Digging deep into the internet to find the kind of grungy image to illustrate this chapter, I came upon hundreds of photos of leaking basements. Many in Florida. Seems like the end of the world as we know it is starting to happen there. Sea levels rising.
But that’s these days. The days of Tardi and Shad are a couple of hundred years into that future.
Imagine a few slabs of these for the load in the boat …
Screenshot from barbequesgalore.com
Image by Steve Jurvetson – Flickr Photograph of the Milky Way in the night sky over Black Rock Desert, Nevada taken on 7/22/2007. It is a 54 second exposure taken with a tripod mounted Canon EOS 5D digital camera with a 16 mm lens, wide open at f2.8 and ISO 800. via Wikipedia
Last three chapters. But not really THE END.
It was hard to figure out the cut-off point between Mongrel and Meld. In a way, the whole of Mongrel is Tardi’s backstory and set-up for his role in Meld.
I felt that, with at least the main character a familiar person, we might all be able to better understand the new scenario. Experience it through his senses, as it were. It was hard to write and it’ll be hard to understand. But I hope you’ll find it intriguing.
— — — —
I’ve seen most snakes in the wild, but never a death adder. Like most bush-walking Australians I was always on the look out for them. Very scary. I’ve known several people who thought they killed one, only for the animal to turn out to be a blue-tongue skink.
Image from https://wildlifeqld.com.au/common-death-adder/ Check out this link for all the variety of colors of death adders.
Now you get to witness the difficulties I have finishing. I never have been able to end a story naturally, always have to study how it’s done. Jeff Vandemeer’s Wonderbook has helped me numerous times.
In Mongrel I ran up to the end a couple of times and each time wrote yet another chapter or part and in the end … well you’ll read about the end in the goodness of time.
Now imagine this forest but thicker, with more trees …
Image by Casuarina grove (Marathi- सुरू वन) (3228093703).jpg
This image of running wolves from peakpx.com
Rita de Heer 