From: vagans@inanna.eanna.net   
      
      
      
   Zaren Ankleweed  wrote:   
   >   
   > Zaren settled   
   > down onto the porch swing and took another look around. A batcat fluttered   
   > it's way to him and curled up in his lap, purring and cleaning it's wings.   
   The   
   > mailbox was stuffed with pink envelopes, and had long since overflowed onto   
   > the ground.   
   >   
   > Still, it was good to be back. It always is.   
      
   "Musta dozed off", Zaren thought as he stretched his arms and yawned in   
   the drowsy summer breeze.  He got up from the hammock strung between two   
   cottonwood trees along the side of the Rancho and scratched his   
   head..."and must have been dreaming I was on the porch playing   
   with one of Source's catbats".   
      
   Then a snap and buzz hit him between his temples and he shook his head.   
   That had been happening for awhile now.  It blurred his vision and   
   sometimes hurt.  Friends said he should 'get a checkup, just in case'.   
      
   Snow began to fall, big cold- dry flakes. In the distance down the dirt   
   road he heard an engine and saw lights.  Then it stopped, but the lights   
   remained on.  When he heard the muffled slam of a car door, he stepped   
   back around the side of the Ranch and hid behind a cottonwood.  He heard   
   scrabbling sounds at the front gate.   
      
   The man at the front gate read the tattered notices 'Fighting Ferrets Pep   
   Rally, Tuesday.  Attendance is mandatory.  Don't make me send the   
   dra...' and 'The technospiders ate my homework is not a valid excuse'.   
      
   He poked about the trellis arching over the gate and searched the ground   
   below.  Lifting a rock he muttered "There it is", and held up a key,   
   waving it towards the low dark sedan on the road.  In a moment a car   
   door slammed shut, the lights turned off.  He waited a bit, shrugged and   
   opened the gate and walked in.   
      
   The wave crackled between his ears and he nearly fell to the ground. The   
   doctors said they couldn't find anything and to stop worrying about a   
   brain tumor.  The snow stopped in a final fall of gold glitter which   
   melted away before he could inspect the flakes.   
      
   Poly suffered from it, too, and that made him both mad and curious.  It   
   had taken years, but he thought he'd finally tracked it to its source.   
      
   He thought he heard voices, a chorus of voices, rising and falling, but   
   he couldn't make out the words.  They stopped abruptly.  Shadows seemed   
   to move in the trees, peeking out at him from behind the outbuildings,   
   and from the porch.  The voices rose up again, pitched to laughter, and   
   then a long sigh, drifting off.  Things seemed to scrabble in the tall   
   brown grass.   
      
   There it was in the middle of the lawn.  A structure, a machine,   
   surrounded by a high fence. Mists rose from the near river, figures   
   danced in it like faeries in a mushroom ring.  The moon rose -- the   
   wrong moon in the wrong place in the wrong sky, Sourcerer noted.   
      
   The crackling between his ears became more insistent.  He pulled a sack   
   from beneath his greatcoat.  He'd brought his tools.   
      
   "This is the problem", he said.  There's a short in the Meta Metaphor   
   Machine.  Eyebrown was sloppy, leaving it like this. Let's see..." he   
   touched to panel at the fence's gate.   
      
   This discharge knocked him to the ground, blood ran from his nose.  "I'm   
   a dead man" he thought.  As he blacked out, he heard a voice scream   
   "No!".   
      
   He was standing before the porch steps.  A soft, pillowy hand had raised   
   him up and caressed him, and had held him like an infant.  "My mistake", he   
   thought someone said.  It was high summer, humid, the air redolent with   
   jasmine and bougainvillea.  The chorus of voices became a murmering and   
   drifted into silence.   
      
   Sweet Poly came walking along the path from the front gate and past the   
   Meta Metaphor Machine. Sourcerer held his breath, but it did not touch   
   her. The wind rushed through the trees and autumn leaves fell in front   
   of her.  There was a thumping in the little shed inside the Machine's   
   gated yard, as she passed.   
      
   He sat on the stop step waiting.  Poly stopped, her toes tight up against   
   the first rise of the steps. She did not look up. She had walked the   
   length of the lawn with her head down. She would not look up at him.   
      
   "Are you frightened?" he asked.   
      
   "A little", she whispered.   
      
   "Of what"?   
      
   "That they will all be here, frozen in time, as if Father Frost had   
   touched them all with his staff, never to awaken".   
      
   "I looked through the window. It is dirty, but it is empty.  They aren't   
   here".   
      
   Finally, Poly looked at him. Her eyes welling up with tears.   
      
   "I was afraid of that, too"   
      
   Sourcerer, walked down to her, took her hand and led her back into her   
   house.   
      
      
   --   
     (__)    Sourcerer   
    /(<>)\ O|O|O|O||O||O   
     \../  |OO|||O|||O||   Mirroring the shadows of futurity   
      ||   OO|||OO||O||O   since 1993   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)