses about him that this man might moan under his breath.  Apparently he knew her name, as Kim but all Carocco knew was a royal woman processing an opaque pallor according to her needs.  Sometimes an illusionary smile momentarily fractured her enormous gums that spoke nothing about what the female thought behind her hopelessly wrought mask.  Her eyes would beat from time to time but when opened fully, seemed fully numb and serious; nothing for the likes of Carocco or the universal pool within his kind to get into.  So this man alluded to intimacies with her that were just not possible in any circumstance; so lay the paradox.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Carocco grew sure that if this nuisance carried on burbling about what he knew about their sovereign, he would end up twisting his head straight off his accommodating shoulders, just to gain him some peace; besides he could not fly with wings like his fellow countrymen and remained pinned down to endure the tormented fiction this man spat out which angered him interminably.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Prove you know our mistress, otherwise develop your madness in chains”.  Carocco now spoke his mind and ventured to immobilise himself from yet a further breach of sanity that this man could offer.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; For this man was far ruder beyond the pale of doubt, ruder than anything Carocco had noticed in anyone else before but it had got him thinking on other tangents beyond the ones he had got stuck on so recently.  What if she, this so-called goddess they had been worshipping for the last fifty years, was really the rude infidel instead?  What if this man was right and they had all been hoodwinked into thinking this graceful lady more than she seemed but really she was a crown disaster, possibly even sleeping with the man who faced him down now.  Perhaps she was in the clutches of something evil instead, or was charmed by day and by night she would awake from her torpor to become a temptress at her leisurely device.  But what was really true, she didn’t want anything from them, her own true kith, whereas Carocco would stay by her side until the last measure, or even until the dawn had no more will to break in its infatuation with its own self.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Open your mind you fool; from the cradle I have known her, for I’m her brother who lives up in the moon’s quadrant around the sea of eyes.  I sometimes tramp through more earthly domains as a spy, hoping to curtail her enemy’s hopes but it is never to any worthwhile avail that I can halt their indicative schemes”, he said almost in an unearthly chant, “but, she must always wave them away with a composure that would scatter the witless and every fool that would blunder to follow her hoping for a sudden wind fall from her soul”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “No that cannot be, she is as secretive as this desert around us now!  How can you burst force with all your deviant manners and maintain she is nearly the same as you?”  It was Carocco’s last hope that the stranger would relent before him but he held fast with a knowledgeable smile that put out his flame with a flutter.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; To Carocco, she just did not utter more than a sentence at a time and only spoke as if within her sleep.  He could not tame his mind one way or another and he saw that the shameful mask would not unfurl from the stranger’s visage, not even slightly.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “The devil betrays you old man; do not now try to convince me any further.  These are lies that could be construed as gossip”, though in actual fact Carocco felt deceived on the Queen’s account and by this mans eccentric behaviour.  Was there a conspiracy to pervert evil around this tight corner realm?  How could the same seed spawn such diverse figures:  One queen and a man who claimed to know her like the palm creating his own hand?

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Give me your hand and I will take you and show you all that I have promised”, the stranger spoke quietly as he pulled out a limb that fielded a long set of wobbly digits that had up until now dwelt neatly down his long sleeved smock, “you must come with me now otherwise you will not grasp for yourself the whole truth in this matter; your knowledge will lie forever destitute without functional enlightenment.  Please say you will come.  It is not far to what it is I wish to show you.  But do come now otherwise it will be all gone and there will be nothing to see.  Hurry up”!

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; But the ground sucked him down and the ferocious spies of anger would not allow Carocco to stay still but to move him further forward off the preferred spot.  It seemed like magic that his curious legs were not his own but journeying in their own accordance, following the older gentleman in unison a few paces behind.  They both trudged through the robust countryside, not noticing that the sky was always changing from a blackened stain to a silver azure whilst the sun shone through, then back again into the bleak eye sore that it had been before.  Soon enough they both stopped short several feet from a dusty canyon that funnelled out towards the travelling duo.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Where do you think she is now”, he barked at Carocco.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Carried off to seclusion according to her war time obligations”, answered his opposite number.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I bet you don’t know where she really is youngster man”, he said.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “If I were you, I would loose the attitude, I have pretty powerful allies”, he counter-struck.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “She’s not where you think she is, that’s for sure.  I know for certain”, he said as if to parry the shot much more carefully.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Why”?

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;  “Because she’s around here where she truly lives”,

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Around here, in there, thriving in that aisle” he said, pointing to the long desert groove that made up the canyon

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Carocco had forgotten himself and it definitely showed on his face.  What was this man implying?  A whole lot of nonsense had been stumped up it initially seemed, though despite all the doubt, young Carocco felt ill at ease.  This man was so sure in his conclusions, his aspersions, and mostly his clear thinking as towards everybody’s queen that she truly was when he remembered home.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “She’s down there alright”, he was singularly on a roll now, taking big advantage that Carocco looked terribly confused, “she’s camping out down there with her entourage my friend”.   

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The ragged man went on to describe her first journey to these parts.  She needed to leave the home city straight away.  It wasn’t that she needed to be away for some lunar months while the marauders sacked her haven; it was mostly because she had some other diversion away from the usual courtly drudgery, prying eyes and miscalculated investigations into her life.  She would spend all her nights in this small free alcove.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It wasn’t long before a dishevelled little girl came tumbling towards them, yelping coyly, stumbling breathlessly and constantly sneezing.  Her wings constituted another tight shawl united with the shoulders, winding round her body, spiralling down in tufty feather vistas to her two little naked feet.  Two little blue eyes peered up but slammed shut to shield against the now constant sunlight that had broken the creeping clouds. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “This is her first born and there will be several others like her who will come along, no doubt after the first wave has spent out, though that’s only a prediction”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Carocco couldn’t think what the man was talking about, it didn’t make sense to his tiny fragmented mind; it frightened him to know all these things; there were too many things to take in simultaneously.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The man went on with the story as the child girl carried on stumbling along, switching from one leg to the other as she travelled across their mid sight towards another stationary figure, which had suddenly appeared behind them.  There was a brief description to finish the story’s final slice but Carocco was no longer listening to the man.  He had already turned to face what he could only feel sure was a trick in the now modulating dusty light.  She towered over him, wings spread out wavering in the solar illuminations that cut through the structural gaps.  She briefly looked agitated beyond measure, her mouth dazed open by her own bewilderment.  But she soon composed herself and slid back into her former decorum that had be so familiar to Carocco back home, where she led them with the same such curt indifference.  Her deeply summated eyes assumed a poised stare and through cultivating hypnosis seemed to subdue her company captive like mere prey.  She stared at Sirocco endlessly but remained obdurately taciturn, as was her usual nature whatever the occasion.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; She had obviously been spawning quite heavily lately and Carocco could pick up one or two words about ingratiating herself onto a male being, which was fertile enough only at certain brief moments in the lunar year for her to hatch her gullible osprey whenever it was her whim to do so.  He had seen her example in the ambling girl.  So she was here in this ditch with all her new companions, partners, their families and her own family, involved in a community-building project beyond imagining, cultivated from here amongst the dusty waste.  She had bled her all into this project and left nothing but her emotionless shell towards her deserted kinfolk at the palace. 

      & nbsp;   &n bsp;   “What is to become of us”, he whimpered while he could still control his panting voice in quite lowish wave patterns, “it would seem silly to suggest that you would ever want to come back to us now you are established here”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It was true to say that she could not consider any such reason to return to her former kingdom anymore, especially now she had been found out by an insignificant underling, intruding to discover her new nest away from her own shinning past.  His little jab from her destiny had jeopardised the palace.  Such knowledge would be his undoing, as he saw her now for what she was, in her true guise.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; She folded her arms angrily and declared, “Now you can go home Carocco for I certainly don’t want you now”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Carocco wept violently, as he knew he could when he had occasion to, with sheepish upturned eyes that pleaded with his former majesty but she was remiss in her response.  She turned away uninterested and sauntered down into the foreboding crack to feast on the desolate earth with her virulent partner, who had drawn her into his dormant lair several springs in every leap year.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; During the longitudinal reign of the emperor Xianphio ‘The Plumed’, lived a desperate tyrant who ruled only some of the land, but spitefully wanted to keep all of the land.  His darkness beat dreadfully over all his mistreated slaves, wanting to openly cause his overthrow more than anything else on the living earth, but several fewer higher ranking officials felt that he should stay, just in case they were the ones chosen for the exalted privilege to the higher ranks of glorification then usually calculated by earned merit – they felt that maybe one day they too would presume to become a monarch representing their own ilk - in the meantime it was supposed best to concur.  Unfortunately, these minority people didn’t understand that they were all fairly useless pawns in a larger game, and did nothing in their meagre efforts to conform their aspirations but instead bolster the status quo in their fruitless quest for power without responsibility or quest.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; On the very day the emperor celebrated an advanced birthday, he decreed that he wished to visit the realm of his origins, the valley of Dujunoing – the region where the daring firefly and the roving turtle-headed snake lived.  It was seen from the light from the sage’s staff that this was to be no ordinary circumstance:  Emperor Xianphio had already reached out with his gold bangled fingers to search his lands for a lightly candidate to build him a single step to eternity, in an effort to join the fifty others over his very own commemorative ziggurat.  This step would be the highest step and would surpass the former hefty Masonic slab hauled out in layers from the sprawling landscape close to the Nupueon hills - a place where the elephants of light could roam freely without outside disturbance from the killing gangs familiar in the central provinces. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; No trivial craftsman would be selected to build this step denoting heaven’s flattery; The artisan specially picked would resemble a staggering eagle from Yugimal in deeds, soaring above the heads over his fellow earthly incremental operators; his design would have a wide panesthesia beyond vision and most remarkably, yet far beyond the world of dawning – closest to god in everything.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; So it came to pass in this cultural desert that the tyrant prince presumed that he would just like to be such a person with the essential qualities suited to architectural destiny required amending this divine bridge.  So, arrogantly he boasted to official ears of his imminent success already secured at such time and place that he would be personally called upon to serve the emperor in a way described with all its several glittering ramifications in future acclaim.     & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; While the emperor’s promises rang out throughout the Tyrant’s deprived region of discontent, malnutrition and desolation, the wind had carried the news to other national enclaves towards smaller metal who would nevertheless send representatives to this meeting with the sole purpose to learn what use their kith and kin could be put concerning building this monument in such precedence. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It was muted that a great feast would be held at the Temple of Moons within the emperor’s enclosed capital to learn the contestant’s identities who would be drawn to try for the contractual pleasure of building a step, though not just any step, it would be a gaping idol celebrating the divine, or so they all said infinitely.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; High up from the tyrant’s side in the valley lived an inconsequential lop-eared man who called himself Te Ling Su, a man never to set forth without his hood fully set up to cover most of his facial entourage, for fear of public ridicule and mirth towards his overtly gangly skin pouches that hung on the outside. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Although Te Ling was not his real name, it was more an extravagant affirmation, awakening him from his sleep on occasions after excessive modular imbibing various opiate draughts enveloped with asphyxiating substances, designed to affect the internal organs temporarily.  During such aspirate unconsciousness the subject would benefit from knowing exactly nothing except for the strength of infinity’s reverberation – a deeper repose away from the day’s lively suns.  The only other option during life was to fall back into wakefulness once again with a keener sense towards persistent mortality.  In most circles, this method was termed the “Karoon”, a dicey state that aped death’s coordinates and went further than the normal comatose state.  Those who had regularly persisted with this were less afraid dealing with the finality involved with their own passing away, using this method as an advantageous insurance against the strain on the body that real death and its familiars would freely bestow.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Eventually on the day culminating in the seventh sun, Te Ling was invited to attend an expedition going over to the Palace of Moons soon after a particularly long ‘Karoon Dawn’ had broken out.  He had spent the last couple of days remembering what he had forgotten before his interment; some memories had been distinctly blurry and only vaguely rejuvenated.  Intuition settled him as a man with poor means, generous intensions and extremely bad judgement in human affairs, happening to be the only constant for him that had reappeared after each sleeping relapse.  However, nothing else of persuading kilter remained around in his waking experience to frequent joyous recollections, just an indelible mapping from birth; a scratch denoting basic personality, and so his days in the safer Karoon shade had become more prolonged then usually required from a melodious youngster in his position. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; So why had the emperor invited him to his palace to look over all the requisites to build the step, and also to vie with the other hopefuls for the sole privilege of building the blessed thing?  This question both puzzled and interested Te Ling simultaneously; it was enough for him to embark on investigating the prospect of escaping his vapid home life among the silted hills and troughs, to the lush yew treed lakes of Kwalasia, the seat of emperor Xianphio, general hero in the war against the Dujing guerrillas.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; So he left his bamboo hut with a cast iron ambition to lift himself far up into the azure canopy, if only to defy destinies elopement by faking competence.  At the head of the first rolling hill, hope rapidly fled from him as quickly as it first momentarily and fleetingly appeared; he apprised the thousands of travellers, who like himself had a hope of taming the emperor’s adjudicators with their evolving mathematical theories and intelligences, far from the bounds surrounding poor Te Ling’s own modest technical prowess.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; After sixteen long days and two nights spent under the stars – there had been more suns readying themselves for inspection than the season’s shinning moon disks - the entourage entered the palace grounds to join the even greater throngs representing plain-smocked bystanders, but in his case, promptly exchanged for blue smocks, delineating the entrants from the concrete spectators. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Te Ling wondered if the dilated palace structures had been requisitioned from various home country districts for the chief reason that everything looked familiar in conformity and weight throughout the harsh masonry sporadically used to build the thing, seeming overwhelmingly dominated by the peaked assemblage of luxuriant ornamental plot plants that were used to build up different strokes over the frontal adornment.  Large pale metal skin orbs were built so high up as to light the place at night from the very cornices showing the star’s own landscape, beguiled by the moon’s sudden and rare illumination.  At home, many stone structures were mustered from these same building blocks used extravagantly to feed this onerous palace citadel.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Despite his reasoning for feeling slightly embarrassed that he had been selected at the more worthier candidate’s expense, Te Ling was enjoying all the attention the competition could afford and the delight’s of the place’s various inmates and places of pleasurable import, like the knobbly steel domes that were stuck to long silver metal poles, meant to afford the emperor’s family a place to eat and sleep; likewise the guided turret walks through to, and around rapture gardens where the encapsulated parquets would roost, tethered to sticks but squawking at awkward visitors in case they should be looking elsewhere from their feathery expanse; and best of all, dancing ball rooms equitable in measure to the picturesque marble gabled terraces like the witch doctor’s manse, being a man made rich by fortuitous successive cures given to youngsters under care, appearing disturbed but just needing a heavy smattering of clean fresh air to rest in exchange for the correct amount in lieu.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Te Ling had been subsequently chaperoned into the first evenings by sequin hooked guards, one allotted to the arm of each guest, preventing them from getting away, even for an amusing stroll.  

