The Great Work Begins...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (CrusadersUnderwear) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:30:22 GMT

Puss's sensitive ears heard Jack's query. She stopped mid-stride and turned around, heading back up the hill. "We can get your mount after we check out the town," she told Jack. "It will be simple. I know my way around the spheres like the back of my paw. Come on."

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (Gem Sealed Emperor) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:34:05 GMT

Need. It crashed upon Lon like a wave. Leaping to his feet, he grabbed up his burden and slung the sleeping boy onto the harness he had swiftly put together before walking to this place.
"Ready?" he asked the sleeping boy, knowing he would get no answer. Swallowing and wiping the sweat from his brow, he prepared to use a talent taught to him by the head of his house before the elder Gigant vanished. Raising a small knife, he cut the...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (Wolfgang Kaiser) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:40:38 GMT

The Green Man nodded to his companion, watching him disintegrate with a certain dim sense of envy. Doubtless the Ashman had no existential troubles when trying to change back to himself from a cloud of ash, surely he could distance himself from whatever satisfaction he experienced as a whirling miasma of charcoal dust. Then again, who knew? Jack knew better than to ask; besides, there were better questions.

"O maskéd cloud, it bethinks me to ask if thou hast left my mount...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (anacharis) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:44:01 GMT

"good Jack," whispered the Ashman to the Leaves, "I am afraid we must apart
from here, for our nine-livéd friend has gone
in search, I think, of Paracelsus Fext
(or so I hope- black powder on the wind
is not a well-meant omen otherwise)."

And with that, the Ashman burst into the air and flowed after Puss in a whirling, viney cloud of shifting, storm-coloured smoke. He congealed again beside her on the hill
"What town is this, that...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (CrusadersUnderwear) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:19:09 GMT

Puss faced into the breeze. "The spheres have shifted again. People have moved. Many people, which is unusual. Most of the time, things are quiet and we who move between the spheres are not so active. But that is not the case now." She sniffed the air again. "I smell gunpowder. Come." She streached her legs and headed to the north, to the small town that lay over the hill.

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (Gem Sealed Emperor) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:53:20 GMT

Lon shifted the weight of his burden to a more comfortable position on his shoulders. His blue eyes gazed at the small town, and a smile pulled the right corner of his mouth up. So, this was the spot. The place he Needed to be least of all. Long had he searched for such a spot, but they were elusive, as Need was something that could rarely be denied without consequence. He sighed, and walked down the...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (CrusadersUnderwear) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:59:19 GMT

"You head on a difficult journey," Puss said with a frown. "Though you seem to have a knack for finding the hard-to-find, I will warn you now that if Lon does not want to be found, no force in all the worlds will find him. As for the Artist..." she shrugged, a graceful gesture, "he is difficult to pry away from his work. I've done it before, but if I had to do it over I wouldn't bother." She thought about this for a minute, "I don't think he...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (anacharis) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:24:21 GMT

"Old Os himself resides in Tantastelle," the Ashman began,
"a hundred leagues away when last I left
green Cozabel for Jack's far greener land
and that, in turn, for this, another ten away
(for I can travel faster than a man
and ten leagues- or three hundred- in a morn-
ing's not too difficult for me to walk).
Apart from him, there's Lon, who last was called
to Graustadt by a certain alchemist
who owed a favor to the...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (CrusadersUnderwear) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:24:11 GMT

"I call this place "here."" Puss said, refolding herself into her human form. As she pulled her boots back on, she added, "The locals call it "Wal'ka'carn," which, as far as I can figure means "Empire of Fifty Roots" or some such thing." She stood and looked over Jack and the Ashman. "As much I would like to see this doctor-wizard immedately, I sense that there is a journey ahead of us. We do we wander gentlemen?"

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (Wolfgang Kaiser) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:41:48 GMT

"Mulch and root-rot!" Jack Barleycorn swore lightly, taken off-guard. "My apologies, my sincerest apologies, O Bootéd Cat - I of all folk should know by now not to trust appearances, to place faith in the deceptive nature of the visible." He bowed stiffly, suddenly a great deal more uncomfortable. It didn't seem to matter that he had little practical reason to fear cats; it was one of the few irrationalities that he couldn't seem to shake off after thousands of...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (CrusadersUnderwear) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:09:20 GMT

Puss temper, already frayed by surprise, snapped. "I am no mannikin, Tree-man, no sapling!" she said to Jack. "And I am no child either!" She jumped to her feet, "I am CAT. Watch."

Puss's transformation was not a puff of fur or dazzel of magic. She did not melt into the form of a cat, one feature at a time. She folded into her smaller form, like a tesseract folded into itself.

