A big one today. Well, big in events and emotions. I’m positioning this as the final chapter in the second installment. I’m undecided about Part III.
It can either be Sard’s story, The Remaindered Avatar, posted already as far as it goes, but needing me to write a finale.
Or I can break new ground with Srese’s ongoing story? With Srese as the viewpoint character in this installment, Kes and Ahni continue their lives in the background with every so often a spot-lit action.
That big fluffy white rug is me of course, relaxing in the sun, while the pernickety old woman has her coffee and catches up on her social calls.
“Frog eggs?!” she said excitedly. “I have some too.” She laughed. “They’re no problem in my frog pond. I have an old cast iron bath now, that someone was tossing out in the white-goods recycling event.”
I pricked up my ears. Rolled over and sat up. Stared at the frog pond in the back of the yard. Reeds and a yellow flowering plant showed above the rim. On the white ledge nearest lay a bent piece of wood.
My human went on with her conversation. “There’s not a canetoad on Earth that can jump backward and over the lip. And they are not that good at climbing. Yes, I’ll teach my cat not to hunt them.”
Huh, I thought. We’ll see about that. I’ll hunt whatever catches my eye. And something did catch my eye just then. I stared.
The piece of wood on the lip of the pond moved! All by itself! Not a breath of wind!
This I needed to investigate. I hopped down from the deck and stalked silently toward the frog pond using all the cover at my disposal.
“Won’t do you any good,” the pernickety old woman called from the deck. “It’s the Frog Pond Guardian at her post.”
Her words made no sense. Belly to the ground, I leopard-crawled nearer, the nasturtium patch grew densely to well above my head.
I peered around the corner …
A large water dragon stared implacably back at me. I’d heard rumours about this lizard. In the backyard nextdoor it was supposed to have bitten off the head of a hen sitting on a nest of eggs.
The lizard moved! I backed up in a hurry! Waited there in the protection of the nasturtiums. Peered round the corner.
No. It just changed position. Lay there, immoveable.
“She’s just sunning herself,” the pernickety old woman said from behind me. What is it about her? She is always, always, giving away my hunting position.
Finally I could learn to hunt, and me a large middle-aged cat with a low-slung belly. As a kitten, and with my mother and my brothers and sisters, we were ‘contained’ in a cattery yard. Where my mother could teach us only how to hunt flies and cockroaches.
As a teenage cat, I was contained in the basement of a large house. A large basement that meant, but all of it indoors. Cockroaches there, too. Then I came here.
After studying my new territory, I decided that my first prey animals up from cockroaches would be garden skinks. About the length of my foreleg including my paw, and very fast.
These little lizards live on all the fences surrounding my backyard, about one per metre, but come down onto the ground to catch insects. Where I’ll catch them. When I get fast enough.
The first time I was nearly successful the pernickety old woman took a photo of me, as above, and then laughed.
She laughed at me?
“Too slow!” she chortled. “They know all about big black and white marauders, and have evolved to be very fast!”
I set out to prove her wrong. Days later, I managed to snag with my paw a look-alike from the house wall. I laid it proudly outside the laundry for the pernickety old woman to inspect.
“An Asian Gecko,” she said. “Very good! You can eat as many of those as you like. They’re not native and starting to be a real pest, running over people’s faces at night, and the like.”
I ate it but it was nothing like my kibbles. The tail had spines on it. Yuck!
Patty, the mechanic, who came and went. Boss thought she might be able to fix the run-about. She thought it a pile of buffle* you-know-what. “Should start again,” she said. “There’s quite a good one going second-hand at Brick Resales, you know that place?”
Part Three of the saga is out–on the Brick Stories Page–up on the Menu. Telling you again because we have new readers.
*A ‘buffle’ is the type of buffalo that this story’s herders breed. The buffles are out there grazing the swamp grasses. Below, the buffle herd.
Escaping from the house, I rapidly got into new habits. I’d sleep most of the day. On weekends, I’d spend the day on the deck with my human.
Weekdays, when the builders arrived at 8.30 AM and went home at 3.30 PM, I slept somewhere warm but out of sight and out of mind.
From about 4.00PM onward, I got to know my backyard. Because, of course, the pernickety old woman put every kind of barrier up to stop me wandering. More on those later.
At approximately 5.00 PM, the pernickety old woman would open the screen door and stand there shaking the kibble tin.
The kibbles rattling was her sign that I should come inside for my dinner. She’d lock the screen door after me. Keep me inside during the exciting hours of the week.
After only my second night inside ready for anything, because I’d slept all day, I started planning my escape.
Watching for wildlife with the deck still a bit wet from rain during the night. I’m on the lookout for intruders.
Now came a bad time in the house. No peace in the daytimes. Builders tramped past all day, talking and laughing when I scurried for my water bowl or my litter box in the laundry.
They took over the garage and used it as their base. I watched them stormy-eyed as they trekked in and out through the screen-door with tools and materials.
I blinked. Didn’t hear the click of the lock that time. Started watching carefully. Listening too. The men grumbled.
The pernickety old woman came in with an armful of dry washing. “What’s the problem?” she said.
“We’re spending too much time looking out for that animal,” said one of them. “It’s maddening having to open and close that damned screen door every trip.”
“Can’t you board her somewhere?” said the other.
I didn’t wait for my human’s answer. Nipped to the screendoor …
That is, the writer has arrived at a crossroad in the saga. A place where the forward movement of several characters intersect with consequences good and bad, depending on who they are.
Kes is on his way to rescue Ahni. Srese, the female avatar, is familiarising herself with the world just beyond the door. Her brother Sard, the remaindered avatar, has a hide-out nearby.
Also in the scene are Youk, still trying to best the twins, and half a dozen more people. Though none are expendable extras, they’re not viewpoint-characters in the present.
If you’ve read both The Remaindered Avatar and Lodestar Part 2 up to this point, you may know the problem that needs solving. In the former, it was Sard who rescued Ahni, with all his observations and feelings of what happened in CAVE. (Which is known as Rockeater’s Ridge by the herders.) In the latter, more recently posted story, Srese organises Ahni’s rescue. Same event. Different rescuers.
Which version is the most dramatic? Which version should I disappear?
Both have their merits. But I have to admit, that even as I’m writing this I’m deciding that the version that has Srese setting Ahni’s rescue into motion is the more informative, if not the more dramatic one.
Sard’s version can be shortened toward its end because somewhere along both these time lines, Srese and Sard almost meet.
Meaning that a couple of chapters of Sard’s story need to be rejigged, later, when I resume work on that again. In Srese’s version, Ahni can be left where she’ll be found by Sard after he catches up on what’s happening in CAVE, because Ahni will still need to be in Sard’s hands when she is rescued.
Links to the relevant chapters for your interest:
The Remaindered Avatar 16: Rescuing Ahni
Lodestar 34: What the Implant Did
Rita de Heer 