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; A little quietly placed girl tried to catch his attention as soon as the courtly celebrations had drifted through past the palace square and out through the many centrifugal quadrangles scattered on the main track in the palace centre.  When at last they had all been released, she told him her name was Yi Ping Sumoro, seemingly a circus act from Nipponesia; star from the pit containing bickering flames, gasping for air as she arrived out from under the flaming water and sent up through a fire rod to stand up on a high platform bound in natural electricity – she withstood all the shocks until she guided herself gently back down to ground level, perfectly tamed after the unleashed beast that she had fought had grown tame at last. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; When he first saw her, Te Ling did not give her a second thought and felt no  solid presence about him, solely in the fact that she was from a foreign desert quantified with sand and rock formations, turned to dust graduals, in the turbulently foul air, or so he wrongly surmised.  She obviously knew little vocabulary from his own language or his people or anything about the famous ‘Karoon’, forcing him to stop thinking about her subsequently, although she always seemed to be irritably present around him ever since he could remember arriving two days previously – although he could not place their first encounter at any definite instant before then.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Yi Ping qualified as a minor guest in the ceremonial raffle - the night before the first round contestant sparring.  She would be involved in the many dances throughout the evening, but only from the visitor’s contingent, having less apparent kudos than a Dujing servant pallbearer.  A quick pariah on the gigantean beetle drums would beat out the time for the commencement of the first activity, the native ‘Quirk Quirk’ dance, involving three step rhythms shuffled and then tapped in quick succession according to each partner’s gender – some couples, or threesomes preferred to skip these traditional emblems showing weakness and dominance for random intuition, especially loaded from liquor intoxication, but it all never worked quite so well before.  Yi Ping was suddenly picked out discreetly as the aspiring dancing partner for Te Ling, even though it gave the impression to be a none-event for a boy waiting to make his way up in the world around the next day’s corner.  But, he had to start from the very bottom, merely for it to be a happy interlude he suspected it might transpire not to be.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Today she was plainly dressed with no garment with worth.  Her disordered costume was drab and compact, compared with the other dainty maidens, all floating about replete with their floral tributes, single crocuses, damsons and tulips shoved at them as they entered the dancing ring by the many genial stewards, bowing and grinning in formation as if they were participating in a children’s drill team.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; After the dance the temple bells would beat the measure, the twittering flutes would harmonise in pentatonic array and then the initial draw would commence from the palace raffle in efficient vocabulary, according to custom.  Again the ineffectual Yi Ping was by his side.  He had hardly noticed her excitement from her presentation with a spare flower from the remaining dregs, after the more faceable dames received the pick from the bunch – obviously she had caught the steward’s eye before requisitioning it, which meant she could participate in every single dance from that moment on without being detected as a lower cast vagabond that she was.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Then it happened in a flustered rush, she had picked out all his winning numbers for him.  Granted, he had allowed her do so for a quiet life, picking out the tickets and accepting the prizes for each category, but they were all in his name and now his luck was estimated to be running high and judged naturally inherent within his sinews. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Raffles were designed as a way to measure the luck carried by each viable contestant, just in case they might in actuality be biologically unlucky, in which case they would not be eligible for the construction practice in this present assembly – this was a superstition quite typical throughout the countryside, where contact with fellow humans were a rare occurrence and many had to frequently rely on their own personal resources - misfortune was construed as a blameworthy offence.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; As the evening spread its wings, Te Ling found he was mercifully lucky: Every time Yi Ping picked the specially embroidered cards out from the chance row, he either claimed a prize or a fortunate mention was granted from the pack of judges assembled at the back of the main hall.  Te Ling’s peevish censure towards her constant presence turned abruptly to extolling virtue when he found that they made a capable partnership.  Her visage in his mind had transmuted from a common serf to a not so ghastly country girl in common value to his own; this became increasingly obvious through a barrage of engaging chat, flirtatious signals and remittent claims upon his physical persona.  She additionally bore a memorable thick smile that radiated her confidence and mixed into the garish revelry, ensnaring the boisterousness melding all the dances into one.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; What foxed him now was that she nonsensically disappeared abruptly at the very top of the evening’s pleasure, as all the other people sought to remedy the strain from their efforts with a milder sleep than the deeper stuff run in by Te Ling a night away from the carefree sun.  She had a certain claim on him at this moment, and after promising at several points in the evening that their was a future tense to their first acquaintance, he was certain that she would turn up some place else another day, just as keen and willing to forge his luck as he was enthusiastically ready to learn more about her – it had first class potential for him to gain some pleasure from the occasion’s competitive sweep.  Any doubts from him as to her lowborn institution and bankrupt appeal were dismissed casually for the moment, and immediate gratification was decided upon as the better quota with all the options available to him.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Along the sidelines stood the tyrant prince gazing on transfixed by the outlay of guests, finding out alternative ways to seal his mark on proceedings – spontaneity he decided, was to be his cue to begin any meddling he might grievously wish to commit.  

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Now it just so happened that on that same day in that particular year a sorceress had similarly resolved to open her mind in a particular way to lean on her competitors through the denomination expertise of magical pressure.  It was easily done in telepathic relay and she knew how to fix the whole darn lot so that they would not even notice she had dabbled with their bodily automation throughout their mind’s bent, however weak her touch might be.  The requisite psyche demanded a huge generation of global force distempered with some corrupted beginnings, the like never instigated by her science in any event from the past. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; In a break during the evening’s proceedings the lately mentioned dour lady saboteur managed to pair up coincidently with the tyrant prince during a dance called the ‘High Wrangle’; a combination of a serene waltz with the temptation to acquire several partners at a time to join in and wrestle each other to the ground sedately while accompanied by a delivery of bells clanking in the background.  Many agreed it was spellbinding to watch, including the lucky sorceress who sought to use it, prompting advantage.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Her mental energy was now growing stronger as the moments were spent out bit by bit; the dances became longer and longer until the time came for the last dance that came by whirling, jigging and spinning, delaying its literal end right into the early hours – it was too long a flight for some tired dissenters who left the action immediately, drifting by unaided.  But the lady sorceress kept scanning the crowd, picking up viable subjects for a little foul miracle that was due when the appropriate opportunity should be revealed to her prying nature.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Carrying herself carefully with quiet dignity, she cast away the prudence forming her everyday visage to throw an obdurate disguise worked by some magic onto a simple fool, susceptible to be taken in by her enchantment; in turn she envisaged the plan continuing and shaming another victim, accusing them of plagiarising her own original ideas for the mighty commemoration step, thus turning the public sympathies towards her plight – the idea was highly simple but it needed two people to adhere nicely:  One of inferior male intellect and another vulnerable but not altogether guileless female.  She had them there at the party.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Quite out of reach from the shimmying and general diving onto the ground occurring around the arena edges, soft mats were provided along side facing Te Ling and Yi Ping, in a tandem press, all cuddled up for the night, their shadows doing all the work for them in their repressed present intimacy.  The sorceress espied their devoted infiltration and began to weave her ideas that had originally manifested corruptly from the tyrant’s mouth who had pointed out the delicate couple as a possible target for the Sorceress to tamper with shortly.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Under a glamour of the sorceresses’ intended restraint, Yi Ping turned from a talkative cloth peasant into a painted face lady adorned with red and yellow dyes, fused together in shapes around the nose and mouth, on top of the usual powered white skin surface, as was the customary regalia for concubines in those windy plains – she had become a sure puppet to the ruling Sorceress.  Yi Ping could talk eloquently in half tones that were almost musical.  She looked almost too luxuriant for Te Ling’s present bent, having not before distinguished her mesmerising embellishments.  In their lonely corner she would carefully murmur down his enormously concave ear to gladden him, gradually cupping her fingers in a conical shape to fit the vast lobe in an effort to overcome the noise rising above the tolerable levels, laid down by respectable arrangements in secular institutions around the province.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Te Ling was only slightly befuddled by the first night’s festive harmony, and considerably softened up in a mildly amorous encounter with the girl.   The sorceress flew in by the windows to temper the ruse with a more meaty stock.  Having watched Te Ling in mundane sleep, she took the shape resembling the garden’s most magnificent gliding parquets, casting a magnified disastrous blast.  Having first harboured his downfall by making his mind pliable for as long as that evening drove forward Yi Ping’s intensities, she cast her unique Karoon and brought it forth, unfurling itself fully around his bedroom chamber, first a drifting evil, then an impending direness penetrating on into his bed time slumber – his dreams were fraught with beady spiders, intestinal snakes and disturbed ape like fugitives discovered within desolate pitch black lairs.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; He awoke the next morning freshly duped by the despicable Karoon and fully expecting to see Yi Ping that day with a hankering for a reprise centred upon the previous night’s love in, while he had forgotten all about the comparative competition for the emperor or why he had been called to such an unfamiliar place as the emperor’s guest.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; On the second festive night, Yi Ping was dressed as the sorceress would prefer, standing in a tied kimono, deeply spangled in readiness and her raven hued long mane plying afloat small bamboo beams, regularly marked along with runic lettering; these rods were playing with her hair in their own way.  His pulse sped on into spitting flaming hoops in direct resemblance to her long circus act that he had once eschewed as her limitless talent - now he had fallen in love. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; But, as for the lady sorceress was concerned, now watching from the wings, she had always supplied magical energy to anything she had prepared but her own time was now moribund – her immoral scheming had played its course.  Sated with Te Ling’s stolen inner conviction to win, by her accursed theft during the dark hours, she had taken all his wisdom away for her muted use as a trophy to gain a more startling prize from the emperor himself.  Te Ling’s mounting trust would flower within her hefty size and next, she should use more ingenious remedies to increase its potency, blowing it all back out again at the judges, come the moment to decide, now as ever fixed to happen in the blue bridges room at the back of the shielded palace gates.  If Te Ling so happened to awake from the symptoms relating to the Karoon dream she would, according to her wishes, indict him of duplicity.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Yi Ping was discovered sitting next to a man denoting no fixed identification, introducing him as a closet friend but as soon as the man stood up to greet him, Te Ling recognised the tyrant prince who plagued his homeland so often, but while the newcomer just denied all knowledge ever meeting him, Te Ling nonetheless pressed the point that they had indeed seen each other many times before in cold blood, if only to fit a vaguer memory, serving his head with even more confusion at this point.  The tyrant then refused to talk to Yi Ping’s previous debutante either in friendship or business or curiosity, as he did not want to provoke what the sorceress feared was a more genuine memory.  She handled the tyrant with such care, sharpened from the negligence she had treated Te Ling, that he would never throw a stone against her character     & nbsp;  

