I wasn’t quite finished with the story I was telling by the time 2025 ended and so decided to continue it until it reached an ending point. Then I will start a new one. Besides, I kind of want to see where Penelope ends up. And so we have…
Day 204: It took the last of her effort and she was more than ready to collapse into bed.
It took the last of her effort and she was more than ready to collapse into bed. Penelope slipped between the sheets careful not to jostle her arm too much. She figured that since she wasn’t using the high test pain killers the least she could do is try not to move it too much.
She sank slowly into sleep. Her eyes were too tired to stay open but the rest of her body seemed to need some convincing to join her. She could almost feel her body start to relax, muscle by muscle. Gradually, she started to feel heavy and weighted, finally able to sink into sleep.
She drifted and the world was dark and formless. She felt as though she was swimming in space.
‘Although the stars are missing,’ she mused. She saw a light ahead and tried to direct herself towards it. Ahead she saw several balls of light. They were each tennis ball sized but glowing with different colors. Some were shades of the lightest blue others edged ingo purple territory. Some were a pale green while the gradations took others towards a deeper green. Each color seemed to have Its own spectrum. The tennis ball sized lights seemed to radiate in a starburst pattern, the lightest shade towards the center with the darker shades out towards the edge.
It was a beautiful if strange design and for a moment Penelope simply marveled at it. Then she started to wonder what it was. As she did, one of the lights started to blink. It was one of the green ones. It was mid-range. A clearly green color, but not yet a vibrant shade.
“Celedon maybe?” she said. It continued t blink at her a though inside it had a light bulb that was faulty or at last not screwed in properly. She drifted close and touched the light thinking to make it stabilize.
As she touched it, Penelope was pulled in. She felt like the light was turned into a vacuum somehow. Before she could fear, she was pulled in and was standing on a small grassy hill. At first she thought it was the place where the pool and the guardian were, but the trees were different and there weren’t any pathways.
“And no lake.”
She looked over and there was a big tree with three people under it. She walked over. As she approached she could see they were talking and hear the sound of their voices. One man was standing as though giving a lecture, the other two, a woman and a man, were lounging on a picnic blanket. An open hamper proved that the picnic was already over and they were simply enjoying the sunshine and the lazy afternoon.
The men were both wearing suits of some kind. They seemed a little old fashioned to her but she couldn’t quite pin pint why. The woman was wearing a dress with large skirts. Even from a distance Penelope could tell she was wearing some form of corset underneath the dress.
‘Definitely old fashioned,’ Penelope thought as she approached. None of the three seemed to notice her.
Ten til Midnight 