Oscar has a fetish. He loves underwear. My underwear. He loves to eat it. After a few scary incidents where I had to pull a half swallowed pair of underwear out of his throat while he choked and gagged, we learned to lock up all underwear.

 

Staying in Sonoma on Sunday, we put the suitcases in the closet since they had underwear in one of the half zipped pockets on the outside. No problem for Oscar, since the door had a latch instead of a door knob, he just jumped up and tripped the latch. Then he unzipped the pocket and proceeded to devour a full pair of underwear. When I finally caught him, there were only a few inch long scraps left.

 

We've been anxiously watching him since then to monitor if anything comes out either end. But he seemed to be eating and pooing as usual, so we began to wonder if we were mistaken.

 

Then Tuesday, it all started to go downhill. He began choking and gagging, but when he almost threw something up, he'd quickly swallow it back down. I spent two hours locked in the bathroom with him, trying to get my fingers down his throat as he retched to grab what looked like a piece of cloth coming up. When I finally realized I just wasn't going to get whatever he wasn't going to let come up, I called the vet who got him booked for emergency surgery. As I was on the phone, Oscar horked up a huge compressed ball of fabric. So I spent the next half hour, on vet's orders, unravelling the ball and trying to reassemble the underwear to make sure we had all of it. Before I nearly fainted from the gagging, I called it done. Then he threw up an elastic waistband just for good measure and I thought we had to have it all. I left for a few hours only to come back and find him looking really distressed. Took him to the vet who X-rayed him, declared there was a dangerous blockage and booked him for surgery at the emergency clinic.

 

Four hours later, the clinic told me I might as well go home, they were keeping Oscar for emergency rehydration, evaluation and more tests and might do surgery in the morning.

 

I was told to come back at 6AM at which time the vet would tell me the prognosis and if Oscar needed surgery. Good news: after $700 of expensive Xrays and Ultra-sounds, plus rehydration with an IV, Oscar was declared "absolutely cleared out". Just to double check, I said, "So you are completely sure that there is no cloth left in him?"

 

"Absolutely", said the vet, "These tests are very sophisticated. They'd pick up anything."

 

We left the vet's and four paces outside his door, Oscar squatted and produced a foot long piece of cloth. So much for diagnostics and the powers of veterinary technology.

 

But the good news is he's doing well and milking it for all it's worth. Here he is relaxing on the bed on a decorative sham (he didn't really want to lie on just a cotton pillow case) watching Law & Order.

 

Next step for me: pet insurance.

The ward at night - little light,

Dark to the world, dark to the self.

my body stirs, something's not right.

I look around, no nurse in sight.

 

My bladder full, I'm now in pain.

Is it my imagination or an infection?

I'm pulling my hair out, going insane.

No, it's this bloody catheter, it does not drain.

 

OK, I say, I'll act my age

And teeter down to the nurses' station

To explain my case: my blockage

and try my bladder to salvage.

 

"I'll take you in for a quick look"

So into the treatment room we go.

She does things methodically by the book.

I think: just free the flow, by hook or by crook.

 

The nurse she does a bladder scan

As I lay grimacing on my back.

Yes, it looks like there is a dam,

So she'll give me a flush, that's the plan.

 

Soon I'm flowing - what a relief.

To empty my bladder - ecstasy!

Now I feel drained, like an old tea leaf

And thank the nurse with heart felt belief.

 

The ward is dark, but not just night,

dark sounds too: moans, groans and retching,

Men alone with their urinary plight,

Waiting for morning and hope and light.

 

Goerge

 

George wouldn't stay in bed,

He couldn't lay down his weary head.

He found it very painful to pee

And his dribble resulted in agony,

So he would walk around

Like a mouse, barely a sound.

But at night, with no light,

Wasn' t seen as safe, not right.

So the nurses told him to stop,

To stay put, lie down: plop.

But lying down would make him scream,

So they administered liquid morphine.

Losing his way, losing his fight,

George had such a miserable night.

As the nurses came and fetched

I listened whilst he retched and retched.

 

In the morning he was taken down to surgery,

Please God, help this man I plea.

Did he listen? I don't know

By mid-morning I could go.

 

Life is sometimes very hard

When life deals us an unlucky card,

But why all this wretched pain?

It's enough to drive a soul insane.

*** Chapter 5 - παραμένω ***

  

There is no ferryman. Over the infamous River Styx, four carriers cross with neither toll nor care. It is, in no uncertain terms, a trespass, and Diana of Themyscira is well aware that Charon's disappearance is not a blessing in disguise to the expedition. If there is any grace for her only two friends in this place, Diana knows, it will need to be salvaged.

 

The princess sinks to one knee, and whispers to the magic water babbling beneath them all. An unsettled Baroness von Gunther demands she be restored to her feet. Her men practically march over Barbara——resolving to go around Epimetheus——and aim their weaponry at Diana's skull to motivate her; she stands, in her own time. She nervously wrings one of her bracers, and spots Barbara's discerning gaze: Indicative of the professor's forte having helped her, in part, to work out Diana's action.

 

"… It is the way of my kin, to take oaths on the body of Styx. To consecrate our resolution to the eldest of beings, and some believe, to better one's fortune in their trials."

 

Epimetheus' nods quicken. "That's right. Perhaps, I too might..?"

 

Diana holds up her hands tightly, to allay him. "No. I have tried the baroness' patience enough as it is. And in truth… it is a superstition more than anything."

 

"Really. That's the superstition," Barbara comments, eyeballing their present state of affairs. Her derision dries up in no time, in the face of the inescapably staggering kingdom they have fallen into.

 

"Would you look at this place?" she inhales.

 

Every facet of the domain, from the alarmingly base aspect of its watchtower, to its air, should shun a prudent being, but Hades flouts these worldly principles. It beckons, like the sirens in many a chronicled voyage, and it holds Barbara and the rest in cold arms. For a time. The railing under Barbara's elbows begins to sting, from an updraft coming off of the second river they have chosen to weather. The Pyriphlegethon arches its back, spewing magma in a near miss on the skiff's belly. If only to keep their minds off of the heat——as she may well have excused herself, if pressed——Barbara takes this moment to know her companions' thoughts.

 

"Diana?"

 

Before now, the Amazon has not heard the woman's voice without defenses in place.

 

"If any of us even live through this, who is this apple going to? How can we know ‘the fairest’ must be a woman?"

 

"I cannot believe that Eris could bring herself to devise a challenge suggesting otherwise," Diana grimly advises. "Even for her to delight in our preconceptions."

 

Epimetheus sits down, grabbing his legs. A few grunts later, an inspired look washes over him.

 

"The Golden Maidens. Of Hephaestus' forge? I have heard they are, flawless."

 

"Which one?" Barbara logically follows up with.

 

"Physical beauty led to ruin once already," Diana breaks it to him, tolerantly.

 

Epimetheus shrinks. "I—"

 

"Should've thought of that," Barbara intonates. "You'll get the next one, big man."

 

Crossing her arms, Diana elects to clue Barbara in. "Epimetheus making the choice is mandatory. He is Eris' champion."

 

"… I'm not laughing," Barbara warns.

 

"Everyone must be considered," Diana gives her cousin counsel, "immortal or not. Remember there are many faces of attraction, qualities that make one 'fair.'"

 

"It could be any one of the goddesses of justice," Barbara despairs. "How can there possibly be one answer?"

 

Diana steps aside, for Barbara alone to hear her. "I've long thought the puzzle a paradox. Would the one chosen, worthy to judge, not be ‘the fairest’ themselves?"

 

Barbara glances over the princess' shoulder. "Oh surely not."

 

"Marilyn Monroe," Epimetheus puts forth, to Barbara's pique.

 

"Physical beau—"

 

"She is a philanthropist," he frowns.

 

No sooner has the trio washed their hands of the conundrum, for now, than one mercenary shouts for the party to listen with him. The third river approaches. The thrumming, which is imminently to act as a dirge, is heard by all.

 

Reason has it that the contaminant over the water is too evocative to be fog; instead of being dispersed by the transports, it takes to them magnetically, scaling their hulls and worming over their rails. The ghostly residue sings a dreadful tune, like an ever-present chamber fraught with plague, just low enough and with such discontinuity that Barbara and the rest cannot hope to put it out of mind. Diana exchanges looks with Von Gunther, affirming her earlier directions, and with that, their trajectory slopes ever closer to the Cocytus' slick banks.

 

The hollow moan of the river is not what the adventurers have primarily been tracking, as they come to find. Further inland towards the dwelling of Hades, from across the flattest tract they have yet encountered, the most pervasive chorus of wails drifts to their sore ears. Cyber, whose augmented senses stand to be ravaged by this environment, roughly takes the controls from their pilot and propels the caravan into a maddening flight over the plains. The wild sobs, of course, only worsen. Her head set to burst from input, Cyber doubles over the throttle in a stupor, cranking it almost to its breaking point. When from out of the dark, a tall, bent shape whooshes past the port side and overhead, nearly decapitating the men on the bow, Von Gunther barks for Cyber to be removed. No one volunteers, until Diana bolts to the deranged woman, wrapping hands around her enemy's and throwing back the lever about to doom the transport. The line of skiffs lurches to a halt.

 

Cyber regains her bearings, instinctively fighting Diana's control, but neither one has the fortitude for this dance. They keep one another in a lock, finding their breath while slowly deescalating. Diana looks away, ahead of them; Cyber continues staring at the ship's savior, until the cacophony catches back up with her. It forces her to stoop in full surrender, and without pretense or posture, without thinking much at all, decently, Diana takes her shoulder.

 

Von Gunther and most others have white-knuckle holds any part of the sled convenient to them. Same as her guards, Barbara had dropped to the deck at the close call. She twists her head to see Epimetheus stood straight, looking prepared for incoming danger and, notably, not as if some had recently grazed his hair.

 

"You might've been… oh never mind," Barbara relents, dusting herself off.

 

Epimetheus, bewildered by this concern, pats her arm, doubling the bewilderment aboard. He trots off to where he last saw Diana.

 

The Amazon warrior has lighted on Hades' land officially, leaping the last meters from their lead transport. Aberrantly, at this depth in the planet, the ground here is a rich loam, though this has not helped the scant trees——yews, quite dead——dotting the shallow, bluish hills. The particularly large trunk that would have caused a wreck, now behind them, is something of a marker for this "orchard".

 

It seems the crying cannot feasibly be any nearer, echoing between the decomposed wood, but still, no source betrays itself. Diana preemptively motions for silence from the others, and not a moment before Von Gunther makes her rival's jump, moving to reestablish dominance over their course. The heroine cares not; she looks back to Barbara and Epimetheus, eyes wide at the beacon which the skiffs are making for. The Red Panzer takes a hint.

 

"Mach diese Lichter aus," his order seeps harshly from his lips.

 

With haste, the headlamps down the string of transports clunk off, prompting winces from all except the resident Titan. The crying is unwavering, which could somehow be taken as a relief.

 

Diana's eyes make a cursory sweep of the land, then another. She detects a scattering of the dried-out saplings defined by cloven trunks at their bases, and every one of them, bearing a mere two branches. Furthermore, when one of these putative trees spasms, and clambers deeper into the gnarled grove, Diana's heart skips. A terrible fixation returns to her psyche: An old tale, from days when her mother would put her to bed, and when it was fact that the evening was the only time in which there could exist monsters.

 

"Hera," Diana blasphemes, in shock. "Not… Maenads."

 

"You see them…" Von Gunther flinches, experiencing a sighting for herself. Her spear is tucked in at her hip. Some crew members point out and gasp at another receding, gangling blur.

 

From the bow, Cyber chokes "What are they," with precious little spirit left, ready to collapse all over again.

 

"The muses of Dionysus," Barbara murmurs, with Diana picking up the rest.

 

"Mad, from indulgences in life. In death, in the Fields of Mourning, they will have lost more than their sanity. Here, they are not flesh, or souls. Impressions. Of annihilation."

 

…

 

"We go no further with these carriers. They will see that we are invaders."

 

Von Gunther is taken aback at this conclusion. "You think we will leave behind our best fortifications t—"

 

"Your fortifications are nothing here," Diana's voice roils. "I have told you time and again, we did not come here as we should have. We earned no shield from the shades of death. I assure you, they can harm us. And the maenads… they wish to."

 

The skiffs touch down, allowing to disembark: Cyber, limping to the lead; Barbara, who trips the last step off the telescopic gangway, with Panzer ever her escort; and Epimetheus, who has two dozen soldiers overtly keeping him between themselves and the heart of the dead forest. Their parade approaching, Diana finds it all too easy to picture eyes going grey, skin paling and sinking into bone. All of them, wandering to their ends. Unless.

 

"If I walk, they will think me one more lost soul…"

 

"You're not going alone," Epimetheus and Von Gunther shoot her down, as one. This offends them both.

 

"With each person allowed in its presence, you feed them to the apple's suggestions. We would destroy ourselves before we remembered what we were fighting over. I swear, I will bring you back the apple."

 

Diana knows appealing to her friends will gain her no ground with the baroness. "… Let your men stay."

 

"We will take whomsoever we wish. Panzer!"

 

Her lieutenant calls for half the men to secure their landing, and the other, to form a wide semicircle behind Diana's guidance. Panzer takes this time as they form up to boast at the princess, Barbara in hand.

 

"You will feel better, keeping an eye on her yourself, I think. … Safer, this way, yes? Doctor?" he corroborates with his shield. Barbara's eyes tell Diana everything on the woman's mind: The terror, the anger, and the uncanny readiness binding them.

 

Diana catches Cyber still walking, apart from any of her purported allies. She balks the masked woman with a hand into her shoulder; be it defensively or trustingly, Cyber mirrors the action. They again pause like this. Diana looks at the clenched fist on her, at the infinitesimal smile of courage Epimetheus has, and all the hateful and fearful men around them.

 

“… We must not let them realize we are of the living. … Do not answer them. Do not be afraid.”

 

Onwards into the ambiguous den, the band trickles. Panzer's formation disintegrates in seconds. No step taken is remiss. Every tree is intensely studied, though this care is soon made unnecessary: Diana stalks the maenads' coarser vocalizations in as straight a path possible, and instead of the ambush on everyone's minds, their first proper encounter with Hades' inhabitants is a gradual and horrible exhibition.

 

They are sallow. Their only coverage is mange-riddled hair and tattered pelts, rusty in color, hooked around their gaunt silhouettes. Some, in small rabbles——and others lost all to themselves——simulate a raucous soirée by throwing their bodies to phantom tones, only to come to standstills, perhaps trying to remember. Some tussle and strangle one another in the loose soil. In the spindly branches, still more of them laze and stretch. They all cry, unbearably.

 

Diana and her shaky company play through, and largely, the maenads ignore them in their hectic fashion. In the way of their weapons and attentions, the men selected by Von Gunther represent commendable restraint, but not to perfection: Aimlessly, one maenad scuttles from out the dry brush and into the shin of a soldier just to Diana's right, and the Amazon stays his sidearm before it can be pointed.

 

The maenad blenches and unduly staggers back and forth from the collision, but the amber eyes behind its tangled mane lock onto the soldier, Diana, and Cyber beside her, one at a time. It asks them each,

 

“Have you drink?”

 

It asks, with the glistening white smile of every maenad, tortured into their lips for centuries. Diana moves forward with the other two, like they are children, who would otherwise have kept gawking. Epimetheus and his cousin are the only ones to comprehend the maenad's words, spoken in too archaic a form of Greek for Barbara. Out of habit, the professor might have asked for Epimetheus to translate, but she has in mind Diana's last words; instead of comprehending, Barbara does what she can to not be afraid.

 

Panzer has been rapt ever since the denizens of the orchard appeared. Stably he treads, hardly containing his intoxication by the suspense. The maenads' pleas to the unknowing men come and go as a tide, when the next huddle of ragged semblances catches on to their "sisters'" newest fascination. Darting past and between legs, then skulking, slinking in their dolor, they ask.

 

"Have you drink?"

 

They cry.

 

"Have you drink?"

 

Busied with enforcing abstinence from any upheavals, Diana is caught unaware by the nauseous hike taking them almost to the fourth river, the Lethe, whose waters are as calm as silk being pulled. The trees here open into something of a small, dried-up atoll, maenads sprinkled about its rim… and down the deceiving grade: A nest of detritus, five feet high and across, cradling what they all sought.

 

Diana had not given thought to how the apple might appear; accurate to Eris' forecast, it is deteriorating. Of regular proportions, it bares abnormal dappling from what could——in a less abnormal place——be called oxidation. This tinges its gold with unappealing umber, but set within the suffocating blue tint of the maenads' place of unrest, it emanates a color still so lurid as to effectively sting the eyes. On its skin, the treacherous scrawl survives: "to the most fair"

 

It has dawned on Barbara that like most every abominable attraction in Hades, the Golden Apple has a voice all its own. But this voice is pitiable, in need. Yes, like a lost child. Telling the woman that only she would do for its protector.

 

"We have to… get it back to England. We need it studied, in my… I need it."

 

Diana knows better than to contradict her, now. If Barbara is still making excuses to have it, then she has not succumbed to it. The princess can hear it; Von Gunther and Cyber will have too, by now, as Eris of Discourse so invidiously contrived. A timer is running, more certainly than ever. Even so, Diana impedes Epimetheus from stepping right over the ledge to the fell treasure.

 

From the cusp of the cavity, the women and men evaluate an extraction. The maenads' patrolling is ubiquitous, but without intent. They flail about the articulated corners of the mound on which the apple is perched, which owes its composition to entwined bodies: Hands invading ribcages, jaws around throats, all mashed into a pedestal under their own power, or whatever power they had in their afterlife. These were truly the maenads, their souls. Epimetheus' inquisitive face darkens.

 

"Zeus must have thought the apple would offer them rest, and so vindicate Eris' wiles," Diana relates. She turns for a moment from the graphic jigsaw. "… Even their spirits perished."

 

She feels Cyber tugging away from her. Diana actually unhands the woman, but walks backward with her to negotiate.

 

"There is no need for us all to risk a trap. Take everyone back to the ships. You have my word that I will give to you the apple."

 

Cyber doggedly refuses. "Out of my way."

 

In the blink of an eye that Diana idles to tell Epimetheus not to leave Barbara's side, Panzer has offloaded Barbara onto his nearest man, breezed around the heroine, and rammed his robotic arm into Cyber's hip. There is a strum of energy felt in all their chests, and with it, Cyber pitches forward, to be stabilized by her saboteur. Patches of her sentient armor drip away.

 

Diana's vengeance is alone deferred by the guns that have Barbara covered. Von Gunther notes, with an incredulous eye, the Amazon's hampered response. "Spare us. Cyber would never shame your end with remorse."

 

"She isn't breathing as she should," Epimetheus says, redundantly, but genuinely.

 

"Low-bred," the baroness derogates Cyber with, passing her up. "Presumptuous. As if you were here for any reason but your weapons and your rage."

 

The doomed villainess has no vision. She cannot appreciate her ears' long-awaited freedom from the maenads' crying, for the enduring organic portions of her now being smothered in their cast prison. She can wriggle, like larvae, and that is all. The wispy, green light in Panzer's forearm winks out.

 

"Centralized, conductivity-neutralizing radiation. We call it the 'Anti-Elektrisch'," he triumphs, lowly, at her collar.

 

He eases Diana's lasso off his former accomplice's belt, and once delivering a pithy "Auf wiedersehen," with his enhanced strength he hauls her from the armpit, sending the paralyzed Cyber in a furious arc to the Lethe's passive body: A game, to him, although the splash has the utility of distracting a few maenads from the circle. Their overthrow assured, Von Gunther and her enforcer begin the final stretch to their ultimate desire, with Panzer theoretically awarding the apple.

 

Barbara, whether from the apple carving away her discretion, or from her legitimate revulsion, is having none of it.

 

“Illiterates,” she mocks their backs. “Neither one of you has asked yourself if Troy was always the outcome in mind. If you take that apple back to the world—”

 

For Barbara still to not be entertaining “the fairest”, even for herself, Diana is sure the professor has retained her wits. There is a hope to buy time with them. Her eyes swivel onto Panzer, to the Lethe, to Panzer again.

 

The indent in the earth carries Von Gunther's voice well, as she does not raise it or turn for the Englishwoman's nettling. “It is very simple equation, why the apple led to devastation all that time ago, little girl. It was crafted too early for me to accept it.”

 

"Barmy…" Barbara's diagnosis dies on the vine.

 

Von Gunther is five strides from the apple's altar. “I will have favor with the gods. A seat at the council that can sculpt this planet’s population with a mere thought. The divine adoration of those reprieved, and worthy to behold me. In a fair world.”

 

"Kill me, before I have to see it."

 

"Hmm… 'after.' In higher society," Von Gunther schools Barbara, "there will be demand for laborers. And bloodsport."

 

Panzer's unseating of the Golden Apple is perfunctory, immature. Once possessed, though, he shudders with servile gravity at it. For him, his helmet's likeness is lost in the trinket's dim reflection. It is the baroness he sees, premier, surpassing all else.

 

"Through the will of Odin, meine Herrscherin, I give to you—"

 

"Minerva is wrong," Diana rebuts: First, projecting down to the villains, then carefully taking the incline to the apple herself. The soldiers' resolve to keep Diana and her friends in line survives as little more than show. Weapons are on standby, but none of Von Gunther's men feel they have an enemy in the Amazon, not with the peripheral song and dance of the maenads, and the face of Hades' house leaning in.

 

"There is one who may accept the apple, who will not bring about disaster. I was shown what will follow, should you claim it, Baroness. Yours will be an ephemeral reign."

 

"You were shown," mimics Von Gunther, not at all listening. The apple whimpers. It needs her.

 

"Eris forewarned you would beat us to it," Diana declares, moderating her persistence so as not to be transparent, "and so you have. I tell you now, in your faction's subjugation of the Earth, you do not live to lord over it. The apple trades hands over and over, sowing the desolation of all you love and hate, indiscriminately."

 

Diana leaves them space——only a second or two——to deliberate, before she imposes completely on their ritual.

 

"If you cannot believe my words," she indicates her plundered lasso on Panzer's person, "see my mind. The truth."

 

"I've no use for your gods' omens," Von Gunther shelters herself. With the curl of the baroness' mouth, one pulse in her temple, Diana knows she has struck it. The lurking insecurity.

 

"But," comes the rationalization, "to glimpse our finest hours, and how I might thwart this, untimely end… I accept."

 

The woman sanctions Panzer to move in on Diana, who turns her back to signal concordance, with her arms behind, to be bound. Panzer privately smiles behind his mask of Death, insignificantly swapping the apple to his left hand to utilize the lasso with his stronger, favored right. Diana's thoughts are not of the surface degradation. They are entirely of Barbara and Epimetheus, both of whom watch their ally doubtingly, blind to the princess' ends, to her fear for them should she fail.

 

Timed with Panzer taking her arm, and not before, Diana gives what she suspects to be her penultimate words to her cousin, and to the daring woman she has only begun to know. They are the same words she last gave them: Not comforting, as before, but commanding.

 

"Do not be afraid."

 

The lasso slips around her hands. As it has forever operated, not with magic and not with guile can any one or thing in its bind cheat their nature; their truth is revealed for all to see. Diana's truth is that she has seen no explicit, future catastrophe to share with Von Gunther. The truth is that she is very much afraid herself.

 

The truth is, Diana is alive.

 

The foxes' crying stops.

 

Everyone stops.

 

It all unfolds in a flash. At her back, Diana ripples the lasso with just her wrists; her proficiency manipulates the middle of the rope to funnel as with a mind of its own into a slipknot around the apple in Panzer's left, human hand. As downplayed as her first movement, she flicks a shoulder forward. The apple slingshots from a stupefied Panzer's fingers, by her ear and, without arcing, into Epimetheus' chest. The item bounces disappointingly onto the compost of Hades' playing field, back over the lip of the crater. Epimetheus flops down in a panic, and axes his arm over the apple to pin it before it can again find Panzer.