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “What treacherous business is this”? Te Ling mused as he sidled off from them visibly disturbed; his face contorted and taught with excessive distress, but knew not of the tenure the punishment shaped to come.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; For now on, Yi Ping had grown to be more opulent by figure then Te Ling could long remember from the previous night’s rapport; back then she was a slavish underling; more singularly beautiful in her dashing finery for the occasion; more desirable now she was sat with a man permeating wit and more demonstratively wicked beyond all imagining.  What was once a diminutive Yi Ping, offered the celebrated tyrant a bounteous kumquat with a lengthy grin emerging from the action.  The fruit was given by carriers who travelled between festive tables, relaying wicker baskets filled with fresh produce from the watered Yugimal plains, where the stone eagles and egrets guarded the villages and towns fearlessly, lest a stranger should spoil their habitual repose with war.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The more compelling man spoke to the masked Yi Ping for the evening’s balance, whilst Te Ling was strung up with woe from his fractured and vacant conduct daubed by loss; His eyes were forced never to stray from her, whilst thinking that she should ditch the other man’s creeping supplication straight up and come over to him once more in ready silence.  Deep down Te Ling knew that this would by no means be so, because the tyrant permanently, as by despotic right, had everything he so wished, even the construction of the great giant step that effected everyone in sight, sliding into his hands bewitchingly – it was all so complicated that at last Te Ling wanted to cry but could not find it in him to know how anymore.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Astute the sorceress’ illusions may have been, the ordinary, gentle and carefree Yi Ping ceased to exist bit by bit until there was nothing left by the eventide’s end, except for more of what the contrary sorceress had magically sought to put in her place.  Indeed, the sorceress had allowed Te Ling to keep this last watery vested memory tied up with his illusory sweetheart who had just wafted away in to dreams content and so at last her love’s absence made his mind cloud around anything else but to that first night’s caprice.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; In the end, Te Ling effortlessly forgot his wish to compete for the emperor’s glory due to a severe malady around the head region.  And now all his money had been squandered building a shrine for his dead goddess Yi Ping Somoro, built from quality silver and bronze that had been left to him from his father’s inheritance funds.  It was unto this temple furnace that the real Yi Ping could speak to him intimately, permanently untainted by sorcery from the fires he had nurtured at each daybreak, but it was small redress for loosing what he thought a girl imbued with real stature, be her dead or otherwise very much alive through illusion.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Martin’s hair was always in a mess, but the dividers always stayed in to keep it neat and all in double-check.  Therefore, he could not allow any of them to stay out at any time, even the stragglers on the nape, and especially when speaking to the numerous secular diplomats sent to know his mind about world trade – the bottom line was he had to be taken seriously.  If his hair were out of control, it would reflect badly on the intended deal to exchange inhabitants from each world community for the purposes of social research – so it was crucial to remain tidy for appearance sake.  It did not take long before the door zoomed open to reveal a woman with proportionate sized parts dressed in traditional clothing showing opulent design.  Her hair was managed in steel ringlets into a kind of lopsided hive, sealed at both ends into a point.  Her garb indicated a lot about what was to come.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Have you made the correct preparations, I should hate it for this to go wrong”, she delivered this in a wining address in which she paused briefly between each word to ensure everything was understood, “I’m not going to be at home over the next twenty four hours and so I’m leaving you firmly in charge – consider this a challenge”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Martin was not used to challenges of any pretension, especially those dolled out by his wife – it was not good etiquette.  No one party in this marriage had the right to order or pause another without written permission from the marriage committee, who usually took over twenty-eight days to dictate a course of action.  It basically meant that both members of the union were free agents, unless the committee were called upon to approve one member’s case against the other.  Openly this was flouted at every corner but the principle remained – no part of a marriage was more important than the sum of its parts.  Many couples despaired over this edict but it did lead to better harmony within the four walls every couple shared.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Between these two there was a developing sadness that had grown over a small matter, but it had spread like a mean cancer, now ultimately turning out to be a giant thing.  Usually it was of no great shakes that Mr Sparrow, their personal marriage psychologist would warn against any slight problems that lay ahead of the unsuspecting couple – a kind of early warning system if you like. Lately he had neglected to do his job as well as he had been originally employed to do.  It was partly due to the fact that one of his thankless children had rushed off to America to elope with some scruffy wastrel, without so much as a goodbye and the usual show of gratitude for their sound upbringing.  So you see, Mr Sparrow felt less cohesive in his attitude towards his work framework and thus less able to see Martin clear through the typical marriage jungle with all its false beginnings, disharmonious turns and quirky sidetracking.  It was all starting to take effect on the marriage and rend apart whatever bold enterprise they had both initiated together several years back.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Joanna, Martin’s wife, was carefully reading her husband’s physical demeanour for clues on how to react if he complained.  For a start, his eyes were presumptuously laid to rest on the floor, instead seeking his redress through the upturned unscrupulously dirty tiles; his legs were suck together at the knees and his arms had just unburdened themselves from a small megaphone which he nearly always used to speak to people with retrograde hearing.  Judging by the look of him, nothing seemed particularly wrong, except for the droopy hunched look just described, but she was looking for something quite different to avoid dreaded conflict; it might be a sudden movement or a flick of the wrist.  With no one to assuredly guide them, she made up her mind to spread her wings there and then.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Her hand arose with a gun and she pointed it at his general direction saying, “it’s about time I popped you off; you’re no use to me anymore; in fact you are an obsolete friend and I want it over now”!  Joanna shouted this, hoping he would fear her anger.  Which he mostly didn’t.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Bright colour distilled throughout her cheeks while she thought all the threats in the world she could afford to sally against her spouse – she now felt in tight control for the first time, instead of hiding a whole bundle of feelings just for the sake of Mr Sparrow’s – or someone else’s - continued employment as their marriage guide.  It was time for her to pass the whole blame on, so with a blast from the brandished weapon she felled him at a stroke.  She didn’t even have a second thought about his flight downwards and while his heavy head smacked the inhospitable floor with a plunk.  She swooped onto his things like an irascible bird of prey.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Where is it, where is it”, she whispered to herself.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Now on the ground, his hair was now not so much a magnificent prospect being all ragged and inked with spreading blood, flooding through into pools of dispersing beetroot juice.  The arms were wrapped around his neck, held there by the pointed ends of his twiddling thumbs, fixed to a spot, as if to staunch the gushing turmoil surrounding the failing internal organs through a single inflicted bullet hole.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Duped into a graced subterfuge, Martin had kept certain personal reactions to himself and his weekend away on an inter-planetary excursion to embroil his person into some amorous affair was a huge success; Joanna was to know nothing of it, even though she searched high and low for evidence of his culpability.  The only authentic evidence that revealed this affair was in her memory, stored up in a tight bundle of brain cells, which she was hardly conscience, and in an argument with Martin about his unreliability surrounding initiating passionate liaisons with other people, she had an inescapable comprehension of these undisclosed areas within her brain; there was no way to make a clean extraction from them without destroying him completely first and foremost.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Martin had always been an expendable part existing in her design for generic respectability, to display a closeness of arms in marriage, sucking out the poisonous elements from life’s little eccentricities, which were closely censured by all the authoritarian agencies, just in case the whole world accidentally became infested with freely spirited drifters like Mr Sparrow’s potential son in law.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; At first Martin had made an interminable fuss about creating space within their tidy villa for one other to share their marital burden.  He was proposing an unnatural deceit by starving the duality that love always nourished.  Joanna started to imagine all kinds of dishevelled strangers coveting her property; making dark shapes upon her clean blank walls; traipsing around from room to room despairingly; lounging on the many sofas and divans with neither a solid devotion towards her nor anything bordering on forcible recognition for her authoritarian household status.

     & nbsp;   &n bsp;    At the end of the day, Joanna would never allow another partner in and it was extremely within her determination to make it so by blasting her husband away before Mr Sparrow could poke around what she felt as strictly her own private discord.  There would be no reprisal for this violent act, as her own family would have applauded this mercy mission; besides the public forum would not be able to stomach such an investigation into her married life, as with anyone else’s clandestine world – it would be considered a story bearing salacious intent, best kept underground because its distasteful origins signified horrible deviance.  She had been agonising over the need for months to stabilise her life from regressive openness back to its peak of domestic charismatic affability; it seemed the only way forward now to be alone for a period to bloom as a flower.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Joanna’s long green chemise had unpinned from inside her gown, hurtling along on the floor with her lolloping stride to such an extent that it became a greatly twisted around her legs, threatening to tip her over at every step forward.  She immediately reached down hurriedly, swiftly correcting this inaccuracy so that she could search Martin’s playthings with out consciousness protecting her outward appearance towards hidden eyes, forming yet another opportunity for discontent, to be avoided from strangers or other people who happened to be walking by.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Quick work was now needed in the effort:  She opened special doors, cherished cupboards and a rather well-used dirty hold-all, though nothing of great value was turned out for her knowledge to abet this scanty search in just such a cursory nature.  Moreover, it was highly likely he would keep nothing in the office for anyone to find casually, so she turned her mind to search back in the home section forthwith.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; She quickly cleared the mess and made it look that the husband had plagued himself with his own gun – she doubted if anyone would care about what happened, just as long as it was all cleared out the way for normal life to continue untarnished by extremities such as this murder that had lately numbed her.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It was absurd to think that she would later turn her home upside down to find what she wanted promptly; her possessions had been smartly positioned to reflect the latest designs and fashions.  At the moment it was the triangular formation design that had currently attracted the vogue infiltrators.  Fuss had been made over the arrangements, right down to the crockery that was laid out in triangular formation for the guests to admire.  Even the two pianos she possessed had strictly triangular lids that matched and interlinked to form a perfect square as the view from above dictated.  Therefore the investigative ardour would be accomplished gradually over several weeks until such time she grasped the hidden mementos from Martin’s open-ended designs but now her revulsion was at an end and now marking a clean beginning was all that she desired – she might even acquire herself some children, what would men know about that?  She had already spent out her one and only to finally initiate her pride.

Weeks later, she sat in the same parlour contemplating the traffic outside, now feeding on the speed of electricity - greatly slower - and in cars looking more like oversized bananas than Ford Escorts or the Mondeos existing a century ago before the great petroleum crisis wiped out all carbonating vehicles.  This traffic stream forward governed her awareness for a long time and then became a thread and later still became a stream cascading into her mind from just above her cranium, a font of loose energy for her to apply her will.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   “It maybe in the car”, she mused silently. 

And suddenly, spiritual determination to produce music without delay, leaped from within her frame at the thought that her two precious instruments would now be played after long term neglect.  The pianos had acquired dust in large quantities, which had effected the tuning, and so several different sized ratchets had been applied to the strings, so as to pull the instrument firmly back onto the classical system.  It needed great care, otherwise one would need to start again from the first string and repeat the check on every single plucked string without fault.  It took two whole days calibration before they were ready at last, and she well knew the mechanical upkeep for any real upright or grand piano, such as the one she proudly owned, had not progressed that much since its ancient conception, unlike everything else around the house, nevertheless it was still the preferred mode pertaining to extended musical articulation and retention within a small environs; she was one of the most ardent champions of these older limiter keyboards, despite the strain needed in their upkeep.

She called up her special piano playing buddy on a longitudinal tubular contraption that sent the voice straight through digital signals continually rearranging in infinite permutations in the air, culturing the reality surrounding a chosen sound mechanism dialled by the listener, who would end up hearing the talker as if they were actually in the same room.  Joanna had her equipment switched to the concert hall setting during the conversation and Bella’s voice now echoed politely around her living room in a living reverberant somersault.

She had known Bella for the best part of her life, acting as a panacea for her most detestable mistreatment from Martin the husband-king – a term of the day referring to a married man who still misguidedly and illegally felt he could get his own way around a marriage contract without reference to a wife or similar kind.  On the other hand, Bella provided succour whenever Joanna felt aggrieved at his eccentric passions; likewise she offered sensitivity whenever Martin’s traditionally dull intelligence failed to pass muster, nearly every time her other friends attempted to rope him in to their erudite conversations.  They commiserated with her for a wasted fifty years of marriage to a sexually charged snail, a big turn off to their exorbitantly high expectations; this was a result of faulty breeding.  Jonanna had even contemplated cloning her husband to programme for her own use, unfortunately his face still sickened her enough to eventually drop these plans completely.  Besides, what use would his bight blue eyes be to her if she just separated them from their sockets, only to keep as pretty ornaments around the triangulation room?

 There were not many of Martin’s sort left and Joanna’s marriage to him had been a very big exception to her watertight rule governing the superficial role of men in modern society, feeling they were all trapped on a tight rope, surplus to the effeminate dominance surrounding the modern ethos.  Bella likewise firmly believed that the chaos governing masculinity was over and it now took straight female instinct to straighten the world - Joanna had just gone soft in marrying Martin, who represented an unequivocal male whose irrationality had invariably led Joanna into trouble more than once in her life, with marriage brokers and various soft psychiatrists, the ones against pills to abridge mental pain. 

But both girls shared a little hazy world that was more their own bigotry than anyone else’s proactive conceptions and it could be said that their views were a little extreme to become universal thinking just at that moment in time; conversely, the sexual plot had ripened considerably since the early twentieth century and it culminated in these two ladies little foibles going abroad for love – they were never neither here nor there.

Bella agreed to visit but only for an hour to look over the pianos.  She would never agree to stay there overly long, just in case Martin should appear from the back with daughters Emma and Triplene, finding their love for metaphysics decidedly distasteful and even worse, vague and unexacting – that would have been the father’s influence to be sure.  These bright sparks were made in the perfect image of their mother but their logic curtailed by the reproductive father who was directly related to them by the traditional means.  Unfortunately, there was no more Martin left to quibble over and the coast was clear for ‘Bella the Bright’ to sanction anything she wanted to at her ease.

She waltzed in with her high open neck collar subdividing the neck and throat neatly, and then sat on one of the two stalls ready to play a tricky concerto for two hands, or perhaps a steamy ballad or something else by Grieg, having some Norwegian blood on her father’s family - she felt comfortable playing something from her distant land of her forbears.  But today, she had no real idea what she wanted to perform from the music piles accumulated for the two piano canon, so she spread her manuscripts over the floor with tempestuous disarray, little thinking that she would be awaiting Joanna’s pleasure towards the surety of the unqualified action.  Nonetheless, Joanna was already thinking how she was going to clear that lot back into a steady neat pile.

“Shall we play something from the ‘Empire and Supper’ Toccata”, Joanna retorted after surveying the disembowelled paper chase that had left her usually pristine room pretty untidy.

“Too early, lets play Grieg’s Holberg Suite”,

“You always say that”,

“You always agree”!

An unspoken communication denied them the right to directly play any Grieg on that day and so they resorted to the automatic playing starting with the first mentioned Toccata.

So the girls took to their respective piano stools and began to play through the music that was not so new to them but teaming with possibilities and with emotions that the ladies did not know how to expose themselves.  Their playing was laced with a cacophonous tendency, smudging the notes into a formulaic rhapsody of chiming chords most of the way into and throughout the piece.  If it was what the composer intended, the interpretation didn’t have the verve to carry the precision needed to rationally exist as a Toccata outlined by JS Bach, the format master, now interpreted by the women, who had become heedless soothsayers creating a bacchanalian work with a more mysterious designation.

The energy it took them to complete the long piece made them look exhausted and haggard by the time the last note had been struck:  Bella’s coiffure had flopped to one side as if the wind had got it and strangled it into a twisted bow; Joanna’s face was anchored unceremoniously to the black notes in a marginal parry from the smiling gaze signalling Bella’s obtrusive gestures showing contentment.  Most of all, it had been a happy union, two ladies touching opposite keyboards without having distressing words to squander ruthlessly on each other in the proper magnitude – the written notes only being a catalyst to such imprecision in the sudden interpretation, not and end in themselves.

