FINDING A PLACE TO HIDE
Kar shimmered a shift to cloud and floated out over the pool. I expected her to be blue or green with wings, but no, she knew enough to be common fluffy white and wingless, so such as not to attract attention.
“Good, perfect,” I praised.
“You thought I’d do my blue with wings, didn’t you, Bek?” asked Kar in her cloudy voice.
“No … no … no … yoss,” I admitted.
“Well, I almost did,” admitted Kar.
I took one long look around at the scenery. Truth, it was splendid and mountainous with many fine stands of trees, rough ridges, and great bulges of rock with tumbled boulders. If you who read this are of the world down the Well, as so such it is likely you might be, I don’t know what to say. You have beautiful mountains, true. I’m sorry about the rest of it. Such, so, I took in the view before lifting on my broom into the foggy swirl of Kar.
“You’ll have to … you’ll … you’ll have to … have to …” I said and got stuck.
“Guide you because you can’t see through me,” helped Kar.
“Yoss,” I said with relief.
“I bet no jrabe or jroon has ever been a thicker cloud,” boasted Kar.
Up we went, Kar’s breathy cloud voice giving direction, telling me left, right, up, down, quicken or slow. I had to tell her clouds don’t zig and zag like weetlebugs before she slowed to a calm drifting pace.
“Tell me what … what you knee … see. Any spasms … chasms?” I requested.
“I see nothing. I’m a cloud. Remember?” breathed Kar.
“Sense then … dense! You know what … what … I … I … green!” I blurted out with a sudden shiver of anger. I was not in the mood for Kar’s silly games.
“Bek, Bek, Bek. This is an adventure. Enjoy it calmly. You never enjoy things calmly. You are Harick. Everything has to be fine. Such is ever so with Haricks,” soothed Kar.
“Ha!” I said, knowing it not to be true, but glad to hear her say so such. “What do … you SENSE?”
“There are rising ridges of rock, some domes, even cliffs, good scatters of trees, a river roaring down a steepness, grassy meadows with strewn boulders, wandering tricklestreams, and …”
“Don’t pop … stop. And what?” I pressed, almost tempted to fly out and see for myself.
“A thickness of bramble, a cut between cliffs!” hissed Kar, roiling.
“A rocky chasm valley?” I asked with hope.
“A good hiding place, Bek. Slow drift down,” she said and instructed.
Slow drift down we did until Kar thinned and wisped away, leaving me floating above a fine thickness of brambles pressed between two walls of rock. A tug of happiness pulled a familiar comfort from my memory’s cupboard. The brambles below echoed somewhat the dear bendo dreen thorny hedge home of my younglinghood. I swept down, and using never to be forgotten bendo dreen skills, slipped through the thorny briars and entered a dusty hollow. Kar, in bendo dreen guise, sat there grinning.
“Perfect, isn’t it? Perfect. So such almost like as the hedge, just dirtier and undeveloped. We could develop it, though, couldn’t we, Bek? Make it a hedge home with corridors, rooms, and even an Assembly Bower. We just have to …” bubbled Kar until I stopped her by holding up my hand with its single ring glowing yellow danger.
“Oh, I forgot,” she said, shrugging like we do.