 

The Titan laughs, once, at his debatable foresight, but remembering himself, he and Barbara as well catch on to what Diana means to happen.

 

One maenad hanging off its claimed tree bristles with new ardor, having arrived at a conclusion about this positively glowing figure sharing its home.

 

"Driiink"

 

The champion of the Amazons performs an athletic spring and backbend over Panzer, unworried that she remains leashed to him as she lands and thunders up the ridge: Not to regroup, but further on still than the rest of their party, off to the Lethe. She wails like a great wind to her friends. "BACK TO THE SHIPS!"

 

Then the eruption.

 

Every maenad catapults ravenously after their departing sustenance, whooping and salivating as they go. Barbara narrowly avoids being bowled over by two of them in the pandemonium of Von Gunther's men likewise hopping about in the stampede. It is only for Diana's distraction, masking the scent of fear that hangs sickly-sweet over them, that they all survive. Von Gunther and Panzer are beet-red, agape, torn between the apple's retrieval, punishment for Diana, and the thirsting horde streaming down the dish they find themselves served in.

 

A maenad, clever enough to head Diana off from its fortuitous starting position, flings from the crest above Diana to behead her with one stroke by its cursed claws. Cutting it so close that she sees the tears dried in dirty striping on the predator's taut face, Diana limbos and pummels it in the gut. It spirals over her, spraying soil when it impacts the downhill. It never stops. Disoriented, livid, it keeps on its careless warpath. To Panzer.

 

Nigh-exceeding his rein on Diana, he grudgingly gives her up to convert the arm into a cannon and opens fire, ranging on the maenad unwisely late. It bucks its head into his hipbone, and pairing with the series of blasts he releases under their feet, they are carried——like a skipping-stone over a lake——back up the pitch he had traversed to be here. With jets of earth in tow they violently carousel by Epimetheus, chipping the ridge which he has not yet vacated. Barbara is pulling on his baldric to encourage his legs to take him someplace else. She strives not to fixate on the gold peeking through the bend of his arm.

 

"Come on!"

 

"TAKE MY APPLE," Von Gunther retches with unbridled malice at her pawns, eyes aflame, "FROM HIS DEAD HANDS!"

 

But none in Hades now answer her. The flame in her eyes is snuffed by the oncoming charge. Erroneously, she takes up her polearm and wartime handgun, and twenty maenads immediately peel off for the easier meal.

 

Summiting the pit, lasso at long last held, Diana catches sight. She swings her wrapped arm up. "No Paula! They see only me! DON'—"

 

Von Gunther is swarmed by the maenads, their throng tightening like a noose. The spear of the valkyries is bitten in half, through her knuckles. They wrangle her neck; hips and shoulders are dislocated by the beggars' cluster. Then, the last maenad to join in forces an entire arm into their warm cask.

 

The baroness is thrown down in a fountain of viscera. Slice after psychotic slice rends muscles into grisly confetti, raining over the centuries-parched serfs of Dionysus. When the meat is picked over, they inhale the soaked earth itself, and clean the spatter off each other, not sated but refreshed; aroused, even. In all of four seconds, the baptismal episode crescendos, and stops with the efficiency of clockwork. There is more drink, and no longer could it ever be concealed from the maenads' ignited perceptions. Their pinprick eyes peruse the options above. Glistening white smiles have turned a runny red. It could be said that the maenads were alive again. Alive, and raving mad.

 

Diana has not lingered, knowing that observance or guilt over the drawback is pointless now. The pack which had never faltered in its pursuit matches her own dead sprint for the Lethe. Barbara and Epimetheus take inspiration, in the opposite direction, ahead of most but not all of the soldiers.

 

Barbara does not censure Diana's detour, though compelled. Every molecule of air in the woman's body and the others' is issued to the run, and only the run. When the maenads' blaring gekkering fires up their spines and rattles in their jaws, this purges any fledgling stratagems that the individuals of the rout have naively shaping in their minds. Their flight turns primitive in nature, brought back to cave dwellers fleeing disembodied teeth in the night.

 

Frantically scanning for their skiffs, Barbara is instead treated to, on either side, a flurry of ashen limbs blending with those of the trees. To no one's surprise, the maenads are gaining. Barbara's heels tear up the ground. The irregular drumming extending all through her body makes each footfall seem inferior to the one before, like the one that won't be enough. Just then, Epimetheus——not lagging in the slightest, arms working like train pistons——obscures the demonic tide for her.

 

"They'll get me first," he decides for the two of them. He does not look at her. He scarcely has a smile contained, and she scarcely understands.

 

To their left, a soldier fissures under the weight of one maenad dropping out of its arboreal hideaway. Barbara somehow makes her legs pump faster, while the creatures' rote carnage occupies Epimetheus to such a degree that his companion has to alert him of an obstacle.

 

"Tree!"

 

Barbara has a shock when the giant of a man counterintuitively rounds it nearer to an inbound maenad. Taking the professor's word a much different way than intended, Epimetheus rocks too far forward on his step past the tree which is only just taller than him, but hooks his free hand upwards on its trunk to equalize. For the Titan, the husk uproots as cleanly as a pen from a well. He brings it overhead, almost in the maenad's arms, and swats the monster into the spongy soil, underneath his jump. The extempore weapon is rendered smithereens; Epimetheus, while keeping pace, brushes away the shavings, the Golden Apple acting as his broom.

 

"… Worked," is all the breath Barbara can spare for his feat.

 

"Yes," he chirps.

  

~~

  

Diana takes her last possible moment to circumvent a tackle. She twists out of the way to let a maenad scream by, and as it swings around, she kicks its chin upside-down. It is downed for three seconds, shaking crazily before taking off into the riot again.

 

Three minutes, Cyber has been under.

 

Another twenty seconds to get her out, if she has not drifted. Four minutes, at a stretch, to have her on a transport.

 

For resuscitation, no math could be done.

 

Diana needs the maenads to catch up a little more.

  

~~

  

Barbara almost misses the next soldier taken in the rush, for how quickly it is over. A maenad boosts him by the seat of his pants, striking him twice mid-air, and he lands in two wrenched halves. Only one other hunter stops to fight for the scraps; the rest rather like their odds of a body all to themselves.

 

Another soldier thinks he can get off a shot, but he snags a strap on his bandolier. His boot doesn't clear the other. His consequent seconds are filled with his squeals for help, with a maenad backing him into a snapped-off trunk. It impales him over it, but slowly, as an infant would be laid in a crib. Barbara zooms by it. What she had sworn to Diana was no empty motto. Not one tear.

  

~~

  

Through Diana's parries, her group of maenads has been evened, and now they race neck-and-neck for the first taste.

 

Eight paces from the Lethe, her blood on fire, Diana brings her arms out from her sides.

  

~~

  

The men who were left minding the airships have reactivated their floodlights, to witness the encroaching nightmare. Their comrades and the maenads are equally blinded, but no one stalls. The men on the ground yell for assistance, with Barbara even joining them, and then the first shot punches the dirt between them and the skiffs. And another. It is unclear if they were poor attempts on the frightful, bloodied shapes further back, or if it mattered at all to those who fired. The men on the ground yell louder. A few unadvisable shots are returned to the skiff's grille, and with them, a new line is drawn.

 

Epimetheus points at the ships. They are rotating left, as one.

 

"Oh no they do not," Barbara snarls.

  

~~

  

Diana hurls herself headfirst at the Lethe's textureless surface, and whets one silver bracer off the other. Reverberating mightily enough for a steeple, a fan of sparks wraps around the focused typhoon the Amazon has produced, and the Lethe, almost voluntarily, parts twenty meters in either direction. Diana falls, and the maenads flow in, a second behind her.

 

Cynthia Cyber's mutilated body——caked in silt, at the very bottom of the temporary passageway——rocks minimally away from the gale of Diana's making, too heavy to be pried up by the awesome force. But not by Diana herself.

 

The riverbed is so soft that, in a squat, Diana is embedded all the way to her shoulders, on which she has counted. This situates her to scoop Cyber up on her neck. With next to nothing solid beneath her to work against, Diana achieves a push-off that could compact diamonds, which is only just enough to send the two in a reversed vault, surfing over and against the downpour of maenads.

 

Vile breath and claws tag the heroine's back, and she, with her dead weight cargo, is slowed. Diana screams, hefting Cyber out of reach. She defies the cuts, the very air obstructing her, to rise. The Lethe is returning to engulf them all.

 

The fifth river is not destined to be crossed this day, yet in the Acheron's darkest trench, the knell of Diana's resilience is heard. Someone there slumbering, dreaming ever-new miseries for the world high above, slumbers no more.

  

~~

  

Dodging under the hail of laser-fire, Barbara cannot believe she and Epimetheus seem to maintain their distance from the retreating convoy, before becoming aware of a separate feud aboard: The command ship that Barbara and the other abductees had come here in is presently bringing up the rear of its autopilot's own heading, as all four transports retrace their exact slide into the Underworld. The deserters had all piled into the command ship, in error, as close to the danger as they could be, and now, all those not unloading their guns' dark energy on the ground are grappling over the console. Half of them try to disengage the predetermined route to foolishly find their own, faster way out of this living hell. The rest are having second thoughts and wanting to delay for their stragglers down below, and for once, Barbara has a reason to wish some of them their lives a while longer.

 

The unlikely pair is practically out of the orchard, running a half-minute behind their only chance for deliverance, when Barbara and Epimetheus' paths are forced to diverge. A tree before them explodes from a blast at their backs, credited to a maenad sideswiping one fatigued soldier's Cyber-cannon. Barbara's heart sinks when one, then two of the creatures fully outdistance her. She nearly stops altogether, to accept what must follow, but none of the feral specters double back. They spring to dig their fingers into the steel of the command ship's underside, and begin to creep up and around, ducking away from the men at the rails, biding their time to let the greatest feast of all commence.

 

It is worse, Barbara realizes, to see them like this——processing, patient——than at their most manic. She and the current survivors on foot are being saved for later. This in mind, and their lead on the maenads lost forever, they decide it will be now, or never, that they push back.

 

The handful of ground troops pepper the maenads' numbers with their firearms, and the mystic weapons prove effective, to a point; the pallid beasts drop off like insects, crisped and smoldering as an occult virus grips their bony forms, though they right themselves in a matter of seconds after hitting dirt. At the back of the chase, and a problem once again, they are but a fraction slower than earlier.

 

Pressured into defense, some maenads still hanging on give up the skiff, and an unexpectedly coordinated maneuver of their own rains down to thresh four soldiers instantly. Barbara is spritzed by the blender of crimson, whipping her head away to see Epimetheus with one of their otherworldly enemies in a chokehold, and two wrists in one hand, to hinder it from taking his face off.

 

With its victorious howl, the first maenad to swing itself onto the deck clears the two parties waring over the master control panel, leaving the ships at a less-than-ideal but workable speed to overtake, and board. There will not be another chance to make it, before their train passes the Cocytus, and transcends Hades for all time. Thus, what once was "full-tilt" for Barbara is brutally redefined, where her bones may as well be blades within her muscles. She hastens all the way ahead of the besieged command ship, and when she can no longer, she launches herself onto one of the gravitational pontoons of the transport third-in-line.

 

The Englishwoman looks up, into the barrel of a gun. Another soldier has had the same idea to abandon the rear skiff, and is not liable to share his sanctuary. He spits some obscenity to her, where she can do nothing except cling like a rat. He goes to take his shot; he takes another, straight through his eye, from one of the last men still up and running. Barbara screams shortly, in perplexed relief. Her savior is young just like the Panzer was, charging with a limp, and for his terror, his actions cannot be read into. Had he killed his brother-in-arms with the conscience to save another, or only for his own prospects, the indeterminate gesture will remain so in Barbara's mind, to her dying day, when a maenad blitzes him to bits. Barbara gets climbing.

 

She gropes up the rungs running around the hull to the transom, so far as to have an arm over the topmost bar at the time that the maenad, slithering around the command ship's bow above her, sniffs her out. The thing shuffles about on the outside of the vehicle, nose down, and tenses its haunches to take Barbara: Mortal woman, facing the undeath of its amber eyes, is petrified as only she can be. Right as it is clutching its way between the skiffs, with claws aloft, a booming voice sounds out:

 

"Dr. Minerva!"

 

Epimetheus lopes desperately for the impending scene. With all his might he casts his maenad into the aft command ship, curling it around the fuselage as if it were a damp towel. Underfoot, he fetches a far-flung spike from a shattered tree, which still burns at one end with Cyber's arcane fire.

 

"Tree!" he recommends.

 

His toss spins up to Barbara. Her only opportunity being to capture it underhand, the professor takes her end of the torch back into herself, and by a hair's width she fends off the embrace of her abhorrent hunter. Like oil, the maenad's chest sizzles against Barbara's deterrent, and before it plummets from the gunwale in a fetal bundle it shreds the sleeve off of her secured arm. First, skeptical of even taking in air, the woman shivers along with her prevailing light, but then between the torch's flickering, she sees. She sees, and her own fire is rejuvenated.

 

She observes in wonderment: Diana of Themyscira, Cynthia Cyber over her back, pounding closer, faster than Barbara could ever dream. Epimetheus gives a cheer——prematurely, he fears——as his cousin accelerates to the maenads both hounding him and walling her off, but the pack has not the time to formulate a takedown of this new quarry presenting itself. Pulling up next to them, Diana contorts over her shoulder at one's lunge to bat it off her and into a backspin; the Amazon whirls back to her feet without missing her stride.

 

Mesmerized, Barbara is not braced for an increase in altitude, almost biting her tongue in the shift. She catches herself on the railing and recalls their journey here: When they had made this descent before. Layered under the gunfire and mayhem of the command ship, the dread melody of the Cocytus again infects her ears.

 

"Diana! Epimetheus, the river!"

 

The third ship is already passing over the crevice, spurring Diana on to swoop under Epimetheus' arm and hurry him along; he untucks the apple in his care, to her elation. Her yell galvanizes them both.

 

"Do not let go of me!"

 

The princess draws the disabled arm of Cyber over her front like a javelin and points around at the final two maenads scraping at their heels. Fingertips latched under the manual triggers for the inventor's wrist-mounted missiles, Diana skips the three of them a foot off the ground, then ejects the full arsenal.

 

They ride a radiant shockwave far over the Cocytus' murky, wanting hands, and without need of her lasso to surmount the distance, Diana and company conserve momentum in such excess that their armored legs bust through a low wall on the stern, face-planting them to general safety. Barbara takes and then comes out of unpunctual cover, amazed but unsure if this is a time to celebrate. As fast as Barbara can scurry to look them over, Diana is upright and whisking Cyber to the skiff's wheelhouse. She lays the comatose woman down, setting to digging a hand through the control console's housing, easily as with paper. Barbara watches while offering Epimetheus an unneeded hand, which he takes anyway; it is for their escape he is stifling a giggle.

 

"What are you doing?" Barbara pants to Diana.

 

"Pardon me," says Epimetheus.

 

Diana's lasso soars from her hand again and cinches, strung onward to the skiff which is second from the lead.

 

"Her organs are machine," she worries over the body. "Siphoning this ship's power into her, I might make her to breathe again. I have seen her heal similarly. … But you must both take the next ship, before I try. She may need this one, all."

 

Barbara's aggravation is not duly expressed in an off-color remark before Epimetheus keeps her moving for their glowing lifeline. When they stop a moment to estimate the dismaying gap they have still to brave, and as Diana prepares the cables, the list of the transport diverts all their eyes to a figure far below, which skims beyond the Cocytus, though she is not slowing at the barrier. Even over the expanse, they can discern her as feminine.

 

Knotted joints end with large hands folded like bats' wings, and a dusty aura of dead skin hangs as a foul halo. The matted hair spun thoroughly around an elongated skull spares them her face. After everything, the heroes nonetheless stare, unbelieving, at a view nothing short of a curse in and of itself. Her hands uncouple from the cocoon and reach. Diana now also sees that she has used the river and penned two maenads in a frenzy, as well as one last soldier, chased so fair afield that he lost his chance at the ships long ago.

 

This exile of Hades, awoken from the Acheron, consumes them without hesitation. Her dress' chthonic train kisses their heads, and from the inside out spreads a mist clouding their eyes, to drag them into dreary acedia. They fold and fall, colorless even by the maenads' measure: Refuse, never to think or to move again.

 

"Relative of yours," Barbara shakily associates for Epimetheus, shimmying the lasso without being told. The Titan takes her lead.

 

"I've never had the displeasure."

 

"We know her only too well," Diana scowls. "She is sorrow, as old as Chaos itself. Perhaps older."

 

Weaving, robes cracking like whips, the devil Achlys takes flight after the ships extricating the souls she so covets. How she does cry. She humbles the maenads on the command vessel, coercing them to cringe and spit at her sight. Their flock endeavors to leave their depleted cornucopia, in exchange for the third skiff, but Diana——once convinced that her friends are at the point of no return to take the second——jams her cables against a discreet terminal in the ribbing of what armor Cyber has left.

 

The body starved for air jolts, and water flushes from the mask's vents, while the ship beneath the women convulses at the vampiric conduit. As all its lights dim, Cyber is swept up again by Diana and launched to their next safe haven. The third transport gives out before the maenads make contact, sending the last of the shadowy facsimiles tumbling with the sapped hull back to their purgatory, to cry, to hunger through a hundred more eras.

 

Barbara spills onto the second vehicle's transom, tracking Diana's landing further ahead: A sight more sure-footed than her last. The professor's exhausted arms then lug her back to the edge to check on Epimetheus' progress. He has more than enough strength but not the coordination for the activity, twirling right and left because he fails to use his legs to the fullest. Not helping the predicament is the apple, taking up one hand. Epimetheus spies his companion, and thrusts up the artifact, still eight feet short.

 

"Take it, for if I fall!"

 

Barbara is stunned, as though shot. At his words the world for her contracts around the Golden Apple, highlighted in splendorous warmth on its own plane of existence. That devout whisper, again insisting that it belong to the woman. And why should it not?

 

"You're… you give it, to me?"

 

Epimetheus ceases his struggle up the rope, retracting the apple an inch. The future does, this once, vividly paint a warning in his mind, for mingled in Barbara's aspect is another's. Fair. Innocent as she was dangerous, not knowing what she seeks, and seeking all the same. Even Epimetheus can think twice, to look upon Pandora, reincarnate.

 

"I—"

 

Barbara's hypnosis is intruded upon, when her leg nudges something that crunches.

 

~~

  

Diana yearns to break away to her cousin, to secure both him and the apple. The rescued body at her feet detains her from that wiser course.

  

~~

  

The something is a maenad's carcass, scorched and deformed. Much of its body appears caved in with scads of dints the right size and shape for knuckles. Now Barbara wakes.

  

~~

  

Diana waits, palm gingerly placed over the copper chin of Cyber; after endless seconds lapse, she feels life. The princess snaps back to the scene on the stern and is on her way, before Barbara's holler.

 

"DIANA! HE'S NOT—"

 

"Nicht so schnell!"

 

The Red Panzer trucks into Diana's lower back, with her shield in his bionic grasp. His blindside crams her into the cabinets under the seating at the ship's rails, and at once, he turns from her bruised heap, zeroing in on Barbara. Claw and shield flip aside on his prosthetic to make way for the cannon within. Barbara dives. The shot reshapes the stern down to the rudder; immense heat bends the rail tethering Epimetheus out and up, dangling the large man like bait on a fishing rod. He slips one arm's length back, to the pursuing Achlys.

 

Barbara turns over at Panzer's weighty footsteps, and is startled to make out that in the ferocious clash with his maenad, the soldier's only human arm must have been ripped from his body: Its dearth poorly cauterized, presumably by his own weapon. She finds him just about laughable, to picture him limbless, terrified, retreating all the way back to this ship for the ill-gotten hoard he had there. For a shield, of all things.

 

"You coward," the woman coughs.

 

Wordless as the Reaper, and gentle, Panzer holds the shield down on Barbara's chest. One boot powers into her wrist. The other kicks her in the ear, hard. Epimetheus, looking on as he must, tosses and yells, close to the end of his gold thread.

 

Diana is back in action to shunt Panzer with a bracer, saving her cousin from the offhanded attempt the villain makes to blast the moving target. Ducking out of a headlock, Panzer repels the Amazon volleying punches for his stomach. They dance and pirouette, Diana leading, skirting the melty edge of the transom. Her attacks, all glancing off the broad shield in a fireworks display, knock the mortal man to a knee, and Diana seizes the opening. She forks a hand under her poached shield and constricts the nerveless appendage's carapace. It stays impressively intact. Panzer keeps pushing and kicks at her leg, with no leverage, and to no effect.

 

Epimetheus takes one hand over the other, and clings. Barbara is up on an arm, then down again, leaking black from her ear. Trying to veil her worry, Diana threatens the aspiring assassin in a voice deeper than Hades. "You may still bleed out. Yield."

 

Panzer slumps enough to satisfy her, to then fire the grappling cord behind his hand. The shield hammers her nose and resets their match. Panzer waits for no retaliation; he takes her hip into his shoulder——and his shield, a tray——full-force, pivoting on his inside foot to shot-put Diana through the wheelhouse and bridge. She belts him once in the top of the helmet before she goes, her body trashing circuitry and subsequently frying for a nanosecond on the bed of newly-shaped blades, which bite into her preexisting lacerations. Dazed and with no counterweight for his move, her opponent sprawls too, a wreck.

 

Their right, rear gravitational generator dies. At the ship being jostled by the electrical upset, Barbara chases away the dark from her vision yet again. Panzer somehow stands, the picture of a weather-beaten shack, watching Diana sway semi-conscious in the toothy floorboards: Her run, and slashes suffered, having taken their toll. Head swimming, Barbara's only functioning ear transmits Panzer's haggard phrase.

 

"Those… were my oldest friends you killed," it grinds like metal. He lets go the shield.

 

Epimetheus is still two meters from the rail.

 

The hatch from whence Diana's shield had been acquired, concave on its hinge, takes some more turbulence and frees the remainder of Panzer's stowed trophies. Out skitters the Amazon sword, some jewelry whose owner cannot miss it, a partial raptor's wing riding atop… and one profound oddity, staring at Barbara without eyes: The head of Dr. Andonis Bal.

 

Realizing what it is expends the same time it does for Barbara to realize she is not stone. Her faculties sharpen on her anger, and to a crouch she rises with the temperature; beneath, the volcanic Pyriphlegethon roars at their departure. Panzer is too consumed to feel anything outside of himself.

 

Through the warped visor of his helmet, one, wild eye is visible. It does not soften, but rather slides, into a supremely unfeeling laser, affixed to the fallen sword. The Red Panzer recoups his regimental posture; he gathers his bleeding pride, contemplating Diana's transgressions, and a suitable reprisal, like it is arithmetic. He nods.

 

"I am going to flay you," he apprises the impaired princess, and as an automaton would, he trudges for her weapon, in range of the other, quite-forgotten woman.

 

Barbara fumbles for the head, nabbing just one of its snakes behind its mandibles right before the monstrosity rolls off into the firestorm leaping up at the hurtling sled. She presses a thumb on the scaly brow of her acquisition, and pounces——as best she can, on the askew bed of the transport——at Panzer.

 

She crashes a foot short of his boots, scrambling for a breathless moment, then crudely drives the fangs she has exposed from the dead serpent’s maw down his thigh and calf. Panzer shrieks.

 

Though its Gorgonian gaze is bygone, the venom of the head's many mouths has been lying in wait, no less potent than when produced. The vicious man's blood curdles in the leg, stopping him in his tracks. In this unthinkable heartbeat, Barbara bear hugs his waist and runs them both over the starboard railing.

 

His top half pops and sags back unnaturally on the bar, and he gasps, not at the severing of bone but in feeling himself fall. His claw lunges, for anything. It finds Barbara's left wrist. The Englishwoman's shoulder and ribs are towed tightly over the wall, to share his fate. As she screams, Diana and Epimetheus together, on their knees from last-ditch exertions, clasp her legs and belly from behind. More bones are splintered, now in Barbara's hand. The pincer strips her skin, but her friends guarantee: It cannot have her.