Scalene triangles were rampant everywhere in the room that had now become white hot; the blinds were open and the sun allowed to sweep in through the deeply set notches, forming swaggering curves of light onto the ancient wooden tiled floor, crises-crossing with tablature slabs denoting roughly hewn oak, hacked down in the days when trees actually grew in the forests instead of treated compounds, now extensively reserved for a few specially mutated species.  Nobody up until the present day had established who was to blame for such a natural disaster and so, as with everything that craved for such answers, it was continued indefinitely until the majority had fallen victim to violent attack.

Bella picked up the enfolded hem attached to her skirt, strode to one of the fallen manuscripts and indicated with the flick, pointing her finger towards what she felt she really wanted to play next.  This time around, a softer piece named “Lullalilli” was requested, a churlish lullaby denoting a secondary concoction for two pianos likely to have been popular in Victorian parlours.  Bella’s former husband in residence had written out its’ exacting stanzas in a full calligraphy but on one occassion after he had to be sent away and cleaned, it was left to her to fit the homemade notation to each guided syllable that he had employed so graphically for a son they would not and could not ever have.

“Ok, yes, let us play that, it might do us some good”,

Back on her uncomfortable stool, Bella’s hands independently readied themselves nervously to grasp the piano’s dormant keys to participate in yet another cycle involving string hammering and crushing notes.  Joanna looked regretful, perhaps for being such a callous woman or perhaps for some harm that this music playing might cause her and any rapport with Bella.  Another tight feeling had just dawned within her head that this might not be such a glorious undertaking but an evil ravaging towards sensuous desire, right at odds with society’s expectation and claims on personality control – it could be classed as a freedom that had to be stopped immediately – she didn’t even want to risk being seen in such an emotional state by anyone. 

Projected onto the broad shoulders of the facing women, debris of carefully brightening light staggered around like wisps in a rotating kaleidoscopic and then fading off completely according to the whim of an overactive sun, being blocked off by heavenly cloud bearers, forging about the skies at their own leisure.  Both girls were now squaring up to play very quietly at least a little way through but as it turned out, not all of the way through.

There was but a trickle guiding the initial notes, sobbing through the patterned melee of paper dots and dashes that meant nothing and felt nothing and at the same time formed a parity with nothing the ladies could do with their slender hands that flooded the keys, dancing fluently along the shiny white and black plastic mosaic, listlessly born.  Their eyes began to squint at the music reams set before them, more so that the hands carried on self sufficiently, rather than a defence from the blinding light distributing all over them and the piano from the window blinds, so that one could clearly see the flying grime shaping in changeable peppery gusts into and from under the semi-open lids uncovering the pianos innards.  At some point their eyes met full on but only just in time to clock the floating dust in the air between them.    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;  

The piece stopped in mid flow.

“Must get that cleaned”, Joanna spouted loudly in full command but her secret canker remained unspoken.  

Her eyes spelt danger and it rattled Bella, who had would never display heightened emotion such as this outside the musical divide; the piano and other machines provided all kinds of nourishment to match all their devotion, just simply to avoid the modern trinity caused by public embarrassment, power and lust.

“Can I get you a drink”, Joanna added as a quick addendum to her hubbub.

“No, I think I’ll go and see if John is ready from the cleaners, at least he will be nice and clean”, Bella cast her words into the void and supplemented, “I hope Martin is back in action soon as you seem visibly needled by it, well I thought I’d warn you anyway”.

“It seems the sensible thing to do”, Joanna vaguely answered without thinking about what she was saying, or yet realising someone else was present dedicated to react to her misgivings about the whole occasion. 

Bella too was starting to fade in and out from Joanna’s consciousness - as the sunlight had now faded altogether - drifting out of the room and into her barely ready car that had been compared with a pudding known as the “Banana Long Boat”.  The desert had long been off the menu at dozen’s of higher status restaurants as a direct result from third world belligerence against inbalanced unity, already making fresh fruit such as bananas virtually obsolete to awareness – a few stray batches still belonged in the black market for the wealthy punters to try, but they were nearly always rotten scraps of what was once the famed yellow semicircle.

Joanna then plumbed her head again for the clues as she had given up on the traffic suggestion from moments before Bella arrived.  No it would not all be hidden in Martin’s car, it would be somewhere else she did not care to mention to public-minded Bella. 

She wanted him back after scarcely weeks had gone by since she had killed him by her bewitched gun.  It seemed ludicrous that he could now fulfil his duties in everyway when he came back mended, while it was more than a start for sure:  He could be persuaded to love in twos instead of threes; tooled up so that he would think that he should not need anyone else but her; taught to be less outwardly scandalous; told to be gentle - it would be a much better beginning than she predicted before the last beginning.  She would give it a go.  The love from a friend was much less than the love from a specific man; it was a quaint concept but rang true within the canopy of Joanna’s knowing ethos.

Was it so hard after all to find it?  The hunt began earnestly again after a quick pause for compulsory brooding that she felt might be helpful to set a trend.  It had to be in the portable unit under the stairs that had been set up for them both by the illustrious Mr Sparrow, the modern divinity, their very own marriage broker, who had in turn annoyingly broken off the consultation. 

On finding the case, it took time to manipulate the combination that locked the enclosed sealed glass containers.  With a sharp throw she shattered the bell jar, so as she could scoop up the contents inside for inspection – another cleaning job was instantly created.  The note inside was quite simply headed, “Warranty for Martin”, signed by herself, Mr Sparrow, the local preacher and local mortuary on the high street.  Joanna thought it would surely be a hoot to resurrect her larger than life husband in a different way again from the first.  She made up her mind to call the preacher and visit the mortuary the next day to find out how she may be able to repossess his body shell.  Bella would think it a good idea too if she were here but she had already driven home back to her own rather soggy husband, who had been fished out after falling into her pond.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It was a shocker; a truly knotty problem had dangled itself in front of Clare’s lifetime’s ambition surrounding the little village snack bar, unfortunately her parents unkindly refused her request for enough funds to acquire it.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; For the most part throughout her youthful pleasure, she had surveyed the said lone caff and from time to time angled for a look inside from the clever owner.  She craved for a sneak preview of the exquisitely decorated forecourt done up in pretty coloured ribbons, and the holy of holies, the pernickety kitchen, in which she imagined a fuss would be made around giant stoves of poultry, beaten meat for parties of over five and even Spanish omelettes cooked without the vegetables – it would be all arranged sympathetically to her own classic show of food awareness, taken from the shards of her dreams that had remained constantly renewable over the past decade.  Most of all, Clare wished for a caff that would open just for her own delight, where meat would be stored and prepared in a culinary ecstasy, placed on her table in a fashion in which she, and others of her choosing, could eat up to the limits of their imaginings.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Of course, there would be no coffee, by far and away a disastrous drink of which she tended to spit out quite rudely if plied on her, much to the consternation of her evergreen parents.  Strong coffee had a habit of spoiling things, and she associated its uses with her forbears, ma and pa included.  Day by day she was foisted onto people who actually enjoyed the drink and they would do nothing but recommend it to her as fast as they could gulp it down fully.  She thought it too pungently disgusting, mean and awful to contemplate drinking a drop by herself, a bit like some of the boys she had know on her rounds outside the safety of the house.  Not that she ever had drunk a single whole cup of it before, but being in the same room as coffee lovers gave her an awful sinking feeling that brought out her weaker nature and an inclination towards violent behaviour based on deceitful impertinence.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Back to the kitchen descriptors - she would hire big chiefs in charge that would not argue with her food preferences, and make an effort to ensure immediacy at serving times.  It was all very simple, to avoid boredom, staff needed to be trained in handling customers on the hop:  There would be no cold stews served up in her establishment, or a false need to play with the condiments before the appetizer, plumped down by an unapologetic waiter who thought he was far too clever to serve up dinners in the first place.  In fact, she would have no bored waiters on the job whatsoever, just the type who would sporadically laugh, play ad hoc games and make the customer try harder in their choice of viands included in the coming meal. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Her ruse was to open up the giant gates of public interest to mutton, chops, gravy, and chicken and also diced ham of a particular cut, it would be a huge success and it would be all in this particular little snack shop on the village green – her mind was already running away with all these delicious treats people could be having at a particular turn of the time.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; During the summer the place would be shut, as not enough people usually wanted to eat meat during hot whether.  This unusual caff was a Christmas thing – a time when the mind turned to ritually killing spare livestock just for the seasonal palette and then gradually abstaining for the most part of the year.  Hence Clare’s unhappiness, she was unable to peruse the flotilla of rooms emerging like flower petals, broaching the snug: a place where invited guests were encouraged to converse quietly amongst themselves without the incontinent clatter of food being transported from plate to mouth.  It had the effect of placing minds together during the off peak hours when the workers day were done and hidden wives came to collect the members of their family along home too bed.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Following the torment of having very little capital to negotiate or bargain with for the caff, she had only the fool’s gold often threatened to be withdrawn from her by the parents following periods of breathtaking non co-operation, she thought that she may be able to regurgitate some sort of previous activity in accordance to amicably earning a flow of funds straight into her hands.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It was a terrific embarrassment for Clare that the local district lads had ousted her with a successful bid to purchase the caff, aided and abetted by some kindly relatives - they were the boys who wheeled themselves around in barrows and the ones who conscientiously flew kites around common ground to gain attention from passing strangers at a whim.  They stopped their practice in favour of achieving joint management of the caff with all the paraphernalia described included in the terminal inventory.  This move turned out to be an incredibly disabling cause, proving Clare to become distraught beyond measurable gain and later causing her to sob soundly for hours until her unmoved parents found a way of simply turning her off.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Upon the dreams winking out in greater numerals than the effort it took to make shapes from them, a slight attitude affected her mood.  She fetched the water, took it promptly to the boy’s street corner, and doused them in fluid until their hair became lacquered jet black.  It was hoped that this would put a stop to their cheerfully lofty aspirations by using what was a simple revenge formula.  The success needed for this jaunt badly eluded poor Clare and more creative energies seemed merited if she wanted to cavort with friends in her beloved snug partition, in the vicinity of her own caff, any time frame soon to be. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Clare wound up having to emulate the boy’s example, resorting to her existing friendly conventions.  She had picked out from her posh buddies a reflection on which she could rely upon the most.  Some stood the test of camaraderie, while others she found as destroyers, growing quarrelsome in open range to warrant any bother to approach.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Eustace, above all fared to the top of Clare’s list of friendly faces; she was a shopping friend, a life long supply of quality time and would be there to hold her hand if need be – Clare knew she could bank on it.  This rose of kinship was not like the other treacherous options, including those now needing to wait, pending a reinstatement back into Clare’s ever roaming intentions.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;  It was always difficult to spot Eustace when she was idling amongst the gasing women, never at liberty to venture an opinion or an observation on the size and colour of somebody’s dress.  She just stared intently at the peeking eyes that would wield themselves at her visage, wanting to appraise her figure from her head gear down to her snappy sandals, the ones with a huge golden buckle affixed to its side angles.  It was this that Clare intended to use to counter bid the boy’s offer on the caff but Eustace was unused to sharing her belongings, least of all to the petulant Clare who had assumed that anything of her ownership could be employed by a fashion guru and must therefore be worth quite a bit.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Its mine”, Eustace repeated fiercely half a dozen times in reply to the abandoned overtures of her despairing friend on her suggestion to sell the footwear.  Clare was then pushed never to mention the golden buckle in relation to the caff, but it cast far more weight then she supposed and the friendship waned dramatically for the time being.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Next Helena’s bracelet became the object of desire for the asking.  Clare managed to borrow it for an evening but Ma and Pa confiscated it after she was caught tapping it on a stray radiator – she was told it wouldn’t be good for the circulation system.  Clare wondered if her caff would have a circulation system, she would have to look into it by asking plenty of pertinent questions about internal organisation, such as how many sweeps to employ to clean the flumes of smoke; whether their would be enough strawberries to cover the Winter season; if pets as well as grown ups would be allowed to consume food at her establishment and if it could be said that everything fluffy could go into one room – in this case she was thinking of the snug as a luxurious lounge complete with soft furnishings that customers could bounce and jump without remonstration, and would go along with the swing of the place.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Clare and Eustace had a terrible time with each other after Clare’s unflappable parents had indulged their daughter’s need to be around friends of similar ilk and of good pedigree.  Thinking that Eustace was a perfect choice, they made a complete fuss over the arrangements, but according to Clare, they did it in such a lively ignorance of occasion, and by the time of the visit, Eustace had already received a hard slap, a ribbon extraction from her hair and a large bruise on her left leg after only an hour’s consultation.  Eustace fled back, yelling that Clare was out to murder her and that her mother was the wicked witch of the market – associated with a rather bland one-eyed woman who ran an electrical stall on the market plaza; she had a particular liking for Eustace, much to the jealousy of Clare.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; So the boy’s quickly claimed the caff for the alliance and changed it to an open bistro.  They took down the ribbons and replaced them with coloured flags called bunting who jumped to music whenever it was possible to evacuate the main food halls for the pleasure.  Most of all there would be vending coffee machines of sizeable proportions for all the parents to load themselves silly with a hardened caffeine intake, so that they would sit there shaking until close to home time, when they would be allowed to switch to beer instead – a preferred drink by many.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Despite the better efforts of little Clare to claim her rightful kingdom, she had heavily lost ground, but many a day from that time on, she would sit secretively to eves-drop the boy’s planning meetings, just in case they would ever wish to relinquish their grasp on the delight of her life so far; perhaps it would drop into her hands as a gift from above, or below for that matter – which ever way one believed in. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; But she did try one last time to ask for her parent’s help to take her back in time by some carefully construed machine, but they insisted that she was letting her imagination get the better of her and that their would be no sweets if she continued with her silly delusions ever again.

