From yesterday through mid day Thursday, August 6th, I have a Prompt Call running here – anyone can prompt and please do!

Back in 2011, I wrote this part of a story I called Blizzarded.  http://www.lynthornealder.com/2011/05/16/meeting-a-furtherfurtherfurtherfurtherfurtheretccontinuation/ (Despite saying “continuation,” for some reason every time I wrote more on that story, I reposted the whole thing and added the new bit at the end…)

This is fishing for answers in that world.   Short version:

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“If you have no tech-a-nie,” the gnome began – or, at least, it was a thing and it had suggested it was a gnome and it was talking to Sandy, it had a tiny red hat and it was definitely, while more or less humanoid, short enough without the hat that it came to about mid-calf on Sandy. “-Then seeking you must go. And if you can na’ seeking, then Sla Bless You.”

Sandy stared at the thing, then looked at the train, then stared back at the thing. Gnome. She ought to call it by its proper name, she thought. It was probably rude to go around thinking of talking beings a things.

“So if I seek to Seeking,” she began – she had a couple things that might count as “tech”, her cell phone being the one she wouldn’t part with if she could help it and the fancy light-up compact mirror being the easiest to get rid of on the other end, but really. She was- well, either she was hallucinating, dying of exposure in a ditch somewhere, dreaming, or she’d ended up in a strange world with gnomes and endless snow. Just passing over her compact mirror and getting on the train suddenly seemed like a very bad idea.

On the other hand, her feet were very cold and she thought there was snow down her boots.

“If you seek to Seeking, then Seeking you must see,” the gnome told her, and giggled. “That is, you have to take the first step, and you have to know what it is you’re seeking, or in the long run, all you’re doing is wandering. And that is a thing altogether different indeed.”

“If a green horse walks up, I’m leaving,” she told the gnome, apropos of nothing.

“There’s no hourzes here. But there is indeed Seeking. What you have to do – you have to think hard about what it is that you want. You have to be thinking of it with all your being, toes to nose. And then you say ‘let me Seek, let me Find, let it Hide, let the Door be Open unto me, Let me Seek, Let me find.'”

“And then -“

“And then you will know what comes next. Or so I have been told. I have what I need, and thus I have never sought to Seeking. It is the sort of thing travelers and wanderers, the lost, the new, the strange, and the Unknown do, and I am a homebody who knows where I am, I am normal and old, not new, and I am Known.” It doffed its cap again in another bow. “But you are some of those or all of those, and you, thus, you might Seeking.”

“I – this makes almost no sense and yet at the same time I understand it completely.” Sandy closed her eyes. “So I need to know with my whole being what I want.”

She wanted Home. She wanted Home, and warm toes, and a warm drink. Home and warmth. Home and dry feet. She wanted dry feet that were warm. Very warm. She wanted to sit by a roaring fire and be dry and warm and safe, and no longer lost. She wanted feeling back in her fingers.

And her nose, for that matter.

“And then you say ‘Let me Seek, let me Find-‘”

“Let me Seek, let me Find-” she repeated dutifully.

“‘let it Hide, let the Door be Open unto me-‘”

“let it Hide, let the Door be Open unto me.” Shouldn’t there be a knocking in there.

“‘Let me Seek, let me Find.” The gnome’s voice seemed very far away.

Was she waking up?

“Let me Seek.” Her toes were numb. She wanted dry feet, before she had to deal with any of this nonsense. “Let me Find!”

She opened her eyes as a flash seemed to surround her.

The path in front of her was marked with blinking lights, red and blue and green. They were definitely pointing her into the little Hallmark Village.

As if she were being pulled along, reeled in, Sandy followed the lights.

Her feet felt warmer already.

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