Thursday, March 1, 2012

Dragon Temple: Keeper of the Heart - The Nimbobula Journals Continued.


The Nimbobula Journals - II
Alo had to travel over forty oceans and seventy-nine continents to find a city he was happy with. Ooh - maybe we should call him “fussy Alo?” No? Okay, on with the story then. Our explorer boldly braved the busy, bursting, bulging full to the brim, streaming streets. Rubbing shoulders, noses and even knobbly knees as he peered left and right till people looked with fright at this audacious stranger who gazed glaringly deep into their very souls. Alo was quite sure of what he wanted. He needed only those who were brave and true, and absolutely pure of heart. No scallywags for this perilous task, no thank you, no siree. Now, this was a very humungous city and you would think it would be easy to find a few heroes and heroines amongst the hundreds and thousands of people. Especially a city with joy peeping quietly around the corners, waiting to be found. It was not so. The very pounding pace of this place made every day life challenging, and lots and lots of the peoples found this in itself enough excitement. Poor Alo pounded the parched pavements until he was as dry as a bone and sad as a hungry beagle too. The grown ups rushed, grumbling past, growling, gazing left or right or even down to floppy feet – anywhere but his eyes to meet. Yes, poor Alo. The suspicious minds of the city folk had labelled any stranger a bounder with nefarious motives, and Alo was certainly as strange a one as any city folk had seen in a long, long, LONG while. What? Nef-ar-ee-os… means bad, bad ideas. Bit like giving a Nimbobulan cannibal a microwave. Not good, {{shudder}}. No way, you don’t say.


Alo had begun to wonder by this time if he had made a really big boo-boo. Was THIS the right pick? Should he move on to city eighty-one? Could he have stuffed and muffed it, really, really not thought enoughed it? Was this land just the too, too tough bit? Just as he was about to cut his losses and move on over past ocean forty-one, turning left at the rock island and right at the whale with the stumpy tail, he felt a small, sharp tug on the waist of his pants. He was very relieved he had worn his really, really tight belt, for it would have not looked good if an intrepid explorer’s pants fell down to his ankles and revealed his favourite patented super hero boxer shorts. The exhausted explorer was so relieved his belt held he allowed himself a little sigh to slip quietly from deep underneath his breathe. Looking down he gazed into the purest of innocent deep green eyes, brimming full to the edges of the pupils with honesty, truth and the bravest of all hearts – the heart of a child. Alo nearly jumped for joy, children, they were the answer, the children! Not wanting to scare off this wonderful young man who had middle-tapped him, instead he let loose another sigh, but instead of merely being filled with quiet relief from pants not dropping to the ground, this one was chocker-block, full to-the-top, overflowing loudly and nearly bursting with happiness… oh, and a big chunk of bone-deep relief.


The Alo sigh floated loudly over the top of the crowds, and up into the wild blue yonder. Okay, it was not blue, it was grey with the dust of a thousand factories and it wasn’t wild either, certainly nowhere close to as wild and junglified as Nimbobula! It was citified right as far as the eye could see, and even a bit further but still the sigh did rise and rise and rise! It rose so high that the full throttle North Wind grabbed it, and forcefully flung it right back into the middle of a Nimbobulan feast, where the natives were dancing and prancing, chanting and ranting, basting and tasting a fine young missionary by the name of Henry Llewellyn Jones the Third. The sigh was so loud and filled up, it scared the cannibals half to death and back again and they dropped their spoons and ran for their lives, allowing Henry Llewellyn Jones the Third to leap from the pot and run away to his mission loudly screaming the praises of his dear Lord and the saint whose sigh had reverberated into the wilds!


Work in progess...

Hello!

Would  you believe I have finally recommenced working on this? How many years late?


I should just mention dat dem dere mountains of Nimbobula are very dark, dank and distracting. Took me many misty moons to climb, only to find I left behind... my laptop and my pen!

Damn you lost imaginings, damn you!

Stay tuned...

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Dragon Temple: Keeper of the Heart


The Nimbobula Journal

There once was an intrepid explorer. His name? Well, nobody remembers it now, but it was long and sounded very important. This explorer was walking, stalking, slashing, pulling, tugging and lugging his way through the deepest, darkest jungles of Nimbobula. Nimbobula was a land full of imaginings and dreamings, day or night, didn’t matter much. And such terrifying dreamings they might be. Could scare a person full to death and back again!


AAH!

Where were we? Oh, yes, the slashing, dashing explorer whose name we cannot remember though we do know it was definitely NOT Bob Brown or Fred Jones. As he pushed deeper and deeper into the steamy rainforest (all together now: PU-USH!) the explorer stumbled (ouch, what was that?) upon an ancient, fusty musty dusty, towering, touching the sky building all covered in vines as thick as an elephant’s trunk. (Okay boys and girls, one loud: WOW!). He cut, he yanked, he groaned and moaned with effort, but he could not budge even one of those hundreds and thousands of vines sealing, hiding almost hugging the huge ancient wooden doors. The explorer finally realised he needed help and as much as he hated the idea he knew he had to go back to the hustling, bustling, loudly muscling cities to ask. Not many people lived in the deepest jungles of Nimbobula, and those that did were just as likely to be cannibals or witch doctors with no manners and horrible eating habits!

So off to the city he decided to go. He was a man of very quick decisions and once his mind was made up it was a bit like a bed, all neat and smooth, with corners finely ticked under and dang hard to climb into! The explorer knew it had to be a very special city. It had to be a city where the hope was not lost, a city with some sign of the goodness of the world, a city where the joy still shimmered in secret corners. The explorer - hang on a minute. I’m a bit sick of calling him the explorer! Can we come up with a name as no-one truly remembers his real one? How about Aloysius? All-loo-ish-ee-os. It sounds the sort of important name that our dashing explorer might have been called. We can call him Alo for short. But he wasn’t short, oh no. He was tall and terrific, tanned and toned with rippling muscles finely honed. And a mind settled tightly tucked into his adventure.

To be continued...

Nimbobula: The Dreamings Life



Nimbobula the tireless land
Calls to you though it is banned
Dreams and nightmares hand in hand
The other kids, they’ll understand

Nimbobula the name scares most
Winds all howl from coast to coast
Joined by sun so hot can roast
Turn you into crispy toast

Screams they seem to run right through
Not so good for me or you
Imaginings, they leap out too
Is there nothing we can do?

This place echoes of stark terror
Its name not be said in error
Only screamed whilst with a carer
Then it's bad news for the bearer

The witch doctors all travel there
To train up how to do their hair
They’ll drag you deep into their lair
Would anybody really care?

The cannibals roam jungles deep
Don’t say a word now, not a peep
Or in the pot we must soon leap
Our juicy flesh they will all reap

They’ll cook us up or eat us raw
If they spy us here we’ll be no more
Wouldn’t wait for us to thaw
Don’t give a hoot if someone saw.

Be nothing left at all around
Not even bones flung on the ground
For flesh they’ll take more than a pound
Dinner time and we’d be downed.

It tastes better if we died
Crying out to stay alive.
Brains they like to chew deep fried
They’ll store the rest all mummified.

We need to leave but don’t know how
Stuck between the then and now
If Mummy knew she’d have a cow
Tan our hides till we screamed “OW”

Nimbobula, don’t say it fast
That big word could be your last.
“NIMBOBULA…”