Facing the possibility of being sick, I tried to look the other way, unfortunately there had been no hope disguising my emotions to the dim implied knowledge the “citizen ordinaries” had entrapped me within; I was but an amateur in the art of complete deception.  My neighbours had learnt more adeptly to exact brevity when modulating conversations, especially lately since the criminal tribunal had stepped up its plans to snoop around the country for what they cited in sentiment as the “lost sheep”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; I confess that I was one of those titular criminals so eagerly sought, totally displaced within the currency of persistence, reserve, borrowed courage and chaos – typical characteristics of the regime’s inviolable malice.  A more distinct sense of openness had been abducted from every community and made to fade obliquely from where they were allowed to manifest previously.    & nbsp;  

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Without wishing to judge my friends - at no point could there be corporate understanding - so many who had eluded prosecution, scattered in calmative packs of wishful émigrés, countless victims leaving France to seek external redress.  I therefore held them in distain and claimed them as traitors to my breeding and ancestry for their lack of common loyalty.

.      & nbsp;   &n bsp;   One of these oppressive brutes sat facing me now; he had been responsible for a fair quota of sorrow inside my provincial lands throughout Rennes.  He quashed the remaining resistance callously just by thumping his fist a few times in a fit of temper without administering any healing allay; even the radicals were rattled as he recklessly chewed his way into their cages from a distance; divided family unions of years existence from up high; counteracted the wealthy land owners by entrusted deputies and severed a few limbs in passing from his office chair.  His job was to tolerate such extreme actions for his authority. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It was the end of a calamitous month for me in the “Corps de Rennes”, my own little monastic pressure group.  Not only had we been the victims from a heinous spies but also from jealous twits on our own side of the fence, landing us in a generous flurry of sure trouble.  Our ranks contained gutter rubbish that plagued our group and worked through the sinews around our courageous advocacy.  Mighty was the ensuing quarrel, it was sufficed to break a compelling bond funded with communal interest, also every single thing we had created to protect ourselves from the Paris fiends was discovered and vanquished ad libitum; for they had splintered our own into a distrustful conclave.  Word spread about our venturesome dreams to the governing bodies, apparently waiting to commit atrocities all over the land.  Newly spawned judicial thugs stepped in to depress the fleur-de-lis, a symbol declaring what was known and true before the trouble began - in turn it became a shock unrepressed.  And so it was in their sordid pleasure that the hardy tricolour flag remained for their painstaking pleasure in a long-term haul situated within distasteful foreign rule.    

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; My confessor looked up at last to speak candidly, “Citizen, I saw you with that disgusting whore yesterday before the noon”, he seemed to be mouthing this from his crab like jaws in the form of a guarded threat, “she was biding here yesterday trying to palm me some cast iron lies, so I just locked her up for the time being, so that she could think and decide her confession before I deign to reason with her again – the little slut.  On my life, she hasn’t got very long to live if she carries herself in this manner - I loose patience with her – it is a shame is to be in her company - that moustachioed bourbon and that suspicious dark skin openly hanging from her skirts all the time – which filthy pit do they arise from then”?  He gently smiled to let me know that he hated them all and that most of all he hated me.  I expect it would not take a little time before he locked me up also for committing myself to the simple perjury, earthly habitation.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Anything more to be said,” I cheekily inquired?  

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; I was outstandingly guarded in my chain of response, as I had known this woman well during a glorious period in my life.  I relied on her to be emotive surrounding her deliberations and now she had landed squarely within this man’s lock up, within the very house a party to revolutionary indoctrination that all royalists would sensibly avoid:  A culmination of deferred indiscretions, that had finally sliced her dynamism into little chopped pieces, likewise forcing her dear self to divulge inaccuracies flaming her felonious company.  She was now rewarded with little hope for liberty.  Somehow it fell to me to save her from the fate reserved by this oafish settler.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; This girl had always been my close favourite from the first as surely as anyone could amuse me in any way.  Though felicitously rich on her own contrivance, it was for far more than wealth she had developed an eye for political cultural intrigue.  Intermingled with her paradise world flavoured with villas, summer homes and seaside mansions, governed by monetary superiority and comfort, was a universal woman, a melodious doppelganger masking psychological nature who developed many shapes and inordinate disguises to whomsoever was vulnerable enough to be taken in by such artifice; it was hard to set her true being apart from the single frame she had most want to flaunt in a single go.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Pamela, being her true name, was the first one who persuaded me that it was time to succumb to my grief close after many sessions of basking in woe, haggling constantly with contravening emotions all the way from reflective desire to cold emotive pride.  Though my family had been deposited in winding sheets, swiped from this earth by a recalcitrant satanic conundrum that had ceased power when the first shock waves threw our beloved France into revolutionary turmoil, I was the sole survivor of this purge; it was hopeless for the famous aristocracy to continue as they had been soundly culled in the heat of unholy pressures.  I was the only survivor and fled from the marauding crowds as they attacked and settled, wisely landing in this safe haven in which I currently earn my keep, thankfully still alive but more importantly still inside France’s countryside palisades.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; What motivated Pamela’s diligence was to outsmart proper opponents, delineating their qualities with a clever uprightness, making them perceive truths within themselves that might vex their hidden tempestuous designs, though would not betray her own far-reaching affiliations to the ancien-regime.  Once she dallied with a hawker’s son, a political doctrinaire and a republican high flyer, partial to copious amounts of alcoholic beverages to ink the old copy book; he became the beguiled party after playing ‘Corsair’, a made up game of trumps popular in the region at this moment in time.  It was she that secretly permitted him to steal all her cards and plump for ‘le bateau’, a winning suite that he off loaded onto the table with an arbitrary smile just for luck, without knowledge that she had meddled with the pack on her own free will.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Are you open to false pride my fallen swallow?” he sniffed up his nasal cavity in a haughty colliery to the game, “you have overcome my misery as before today my debts were overwhelmingly heavy”.  It was singularly a defining rapport for a young man already looking over the edge and into the counter revolutionary arena, being swept along by a laughing chit who had turned his fortunes around from destitute madness, over the brim towards overconfidence and overbearing pride.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Oh fine, you can take it away,” she followed.  She didn’t care, money was no importance to her, and he obviously cared for it far more, the hypocrite.  She subsequently forced him to follow his despotic greed, an ignited lust for the grip of courtly power, all from a slightest stipend issue in a game of chance. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; In future, the man became less obstructive but gained a mercenary bent towards our will to restore the monarch wholesale for the ‘corps’. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It was little frequencies such as this that enabled her to change portions along civil life for the better from merely a suggestion, a wink, a look, or a flirtatious nuance from under her blackened locks - she managed it all.  For it was not the last time she would buy undesirables off with fortune’s discretion.  On considering the facts, Pamela was a polite seamstress working around people’s silent motivations, an emotional practice stirrer, a guardian of the psychological sureties and a subtle manipulator by the back way, straight through to the front – it ensured that her enemies would not stray too far from her propelling intrigue.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Quite the other day for instance, she forwarded a note to a known military shyster, who roamed the streets in a bad frame of mind, picking up potential royalists with his own opine from a crazy looking hunting cart that chased the very day away into night.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I hate those crown bleeders”, he infrequently mused, as he forced his mules cantering around ‘les yeux de le foret’ for the seventh time in the dusky night, which had now milked the moon full from its reflective glow. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Stubble had bolted down his facial contours set from a golden-based oar, against golden radiance that had been sent heavenwards by the lamplight around every doorway clear.  Out he bounded on time, and in accord with his usual ways, sneaking around the taverns, infiltrating the ingratiating talk from the various characters who wanted a piece of him, sifting out new information from other stray pieces of information about the movements throughout the upper classes movement, tracking them down with his oratory weapons and curses, always inquiring after their health and only embarking on their downfall after so learning their most personal cares.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; On most days he would preach from his upper foyer, out from the open front window to all and sundry who might be listening along the street, a man fixed to talk to himself into a personal chaos unheeded.  He was bent on the place’s glory to make his mark on the great libertine cause but very nearly always, as with very nearly all of his type, he became drunk, and the day he received a single written communication from Pamela, no exception could be made in accordance with this vein criticism.  Once more, he played the fool at his own window stead, calling out to anyone who would listen with the intonation of a hooting battering ram the following verse:

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;“The king is dead, the king is dead and good for his head,

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; As the bells do chime, as the bells do chime,

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It’s the time for more wine,

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It’s the time for more singing,

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It’s the time for more dreaming,

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; And most of all it’s the time for freedoms of happiness and joy,

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The king is dead; the king is dead and good for his head.”    & nbsp;   &n bsp;