 

Stealing his final pound of flesh, Panzer's ruined, fragmental body spins away to the fiery seam perfectly, hauntingly aligned to take him. Sheathed in his ankle, his very own victims and their pledge shall act the part of his eternal ball and chain. Diana holds Barbara away, both of them pale, both examining the price paid. The professor's shuddering, wet hand features a nasty groove running up the palm's base between the middle and ring fingers. Her pains, manifold, do not outweigh her gratitude to be drinking even the dense, bitter air here. She lives.

 

Still, no reprieve can be enjoyed. A hideous screech reminds them of the unremitting scourge of Achlys, just now sharking onto their command ship, encumbering it with her splaying hands. The heroes can hear her smelling, caressing its surface, for color to blot, voices to hush. Making sure Barbara will manage keeping pressure on her arm, Diana rises to the challenge, to see that Epimetheus has outdone her by retrieving her armaments. He is studying the dark deity, fitting and refitting the sword in an agitated fist.

 

"I think she has enough of a hold on the world already, from down here, don't you?" he poses his cousin.

 

When Achlys' prowling yields nothing to corrupt, a tantrum builds in her perpetual bones, and unleashes. She takes apart the previously-overrun ship like cotton, clawing higher for the last two like it. A truly baleful noise blasts through the hair webbing her face, aimed at the Titan centered on his vessel, yet he behaves no differently than if a summer breeze had passed. His eyebrows lift.

 

"Let us see she does not come any closer."

 

He props one sandal on the slag that is left of the skiff's rear guardrail. To jump. Diana is on his arm in a wink to stop the foolhardy deed. Epimetheus acknowledges her, but only to convey:

 

"What I wanted to tell you, before, when we arrived… I would not recognize forgiveness if ever I found it. But with your hope, I feel I could disappoint the world a thousand times and still have it in me to fight."

 

"We can outrun her, before she is led back. Epimetheus, look at me. We can outrun her."

 

Epimetheus breathes in another of Achlys' bellows, but they are no drug to him. He does not act on impulse now. His mind is clear. "We can't."

 

Barbara is sensing the mood from across the deck. She sits higher, only slightly, on a leg. "No. No, we… we can collapse the entrance!"

 

"Yes, that will do very well too!" the big man sings his endorsement. First making use of his scabbard, he takes Diana's arm the way she has his, and allows her his vast eyes. "… But she will not be stopped with rocks. Someone to keep her busy. For a long time. Someone who can take hits…"

 

Epimetheus turns the shield. The Golden Apple is there in its saucer, to change hands. His Amazon kin plays the game formerly his, refusing to look.

 

"No one else may bestow the apple! You cannot stay behind!" Diana contends. "If someone is to do this—"

 

Epimetheus does not try to shrug her away, reverting to keeping an eye on Achlys' movements. "Eris was too good to put this to me. Wrong to. Don't you see? The grandest disaster will come with my consent. No. It never should have been me, choosing 'the fairest'. I choose this."

 

Gusts have blown his hair a rascally shape, and so oblige Epimetheus to take on a grin to go with. He tries to cheer Diana up: For once, feeling like the older of the two. "And at that: A simple demigoddess, doing a Titan's task?"

 

Scooting another foot before giving in, Barbara needs far more persuading. "The manuscript. What it says might be coming, if…"

 

The professor's qualms are in harmony with Diana's. "How can we take this chance, that Eris lies?" she restricts Epimetheus' undertaking.

 

His neck wavers, more than understanding her plea, to which he argues with no delight: "How can we let that go free, up there?"

 

Neither warrior feels they have won. The only indication of such comes with Diana's half-step back.

 

In confusion, Barbara mumbles "Stop him," though she intends it to be a yell.

 

Epimetheus hears. "Dr. Minerva, I would appreciate, before I go, a definition of that word 'barmy.'"

 

Off her guard, Barbara is too choked to answer.

 

"Some other day," he resolves, foisting levity.

 

Achlys has made back half the distance to them, after her setback, and the Styx, already vanishing from the three's sights, gets them keen to their speed. Destruction of their bridge sent Cyber's technological wayfinder into overdrive, now causing them to rear-end the last, individually-operable ship ahead, on the same invisible track. The wedge will capsize both, if nothing is done.

 

Epimetheus sets himself up for the plunge again. Not for lack of trying, Diana is not finding her words.

 

“This time, Lady Diana… this time I am not overlooking anything. This is plain enough for even me. I have outlived so much of my family," his chin quakes.

 

"… Please, give me the privilege of not seeing the end of your days also… and trust me with this. I think, what I need, is to be trusted. Surely I can’t forget or betray this duty, if it’s all I will ever know.”

 

The companions feel their weights, at the most dramatic escalation of the ships so far, on to the deciding segment jetting them back to Greece. Epimetheus reattempts his donation. Diana does put her hand over the apple immediately, but holds it there between them a spell.

 

"I will find the one fairest."

 

"You needn't convince me."

 

A new keeper is appointed to the costly creation, and the liberated Titan hunches on the precipice, only, one last order of business halts him. Epimetheus remembers something. The sword and shield are also offered, with a sorry expression: The last of its kind, from him.

 

"Keep them," Diana acquits, without regret.

 

Steps can be seen, like——what felt——so long ago, whizzing underneath in a glinting pattern to catch Epimetheus.

 

"Bury us," he suggests, soft as a feather.

 

"Stop… him."

 

From the transom, Epimetheus alights. Professionally, without looking down to memorialize the exploit for herself, Diana retakes her lasso from the overhanging rail, and leaves the rest behind.

 

"Why. Didn't," Barbara recoils at her approach.

 

Diana hops her up while also collecting Cyber, then sails them all over the drawbridge being made by the two skiffs, before it becomes too trying a peak. Laid down with care, Barbara unappreciatively thrashes over, doing her hand no good, to watch a rapidly-shrinking Epimetheus impact the steps. A stolid cypress of a man, his legs take and cancel his velocity, and right away he has to swing up and stab at the living shroud rippling toward him.

 

Achlys is on and around him like a parasite, for one crushing second. Heavenly shafts blaze through her great, desirous hands, unwrapping her to reveal her antithesis. Epimetheus has her solidly nailed in her missing heart. His blade is miraculously the light source, pouring the warmth of a star into his screaming sorrow. Here, the deadlock for many lifetimes begins. If on the steps herself, Barbara could have seen there is a sign of strain in his back, a pull to the skin around his eyes; ultimately, however, that Epimetheus is, to the credit of Diana's gifts alone, far indeed from being outmatched.

 

The cave's mouth dead ahead, Diana bumps their throttle with an elbow, simultaneously and with impeccable control roping the rear ship, in a graceful curve through the port railing. One yank on this fulcrum displaces the obsolete craft, sending it groaning off to the side. There is a brief, stupendous period of it serenely verging on stone somewhere in the tunnel's void. Contact is made with tectonic force, splitting walls and threatening the same to the escapees' heads. The splashed fuel of Cyber's sorcerous design climbs through strata fast as wildfire, destabilizing sediment from time immemorial, and Barbara Minerva catches a farewell flare from the last, and unfailing life in the Underworld. Then the curtain of earth draws.

 

The skiff breaks free into a nighttime, natural and brisk, that is to be rejoiced by the women. They are swerved around, given seats to the spectacular sight of a swath of the hillside deflating, exhaling from the opening. It all fills itself in with brush and boulders, to be both an astounding and unassuming landscape again. The land of Dirou falls back asleep.

 

No rejoicing comes. Tonight, the beauty and silence breeds only melancholy in one soul, and resentment in another. Barbara turns her head to her: The champion. What had Cyber said?

 

"Righteous colors."

 

The attack comes to Diana more pitiless than any other that day. Barbara looks at her like one looks at disease.

 

"It's that easy, is it?" is the next knife through her. It is unbelievable to Barbara the way she remains standing there, appearing to do nothing besides fiddle with the lasso.

 

"Are you going to say. ANYthing?!"

 

Barbara rushes her to flip her around by the left shoulder. Its arm is bandaged in the lasso as when the baroness was tricked. The other hand closes the resistant professor's on a loose end of the bind, to commune. It is not Diana's voice, precisely. Barbara does not hear sentences. She feels everything Diana feels in each second, and knows what the princess knows to be true.

 

~Barbara, I pled for the mistress of the river Styx to accord us victory. Exchanged for her blessings and mastery over her land, I swore these gifts would be enough for me to deliver you, and my cousin, from that place. I have not made good.~

 

Barbara shakes herself, and blinks.

 

~For this, Styx decrees that I shall walk for a time without the capacity to go back on my word. I am mute.~

 

"You're going to tell me what you lost?" the whole of Barbara trembles.

 

~I saw no other way. Had she obtained the apple, Von Gunther might have killed you in the next breath. I never meant for the maenads—~

 

"You think this is about you going back for THAT?" Barbara flails at the body of Cynthia littering the deck and breathing huskily. "Or my hand? I want to know how you cou—"

 

~He made the choice himself.~

 

"He would have done anything for you! He would have stayed for you! You LET him do that!" Barbara accuses, tearing away in a cold sweat. She knows Diana knows this. "He doesn't deserve to be left there!"

 

She knows Diana knows.

 

"It's not…"

 

The word to complete the thought enrages her more. She circles nothing in particular, batting away moisture. "We could've led that thing back in, if it came to that! W-we would've worked something out. The apple…"

 

…

 

"He was going to give it to me," she says dejectedly. "It could have been me. You weren't fast enough. You stopped him. You didn't stop him."

 

Diana is watching a woman being torn apart. The delusion is partially the apple's, whispering away behind her own back. The other components, Diana finds hard to pass off on a tangible evil.

 

Barbara digs and begs and pretends a smile. "Let me have it. I can, study it. It, it doesn't have to be mine! We'll get it right. And besides I've earned it."

 

She gulps. Her statuesque counterpart is unstirred, sadly winding the lariat up higher on her arm. Diana will not make her enter the rapport again, for she had soon realized in their first that she had minimal sovereignty over her utmost sentiments, and did not know exactly what the woman heard from her mind. The terror, of transparency, is now hers like no other's, and years hence it will be.

 

"… I have nothing."

 

Nothing, no one, and no sway, and the reason for it, Barbara supposes, is that the Amazon's mind was made prior to her outpouring of sensibilities, her sound logic. Diana knows whose apple it is.

 

Barbara relaxes. Her mouth creases. Diana takes no actions to recover her, as she spends a minute fishing one-handed through their ship's compartments, at last coming up with a kit of gauze and ointment, which was the only left thing to keep her from setting off. Wrapping her hand on her way, her boots plunk into sand, headed north. She can tell the heroine watches, with concern. It makes her see red.

 

"Go, take it. I know where I am."

 

Diana questions if she does. A new grasp on empathy, spoiled by blame and losses unmerited: It was developing into a scar which Diana knows nothing of how to mend, with or without her words. She is less than proud to wish——more than she would ever want to erase all of Barbara's experiences this day——that the scar stays, and that she never find out all of who the woman becomes.

Apple + Looking Glass = Esto

 

In an apple you might find a section of the pulp in the theme of common indifference,

A slight of hand lays on the table with the might of a pen on the tip of a sword.

The worries of the world in amongst the grief and glory become the dawn if the day dare break and the night suffocate into the bulbous retching of an immature departure.

How many good men might hide inside there minds is too many for the sake of the people on the edge.

Stick to the plan and the target will unfold like bed sheets in the wind as the soft smell of touch intermingles with your balance forcing ever greater pressure on the remaining flow of fire

In your veins, and the fool on the hill and I feel fine dag nammit cant you free the skipping rope from around your wrist and climb the battleifferous castleifferous?

Why then does that honour precede only the foolhardiest of questers in an army of indignation?

 

Stream of Consciousness on a Monday morning after too much coffee.

Wednesday

 

A day of rain.

 

And a trip to Newcastle.

 

Hmmmm, Newcastle.

 

We woke up at half seven, outside it was overcast with the promise of much rain through the day. We planned to go to Hexham to catch the train into the city, wander round, have lunch, take shots and come back. And it still sounded a good idea in the morning. So, after breakfast, we gathered our stuff, our new waterproof jackets and walking boots, packed the car and set off down the valley to Hexham.

 

There is an even more local station nearer the cottage, but only has a two-hourly service through the day. A 15 minute drive to Hexham opens the possibility of half hourly trains, if we got bored in the city.

 

Two pounds to park the car all day outside the station, seven quid for a return ticket. A cheap day it seemed.

 

We had timed it just right, and 5 minutes after arriving, our train, a class 156, pulled up and we all got on for the half hour trundle into town. The line runs beside the river Tyne, and is very picturesque, even from a rattly diesel DMU.

 

We pulled into Newcastle, over Stephenson’s high level bridge, with glorious views over the river and city. It had just begun to rain, but we were prepared.

 

Outside the station, we looked up the wide street in front, and I saw a memorial, which should mean there was a square, maybe the centre of the city, so we set off, dodging shoppers and waiting bus passengers. However, we were thirsty. And hungry. And seeing an Italian ice cream parlour, we go inside to have breakfast.

 

I order sausage roll and a coffee: Jools has quiche. And a coffee. Now, that we did not specify what kind of coffee we wanted should have meant we got a cup of filter. Or so we thought. But what we did get was a cup of milky coffee, the kind that my parents used to drink, made with almost all hot milk, and horrible.

 

I tried to tell myself this was some kind of retro food experience, but my main thought was to drink it as soon as possible before a skin formed on the top, which would have made me retch.

 

Further up the street, we saw a sign saying ‘central arcade’; we thought it looked interesting and went in. Just as well we did, as inside it was decorated with splendid tiles, in a fine art deco fashion. In admiring them, we caught the attention of a woman, who engaged us in conversation. Turns out she was a guide, and for four pounds each would take us on a 90 minute tour round the city.

 

Sounded fair to us, so we paid, and our guide explained the history of the arcade and the surrounding area, all gentrified in the 1830s, which so resembled fine Parisian boulevards. It was a wonderful area, and the style, Tyne Gothic was very nice and almost chic. It has been renovated in recent times, and looks like it did when new, except for the pawnbrokers and other modern shops now occupying the ground floors.

 

We were shown the indoor market, the Theatre Royal, all the time heading down towards the river. We stop at The Black Gate, the old main entrance to the city, and next to it the Norman, or New, castle. I know that from the top fine views of trains arriving and leaving from the station could be had, and so I planned to return later in the day.

 

We walk down the old main road, the old Great North Road, as was, now a quit pedestrianised street, leading steeply down underneath two of the 5 bridges that cross the river. More history down there; merchants houses, where wharfs unloaded good from around the world, and just beyond, the once busy river.

 

That was the tour, we thanked the guide, and she said that along the river we would find many places to have lunch. We walked on, coming to a modern glass and steel building, a posh eateries and bar: looking at the menu, we both decide burgers were in order. So we go in, take a table, order drinks and our meal and watch the people. It is graduation at the university, and many people are in gowns, joyful with their friends and families, out celebrating their degrees and awards.

 

Our burgers were good, as were the drinks; Jools has a margarita, which was OK, but strong. Once we finish, I leave Jools on a bench as I cross the blinking bridge to snap the views along the river.

 

As the rain falls again, we walk back up the hill to the castle: I buy a ticket and go straight to the roof of the keep to snap the trains. But no Flying Scotsmen or Deltics this day, just the usual class 91, now rebranded to Branson’s Virgin company.

 

I take shots anyway, but time is getting away from us. I worry that our tickets will not be valid between four and six, so en route to the station, we stop off at the cathedral, I rattle off a few shots and we press on.

 

Just missing one train back to Hexham, but another is due to leave before four, a minute before four in fact. So, I pace the platform, snapping the trains that were there, coming and going before our nodding donkey arrives.

 

The class 142 is a horrible train, loud, even more ratly than the one we rode in the morning. Jools manages to nod off, quite an achievement as we shake our way along the Tyne valley. Half an hour later we pull into Hexham, we get off, and walk to the car, just a 15 minute whiz up the road to the cottage.

 

Yesterday, we bought a couple of bird feeders and hung them on the washing line and a bush in the garden, and to our delight as we arrived, a half dozen birds were about, feeding well. As we went inside, the heavens opened, and so we looked out the windows as the rain ran down the roof and off the ends of the thatch. That put paid to another evening we hoped to be sitting in the garden watching the owls and bats flying.

  

The Castle, Newcastle is a medieval fortification in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, built on the site of the fortress which gave the City of Newcastle its name. The most prominent remaining structures on the site are the Castle Keep, the castle's main fortified stone tower, and the Black Gate, its fortified gatehouse.

 

Use of the site for defensive purposes dates from Roman times, when it housed a fort and settlement called Pons Aelius, guarding a bridge over the River Tyne. In 1080, a wooden motte and bailey style castle was built on the site of the Roman fort, which was the 'New Castle upon Tyne'. It was built by Robert Curthose, eldest son of William the Conqueror, having returned south from a campaign against Malcolm III of Scotland. The stone Castle Keep was built between 1172 and 1177 by Henry II on the site of Curthose's castle. The Black Gate was added between 1247 and 1250 by Henry III.

 

The site is in the centre of Newcastle, and lies to the east of Newcastle Central Station. The 75 feet (23 m) gap between the Keep and the Gatehouse is almost entirely filled by a railway viaduct, carrying the East Coast Main Line from Newcastle to Scotland. The Castle Keep and Black Gate pre-dated the construction of the Newcastle town wall, construction of which started sometime around 1265, and did not form part of it. Nothing remains of the Roman fort or the original motte and bailey castle. The Keep is a Grade I listed building, and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

 

The Keep and Black Gate are now managed by the Old Newcastle Project under the Heart of the City Partnership as one combined visitor attraction, Newcastle Castle.

 

In the mid-2nd century, the Romans built the first bridge to cross the River Tyne at the place where Newcastle now stands. The bridge was called Pons Aelius or ‘Bridge of Aelius’, Aelius being the family name of Emperor Hadrian, who was responsible for the Roman wall built along Tyne-Solway Gap. The Romans built a fort to protect the river crossing which was at the foot of the Tyne Gorge. The fort was situated on rocky outcrop overlooking the new bridge.[1]

 

At some unknown time in the Anglo-Saxon age, the site of Newcastle came to be known as Monkchester. In the late 7th century, a cemetery was established on the site of the Roman castle.

 

In 1080, the Norman king, William I, sent his eldest son, Robert Curthose, north to defend the kingdom against the Scots. After his campaign, he moved to Monkchester and began the building of a ‘New Castle’. This was of the “motte-and-bailey” type of construction, a wooden tower on top of an earthen mound (motte), surrounded by a moat and wooden stockade (bailey).[2]

 

In 1095, the Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Mowbray, rose up against William Rufus and Rufus sent an army north to crush the revolt and to capture the castle. From then on the castle became crown property and was an important base from which the king could control the northern barons.

 

Not a trace of the tower or mound of the motte and bailey castle remains now. Henry II replaced it with a rectangular stone keep, which was built between 1172 and 1177 at a cost of £1,444. A stone bailey, in the form of a triangle, replaced the previous wooden one. The master mason or architect, Maurice, also built Dover Castle. The great outer gateway to the castle, called ‘the Black Gate’, was built later, between 1247 and 1250, in the reign of Henry III.[3]

 

Additional protection to the castle was provided late in the 13th century when stone walls were constructed, with towers, to enclose the town. Ironically, the safety provided by the town walls led to the neglect of the fabric of the castle. In 1589, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the castle was described as being ruinous.[4] From the early 17th century onward, this situation was made worse by the construction of shops and houses on much of the site.

 

In 1643, during the English Civil War, the Royalist Mayor of Newcastle, Sir John Marley, repaired the keep and probably also refortified the castle. In 1644 the Scottish army crossed the border in support of the Parliamentarians and the Scottish troops besieged Newcastle for three months until the garrison surrendered. The town walls were extensively damaged and the final forces to surrender on 19 October 1644 did so from the Castle keep.[5]

 

During the 16th to the 18th century, the keep was used as a prison. By 1800, there were a large number of houses within the boundaries of the castle.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle,_Newcastle

Lori has traveled a LONG way in search of Miss Emily's School for Excellence. She had heard about it a long time ago when she first set off on her journey to rid herself of her retched magical powers.

She had the Ability to see far into someones future which in it's self doesn't sound too bad but If she sees something terrible happen in that persons impending future her eyes catch alight.

She has always been able too see other peoples upcoming futures and she has always felt the searing pain of fire. The first time her eyes ever came ablaze they turned from pale blue to coal black and never let the light in again leaving her completely blind.

When her eyes catch fire she is left with painful blisters over her face which take on a gold shimmery effect almost making them look like scales in which people started to nickname her Dragon. After a few days they disappear as if they where never there.

She carries around a old branch to help her find her way and to insure she doesn't accidentally bump into someone and be forced into a Foresight Trance which could result in ALOT of pain.

She has tried many methods to rid herself of these powers but nothing has ever worked until she heard the whispers about the school which strips magical powers from oneself.

 

Miss Emily's School for Excellence original story was created by the VERY Talented Anne Pecaro go check her out on Youtube www.youtube.com/user/AnnePecaro

They must get it a lot. Silly, ignorant, wishful customers hoping for a taste of The famous Snickers, by Queen of Desserts Philippa Sibley, at all hours of the day. Well, I can confirm that they don't serve it at breakfast, even if the polite waitress humoured me by "asking the kitchen", and then feigned empathy when she told me the bad news.

 

Just as well, the breakfast was still as good as I remembered it, and they added Black Pudding as an optional side. Bonus!

 

Il Fornaio

(03) 9534 2922

2 Acland St

St Kilda VIC 3182

www.ilfornaio.net.au/

 

Reviews:

- Il Fornaio, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, September 7, 2010

NOT since the invention of the Peach Melba has there been such a kerfuffle about a dessert. ''The famous Snickers'', as the menu at Il Fornaio calls it, and for once I'm inclined not to retch over the food-related use of the adjective. ''Famous'' on a menu usually means the dish in question isn't famous at all - but the Snickers? The Snickers is famous. The Snickers is so famous it should have its own agent, a magazine deal and a coke habit.

 

The Snickers and its creator, Philippa Sibley, have moved around a fair bit but they took up a new permanent residence recently at this former bakery-cafe in St Kilda, where they've conspired to capitalise on Sibley's reputation (''dessert queen'', ''queen of pastries'', ''passionate pastry whiz'', as Google attests) by trading at night-time primarily as a dessert restaurant (during the day things are far more cafe-like).

 

- Not just desserts, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, August 24, 2010

Philippa Sibley’s Snickers dessert needs little introduction. An instant hit when she first put it on the menu at Circa five years ago, her signature dish recently found a new lease of life at her new St Kilda digs, IlFornaio, and through being showcased on MasterChef.

 

‘‘Oh my god, straightaway it was a monster,’’ recalls Sibley of her take on the peanut and caramel chocolate bar first released by the Mars company in 1930. ‘‘We had a table of five come in and order eight of them, at $25 a pop [the IlFornaio version costs $19]. We sold 700 of them in one week.’’

 

- Il Fornaio

Mad Men at their worst. I suppose from one angle the ad is successful. It made us look twice and retch once. And the copy: "Don't blame the hunter…" seems all-too familiar.

 

From Mademoiselle, November 1955.

One of the nicest bars in Gran Alacant IMO

 

Although you do have to go through the ritual of tapas roulette* every time you have a beer.

 

*One in three is guaranteed to churn the old gut factory - in my case it was a fishbone that made me do the Iberian heave-ho, reducing me to retching heap in the lavvy :D

Whole egg contry pie, smoked ham, cheddar & leek AUD9.50

 

Perfectly cooked eggs in a pie with tender braised leeks adding sweetness to the salty ham and cheddar cheese. Add to that, a flaky, buttery pastry to die for, and you have a fantastic breakfast.

