This week's picture prompt was created by French digital artist Cyril Rolando. They call this one Nine Lives. They have made some incredible pieces and some have been seen on Mid-Week Flash before a couple of times: recently on Week 278 and Week85.
This week, I delved into Tricky's world after weeks of starving myself from her world. It was a delight! But I don't feel this will add anything to the current storyline, but it throws up ideas for another story line and maybe series in her world. Last time I wrote about Tricky was Week 273.
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‘Yes, I have to do that otherwise he’ll get lost and never find his way back to our time.’
‘But he can’t tell time; he’s a cat!’
Tricky eyed this young upstart who clearly thought he knew more than she did.
‘You really don’t know much about cats, do you?’
‘Well, I assume—’
‘Never assume anything,’ Tricky interrupted, ‘about anyone or anything. First rule is get informed, talk to those that know – get yourself a cat and find out exactly how intelligent they really are, and how helpful they can be to you.’
‘Yes, but they’re a feline; they don’t have the mental capacity of us humans.’
Tricky burst out laughing, shocking the poor boy into silence and wiping the smugness off his face.
‘Oh that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all week. You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you? Not done much studying about what happened before The Shift, have you? I suggest you go and do that, and then maybe get yourself a cat, or spend some time with Nathan, and find out exactly just how far down the evolutionary scale of “intelligence” we really are.’ Tricky was still giggling to herself. ‘Oh my, you youngsters may have talent but it seems to deprive you of the reality that you are not superior to anything, that in fact everything is symbiotic. You need to learn to work together WITH everything, that it complements you and your abilities, that it’s not there for you to use how it suits you.’
Her young student looked duly chastised. She wondered if she’d been overly harsh.
‘You have exceptional abilities in time manipulation. To be honest, I’ve not met another who can do what you can, besides myself—’
‘There’s Gandalf,’ the naïve one butted in.
‘His name is Douglas Bottle.’ Tricky was pleased to see that raised a smirk. ‘And yes, he can do what we can do. But beware, do not engage him in any way, should you come across him. He is out for his own gains and to take from others.’
‘So he’s still out there.’
‘I assume so.’ The boy opened his mouth to speak. ‘Yes, I know, I just told you not to assume, but in this instance I can’t glean any information from anywhere that can tell me otherwise.’
‘He’s not here in this time, then?’
Tricky pulled a face. ‘I can’t be sure. I don’t think so, but I haven’t spent a lot of time focused on finding him – not without reason. The rest of his cohorts are gone, so he’d be foolish to return.’
‘But there’s a chance we could come across him in another time.’
Tricky didn’t want to consider that, but it had to be faced. ‘Yes, we could. So again, I advise caution in everything you do.’
She felt he’d understood the seriousness of the situation and resumed the lesson.
‘Okay, so as you can see various clocks run in different ways due to the time dilation when he follows me through portals, hence the selection. They give Rasputin the opportunity to track where, and more importantly, when he is for his return. But as you know there are no guarantees, and although clocks can be useful, the best way to judge is looking at landscape. The trees will always know too. How you getting on with engaging them?’
‘I don’t have your knack yet, Tricky. One of the oaks gave me a bit of a shake down the other day. I’m not sure what I did wrong.’
Tricky suspected he wasn’t polite or grateful enough. Many of his generation seemed to be missing that particular gene, and unlike humans, trees didn’t change their attitudes or culture, they remained fast and true.
‘I’ll go through it again with you later. First I wanted to see how far you got with your assignment, did you manage to create a portal?’ She knew he had, because he hadn’t sealed it off properly, but she wanted him to tell her in his own words.
There was a time when we were in charge, by that I mean we were the apex predator.
ReplyDeleteBut times change, we held a great meeting to discuss our future.
After a time we came to the conclusion that it might be better to be served than feared. We gave up our time as the top of the food chain to another species, they feed and housed us, worshipped us even, as they should.
A few reactionaries refused to keep up with the times, they ended up being the hunted rather than the hunters.
For those of us who saw the wisdom of being gods it was the best of times.