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Apart from this crude song, there was no sign that he knew any subtler tricks to bolster the singular repertoire surrounding the hopeless providence beleaguering the poor old king.  It was thus widely understood throughout the area that his outpourings were partly a malady through bigoted hatred and distrust that had blown bitter smog over the French populace during ‘The Terror’; though in his case, the words issued in a mouthed madness were affected by bad liquor, rather then a statesman like hit on prosperity.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Next, he pulled his head back in a lurching action from the outside void.  Because the winds were ungracious in their turn, he found that his voice was being fractured on its outpour, not a great sign of heavenly virtue, and so he twisted his mind to the strange envelope he had just received quite unexpectedly from a random boyish carrier.  As he pulled open the package, papers fluttered to the floor like circling doves, all founded upon Pamela’s terrible scrawl that he had the chance to encounter many times previously – the ink was characteristically sunk into the paper in what looked like a globule of black gel.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; One read on examination, “Dear monsiour, please let me know if you are in any way related to the royal family for you can be of great service to our cause”?  Another line was inscribed, “In exchange for your distress I donate my sixty golden coins”.  Still another translated, “Underneath the gatehouse statue lies a fortune, go now and you may retrieve your future bounty” and then “…to shut your mouth”.  Practically engraved on the last line were the words, “Pamela de Rheims”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; From past recourse he had never paid much attention to the written word, due to deficiencies in reading skills, but these actual words were cultivated especially for him from a little individual twist, with underlying coded lettering implanted onto the page fabric, growing out in helter-skelter spirally stains of ebony.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; A little later he received the gold hidden in environs about the plinth belonging to a hideous stone caricature, as in accordance with the instructions delivered from Pamela.  But, because of the hiatus it had cause his moral qualities - for this was a substantial amount of money - he accepted it on condition to developing strategies covering up the bewildering development in his fortune.  Suffice to say, he lost heart for political fervour and he never appeared at his window again to address even as much as a local tramp else the chance turnip seller, for want of a better life with the money and gainful employment with Pamela – this type of thing was widely known throughout the province as the corrupted bargain, but for me she had just cured him of barmy megalomania that his neighbours meticulously blamed alcoholic poisoning.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Another story goes that on the road she waved off a dishevelled couple walking out with an ugly disfigured looking beast of a dog - they were clearly recognised as conscientious objectors to the monarchist sentiment, the sort of people who would initiate trouble if called upon to do so by the highest of authorities.   Unfortunately, the owners had tremendously mistreated their hound on more than one occasion; it looked depressingly gaunt and openly under pressure to walk under the restraints of large gashes, massive open wounds and tumultuous bruises on the sides and behind its toting head.  It opened its aching maw so that one could view the gulf full with straining gnashers and straight past the main orifice, down the sinewy tissue lining its inner rump, descending into a deeper chasm filled with darkness.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Is that disgusting mutt for sale,” her voice sang out mockingly, as if she was not that serious about her suggestion in the slightest way.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Why,” said one half of the couple, “are you offering to buy it”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I’m openly suggesting I take that dirty carcass away for you in exchange for a large sum of money”, but she was laughing profusely with exaggerated tolls of dubious giggling and facial dimples, a bravado regarded with immense suspicion by the walking couple.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Well you are not very kindly towards your poor animal.  I think I shall have it for myself”, she added.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; At that point she lent forward to take the leash from the startled owners but it was snatched away almost immediately, accompanied by a lowly grumbling from within the stomach of the dog.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I should think this poor dog is badly maltreated.  Give it to me and I will allow it a better life”, she was hoping that the irony of it would not be lost on them, despite their belief in all things existing equally.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Extortionate amounts of money changed hands and the dog became safe but Pamela had to watch herself, since for her interest, the couple became aware that her excessive directional behaviour was up above their likes – a suspected lover of thrones became her solitary label.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; In the long year that I had known Pamela, she was definitely part of the bon vivant in my favour, but nevertheless had a taste for picking out the ripe insincerities off from our bourgeois neighbours without alerting them to their crime.  She was a clever impresser, a rough diamond and for that she had heartily deserved my respect – a gift I have not had the want to give likely.  My defiant means were more a crude nature: blades and stealthy violence - I did not have her eloquent behavioural order.  In that vein I had no choice but to save her from Satan’s calamities rooted by her infrequencies with the opposing rabble.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Back to the present, Pamela had afforded herself the pressure of being locked up by this man I feared and firmly despised.  In fact, the door had been bolted securely for the time being against her recruitment schemes, and I felt coerced to drink to her jailor rapturously.  He threatened a summary court appearance if I did not lay bare to be sufficiently touched by his propensity for allowing her to be left untainted for the duration of the night.  After which, he snatched the lapels of my jacket for a word in hushed tones directly down to the functioning end of my inner ear.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I have something I need to square with you”, he proceeded to indicate Pamela’s prison room; “this one flies with the geese you know”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; He told me that he was going to hatch her out at dawn and that one of his men would drag her out for questioning.  I was required to stay and watch lest I join her as part of a pragmatic investigation.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “If she displeases me in any way, I’ll feel obliged to feed her to ‘Madame Guillotine’.  I do hope you grasp the way of my words”, he whispered.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; These words were as harsh as his banal concessions towards humour, designed to regulate my possible delinquent intentions at certain opportune moments.  I hope that he would not feel obliged to transact his threats, as so far I had avoided the worst cruelties universally associated with the regime.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Pamela was indeed later produced under curious circumstances, soon after the echoing illumination of the sun induced the horizon, for it basked in its shining tangents both east and west, then soon after, all round the spreading panorama view. Inside it was dark, and densely so.  I now determined the irksome jailor to be truly mystifying, he had ensured I should be present for this act of interrogation, and I guessed that the presence of soldiers along to chaperone my morning journey would attract full cooperation and sure acquiescence.  Regarding what I thought I was about to hear and see, they resumed solely as expecting shadows, for nothing that had been promised from such a captive’s malicious heart, turned out in effect true to life – I sensed no doubt, a shady conclusion to this inharmonious episode.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; For on re-entering the building, I found myself admitted to a different room, more isolated than the first, more regular, more isometric and thirstier for an intrinsic discourse than as the one I had been previously forced into last night.  It was larger but far gloomier, several candles were all that stood to colour in the scene by any effect.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; At the back, the jailor hung from a few rope hooks on the back wall like a carefully positioned collage, daggling in a requisitioned star shape across ways; he had been tightly fixed without lock or reinforced restraint so that he could leave at any time, if he so had a mind.  I had no idea who had put him up there, or if he had done this for himself, or for what motive could have called upon such actions, but I surely recognised my enemies face staring at me across the empty chamber thunderously bewitched. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Pamela stood a little further to his front; her head began to loll upwards with a confident swagger, marking an appearance dislodged with a strange aloofness bent to avoid my inquisitive countenance, but in the next instant she looked forwards at me again.  Her disposition was secretive but I hoped that she was rational enough to avoid intentionally any physical malign.  The penalty for harming a revolutionary spirit was most certainly an appointment with death – always an outstanding engagement for all of us on earth.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Not counting in my very own steps into the room there had been no detectable sounds so far, but now the man’s legs began to rap lightly against the kiln bricks that had made up the room’s unhealthy quarter.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Seek the solace of quiet”, she gently hissed at his face, “as you will presently need it”.  The jailor was barely conscious to be at will to understand the command and continued the kicking gestures set to avail himself from his bonds at ankle level.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The faint candles became momentarily obscured in some way and then two jaded eyes strained at me below, through the melted blackness that had swiftly moulded itself to stifle the only light source available.  I did not know if the eyes belonged to the man or the woman or something else that was absent besides on my first appraisal of the room.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I’ve been feeding him something special”, this quiet remark from Pamela dropped quite incidentally into the silent pool, having the cause to awake me from the brief reverie that seemed more like divine sleep, but of course I must have been too awake from the shock of seeing Pamela free, when I expected her to be tidied away into some back room somewhere.  Her actions had been so far, foggy, inconclusive, not a kind I would have attributed to her before this morning and in actual fact, I felt that I now did not know anything about her rumbling fancies.  I made a cursory judgment that she had fed herself and the man some kind of potent medicine, procuring the man to have climbed upwards on his own accord but I could not be totally sure what roles they had both played before my part had been taken in this tableau.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; My nervousness was of a breathless kind; I could not determine what was in store and furthermore, I now recognised the poorly dog she had lately acquired, it yawned pitifully up at me from its knotted throat, not to be taken as a friendly gesture but as a warning to the foolish not to accept anything from the female again.  And so the dog’s frantic noise was unrelenting, first as a yell, then as a squeal, and then tailing off as a threadbare whimper.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; I was not to risk delusional haste and thought about releasing the man from his shackles unharmed but this actual call was not up to me to fathom, as she had now jammed my own way forward by brandishing the sword away what I took to be of her victim’s possession.  My own situation had a weaker vocabulary as my weapons had been confiscated on the way up along the dungeon keep.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; She made an attempt to speculate on my intentions.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I don’t want you untying my prisoner”, she yelled shrilly, “stay clear.  I haven’t finished with him yet.  I simply cannot let you mess things up”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; She was clearly out of contention with the sword hilt, and wanting to vent some hatred onto the defenceless soul who was now wriggling free from his bonds – he was gaining strength, having an assurance that his torture would have no apparel. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I will fence you if you move anyway towards him”, she was now shouting above the din, also above the dog that was still gurgling in abject pain - I was shouting too.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Upon the heads of the saints, there is no glory in this retribution, he is not one of us”, I rasped, “Get out of here while you can”. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; But it was too late, the fires in his eyes were burning silver ash, his feet now steadied on the ground.  The sword was lashed out of her careless hands while she meant to lunge forward in a tempestuous full turn.  She ended facing her tyrant in her imagination, who after disarming her completely, wrestled her down for what she had stored up in her pockets, tearing out the hems to recover what he thought were hidden mysteries within.  The contents directly exploded and distributed evenly, rattling over the stone flags, drifting about the immediate area and rolling steadily even as far as my feet.  On surveying these objects well, I may have be forgiven for thinking that they resembled small colourful pebbles, although the issue from her pockets had now become an interest for the terse dog.  For it sniffed and pawed around and around the mess in transit across the floor’s length, forming an apotheosis imitating a beleaguered tarantella with its bandy legs. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Its time to disappear, a jamais”, I strongly spoke my articulated words so that she would understand my eventual meaningful drift.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;  It was imperative that I got her out before the belligerent captain had his revenge for her unkindly tricks.  On the other hand, Pamela was still reeling from the effects of whatever she had given him and her during that night’s quarrel.  Because she had reacted in a corpulent state, I felt it would be very hard to drag her out of danger by myself and so I decided that she must be left to embrace his malice on her own.  Her behaviour had heralded this evasive action I felt I needed to take immediately, callously abandoning her in case I should be decorated with unsightly gashes made by a – it was the only way to survive.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   I was concerned that Pamela still had not awoken from her apathetic state; she needed urgent medical expertise to rendezvous with her more conscious self.  Her torso flailed erratically within the arms of the bearded creep until she halted all her movements with the jingly brightly coloured braided tassels, falling through the air into their dazzling hundreds and thousands, down onto the concrete surface that made up the square bit of ground that set witness to the scene’s purpose. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Making the quick decision not to tarry much longer and witness a possible assassination, I decided my welfare was too much for my own keeping.  Outside I was personally met by the full blaze that my eyes fought to adjust to in relation. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Jasmine sat on a hard cushion, silhouetted, observing the waves dropping down along the silted beach in a frequent drifting motion as if from a slow turbine engine further out to sea.  Her pleasure grew as she witnessed this industry; it touched her sense of uniqueness and it suggested an augury of sleep.  She sat high up on a crest following down the side of the pier, on one of the seats among many that would allow passive whimsy, and a view taking in the red sandstone bay, if one was lucky enough to be facing inland for any time period.  She ceased her bag dizzily thrown at the foot of her chair, at precisely the same time a mysterious grandee from the pier entertainment committee decided to interrupt her from this merry enchantment.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Good day to you madam!” he ventured, as a sycophantic overture to lead into something he was not quite sure would have any import to the lady.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Jasmine noticed his top hat was considerably lopsided and needed pulling straight immediately, lest he courted instant ridicule from the frowning children being towed along by their parents, who seemed as foreign to them as the Kaiser, determined to plod into every vertex of the pier in time with the ambient slow march permanently emanating from the corps of bona fide musicians, distracting the prom at moments of pressure during the high seasoned afternoon, such as this one first described.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “How has your afternoon been so far, eh?  The weather has been quite admirable this afternoon”.  His opened mouth shut down immediately tightly in a show of conflict surrounding what he was about. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Next he shoved his hat into his open hands and stood back to allow Jasmine to raise herself, as she had already had enough – frond after frond of her large pearl white dress plummeted down lackadaisically under its own weight and then immediately after rose up skyward, a mountain with a feathered summit.    This garment was disastrously too substantial for the dingy heat in which the grandee was evidently finding hard himself to bare too quickly. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; However, on her vaulted throat lay a cooler adornment than the sun that began to resonate freely in the midday heat, a green stone of beryl resting there on the tide of its owner’s breath, in matching colour to the floating orbs with which she could avail herself of to set eyes upon her future cares.  The gem was symmetrically placed in a golden cradle, plumed to match her dress line inlaid around in countless spirals of bindweed swirls.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Tired of the potential conversation before it had even begun, Jasmine crossed the decking to prove she wasn’t prepared to sit demurely while this salesman tried to pitch his wares – for that is what she assumed he was his intended aim.    & nbsp;   

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Go away, stop following me you fool,” she commanded, “my father is just around the corner”: a rather two-dimensional response to a common irritant, she knew this very well, she had misgivings about selling him a rebuff of more flattering sophistry, due to the undignified manner with which he had plied her will in the first place. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The man had now started to deliberately move in her direction, finding it difficult to convene open rapid eye contact.  Her elongated dress got caught beneath her feet disastrously, as she grappled with a floral display that had overgrown onto the steps of the “Golden Ballroom”.  A long arm caught her by the shoulder to prevent her from completely sliding forwards onto her abdomen; it was quite a reflexive display of acrobatics for the man to prevent a true upset.  Both her feet, in gradual abeyance, had become entwined amongst the ground splurge of dynamic Spanish posies that had now crept up her floral wear.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Impudent man”, she yelled, “get off me, or I’ll call the police.”

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;  “I think rather, it will be me calling the police; you stole that”, he pointed at the jewel garnishing her upper person, being the only real object of his attention during this whole confrontation.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Its mine, its mine, its mine”, she kept rejoined increasingly loudly so that the man knew that it was time to give way under pressure.  Unfortunately, his will was unrelenting on this point of issue.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The frenzy of activity was already interrupting the band’s rendition of a light overture, the woodwinds flicking in and out on the wind like a late song-bird; furthermore some of the cyclical movement around the pier paused to investigate these partners exchanging their words of unqualified avarice.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “It was part of a caprice at the end of the pier, you were watched lifting it from the display; I’ll take it away now, without resort to force, and perhaps then I may be mollified”, he rasped thickly under a mouthful of air.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Jasmine wrestled with him, high kicking his top-notch hat to the ground with some degree of knotted violence, stamping on his polished sneakers with demented pleasure and in that manner of proceeding, bowled him over by wielding her head as an intrinsic weapon to flatten his rotund figure.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Are you kidding!” shrieked a floating bystander, “this is like the fighting cocks at the ‘Morning Glory’, this is”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Another dame sidled up for a peek with a view to stir her version of the pot.

“She stole it, she stole it, it was she”, she wailed grotesquely.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; By now there was a sizable crowd jostling for a look at the lady cynosure, transforming the whole affair into some sort of spectator sport.  From within the bullring Jasmine tore out through from the circle’s cusp with her shoulders flaying in mid air – the terror was mounting and her eyes jerked open and shut upon dismay.  Somebody who reached to grab her giant dress drew in a starry momentary look of green from eyes defined by anger’s repulse; they shone, faded out, and rekindled brightly, so whoever held her tightly now was forced to look away abashed of her passionate vehemence.    & nbsp; 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Give me the trinket, come on give back my prize, it was shipped to us all the way from Greece”, the new arrival voiced – he turned out to own the affronted booth that contained the pilfered item that had now come to hang from the neck of the frightened woman.  But her own determination overtook her unvarying rage

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Jasmine careered to one side jauntily, then fled from the gesticulating throng, and dangled for a slight moment over the side of the pier, her dress swishing in the air like an elongated tail and after jumped casually over the railings to join the sea; her garments, hat and all else beside.  Jasmine carried herself out to sea in a kind of floating swim and then down under the waters with only the sight of her following dress crashing over by means of a fleeting flip-flopping motion.  How far the waves had carried her, nobody would surmise, though up she came some way off, father into the misty distance with a short cavort and a wave from her hand.  Finally, yet once more, down she bobbed to head for her own territory of foreign intrigue to those gathered there on the wooden decks of the summer pier.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Plenty stalked this mystery encounter whilst others decided to trudge back to see if the pendant had really gone from all the miscellany of items to be won by the tourist guests coursing in their fairground delight, but they found that nothing had actually been taken, everything glittering stood just as before in wraps of olive silk: Chimera masks; Olympic rings; bracelets that bore the effigy of Pegasus; golden statues of Grecian nymphets; patterned rags for tables and the beryl jewel still winking in the sunlight gracefully amongst many the same such bejewelled curiosities qualified to amuse the cantankerous public frame of mind.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; I tried to remain anonymous at the meeting, partly to gauge various reactions from the gorgeous female fraternity available towards myself.  Which, as it turned out, angled more on the negative side.  At the end, they all piled out of the room without acknowledging me in anyway whatsoever.  Should I have justified my existence, rather than taking an immeasurable step back towards insignificance?  I had spent the whole time locked into this theory that someone was going to step on my toes if I presumed to speak and therefore I was on my guard, erring on the side of caution throughout the injunction period, which was a very tricky tact to say the least.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; I was the last one left in the meeting room after the drama, biding my own time, staring into a portrait of the then late director smirking down to his shoes in a display of grounded satisfaction.  What had he got to be so happy about?  His company had gone bankrupt; all his hidden assets had disappeared into the countryside estates; nine out of the fifteen board members were going to resign and already his wife was showing amnesia surrounding their long, though very grateful marriage, and besides, there was no more room to manoeuvre for anyone connected with this dying franchise.    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; There had been such a tangle of consciousness during the meeting:  Tempers were controlled heroically; ulterior motives dowsed; contracts were torn up into the shredders that were provided especially for the occasion.  Nobody in the minor junior ranks seemed to be concerned in the slightest degree about the juggling fates of all those who sat within the conference room, although this was all they had in the world.  Employees had to steel themselves away from the rupture this news would cause, not only to them but also to their families and to their family’s ancestors.  A torrid announcement was made by the contemporary chief director, who seemed quite dismayed, a couple of other contributions and then the aftermath – this took another two hours.  I had, as well as many others, lost everything except for this last perusal of the company portrait that I was now enjoying posthumously.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; I waited for some minutes until the rocking movements caused by a useless pen holder had at last obeyed the laws of gravity.  Only when this moment had arrived I felt it safe to leave my comfortable seat.  There was always a hidden logic to my impulses, even though I was unable to always grasp them fully for myself.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; My hand swayed inquisitively over certain office artefacts as I crossed the room to seek out a more tolerable environment.  Everything around the conference room felt hot to the touch contaminated by a kind of electric energy that half deliriously enfeebled me and half obliged me to stay with its activity for the time being.  What else was there to do now?