 

I added a slab of black pudding to make sure the resultant heart attack would be fatal. Fortunately, the translucent cubes in black pudding were indeed lard. Yum! The liberal use of cumin and spice created heavenly balance with the minerally tastes, but it might ward off cancer though. Can't win 'em all.

 

---

  

They must get it a lot. Silly, ignorant, wishful customers hoping for a taste of The famous Snickers, by Queen of Desserts Philippa Sibley, at all hours of the day. Well, I can confirm that they don't serve it at breakfast, even if the polite waitress humoured me by "asking the kitchen", and then feigned empathy when she told me the bad news.

 

Just as well, the breakfast was still as good as I remembered it, and they added Black Pudding as an optional side. Bonus!

 

Il Fornaio

(03) 9534 2922

2 Acland St

St Kilda VIC 3182

www.ilfornaio.net.au/

 

Reviews:

- Il Fornaio, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, September 7, 2010

NOT since the invention of the Peach Melba has there been such a kerfuffle about a dessert. ''The famous Snickers'', as the menu at Il Fornaio calls it, and for once I'm inclined not to retch over the food-related use of the adjective. ''Famous'' on a menu usually means the dish in question isn't famous at all - but the Snickers? The Snickers is famous. The Snickers is so famous it should have its own agent, a magazine deal and a coke habit.

 

The Snickers and its creator, Philippa Sibley, have moved around a fair bit but they took up a new permanent residence recently at this former bakery-cafe in St Kilda, where they've conspired to capitalise on Sibley's reputation (''dessert queen'', ''queen of pastries'', ''passionate pastry whiz'', as Google attests) by trading at night-time primarily as a dessert restaurant (during the day things are far more cafe-like).

 

- Not just desserts, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, August 24, 2010

Philippa Sibley’s Snickers dessert needs little introduction. An instant hit when she first put it on the menu at Circa five years ago, her signature dish recently found a new lease of life at her new St Kilda digs, IlFornaio, and through being showcased on MasterChef.

 

‘‘Oh my god, straightaway it was a monster,’’ recalls Sibley of her take on the peanut and caramel chocolate bar first released by the Mars company in 1930. ‘‘We had a table of five come in and order eight of them, at $25 a pop [the IlFornaio version costs $19]. We sold 700 of them in one week.’’

 

- Il Fornaio

It is interesting that they didn't mention Dan DeQuille -- I will: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_DeQuille

Beebe and Clegg resurrected the paper during the 50s.

 

As sidebar I have an old edition of Mark Twain's collected works...

Here is a piece published in the Territorial Enterprise that he wrote while at Steamboat Springs and excerpted from my book: www.flickr.com/photos/owlsplace/801024084/:

 

I have overstepped my furlough a full week, but then this is a pleasant place to pass one's time. These springs are ten miles from Virginia, six or seven from Washoe City and twenty from Carson. They are natural, the devil boils the water, and the white steam puffs up out of crevices in the earth, along the summits of a series of low mounds extending in an irregular semi-circle for more than a mile. The water is impregnated with a dozen different minerals, each one of which smells viler than its fellow, and the sides of the springs are embellished with very pretty parti-colored incrustations deposited by the water. From one spring the boiling water is ejected a foot or more by the infernal force at work below, and in the vicinity of all of them one can hear a constant rumbling and surging, somewhat resembling the noises peculiar to a steamboat in motion. hence the name.

THE HOTEL

The Steamboat Springs Hotel is very pleasantly situated on a grassy flat, a stone's throw from the hospital and the bath houses. It is capable of accommodating a great many guests. The rooms are large, hard-finished and handsomely furnished; there is an abundant supply of pure water, which can be carried to every part of the house, in case of fire, by means of hose; the table is furnished with fresh vegetables and meats from the numerous fine ranches in the valley, and lastly, Mr Stowe is a pleasant and accommodating landlord, and is ably seconded by Messrs Haines, Ellsworth and Bingham. These gentlemen will never allow you to get ill-humored for want of polite attention, as I gratefully remember, now, when I recall the stormy hours of Friday, when that accursed Awake-up-Jake was in me. But I haven't got to that, yet. God bless us! It is a world of trouble, and we are born to sorrow and tribulation, yet, am I chiefest among sinners, that I should be prematurely damned with Awake-up-Jake, while others not of the elect go free? I am trying to go on with my letter, but this thing bothers me; verily, from having Awake-up-Jake on the stomach for three days, I have finally got it on the brain. I am grateful for the change. But I digress.

THE HOSPITAL

Dr Ellis, the proprietor of the Springs, has erected a large, tastefully designed, and comfortable and well ventilated hospital, close to the bath-houses, and it is constantly filled with patients afflicted with all manner of diseases. It would be a very profitable institution, but a great many who come to it half dead, and leave it again restored to robust health, forget to pay for the benefits they have received. Others, when they arrive, confess at once that they are penniless, yet few men could look upon the sunken cheeks of these, and upon their attenuated forms and their pleading, faded eyes, and refuse them the shelter and assistance we all may need some day. Without expectation of reward, Dr Ellis gives back life, hope and health to many a despairing, poverty stricken devil; and when I think of this, it seems so strange that he could have had the meanness to give me that Awake-up-Jake. However, I am wandering away from the subject again. They treat all diseases (except confirmed consumption) successfully here. A multitude of invalids have attended these baths during the past three years, yet only an insignificant number of deaths have occurred among them. I want to impress one thing upon you: it is a mistaken notion that these Springs were created solely for the salvation of persons suffering venereal diseases. True, the fame of the baths rests chiefly upon the miracles performed upon such patients, and upon others afflicted with rheumatism, erysipelas, etc., but then all ordinary ailments can be quickly and pleasantly cured here without a resort to deadly physic. More than two-thirds of the people who come here are afflicted with venereal diseases, fellows who know that if Steamboat fails with them they may as well go to trading feet with the undertaker for a boxCyet all here agree that these baths are none the less potent where other diseases are concerned. I know lots of poor, feeble wretches in Virginia who could get a new lease of life by soaking their shadows in Steamboat Springs for a week or two. However, I must pass on to

THE BATHS

My friend Jim Miller has charge of these. Within a few days the new bath-house will be finished, and then twelve persons may bathe at once, or if they be sociable and choose to go on the double-bed principle, four times as many can enjoy the luxury at the same time. Persons afflicted with loathsome diseases use bath-rooms which are never entered by the other patients. You get up here about six o'clock in the morning and walk over to the bath-house; you undress in an ante room and take a cold shower-bath, or let it alone, if you choose; then you step into a sort of little dark closet floored with a wooden grating, up through which come puffs and volumes of the hottest steam you ever performed to, (because the awkwardest of us feel a hankering to waltz a little under such circumstances, you know), and then if you are alone, you resolve to have company thenceforward, since to swap comments upon your sensations with a friend, must render the dire heatless binding upon the human constitution. I had company always, and it was the pleasantest thing in the world to see a thin-skinned invalid cavorting around in the vapory obscurity, marveling at the rivers of sweat that coursed down his body, cursing the villainous smell of the steam and its bitter, salty taste, groping around meanwhile, for a cold corner, and backing finally, into the hottest one, and darting out again in a second, only remarking Outch!, and repeating it when he sits down, and springs up the same moment off the hot bench. This was fun of the most comfortable character; but nothing could be more agreeable than to put your eye to the little square hole in the door, and see your boiled and smoking comrade writhing under the cold shower-bath, to see him shrink till his shoulders are level with the top of his head, and then shut his eyes and gasp and catch his breath, while the cruel rain pattered down on his back and sent a ghastly shiver through every fibre of his body. It will always be a comfort to me to recall these little incidents. After the shower-bath, you return to the ante-room and scrub yourself all over with coarse towels until your hide glows like a parlor carpet, after which, you feel as elastic and vigorous as an acrobat. Then if you are sensible, you take no exercise, but just eat your breakfast and go to bed, you will find that an hour's nap will not hurt you any.

THE WAKE-UP-JAKE

A few days ago I fell a victim to my natural curiosity and my solicitude for the public weal. Everybody had something to say about Awake-up-Jake. If a man was low-spirited; if his appetite failed him; if he did not sleep well at night; if he were costive; if he were bilious; or in love; or in any other kind of trouble; or if he doubted the fidelity of his friends or the efficacy of his religion, there was always some one at his elbow to whisper, Take a wake-up, my boy. I sought to fathom the mystery, but all I could make out of it was that the Awake-up-Jake was a medicine as powerful as the servants of the lamp, the secret of whose decoction was hidden away in Dr Ellis' breast. I was not aware that I had any use for the wonderful Awake-up, but then I felt it to be my duty to try it, in order that a suffering public might profit by my experience, and I would cheerfully see that public suffer perdition before I would try it again. I called upon Dr Ellis with the air of a man who would create the impression that he is not so much of an ass as he looks, and demanded a Awake-up-Jake as unostentatiously as if that species of refreshment were not at all new to me. The Doctor hesitated a moment, and then fixed up as repulsive a mixture as ever was stirred together in a table-spoon. I swallowed the nauseous mess, and that one meal sufficed me for the space of forty-eight hours. And during all that time, I could not have enjoyed a viler taste in my mouth if I had swallowed a slaughter-house. I lay down with all my clothes on, and with an utter indifference to my fate here or hereafter, and slept like a statue from six o'clock until noon. I got up, then, the sickest man that ever yearned to vomit and couldn't. All the dead and decaying matter in nature seemed buried in my stomach, and I heaved, and retched, and heaved again, but I could not compass a resurrection my dead would not come forth. Finally, after rumbling, and growling, and producing agony and chaos within me for many hours, the dreadful dose began its work, and for the space of twelve hours it vomited me, and purged me, and likewise caused me to bleed at the nose. I came out of that siege as weak as an infant, and went to the bath with Palmer, of Wells, Fargo & Co, and it was well I had company, for it was about all he could do to keep me from boiling the remnant of my life out in the hot steam. I had reached that stage wherein a man experiences a solemn indifference as to whether school keeps or not. Since then, I have gradually regained my strength and my appetite, and am now animated by a higher degree of vigor than I have felt for many a day. 'Tis well. This result seduces many a man into taking a second, and even a third Awake-up-Jake, but I think I can worry along without any more of them. I am about as thoroughly waked up now as I care to be. My stomach never had such a scouring out since I was born. I feel like a jug. If I could get young Wilson or the Unreliable to take a Awake-up-Jake, I would do it, of course, but I shall never swallow another myself I would sooner have a locomotive travel through me. And besides, I never intend to experiment in physic any more, just out of idle curiosity. A Awake-up-Jake will furbish a man's machinery up and give him a fresh start in the world but I feel I shall never need anything of that sort any more. It would put robust health, and life and vim into young Wilson and the UnreliableCbut then they always look with suspicion upon any suggestion that I make.

GOOD-BYE

Well, I am going home to Virginia to-day, though I dislike to part from the jolly boys (not to mention iced milk for breakfast, with eggs laid to order, and spiced oysters after midnight with the Reverend Jack Holmes and Bingham) at the Steamboat Springs Hotel. In conclusion, let me recommend to such of my fellow citizens as are in feeble health, or are wearied out with the cares of business, to come down and try the hotel, and the steam baths, and the facetious wake-up-Jake. These will give them rest, and moving recreation as it were.

HBC note ** Don't I feel a proper berk! This should have been episode 2, but for one reason or another it wasn't. ** So here's Elina reflecting on how she first met Skarr in the first place...**

  

From “My encounters with the Barbarians blade”, by Lady Elina Greypepper

 

Being bound in slavery has a strange effect on one’s being…and as Skarr and I found ourselves in greater difficulties than ever before, I began to remember how Skarr and I had first met. Rather than being mere weeks ago, It seemed like years since I had arranged an expedition to Arlaheim for rare ingredients, and ran into trouble with slavers for the first time. I recall that I first met the Cock o’ the North shortly after she defeated the wyrm…

 

“The screams and catcalls of the forest had died down a little over the last few hours of Skarr’s trek. She was grateful, the wound in her thigh needed more attention than her ministrations of water and a bit of rag to tie round could give, and she felt it going numb. She was slowing slightly on her trek, but her fury carried her along. She repeated the names in her head, Gunnerson, Macleish, Taggarhey and Bunds, over and over, Gunnerson, Macleish, Taggarhey and Bunds. Four names that made her blood rise and carry her on through the forest. Gunnerson had been the one to hold her down, Macleish had bound her, Taggarhey had wrestled her into a sack and Bunds had thrown her into the icy ocean. Her four warlords, the terror of the north. Gunnerson she would kill first. When the Northmen had been routed along the banks of the Green road, he had fled over the hills into Samaria. She had found this out from a band of marauders shortly after being washed ashore, gasping for life. He would die first, Doomsayer would have the kill. Bunds she would save until last. He had been her closest ally, her friend since her childhood; they had been of the same tribe, the Tanra. She had been securely tied and sealed within the burlap sack; he had been the one to stab her, a callous and cruel act. For that, Bunds would pay. She would kill him the last of all. Skarr would make sure he heard of the deaths of his murderous dishonourable friends, and then she would kill him. Not with Doomsayer. With her own bare hands.

 

As she walked, she heard a cry from just off the forest path.

“Help”, came the voice, “please, traveller!” it cried.

Skarr entered the forest clearing and saw the figure, a female, bedraggled and shoeless, chained securely to a tree.

“Undo me traveller!” cried the girl, “the Panther women have me. They intend to sell me into slavery. They sell us to Samarian traders! I am an apothecary and valuable to them!”

Skarr thought for a moment, considering her response,

“But”, she began in her thick accented broken Imperial tongue, “if I was to free you, you would die at the hands of either the Panthers, of at the hands of the beasts that roam here! If I leave you tied, the Panthers will look after you and keep you safe, dushka! I will not be the one who causes your death. Farewell.”

Skarr turned on her heel and walked off through the forest, ignoring the girl’s plaintive cries and the clanking of her chains as she struggled.

 

After a few minutes, Skarr became aware of someone tracking her from beyond the path, and she tensed her lithe body slightly. She continued to walk, smelling the air. Human, definitely human, she decided. She moved to the other side of the path, so to draw the attacker out onto the path. Suddenly a figure clad in furs leapt with speed at her and the two of them collapsed onto the dirt. The Panther girl wrestled herself on top of Skarr with a ferocious energy.

“These are our lands!!” the Panther spitted at her, “We get a good price for you, Norther bitch. You make good strong slave for Samaria!”

Skarr relaxed her arm muscles and let the Panther pin her arms to the ground. Then she quickly raised her leg, delivering a knee to the girl’s stomach, making her retch. Skarr threw the Panther woman onto her back, delivering an uppercut to the jaw, before standing and delivering a swift kick in her side.

Skarr surveyed her whimpering opponent,

“Pah!” she exclaimed, “I would not sully the steel of Doomsayer with your hide. Tell your tribe to stay away from me, or I will make a mountain of your severed heads!”

The girl attempted to crawl away into the forest with a whimper, but Skarr kicked her in the side harshly again, and she fell still.

 

Muttering a Norther curse under her breath and shaking her head, Skarr began to retrace her steps to where the prisoner had been. Sure enough, there she was, securely chained to the tree. She had given up her struggles and stood quietly.

“It would appear, Dushka, “Skarr began, “That I have either frightened away or killed your captor”.

“You can’t just leave me here!” the girl cried.

“No. I cannot!” Skarr said, thinking, “Or you will die here”.

“May I travel with you?” the girl asked, “The beasts will tear me apart, unless the other Panthers get me first!”

“Keep up the pace, and look after yourself”, Skarr replied brusquely, “I’m not a nursemaid. If you slow me, I will kill you myself.”

The girl nodded, and watched as Skarr, with three quick tugs, snapped the girl’s chains, letting them tumble to the ground with a clatter.

“Thank you”, said the girl with relief, “I’m Elina. I make potions and incantations. I can look at your wound if you’d like.”

Skarr muttered another Norther curse, before spinning on her heel and stomping off along the path, cursing in her own tongue. Elina ran along after her, suddenly feeling hundreds of eyes watching her and the barbarian as they moved through the forest. Had she just jumped from the frying pan into the fire? Elina didn’t know.”

 

Suddenly, Elina was shaken from her thoughts by the barking order of a slaver...

Organic panella - dried-whole, natural sugar cane.

panella is an unrefined sugar, widely recognised for its unique caramel flavour, fine grain texture and golden colour. perfect for baking & coffee.

origin: hacienda lucerna

valle region, columbia

 

Tasted like good brown sugar, with a pleasant, almost flowery, caramel flavour.

 

---

  

They must get it a lot. Silly, ignorant, wishful customers hoping for a taste of The famous Snickers, by Queen of Desserts Philippa Sibley, at all hours of the day. Well, I can confirm that they don't serve it at breakfast, even if the polite waitress humoured me by "asking the kitchen", and then feigned empathy when she told me the bad news.

 

Just as well, the breakfast was still as good as I remembered it, and they added Black Pudding as an optional side. Bonus!

 

Il Fornaio

(03) 9534 2922

2 Acland St

St Kilda VIC 3182

www.ilfornaio.net.au/

 

Reviews:

- Il Fornaio, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, September 7, 2010

NOT since the invention of the Peach Melba has there been such a kerfuffle about a dessert. ''The famous Snickers'', as the menu at Il Fornaio calls it, and for once I'm inclined not to retch over the food-related use of the adjective. ''Famous'' on a menu usually means the dish in question isn't famous at all - but the Snickers? The Snickers is famous. The Snickers is so famous it should have its own agent, a magazine deal and a coke habit.

 

The Snickers and its creator, Philippa Sibley, have moved around a fair bit but they took up a new permanent residence recently at this former bakery-cafe in St Kilda, where they've conspired to capitalise on Sibley's reputation (''dessert queen'', ''queen of pastries'', ''passionate pastry whiz'', as Google attests) by trading at night-time primarily as a dessert restaurant (during the day things are far more cafe-like).

 

- Not just desserts, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, August 24, 2010

Philippa Sibley’s Snickers dessert needs little introduction. An instant hit when she first put it on the menu at Circa five years ago, her signature dish recently found a new lease of life at her new St Kilda digs, IlFornaio, and through being showcased on MasterChef.

 

‘‘Oh my god, straightaway it was a monster,’’ recalls Sibley of her take on the peanut and caramel chocolate bar first released by the Mars company in 1930. ‘‘We had a table of five come in and order eight of them, at $25 a pop [the IlFornaio version costs $19]. We sold 700 of them in one week.’’

 

- Il Fornaio

Wednesday

 

A day of rain.

 

And a trip to Newcastle.

 

Hmmmm, Newcastle.

 

We woke up at half seven, outside it was overcast with the promise of much rain through the day. We planned to go to Hexham to catch the train into the city, wander round, have lunch, take shots and come back. And it still sounded a good idea in the morning. So, after breakfast, we gathered our stuff, our new waterproof jackets and walking boots, packed the car and set off down the valley to Hexham.

 

There is an even more local station nearer the cottage, but only has a two-hourly service through the day. A 15 minute drive to Hexham opens the possibility of half hourly trains, if we got bored in the city.

 

Two pounds to park the car all day outside the station, seven quid for a return ticket. A cheap day it seemed.

 

We had timed it just right, and 5 minutes after arriving, our train, a class 156, pulled up and we all got on for the half hour trundle into town. The line runs beside the river Tyne, and is very picturesque, even from a rattly diesel DMU.

 

We pulled into Newcastle, over Stephenson’s high level bridge, with glorious views over the river and city. It had just begun to rain, but we were prepared.

 

Outside the station, we looked up the wide street in front, and I saw a memorial, which should mean there was a square, maybe the centre of the city, so we set off, dodging shoppers and waiting bus passengers. However, we were thirsty. And hungry. And seeing an Italian ice cream parlour, we go inside to have breakfast.

 

I order sausage roll and a coffee: Jools has quiche. And a coffee. Now, that we did not specify what kind of coffee we wanted should have meant we got a cup of filter. Or so we thought. But what we did get was a cup of milky coffee, the kind that my parents used to drink, made with almost all hot milk, and horrible.

 

I tried to tell myself this was some kind of retro food experience, but my main thought was to drink it as soon as possible before a skin formed on the top, which would have made me retch.

 

Further up the street, we saw a sign saying ‘central arcade’; we thought it looked interesting and went in. Just as well we did, as inside it was decorated with splendid tiles, in a fine art deco fashion. In admiring them, we caught the attention of a woman, who engaged us in conversation. Turns out she was a guide, and for four pounds each would take us on a 90 minute tour round the city.

 

Sounded fair to us, so we paid, and our guide explained the history of the arcade and the surrounding area, all gentrified in the 1830s, which so resembled fine Parisian boulevards. It was a wonderful area, and the style, Tyne Gothic was very nice and almost chic. It has been renovated in recent times, and looks like it did when new, except for the pawnbrokers and other modern shops now occupying the ground floors.

 

We were shown the indoor market, the Theatre Royal, all the time heading down towards the river. We stop at The Black Gate, the old main entrance to the city, and next to it the Norman, or New, castle. I know that from the top fine views of trains arriving and leaving from the station could be had, and so I planned to return later in the day.

 

We walk down the old main road, the old Great North Road, as was, now a quit pedestrianised street, leading steeply down underneath two of the 5 bridges that cross the river. More history down there; merchants houses, where wharfs unloaded good from around the world, and just beyond, the once busy river.

 

That was the tour, we thanked the guide, and she said that along the river we would find many places to have lunch. We walked on, coming to a modern glass and steel building, a posh eateries and bar: looking at the menu, we both decide burgers were in order. So we go in, take a table, order drinks and our meal and watch the people. It is graduation at the university, and many people are in gowns, joyful with their friends and families, out celebrating their degrees and awards.

 

Our burgers were good, as were the drinks; Jools has a margarita, which was OK, but strong. Once we finish, I leave Jools on a bench as I cross the blinking bridge to snap the views along the river.

 

As the rain falls again, we walk back up the hill to the castle: I buy a ticket and go straight to the roof of the keep to snap the trains. But no Flying Scotsmen or Deltics this day, just the usual class 91, now rebranded to Branson’s Virgin company.

 

I take shots anyway, but time is getting away from us. I worry that our tickets will not be valid between four and six, so en route to the station, we stop off at the cathedral, I rattle off a few shots and we press on.

 

Just missing one train back to Hexham, but another is due to leave before four, a minute before four in fact. So, I pace the platform, snapping the trains that were there, coming and going before our nodding donkey arrives.

 

The class 142 is a horrible train, loud, even more ratly than the one we rode in the morning. Jools manages to nod off, quite an achievement as we shake our way along the Tyne valley. Half an hour later we pull into Hexham, we get off, and walk to the car, just a 15 minute whiz up the road to the cottage.

 

Yesterday, we bought a couple of bird feeders and hung them on the washing line and a bush in the garden, and to our delight as we arrived, a half dozen birds were about, feeding well. As we went inside, the heavens opened, and so we looked out the windows as the rain ran down the roof and off the ends of the thatch. That put paid to another evening we hoped to be sitting in the garden watching the owls and bats flying.

  

The Castle, Newcastle is a medieval fortification in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, built on the site of the fortress which gave the City of Newcastle its name. The most prominent remaining structures on the site are the Castle Keep, the castle's main fortified stone tower, and the Black Gate, its fortified gatehouse.

 

Use of the site for defensive purposes dates from Roman times, when it housed a fort and settlement called Pons Aelius, guarding a bridge over the River Tyne. In 1080, a wooden motte and bailey style castle was built on the site of the Roman fort, which was the 'New Castle upon Tyne'. It was built by Robert Curthose, eldest son of William the Conqueror, having returned south from a campaign against Malcolm III of Scotland. The stone Castle Keep was built between 1172 and 1177 by Henry II on the site of Curthose's castle. The Black Gate was added between 1247 and 1250 by Henry III.

