The Lives of Fergie

The Lives of Fergie

Chapter One

Death, A Home Coming

A funny thing Death is. For centuries on Earth we’ve been pooh-poohing the whole bloody idea of it. Carrying on about how great it would be to find immortality and why should anyone else get the toys we worked so hard to acquire just because old Mr. Grim Reaper says we have to come along with him now, no chess games allowed anymore, thank you very much. It also boggles the mind how we turned a nice old crone into a man’s animated skeleton for the being who comes to collect at the end of a life. That’s patriarchy for you, but that’s not what this story is about. Personally I like dying, though I can never remember why until after I’ve died.

You see, I know quite a bit about Death, met her in person so to speak, 10 years ago Earth time and this was not our first encounter by far. She spoke to me as one speaks to an old family friend, I thought nothing of it at first – after all why wouldn’t Death know each of us intimately? But then she let slip a little inside joke I was supposed to catch, something about one night at the Akashic Tavern a millennia ago and when I stared at her in confusion she cleared her throat, stood as tall as her bent back would allow and said:

“Oh right. You still haven’t all your memories back yet. Sorry about that, let’s just take you up to life debriefing then shall we?”

With a Pop! we were standing in the lavish and quite comfortable foyer of an office. The styles were a mix of many different eras, most I recognized, some seemed to be from a future I had not lived to see and still others did not seem human at all. The tone was rich in jewel colors, luxurious textures and gave the air of being the sort which scholarly types would find very welcoming. If this is where all people go when they first pass on, it seemed rather empty to me compared to the latest statistics of death rates I had seen, especially considering I was the only one there who wasn’t an employee of the afterlife – which brought the total of room occupants at that moment to three – specifically: myself, Death and a rather lovely secretary behind a huge marble desk who looked more like a Roman goddess than anything else.

I peered sheepishly around the room trying to find any other recently arrived soul, thinking perhaps they were lurking behind one of the huge potted trees which were arranged tastefully between chairs and tables and in the corners. There was absolutely nobody else around but us, which put me right off. Wasn’t there supposed to be big lines leading up to St Peter or thousands of shades waiting for their number to be called or, or… something along those lines? Death saw my searching gaze and immediately knew what was wrong.

“You’ll remember it all after the debriefing but we work differently with the whole time/space game around here. No need to wait in lines or pull a number and sit forever in a ghastly reception room full of freshly dead ghouls. The things you corporeal people come up with!” She and the secretary had a nice chuckle over that. “No, you just wait right here until Ms. Arachne can send your life records in to Ms. Erinyes. It won’t take but a moment; we were, after all, expecting you.”

A fresh round of laughter came from them both at that little joke and before I could groan Death was gone with a wave. When I got a closer look at the secretary, Ms. Arachne, I realized that she was shooing me towards a huge couch of soft oxblood red leather with one hand, while another was picking up a phone and two more were typing - she had multiple arms. While settling into the proffered couch, I saw that she was also doing something below the line of the desk, what it was I couldn’t see, nevertheless, this brought the count of arms to six altogether. I felt strongly that she should have eight limbs and felt quite silly to realize, when she stood up to usher me through the huge teak door beside her desk, I had failed to account for her two shapely legs in the process.

Struggling to pull myself back up out of the overly plush cushions, I had to ask:

“I beg your pardon, but are you The Arachne who was in a weaving contest against the Goddess Minerva?”

She smiled and pointed behind her desk. Upon approaching the door she held open for me, I was able to catch view of a small loom set slightly under the desk and to one side of her chair. On it was a half-finished tapestry which was amazing to behold, even if it seemed to oddly portray the Viking gods in football uniforms.

“I only need two arms for weaving and this is the perfect job for me to keep the other four occupied, don’t you think?” Her voice was melodic and yet vaguely insectile, on the whole it gave me the willies, especially when it dawned on me that what I thought were six jewels on her forehead were in all actuality smaller eyes. I hurried past her with a nervous smile and a nod of thanks.

The room I rushed into made me feel like Alice crying “curiouser and curiouser!”

