The Eternity Tree (and shadow)
The Banshee is dressed in teal silk and strange looks today; she takes slow, thoughtful steps around the grove, as if considering the implications of every misplaced twig and crushed blade of grass. She is very pale, staying to the shadows of the tall trees. Her eyes are bloodshot, but her gaze strangely clear. As you approach, you get the sense off her of one in the fierce calm after great revelation. She looks up at you and smiles… heartbreakingly soft, the lines of her face, the kindness in her eyes.
She makes a gentle curtsey to you in greeting; asking after your health and happiness. As the conversation lulls, your eyes stray to the Tree at the center of the grove: it looks just slightly out of place there, as if it just… appeared. But of course, that is ridiculous; trees do not move… do they?
Like a dreamer, the rest of her words do not make a great deal of sense…
the Parable of the Perfect Parcel
She is curled up on an old faded rug by the fire, sipping a cup of steaming tea. There are no walls to this place, so the chill early morning breeze saunters through, stirring the dark curls framing her pale face, rustling the pages of the book. Once, twice, the wind snatches the feather quill from her hand, which takes to the wind as if remembering the thrill of flight– but each time she need only reach out her hand, and the quill flits obediently back.
She smiles softly as you enter and says not a word… but turns the book to you, so you can see what she has written…
adventure to The Port
The Banshee sits on a couch of plush purple velvet, studying three colour photographes. She peers closely at each one, like a vacationer searching for a clue to a mystery, or a spy knowing she must’ve missed… something…
At her feet lie a stack of useless photographes… over-exposed, under-exposed, or blurred in strange ways. Only three seem undistorted:
the Flowers over the Fence
The wysteria
it rooted in the neighbor’s yard
and grew over the fence into ours.
It was so beautiful
so new and questing and vital the vines, so lush
so delicate and trembling the blooms in the sweet summer breeze.
Then they did something to it to kill it
something over there, across the fence.
Was it cut? I cannot see, and don’t know them well enough to ask.
So slowly it died.
Now it hangs there, shrivelled
but I cannot bear to pull it down
because it is still pretty, even in death
and reminds me of when it was beautiful.
Don’t trust another to grow your flowers.
I think I shall plant my own.
a string of Precious
… then something falls into place, and this inner alignment just clicks. Love and chemistry, heart and spirit and mind. Click. And so the path is opened…
Looking up into the great old spiderwebbed tree, you can see that the house lights are ablaze. Every gas lamp pulses with flame, and every window shows candles dancing to music you cannot hear, not from down here. The great wooden treehouse might seem in peril of burning, were it not so thoroughly soaked by the rain.
The Lady of the house and of this land has moved from room to room sparking this light. A shift of the wind brings you the purifying scent of burning sage.
Photographes From The Future, part one
Your hand, holding the postcard, twitches in just the right way, and three photographes (surprisingly sharp, and colorized!) fall out from between the…
But wait. a postcard has only one page. How were these inside it?
In any case, they are all captioned on the back, in violet ink…
Here I am about to step off of my 19th(ish)century timeship and into the 23rd century.
a postcard from The Future
The Lady moans miserably, curled up on the velvet couch. She steadies an icepack on her pale brow.
She holds a postcard out to you, and says very softly, her eyes closed,
Come in… come in. Here, I wrote this to you, on my music-raiding trip to the 23rd century…
Having a great time in the future! Wish you were here…
Now I have Time Lag. lemme go back to sleep.
((thanks to Retropolis for the postcard 
)
a Tardis still growing
The Banshee paces, her shoes echoing hollowly across the intricately carved wood floor, her hair and skirts swishing darkly. All around her are walls of twisted wood, with the occasional little waterfall of green leafy vines. The light is strange: very bright, unnatural, shifting. If you hold very still, you can hear, under the electric hum of the console in the other room, the faint, slow creaking sound of the wood, indeed the tree that you are inside, growing.
She seems delighted and disturbed, moving from one wall – laying her hand on it – then moving to an opposite wall, and exclaiming as she looks up at how tall it’s got. You step off the old persian carpet, and your footfall is heard; she stiffens, then turns, with agonizing slowness, to look at you. For a moment, her eyes! but no, it must have been a reflection of the strange light.
She smiles, slow, and you wonder if perhaps you shouldn’t have wandered in here…
Watching him as he sleeps
She writes her words in darkest purple ink, a little looping script that tends to sharpen into points when you least expect it. Holding her leatherbound journal over the tree stump that usually hides it, you feel more than a bit like a voyeur… but still, you read…
