Where Calara Shimmerings Fly

Jack Challis

For those who keep a window in their imagination open.

PROLOGUE

Eighteen stories: a novelette, novellas, short stories and poems. Tales of human contact with the unexplainable and the unearthly; contacts that are on occasions deadly, frightening and sometimes enchanting, protective. Tales of the fairer sex’s schemes of avarice: lust, love and terrible revenge; emotions that can attract the wrong kind of unwanted attention from another dimension. True stories of human survival and of an unusual… perhaps even unnatural friendship of a beautiful female with an extremely dangerous animal.

Including a novelette of a newly married female’s premonition of impending sexual danger, from an unseen being not of our time; a premonition her husband did not heed.

Can we attract unwanted attention by fantasizing – keeping an open mind? Is leaving an open window in our imagination as risky as leaving an open door into our house – through which anything can enter?

Are some legends based on forgotten truths lost in time? Are there strange life-forms hiding in the mysterious fourth dimension; can our second dimension merge with the fourth dimension during the solstices?

Consider this: if a moth can take on the appearance of a piece of bark… is it in the first stage of shape-shifting? Touch it… you will feel the soft body of a moth; for a shape-shifter only deceives the eye not the touch. Touch a shape-shifter in the guise of a beautiful woman and you will feel something completely different: perhaps revolting.

A caterpillar spins a cocoon and over a period of time emerges as a butterfly; is the caterpillar becoming a true changeling? In time will the metamorphisms of insects become immediate and visually spontaneous? Alien Lings appeared on earth two thousand years ago. Lings are small humanoids of insect ancestry: Lings are true changelings. They are still here.

Can we draw the attention of the three fickle female fates by fascinating them – tempt fate?

We understand the moon’s magical and powerful effect on the seas; but we are still unaware of star-power on us: the moon is a star.

Europe was once covered in forests. As pales of twilight descended… man stayed close to his warm hearth; for the spirits of the forest were bolder then. Can the collective power of trees, water earth and sky create… sustain strange life-forms? Remember: Today’s fantasy and fiction is tomorrow’s reality and fact.”