Story: The Ninja of Health, XXVIII

( Part XXVII , XXIX )

What is this going to be about now? Have our two brave protagonists vanished off the face of the planet or been shifted into an alternate state of consciousness, across which bourn people have yet to ever return? The second one sounds better, plus it fits in with our recurring astral themes...

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"This is freaky."

"No freakier than the people I used to deal with back at the upholstery works."

The Man cocked an eyebrow. "The details of your life before you joined the Order never cease to confuse me." Gesturing around them, he continued, "Life in an upholstery works could be as freaky as this?"

The sands of varying hue hung as a grand circular curtain, surrounding the Two from the walls of the crater, if it were indeed still there. The Lady sat serenely, while her companion waffled on. She found that it sometimes helped to not pay too much attention as he often spoke to help himself think. At their feet, the angular caricature of their meditation Pattern had been filled in with coloured sands to become authentically smooth.

The Lady spoke succinctly. "Something is going to happen soon."

"I know. It's already beginning."

The sand curtains began to flicker, and the coloured grains to shift about haphazardly. It was like an old-style television tube's picture beginning to coalesce, as if someone were adjusting an old-fashioned tuning dial.

Back to back, the Two became ever more tranquil as the sand curtains that seemed to cut them off from the regular eddies and flows of time revealed the beginning of a story from a different world, a world so very distant that it hung there a few scant metres away.

In a reversal, the Lady began to talk, "Who would have thought it...?"

"Ssshh. We're getting to the good bit."

The good bit will come soon...