 

The site is in the centre of Newcastle, and lies to the east of Newcastle Central Station. The 75 feet (23 m) gap between the Keep and the Gatehouse is almost entirely filled by a railway viaduct, carrying the East Coast Main Line from Newcastle to Scotland. The Castle Keep and Black Gate pre-dated the construction of the Newcastle town wall, construction of which started sometime around 1265, and did not form part of it. Nothing remains of the Roman fort or the original motte and bailey castle. The Keep is a Grade I listed building, and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

 

The Keep and Black Gate are now managed by the Old Newcastle Project under the Heart of the City Partnership as one combined visitor attraction, Newcastle Castle.

 

In the mid-2nd century, the Romans built the first bridge to cross the River Tyne at the place where Newcastle now stands. The bridge was called Pons Aelius or ‘Bridge of Aelius’, Aelius being the family name of Emperor Hadrian, who was responsible for the Roman wall built along Tyne-Solway Gap. The Romans built a fort to protect the river crossing which was at the foot of the Tyne Gorge. The fort was situated on rocky outcrop overlooking the new bridge.[1]

 

At some unknown time in the Anglo-Saxon age, the site of Newcastle came to be known as Monkchester. In the late 7th century, a cemetery was established on the site of the Roman castle.

 

In 1080, the Norman king, William I, sent his eldest son, Robert Curthose, north to defend the kingdom against the Scots. After his campaign, he moved to Monkchester and began the building of a ‘New Castle’. This was of the “motte-and-bailey” type of construction, a wooden tower on top of an earthen mound (motte), surrounded by a moat and wooden stockade (bailey).[2]

 

In 1095, the Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Mowbray, rose up against William Rufus and Rufus sent an army north to crush the revolt and to capture the castle. From then on the castle became crown property and was an important base from which the king could control the northern barons.

 

Not a trace of the tower or mound of the motte and bailey castle remains now. Henry II replaced it with a rectangular stone keep, which was built between 1172 and 1177 at a cost of £1,444. A stone bailey, in the form of a triangle, replaced the previous wooden one. The master mason or architect, Maurice, also built Dover Castle. The great outer gateway to the castle, called ‘the Black Gate’, was built later, between 1247 and 1250, in the reign of Henry III.[3]

 

Additional protection to the castle was provided late in the 13th century when stone walls were constructed, with towers, to enclose the town. Ironically, the safety provided by the town walls led to the neglect of the fabric of the castle. In 1589, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the castle was described as being ruinous.[4] From the early 17th century onward, this situation was made worse by the construction of shops and houses on much of the site.

 

In 1643, during the English Civil War, the Royalist Mayor of Newcastle, Sir John Marley, repaired the keep and probably also refortified the castle. In 1644 the Scottish army crossed the border in support of the Parliamentarians and the Scottish troops besieged Newcastle for three months until the garrison surrendered. The town walls were extensively damaged and the final forces to surrender on 19 October 1644 did so from the Castle keep.[5]

 

During the 16th to the 18th century, the keep was used as a prison. By 1800, there were a large number of houses within the boundaries of the castle.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle,_Newcastle

This thing is outside one of the haunted house rides. She pukes and at the same time, a stream of water comes out of her butt too.

 

It's vile, but fascinating. It makes vomit sounds too. The lady is animatronic and moves back and forth like she's really retching. Notice the water flooding out of her mouth.

 

Everyone that walked by had a wonderful mixture of revulsion, fascination, and amusement on their faces. Most people ended up laughing pretty hard at this thing.

 

I love Coney Island.

 

Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY

 

This photo appears in an www.singlemommyhood.com/2009/11/when-youre-sick/ website!

Wednesday

 

A day of rain.

 

And a trip to Newcastle.

 

Hmmmm, Newcastle.

 

We woke up at half seven, outside it was overcast with the promise of much rain through the day. We planned to go to Hexham to catch the train into the city, wander round, have lunch, take shots and come back. And it still sounded a good idea in the morning. So, after breakfast, we gathered our stuff, our new waterproof jackets and walking boots, packed the car and set off down the valley to Hexham.

 

There is an even more local station nearer the cottage, but only has a two-hourly service through the day. A 15 minute drive to Hexham opens the possibility of half hourly trains, if we got bored in the city.

 

Two pounds to park the car all day outside the station, seven quid for a return ticket. A cheap day it seemed.

 

We had timed it just right, and 5 minutes after arriving, our train, a class 156, pulled up and we all got on for the half hour trundle into town. The line runs beside the river Tyne, and is very picturesque, even from a rattly diesel DMU.

 

We pulled into Newcastle, over Stephenson’s high level bridge, with glorious views over the river and city. It had just begun to rain, but we were prepared.

 

Outside the station, we looked up the wide street in front, and I saw a memorial, which should mean there was a square, maybe the centre of the city, so we set off, dodging shoppers and waiting bus passengers. However, we were thirsty. And hungry. And seeing an Italian ice cream parlour, we go inside to have breakfast.

 

I order sausage roll and a coffee: Jools has quiche. And a coffee. Now, that we did not specify what kind of coffee we wanted should have meant we got a cup of filter. Or so we thought. But what we did get was a cup of milky coffee, the kind that my parents used to drink, made with almost all hot milk, and horrible.

 

I tried to tell myself this was some kind of retro food experience, but my main thought was to drink it as soon as possible before a skin formed on the top, which would have made me retch.

 

Further up the street, we saw a sign saying ‘central arcade’; we thought it looked interesting and went in. Just as well we did, as inside it was decorated with splendid tiles, in a fine art deco fashion. In admiring them, we caught the attention of a woman, who engaged us in conversation. Turns out she was a guide, and for four pounds each would take us on a 90 minute tour round the city.

 

Sounded fair to us, so we paid, and our guide explained the history of the arcade and the surrounding area, all gentrified in the 1830s, which so resembled fine Parisian boulevards. It was a wonderful area, and the style, Tyne Gothic was very nice and almost chic. It has been renovated in recent times, and looks like it did when new, except for the pawnbrokers and other modern shops now occupying the ground floors.

 

We were shown the indoor market, the Theatre Royal, all the time heading down towards the river. We stop at The Black Gate, the old main entrance to the city, and next to it the Norman, or New, castle. I know that from the top fine views of trains arriving and leaving from the station could be had, and so I planned to return later in the day.

 

We walk down the old main road, the old Great North Road, as was, now a quit pedestrianised street, leading steeply down underneath two of the 5 bridges that cross the river. More history down there; merchants houses, where wharfs unloaded good from around the world, and just beyond, the once busy river.

 

That was the tour, we thanked the guide, and she said that along the river we would find many places to have lunch. We walked on, coming to a modern glass and steel building, a posh eateries and bar: looking at the menu, we both decide burgers were in order. So we go in, take a table, order drinks and our meal and watch the people. It is graduation at the university, and many people are in gowns, joyful with their friends and families, out celebrating their degrees and awards.

 

Our burgers were good, as were the drinks; Jools has a margarita, which was OK, but strong. Once we finish, I leave Jools on a bench as I cross the blinking bridge to snap the views along the river.

 

As the rain falls again, we walk back up the hill to the castle: I buy a ticket and go straight to the roof of the keep to snap the trains. But no Flying Scotsmen or Deltics this day, just the usual class 91, now rebranded to Branson’s Virgin company.

 

I take shots anyway, but time is getting away from us. I worry that our tickets will not be valid between four and six, so en route to the station, we stop off at the cathedral, I rattle off a few shots and we press on.

 

Just missing one train back to Hexham, but another is due to leave before four, a minute before four in fact. So, I pace the platform, snapping the trains that were there, coming and going before our nodding donkey arrives.

 

The class 142 is a horrible train, loud, even more ratly than the one we rode in the morning. Jools manages to nod off, quite an achievement as we shake our way along the Tyne valley. Half an hour later we pull into Hexham, we get off, and walk to the car, just a 15 minute whiz up the road to the cottage.

 

Yesterday, we bought a couple of bird feeders and hung them on the washing line and a bush in the garden, and to our delight as we arrived, a half dozen birds were about, feeding well. As we went inside, the heavens opened, and so we looked out the windows as the rain ran down the roof and off the ends of the thatch. That put paid to another evening we hoped to be sitting in the garden watching the owls and bats flying.

  

The Castle, Newcastle is a medieval fortification in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, built on the site of the fortress which gave the City of Newcastle its name. The most prominent remaining structures on the site are the Castle Keep, the castle's main fortified stone tower, and the Black Gate, its fortified gatehouse.

 

Use of the site for defensive purposes dates from Roman times, when it housed a fort and settlement called Pons Aelius, guarding a bridge over the River Tyne. In 1080, a wooden motte and bailey style castle was built on the site of the Roman fort, which was the 'New Castle upon Tyne'. It was built by Robert Curthose, eldest son of William the Conqueror, having returned south from a campaign against Malcolm III of Scotland. The stone Castle Keep was built between 1172 and 1177 by Henry II on the site of Curthose's castle. The Black Gate was added between 1247 and 1250 by Henry III.

 

The site is in the centre of Newcastle, and lies to the east of Newcastle Central Station. The 75 feet (23 m) gap between the Keep and the Gatehouse is almost entirely filled by a railway viaduct, carrying the East Coast Main Line from Newcastle to Scotland. The Castle Keep and Black Gate pre-dated the construction of the Newcastle town wall, construction of which started sometime around 1265, and did not form part of it. Nothing remains of the Roman fort or the original motte and bailey castle. The Keep is a Grade I listed building, and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

 

The Keep and Black Gate are now managed by the Old Newcastle Project under the Heart of the City Partnership as one combined visitor attraction, Newcastle Castle.

 

In the mid-2nd century, the Romans built the first bridge to cross the River Tyne at the place where Newcastle now stands. The bridge was called Pons Aelius or ‘Bridge of Aelius’, Aelius being the family name of Emperor Hadrian, who was responsible for the Roman wall built along Tyne-Solway Gap. The Romans built a fort to protect the river crossing which was at the foot of the Tyne Gorge. The fort was situated on rocky outcrop overlooking the new bridge.[1]

 

At some unknown time in the Anglo-Saxon age, the site of Newcastle came to be known as Monkchester. In the late 7th century, a cemetery was established on the site of the Roman castle.

 

In 1080, the Norman king, William I, sent his eldest son, Robert Curthose, north to defend the kingdom against the Scots. After his campaign, he moved to Monkchester and began the building of a ‘New Castle’. This was of the “motte-and-bailey” type of construction, a wooden tower on top of an earthen mound (motte), surrounded by a moat and wooden stockade (bailey).[2]

 

In 1095, the Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Mowbray, rose up against William Rufus and Rufus sent an army north to crush the revolt and to capture the castle. From then on the castle became crown property and was an important base from which the king could control the northern barons.

 

Not a trace of the tower or mound of the motte and bailey castle remains now. Henry II replaced it with a rectangular stone keep, which was built between 1172 and 1177 at a cost of £1,444. A stone bailey, in the form of a triangle, replaced the previous wooden one. The master mason or architect, Maurice, also built Dover Castle. The great outer gateway to the castle, called ‘the Black Gate’, was built later, between 1247 and 1250, in the reign of Henry III.[3]

 

Additional protection to the castle was provided late in the 13th century when stone walls were constructed, with towers, to enclose the town. Ironically, the safety provided by the town walls led to the neglect of the fabric of the castle. In 1589, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the castle was described as being ruinous.[4] From the early 17th century onward, this situation was made worse by the construction of shops and houses on much of the site.

 

In 1643, during the English Civil War, the Royalist Mayor of Newcastle, Sir John Marley, repaired the keep and probably also refortified the castle. In 1644 the Scottish army crossed the border in support of the Parliamentarians and the Scottish troops besieged Newcastle for three months until the garrison surrendered. The town walls were extensively damaged and the final forces to surrender on 19 October 1644 did so from the Castle keep.[5]

 

During the 16th to the 18th century, the keep was used as a prison. By 1800, there were a large number of houses within the boundaries of the castle.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle,_Newcastle

Why Vaccination Is Important For Your Pets | Vaccination Clinic In Singapore

 

Vaccination clinics in Singapore help forestall numerous illnesses that influence pets. Inoculating your pet has for some time been viewed as perhaps the most straightforward approaches to assist him with living a long, sound life. Not exclusively are there various antibodies for various illnesses, there are various sorts and mixes of immunizations. Immunization is a method that has dangers and advantages that must be weighed for each pet comparative with his way of life and wellbeing. Your veterinarian can decide an immunization system that will give the most secure and best insurance for your individual creature

 

Understanding vaccine

 

Vaccination help set up the body's invulnerable framework to battle the intrusion of malady causing life forms. Antibodies contain antigens, which appear as though the ailment making living being the insusceptible framework yet don't really cause illness. At the point when the antibody is acquainted with the body, the safe framework is somewhat invigorated. In the event that a pet is ever presented to the genuine infection, his safe framework is currently arranged to perceive and ward it off totally or lessen the seriousness of the sickness.

 

Core vaccine

 

Core immunizations are viewed as indispensable to all pets dependent on danger of introduction, seriousness of malady or contagiousness to people.

 

Cat core vaccines

 

Cat Calicivirus and Feline Rhinotracheitis: the two infections most ordinarily liable for upper respiratory contaminations in felines and little cats. They are incredibly regular infections and practically all felines will be presented to them sooner or later in the course of their life.

 

Cat Panleukopenia: otherwise called 'cat distemper,' this kind of parvovirus can end up being lethal for contaminated felines.

 

Other vaccination for cats

 

Chlamydia: a bacterial contamination that causes serious conjunctivitis. It is regularly remembered for the distemper blend antibody.

 

Cat Leukemia (Felv): a viral disease that is communicated through close contact. This immunization is commonly just suggested for felines that head outside.

 

Core dog vaccines

 

Distemper: an exceptionally infectious and frequently lethal viral contamination. It influences the respiratory and sensory systems.

 

Hepatitis: a viral disease of the liver which can prompt serious kidney harm.

 

Parvovirus: an exceptionally infectious and frequently lethal viral sickness that is portrayed by extreme retching and ridiculous loose bowels prompting lack of hydration. Youthful little dogs are particularly defenseless.

 

Other vaccination for dogs

Lyme Disease: this bacterial disorder comes about as a result of being smacked by a corrupted deer tick. Lyme ailment can cause constant and troublesome insufficiencies, for instance, kidney disillusionment, floundering, similarly as drawn out joint and muscle torture.

 

Leptospirosis: this bacterial malady is passed on by various wild animals and most normally imparted to canines through contact with polluted water, soil, mud or pee. This ailment causes liver and kidney disease and can be fatal. It is zoonotic, which infers, like rabies, it might be sent from various animals to individuals.

 

Bordetella: this bacterium adds to the respiratory disease known as pet inn hack. Canines are in peril when introduced to various canines in pet inns, preparing workplaces, instructional courses, day care and canine parks.

 

Influenza: this significantly irresistible respiratory ailment can essentially influence canines. There are two known strains of canine influenza that have been represented.

 

Creature antibody science is a substantially more ongoing advancement contrasted with that read in and produced for people. Inside the most recent decade, upgrades in veterinary clinic medication have diminished the dangers related with antibodies and had a tremendous effect on our pet's wellbeing and prosperity. All things considered, antibodies keep on being a subject of discussion. With more logical examinations being led than any other time in recent memory, pet guardians are getting more incredulous and instructing themselves to guarantee their pets maintain a strategic distance from genuine medical problems and possibly deadly symptoms.

 

Organic panella - dried-whole, natural sugar cane.

panella is an unrefined sugar, widely recognised for its unique caramel flavour, fine grain texture and golden colour. perfect for baking & coffee.

origin: hacienda lucerna

valle region, columbia

 

Tasted like good brown sugar, with a pleasant, almost flowery, caramel flavour.

 

---

  

They must get it a lot. Silly, ignorant, wishful customers hoping for a taste of The famous Snickers, by Queen of Desserts Philippa Sibley, at all hours of the day. Well, I can confirm that they don't serve it at breakfast, even if the polite waitress humoured me by "asking the kitchen", and then feigned empathy when she told me the bad news.

 

Just as well, the breakfast was still as good as I remembered it, and they added Black Pudding as an optional side. Bonus!

 

Il Fornaio

(03) 9534 2922

2 Acland St

St Kilda VIC 3182

www.ilfornaio.net.au/

 

Reviews:

- Il Fornaio, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, September 7, 2010

NOT since the invention of the Peach Melba has there been such a kerfuffle about a dessert. ''The famous Snickers'', as the menu at Il Fornaio calls it, and for once I'm inclined not to retch over the food-related use of the adjective. ''Famous'' on a menu usually means the dish in question isn't famous at all - but the Snickers? The Snickers is famous. The Snickers is so famous it should have its own agent, a magazine deal and a coke habit.

 

The Snickers and its creator, Philippa Sibley, have moved around a fair bit but they took up a new permanent residence recently at this former bakery-cafe in St Kilda, where they've conspired to capitalise on Sibley's reputation (''dessert queen'', ''queen of pastries'', ''passionate pastry whiz'', as Google attests) by trading at night-time primarily as a dessert restaurant (during the day things are far more cafe-like).

 

- Not just desserts, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, August 24, 2010

Philippa Sibley’s Snickers dessert needs little introduction. An instant hit when she first put it on the menu at Circa five years ago, her signature dish recently found a new lease of life at her new St Kilda digs, IlFornaio, and through being showcased on MasterChef.

 

‘‘Oh my god, straightaway it was a monster,’’ recalls Sibley of her take on the peanut and caramel chocolate bar first released by the Mars company in 1930. ‘‘We had a table of five come in and order eight of them, at $25 a pop [the IlFornaio version costs $19]. We sold 700 of them in one week.’’

 

- Il Fornaio

Skarr the Barbarian - Vampires

   

Yolande Fireheart walked in the light undergrowth of the woods just outside the Imperial city, her black wool cape and hood trailing behind her. She normally loved the smell of the early morning dew, and the sounds of the waking animals and birds. Reminded her of home in the Northlands, where her father would already be awakened hours before and working at his blades at the Fireheart Forge. She was supposedly looking for fresh mineral deposits, for her own forge, right here in the city, but her mind was elsewhere. Ever since she had met the Countess….

 

Not that Yolande was swung that way, but when she had first met the Countess of Richtenburg for the sale of a hundred swords for La Comtessa’s men, she had been struck with the woman. Countess Gabriella of Richtenburg was almost hypnotic and sensual, and tickled Yolande’s nerves beyond what the young Norther woman had thought possible. And, in their subsequent meetings, when Gabriella had admitted to being a vampire, a fiend, the very demon her father had warned her against, she still could not take the courage to shout for the watch. The way the Countess explained the advantages of undeath, Yolande longed for blood kiss, the caress that would turn her vampire . The feeling did not fade when she was alone, the petty squabbles of city life, jealousies and rivalries, all Yolande saw or felt were those delicious fangs sinking into her flesh…

 

…and so, she had come to look for mineral deposits. Normally, the job of kneeling in the earth and tearing her fingernails on the rocks till they bled reminded her of her own mortality, and of home. But not today. She thought only of Gabriella.

 

And so it became fitting when the small, raven haired Countess silently appeared behind her.

 

“Where…where did you….”, spluttered Yolande Fireheart, reaching for her blade, with which to attack the vampire.

 

Gabriella ignored the blade, and walked closer to Yolande,

 

“Shhhh now, sweetness, it’ all going to be fine”, she murmured.

 

Yolande stood there, in the morning air, shaking as Gabriella approached her, clad in the “Gabby the fisher girl” disguise she had been affecting recently. Gabriella stroked Yolande’s hair gently, cradling the blonde Norther’s head in her arms. Instinctively, Yolande tilted her head on one side and bared her neck for the vampire,

 

“Shhhh”, reassured Gabriella, “it won’t hurt. It’ll all be over soon, my darling.”

 

Yolande closed her eyes as Gabriella’s long fangs emerged from her mouth. Gripping Yolande’s head in her emerging claws, she bit deep into the jugular vein in Yolande’s neck, sinking her sharp fangs in. Gabriella held the Norther woman in her strong grasp as her body spasmed and instinctively tried to get away. Then, as Gabriella drunk deep of the delicious rich blood, she felt Yolande’s body relax into warm ecstasy.

 

Yolande’s vision became hazy. She remembered parts, not all. She remembered her vision fading in the harsh heat of the suddenly burning sun. How did Gabriella stand to be outside in such heat? The morning sun made her skin feel like it was almost on fire. She remembered the revolting smells coming from the sellers of cooked meats in the market, horrible retching smells of dead flesh.

 

And the delicious throb of the veins on their necks as the rich blood pumped in their warm bodies…

   

Yolande woke with a start. It was darkness outside, the middle of the night. Had the meeting with Gabriella all been a dream???

   

Her hair really makes her ensemble take off!

Like it's not bad enough that I'm allergic to the entire season- but does it have to SMELL like cum too? It's like Nature's little ha-ha joke on us.

I'm just strolling around, admiring the flowers and soaking up some sun and *WHAM* I walk right into an invisible cloud of tree jiz that shoots up my nose. So not only am I sneezing, but I'm also retching and spluttering as every unpleasant experience involving that particular scent flashes through my memory...

Fu** spring, man. Seriously.

 

*sniff* It just ain't right...

 

(Beware of medium size trees with heavy boughs of white flowers. Those are the bastards responsible.)

  

HBC note ** Don't I feel a proper berk! This should have been episode 2, but for one reason or another it wasn't. ** So here's Elina reflecting on how she first met Skarr in the first place...**

  

From “My encounters with the Barbarians blade”, by Lady Elina Greypepper

 

Being bound in slavery has a strange effect on one’s being…and as Skarr and I found ourselves in greater difficulties than ever before, I began to remember how Skarr and I had first met. Rather than being mere weeks ago, It seemed like years since I had arranged an expedition to Arlaheim for rare ingredients, and ran into trouble with slavers for the first time. I recall that I first met the Cock o’ the North shortly after she defeated the wyrm…

 

“The screams and catcalls of the forest had died down a little over the last few hours of Skarr’s trek. She was grateful, the wound in her thigh needed more attention than her ministrations of water and a bit of rag to tie round could give, and she felt it going numb. She was slowing slightly on her trek, but her fury carried her along. She repeated the names in her head, Gunnerson, Macleish, Taggarhey and Bunds, over and over, Gunnerson, Macleish, Taggarhey and Bunds. Four names that made her blood rise and carry her on through the forest. Gunnerson had been the one to hold her down, Macleish had bound her, Taggarhey had wrestled her into a sack and Bunds had thrown her into the icy ocean. Her four warlords, the terror of the north. Gunnerson she would kill first. When the Northmen had been routed along the banks of the Green road, he had fled over the hills into Samaria. She had found this out from a band of marauders shortly after being washed ashore, gasping for life. He would die first, Doomsayer would have the kill. Bunds she would save until last. He had been her closest ally, her friend since her childhood; they had been of the same tribe, the Tanra. She had been securely tied and sealed within the burlap sack; he had been the one to stab her, a callous and cruel act. For that, Bunds would pay. She would kill him the last of all. Skarr would make sure he heard of the deaths of his murderous dishonourable friends, and then she would kill him. Not with Doomsayer. With her own bare hands.

 

As she walked, she heard a cry from just off the forest path.

“Help”, came the voice, “please, traveller!” it cried.

Skarr entered the forest clearing and saw the figure, a female, bedraggled and shoeless, chained securely to a tree.

“Undo me traveller!” cried the girl, “the Panther women have me. They intend to sell me into slavery. They sell us to Samarian traders! I am an apothecary and valuable to them!”

Skarr thought for a moment, considering her response,

“But”, she began in her thick accented broken Imperial tongue, “if I was to free you, you would die at the hands of either the Panthers, of at the hands of the beasts that roam here! If I leave you tied, the Panthers will look after you and keep you safe, dushka! I will not be the one who causes your death. Farewell.”

Skarr turned on her heel and walked off through the forest, ignoring the girl’s plaintive cries and the clanking of her chains as she struggled.

