Just A Note, from Ralph, Himself

 

            Well, howdy, all! It’s been a busy summer here in the Great Forest. But now that the year is kind of rolling over, I’ve been thinking of you.
            In many ways it’s the most beautiful time of year. Up here, in the meadow everything is sort of golden. It’s too early for falling leaves, but you can tell it won’t be long. Soon the Alder Tree House will lose its leaves and look bare and different. There will be frost here in the Mt. B.S.N.F. Maybe not downhill, not yet anyhow.
            Flowers are going to seed, the grass has died back, and the berries, both black and red are all picked and eaten a while back.
            Down in the Home Clearing now, mornings come later, and we see some mist among the trees when the sun comes up. It feels good to gather close to Mona’s fire. And, there’s nothing like a cup of coffee with its steam rising up into the first sunbeams!
            I know some of you are still feeling the last very hot days of summer, but it will be over before you know it, even there. You might even end up missing some of that heat when winter comes.
            Ramona sends her love. She loves to hear about you guys, and she wishes you all well. She recommends soup making. She says it’s cheerful, and you end up with soup!
            Cherry says, “Hi!”
            Uncle Bob and Maurice are writing songs and doing fine. Maurice has a mystery on his hands. But I suppose we’ll hear more about that in the near future. He hasn’t had anymore weird visitors!
            Everything is quiet over at the river. Very quiet, except for the water.
            Maeve wants you to know, you know what! Yes. Evermore! When you think about it that’s pretty cool.
            OK, I learned a funny old word. Fantod. I pray that none of you fall victim to this aberrant mood disease! To me, it sounds like fleas in the heart. You don’t want fleas in your heart.
            It seems to me, and I have to do this too, that every moment of which you are aware carries within itself a choice. You know what it is. You don’t need me to tell you!
            Keep your chins up! We’re all in this together!
            I can’t write this stuff down, so you’ll have to take in on faith!
 
            Love, Ralph

                    🍁💚🍁

🐈‍⬛⭐The Tootsday Cat (Gossip) Report⭐🐈‍⬛

 

What it would really sound like.

☆🧡☆

            “Anything new, Miss Suzy,” inquired Toots, as it was time for the Tootsday Report.
            “Um, snack time! I’ll get back to you in a minute,” said Suzy. “OK. That didn’t take long!”
            “Oh! What kind did you get? Temptations? Or something else?”
            “Nope,” said Suzy. “We had two kinds of Japanese treats, shipped to our indulgent Auntie R. for us. Squishy things with no English on them, and crunchy things with no English on the package either. So elegant!”
            “Ooo!” said Toots. “So, how do you feel about butter?”
            “Ick,” said Suzy.
            “Check,” said Toots.
            “And check,” said Suzy. “Why do they keep trying to feed us that?”
            “Maybe they’re trying to get rid of it?”
            “Anything else?” inquired Miss Toots.
            “Well, let me tell you! Hold your potatoes, I think? Anyhow, I was napping under her desk yesterday and I happened to hear a conversation. Very hush hush! The story is that we are going to be in a book! Feature that, Tootsie!” whispered Suzy.
            “What in the world could there be to say about us? We never do anything or go anywhere! I bet she made it all up!” said Toots. “Nehhhkkk!!”
            “What a scary idea!” said Suzy. “I mean I could understand it if she was ratting on that Fluffbag, or grumpy Charlie, not to mention her adored darlings, the awful Scouts!”
            “I thought you liked those two!”
            “I did! Until they each outweighed me by three times!
            “Did I tell you about the latest? OK. Check this out! P bought a bag of catnip tea bags. Apparently, people drink this tea, Toots. Well, the adored Scouts stole two tea bags and chewed and snuffed them until they got rip-snorting high! Then, to top it off, they had a screaming fight on the kitchen floor!” said Suzy.
            “Ew, bad form,” agreed Toots.
            “Let me tell you what life is like these days, Dear. I don’t come out into the open until They are soundly asleep. I spend a lot of time under her desk, or behind the vacuum cleaner. They can’t fit behind it. They’re fat! Or, I have a safe nook under the bed. If they stick their noses too close…I growl as hard as I can go!”
            “It’s all about safety,” agreed Toots. “Sometimes I have to go undercover too!”
            “What does Sammie say?” said Suzy.
            “Not much. But I don’t see her hiding much. Maybe she’s a secret Warrior Ninja? But she sure doesn’t show appropriate Caution™, IMO. Toots looked a little concerned at this point.
            “Seems like she must be some kind of Ninja,” said Suzy, admiringly.
            “Do you have any special Purrs to report?” said Toots.
            “No special ones. Just the usual good stuff. Shelter, food, water, warmth, all in spite of the silly Scouts. No earthquakes! Ew! No volcanoes!” mrrred Suzy.
            “I haven’t seen any of those big Hairy guys out on the road recently either,” said Toots. “They give me the utter fantods,” she added, “Nor any fake owls hooting!”
            “I think we’re doing OK, Toots.”
            “I have to agree,” said Toots. “OK. I think that’s enough for today! Snooze well, undercover!”
            “Oh, I will, Honey, I will,” said Suzy.

