Story: 'Wordspace', IX

(Part I , VIII , X) - (Prepared long ago - delivering the Dutch from tyranny and cheeses at this time)

Mystery, Club and Sorpresa stood at the point of intersection. Their ally Cloud, left behind on their other plane of existence, would be doing what? Would he wait? Would he be summoned away for some vital mission?

Mystery jerked himself back to his new reality, his mind wandering as it never had before. Was that an effect of crossing over to this strange new place, wherever it might be? Around them was the accumulated debris of eons, or of just a few minutes. The space was vast (or quite, quite small) and dominated by the figure he could only assume was the Silly Stone.

The Silly Stone was bunny hopping. Badly.

Club immediately stepped forward, to Mystery's right flank. He looked quite normal and composed, but composure for Club meant preparedness and vigilance. The Silly Stone continued on obliviously, now making strange noises that might have been singing.

Mystery's mind had wandered again, and this time he brought it back from the Isle of Truth, Lies and Mystery as it had used to be. This time there was an almost audible mental twang. What was the Silly Stone? What had Sorpresa done when he was here last? (If 'last' even had any meaning?) Now that he was reminded of that strange visitor from another land he examined him closely. Sorpresa wasn't looking around, not was he chirping away in his own lingua franca. He just watched the Silly Stone silently and quite intently. Did he know something?

Bunny hop hop hop. Hop chirp splat hop click squeal hop unidentifiable noise tra la la hop.

The Silly Stone was evidently sillier than even Space had intimated. Mystery and Club looked on as he capered around, utterly alien and yet quite familiar. Parts of the Stone seemed to made of the regular syllables and letters of their own syllabic existence while others were utterly different and... inexplicable... even solid. And what was there in the syllabic sense was partly extra-lexical. It was madness!

"Sploot sploot, clammy nostrum axc:lap." The Silly Stone had stopped before him and he realised that he had drifted off again. "Slappy Clippy Drchr Sponge?"

"Sponge?" A genuine word?

"Sponge! Ah! Tarkll lingual smash traversal sl^p."

"Translation!"

"Yes. Translation. Don't spckl, it's almost settled in now. Ah, I know this trpl from before! No need to analyse! Como se va, Sorpresa?" The Silly Stone addressed Sorpresa.

"Bueno, excelente, pero ahora quiero ir a mi casa. Ha hecho muchas días." Sorpresa sounded happy, but not urgent.

"Si si, en un momento." The Stone turned back to Mystery and Club. "I've identified your lexicon now. Never met anyone from your world before. What can I do for you? Sing a song? do a merry Rosetta jig?"

"No, ah... This is confusing..."

"Yes, it would be. As lexical beings you're struggling with being out of context." A slow waltz around the tiny/huge room. "You'll adjust in a few moments. Plus, I suspect a few days trying to interpret another language has left you more than a little tired." A sigh. "When you're made of language itself, a new one can be rather opaque."

"Yes... What?"

"Time means nothing here. I know most things and at the same not many at all. However, it's best to get our friend Surprise here home." The Stone spun, handed a funny looking bag to Sorpresa, who attached it somehow quickly. Then the Stone snapped his digits and boom, Sorpresa was gone.

"Sorpresa? Surprise?"

"Yes, Surprise."

"I see... That explains the jumping out of holes while grinning."

"Probably. He's much more fun than the other one."

"The other one we haven't seen at all."

"Just as well. A nasty piece of work. Quite shook the feathers off my back." The Silly Stone stopped bouncing and looked worried instead. "I suppose that we'd better talk."

"Yes, it sounds we had better." Mystery had a feeling that the weirder events were yet to come.

More shall follow.