It seemed to be a small theater built for two, where a screen normally would have been was a huge, extremely intricate tapestry made with only white thread. I could just make out raised shapes which cast the slightest hint of shadows covering the entire thing. Along the opposite wall was a projection booth of the type you find in old movie theaters, between the two and facing the tapestry were two armchairs of the same oxblood red leather as the couch in the foyer. On a table between the armchairs were a couple of bags of popcorn, some boxes of candy and two gigantic sodas all exactly as you would purchase at any movie theater on Earth. Ms. Erinyes was nowhere to be seen and so I stood awkwardly in front of the now closed door, not knowing what to do next.

Just as I was about to call out, a monster came out of the projection booth and frightened me out of my wits. She was severely tall and thin, (almost 2 meters tall and barely 54 kilos) with snakes writhing upon her head for hair and red streaks about her darkly luminous eyes which appeared to be blood wiped away as one normally would tears with a hankie. She had on a tailored suit which she wore as comfortably as one might wear their favorite pajamas with a green silk blouse that complimented the same shade found here and there in the patterns on her hair-snakes. When she smiled, her fanged grin caused me to become more ashen than she appeared normally. I found myself pressed against the door, involuntarily trying to simultaneously shield my eyes, make myself invisible and find the handle on the door in order to make an escape before I was devoured in some hideous way.

“Oh goodness, I’ve given you a fright, I can see. Do not worry, my gaze will not turn you to stone, I am not a medusa – they are quite a bit shorter and have green skin.” She chirped at me, her happy sing-song voice contrasting violently with her appearance. “I am Ms. Erinyes, but please call me Megaena and you must be Fergie.”

I stopped my frantic scrambling in confusion. This was not only because of the contradiction of her voice compared to her visage but also because there was no handle on this side of the door, nor, when I actually looked, was there any indication there had even been a door behind me to begin with. I was trapped and after a second’s thought I remembered I am already dead, I was here to meet my eternal fate and there was nothing I could do for it. Taking a deep breath, I turned back to the well-dressed monster named Ms. Megaena Erinyes and faced what I thought to be my final judgment.

That was when I became abashed at my behavior, what I thought was her hands reaching out to grasp and render me from limb to limb was simply her reaching out to cordially but firmly shake my hand in both of hers. Still my voice seemed to have decided to leap into a dark corner and stay there quivering for a while, so I simply nodded my head in agreement. I was indeed the Earth-human who calls herself Fergie.

Chapter Two

Limelife

We sat in the armchairs, comfortably full, buzzing and slightly nauseated as one gets from ingesting too much butter and sugar while sitting still for hours watching other people being physically active. Only this film lasted exactly as long as my life did and the main character had been me. In the eternal here-after ones life does not exactly flash before your eyes but it certainly seems to go at a faster clip than it did while you were living it. I guess it’s that whole not playing by the normal time/space game rules Death was talking about.

I had become comfortable with Megaena sitting next to me and actually liked her in general, she had picked out my favorite candy, type of soda and even my popcorn was exactly the way I’d always wanted it to be. She laughed and cried when it was appropriate during the viewing of my life (which was when my suspicion was proven – she sheds tears of blood) and was all around an excellent hostess. The only thing that made me nervous was the clipboard with pages of a check-off list upon which she made checks in what I supposed to be appropriate boxes from time to time.

Finally when the film of me was done, she stood up and walked to the tapestry. She fed the sheets of check list into a slot in the wall beside it and hung the clipboard on a hook which was above the slot. I was still soaking in what I looked like dead at the age of 92, which was quite peaceful and content to tell the truth, surrounded by my family and friends and laying comfortably in my obnoxiously pink bed. I really did love that bed.

When she bent down at the corner of the tapestry, my eyes followed her and it took me a minute to realize she was tying off the last thread of it’s making, snipping off the slight excess neatly and precisely with a tiny pair of silver scissors she kept in her breast pocket. She then began to unhook it from its frame and carefully folded it up; it was obvious she had done exactly this more times than anyone could count. Having manipulated it into a smooth and precisely folded triangle, Megaena turned back and held it out to me.

