He’d searched the palace kitchens and come up empty.
He’d searched the walls, the guard posts, the corner fortifications and come up empty.
The dungeons, servant’s quarters, surprisingly organized storerooms and public receiving rooms – all duds.
Month: March 2015
March 10 – Snow Monkey Healer
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/snow-monkey-mother-jigokudani/
Deep in the ever-snow
At the tree-line’s very top
Lives a mother and a grandmother
A leader and a healer
And each is one in the same
Snow monkeys avoid the reputation
Of their thieving and mischievous kin
They are a quiet sort
Who prefer solitude to crowds
Contemplation to action
And health to sickness
March 9 – Intrepid Minds
Patrols had been less and less calm in recent weeks. This happened every year after the snow melted, and the earth warmed, and the town slowly shook off the sluggishness of a winter spent indoors. Jatt and Gyace understood the perils presented by the Intrepid Minds gang that operated in the far reaches of the town. As soon as their transport dropped them off, they’d established a communication link to the local precinct, verified the capacitors on their stun-batons were full and prepped their shields on their chest guards.
They set up a grid pattern for the night’s territory. Heads on a constant swivel, they walked up and down the asphalt streets still driven by rubber-wheeled cars. The whole neighborhood felt like a place out-of-time. Gyace often said this beat felt like patrolling the past, as if they walked along a backlot at a movie studio.
March 8 – Encyclopedia Odditoria: On Hallucinatory Mist
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/ant-carnivorous-plant-borneo/
Encyclopedia Odditoria
Hallucinatory Mist
Example 1 – Roller Coaster Vine (full entry in Flora, vol. 5, page 578-579)
The Roller Coaster Vine was the third species ever confirmed to produce and emit Hallucinatory Mist. Its particular brand of mist is relatively powerful, in the 4th tier on the seven-tier Crain Scale of naturally-occurring hallucinogens.
March 7 – Morning at the Launch Pad
The Engine of the Empire. A Path to Power. The temple had many monikers, though the Hermesium was its only true name. Inside, an unassuming circle of stone was set into the floor, large enough for no more than four adults to stand at a time. The rock was not of this world. Its place of origin was still unknown, though the Empire was now four hundred years into its search. The stone circle had no official name, though senators often wasted days at a time pontificating on how a recently deceased statesman was, finally, a worthy candidate for such a naming.
So it was called, simply, a launch pad.
March 6 – Westward Light
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/grand-canyon-dawn-light/
Light danced on the side of the canyon. Ilasos stood at the edge of the massive ravine and watched. No shadows moved across the firelight projected onto the striated rock. He heard nothing from the protected shelter below, though he wondered if he was too far away for that to mean anything. By all accounts, it was a natural fire started by a lightning strike from last night’s storm. Except it was lit in a huge nook of a large canyon where, Ilasos presumed, no dead foliage sat around waiting to catch a spark.
It was a campfire. Someone had lit it.
March 5 – To Catch a Would-Be Thief
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/polar-bear-prey-kaktovik/
Cold wind buffeted the seabird’s wings as it moved ever northward. A few hours ago, it had left the last remnant of solid ground. Far below, drifts of ice bobbed in the dark blue chop. Occasionally, a small piece of white was framed by a large, amorphous shadow just below the surface. The icebergs were intriguing, but they were the domain of other Antarctic agents. His mission lay on the ice floes, just visible on the north horizon.
As he drew close to the nearest piece of wide, flat ice, he began his reconnaissance. He flew long arcs about three miles out, eyes cast down, looking for moving subsurface shadows or the telltale blowhole bursts of waterborne patrols. For half an hour, he circled, high as he dared go, but there was no sign of orcas. With the water deemed safe, he began his descent.
March 4 – Prisoner of Conscience
Clouds rolled across the massive swamp in the night. Dawn came with weak, grey light that did little enough to illuminate the mangrove trunks. Below their spindly roots, interwoven with complexity unseen anywhere else in the world, light could not reach the ground. And in the tangled mess, a shadow moved through the darkness, slow and plodding, slithering between gaps in the wooden prison.
March 3 – Clinging Ivy
The goat had not moved for hours. He stood right at the edge of the rocky outcrop halfway up the mountain. Wind buffeted him in venturing gusts, but his stocky build hardly wavered under the assault. So near the edge and certain doom, he showed no fear. How he’d managed to hold a frown the entire time was well beyond Cary’s reckoning.
She had spent the morning climbing the mountain. Before that, she’d spent two days getting from the nearest airport to this peak in the middle of nowhere. The year before that she’d been consumed in grueling research, following hikers’ half-formed memories, vague hints from drunk shepherds and poorly translated clues from local folklore. In a few minutes, it will have all proven worth it.
If she could just get past this damn goat.
March 2 – Solar Halo Phenomenon
Journal Entry for March 2nd
On the Halo
It’s still up there. And we still don’t know what it is, or where it came from, or what it means. It hasn’t grown, which I guess is good, but there’s no sign that it will go away either.
The theories people are putting out on the news are getting more ridiculous by the day. Most of it is still grounded in rudimentary, if scientifically dubious, astronomy and meteorology. No one has crossed the threshold into aliens yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.
The Tall Tale Year 