Finished, she sat down on the boots that had been...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (Wolfgang Kaiser) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:03:30 GMT

Many hundreds of leaves dragged themselves across the ground from their various resting-places once the Ashman had finished speaking, drawn together into a vaguely humanoid pile by an unseen force of attraction. The Man of Green coalesced, face-down in the dirt. The return to normal was always the humiliating part of his transformations, as well as the most difficult: the notion of staying as a mass of carefree leaves floating the breezes of the world was certainly inviting. He always had to...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (anacharis) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:20:13 GMT

"What bribe or trap good Doctor Os has laid," the Ashman replied to the Cat.
"for you, I cannot say, for I don't know
(and good I call him metrically alone,
I do not judge that he is good at all)
but I can tell you that you wish to go
to visit him indeed, for reasons not
related to this 'greatest work' at all.
You see, Os knows your Name Ineffable
-not merely Puss, or Sports-with-Leaves, or Walks-
the-Worlds,...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (CrusadersUnderwear) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:39:32 GMT

Puss nearly jumped out of her presently non-existent fur when the swirls of leaves and smoky feathers appeared near her. Fortunately she'd regained some of her composure by the time it had soldified into the stranger.

Well, he was not quite a stranger. Puss would be the first to admit she had no memory for faces, but she remembered him. She even remembered a name: the Ashman.

She'd first seen him at a masque in the world of Vallhin. At the height of the evening,...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (anacharis) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:36:35 GMT

'Twas but a metaphor, John Barleycorn", the Ashman said to the leaf-pile that was the Green Man, already breaking up in the breeze,
"To fly, to travel quick as though the wind.
Dear myrtle shall not be too far outpaced,
Though I can bear you hence if you desire
-A whirling vortex born upon the wind-"

At that point, he realized something was amiss. His...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (CrusadersUnderwear) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:08:16 GMT

((I suppose I could not ask for a better cue. ))

Puss streached her back and flexed her claws in the warm sunshine. The air was sweet and warm, a soft wind was blowing, and the leather boots she was laying on had warmed to just the right tempature. She was just settling in for a nap when a leaf flew by caught by an errant breeze.
Well, it was simply too nice a day to just let an opportunity like that pass...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (Wolfgang Kaiser) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:47:46 GMT

"Fly?" John peered at the Ashman, wondering if this was what the little ones called "humour". He'd heard vague whispers of such things from the birds, but they seemed to suggest there were four. Which one was this tattered spectre using - yellow bile, perhaps? "Mmm. Fly. In truth, to speak frankly, O Maskéd Man, my fiefdoms scarce extend beyond the highest boughs of the tallest, of the most majestic sequoia. Of the Father of Trees. My kingdom, my home, is rooted...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (anacharis) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:07:11 GMT

Ah, good, the Ashman thought. That was easier than I had dared hope it would be. Now, which one next? Lon, The Tesseract, the Painter, or Fext?

"I think that we should start to go right now
I'm not in too much haste, good Wild John
The morning's rather pretty, though, and 'twould
Be quite the shame to waste it, don't you think?
To Weir in...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (Gem Sealed Emperor) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 05:21:41 GMT

Several spheres away, a pair of blue-gray eyes opened in darkness. "Strange..." their owner muttered to no one in particular. Shifting in the black void, he came to several realizations. The first was that he was lying down. The second, he couldn't remember the Who, What, Where, When or a How. The third, sitting up in pitch darkness was disastrous. He filed this last in his memory. Pushing up the lid of the sarcophagus, he remembered his name. Lon smiled as he hopped out...

Re: The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (Wolfgang Kaiser) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 01:11:47 GMT

Green George thought for a long, long time. It had been ages since he'd heard iambic pentameter, and speech was difficult for him to remember at the best of times, being so fleeting compared to the long ages he spent tending a single shrub or coaxing a forest into life. At last he spoke, his sudden motion like a weeping willow spray caught by an unexpected breeze.

"Mmm. So, I am the first thou seekest, the first of many. Dost thou wish my help, dost thou require mine aid in...

The Great Work Begins...

feeds@yuku.com (anacharis) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:19:15 GMT

The language of the birds is older than time. Why this is so is unclear; certainly birds themselves only appeared at some point between the Late Triassic and the Fifth Day of Creation. Nonetheless, they speak a language far older than they are. Perhaps the world itself is written in their odd, scratchy letterings, or perhaps the deep angels that lurked before the dawn of time found some kinship amongst the feathered things, or perhaps some brave legion of robins and crows flew beyond...