“This is your life tapestry, to hang in the hall of your Akashic home with the others. We’ll have the verdict of this life’s sins vs. goodness in a second, if the judgment includes a heavy punishment you’ll be given the normal five Cosmic days to make arrangements, say hello to old friends and look up new ones from this last life before being shipped off for the duration of the verdict.” She smiled and once again it seemed something to fear. “But between the two of us old friend, you have nothing to worry about. I haven’t had to hand you a bad time in almost 50 lives! You’re getting soft ole girl, maybe it’s time to take a break and just stay home teaching for a while. We could use your expertise around here.”

With this she winked and as I stood there hugging the weaving of my life, wondering what in the universe she was talking about, Megaena turned to the wall behind the tapestry frame and pulled a single sheet out of another slot there.

“Just as I thought, your naughty ways as a young girl were balanced out by your almost saintliness in the second half of your life. What were you trying to do, become the Mother Theresa of Oddballs?” With that, she took a device out of a jacket pocket and pointed it at me. “This won’t hurt a bit.”

The next thing I saw was her pressing a button but nothing happened, no light, no sound, absolutely no sensations at all. Slowly at first, then more rapidly I began Remembering. I knew Megaena to be a close friend, as well as Death (whose name is actually Sheila), Arachne and many others here. I knew where here was. I knew I had been here many, many times before and this was neither the biggest nor the smallest life tapestry I’d had handed to me. Most importantly, I was enormously relieved to finally remember it all.

I was back home – at the Akashic University.

Many people know of our universally famous Library which holds all the records of everything from infinity, but rarely does anyone actually escape its massive chambers to find that there is a whole university situated around it.

I am what would on Earth be considered an Anthropology professor who’s often in the field for years at a time, only I’m gone for lifetimes and my specialty is in what being an Earthling is like. Not just Earth-human, Earth herself is a complex and sentient life form and everything on her spherical surface gives a new and different perspective of the Universe all its own. My longest life was as a tree. The most fun I’d ever had was as a dolphin, those guys really know how to party.

Chapter Three

Back on Campus

I hadn’t been home in almost 93 Earth years, of course if that mattered and things moved linearly here, I’d have to say 186 years counting the reviewing of the first set over again with Megaena. Thankfully the meaning, much less the use, of linear time is an abstract concept at AU, else lunch dates would be impossible to keep. Especially with my colleagues, we are always popping off to this life or another on quests for understanding via nitty-gritty hands-on experience.

After promising to be at our nightly gathering at the Tavern, I left Megaena’s office and headed out of the Administration building to catch a chariot to my home in the staff’s neck of the woods. (It’s actually a wood, as in a type of forest, our houses are scattered congruously among the flora there.) I wanted a nymph’s bath, some satyr music and to see what my newest tapestry looked like next to all the others in my already crowded Life Hall. Maybe Megaena was right, I should take a break and just teach for a few cycles.

I stepped out of the building and took in the sites of the University. It looked as though more and more people were figuring out there is an entire campus outside of the Library, which is a colossal edifice taking up the entire Eastern edge of campus and stretching back, literally, into infinity. You have to have an infinite building to store infinite knowledge – it just goes hand in hand. Thankfully a couple of tribes of dragons love being librarians and have those posts as long as they like, for most it is a permanent and infinite position on the staff. They have herds of Pegasus and other flying creatures or those beings who like to teleport as assistant librarians and under-staff. It’s the only way to work efficiently in a Library of such vast scales.

The Administrative Building was nothing to sneeze at either, it was a replica of the Tower of Babel, with hanging gardens towards the top and everything. It is said that the original architects thought it would be funny to put AU’s administrators in a monument which represents the failings of social cohesion and union. By the usual rules of Murphy’s Law this caused the AU Admin to be the epitome of social cohesion and union, simply put it was the best university administration in the multi-verse. Everyone loved them and wanted to be on their staff, though turn over was slower than molasses on the ice world Brrrzzt Augh considering Death (Sheila and her co-workers) worked for AU, therefore everyone died to get there but lived eternally once on staff.

