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

A monorail train glided by overhead and Mini-Flash Juniper followed its track, keeping the high concrete struts to one side and letting the line lead her seaward. Here lay a manmade watercourse lit by brighter orbs than those behind, and by the ramp that led to the gate which was Mini-Flash Juniper’s destination, some sort of indoor sports complex glowed.

This at least was a bit more like it.

Climbing the slope she passed a wall of glass immediately inside the leisure-centre, behind which Earthlings even at this late hour were indulging their curious disposition to dip themselves in hydrogen. The windows admitted only a view of the luminous depths, but Juniper knew which kicking legs belonged to boys and which girls. The latter showed theirs off more, due to a difference in the cut of the things like pants they wore for the purpose. Juniper frowned, thinking back on what that impertinent boy had said to her, and wondered why this planet was so much easier to get the hang of when her memories were gone.

The top of the ridge was the seawall, and below it the beach, where waves were running high. This planet’s moon affected them, Juniper remembered, such that the night-surf was a rolling roar as it tore along the wooden weedy pilings or crashed to great breakers farther off in the dark.

The thing that stood before this raging panorama, hunched in the shoulders but still horribly tall, wasn’t Uncle Lasser. Its bulbous head would have towered over his even without the scrawny neck which somehow supported it, or the horns on its helmet which pointed towards the scudding clouds. Its lanky legs and arms were bare, of disproportionate length to the body yet whiplike compared to that gargantuan dome, and but for a bracket or two of armour the rest of it was as indecent. It bore an illumination all its own, fluorescent blue-green and garish orange which shifted whenever the creature moved its appalling anatomy.

It wasn’t Uncle Lasser. Not anymore. But it was what had sung in the theatre.

Mini-Flash Juniper ignored it, setting off instead down the cement steps. Wet sand touched her school shoes and she continued on her way. She knew the monster was lurching after her.

“So, you caught my earnest of good faith?” a voice hissed, sure enough, almost in her ear.

Juniper looked mild, and offered no warmer acknowledgement than this.

Her skirt-pleats swung steady as she strolled, the thrashing roils on one hand and a baleful shape almost twice her height lifting its clawed feet on the other.

“Wow, you hate it when someone else pulls your trick, don’t you?” the ugly one spat at her at length. “Twists them up but good when we’re the ones keeping secrets from you. Oh, but it’s fine for you to do it to us. Flashsatsumas enjoy his goodnight kiss, did he? Poor kid. Some holiday he’s got lined up.”

“Channel that jealousy when you’re singing, Lasser,” Mini-Flash Juniper advised.

“Does that move us on?” the other snorted back, nostrils wide.

Juniper stopped, and made much of gazing out upon the boundless stygian tumult. Then she looked back at Lasser and let one finger stray to her navy-blue school tie.

“I don’t usually wear as much as this on the beach,” she told him matter-of-factly, all the while brushing her fingertip lightly back and forth over the silver brocade.

Lasser’s beady eyes by now were burning holographic red.

“You remember,” Juniper added, and her lips twitched as though to hint at a mocking smile.

As though.

For the truth was Mini-Flash Juniper’s thigh-muscles were in spasm, shaking the stockings that wrapped them tight, their fitfulness reaching as far as her skirts whose ticklish dance she could feel through the nylon. Her breath was coming short. Even anticipating this moment earlier with Flashsatsumas she’d struggled to keep her apprehensiveness from view, but that had compared to shooting hoops with the aforesaid now that the moment was at hand.

“So I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” Juniper finished, though it took the last scintilla that was in her to force an offhand tone. “They’ll be locking the gate before long.”

That did it. The other moved, frighteningly fast for a being of his bulk, just as he’d done on campus.

Waves exploded against the breakwaters, throwing up foam-torrents high into the night, and Lasser summarily mimicked their motion with every great gangly bit of him. His huge astonished head lolled like a doll’s as it led the skyward arc that started with Mini-Flash Juniper, who suddenly was surrounded by a sheer shield of brilliant yellow as waxy-sweet as it was sonorous and light. This had been constituted awhile ago, on this same strip of beach, when two young hearts were in the process of finding their way to each other. Amid those blushes and the shy solitude she’d shared here with Mini-Flash Robin, Juniper had ventured to him an idea which she’d put into practice on the road with Flashsatsumas that morning, in faith there would be protection in its purity once she’d broached the barrier again to dominions where all was corrupt.

The avatar of that depravity thudded to damp terra firma and the interview ended as had the prior one glanced at, with him squirming powerless on the ground.

Mini-Flash Juniper breathed at last.

It had been a bit of a gamble, and that she didn’t mind admitting.

Luckily however, this was the sort of place where a bit of oilseed down your knickers was as good as a kiss from Glinda.

“I do need to know what your song meant, Lasser,” Juniper concluded calmly to the writhing cursing one. “And I’m still willing to make a deal. Tonight was so we can be clear from the beginning on what’s out of bounds. When you’re ready to make me a sensible offer, you know where I am.”

So saying she turned and skirt-bumped back the way she’d come, to scale the steps and cross into the camp again well ahead of the gate closing at nine.

It had been a promising start, but Mini-Flash Juniper’s pensiveness wasn’t altogether gone.

All very well to speak so boldly.

However, deep down Juniper knew she only had a week.

END OF CHAPTER THREE