Rachel was a portal hunter. She’d been doing this professionally since 1988, but this was the first one she’d found. She’d known it was the real deal because of the way the light avoided the ground. This tricksy portal was hiding in plain sight, but not from her! Her decades of honed professionalism taught her to look directly at that which others pass over. She felt vindicated at last, and shook off the niggling doubts which others had imparted to her. To be honest, it wasn’t what she expected: it was a bit dirty really. She had presumed portals to the underworld would be kept pristine by their magical charms. It may well be that others are, she thought, perhaps that’s why even her trained gaze slid over their glossy charm. That this one was covered in grime was the fact which allowed her gaze to stick upon it, and thereby
They’re called the Wiblets of Oldpark Wood, but as I am sure is obvious to a knowledgeable reader like you, they are really from AlphaZenturianSix. Their claim to be from Oldpark Wood is simply a ruse to lull us into a false sense of security. For if they belong to an earth locality, then we may be less inclined to monitor their behaviour. But monitor we should, fellow earthling, monitor we should, as there is more to the Wiblets than meets the eye. The Wiblets first came to earth forty-five years ago, when the M25 had burnt a hole in the soul of parts of southern England. The Wiblets spied it from space and saw their chance to begin their slow colonisation of a new planet. As the M25 had damaged, deaded, or dispersed a great many of the indigenous natural powers of certain parts of Surrey and Kent, the land
Marvin was a megalith, although you couldn’t tell him that. He was convinced he was a third century Buddhist nun. Rose and Veronica kept tying to tell him how unlikely that was, but he wasn’t having any of it. He was a nun and this was Tibet. It drove Rose and Veronica spare for centuries and it wasn’t until little Billy pointed out that maybe they’d want to take a leaf out of Pedro’s book and ignore Marvin’s fantasies, that the squabbles ended and they all got along. Maybe it was because of his size and that he wasn’t technically a megalith, but little Billy had always been more flexible in his thinking. He enjoyed pretending he was a way stone for the stars. He liked to think that the sky beacons knew which way to move across the sky because they were oriented by him. Rose and Veronica grew some
Martha was from Panama, but she had been living in Kent for 34 years. She had moved there after meeting Peter who had been working on the canal. She followed him back to the country of his birth, far away from her own. It had been hard for her at times, away from her sun and food, but she had never wavered in her decision to come. Peter was quietly solid and full of his own kind of light. He was a reassurance that her gaze rested on over the decades. Peter died last year. Martha had felt herself winding inwards in the days which had passed since. Everything becoming a little bit smaller and more compact. Peter had died and now she was free, and she was trying to understand if that meant she had formerly felt trapped. Working her way to the answer was an exercise in dodging guilt,