 

After a few minutes, Skarr became aware of someone tracking her from beyond the path, and she tensed her lithe body slightly. She continued to walk, smelling the air. Human, definitely human, she decided. She moved to the other side of the path, so to draw the attacker out onto the path. Suddenly a figure clad in furs leapt with speed at her and the two of them collapsed onto the dirt. The Panther girl wrestled herself on top of Skarr with a ferocious energy.

“These are our lands!!” the Panther spitted at her, “We get a good price for you, Norther bitch. You make good strong slave for Samaria!”

Skarr relaxed her arm muscles and let the Panther pin her arms to the ground. Then she quickly raised her leg, delivering a knee to the girl’s stomach, making her retch. Skarr threw the Panther woman onto her back, delivering an uppercut to the jaw, before standing and delivering a swift kick in her side.

Skarr surveyed her whimpering opponent,

“Pah!” she exclaimed, “I would not sully the steel of Doomsayer with your hide. Tell your tribe to stay away from me, or I will make a mountain of your severed heads!”

The girl attempted to crawl away into the forest with a whimper, but Skarr kicked her in the side harshly again, and she fell still.

 

Muttering a Norther curse under her breath and shaking her head, Skarr began to retrace her steps to where the prisoner had been. Sure enough, there she was, securely chained to the tree. She had given up her struggles and stood quietly.

“It would appear, Dushka, “Skarr began, “That I have either frightened away or killed your captor”.

“You can’t just leave me here!” the girl cried.

“No. I cannot!” Skarr said, thinking, “Or you will die here”.

“May I travel with you?” the girl asked, “The beasts will tear me apart, unless the other Panthers get me first!”

“Keep up the pace, and look after yourself”, Skarr replied brusquely, “I’m not a nursemaid. If you slow me, I will kill you myself.”

The girl nodded, and watched as Skarr, with three quick tugs, snapped the girl’s chains, letting them tumble to the ground with a clatter.

“Thank you”, said the girl with relief, “I’m Elina. I make potions and incantations. I can look at your wound if you’d like.”

Skarr muttered another Norther curse, before spinning on her heel and stomping off along the path, cursing in her own tongue. Elina ran along after her, suddenly feeling hundreds of eyes watching her and the barbarian as they moved through the forest. Had she just jumped from the frying pan into the fire? Elina didn’t know.”

 

Suddenly, Elina was shaken from her thoughts by the barking order of a slaver...

they ring in my ears

 

..and then it’s over. The moment is gone, the mood has passed and I awake from those tattered dreams. Standing alone. Standing over all that I’ve done; all that I should not have done.

 

Sometimes there is silence. Sometimes voices: angry voices.

 

‘you always ruin everything’

 

Those words chase me up the street even now.

 

Sometimes there are voices. Sometimes silence: shocked silence.

 

People like me don’t do those things. Not things like that. They don’t say those words; they just don’t do those things. And yet, there it is. The movement, the shock, the impact, the pain, the memory and the moment, all passed in blood red seconds. Remembered for years by them, forgotten before they begin by me.

 

They walk away; away from me. From what I have done and from what I might do. Eyes seek horizons and hands are closed, fear and loathing. An unwanted perception covers me, smothers me and I hate them for it. I hate me for it and I cannot fight it, I cannot be seen in any other way. I cannot see. I did not see. I do not remember and it burns me to say it. I hate him.

 

Distance spins out in seconds; words of tradition lose their meaning in repetition. Familiar patterns of sparks, angles and cutting edges, of sharp turns and blind alleys. Blind rage. I blaze through normality. I alone burn that way while the victim shouts and falls. The witnesses stop and stare. The page crackles at my touch but it is me who burns. Alone.

 

Shunned.

 

I am left alone with the feelings, with that goddamned torrent of emotions. I am left to spit and choke on the acrid aftertaste of anger. I am left alone to feel another drawn out retch of regret moving beneath my meagre ribs. That regret that will build and form and swell into resentment, ready for the next spark. For me there can be no sympathy. There is no moral high ground, no pride, no more respect. Not for them. Never for me.

 

People like me don’t do those things.

 

People like me do those things.

 

We hate ourselves for it. I hate myself for it. But we do those things.

 

Time is the healer. How much time until the next time? Time is the healer. Memory fades and moments dwindle. Time is the healer. Until the next time…

  

Skarr the Barbarian - Vampires

   

Yolande Fireheart walked in the light undergrowth of the woods just outside the Imperial city, her black wool cape and hood trailing behind her. She normally loved the smell of the early morning dew, and the sounds of the waking animals and birds. Reminded her of home in the Northlands, where her father would already be awakened hours before and working at his blades at the Fireheart Forge. She was supposedly looking for fresh mineral deposits, for her own forge, right here in the city, but her mind was elsewhere. Ever since she had met the Countess….

 

Not that Yolande was swung that way, but when she had first met the Countess of Richtenburg for the sale of a hundred swords for La Comtessa’s men, she had been struck with the woman. Countess Gabriella of Richtenburg was almost hypnotic and sensual, and tickled Yolande’s nerves beyond what the young Norther woman had thought possible. And, in their subsequent meetings, when Gabriella had admitted to being a vampire, a fiend, the very demon her father had warned her against, she still could not take the courage to shout for the watch. The way the Countess explained the advantages of undeath, Yolande longed for blood kiss, the caress that would turn her vampire . The feeling did not fade when she was alone, the petty squabbles of city life, jealousies and rivalries, all Yolande saw or felt were those delicious fangs sinking into her flesh…

 

…and so, she had come to look for mineral deposits. Normally, the job of kneeling in the earth and tearing her fingernails on the rocks till they bled reminded her of her own mortality, and of home. But not today. She thought only of Gabriella.

 

And so it became fitting when the small, raven haired Countess silently appeared behind her.

 

“Where…where did you….”, spluttered Yolande Fireheart, reaching for her blade, with which to attack the vampire.

 

Gabriella ignored the blade, and walked closer to Yolande,

 

“Shhhh now, sweetness, it’ all going to be fine”, she murmured.

 

Yolande stood there, in the morning air, shaking as Gabriella approached her, clad in the “Gabby the fisher girl” disguise she had been affecting recently. Gabriella stroked Yolande’s hair gently, cradling the blonde Norther’s head in her arms. Instinctively, Yolande tilted her head on one side and bared her neck for the vampire,

 

“Shhhh”, reassured Gabriella, “it won’t hurt. It’ll all be over soon, my darling.”

 

Yolande closed her eyes as Gabriella’s long fangs emerged from her mouth. Gripping Yolande’s head in her emerging claws, she bit deep into the jugular vein in Yolande’s neck, sinking her sharp fangs in. Gabriella held the Norther woman in her strong grasp as her body spasmed and instinctively tried to get away. Then, as Gabriella drunk deep of the delicious rich blood, she felt Yolande’s body relax into warm ecstasy.

 

Yolande’s vision became hazy. She remembered parts, not all. She remembered her vision fading in the harsh heat of the suddenly burning sun. How did Gabriella stand to be outside in such heat? The morning sun made her skin feel like it was almost on fire. She remembered the revolting smells coming from the sellers of cooked meats in the market, horrible retching smells of dead flesh.

 

And the delicious throb of the veins on their necks as the rich blood pumped in their warm bodies…

   

Yolande woke with a start. It was darkness outside, the middle of the night. Had the meeting with Gabriella all been a dream???

   

All shot with the 10-20mm.

 

Wednesday

 

A day of rain.

 

And a trip to Newcastle.

 

Hmmmm, Newcastle.

 

We woke up at half seven, outside it was overcast with the promise of much rain through the day. We planned to go to Hexham to catch the train into the city, wander round, have lunch, take shots and come back. And it still sounded a good idea in the morning. So, after breakfast, we gathered our stuff, our new waterproof jackets and walking boots, packed the car and set off down the valley to Hexham.

 

There is an even more local station nearer the cottage, but only has a two-hourly service through the day. A 15 minute drive to Hexham opens the possibility of half hourly trains, if we got bored in the city.

 

Two pounds to park the car all day outside the station, seven quid for a return ticket. A cheap day it seemed.

 

We had timed it just right, and 5 minutes after arriving, our train, a class 156, pulled up and we all got on for the half hour trundle into town. The line runs beside the river Tyne, and is very picturesque, even from a rattly diesel DMU.

 

We pulled into Newcastle, over Stephenson’s high level bridge, with glorious views over the river and city. It had just begun to rain, but we were prepared.

 

Outside the station, we looked up the wide street in front, and I saw a memorial, which should mean there was a square, maybe the centre of the city, so we set off, dodging shoppers and waiting bus passengers. However, we were thirsty. And hungry. And seeing an Italian ice cream parlour, we go inside to have breakfast.

 

I order sausage roll and a coffee: Jools has quiche. And a coffee. Now, that we did not specify what kind of coffee we wanted should have meant we got a cup of filter. Or so we thought. But what we did get was a cup of milky coffee, the kind that my parents used to drink, made with almost all hot milk, and horrible.

 

I tried to tell myself this was some kind of retro food experience, but my main thought was to drink it as soon as possible before a skin formed on the top, which would have made me retch.

 

Further up the street, we saw a sign saying ‘central arcade’; we thought it looked interesting and went in. Just as well we did, as inside it was decorated with splendid tiles, in a fine art deco fashion. In admiring them, we caught the attention of a woman, who engaged us in conversation. Turns out she was a guide, and for four pounds each would take us on a 90 minute tour round the city.

 

Sounded fair to us, so we paid, and our guide explained the history of the arcade and the surrounding area, all gentrified in the 1830s, which so resembled fine Parisian boulevards. It was a wonderful area, and the style, Tyne Gothic was very nice and almost chic. It has been renovated in recent times, and looks like it did when new, except for the pawnbrokers and other modern shops now occupying the ground floors.

 

We were shown the indoor market, the Theatre Royal, all the time heading down towards the river. We stop at The Black Gate, the old main entrance to the city, and next to it the Norman, or New, castle. I know that from the top fine views of trains arriving and leaving from the station could be had, and so I planned to return later in the day.

 

We walk down the old main road, the old Great North Road, as was, now a quit pedestrianised street, leading steeply down underneath two of the 5 bridges that cross the river. More history down there; merchants houses, where wharfs unloaded good from around the world, and just beyond, the once busy river.

 

That was the tour, we thanked the guide, and she said that along the river we would find many places to have lunch. We walked on, coming to a modern glass and steel building, a posh eateries and bar: looking at the menu, we both decide burgers were in order. So we go in, take a table, order drinks and our meal and watch the people. It is graduation at the university, and many people are in gowns, joyful with their friends and families, out celebrating their degrees and awards.

 

Our burgers were good, as were the drinks; Jools has a margarita, which was OK, but strong. Once we finish, I leave Jools on a bench as I cross the blinking bridge to snap the views along the river.

 

As the rain falls again, we walk back up the hill to the castle: I buy a ticket and go straight to the roof of the keep to snap the trains. But no Flying Scotsmen or Deltics this day, just the usual class 91, now rebranded to Branson’s Virgin company.

 

I take shots anyway, but time is getting away from us. I worry that our tickets will not be valid between four and six, so en route to the station, we stop off at the cathedral, I rattle off a few shots and we press on.

 

Just missing one train back to Hexham, but another is due to leave before four, a minute before four in fact. So, I pace the platform, snapping the trains that were there, coming and going before our nodding donkey arrives.

 

The class 142 is a horrible train, loud, even more ratly than the one we rode in the morning. Jools manages to nod off, quite an achievement as we shake our way along the Tyne valley. Half an hour later we pull into Hexham, we get off, and walk to the car, just a 15 minute whiz up the road to the cottage.

 

Yesterday, we bought a couple of bird feeders and hung them on the washing line and a bush in the garden, and to our delight as we arrived, a half dozen birds were about, feeding well. As we went inside, the heavens opened, and so we looked out the windows as the rain ran down the roof and off the ends of the thatch. That put paid to another evening we hoped to be sitting in the garden watching the owls and bats flying.

 

I wish I could have gotten a better photo of this great sign, but it was not to be. I don't even remember where it is -- some town between Branson and OKC.

 

We were driving home from a great weekend skiing at Table Rock Lake, going to Silver Dollar City, and exploring area caves when my older son, Jack, aged six, decides that he's feeling a bit queazy -- just a few miles into our journey from Branson. So, we stop to let his stomach settle a bit and take some medicine to pass him out -- always the best remedy when we're in a car for a long time and he's not feeling well.

 

After a few minutes, Jack says he's better and we're back on the road -- a windy country road with miles between stops and an ever-darkening, forboding sky accompanying us. Can you tell that pretty things are not about to happen?

 

We're driving along and after a few minutes of complete silence from Jack (something that NEVER happens with my chatterbox son), I hear my younger son, Will (aged four), scream the words I've been dreading for the last 30 minutes, "Jack's getting sick all over himself!" "EEWWWW!!!," Will is hollering in disgust; Jack is white-faced and hurling his breakfast (pancakes and sausage) all over his lap; my husband starts retching at the smell of it all; and at that exact moment, the sky finally opens and sheets of rain begin to pour.

 

Lovely.

 

Chuck pulls the car over to the narrow shoulder because there is no place to stop for miles, and we brave the downpour to help Jack, who is now crying as hard as he was throwing up a minute ago. We strip the poor lad down to his underwear and try to clean up the mess as much as we can until we hit the next town, a whopping 20 miles away.

 

Back on the road, the stink in the car is so overwhelming that we brave the pelting rain and roll down all of the windows so that we won't be overcome by the fumes. We drive like this until we arrive at the next town and, thank God, find hose at a gas station that we can use to rinse everything, including a nearly naked and now-shivering Jack. We buy some trash bags in which to dump rinsed but still smelly clothing, floor mats, towels, etc., then we're on our way again.

 

Back on the road -- and only one hour into our long, six-hour journey -- we think that all is well until I look back at Jack and see an ashen face that matches the gray and gloomy sky. Oh no! Not again....

 

Sure enough, he didn't get all of his breakfast out the first time and proceeds to projectile vomit all over himself and the floor, devoid of floor mats this time. Will thinks it's a joke this time and starts hysterically laughing, but Jack looks like he's going to die right there on that lonely country road out in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain.

 

Jack (looking like he's gasping his last breath, he's so gray now): "U-u-g-h-h!"

 

Chuck (stopping the car as fast as he can on a wet road -- luckily, there is no one else around to run into): "Damnit! Stick your head out the window, Jack. The car. We just got it cleaned up! *&%#! #%#@!"

 

Me (calming my sick child, or my husband -- I can't tell which.): "It's okay, baby. You're okay. Everything will be fine."

 

Will (now trying to calm everyone, including himself -- or just traumatized by it all and going off into his own world): "You know, Jaws is just a big fish, that's all. Just a big fish. Nothing to be scared of." (He has just gone through an obsession with sharks and is terrified of them.)

 

We've used all of our towels and supplies cleaning up the first wave of sick, and we have nothing left to clean this doozie of a mess but the clothing we wore over the weekend. So, we pile through our suitcases looking for something absorbant and find a few shirts and a skirt we can use to wipe up the floor, door, seat, carseat, and Jack himself. After 10 minutes of erasing up every last bit of gunk and putting Jack in his last clean pair of underwear, we pile back in the car, give Jack an old cup to hold in case he needs to barf again, and are once again on our way.

 

At the next town -- 30 miles down the rainy road this time -- we luck out and find a car wash, scrub everything down one more time, find Jack a bigger cup in case he needs it (he does), and try it all again.

 

Somewhere along the way on this nightmare journey, I miraculously had the presense of mind to spot this great sign and snap it. I wish I could have stopped and taken a better photo of it, but by this time, I just wanted to hurry and get home and into a fresh-smelling environment.

 

If anyone has any idea of where this sign is located, I'd be interested to know.

HBC note ** Don't I feel a proper berk! This should have been episode 2, but for one reason or another it wasn't. ** So here's Elina reflecting on how she first met Skarr in the first place...**

  

From “My encounters with the Barbarians blade”, by Lady Elina Greypepper

 

Being bound in slavery has a strange effect on one’s being…and as Skarr and I found ourselves in greater difficulties than ever before, I began to remember how Skarr and I had first met. Rather than being mere weeks ago, It seemed like years since I had arranged an expedition to Arlaheim for rare ingredients, and ran into trouble with slavers for the first time. I recall that I first met the Cock o’ the North shortly after she defeated the wyrm…

 

“The screams and catcalls of the forest had died down a little over the last few hours of Skarr’s trek. She was grateful, the wound in her thigh needed more attention than her ministrations of water and a bit of rag to tie round could give, and she felt it going numb. She was slowing slightly on her trek, but her fury carried her along. She repeated the names in her head, Gunnerson, Macleish, Taggarhey and Bunds, over and over, Gunnerson, Macleish, Taggarhey and Bunds. Four names that made her blood rise and carry her on through the forest. Gunnerson had been the one to hold her down, Macleish had bound her, Taggarhey had wrestled her into a sack and Bunds had thrown her into the icy ocean. Her four warlords, the terror of the north. Gunnerson she would kill first. When the Northmen had been routed along the banks of the Green road, he had fled over the hills into Samaria. She had found this out from a band of marauders shortly after being washed ashore, gasping for life. He would die first, Doomsayer would have the kill. Bunds she would save until last. He had been her closest ally, her friend since her childhood; they had been of the same tribe, the Tanra. She had been securely tied and sealed within the burlap sack; he had been the one to stab her, a callous and cruel act. For that, Bunds would pay. She would kill him the last of all. Skarr would make sure he heard of the deaths of his murderous dishonourable friends, and then she would kill him. Not with Doomsayer. With her own bare hands.

 

As she walked, she heard a cry from just off the forest path.

“Help”, came the voice, “please, traveller!” it cried.

Skarr entered the forest clearing and saw the figure, a female, bedraggled and shoeless, chained securely to a tree.

“Undo me traveller!” cried the girl, “the Panther women have me. They intend to sell me into slavery. They sell us to Samarian traders! I am an apothecary and valuable to them!”

Skarr thought for a moment, considering her response,

“But”, she began in her thick accented broken Imperial tongue, “if I was to free you, you would die at the hands of either the Panthers, of at the hands of the beasts that roam here! If I leave you tied, the Panthers will look after you and keep you safe, dushka! I will not be the one who causes your death. Farewell.”

Skarr turned on her heel and walked off through the forest, ignoring the girl’s plaintive cries and the clanking of her chains as she struggled.

 

After a few minutes, Skarr became aware of someone tracking her from beyond the path, and she tensed her lithe body slightly. She continued to walk, smelling the air. Human, definitely human, she decided. She moved to the other side of the path, so to draw the attacker out onto the path. Suddenly a figure clad in furs leapt with speed at her and the two of them collapsed onto the dirt. The Panther girl wrestled herself on top of Skarr with a ferocious energy.

“These are our lands!!” the Panther spitted at her, “We get a good price for you, Norther bitch. You make good strong slave for Samaria!”

Skarr relaxed her arm muscles and let the Panther pin her arms to the ground. Then she quickly raised her leg, delivering a knee to the girl’s stomach, making her retch. Skarr threw the Panther woman onto her back, delivering an uppercut to the jaw, before standing and delivering a swift kick in her side.

Skarr surveyed her whimpering opponent,

“Pah!” she exclaimed, “I would not sully the steel of Doomsayer with your hide. Tell your tribe to stay away from me, or I will make a mountain of your severed heads!”

The girl attempted to crawl away into the forest with a whimper, but Skarr kicked her in the side harshly again, and she fell still.

 

Muttering a Norther curse under her breath and shaking her head, Skarr began to retrace her steps to where the prisoner had been. Sure enough, there she was, securely chained to the tree. She had given up her struggles and stood quietly.

“It would appear, Dushka, “Skarr began, “That I have either frightened away or killed your captor”.

“You can’t just leave me here!” the girl cried.

“No. I cannot!” Skarr said, thinking, “Or you will die here”.

“May I travel with you?” the girl asked, “The beasts will tear me apart, unless the other Panthers get me first!”

“Keep up the pace, and look after yourself”, Skarr replied brusquely, “I’m not a nursemaid. If you slow me, I will kill you myself.”

The girl nodded, and watched as Skarr, with three quick tugs, snapped the girl’s chains, letting them tumble to the ground with a clatter.

“Thank you”, said the girl with relief, “I’m Elina. I make potions and incantations. I can look at your wound if you’d like.”

Skarr muttered another Norther curse, before spinning on her heel and stomping off along the path, cursing in her own tongue. Elina ran along after her, suddenly feeling hundreds of eyes watching her and the barbarian as they moved through the forest. Had she just jumped from the frying pan into the fire? Elina didn’t know.”

 

Suddenly, Elina was shaken from her thoughts by the barking order of a slaver...

HBC note ** Don't I feel a proper berk! This should have been episode 2, but for one reason or another it wasn't. ** So here's Elina reflecting on how she first met Skarr in the first place...**

  

From “My encounters with the Barbarians blade”, by Lady Elina Greypepper

 

Being bound in slavery has a strange effect on one’s being…and as Skarr and I found ourselves in greater difficulties than ever before, I began to remember how Skarr and I had first met. Rather than being mere weeks ago, It seemed like years since I had arranged an expedition to Arlaheim for rare ingredients, and ran into trouble with slavers for the first time. I recall that I first met the Cock o’ the North shortly after she defeated the wyrm…

 

“The screams and catcalls of the forest had died down a little over the last few hours of Skarr’s trek. She was grateful, the wound in her thigh needed more attention than her ministrations of water and a bit of rag to tie round could give, and she felt it going numb. She was slowing slightly on her trek, but her fury carried her along. She repeated the names in her head, Gunnerson, Macleish, Taggarhey and Bunds, over and over, Gunnerson, Macleish, Taggarhey and Bunds. Four names that made her blood rise and carry her on through the forest. Gunnerson had been the one to hold her down, Macleish had bound her, Taggarhey had wrestled her into a sack and Bunds had thrown her into the icy ocean. Her four warlords, the terror of the north. Gunnerson she would kill first. When the Northmen had been routed along the banks of the Green road, he had fled over the hills into Samaria. She had found this out from a band of marauders shortly after being washed ashore, gasping for life. He would die first, Doomsayer would have the kill. Bunds she would save until last. He had been her closest ally, her friend since her childhood; they had been of the same tribe, the Tanra. She had been securely tied and sealed within the burlap sack; he had been the one to stab her, a callous and cruel act. For that, Bunds would pay. She would kill him the last of all. Skarr would make sure he heard of the deaths of his murderous dishonourable friends, and then she would kill him. Not with Doomsayer. With her own bare hands.

 

As she walked, she heard a cry from just off the forest path.

“Help”, came the voice, “please, traveller!” it cried.

Skarr entered the forest clearing and saw the figure, a female, bedraggled and shoeless, chained securely to a tree.

“Undo me traveller!” cried the girl, “the Panther women have me. They intend to sell me into slavery. They sell us to Samarian traders! I am an apothecary and valuable to them!”

Skarr thought for a moment, considering her response,

“But”, she began in her thick accented broken Imperial tongue, “if I was to free you, you would die at the hands of either the Panthers, of at the hands of the beasts that roam here! If I leave you tied, the Panthers will look after you and keep you safe, dushka! I will not be the one who causes your death. Farewell.”

Skarr turned on her heel and walked off through the forest, ignoring the girl’s plaintive cries and the clanking of her chains as she struggled.

 

After a few minutes, Skarr became aware of someone tracking her from beyond the path, and she tensed her lithe body slightly. She continued to walk, smelling the air. Human, definitely human, she decided. She moved to the other side of the path, so to draw the attacker out onto the path. Suddenly a figure clad in furs leapt with speed at her and the two of them collapsed onto the dirt. The Panther girl wrestled herself on top of Skarr with a ferocious energy.

“These are our lands!!” the Panther spitted at her, “We get a good price for you, Norther bitch. You make good strong slave for Samaria!”

