School was out for the summer. No one ran through the halls since no one was late. No bells rang. No sounds were heard.
Except for the thump-thump-thump of running feet getting closer.
He charged through the door at full speed, all 6 feet and flowing coat, twisted his body to the left and tried to stop from slamming into the row of lockers. He failed. Hard. At least he had managed to avoid planting his face into the steel doors.
Regaining his balance and composure he started to race down the hall at a considerably slower pace, quickly reading off the locker numbers. As he reached the end of the first bank a bark from behind him caused him to turn around just as a small white dog came racing through the same set of doors, albeit in far better control of it’s body.
He smiled. Then frowned as a roar came from the same general direction, reminding him of what he was running from.
He watched as the dog sped down the hall towards him. Bracing himself for the leap he expected, it took him a second or two to realize the dog hadn’t slowed in the least as it raced past him almost to the end of the hall. Suddenly it stopped at the third bank of lockers, look to the right, sat and started barking.
The man looked at the dog with confusion, glanced at the lockers and back at the dog when a smile began to break out on his face.
“Good girl Zena! You found it.”
Zena gave a single responding bark as if it was expected she would know.
He raced down the hall and slide to a stop beside Zena. Reaching into his breast pocket he pulled out an ordinary key, slipped it into one of the locks, and inexplicably opened the doors of four of the floor to ceiling lockers at the same time. He then stepped aside as the little dog rushed into the lockers. Taking a glance over his shoulder back toward the doors from which they had both raced through, an expression of concentration creased his face as he stepped into the lockers and disappeared.
This entry was written by , posted on July 6, 2009 at 10:34 am, filed under Timelord Chronicles. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
“I just don’t think it’s safe!”
“It’s only a 3 day travel to the edge the a 3 day travel across Upside. 6 days there and 6 days back. You’ve been telling me for years I need a vacation. Besides, I thought you’d be glad to get rid of me for 2 weeks. “
“Well yes, but it just isn’t safe! Upside is barren and covered with dead trees like you read about in the books!”
“How can it be barren AND have trees?”
“It doesn’t you twit, they are dead.”
“Eloise my dear, please relax. Nothing is going to happen. How bad can the Upsiders possibly be?”
“Well for starters they eat things!”
“We eat things.”
“But they eat different things, and use weird spices… like Salt!”
“We use salt.”
“But not as a spice! It’s a condiment. A proper condiment that sits on the table and minds it’s own business. No one asked the Salt if it wanted to be a spice, they just decided for no good reason to use it as spice. Heathens!”
And with that Eloise Badunkle slammed the rather heavy, rather large door. The fact that it only made a small thump wasn’t important. What was important was that it made a sound at all. It was designed to close quietly so as to not wake the Sovereign Mayer of Frumunda while he slept. The fact that it made a sound at all was a testament to how truly upset the Lady Sovereign Mayor of Frumunda (she insisted on the full title at all times) really was.
“For Mark’s sake… now we are arguing about Salt!” shouted Henry Henderson, 115th Sovereign Mayor of Frumunda, Long May He Serve. “We could argument about the fact that I have no clean shorts or that there is no one in this city who even knows what Upside looks like. We have to argue about Salt! Salt!!”
“Yes your majesty?”
“Wha..? Hm? Oh, sorry Saul old friend, I didn’t mean to call for you. I’m just frustrated.”
“Understandable sire, what with Lady Sovereign Mayor of Frumunda Eloise upset about your travels.” replied the old servant master as he quietly and surreptitiously straightened and shifted various items around the room.
“What else can I do Saul?“
“Every other Sovereign Mayor has received a request such as you have and every other one has refused.”
“Yes, well we can’t stay in the dark about what is going on can we? Are we always going to just accept that things are the way they are and they are never going to change?”
“It is not my place to say sire”
“You don’t approve of my going either do you Saul?”
“It is not my place to say sire.”
“But you don’t approve just the same”
“No sire, I do not approve. You put yourself and the entire Kingdom of Frumunda at risk by going Upside. What shall we do if you are kidnapped or killed?”
“You are starting to sound like Eloise”
“Perhaps the mistress is justified in her concerns.”
“Perhaps, and perhaps it is time to stop thinking in the old antiquated ways and move our city forward in to the new century! “ Henry punched the air with his fists to emphasis the last part of his declaration. Hs stood staring at Saul hoping that some glimmer of agreement would break out on the old mans face.
Instead, Saul could have won 10 Sand-Hold’em Poker tournaments based on his face alone. Nothing moved. Henry fought the urge to check to make sure Saul hadn’t died standing up. It had happened before. Just last week he had stopped breathing and forgotten to start again. It took 3 nurses, 2 kitchen boys and a squirrel to get him started again.
No one really knows what happened to the squirrel. Although there are rumors you can hear him screaming late at night. If your really quiet.
“Grab my bags would you Saul,” started Henry, looking incredibly dour that his theatrics had managed to produce nothing, “I must get going.”
“Will madam be seeing you off?”
“I would think not, she’s probably off playing Cabbage or whatever it is she does with the Ladies in pseudo-waiting”
“Very good sire,” Saul carefully tossed the luggage, all 19 pieces, into the back of the carriage, “then you are all set for departure”
The carriage started out slowly, picking up speed as it made it’s way across teh courtyard. Henry looked around and finally sighed to himself. No one had come out to see him off. Apparently Eloise really was upset with him. Hopefully, he thought, I can find her something nice on my trip to make her happy.
He glanced at the back of the carriage and smiled to himself. True, 19 bags was a lot for a man to take, but it was a 2 week trip and he had an impression to make. Besides, not all of them were clothes. Some were filled with bottles full of Premium 110 proof magic, straight from the foundry spring, doubtful anyone on Upside had anything even remotely like it. And some were just bags with other bags inside. After all, the shopping up there was supposed to be an adventure. Who knew what he might bring home.
Yes, he thought, she will be very pleased when I return. Quietly, to himself, Henry smiled.
This entry was written by , posted on at 10:24 am, filed under Discmoon. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
So I’m working on the finishing touches of this when I notice that WordPress 2.8 is out and this site is still running 2.7. Well! That simply muct not be allowed so I promptly upgrade. And break it.
For some reason I begin having delimiter errors every time I create or attempt to edit a post or page. It didn’t happen before so it must have been something I did during the upgrade. So I download it again. And… it’s broken. Okay. Phase 2.
As anyone who has worked with WP in the past knows, when all else fails start deactivating plugins one by one till the problem goes away. Then you have your culprit. Except I even went so far as to delete the blasted things and still didn’t fix it.
‘Well now’ I say to myself. ’I upgraded 2 other site recently to 2.8 and they both work fine. I’ll just copy them over and change the theme and plugins’
So I did. And it didn’t work.
I then go back to the other sites that are running 2.8 and start playing around. And guess what? THEY ARE BROKEN!
At this point I’m totally confused and lost. I’ve even tried a clean install, new DB, everything short of wiping the hard drive and starting over. It DID cross my mind!
So I do the one thing men hate. Ask for help.
Turns out it’s all because I had a trailing forward slash at the end of my siteurl. GAH!
For those that already knew the answer, bite me. Seriously :)
Anyway, it’s 1:2 in the morning, I get up at 6 and I’m dog tired. Enough blabbing, time for sleep.
This entry was written by , posted on at 1:10 am, filed under Uncategorized. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.