interlude___times_between_time karasu in the year 1901 in a small shop in a small village near the Portuguese coastline, a toymaker sits in his shop. he fashions a doll in the likeness of a strange, intense child he saw on his last holiday, staring at the sky from a spot along the Champs-Elyseés. He was fascinated by he memory of her expresson, he remembered stopping to look at the sky as well, hoping to see whatever it was she was waiting for. he remembered the chill that ran down his spine when she answered him just as he was preparing to open his mouth and ask what she was looking at "it isn't here yet, but it will be, and then you'll wish you didn't know." he felt a sudden sense of urgency to finish the doll, which he would present as a gift to the two strange Americans he met while doing business in Lisbon - a short, burly, grim-faced cowboy who wore some of the trappings one would more commonly expect to see of a priest and a woman who he would have called beautiful if not for the great weariness in her eyes and the downturned scar at one corner of her mouth that made half of her face appear to be in a permanent frown a storm was brewing outside, the clouds darkening and the sea air chilling and thickening as thunder began to rumble in the distance. he finished the last stitch, securing the last portion where he had just tied in and fastened the porcelain head. he had never had so much trouble making one doll before. three prevous heads had exploded in the kiln before he had gotten this one. as he set the doll upon its pedestal, he breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the burden of the child's inscrutable expression and ominous words lifting as he finished the task he lit a cigar as he sat down at in the chair behind his front counter, wishing he was a younger man, briefly lost in reverie, recounting a memory of one of the first times he made love to his wife, musing to himself that it was a stormy night just like this one wasshaping up to be "heh" he sighed to himself, breathing a puff of smoke into the air and waving it away. "here's to the rainy nights, love. I hope we have more of them when i get where you've gone to" the moment was broken when he heard the sound of the doll slipping off of its plinth and falling face-first onto the counter the head was intact, but as he picked it up to put it back in place, he noticed a faint filigree of cracks starting at the forehead and grumbled to himself, imagining that the fragile porcelain head would eventually disintegrate over time with such a flaw in it. the doll stared blankly, its glass eyes pointed towards the shop window, cast slightly upward. he closed up the shop for the night, knowing that there would always be toomorrow and he could trust his nephew to open the place in the morning Pulling his coat tightly about him to ward off the sudden downpour and wind, he made his way as quickly as he could up the steep stone street as he reached the crest of the hill, he saw a constable and a priest looking grimly at the contents of the constable's cart two more men came out, soldiers, carrying bodies wrapped in sheets he knew all of these men, the two young soldiers had been devoted customers as children, clamoring for whatever new toys he concocted in his workshop and the constable and priest had been his own boyhood friends. He stopped and said a quick hello to them and noticed that there was no smile in their reply. one of the young soldiers slipped coming down the steps to the cart and the body he and his companion were carrying tumbled down, coming unwrapped as it fell It was the innkeeper's oldest son. and by the number of bodies stacked in the cart, he assumed the inkeeper and the rest of his family were in the cart already The boy, maybe sixteen or so, was ghostly pale, his clothes were still realtively neat except for the fact that his shirt had been torn open and he could see loose stitches on a long bloodless gash in the boy's chest. as the body came to rest by the gate, the priest began t retch at the sight of something moving beneath the stitches just as the constable was about to pull out his pocketknife and investigate, the shape moved more abruptly beneath the skin and the priest threw up violently on he cobblestone pavement there was a muffled screeching shound and just before the constable could cut the stitches, they popped loose from where they were secured and a terrified grackle emerged, its blue-black plumage flecked with gore. THe the fallen soldier, limping, tried catch the bird, but it sailed off into the angry wind. by the time he finally got home and managed to fall into sleep, he remembered the hole in the boy's chest and the poor bloodstained creature who had been sealed in it, only one thought remained in his head "dear god, how i wish i had not seen what i saw today" 030112 ... frAnk extremely well written and eerie as fuck. nice. 030113 ... karasu the hard part is how i'm going to tie all of my little threads together over time, i want this to be my non_linear_novel but i'm afraid i will just keep spinning tangents, and i'd be disappointedif all i did was create a sea of red herrings with no definitive link 030113 ... karasu (annotated) and the tough part is that i've deliberately avoided giving any of the characters a name, my own system of references is beginning to confuse even me 030113 ... bandersnatch you might try naming them, but just leaving the names out of the story. 030113 ... bandersnatch i have just gone through and read what i think is the whole non_linear_novel, and i must say that i retract my last post. if the characters have a name, even if it is never known, they would loose something, and the story would loose that same magical quality that i just cant put my finger on. 030113 what's it to you? who go blather from