The streets were multi-layered to accommodate the different types of creatures which visited or lived and worked on the campus. For those pedestrians who preferred solid ground there were cobble-crystal lanes which were always packed with vehicles of all descriptions. There were tubes with moving walkways full of different kinds of gases for those who either didn’t breathe oxygen or naturally didn’t have a corporeal body. There was a river road for the water types which contained its own specific types of vehicles and far above it all floated signs to direct the traffic of flyers.

Sitting in front of the Administration lawn there were fancy, liveried carriages drawn by big ostrich type creatures, called Ooracks, which enjoyed this kind of work and squawked gossip at each other constantly whether at rest or running along to wherever their passengers needed to go. Some Ooracks stood by a refreshment stand with saddles on their back, pecking at bags of wormed grain – these were personal mounts for people who preferred to be bounced around in the open air instead of being bounced around inside a carriage. Between the garishly decorated carriages stood hovercrafts, a couple of yellow taxis, a few rickshaws of various designs, a flatbed bus designed to take on the larger multi-peds (here people had anything from no legs upwards to a hundred of them), and an old Edsel car, all with drivers trying to catch the eye of potential passengers. I was disappointed that my favorite way to go, chariots pulled by oversized horned goats, was nowhere to be seen. People always got out of your way with those beauties, usually because crispy buttocks is not a fashionable look these days and the goats blow flames out of their nostrils whenever they bleat at you to get out of the way.

The driver of the Edsel called to me and ran over to grab the bag containing my tapestry; he was a familiar figure - a being about 1.53 meters tall with skin so black it was like gazing into soft obsidian (that is if obsidian came in the soft variety.) His eyes were disarming, they looked liked they belonged on a giraffe – huge, liquid brown without any whites and the longest eyelashes you’ve ever seen. He had an oversized hook nose and long pointy chin, with the most delicate, bright pink, rosebud mouth.

To anyone who has never seen an Aabsallom, they appear quite absurd especially as they prefer to wear the most obnoxiously neon-colored and floral printed outfits, in one of two sizes: tent or band-aid. The one running towards me was in a gigantic orange and pink half-shirt with a pair of tiny lime green and orange speedo shorts, green and pink knee socks and purple boat shoes, he is also my main housemate and dearest friend at AU.

“Fergie! There you are, darling you still look no older than 100.” He patted my hunched back and took my liver-spotted hand in his eternally youthful one. I scowled at him and then down at myself, I still looked like the body I had recently become a dearly departed in.

“That’s because I died at 92 this time, you jerk!” I followed him to the car. “Twuup, where’s the chariot and where in Hades did you get that thing?”

“Well, the new goat tender didn’t realize that the goats would start eating the chariot if they were left unattended, un-tethered and unfed near it. You can guess the results when he came back from his lunch an hour later.” He opened the back door for me. “I saw this on the auction block and bought it thinking, since you were coming back as an old Caucasian woman, from an era after the movie about the old woman and her dark-skinned chauffeur, you would find humor in arriving home like this.”

He climbed into the driver’s seat, looked over his shoulder at me with one soulful eye and winked.

“Hang on Ms. Fergie! I supped this one up big time!” He started up the engine and it roared like a jet, flames leapt out of the tailpipe and beings scrambled for safety, putting whatever they could over their sound receptors to keep from going deaf, those who were behind the Edsel trying not to become charcoal in the process.

He pulled out into traffic, revved the engine twice and sped off down the newly emptied lane that was emerging in front of him as people cleared a path in order to not be run down. The Science building sped past in a blur; it looked like the fire from that explosion Einstein and Currie swore wouldn’t happen was still smoldering. It was in one of the outer loops not one of the lower ones thankfully. The Science building was in the shape of a gigantic copper atom, each of the orbits of the four electrons were hallways of smaller classrooms, with the particles themselves as large lecture halls and the forty-nine photons of the nucleus used as the main exhibition spaces for senior thesis or the staff to show final results of long years of research and experimentation.

