A Land Where All Things Always Seemed The Same, Chapter One

They’d reached the part of the journey when you knew it wasn’t far now. The sea for some time had been a dark band spanning the near horizon, and on either side of Flashsatsumas and Mini-Flash Juniper wild grass verge was spilling not earth but rich golden sand, its stray grains crunchy underfoot. The land around lay flat as the road, baking in the height of summer.

Too late for oilseed, Juniper knew, though she didn’t say so to Flashsatsumas as he wouldn’t have known what she was talking about. Nevertheless, they presently passed a straggly field where a scrag of two of brilliant yellow still stood amidst growing green. Some of its sweet waxy drowsiness lingered and Mini-Flash Juniper held where she was, a lone lotos-eater smelling in stockings and sweater and skirt and tie.

Flashsatsumas looked on the mild-eyed melancholy one and guessed, correctly, that she hadn’t told him everything about her history with this place.

Softly Juniper crossed a board-bridge which spanned the roadside drainage-ditch, disclosing flat school-shoe soles which had turned light grey with dust. There she skirt-smoothed and knelt, no doubt coating her sheer blue shins into the bargain, and plucked a little yellow sprig which she put to her lips and breathed deep.

“Robin,” whispered Mini-Flash Juniper, in a voice which only she could hear.

It wasn’t sentimental fuzziness. True, Limb Four had been absent from her memory the day she first sniffed that seed. She had however been bound for an all-too similar encounter, courtesy of the very same foe for whom she was bound now.

Too similar for it not to be noted this second inflictor was, in a way, the father of the first.

So the oilseed didn’t seem to Mini-Flash Juniper a mere remembrance. It seemed to her something she needed to do.

Standing, she turned and told Flashsatsumas they might move on.

After she’d gone about the tricky business of negotiating triple waistbands of polyester, nylon and cotton, to put her prize somewhere safe.

They passed through the town, and keeping the sea to the right of them proceeded along the coast road. It was afternoon when they reached a rise Mini-Flash Juniper knew well, and halted to behold the tableau outspread before them in the sun.

Flags of gaudy colours flew above great entry-gates teeming with influx. The spectral cars and taxi-cabs of this insubstantial realm were a jolly trundling procession, piled high with suitcases and bags as they teetered one after another through the maw. There were shouts and laughter and snatches of song, and people everywhere, a happy heaving mass of hats and vibrant summer hue, above which blazed the first bright primaries of freshly-painted chalet blocks. Flashsatsumas was starting to understand why his companion seemed a little pensive.

“Didn’t you tell me that the last time you were here…?” he began.

“It was a derelict run-down old ruin, yes,” Mini-Flash Juniper finished for him. “They must be growing more powerful.”

Her fingertips were giving the impression hosiery lacked friction in this world.

“Separate issue, though,” she sighed at last. “It even works out to our advantage, for the time being at least. Yon’s plans are obviously bigger than either of us. If they’d met us in force like they did before, we’d have been no match for that rabble. Flashbee would have had to pull us out, and our mission would have been over before it had begun.”

So saying, Juniper gave her stockings a final decisive hitch.

“We didn’t come to stop them, Flashsatsumas,” she reminded him. “We’re here to find out if they know where Mini-Flash Phytolith’s movement took 4-H-N.”

Flashsatsumas was still getting used to the eerie way in which things were laid-on in this place. When Mini-Flash Juniper led him to a square brick building where a phantom receptionist gave them a key and told them their chalet was ready for them, he’d cried out it was a trap and been all set to run. Juniper however had patiently explained that that was just the way it worked, and most of the mundane dealings related to their errand would be taken care of thus.

The chalet boasted terylene couches lining three of the living-room walls, interrupted in one corner where a boxlike televisual museum-piece was parked. The other wall consisted of a glass-paned door and windows, through which the sky was darkening by the time Mini-Flash Juniper emerged from her bedroom after getting ready. She looked exactly as she’d done before, still in full school uniform.

“I shouldn’t let you go alone,” Flashsatsumas blurted at once.

Mini-Flash Juniper wished he wouldn’t. That was exactly what Robin would have said.

“Rest,” she instructed. “You’ve had a long walk today. If you exhaust yourself while you’re powering this operation in tandem with Mini-Flash Pseudangelos, our memories will start to disappear and we’ll have to eat lots of chocolate cake. You know as well as I do that that’s the science behind this.”

“Bee’s monitoring our vital signs,” protested Flashsatsumas, but weakly, for their friend had had a thing or two to say about that particular branch of science.

“There’s one among them who’s talked to me when I was on my own,” were the facts to which Mini-Flash Juniper judicially opted to confine herself, for she knew Flashsatsumas would refuse point-blank to even allow her out of doors if he heard it all. Over to the exit she promptly skirt-bumped, praying a quivering hemline wouldn’t give her away.

“He might do so again,” Juniper concluded over her shoulder as she stood tall and fair, one palm resting on the door-handle. “Him, I’ve a certain leverage with.”

END OF CHAPTER ONE