            “Mrrrrt!”

The Thing That Maeve Saw, And Then Forgot

 

            It’s not surprising that she saw it. After all, Maeve is the eye in the sky who sees all, pretty much. What is surprising is that she forgot it. Passing strange!
            How it went down is this: As you know, the Silver River is the only jack card in the Great Forest’s deck. It flows through the middle of the G.F. with impunity and no special permission. So, anyhow, Maeve was cruising in the sky over the river one early evening just as the land was getting that golden look it gets as the sun is setting. The last of the light was picking out certain things glamorously like on some famous painting. Maeve was digging the scenery, when she noticed something unusual.
            Rolling downstream was a ball of light, maybe ten feet in diameter. It was an odd color somewhere between green and blue, kind of like that shiny spot on the gills of a certain kind of duck. It was about half submerged. It made no noticeable sound.
            Maeve dropped down to get a better look. In its center was a brighter area.
            She was just formulating the intention to go find Ralph and let him in on the story when she forgot all about it. She flew on.
            Once she was gone, this thing rolled over to the river bank near the granite boulder which, though chastened, still lay there. There, it lifted lightly a bit into the air and drifted over to the huge erratic boulder, where it kind of melted into the granite and vanished, leaving the pebbled river bank and the murmuring water as they were before.
            Sunset proceeded normally.
            Things changed after dark.
            Maeve tried to sleep in her stony nest high on the mountain above the Great Forest. Something kept tickling at her thoughts. She kept waking and looking out into the dark, worrying and wondering what she was missing.
            A baker’s dozen or so small versions of the big greenish light began coursing through the Home Clearing. The family who resided there were sleeping so they didn’t see these objects popping and snapping and seeming to be having difficulties, as if they weren’t meant to be there, but were anyhow and suffering for the impertinence.
            It was like a hunt of some kind. Not seeing their quarry in the Home Clearing they spread out. They had an easier time at the campground and the ranger station, but he they sought wasn’t there either.
            So, going back into the forest, they headed up past Ralph’s log and into the big meadow. They bounced and rolled and spat out greenish sparks as their direction became synchronized…
            Koba wasn’t sleeping well either. He woke suddenly. He was aware that his parents were asleep. Something was coming toward him.
            Without waking Twigg or Leely, Koba slipped outside to stand on the grass before the Alder Tree House and wait. As he stood there in the dark, he assumed his star form.
            A baker’s dozen or so of these small greenish lights hurried toward him where he stood before his home. As they came their true forms emerged. The seemed to be tiny glowing lace winged fairies. They gathered around Koba. One spoke.
            “Come home with us, Star Boy! This dirty place in no home for you! You should live among the stars!” It twinkled near his ear, speaking softly, soothingly.
            “No,” said Koba. “Liars!”
            Still speaking sweetly, the first winged imp said, “You would be given great honor among the heavenly lights! You will have glory and power!”
            “Liar!” said Koba. The fairy imp coughed and seemed to struggle to breathe.
            “Time is short, Star Boy! Come now!” it said. “There is a curse on this place and we will die soon unless you hurry now!”
            “I won’t,” said Koba.
            Just about at this impasse, Mak’s silver ship slid down out of the night sky. This time it had lights glowing all along its sides.