The Cultural Sciences building was next, which is where I work. For obvious reasons they decided it should be shaped like a tree with it’s entire root system exposed and a very thick, short main trunk. The lecture halls were in the trunk, the classrooms in the branches, and because there are trillions of cultures in the multi-verse, there are trillions of branches between both the roots and the top. The roots hold the oldest known cultures, the top and outer branches the newest ones. It is constantly under construction and is already starting to infringe on both the main Science building on one side and the Philosophy building on the other, which is really just an open-aired coliseum. This caused them to start to worrying about our newest branches being unstable and falling on their heads during a particularly excellent debate. To which the head of my department replied:

“Stop complaining or I’ll have the genetics department next door figure out how to make my structure actually grow foliage and fruit appropriate to its size.”

When some people couldn’t figure out why this was a threat, they were reminded of what happens to fruit bearing trees in the autumn when the fruit becomes too ripe. However, the Dean of Cultural Sciences’ threat planted the idea in some more jocular genetic science students’ heads and they figured out how to at least make it start growing foliage. As a joke they implanted the new genetics into the Cultural Sciences building and waited quietly and patiently for the two years it took to spread throughout the whole structure and begin growing leaves. When the first spring buds appeared everyone panicked thinking they were chrysalis for a new species of being which were trying to take over only the Cultural Sciences. Many philosophy students thought it was in retribution for how nosey most cultural science students are and a great practical joke. However, once it was discovered what was going on, the philosophy crowd got extremely quiet and red-faced, shushing the theology students who started talking about karma and asking the geneticists if they were nice enough to have not spliced the building with any fruits or nuts genes.

Fortunately for all of us, the geneticists responded that after much calculation and discussion with the Janitorial crews on campus that it had been decided to leave those genetics right out simply to avoid the enormous mess gigantic over-ripe fruits and nuts would make when dropped on the ground. In addition they had created a new kind of leaf which is fleecy soft, has lovely designs on them and can be used as blankets once shed each fall. The downside of this was the disappearance of quilting circles and the bankruptcy of all blanket makers and shops – each year the Cultural Sciences building shed enough blanket-leaves to keep everyone on campus warm all winter long. It also made gave the janitors a perfectly good reason to not mess with any of it at all, unless of course, they wanted blanket-leaves for themselves.

The darkening colors of those blanket-leaves as we shot by in the Super Edsel, as I had taken to calling the new car, told me that fall was already bouncing in impatient anticipation of starting. I had died just in time for the new semester and I promised myself to pop into the Dean’s office first thing the next afternoon, around teatime sounded good to me. I better make sure I still had a lecture hall and exhibition space, classrooms for studying the multitude of life forms on my specified planet. Let the Dean know I was sticking around for a lifetime or so, taking a bit of a break from the field and all that.

Across the street from the Sciences complex was the Theology complex. It glittered and skulked all in one breath. It simultaneously soared to breath-taking heights of enlightened majesty and hunkered on the ground in a way which seemed to be putting a yoke upon one’s shoulders with a scolding finger. Incense wafted thickly along the ground like cloyingly sweet fog and somewhere bells were always tolling, for what outsiders could never figure out. It caused all but those in the Theology field migraines to even walk on the sidewalk in front of it. Most of us avoided it and its denizens at all costs.

With one exception: on the North end was a walled garden with a large golden plaque on it reading: Genesis! Stay out. Connected to it was a bridged walkway which ended at one of the orbital hallways of the Science building where students were studying the scientific theories about the Genesis process and needed easy access to the running experiment without worrying about getting run over by the maniacs driving in the streets. You can’t die here, but you can still get pretty messed up and it’s downright uncomfortable to get hit by a speeding Oorack.

Chapter Four

Home(s)

I was drawn out of my reverie by the realization that Twuup was saying something to me, was in fact repeating himself because I had failed to answer.

“I’m sorry, what?” I yelled over the roar of the Edsel’s engine.