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; After the sad assembly’s a bystander had witnessed that I had not spoken once, even when required to.  This same bystander also compounded the disharmony by clutching upon my inauthentic behaviour of myself and other vulnerable colleagues who were not there to defend themselves in the entirety.  I shook her off by a taciturn reaction in the wake of such freedoms governing outmoded hostility.  My shocking train of thought encouraged me to cut the wit by this lavish talker short, but no sooner had I received the temptation, I had quietly buried it to congeal my ownership with my varied habits of avoidance.  Hindsight would reveal pleasure’s greater decorum in reciprocation but this was a luxury gainsaid in this commercial world.  I enthusiastically hammed up my leave taking for the stage and allowed this none person to leave the scene without further ado, leaving me spelling out a shocking rejoinder in my forward imagination.  But what good would it do now after the event?

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Trouble like this had always proved my culpability for restraint, not in the least when it came to the world of public relations.  I thought about this as I ended my inspection around the room, a domain that I had temporarily annexed for myself and had power within to enforce my desires.  After all, everything had come to a halt for the serious transactions of veracity and now this was an appropriate refuge to coagulate proper my express thoughts.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; I decided, after a remedial delve into the mind’s secret recesses, I would recoup everything I had lost in this room from the dawn to the very dusk during my career, though under my tutelage everything in this room would conspire to serve me well.  A popular children’s fairy tale gave me the inspiration I so badly needed for this task:  The story covered the relationship between a brutish sorcerer and his useless but resourceful apprentice.  Unfortunately, I did not have the foggiest sense how to master the mind over matter bit needed for this, after all I was only human, and so I left that journeying reflection to follow another fancy scarcely before it was reaching its final destination.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; My mind now turned to the giant stairwell that adorned the side of the building, just a corridor away from where I was standing.  Not an attractive area to be sure but the story goes, amongst the depths of dirt, refuse and grime was something else with far greater complexity - a veritable spiritual circus allowing bizarre disturbances.  On passing this superstructure everyday I had usually not given it all a second thought, but I was made aware something or someone in the location of this area may be giving me a second thought or even more.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The ceiling was the sky itself, an afterthought from the building process, not quite sure what it was doing flapping at the top, barely hidden from view but always a overcast greyish white patch.  It served no purpose other than to allow feint half-light to descend into the depths, shaping a lurid Jacob’s ladder from the blurred sky directly outside above.  There was a slight humming from the generator and the surrounding dust particles formed from some vile moisture that evaporated from the inviolable heights.  If there was anything worth salvaging from up there, it was bound not to be anywhere down here.  Surrounded by fag ends, little bits of pieces of office rubbish and litter, nobody could be blamed for the visions that had enlightened this mini dust bowel – an apparent active universe of space and time in itself.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Finding the nub the matter involved seeking out the safest facts; nothing ought to be built on muddy conjecture alone; nothing should be relied upon without the knowledge of serious pieces of evidence.  On the other hand, I found this pursuit quite subjective, my own sphere of influence for the time being. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; In more than one instance, I had been absorbed in an impression of a cowering boy in this venue; this boy would always refuse to show his face, always becoming perceptible at the same point of singularity within the stairwell.  It would appear to kowtow repeatedly, folding up and stretching out it arms ambidextrously.  I had looked carefully around to see if this facade had left a resounding stain on other reality plains; this ghost was certainly a regenerative nuisance.  Unfortunately, I found none such proofs easily; obviously this was a private performance and a one-act show just for my very own self to suspend belief.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Like the conference room, this area imbibed a very high level of capacitance bonded with developing environmental humidity.  The derived point of singularity, where the boy sat on the lower steps, inclined a sensation akin to a billowing maelstrom that would extend and contract in energising waves, even occurring when there was nothing to catch the sight on my occasional way past this spot.  I have faith in that it may possibly be a scientific charade, a deeper unknown natural force; nevertheless so far I failed to run an exact theorem surrounding the phenomenon or apparition I had been subject to up until now.    & nbsp;   &n bsp;

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Despite feeling quite dismissive towards this wistful young gentleman, I felt no subsequent hostility, and we both spent our time mutually exclusively.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Certain historical references had been made about the building, within which I had loyally worked up until now, even though they were secondary consequence to me:  A male colleague wanted to clear the air in the aftermath of a hideously contrived debacle about the existing state of efficiency within the office environment.  My personal view is that he wanted to gratuitously stream his energetic wrath in my direction due to an unknown insecurity in his own character portrait.  I was only five minutes late into work, countermanding the window of one minute, which we had all agreed on as a team to target carefully.  He made a mighty fuss that had ironically wasted more time than I had been originally accused of loosing in the day’s debutant hours. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Both of us felt an urgent requirement to cool the environmental pressure without delay.  In return for his faithlessness towards me, he suddenly became willing to chat idly about the company’s origins.  I gathered that the offices had been built around a makeshift war hospital complete with a morgue for all the unfortunates who died during the home bombing raids during the last world war.  Undeniably, there was a wing in the present office block that seemed to me the epitome of what he was describing.  My thoughts promptly turned to these individual store rooms, set within a totally dilapidated area, besieged by a few management offices strategically placed around it so as not to cause offence to strangers, honoured guests or potential clients that may be walking around at random – an effect aimed to avoid monetary dismemberment at all costs.    & nbsp; 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; One special room contained the remains of a wooden cross that had evidently survived time’s precincts for many to ventilate hungry imaginations now in the later half of the century.  Not quite a crucifix but two solid wooden planks hung in the greyish dust to herald a plague or perhaps some place to store dead bodies.  I now connected my point of singularity under the gyrating stairs with what my colleague was saying about the wartime morgue with immediate unqualified confirmation from older staff members surrounding my deductions.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Curiously, this room was also a host to one of a score of hidden passages that had been constructed during the Roman occupation.  This formed one entrance to many such trade conveyor belts that swung underneath the town, ending up right by the riverside further down town.  Rich and wealthy traders would frequent such routes in an effort to bypass the teaming world above and march their goods directly to where they were needed underneath the merchant dwellings.    & nbsp;   

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; As an issue of red blanche that galvanised my colleagues face had now disappeared, we went our separate ways in order to fulfil our separate versions of making money.  However, I never gave any credence to the feasible supernatural association to morgues, tunnels and the potential for ghosts, as the situation may or may not have related to the little boy who sat by the stairs – this to my mind was altogether a contravening digression.  My standards of thinking were tempestuously scientific, not to be based on the elegiac mumbo jumbo that issued from a man’s mouth in compensation for a wounded ego, directed at earning respect within a dying office franchise.

Betheena could actually be extra tight with her words while talking to people that she hated, yet she could likewise be so straight to the point in her many unattractive questioning techniques.  Other people would just rather roll over to avoid her immaculate wide-eyed gaze of remonstration, and also to avoid the tussle that she eagerly kept in store for the unsuspecting victim.  Her behaviour betrayed a woman similar to an advanced dowager in years, already knowing how to be lightly young according to her real years without any better knowledge about the responsibilities vital for her prematurely adopted futuristic role.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Betheena had formerly appropriated one and part of a franchise linked to nautical hotels amongst the coastal directions of Devonshire, between “The Warren” and the greatest of all Exeter’s estuaries that forged out into the starry bays at night, as the sky became engulfed all black with occasional climbing masts, reaching upwards and outwards towards the lonely moors and further still in the midst of hills.  And there an age-old harbour town lay exactly in and between; it became the family seat of this Betheena Gollenspiel.  Here within the harbour the heavenly yacht “Rose fulcrum” now slept ineffectually, awaiting the pleasure of its crew to transact in secret what it had never been done before here on earth.  Twinkling lights dressed the anchoring berth abroad the prophetic big ship whilst harbour monkeys set about drizzling themselves in formation about the harbour entrance to nose into affairs of foreign legitimacy.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Betheena had amassed such a retrograde fortune from nowhere that she was never tempted to use it even partially functionally and so deceitful missionaries, who harassed passers-by to pay for their own safe passage within her realm, constantly flounced anybody that sailed within her wicked quarters.  Such monies kept her head overtly intoxicated with booze, pernicious social meanderings, party politics and stoic mutterings that would seek to hurt the polemical careers of the communities well meaning swell – all counteracting opposition towards her person was consequently cut out from source by an unknown agency.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Under her direct jurisprudence were the twins: Polmead and co.  Never was there so likely a couple that would strain to be far away quickly, although simultaneously devoutly loyal to their patroness in arms nearly all the time.  It was such a confused mistake that caused them to be landed in such a chaotic memory, to be kept at bay in such a permanent quandary in case they became a lost and lonely part within Betheena’s personal world of adverse public opinion and disloyalty.  Just through force of habit, the twins were tied here, learning to be partners in crime and at the same time, manage the same people as well as their mentor could and would encourage.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Today Betheena was characteristically chortling on the phone to a pal that she was secretly trying to nail for some imagined prejudice. Betheena had incessantly fixated delusions about sentencing her perceived enemies into a metaphoric bottomless pit based on word and mouth, which she deemed it impossible to flee.  All she felt was necessary for this, precluded acquiring a proof of the crime solely in her own head to vindicate her feelings on the matter.  If one were acquainted with Betheena’s phoning rituals, one would gather, after a certain amount of time, that she would increasingly contact almost complete strangers who had little or no interest in her at all.  Then she would talk quantitatively to these folk towards which she too had no curiosity about her deepest and innermost desires.  She would tell tale about her strangest fantasies, her own inherent wickedness, her many idle assumptions and much pre-emptive gossip foisted from friends who had much too much for themselves to be engaged in reliable witness to the sad events surrounding her alleged hellish life.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Polemead’s shadow slowly climbed the slippery wall in quiet solitude.  She could see the back of Betheena’s head as it nodded and bobbed along with the receiver.  It wouldn’t be long until Betheena would slam the receiver into the table and exclaim about her so-called friends infidelity and go on describing the innumerable atrocities that she had committed against her all that week.  Perhaps she would perhaps send over a few officious harbour monkeys to crack open this infidel once and for all.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Polemead on the other hand, seemed so demurely vulnerable but underneath a gift-wrapped mask was the garb suited to a more cunning madam – it seldom appeared except in dire emergencies.  Polemead would not stand to be affected too much, or to be superseded too much by a more powerful agent such as Betheena.  She certainly occasionally wore an infrequent smile over and above her usual melancholy; so fragrant, it hung like a dewdrop from the pallor from her delicate nasal embrasure.  She possessed a head of hair of such qualities that it washed down her cheeks in a bountiful loom of black tresses that would sometimes veil her with weeping curls that crept magnificently about her features like many warped rafters.  She was more a gliding apparition, wrapped up in her own mystery, than with anything tangible seen on earth, so that all that appraised her literally at first, increasingly failed to notice her in secondary communion with her poised refinement.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Polemead decided to pursue her suite immediately, provided that Betheena was actually available to notice, and was equally determined not to lie tormented by this phone call previously achieved. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Now it was within the glimmering past that Polemead had already estranged herself from fifty ‘grown ups’ in marriage and now wanted another one to add to her healthy connections.  Betheena didn’t approve and would never approve to furthermore factious liaisons without anything monetary to show for it.  Each partner had been and gone without knowing properly that the relationship had finished or even noticed that they were with her prior to this.  A new focus for her attentions would neither label her as a fool, nor attract the possibility of resorting to artificial measures in an effort to keep it going – there was still definitely no sense in restraining herself this time around.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The phone set went straight down with a crack and through the table as predicted by the narrator.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Doesn’t matter about the wedding, I didn’t like her anyway”, she quickly mused as she frowned copiously, “too strange for my liking – not that clever”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; At this point she decided to turn right round to face her sullen inculcator in an effort to swallow whole her penetrating stare.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “What seems to be the problem here”?

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Nothing”, but Polemead lied at this point.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Then why are you here”? Came the retort.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I’m here to ask you a favour”, Polemead added almost distracted.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “To ask me just what?” rejoined Betheena, burgeoning up, looking as if she expected effrontery, not really allowing Polemead continuation in her discourse as she felt it in her duty to do so and then she would follow automatically with cross-questioning, uninvited for the sake of displaying the satisfactory amount of authority.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Polemead suddenly felt highly tensile, keeping it all back from her friend in case the expected indignation would be extended to indulge Betheena’s perverted fascination in her many boy friends, especially towards this certain autominous person she was beginning to see:  Socrates, who she was now in direct contact, disobeyed all the rules of human alchemy and had the looks and grievances typical in a computer.  Instead of a fully blow independent biped, he was a fledgling mainframe hooked into a local network right up to the eyeballs.  In fact, it was not a mere trifle that this machine had ended up involved with Polemead, or rather that Polemead had already wrapped the terminals round her pretty little finger.  This alliance had gone steady now for a number of months and it was now time to make it a little more public and a little less circumspect.

  Socrates was a highly evolved Internet system, which had a string of roots going right back to the 20th century.  To most, this was the last of the great innovations of a nobler civilisation:  Everything else had just about been done, except controlling the planet’s weather systems and exploring foreign galaxies; even that was now was within the dynamic grasp of the nation thanks to Socrates.  Conversely, it was an energy supply that fed the ordinary cravings of the gathered bowing younger saplings found in areas such as the Astrolabe club, a young person’s entertainment dome, and so forth.  

