|| -------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A . singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora ------------------- ----------- DEER EXPRESS--CUP 15--"BUTTERSCOTCH HOLD" <-------  ||  Severe Repair  ||  Deer Express  ||  -------> (Cup SRde015, Created v2 (6/7/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Butterscotch Hold was a way of life. The buzzword all round was "imperfection". Lemon and Courier Arbhay sat in an alcove facing the vastness of Gnoboslast. The Hold was like an enormous hemisphere at a 45 degree angle--like a theater, Gnoboslast the stage. "This place just feels so HEAVY." Lemon said, sitting on the super-shaggy butterscotch-colored carpet. She sat with her legs folded to the side underneath her--a very innocent-looking pose. "Yeah." Arbhay said, sitting astride a big, dark wood chair, resting his folded arms on its ornate back. They were back in their normal bodies. The transformation back was a painful and vexing one. See, as Granticaine led them here, their real bodies started to break through the old ones. The pressure of their true forms built inside of them, and clumsily began to tear and rip the false bodies from the inside. Most of this process occurred during a month-long trek across Special Black Terrain, a dark, barren nowhere of Gnoboslast. The horns were the first things to start breaking through. Lemon's were easy, but Arbhay's antlers were a bitch. Whatever was happening, it could only happen in Gnoboslast. There were a few weeks when both of them looked terrible and experienced a dull, horrific pain. Fingers bursting out of other fingers, eyes forcing other eyes aside, legs ripping out of the sides of other legs. Gnoboslast was like nowhere else. The whole journey to Butterscotch Hold took two months--but it may as well have been forever. No day or night, no eating, no breathing. A more basic form of just being there. Scary. "I hate how this place... has taken away all my concern, all my energy. I should be trying to get us out of here, but I just don't care anymore. I wish I did, Arbhay." "I know what you mean. And I... I was looking forward to a very lucrative and sensually pleasurable afterlife. It was... almost a lock. But now... I doubt I have any access there any more." Lemon smiled a crooked smile. "Sorry for saving your life, antler brain." "No, it's not--I mean, I didn't want to die. It's just--this is sort of LIKE being dead... and I would have preferred the afterlife I invested so much of myself in..." -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----