“I said everything is ready for you, your favorite food, a bath, the satyrs have been practicing a new piece for you and all is prepared in your Life Hall for the colorification and hanging of your newest tapestry. Do you want to nap first or after all of it? You look ghastly tired.” He yelled back for what seemed (and so probably was) the fourth time.

“Thanks for making the house ready, that’s wonderful! As to your observation on my current state, I’m still in the body of a recently deceased 92 year old – of course I look ghastly tired! I think I’d like my regular body back as soon as possible, can’t wait for the bath.” I paused to gasp for breath, shouting like this really takes it out of you. “My mouth is watering to eat some real food and there’s no music as soothing yet invigorating on Earth as that of the Satyrs.”

Which wasn’t exactly true, but it is difficult for the average housewife to gainfully employ Australian aboriginals to play their didgeridoos live whenever you’d like and the recordings of these left out so much that they ended up being more depressing than anything in comparison to the fullness of hearing it live.

You may think I am some rich snob of a being, with satyrs, nymphs and the like working for me, especially if you saw my house. However, things work differently up here. The house belongs to me, Twuup and Charnija, a wonderful being of the hermaphroditic race Blargistian. We built it back at the dawning of our galaxy when we first died and ended up here, met each other at the Tavern and decided to stay a while, maybe work for AU. All of the Greek mythology creatures which cause our home to run so smoothly I met back in the days of Earth’s youth, when everyone was whooping it up all the time and when it was time for them to move elsewhere due to the lack of belief in their existence I offered them free room and board at my place for eternity if they’d help us take care of the monstrosity I call home.

You see, Twuup, Charnija and I were quite intoxicated when we drew up the plans for the house. We were told that there was plenty of space back in Staff Woods, since space likes to fold around, through and back in on itself rather nicely around here. We were told that all we have to do is draw out plans in as fine and precise details as is beingly possible and once done place the blueprint on the ground where we wanted it to exist, and then command it to do so. Seemed easy enough, a little too easy and as most beings who think themselves civilized we made it complicated just to feel better about how easy it is.

We got a bunch of paper to draw rough sketches before we put the final result on the special blueprint-to-finished-product paper. We made lists of things we’d like to have, we checked out records from the Library on architecture used throughout the multi-verse and time in both directions. Then we started drinking and drawing; once we got our imaginations fired up, other beings in the Tavern took notice. For an entire week we got hammered at the Akashic Tavern as our audience kept buying us rounds, to see what pray tell, we would add onto our home next. It was a roaring good time and I’m afraid as young beings in the multi-verse completely wasted for a week straight, we got a bit silly in the designs of our home. Ok, we got a lot silly.

By coincidence our house look like a giant stylized E,

(which kind of looks like this: E )

but this was well before I knew about Earth.

I’m from the Orion clusters, specifically the point of his arrow as seen from Egypt, some of my people did show up on Earth in the normal space/time continuum and dabbled around a bit before they were scolded for messing with a primitive race and giving them clues too soon. They were really just young adults, out exploring the galaxy and having a bit of fun. The bunch decided that going camping for a few decades on a primitive planet would be a blast, once there they figured no one would notice if they played gods on such a backwater, out-of-the-way and young planet for a century or so instead of just roughing it for the original shorter amount of time planned. When they didn’t come back home or shown up to work for 50 more years than they had scheduled for their vacations, people began to get worried. Another decade rolled by and still no word, so star search and rescue teams were sent out to find them and bring them back to worried families if at all possible. By that time the pranksters had split up due to a division of morals and ethics (neither set was very concerned with what kind of havoc they were causing the second set of intelligent beings on this planet) and taken separate continent groupings.

Atlantis had always been mostly below water, it was the citadel of the Dolphins which had already been around for a while and so the Orion kids left it alone, afraid of being caught and sent home too soon. They stuck to the landmasses and built monuments to themselves impossible for the ape-men to have constructed at that time, knowing that it would stump and mystify the ape-men well into the future. Out of these practical jokes came: Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids of Egypt and Peru, Shangri La, as well as a few other temples in the Himalayas and the Canadian Rockies that have been lost beneath centuries of ice and snow. When they were finally caught, rounded up and debriefed on what they had been doing so intently for so long that they failed to message round to their folks and employers that they were fine, but just decided to stay on a little longer is all – the Galactic Counsel had to be informed, for these pranksters had caused a little too much trouble, the ape-men were evolving too fast now and the Dolphins were pissed. They were counting on a few more millennia of peace, sex and playtime before having to deal with those hairy land crawlers.