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “May I take your leave to depart these shores for a protracted period, I need to get away quickly and with out exaggerated delay.”  This change of tact from Polemead seemed to her far more prudent at the time then spitting out about her eccentric affair with an undiluted computer terminal.  Betheena was bound to deduce what she was really about if she lifted the whole news right straight out of the blue.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Please don’t you judge me for it,” Polemead continued, “I’ll return almost straight away, as soon as I have ascertained my own perplexing feelings on the matter.” 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; This change in tact was much more to the point than a mere pronouncement about an intended electronic love affair that almost definitely would outwardly displease M. Gollenspiel no end.  Betheena might even gain pleasure chastising Polemead for her folly, as was very likely if she stood firm - Betheena’s insecurity would nurture the genuine qualms in a jiffy:  Betheena’s face would darken and then she would be away in her full measured self-satisfied pride, rather than to think about Polemead’s ultimate safety abroad.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Betheena was now full of pomposity, folding her head sharply to the left, impudently whistling through her teeth; this was a reaction set to demonstrate a measure of ignoring unpleasant utterances from this one of her protégées.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “You need to get your priorities straight young lady dear,” was the final untactful return from Betheena, just following what had been thirty seconds pause.  It took just this quietly emphatic bolt to resist Polemead’s simple appeal.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Playing her game for a number of days would have been much better for her but little time interceded between this moment and the time Polemead had booked her flight across the channel.  Betheena sparkled with energy and she was determined that this nonsense was not going further still.    

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I’m not really in favour of vast impressions like this too far advanced into the deepening afternoon dear girl.  I feel very tired right now.  Perhaps I’ll lay down for a couple of minutes”.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I wasn’t trying to distract you from your afternoon siesta”, Polemead gently cooed unnaturally – the cracks in her talk were beginning to show, and as for tomorrow she knew that she would be still holding court at Aunty Beethena’s if she failed to hold out this time around, having been inflicted upon to remain permanently in this house.  She very well knew when Betheena was trying to manipulate her on the spot, along with a deepening sense that there was nowhere to go in the present conversation and according to her acute nature, Polemead felt that if she could help it, this would certainly not be an end to the matter – her duress made her strong willed also.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; It was time for Betheena’s lazy bed and Polemead knew that she was in no mood for an altercation now; it would be a saved treat later that day.  Soon after this, Betheena noisily stomped up the stairs to lay herself down and sooth her restless head, feeling a lingering sensation of heavy irritation with the world’s actions at that moment:  She needed time to mull it all over and to take appropriate action laid upon her own auspices, when she could hope to cope with such a burdensome responsibility as Polemead’s unpredictable desires.

She smiled ruefully but he was to have nothing of it.

    & nbsp;          “I don’t know where you have placed your field glasses”, now he was beginning to sound troubled and his movements betrayed his thinking quite markedly.

    & nbsp;          “Look, you have to understand that I don’t care in the slightest if you have come here straight from Cambridge or anywhere else for that matter”, she was now quite cross and beginning to remember that he was a tiresome monster who would never appreciate her more playful aspect.  Why did he always take her so seriously?  A question she frequently rattled off in her mind.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;     Alice was always supposed to be a quiet madam, but somehow the label had miscarried completely, as her late mother had allegedly whispered to her on numerous occasions during her early years that this certainly wasn’t to be the case.  Nowadays, she had a prodigious unstoppable effect around St Cyers where she lived quite comfortably since her unhappy adolescence.  Although Alice was usually quite succinct surrounding her dealings with men, there was hardly ever a time she did not enjoy good provocation if she felt in the habit to govern her senses for amusement.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Everything within the room in which she sat had a melodramatic sense of lurid extravagance; a kind of perceived playroom for the early Victorian upper classes:  Tall mantels; grainy French polished woods; a yapping dog along with a loud clicking black tail and a white portrait of her uncle who probably had control of yet another inconsequential ‘Rotten Borough’, though it was only for one term before he fell down a renovated mine shaft to his death – supposedly he was inspecting the working conditions down there at the request from a few stray miners with a lethal sentiment for their profession.

  “ I came here to tell you something”, William had begun to speak slowly.

    & nbsp;         “Well it is probably something I don’t want to hear anyway.  Honestly, why are you always so dull and intense about everything William”?

    & nbsp;     & nbsp;   Her eyes sparkled momentarily and displayed a kind of cruel pleasure attuned to her luxurious surroundings.  She shifted herself around delicately on the divan and stared out at nothing in particular – this could be quite dismissive gesture if taken in the wrong way.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; In the distance one large bug crawled along the wainscot aimlessly.  The weather outside was exceptionally hot at this time of year so that the mini-beats roamed freely nearly all the time.  Now the insect ended its journey on the floor with a plop. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The conversation tried to refocus on its correct trajectory.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “I’m not saying that, I’m saying this….”, William then allowed himself to pause briefly, then looking askance at the back of the room, he muttered to the floor.   Alice’s head now turned momentarily but her sequined eyes remained carefully opaque.  Sustaining such a pose was quite a feat for the mistress and she sought to effect a flood of tears.  The train of liquid fled down her linen front in thick glutinous blobs, journeying as far as her clasped hands adorned by a rose ring given previously to her by her grandmother; she warned her countless times against man’s nasty artifices.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; William became an island of distress; her grinding sarcasm had needled him a few moments ago – it would not be long before he spoke his mind.  Momentarily he endeavoured to look quite serious about his intentions before looking directly at her again.  Alice interrupted in an abrupt manner.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “Do you suppose I’m going to let you blackmail me,” she tried to look dismissive but instead she accidentally winked at him slyly, for the pain seemed to have fled elsewhere for the time being.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Meanwhile the insect was on its tripod legs moving gradually towards the pretty decorated slippers of the women, guided by its own instincts to join the fray but demonstrably unsure of its ultimate role on arrival.  It opened a pair of large wings set like matching callipered butter knifes, launching it so far into the air that it landed on the female’s head quite safely with another plop.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “This is my final offer, if you don’t concede, I’ll have to do it all for myself”, he consigned to her left ear, this time with great conviction.

    & nbsp;      & nbsp;  Her next reaction was over exaggerated:  She stole out of her chair in one sudden movement, inviting him to join her up above shelf height where she dementedly gabbled a dozen more words in a way nobody would be expected to translate into conversation and then after flashing a quick smile at her adversary, she attempted to look angry.  Several books fled from the shelf in reaction to her twitching hand.  The winged beast sped out from the midst of the fallen volumes, landing dexterously on the tea arrangements situated in the far corner of the room.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “If you do that”, she snapped, “your life could become dangerous because of me, I can make it so hard for you to recoup what you have lost”!  Her voice dropped again at this point as she willed her head to cease rolling about, forcing it to assume a more united front with which the rest of her body could mutually agree on. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The moth flew on into the wider panoramic darkness that engulfed the front of the room, covering a larger area, as its flicking wings beat further into wider space, then over countless heads of reacting watchers.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;

*

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; “You played that scene like a maniac”! He decried.  He was the angry producer, waiting to apportion blame where necessary, whereas her snivelling was obviously going to do nothing to stave off the amount of flack being dealt out in a single stream.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The curtain had finally flopped down at last on a dire performance, which in effect had taken at least thirteen extra minutes running time.  Not only that, the large plate glass window that was placed proximately down stage had been smashed accidentally at the conclusion of the last scene. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; The stagers firmly believed that it had been she who had displayed this formidable negligence:  She managed to shove her opposite backwards during the intimacy of the last positions.  Furthermore, both actor and actress had displayed many idiosyncratic inconsistencies throughout the last scene, countermanding standardised depictions of the play, ending in an abnormal entwinement and a hospital case beyond the belief of anybody watching. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp; Nobody in the audience was quite sure whether they had seen anything of the closer details of the final accident, although many perceived that she had caused the majority of the chaos.  Unfortunately, most of the house felt that having one’s back to the auditorium, as she did most of the time at the conclusion, might have been a major factor in much of their collective vagueness when ascertaining what had gone wrong on the stage that day.      & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;

The palace yard was continually swept both day and night so as to avoid annoying any of the travelling guests, who were felt to be very important carriers of news affairs from the distant moons.  If only these emissaries would hurry up soon, there would be no more need to tidy up for their arrival and certainly more time to prepare entertainments to divert their attention as and when required.  But, already it had taken hundreds of years for them to complete this final approach.  Now the inhabitants of the palace had become weary, constantly bickering amongst themselves as to when and how their guests would eventually appear.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; Sixty men and women descended through the smoky atmosphere in carriers designed rather for notoriety than for speed and distance.  At last people could watch these vessels as they unfolded beautifully around the night sky, arching to land gracefully in a systematic formation within the jungle ground.  This area immediately surrounded a giant metal edifice that formed a vague replica of a towering creature; it seemed to be greeting these people from the struggles of their distant journeying of apparently rueful longevity.  Impatience had already certainly transpired to pervade the entire company as they undid the hooks that bounded the outside fabric of softer gift-wrapped cubicles which had born them thus across the galaxy skies.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; Feather crested men stole out to request that the visitors park their vehicles still further out beyond the central jungle boulevard, so as not to offend the holy object, which they implied could rive in consternation if ever crossed by strangers – the visitors continued to see nothing and felt nothing from the giant opaque metal sentinel.  They did not understand their hosts and these perceived foibles that cut into the cloth of this foreign civilisation.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; Bought prisoners would lay in state until it was decided what to do with them, then bewitched by drugs on transit to a final destination in which it was promised that they would never be expunged until time ran out itself.  Ceremonies of gratification and glorification were conducted amiably between both groups, always with a growing hidden tumult that could neither be touched nor felt unquestionably.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; Instead of invested avid joy, there was an irritating sense of restlessness as the hosts began to distrust the newcomers.  These travellers crept around and said little to the chagrin of their beneficiaries.  Whatever their motives, they were not about to divulge it willingly and felt it quite possible to go on without stimulation of any kind night or day.  They requested no food, denied information; it was no wonder that the colonists regretted their original invitation, patient waiting and eventual reception.  Most of them were summarily banished to the further reaches of the palace to invigorate themselves.    

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; A vast shadow poked about the back yard, back and forth, dusting the ground around the statue in clouds of desultory blackness; clusters of light gleamed freely over poisonous fruits that bobbed in the misty light but were cleansed when the misty clouds relented to the bitter stream of the sunlight pouring through.  Petals swished and danced in shapes growing occasionally still when the breeze became spent.   Groups of creeping people moved about in rhythm within the pall of the skyward tower of metal, holding their breaths and hoping that the reassurance they were seeking would be more real than their adopted effigy could ever afford.  

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; Unfortunately, colonists remained belligerent in their underlying ungratefulness towards their visitors.  Many plans were made to cast off and hurry back swiftly and after concealed in their heavily guarded collective consciousness, just in case of discovery later.   Covering up such intentions turned out to be an outright nuisance, as everything they had brought with them had now been confiscated wholesale.   Even their space vehicles had been snatched in an effort not to offend the saintly statue that was described to look on in pride of the nation - an amiable jewel.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; It wasn’t long before the visitors imagined that they might be prisoners too but were heavily rebuked for their folly when they voiced their doubts about the chief leaders. 

    & nbsp;     “No, no we shall not put you to sleep or detain you unnecessarily, we shall cherish your very presence for ever”, they answered.  Unfortunately, this promise was known to be false and the visitors persisted to be concerned and watched carefully.

    & nbsp;     “Why are we detained so on your pleasure after travelling so far?  Are you not committed to entertain us and display gifts that we may receive them gratefully and return back to our troubled soil to enrich our desolate terrains; revive the gaudy tundra; tend the barren fallows and even be able to marvel at the inventiveness of nature for the first time?”   

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; Unfortunately the home inhabitants did nothing but sleep through these long diatribes and would not be drawn on any matter pertaining to their unfriendliness.  Eventually it was deemed that such uncompromisingly arrogant creatures deserved to be double-crossed sometime or other and volunteers were broached to attempt this difficult but delicate task.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; Eagar rebels subsequently took immediate pre-emptive advantage and tore through the living complex and climbed up above to breach the height of the mysterious statue, with a view to spy freely on some of the mistrusted hosts.  Their combined weight caused the totem to pitch off balance; then the shady lot fell quickly down from the crowded summit into the surrounding scrub, crushed by the falling tower that was to follow close behind, hitting the ground right on its axis.  An evil mess was fixed onto the ground to settle indelibly amongst the rows and rows of crimson petals.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; Communication lines suddenly broke short immediately and for a considerable period the hosts seemed readily confused, bewildered about their predicament.  Nobody voiced a complaint but grew eventually sure of whom to blame.  Angry eyes were set and cast on the hybrid strangers with mounting alacrity.  And when it was explained how the pillar had come to exist in present living glory – a solar fuelled chronometer in actual fact  – the malefactors became remorseful and craved a bargain that sought to enable them to hide their tears in quiet solitude for a while and then allow them to rebuild gracefully what they had at first carelessly broke. 

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; Now it seemed this zealous treachery was uncovered and dealt with according to the unforgiving injunctions of the decorated palace magnates, who were disgusted beyond repent that nothing had been done to check the deceit of these disgraced wretches.  All might be dragged back to their vehicles and pitched back into the void, to encounter much more frantic destinies than might have been expected, afore desecrating in defiance the converted ground on which they had formerly slept.  The excitement began to wax crazily and their little burrow eyes narrowed into melted slots of fury.  For days and nights they chewed and spat; mixed and cursed but failed to agree on a strategy that would expel the worst miscreants.

    & nbsp;   &n bsp; Chemical storms began brew and vent quite strongly throughout the palace yard in a reflective despair towards such agony.  They were the fiercest gales so far of all, and by all conceivable standards, enveloping the whole palace grounds with bounteous shards of golden dirt and grit.  Clods of descending ash settled in tall mountainous piles, destroying or mutating the landscape into a forlorn wilderness of mulch it had once been before the living came to disturbed its preferred slumber.  From north to south, the palace was engulfed in the midst of molten juice, more noxious than the fauna it was set to ruin.  From east to west, not a soul ventured out in any shape or form.  Not even love of their own kind raged as much as for them to leave as they had just arrived.