            “Oh, no…” said the coughing fairy.
            “What!” cried Leely as she opened the door of the Alder Tree House and stepped outside, trying to read what she was seeing. Twigg was right behind her.
            Mak emerged from his ship quickly holding an odd-looking device of some kind. He stepped over by Koba, and kind of vacuumed up the fairies with it. Coughing was still audible from inside the strange machine.
            “I’m sorry,” said Mak to Koba and his parents. “It was a kidnapping attempt. I’m proud of Koba. He knew a liar when he saw one!”
            “Who were they?” said still sleepy Twigg.
            “There are still some dark corners of the galaxy. The one who sent them hoped to gain power by possessing Koba. It was a stupid plan, really,” said Mak. “I’ll deal with them. Goodbye, and goodnight! I will visit soon, but not tonight.”
            He re-entered his ship and it slipped back up into the air and vanished.
            The whole scene looked normal again.
            Far up in the mountain, Maeve remembered what she had seen.
            “That thing must have done something to make me forget!” she said to herself. And, though it was dark, and ravens don’t generally fly in the dark, Maeve flew from her nest to find Ralph.
            When she got to the cave door, she rapped on it hard with her beak. Ralph came out in a moment. She told him about the big greenish round thing in the river, and how she had been made to forget to report it to him.
            “Not good, Birdie,” said Ralph. “This smells very bad. My heart tells me to go up to the Alder Tree House and see if all is well or not!”
            When Ralph is in a hurry, it doesn’t take him long to get up into the meadow. Maeve flew beside him. He and Maeve got there in a couple shakes of a goat’s whiskers.
            All was quiet at the Alder Tree House, but Ralph knocked anyhow and woke everybody up again. First Leely explained what she had seen, then Twigg did the same. Then Ralph put Koba on his knee and said, “Now you tell me what happened to you this night, Koba!”
            Koba told him about going outside because he knew something was coming, and seeing the lights coming across the meadow to him, and how they changed into sort of lacy fairies.
            “Then they told me to come home with them, and I said no,” said Koba.
            “After that Mak came in his ship and put them in a machine and took them back into the air with him! Grampa, they were liars. They said I would have honor and power among the stars. That’s a lie, isn’t it?”
            “Yes, that was a lie,” said Ralph.
            Then Maeve told them what she had seen, and how she forgot about it, and then remembered suddenly up in her nest while she was trying to sleep.
            “I’ll let you all go back to bed now. I have a bit of business to attend to. I don’t think you’ll see those naughty fairies again, Koba,” said Ralph. “Be at peace.”
            Ralph and Maeve walked back down through the meadow, into the woods, and into the Home Clearing. Ralph helped Maeve into the cave to tell Ramona everything, then he went on down to the river.
            In the darkness, under just a bit of dim light from the sky, he could hear the river sighing as it moved ever onward. He could sense the presence of the Mouth of the Mountain lying in the shadow of the great firs.
            In the morning, not a trace of the huge granite boulder remained. Only a smooth bed of river pebbles lay where she had been.

🍄‍🟫💮🍄‍🟫

Photo source.

Suzday Greetings and Open Thread

 I took Catfurday off!

Photo is from a September 2009 trip to Alaska. 

It was a gift from our youngest!

The next morning, early, while most were still abed.

I would certainly like to go back, overland.

Such a trip would be a very big deal.

But, it would be epic!

⚓

"Peekaboo!"