So a quick ice age was induced to cover most of their constructs, the rest was deliberately messed up so that nothing conclusive could be drawn from any of it and the Youths were taken away to start their probation and work-release programs for the wayward Orionite. Unfortunately, this also permanently encased Atlantis in miles of ice since it was at the South Pole of the planet, an oversight that the Galactic Counsel apologized profusely for and offered to rectify. The Dolphins by now were quite sore with their celestial neighbors and told them to just get out, no! don’t try to help any more, just go and don’t come back for at least another 10,000 years.

I was around at that time, but the eviction didn’t include me since I was living as one of the forefathers of the kangaroo in Australia and the only thing I was aware of about the whole fiasco was a drastic dip in temperature and barometric pressure. There were rumors that the dolphins had suddenly become extremely testy and short-tempered for some reason, but I got it as hear-say from a group of migrating birds who stopped at my local watering hole and everyone knows that birds are great for long distance news but usually get their facts confused between different events.

I’ve run off on another rabbit trail of history though, where were we? Oh yes, the building of my house –

E .


The top three strokes are our separate bedroom/living spaces, the back of it all is the main living area, the middle stroke is the kitchen and dining room, the bottom stroke is our Life Hall and the little loop is the glen with a reincarnation pool and rocks to sun on after the transformation takes place, to help you settle back into your usual body. I have the smallest bedroom at the very top, I meant to add on to it eventually but I’ve been away in the field so often there never seemed to be a pressing need for it.

We chose a spot back a little ways from the main road, but not so far as to make it difficult to get to work on time. We marked it on the map, figured out the dimensions allowed within the space and worked our blueprints so that none of the trees would be disturbed, hence the shape, the spaces in between each arm of the house is densely wooded. The main entrance is in the middle of the back of the E and Twuup’s gaudy bedroom extension which looks like everything a tourist should never buy and take home with him turned into a genre of interior decorating, is the one which is parallel to the kitchen, away from first or even second glances. The birds love it, the mammals are confused by and visiting beings complain of eye strain when they get glimpses of it through the trees.

Charnija is more of a blend in with nature type of being, Blargistians are willowy, their skin shifts between earthy brown and spring green depending on the year and their surroundings, they have oval eyes set at an in-turning slant of the most beautiful prismatic coloration with two lids which blink separate from each other, their noses look like tiny orchids and their mouths are similar to a cat’s. He/she designed her/his part to look more like a grassy knoll or barrow with small leaded windows and lots of flower boxes in them. Hence he/she got the front curlicue bedroom and we blended the outer walls of her/his space into the main front wall of the entire structure, which looks more like big old trees, with large, stained glass, arcade windows and french doors floating between them, than anything else.

I thought of all of this, trying to pull in the sense of peace that flows through me while I am at home and sighed with contentment when I saw it come into view. Out front was everyone who lives with us, a coterie of 25 beings with Charnija in the center absolutely glowing in the bright greens of summer. They waited to cheer until the Super Edsel was parked and turned off, so that I could hear them. Even though my ears were still ringing in the aftermath of those jet engines, making the cheer sound oddly tinny, I was beyond pleased with this display. It was obvious by the way the nymphs, saytrs and centaurs were dressed, they had been planning a welcome home party for me. Even, Duscha Paraaha, our resident gamayun’s plumage was arranged and groomed with extra care, with a gorgeous amaryllis flower in her hair. Standing next to her, as proud as ever with his medallion gleaming on his furry chest, was Tocerat - our griffin. How I missed their advice and fables while I was away, I certainly hoped they would join me as I bathed and regale me with tales of everyone’s adventures while I had been gone.