Skarr relaxed her arm muscles and let the Panther pin her arms to the ground. Then she quickly raised her leg, delivering a knee to the girl’s stomach, making her retch. Skarr threw the Panther woman onto her back, delivering an uppercut to the jaw, before standing and delivering a swift kick in her side.

Skarr surveyed her whimpering opponent,

“Pah!” she exclaimed, “I would not sully the steel of Doomsayer with your hide. Tell your tribe to stay away from me, or I will make a mountain of your severed heads!”

The girl attempted to crawl away into the forest with a whimper, but Skarr kicked her in the side harshly again, and she fell still.

 

Muttering a Norther curse under her breath and shaking her head, Skarr began to retrace her steps to where the prisoner had been. Sure enough, there she was, securely chained to the tree. She had given up her struggles and stood quietly.

“It would appear, Dushka, “Skarr began, “That I have either frightened away or killed your captor”.

“You can’t just leave me here!” the girl cried.

“No. I cannot!” Skarr said, thinking, “Or you will die here”.

“May I travel with you?” the girl asked, “The beasts will tear me apart, unless the other Panthers get me first!”

“Keep up the pace, and look after yourself”, Skarr replied brusquely, “I’m not a nursemaid. If you slow me, I will kill you myself.”

The girl nodded, and watched as Skarr, with three quick tugs, snapped the girl’s chains, letting them tumble to the ground with a clatter.

“Thank you”, said the girl with relief, “I’m Elina. I make potions and incantations. I can look at your wound if you’d like.”

Skarr muttered another Norther curse, before spinning on her heel and stomping off along the path, cursing in her own tongue. Elina ran along after her, suddenly feeling hundreds of eyes watching her and the barbarian as they moved through the forest. Had she just jumped from the frying pan into the fire? Elina didn’t know.”

 

Suddenly, Elina was shaken from her thoughts by the barking order of a slaver...

2014/06/07(sat)

Asshole Carnival Vol.2

at Earthdom

 

ANAL VOLCANO

Mecosario (岡崎)

Retch

GO-ZEN

SAIGAN TERROR

ZENOCIDE

 

DJ : LOVEJUICE

 

2014/06/07(sat)

Asshole Carnival Vol.2

at Earthdom

 

ANAL VOLCANO

Mecosario (岡崎)

Retch

GO-ZEN

SAIGAN TERROR

ZENOCIDE

 

DJ : LOVEJUICE

 

HBC note ** Don't I feel a proper berk! This should have been episode 2, but for one reason or another it wasn't. ** So here's Elina reflecting on how she first met Skarr in the first place...**

  

From “My encounters with the Barbarians blade”, by Lady Elina Greypepper

 

Being bound in slavery has a strange effect on one’s being…and as Skarr and I found ourselves in greater difficulties than ever before, I began to remember how Skarr and I had first met. Rather than being mere weeks ago, It seemed like years since I had arranged an expedition to Arlaheim for rare ingredients, and ran into trouble with slavers for the first time. I recall that I first met the Cock o’ the North shortly after she defeated the wyrm…

 

“The screams and catcalls of the forest had died down a little over the last few hours of Skarr’s trek. She was grateful, the wound in her thigh needed more attention than her ministrations of water and a bit of rag to tie round could give, and she felt it going numb. She was slowing slightly on her trek, but her fury carried her along. She repeated the names in her head, Gunnerson, Macleish, Taggarhey and Bunds, over and over, Gunnerson, Macleish, Taggarhey and Bunds. Four names that made her blood rise and carry her on through the forest. Gunnerson had been the one to hold her down, Macleish had bound her, Taggarhey had wrestled her into a sack and Bunds had thrown her into the icy ocean. Her four warlords, the terror of the north. Gunnerson she would kill first. When the Northmen had been routed along the banks of the Green road, he had fled over the hills into Samaria. She had found this out from a band of marauders shortly after being washed ashore, gasping for life. He would die first, Doomsayer would have the kill. Bunds she would save until last. He had been her closest ally, her friend since her childhood; they had been of the same tribe, the Tanra. She had been securely tied and sealed within the burlap sack; he had been the one to stab her, a callous and cruel act. For that, Bunds would pay. She would kill him the last of all. Skarr would make sure he heard of the deaths of his murderous dishonourable friends, and then she would kill him. Not with Doomsayer. With her own bare hands.

 

As she walked, she heard a cry from just off the forest path.

“Help”, came the voice, “please, traveller!” it cried.

Skarr entered the forest clearing and saw the figure, a female, bedraggled and shoeless, chained securely to a tree.

“Undo me traveller!” cried the girl, “the Panther women have me. They intend to sell me into slavery. They sell us to Samarian traders! I am an apothecary and valuable to them!”

Skarr thought for a moment, considering her response,

“But”, she began in her thick accented broken Imperial tongue, “if I was to free you, you would die at the hands of either the Panthers, of at the hands of the beasts that roam here! If I leave you tied, the Panthers will look after you and keep you safe, dushka! I will not be the one who causes your death. Farewell.”

Skarr turned on her heel and walked off through the forest, ignoring the girl’s plaintive cries and the clanking of her chains as she struggled.

 

After a few minutes, Skarr became aware of someone tracking her from beyond the path, and she tensed her lithe body slightly. She continued to walk, smelling the air. Human, definitely human, she decided. She moved to the other side of the path, so to draw the attacker out onto the path. Suddenly a figure clad in furs leapt with speed at her and the two of them collapsed onto the dirt. The Panther girl wrestled herself on top of Skarr with a ferocious energy.

“These are our lands!!” the Panther spitted at her, “We get a good price for you, Norther bitch. You make good strong slave for Samaria!”

Skarr relaxed her arm muscles and let the Panther pin her arms to the ground. Then she quickly raised her leg, delivering a knee to the girl’s stomach, making her retch. Skarr threw the Panther woman onto her back, delivering an uppercut to the jaw, before standing and delivering a swift kick in her side.

Skarr surveyed her whimpering opponent,

“Pah!” she exclaimed, “I would not sully the steel of Doomsayer with your hide. Tell your tribe to stay away from me, or I will make a mountain of your severed heads!”

The girl attempted to crawl away into the forest with a whimper, but Skarr kicked her in the side harshly again, and she fell still.

 

Muttering a Norther curse under her breath and shaking her head, Skarr began to retrace her steps to where the prisoner had been. Sure enough, there she was, securely chained to the tree. She had given up her struggles and stood quietly.

“It would appear, Dushka, “Skarr began, “That I have either frightened away or killed your captor”.

“You can’t just leave me here!” the girl cried.

“No. I cannot!” Skarr said, thinking, “Or you will die here”.

“May I travel with you?” the girl asked, “The beasts will tear me apart, unless the other Panthers get me first!”

“Keep up the pace, and look after yourself”, Skarr replied brusquely, “I’m not a nursemaid. If you slow me, I will kill you myself.”

The girl nodded, and watched as Skarr, with three quick tugs, snapped the girl’s chains, letting them tumble to the ground with a clatter.

“Thank you”, said the girl with relief, “I’m Elina. I make potions and incantations. I can look at your wound if you’d like.”

Skarr muttered another Norther curse, before spinning on her heel and stomping off along the path, cursing in her own tongue. Elina ran along after her, suddenly feeling hundreds of eyes watching her and the barbarian as they moved through the forest. Had she just jumped from the frying pan into the fire? Elina didn’t know.”

 

Suddenly, Elina was shaken from her thoughts by the barking order of a slaver...

 

Friday 18th July 2014

 

My sister Hattie managed to buy the series 3 Zelfs playset that comes with the bee Zelf, "Beetrice". She loves bees so she had to get this one first.

Unfortunately, the "honey scent" of this figure smells VILE. Like, retch-inducing. I have tried to get rid of the smell by coating the figure (plastic parts only, not the hair) in human hair conditioner and leaving it to soak overnight. It hasn't made much of a difference though.

I'm quite disappointed in Moose for releasing such an awful-swelling toy, to be honest. I adore Zelfs, and want to support the line as much as I can, but I can't handle that horrible "scent". I like the look of the other 6 scented Zelfs, but now I am hesitant to buy them in case they reek, too.

They must get it a lot. Silly, ignorant, wishful customers hoping for a taste of The famous Snickers, by Queen of Desserts Philippa Sibley, at all hours of the day. Well, I can confirm that they don't serve it at breakfast, even if the polite waitress humoured me by "asking the kitchen", and then feigned empathy when she told me the bad news.

 

Just as well, the breakfast was still as good as I remembered it, and they added Black Pudding as an optional side. Bonus!

 

Il Fornaio

(03) 9534 2922

2 Acland St

St Kilda VIC 3182

www.ilfornaio.net.au/

 

Reviews:

- Il Fornaio, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, September 7, 2010

NOT since the invention of the Peach Melba has there been such a kerfuffle about a dessert. ''The famous Snickers'', as the menu at Il Fornaio calls it, and for once I'm inclined not to retch over the food-related use of the adjective. ''Famous'' on a menu usually means the dish in question isn't famous at all - but the Snickers? The Snickers is famous. The Snickers is so famous it should have its own agent, a magazine deal and a coke habit.

 

The Snickers and its creator, Philippa Sibley, have moved around a fair bit but they took up a new permanent residence recently at this former bakery-cafe in St Kilda, where they've conspired to capitalise on Sibley's reputation (''dessert queen'', ''queen of pastries'', ''passionate pastry whiz'', as Google attests) by trading at night-time primarily as a dessert restaurant (during the day things are far more cafe-like).

 

- Not just desserts, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, August 24, 2010

Philippa Sibley’s Snickers dessert needs little introduction. An instant hit when she first put it on the menu at Circa five years ago, her signature dish recently found a new lease of life at her new St Kilda digs, IlFornaio, and through being showcased on MasterChef.

 

‘‘Oh my god, straightaway it was a monster,’’ recalls Sibley of her take on the peanut and caramel chocolate bar first released by the Mars company in 1930. ‘‘We had a table of five come in and order eight of them, at $25 a pop [the IlFornaio version costs $19]. We sold 700 of them in one week.’’

 

- Il Fornaio

- Vanilla and orange peel handcream

- Sweet Orange, cedarwood and sage handwash

 

They must get it a lot. Silly, ignorant, wishful customers hoping for a taste of The famous Snickers, by Queen of Desserts Philippa Sibley, at all hours of the day. Well, I can confirm that they don't serve it at breakfast, even if the polite waitress humoured me by "asking the kitchen", and then feigned empathy when she told me the bad news.

 

Just as well, the breakfast was still as good as I remembered it, and they added Black Pudding as an optional side. Bonus!

 

Il Fornaio

(03) 9534 2922

2 Acland St

St Kilda VIC 3182

www.ilfornaio.net.au/

 

Reviews:

- Il Fornaio, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, September 7, 2010

NOT since the invention of the Peach Melba has there been such a kerfuffle about a dessert. ''The famous Snickers'', as the menu at Il Fornaio calls it, and for once I'm inclined not to retch over the food-related use of the adjective. ''Famous'' on a menu usually means the dish in question isn't famous at all - but the Snickers? The Snickers is famous. The Snickers is so famous it should have its own agent, a magazine deal and a coke habit.

 

The Snickers and its creator, Philippa Sibley, have moved around a fair bit but they took up a new permanent residence recently at this former bakery-cafe in St Kilda, where they've conspired to capitalise on Sibley's reputation (''dessert queen'', ''queen of pastries'', ''passionate pastry whiz'', as Google attests) by trading at night-time primarily as a dessert restaurant (during the day things are far more cafe-like).

 

- Not just desserts, by Larissa Dubecki, The Age, August 24, 2010

Philippa Sibley’s Snickers dessert needs little introduction. An instant hit when she first put it on the menu at Circa five years ago, her signature dish recently found a new lease of life at her new St Kilda digs, IlFornaio, and through being showcased on MasterChef.

 

‘‘Oh my god, straightaway it was a monster,’’ recalls Sibley of her take on the peanut and caramel chocolate bar first released by the Mars company in 1930. ‘‘We had a table of five come in and order eight of them, at $25 a pop [the IlFornaio version costs $19]. We sold 700 of them in one week.’’

 

- Il Fornaio

Skarr the Barbarian - Vampires

   

Yolande Fireheart walked in the light undergrowth of the woods just outside the Imperial city, her black wool cape and hood trailing behind her. She normally loved the smell of the early morning dew, and the sounds of the waking animals and birds. Reminded her of home in the Northlands, where her father would already be awakened hours before and working at his blades at the Fireheart Forge. She was supposedly looking for fresh mineral deposits, for her own forge, right here in the city, but her mind was elsewhere. Ever since she had met the Countess….

 

Not that Yolande was swung that way, but when she had first met the Countess of Richtenburg for the sale of a hundred swords for La Comtessa’s men, she had been struck with the woman. Countess Gabriella of Richtenburg was almost hypnotic and sensual, and tickled Yolande’s nerves beyond what the young Norther woman had thought possible. And, in their subsequent meetings, when Gabriella had admitted to being a vampire, a fiend, the very demon her father had warned her against, she still could not take the courage to shout for the watch. The way the Countess explained the advantages of undeath, Yolande longed for blood kiss, the caress that would turn her vampire . The feeling did not fade when she was alone, the petty squabbles of city life, jealousies and rivalries, all Yolande saw or felt were those delicious fangs sinking into her flesh…

 

…and so, she had come to look for mineral deposits. Normally, the job of kneeling in the earth and tearing her fingernails on the rocks till they bled reminded her of her own mortality, and of home. But not today. She thought only of Gabriella.

 

And so it became fitting when the small, raven haired Countess silently appeared behind her.

 

“Where…where did you….”, spluttered Yolande Fireheart, reaching for her blade, with which to attack the vampire.

 

Gabriella ignored the blade, and walked closer to Yolande,

 

“Shhhh now, sweetness, it’ all going to be fine”, she murmured.

 

Yolande stood there, in the morning air, shaking as Gabriella approached her, clad in the “Gabby the fisher girl” disguise she had been affecting recently. Gabriella stroked Yolande’s hair gently, cradling the blonde Norther’s head in her arms. Instinctively, Yolande tilted her head on one side and bared her neck for the vampire,

 

“Shhhh”, reassured Gabriella, “it won’t hurt. It’ll all be over soon, my darling.”

 

Yolande closed her eyes as Gabriella’s long fangs emerged from her mouth. Gripping Yolande’s head in her emerging claws, she bit deep into the jugular vein in Yolande’s neck, sinking her sharp fangs in. Gabriella held the Norther woman in her strong grasp as her body spasmed and instinctively tried to get away. Then, as Gabriella drunk deep of the delicious rich blood, she felt Yolande’s body relax into warm ecstasy.

 

Yolande’s vision became hazy. She remembered parts, not all. She remembered her vision fading in the harsh heat of the suddenly burning sun. How did Gabriella stand to be outside in such heat? The morning sun made her skin feel like it was almost on fire. She remembered the revolting smells coming from the sellers of cooked meats in the market, horrible retching smells of dead flesh.

 

And the delicious throb of the veins on their necks as the rich blood pumped in their warm bodies…

   

Yolande woke with a start. It was darkness outside, the middle of the night. Had the meeting with Gabriella all been a dream???

   

Wednesday

 

A day of rain.

 

And a trip to Newcastle.

 

Hmmmm, Newcastle.

 

We woke up at half seven, outside it was overcast with the promise of much rain through the day. We planned to go to Hexham to catch the train into the city, wander round, have lunch, take shots and come back. And it still sounded a good idea in the morning. So, after breakfast, we gathered our stuff, our new waterproof jackets and walking boots, packed the car and set off down the valley to Hexham.

 

There is an even more local station nearer the cottage, but only has a two-hourly service through the day. A 15 minute drive to Hexham opens the possibility of half hourly trains, if we got bored in the city.

 

Two pounds to park the car all day outside the station, seven quid for a return ticket. A cheap day it seemed.

 

We had timed it just right, and 5 minutes after arriving, our train, a class 156, pulled up and we all got on for the half hour trundle into town. The line runs beside the river Tyne, and is very picturesque, even from a rattly diesel DMU.

 

We pulled into Newcastle, over Stephenson’s high level bridge, with glorious views over the river and city. It had just begun to rain, but we were prepared.

 

Outside the station, we looked up the wide street in front, and I saw a memorial, which should mean there was a square, maybe the centre of the city, so we set off, dodging shoppers and waiting bus passengers. However, we were thirsty. And hungry. And seeing an Italian ice cream parlour, we go inside to have breakfast.

 

I order sausage roll and a coffee: Jools has quiche. And a coffee. Now, that we did not specify what kind of coffee we wanted should have meant we got a cup of filter. Or so we thought. But what we did get was a cup of milky coffee, the kind that my parents used to drink, made with almost all hot milk, and horrible.

 

I tried to tell myself this was some kind of retro food experience, but my main thought was to drink it as soon as possible before a skin formed on the top, which would have made me retch.

 

Further up the street, we saw a sign saying ‘central arcade’; we thought it looked interesting and went in. Just as well we did, as inside it was decorated with splendid tiles, in a fine art deco fashion. In admiring them, we caught the attention of a woman, who engaged us in conversation. Turns out she was a guide, and for four pounds each would take us on a 90 minute tour round the city.

 

Sounded fair to us, so we paid, and our guide explained the history of the arcade and the surrounding area, all gentrified in the 1830s, which so resembled fine Parisian boulevards. It was a wonderful area, and the style, Tyne Gothic was very nice and almost chic. It has been renovated in recent times, and looks like it did when new, except for the pawnbrokers and other modern shops now occupying the ground floors.

 

We walk along a narrow alley past pubs and old workshops, our guide giving us history behind the buildings. The world's fattest man lived and died here, King Charles 1st had dinner there. And so on. Until we came to Bigg Market.....

 

Bigg Market is where the young Geordie goes to have fun, or used to; according to our guide. It is not as popular as it once was, as many now go down to the Riverside. And Bigg Market is to be 'redeveloped'. So, this may be the last chances to see some of these fine old buildings, some of which now have demolition orders against them. All things must change. Apparently.

 

From Bigg Market, we walked to The Black Gate, the old main entrance to the city, then onto the New Castle, which gives the city it's name.

 

From the castle it was all down hill. Down the old main road into the city, the old Great North Road, which is now Pedestrian only, but cobbled, and showing how even the main roads were so very narrow.

 

As we walked down, the various bridges over the river tower above us, and the city huddles under their arches.

 

My only thought was how tough it was going to be walking back up!

Thursday, 11 September 2008.

 

40 Years in 40 Days [ view the entire set ]

An examination and remembrance of a life at 40.

 

For the 40 days leading up to my 40th birthday, I intend to use my 365 Days project to document and remember my life and lay bare what defines me. 40 years, 40 qualities, 40 days.

 

Year 22: 1989-1990

 

When I returned to school for my senior year, I moved out of the sorority house and into an apartment with friends. Technically, I was a 4th year junior. I would not have enough credits to graduate on time the following June, but would finish up in December, instead. Jared (a 5th year senior) and I picked up where we left off.

 

We started jokingly discussing marriage, and then gradually the jokes became less joking. We never discussed it with any specificity, but we hinted at it unceasingly. When Valentine's Day came, and he proposed, it was not really much of a surprise. It was, however, comically timed. I'd had a bad case of the stomach flu, and when he returned to his room with ring in hand, asking me to marry him, I was on my hands and knees, retching into his garbage pail. I suppose we should have packed it in right there, but sometimes when the universe gives you a sign, you just keep hurtling right past it.

 

Word spread, and Jared's fraternity brothers, who weren't cruel enough to toss him into the lake in the middle of February, tossed him into a cold shower instead. My sorority held a candle passing ceremony. We sang the sorority sweetheart song while a candle was passed from sister to sister. The sister who had the big secret announcement was to blow out the candle when it came to her. Once around the circle meant you were going steady with some guy (nobody ever held a candle passing ceremony for something so inane), twice around the circle meant you had been pinned (wearing a guy's fraternity pin was akin to pre-engagement), and three times meant you were engaged. In the four years I was there, the candle had never gone around the circle three times. This time, when the candle began its third trip around, an audible gasp went through the room, and people who had been crowded into the foyer jostled to get into the room for a better look. I felt like an idiot for taking part in the silly ceremony, but I was giddy. My hands were shaking, and as I blew out the candle, the room erupted into such screaming and carrying on that you would have thought they'd all won the lottery.

 

My best friend, Mark, was supportive but skeptical. He asked if I was really sure this was what I wanted. I said I was, and he looked at me for awhile, then smiled and gave me a hug. He would be there for me no matter what, and I was grateful for his concern and friendship.

 

In June, almost a year to the day before Jared and I were to be married, most of my friends - the people who had come in with me as freshmen - graduated and moved away. I continued taking classes throughout the summer and into the fall, studiously procrastinating on anything wedding-related.

 

Who am I?

 

I am not comfortable with rituals and ceremonies.

 

There are rituals that deserve to be laughed at. Sorority candle passing, and the screaming which ensues, is one such ritual. But, I'm uncomfortable with all manner of rituals. I can't help it. While I appreciate their meaning, and their place in our lives, I just find a comical arbitrariness in a room full of people all doing and saying the same thing. It's funny to me. This is OK at sorority ritual. It's not as OK at a funeral. I wore a white blouse and a bright green scarf to my grandmother's funeral, because I wanted to celebrate my grandmother's life. I wanted to be happy thinking about her that day. Everyone else in the room walked around in a fog, dressed head to toe in respectable black. Sitting in the church, I wanted to push down the walls and burst out into the open air, where the sun was shining. I fidgeted and fretted as the crowd around me plodded through its motions. I did not begrudge them their ritual, but I did not particularly want to be a part of it, either. When the service was over, I went outside and stood in the breeze, smiling at the sun.

 

[ view previous | view next ]

All shot with the 10-20mm.

 

Wednesday

 

A day of rain.

 

And a trip to Newcastle.

 

Hmmmm, Newcastle.

 

We woke up at half seven, outside it was overcast with the promise of much rain through the day. We planned to go to Hexham to catch the train into the city, wander round, have lunch, take shots and come back. And it still sounded a good idea in the morning. So, after breakfast, we gathered our stuff, our new waterproof jackets and walking boots, packed the car and set off down the valley to Hexham.

 

There is an even more local station nearer the cottage, but only has a two-hourly service through the day. A 15 minute drive to Hexham opens the possibility of half hourly trains, if we got bored in the city.

 

Two pounds to park the car all day outside the station, seven quid for a return ticket. A cheap day it seemed.

 

We had timed it just right, and 5 minutes after arriving, our train, a class 156, pulled up and we all got on for the half hour trundle into town. The line runs beside the river Tyne, and is very picturesque, even from a rattly diesel DMU.

 

We pulled into Newcastle, over Stephenson’s high level bridge, with glorious views over the river and city. It had just begun to rain, but we were prepared.

 

Outside the station, we looked up the wide street in front, and I saw a memorial, which should mean there was a square, maybe the centre of the city, so we set off, dodging shoppers and waiting bus passengers. However, we were thirsty. And hungry. And seeing an Italian ice cream parlour, we go inside to have breakfast.

 

I order sausage roll and a coffee: Jools has quiche. And a coffee. Now, that we did not specify what kind of coffee we wanted should have meant we got a cup of filter. Or so we thought. But what we did get was a cup of milky coffee, the kind that my parents used to drink, made with almost all hot milk, and horrible.

 

I tried to tell myself this was some kind of retro food experience, but my main thought was to drink it as soon as possible before a skin formed on the top, which would have made me retch.

 

Further up the street, we saw a sign saying ‘central arcade’; we thought it looked interesting and went in. Just as well we did, as inside it was decorated with splendid tiles, in a fine art deco fashion. In admiring them, we caught the attention of a woman, who engaged us in conversation. Turns out she was a guide, and for four pounds each would take us on a 90 minute tour round the city.

 

Sounded fair to us, so we paid, and our guide explained the history of the arcade and the surrounding area, all gentrified in the 1830s, which so resembled fine Parisian boulevards. It was a wonderful area, and the style, Tyne Gothic was very nice and almost chic. It has been renovated in recent times, and looks like it did when new, except for the pawnbrokers and other modern shops now occupying the ground floors.