 

            From Ramona’s point of view, human people were madly interesting when she was a shy young thing. Before she saw Ralph, or figured out the rest of her life right there on the spot, she was like an obsessed teenaged girl.
            You can see how this would go.
            If she saw a fellow working on his car at night. His suspended light source would draw her attention as she did her own research. Like the proverbial moth, she might creep close and look over his shoulder to see what in the world he was doing. His grunting, talking to himself, and moving things around would be totally mysterious to her.
            If he saw her and she knew he saw her, she would skedaddle right quick.
            Her mom had told her to stay clear of humans because they are unpredictable, above all things and might possibly take a shot at you.
            Children playing would be fascinating. She wouldn’t understand clothing. Why do that?
            Her father said human people wear those things because they don’t have enough body hair to stay warm, and besides their body mass is too small to produce much heat. Humans are slaves to the elements, he told her.
            Windows would be like her own TV screens or monitors. The trick would be to watch the show without being seen. She found that this was actually pretty easy because people are so self-absorbed. They don’t look around much, generally speaking. They don’t look at the sky much, or look at their windows. Children are different. They look at everything, then when they try to report what they have seen, well they bump into a bland wall of disbelief usually. Not always.
            Some ladies still hang laundry on a line to dry because it smells so nice when dried that way, and the sun sterilizes like no electric dryer can.
            When she was young, Ramona liked to watch the ladies hang their laundry. They were usually so busy that they never saw her there. If one, sensing something, looked up suddenly, Ramona would do that thing where they change their wavelength to something out of the visible range for humans.
            Peekaboo!
            In fact, this interest in humans is how she met Thaga and Ooog, years before. She watched Ooog gardening and wondered why he did that. Was he making a strange artificial forest or something? What were all those plants for anyhow? What did they do with them? Surely, they couldn’t be food, she thought.
            She was standing motionless in the tree line watching Ooog one day, when Thaga walked out to the road to mail a letter. When Thaga saw Ramona there, she jumped, but managed to steady herself quickly.
            “Oh,” Thaga laughed, “You scared me a little. But not much. I just didn’t expect to see you there.” Possibly, Thaga and Ooog knew of the Forest People. I would suppose so.
            Ramona wasn’t scared either, for some reason, of the little woman in the big apron. She held her ground while the little woman talked to her gently. Thaga even kind of sang to her.
            Thaga took Ramona’s hand and said, “Why don’t you come to the house and spend some time with us?”
            At the stone cottage, they became friends. Ramona learned to speak good English. Thaga learned quite a bit of Saslingua, though it’s hard for English speakers to pronounce. And Thaga, as well as Ooog, answered a lot of her questions about the Hairless. So, she didn’t have to do so much research.
            Of course, Ramona wasn’t Ramona until Thaga named her. Her name, given by her mother, was impossible to say, in Thaga’s opinion.

💚💮💚

She Couldn't Help Wondering

 

            Dianne thought about the river trip for a few days. But really, she was thinking about the blond child in the air and the blue light, inexplicable, beautiful, and compelling. She had to know more.
            Just plunging into the forest hadn’t worked. She and Larry had found out exactly nothing that way. In fact, it seemed as if the very forest had rejected them. Dianne thought there must be a way. She figured she would leave Larry out of this particular venture. He didn’t even admit to having seen what they absolutely did see.
            She decided to investigate on her own. This involved getting a ride upstream with the yellow inflatable raft. There was a park with river access. Her brother was willing to assist. He left her there, afloat, and promised to pick her and the raft up in town when she got there. All she had to do was call. Their parents were not consulted. They didn’t want to worry them over a little solo rafting trip. After all, the river was a sweet calm little river and Dianne would wear a floatation vest.
            It was a pleasant afternoon trip downstream. She passed stands of trees, farm fields, houses, and all, just as she and Larry had done before. She knew she would recognize the right spot. It was rather memorable with its huge Douglas firs standing near the river, and that particular large granite boulder.
            She thought of the laughter they had heard on the beach. It didn’t dissuade her.
            When she got to the right spot, the water thinned out near the west bank of the river, it ran slowly over the pebbles. Dianne steered the raft into that shallow water and then onto the very beach itself. She climbed out, getting her feet wet, pulled the raft further up onto the beach, took its rope and tied it around the boulder. So far, so good.
            The rest of the plan was to sit there and wait, and see if anything happened. Maybe she’d try some dialog with whatever lived in that section of forest. It couldn’t hurt to try.
            So, she picked a likely looking bit of river driftwood and sat down. She looked all around herself.
            The beauty of the place distracted her and quieted her thoughts. On the opposite bank there were the same tremendous firs as the bank where she sat. The water ran smoothly, but not silently. It seemed to sigh, or murmur subvocally. One gull, a long way from the salt water screamed from way up high. Crows added their harsh commentary. The sun glinted on the moving water. A mysterious woody scent came to her, and like scent does, it reminded her of something. But she couldn’t say exactly what.
            Rising up behind her were mountains. Implacable, silent, so very present, saying nothing audible
            Then she remembered with a start why she was there.
            She folded her hands and shut her eyes. She spoke.
            “I just want to know who you are. I come in peace, as they always say, but I really do.”
            She felt the wind lift her hair a little. The cuffs of her jeans were still dripping. Her feet felt cold in their wet socks and Keds.
            “I’m good at keeping secrets, if that matters a lot,” Dianne said. She waited.
            “I’m not going away,” she added. Then she laughed at the incongruity of the situation.
            Someone sat down beside her. She opened her eyes and turned to her left.
            She was startlingly beautiful. That was Dianne’s first impression. Then she noticed the hair, so many colors combining to create the effect of a rich complex light brown. She must have stood around seven feet tall when standing. She was some kind of epic female figure. Her eyes were blue and amused, but a little reserved looking.
            Dianne didn’t dare speak, in fact, she was speechless.
            “You saw my daughter and my grandson,” said Ramona softly. “He was in his star form.”
            “It was an accident,” said Dianne. “We didn’t mean to sneak up on anybody.”
            “The man isn’t here,” said Ramona.
            “He won’t admit that we saw anything. I left him in town,” said Dianne. “I couldn’t stop thinking about what I saw.”
            “Well, since you won’t go away, I thought I would come and sit with you for a while.”
            “Oh! Did you hear me? Were you nearby?” said Dianne.
            “I did! You came to solve a mystery, so here I am to help you. The bones of the story is that those like us live apart from those like you, in forests, on mountains, in deserts, wherever there are the means to do so. My family lives near here.
            “Most of humanity thinks we’re a charming folk story, or something like a horror story. Some find the story horrible, and some can let it be. Some want to be involved.
            “My English name is Ramona. The children you saw are Cherry and Koba. We like to name our children after beloved natural things. Koba means star though.”
            “I’m Dianne.”
            “Which kind are you, Dianne?”
            “I think I’m the kind to let it be. I just couldn’t forget. I kept thinking and wondering. And I won’t tell!”
            “It’s pretty hard to catch us with our guard down. Maybe that bunny Cherry and Koba were chasing bolted for a reason. Maybe we were meant to meet?
            “The forest protects us. Also, it’s unlikely that anybody gets past Ralph, Cherry’s father without a reason. But I’m glad you can keep a secret. Will you keep ours?” asked Ramona.
            “Yes.”
            “Thank you,” said Ramona. “Want some help getting that raft back out into the river?”
            Since the interview seemed to be at an end, Dianne accepted Ramona’s help. She untied the raft from the strange big rock, and climbed into the raft and Ramona shoved it out deeper into the river.
            “I’ll never forget,” said Dianne.
            “I won’t either!” said Ramona.
            As Dianne drifted down toward the west, she saw Ramona step back among the trees.

🍁🌲🍂

Meowy Purrsday to All!🐈🐈‍⬛🐈

 Sweetie wishes you the best of everything.

(He's very interested in the camera!)

He feels that it is high time for fall to commence.

🍄‍🟫🍂🍁🍂🍄‍🟫