 

We were shown the indoor market, the Theatre Royal, all the time heading down towards the river. We stop at The Black Gate, the old main entrance to the city, and next to it the Norman, or New, castle. I know that from the top fine views of trains arriving and leaving from the station could be had, and so I planned to return later in the day.

 

We walk down the old main road, the old Great North Road, as was, now a quit pedestrianised street, leading steeply down underneath two of the 5 bridges that cross the river. More history down there; merchants houses, where wharfs unloaded good from around the world, and just beyond, the once busy river.

 

That was the tour, we thanked the guide, and she said that along the river we would find many places to have lunch. We walked on, coming to a modern glass and steel building, a posh eateries and bar: looking at the menu, we both decide burgers were in order. So we go in, take a table, order drinks and our meal and watch the people. It is graduation at the university, and many people are in gowns, joyful with their friends and families, out celebrating their degrees and awards.

 

Our burgers were good, as were the drinks; Jools has a margarita, which was OK, but strong. Once we finish, I leave Jools on a bench as I cross the blinking bridge to snap the views along the river.

 

As the rain falls again, we walk back up the hill to the castle: I buy a ticket and go straight to the roof of the keep to snap the trains. But no Flying Scotsmen or Deltics this day, just the usual class 91, now rebranded to Branson’s Virgin company.

 

I take shots anyway, but time is getting away from us. I worry that our tickets will not be valid between four and six, so en route to the station, we stop off at the cathedral, I rattle off a few shots and we press on.

 

Just missing one train back to Hexham, but another is due to leave before four, a minute before four in fact. So, I pace the platform, snapping the trains that were there, coming and going before our nodding donkey arrives.

 

The class 142 is a horrible train, loud, even more ratly than the one we rode in the morning. Jools manages to nod off, quite an achievement as we shake our way along the Tyne valley. Half an hour later we pull into Hexham, we get off, and walk to the car, just a 15 minute whiz up the road to the cottage.

 

Yesterday, we bought a couple of bird feeders and hung them on the washing line and a bush in the garden, and to our delight as we arrived, a half dozen birds were about, feeding well. As we went inside, the heavens opened, and so we looked out the windows as the rain ran down the roof and off the ends of the thatch. That put paid to another evening we hoped to be sitting in the garden watching the owls and bats flying.

Photo by Paul Sever.

 

From left to right: Donald Barclay, Paul Spillers, Gene Stone.

 

Gene Stone is a favorite from my fire days. A distance runner from Portland, Oregon who attended Boise State University on a full-ride track scholarship, Gene was quick thinking, athletic, confident, competent, and irresistible to women. That is to say, he was (and is) pretty much everything I never was. And never will be. Gene went on to work as an Alaska smokejumper for many years. He taught school in Alaska for years and, as of 2020, is a school administrator up there.

 

One time, when the crew was on a Bureau of Land Management brush fire near Emmett, Idaho, Gene and I were sent off with some BLM wanker who was supposed to lead us to a hot spot that needed knocking down. There turned out to be nothing to the hot spot, so eventually the BLM guy wandered off, leaving Gene and me alone and out of radio contact. The wind started to pick up, and soon the two of us had more fire than we could handle. We dug a quick scratch line and tried to burn out, but the main fire came right over our line. There wasn't so much fire that it was likely to kill us, but there was enough to make us not want to stand around and find out. We had the choice of 1) deploying our fire shelters, 2) trying to dash through the oncoming fire into the black, or 3) running for the ridge. The latter it was. Off we went. When you are running (possibly) for your life, there is little that is more discouraging than running with a gifted track athlete who happens to be in top condition. I was in decent shape, but Gene left me so far in the dust that I felt like I was barely moving, that the fire must be burning the covers off my canteens. When I finally caught up with Gene at the top of the ridge, the son of a bitch wasn't even breathing hard. I looked back to see that I had left the fire far below me.

 

About the time I was done panting and retching, the BLM wanker came moseying up. Then the helicopter with the fire boss on board flew over. Over the wanker's radio we could hear the fire boss saying, "We could put this thing out if we can get those hotshots to keep their hands off their fusees and quit leaning on their shovels." When the helicopter came closer, Gene gave the fire boss the finger. Later on, the fire boss told our foreman about Gene's love gesture. Neither boss was any too happy with Gene. We always referred to that fire as the "Stonefinger Incident."

 

At the time of the Stonefinger Incident, my sister was taking an entomology course at Boise State. She had learned that there was some question about whether walking sticks (a type of insect) were found in Idaho. I told her that I thought they were, as I was sure I'd seen them on fires in Idaho. Towards the end of the Stonefinger Fire, I was sitting on the ground, waiting for a ride back to fire camp, when I felt something crawling on my hand. Sure enough, it was a walking stick. I collected it in a plastic bag and gave it to my sister when I got back home. She gave it to her professor, who was impressed enough that he later lead an expedition to the hills north of Emmett to find more genuine Idaho walking sticks.

 

Paul Spillers was our squad boss in 1981. Originally from Kansas, Paul had fought fire in Arizona for several years before coming to the Boise Hotshots. Paul was smart, hardworking, and woods wise. I always enjoyed being on his squad. Paul eventually got a geology degree from Boise State University and was working as a geologist in Boise the last time I saw him.

 

There I am in all my Nomex glory. Nomex is the fire-resistant material used to make the yellow shirts and green pants you see in these photos. The shirts Paul and I wear are typically filthy. The dark black marks on our shoulders are from the straps of the web gear we wore on the fire line. Gene's shirt is suspiciously clean. He must have traded in his dirty shirt for a clean one at the fire-camp supply tent. We always wore bandanas because they offered some protection from smoke and dust. Plus they are great for robbing stagecoaches. In Southern California they discourage firefighters from wearing red or blue bandanas because of the gang associations. They use a lot of prison crews in Southern California, so I guess it could be a problem. I never worried about it the few times I fought fire in that part of the world.

 

You might notice that Gene, Paul, and I have label-maker labels on the front of our hard hats; these labels give our names, weights (for figuring helicopter loads), and the name of our crew. The intense heat of fires regularly melts the labels off hard hats. We wore fiberglass hard hats because plastic hard hats melt and metal hard hats get too hot. At times we worked in extremely intense heat. I've had the water in my canteens become too hot to drink. Some guys claimed that their canteen water actually boiled, though I can't swear to that personally.

 

The Boise Hotshots wore green hard hats, while our sister crew, the Sawtooth, wore blue. Back in the days when the Boise still wore metal hard hats, the crew was known as "The Pickles," a nickname suggested by both the color and pickle-slice ridge of their hard hats. The Sawtooth Hotshots held on to their metal hard hats for years after everyone else had gone to fiberglass. I guess they liked the retro look. You can usually spot a hotshot crew on a fire because everyone on the crew wears the same color hard hat. No mix and match like regular crews.

 

The Sawtooth Hotshot Crew was known as both "the Saw Dogs" and the "Saw Chucks." Their foreman was more of a disciplinarian than ours, and so the Sawtooth was always more of a military style crew than the Boise. For example, when traveling home from a fire bust the Boise Hotshots wore whatever clothes they wanted, while the Sawtooth Hotshots had to wear their crew t-shirts and caps. The Sawtooth were good at marching, and they sang a lot. The Boise Hotshots did a lot of bad things, but we never sang.

   

HCTER RETCH VAA

Unused.

 

A soldier's gasmask is adjusted by his officer, ensuring it's correct fit when it's needed. Their black shoulder straps and Swedish cuffs lead me to believe these fellows might be Pioniere.

 

Wikipedia

 

Death by gas was often slow and painful. According to Denis Winter (Death's Men, 1978), a fatal dose of phosgene eventually led to "shallow breathing and retching, pulse up to 120, an ashen face and the discharge of four pints (2 litres) of yellow liquid from the lungs each hour for the 48 of the drowning spasms."

Skarr the Barbarian - Vampires

   

Yolande Fireheart walked in the light undergrowth of the woods just outside the Imperial city, her black wool cape and hood trailing behind her. She normally loved the smell of the early morning dew, and the sounds of the waking animals and birds. Reminded her of home in the Northlands, where her father would already be awakened hours before and working at his blades at the Fireheart Forge. She was supposedly looking for fresh mineral deposits, for her own forge, right here in the city, but her mind was elsewhere. Ever since she had met the Countess….

 

Not that Yolande was swung that way, but when she had first met the Countess of Richtenburg for the sale of a hundred swords for La Comtessa’s men, she had been struck with the woman. Countess Gabriella of Richtenburg was almost hypnotic and sensual, and tickled Yolande’s nerves beyond what the young Norther woman had thought possible. And, in their subsequent meetings, when Gabriella had admitted to being a vampire, a fiend, the very demon her father had warned her against, she still could not take the courage to shout for the watch. The way the Countess explained the advantages of undeath, Yolande longed for blood kiss, the caress that would turn her vampire . The feeling did not fade when she was alone, the petty squabbles of city life, jealousies and rivalries, all Yolande saw or felt were those delicious fangs sinking into her flesh…

 

…and so, she had come to look for mineral deposits. Normally, the job of kneeling in the earth and tearing her fingernails on the rocks till they bled reminded her of her own mortality, and of home. But not today. She thought only of Gabriella.

 

And so it became fitting when the small, raven haired Countess silently appeared behind her.

 

“Where…where did you….”, spluttered Yolande Fireheart, reaching for her blade, with which to attack the vampire.

 

Gabriella ignored the blade, and walked closer to Yolande,

 

“Shhhh now, sweetness, it’ all going to be fine”, she murmured.

 

Yolande stood there, in the morning air, shaking as Gabriella approached her, clad in the “Gabby the fisher girl” disguise she had been affecting recently. Gabriella stroked Yolande’s hair gently, cradling the blonde Norther’s head in her arms. Instinctively, Yolande tilted her head on one side and bared her neck for the vampire,

 

“Shhhh”, reassured Gabriella, “it won’t hurt. It’ll all be over soon, my darling.”

 

Yolande closed her eyes as Gabriella’s long fangs emerged from her mouth. Gripping Yolande’s head in her emerging claws, she bit deep into the jugular vein in Yolande’s neck, sinking her sharp fangs in. Gabriella held the Norther woman in her strong grasp as her body spasmed and instinctively tried to get away. Then, as Gabriella drunk deep of the delicious rich blood, she felt Yolande’s body relax into warm ecstasy.

 

Yolande’s vision became hazy. She remembered parts, not all. She remembered her vision fading in the harsh heat of the suddenly burning sun. How did Gabriella stand to be outside in such heat? The morning sun made her skin feel like it was almost on fire. She remembered the revolting smells coming from the sellers of cooked meats in the market, horrible retching smells of dead flesh.

 

And the delicious throb of the veins on their necks as the rich blood pumped in their warm bodies…

   

Yolande woke with a start. It was darkness outside, the middle of the night. Had the meeting with Gabriella all been a dream???

   

As Ginny and I were walking into McDonald's today, I was thinking about how little tolerance I have for anything annoying, when I'm with her. I'm already at a heightened state of annoyance. One more thing will just send me over the edge. Somebody cuts me off in traffic? I want to shout, "You moron! Can't you see I'm dealing with my mother?!?"

 

That's the mood I was in when a man dropped his Coke on the floor right behind us, splattering Ginny's clean pants and shoes. Now, here's what I wish I had done. I wish I had given him a sympathetic smile and said, "That's OK. Accidents happen." Because if I had, the rest of my day would have gone better.

 

But I didn't. I shot him a Look of Death and made a big deal out of cleaning her up. Then she couldn't get her shoe back on, and wanted to hop on one foot over the slippery floor to be able to sit down. "NO," I said loudly, "Just put your WET shoe back on."

 

The man was so embarrassed he ran out of the restaurant, almost colliding with the skinny clean-up kid and his mop.

 

After lunch, we drove across town to go shoe-shopping. When we reached the store and Ginny got out of the car, a look of horror crossed her face.

 

"Oh no!" she wailed. "I'm pooping!!"

 

Was she ever. It was as if she hadn't pooped in a couple of weeks, and that chicken sandwich just shoved everything out of the way.

 

I covered the car seat with a paper bag and took her to my house, driving with all the windows down. Got her into the bathroom where she exploded. I started to retch which made it all worse. Eventually, when things calmed down, I helped her into the bathtub. Since I'd already showered her this morning, I thought I'd use this hand-held adaptor thing so that I could just wash her body and not get her hair wet. I hooked it up to the sink where it immediately backfired and flooded the countertop. That's when I began to say what was on my mind... and what was on my toilet, my rug and my floor.

 

"Shit." I said. "Shit, shit. Shit, shit, shit."

 

Poor Ginny. She was a hundred times more embarrassed than McDonald's Man. She finished cleaning herself up while I threw her clothes into a trash bag. Luckily I had just done the laundry and had another outfit. While she changed I disinfected the bathroom and my car.

 

Back to the shoe store. Then to the drugstore. Things were starting to get back on track, until I decided to stop and get a soda. I left her in the car with the engine off but the keys in the ignition, the radio on and the windows down.

 

How long does it take to get a soda - 5 minutes? As I'm coming out of 7-11, I see her ten feet away from my car, sliding down a hill, about to fall into a busy street. I call out her name, she doesn't respond. She's heading for a patch of flowers and nothing is going to stop her. I run, I catch her, and I give her hell. I scold her like she's a three-year-old. That just makes her mad, and we get into a terrible fight. At one point, I consider stopping the car, making her get out, and driving off without her. But of course she has her "Safe Return" bracelet with my name on it. Not to mention there would be witnesses.

 

Suddenly I realize just how angry I am, and that actually calms me down. I tell her I'm sorry, and that I yelled at her because I was both angry and afraid. She doesn't really accept my apology and sulks all the way home. I drop her off, I hug her, I tell her I'm sorry again.

 

Then I drive home (21 miles, remember)... and realize I've left my purse at her place.

 

By the time I get back, she's had dinner and is in bed asleep. She wakes up, completely forgetting that we'd spent the day together. Completely forgetting the poop, the shoes, the fight. She gives me a sweet smile and a hug and tells me she loves me.

 

Start again, clean slate.

 

All shot with the 10-20mm.

 

Wednesday

 

A day of rain.

 

And a trip to Newcastle.

 

Hmmmm, Newcastle.

 

We woke up at half seven, outside it was overcast with the promise of much rain through the day. We planned to go to Hexham to catch the train into the city, wander round, have lunch, take shots and come back. And it still sounded a good idea in the morning. So, after breakfast, we gathered our stuff, our new waterproof jackets and walking boots, packed the car and set off down the valley to Hexham.

 

There is an even more local station nearer the cottage, but only has a two-hourly service through the day. A 15 minute drive to Hexham opens the possibility of half hourly trains, if we got bored in the city.

 

Two pounds to park the car all day outside the station, seven quid for a return ticket. A cheap day it seemed.

 

We had timed it just right, and 5 minutes after arriving, our train, a class 156, pulled up and we all got on for the half hour trundle into town. The line runs beside the river Tyne, and is very picturesque, even from a rattly diesel DMU.

 

We pulled into Newcastle, over Stephenson’s high level bridge, with glorious views over the river and city. It had just begun to rain, but we were prepared.

 

Outside the station, we looked up the wide street in front, and I saw a memorial, which should mean there was a square, maybe the centre of the city, so we set off, dodging shoppers and waiting bus passengers. However, we were thirsty. And hungry. And seeing an Italian ice cream parlour, we go inside to have breakfast.

 

I order sausage roll and a coffee: Jools has quiche. And a coffee. Now, that we did not specify what kind of coffee we wanted should have meant we got a cup of filter. Or so we thought. But what we did get was a cup of milky coffee, the kind that my parents used to drink, made with almost all hot milk, and horrible.

 

I tried to tell myself this was some kind of retro food experience, but my main thought was to drink it as soon as possible before a skin formed on the top, which would have made me retch.

 

Further up the street, we saw a sign saying ‘central arcade’; we thought it looked interesting and went in. Just as well we did, as inside it was decorated with splendid tiles, in a fine art deco fashion. In admiring them, we caught the attention of a woman, who engaged us in conversation. Turns out she was a guide, and for four pounds each would take us on a 90 minute tour round the city.

 

Sounded fair to us, so we paid, and our guide explained the history of the arcade and the surrounding area, all gentrified in the 1830s, which so resembled fine Parisian boulevards. It was a wonderful area, and the style, Tyne Gothic was very nice and almost chic. It has been renovated in recent times, and looks like it did when new, except for the pawnbrokers and other modern shops now occupying the ground floors.

 

We were shown the indoor market, the Theatre Royal, all the time heading down towards the river. We stop at The Black Gate, the old main entrance to the city, and next to it the Norman, or New, castle. I know that from the top fine views of trains arriving and leaving from the station could be had, and so I planned to return later in the day.

 

We walk down the old main road, the old Great North Road, as was, now a quit pedestrianised street, leading steeply down underneath two of the 5 bridges that cross the river. More history down there; merchants houses, where wharfs unloaded good from around the world, and just beyond, the once busy river.

 

That was the tour, we thanked the guide, and she said that along the river we would find many places to have lunch. We walked on, coming to a modern glass and steel building, a posh eateries and bar: looking at the menu, we both decide burgers were in order. So we go in, take a table, order drinks and our meal and watch the people. It is graduation at the university, and many people are in gowns, joyful with their friends and families, out celebrating their degrees and awards.

 

Our burgers were good, as were the drinks; Jools has a margarita, which was OK, but strong. Once we finish, I leave Jools on a bench as I cross the blinking bridge to snap the views along the river.

 

As the rain falls again, we walk back up the hill to the castle: I buy a ticket and go straight to the roof of the keep to snap the trains. But no Flying Scotsmen or Deltics this day, just the usual class 91, now rebranded to Branson’s Virgin company.

 

I take shots anyway, but time is getting away from us. I worry that our tickets will not be valid between four and six, so en route to the station, we stop off at the cathedral, I rattle off a few shots and we press on.

 

Just missing one train back to Hexham, but another is due to leave before four, a minute before four in fact. So, I pace the platform, snapping the trains that were there, coming and going before our nodding donkey arrives.

 

The class 142 is a horrible train, loud, even more ratly than the one we rode in the morning. Jools manages to nod off, quite an achievement as we shake our way along the Tyne valley. Half an hour later we pull into Hexham, we get off, and walk to the car, just a 15 minute whiz up the road to the cottage.

 

Yesterday, we bought a couple of bird feeders and hung them on the washing line and a bush in the garden, and to our delight as we arrived, a half dozen birds were about, feeding well. As we went inside, the heavens opened, and so we looked out the windows as the rain ran down the roof and off the ends of the thatch. That put paid to another evening we hoped to be sitting in the garden watching the owls and bats flying.

So there it was over, thirteen years. And the short trek down the beach, the hobo and the stink of the absences of booze that only a particularly fetid individual can give off not like a real tramp and the sterile sweetness that only cheep alcohol can supply, he had been following him a while not that he minded it he supposed that some people would be intimidated but he just welcomed it, fuckit he said there is not much I have to lose.

 

Shadows he thought back then though why bother? So what was he doing here? If he was honest? Did he feel at home like he told everyone no home was up in the spires and the monkeys on the ground adding to the grist it's not like the air was better here, the stinking of the rot of a hundred thousand years.

 

He stopped to take a piss his knob shrunk to the size of a maggot, just managed to petrude from his flies, a shot trickle of urine splashed to the stones and across his feet then stopped abruptly, not managing to feel like any sort of relief he trudged on hunching deeper into his slim jacket.

 

By the time he reached the point, the hobo’s mumbling could be heard the tramp was closing in on him. Fuckit he thought and hunched down behind a groin to cut off most of the wind.

 

Of course the hobo hunched down next to him,

 

Least this demon has the balls to face me he thought, he pulled the vodka out of his pocket and took a pull, so I’m just a blind fool what’s your problem? proffering the bottle expecting a vampiric grasp at the bottle but getting nothing more than a sneer and a child like battering of the bottle he consoled himself with an other deep pull causing him to gag and splutter leading to a cough and the evacuation of his guts, retching he turned over to brace himself against the cold wet wood of the groin sucking, trying for air until he was too winded to puke and curled up.

 

You know this one right? He managed to spit through the stream of saliva emanating from his lips

 

“No never drunk never will” the hobo spat.

 

I've been in panic before. I mean, when Crow kidnapped Tim, when Jackie lost it on Roadkill, all that stuff. But they're not the same kind of panic I felt today. You see, today I felt panic in the batcave, a place I always believed was safe. I felt that panic for Bruce, and man I thought could never be brought down. Now here he is on a bed, sweating up a storm and breathing for his life. Me, Tim, and Alfred have done all we can for him, and we're waiting for Leslie to arrive. Though at this rate, I don't think she can do much. Tim caught a glimpse of what Bruce was looking at on the Batcomputer. Nothing but medical records on something called Fucus Anhelitus Febris. A medical term for Crimson Fever. Simply put, it's terminal, and a lousy way to go. I'm busy on a laptop trying to see if it can at least be held off while Tim and Alfred stand by Bruce at his bedside.

 

"You sure you don't know what to do?"

 

"MI-6 taught me limited medical terminology, Timothy. Gunshot wounds and lacerations I'm more than experienced with. Retched plagues like this, though..."

 

"So...we've got nothing..."

 

"The fault is mine. When Bruce arrived home last night, I couldn't help but notice a peculiar smell on him. A horrid stench to match this horrid disease. I implored him about it but he wouldn't answer. If I had just been more--"

 

"Enough. Even if you knew beforehand, there wasn't much you could do."

 

"I'm aware, Timothy. But..."

 

All the medical records I'm pulling up are useless. I'm just getting oh-so-vivid descriptions and basically life expediencies. At this stage, Bruce has 1-2 agonizing weeks before the fever either overheats him or his lungs rot away. The stupidest thing I did was actually look at some autopsy pics. The instant they appeared on screen, I remember letting out a small horrified shriek and slamming the laptop shut. The image of the rotted organs was still fresh in my mind, though. It wasn't so much the disgusting images that scared the hell out of me. It was that something that horrifying was gonna happen to Bruce. Like Tim, I owe so much to the man. He's just as much of the reason I'm here that Tim is. He's been more of a father to me than my real one ever was. And to imagine this was the way he was gonna go...I teared up a bit thinking about it. Tim saw this and asked me what's wrong. I just hand the laptop off to him. He opens it up, sees the image, and his hand slams into his face in a combo of horror and distraught.

 

"No...no, no, no, no...."

 

"Timothy...I think it's time we started making preparations."

 

'W-what? Preparations for what?"

 

"I'm calling Richard soon. I'm expecting him to be out of Bludhaven within the next 24 hours. Master Bruce has an entire catalog of cover up storie-"

 

"Y--you can't be serious!"

 

"Timothy, I'm sorry. It pains me as much as it does you, but we have to face that there's nothing we can do."

 

"You gotta be kidding! Of all the people here I'd expect you to stick with him! You're just gonna leave him to die like this!?"

 

"Tim, please..."

 

"Please nothing!! Do either of you know how much we owe to this guy?! He's saved our sorry asses more times than I can count. And for all I've done for him and to just let him go like this!?"

 

"Timothy, please be reasonable-"

 

"If none of you want to help him, fine! But I'm not gonna let it end like this! I owe him too much see him go like this!"

 

Tim storms out of the infirmary. Alfred stands there defeated as I watch Tim walk out of the cave. As if today didn't have enough drama... I just felt more distraught seeing Tim walk out on us like that. And the sound of Bruce behind me breathing for his life didn't help...

In the 1980s, art star Jeff Koons creates an oversized porcelain figurine of the Pop Icon as part of a series titled "Banality". Audiences simultaneously retch and swoon over the work, debating its cultural significance, while the Koons experiences a meteoric rise to the top of the art world with his italian pornstar wife.