The Fellowship Or Some Thing - THE saga, Part I

I have done a partial edit which I believe will help this amusing piece.

Aisha wiped the mud out of her eyes before plunging her head into the almost-freezing mountain stream.

(Suggested change - then plunged her head into the ice-cold mountain stream. The change is more visual and adds to the flow and pace without it)

"That Jon!" she muttered (filling her mouth with water, the rash girl), "He'll pay for this!"

(Cut - filling her mouth with water, the rash girl)

Shaking her head caused myriad waterdrops to fly out from her long, red hair. – EvD

(We now have a change of POV, a camera swing to a frog, without a signpost)

Suggested change – Aisha saw a frog peek out from a tree bole. Cut – (it was a tree frog). You could describe the frog by its colour, but what defines it as a tree frog?

A frog peeked out from a tree bole (it was a tree frog).

“Bleedin’ hoomings!” it croaked. “Narstying up our ribber!” – JHiD

"Less of the hoomings!" Aisha spat through gritted frozen teeth. "It's as much our 'ribber' as yours." – HLJ

Aisha spat through gritted frozen teeth – How can you spit through gritted teeth?

She considered throwing a handful of pebbles at the vile creature but thought it a waste of good anger. Instead she concentrated on tying up her knotted hair with unnecessary vigour.

If she was going to catch up with Jon, she would need some shoes - anybody's shoes. – VF

Suggested change – She picked up a handful of pebbles to throw at the vile creature to vent her anger, then relented and let them fall loosely from her hand. She grasped her tousled hair and swiftly twisted it into a knot behind her back. If she was going to catch up with Jon, she would need some sturdy shoes to run after him. Cut – anybody’s shoes.

Change of POV, camera swing to Jane Austen, without a signpost.

As if summoned, Jane Austen – turned into a zombie by unscrupulous literary agents keen for a 21st century scoop – stumbled out of the undergrowth.

“This is going to be a push-over”, thought Aisha… and pushed Ms. Austen over.

The shoes were a bit small and really too dainty for forest running, but PERHAPS better than nothing. – WL

[The literary agents of Ms. Jane Austen (b. 1775, d. 1817, z. 2016), being too unscrupulous to sign up with an upstanding web-site such as this, have put themselves (by devious means) in contact with myself and asked me to include the following contribution from their client:]

“Waaurughhhhhhhhh”, ejaculated Miss Jane.

Ejaculated as a reporting clause worked fine in Jane Austen’s day, but here it suggests that a form of sexual pleasure has taken place that I’d rather not think about.

“Do not you think”, riposted the tree-frog, “that you are hardly in a position to make such a statement? And watch your language: words have changed their meanings since you were alive, and there are children perusing this, do not you know?” – JA

Perhaps - said, or croaked, as reporting clauses for the tree-frog.

Aisha, somewhat confused, beat the zombie Austen to a greasy stain with the dainty yet suprisingly (Surprisingly) lethal shoes forever ending her plans to marry a handsomely moustached zombie. – VF

Dainty but lethal?

'Hmm,' said Aisha, wiping the remains of Miss Austen from the shoes. 'A bit messy, but they'll do.

Slipping the shoes on, she set off through the undergrowth, making for where she'd last seen Jon. – HJ

Asterisks here?

Meanwhile, three sneaky, creepy, slinking literary agents slinked creepily and sneakily from under a large, moss-covered rock and slinkily crept their sneaky way over to the remains of the greatest un-dead novelist in the English language… bar none!

Repetition – Sneaky and slinking, slinked and sneakily – have similar meanings.

“A shame to waste our investment,” gargled one of them to the other two.

Gargling and talking at the same time? Better to name the new character here.

Schlepping the battered zombie away, they all squeaked sleekly: “Jane Austen shall rise again!” – JHiD

Two kilometres ahead already, Jon (remember Jon?) was taking a breather and combing the lovely, long hair on his legs. He KNEW that Aisha would soon smell him out (that awful aftershave that he'd been forced to use after his overnight stay at Luigi's) and face him down. Were red-heads ALWAYS this dangerous?!!! – WL

A particularly large Red Kangaroo (Osphranter rufus) – carrying a sunglasses-wearing Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons solisspeculi) in her pouch (both of them on a long-desired European six-month holiday “to take a squizz at the Poms and Euros” – startled Jon by landing right in front of him after a six-metre bound.

“Strewth, Cobber, this is a fair dinkum op shop, and I’m as dry as a dead dingo’s donger!” exclaimed the Osphranter.

“Pay no attention to her: she’s just skulled a whole row of gooms, and it’s fried her brain; she doesn't know Christmas from Bourke Street,” explained the Lasiorhinus. – EvD

Jon, in a vain attempt to maintain some degree of reality, could only stumble: “I’m afraid that I don’t…”

“Those gooms have dried me out: got any amber fluid on you?” insisted the kangaroo.

“You just watch it or the booze bus will be along to get you to blow in the bag… and I’m getting out before you make with the technicolor yawn: I’ve got to strangle the lizard, myself,” was the wombat’s contribution to the conversation. – JHiD

“The booze bus would have bloody hard yakka getting here: it’s beyond the black stump!” retorted the kangaroo, leaning forward to facilitate the egress of her stumpy-legged passenger.

“Do I understand that you would be appreciative of a beer?” asked Jon, fishing three cans of the ‘amber fluid’ out of the sack he had left lying on the ground, while the wombat delicately disappeared behind a tree to take care of business.

“You little ripper!” exclaimed the kangaroo, adding to the unseen wombat: “this bastard’s blood’s worth bottling!” – WL

[An [unfortunately: ONLY] nearly comatose Jane Austen (zombie) has asked her literary agents to pass on the following contribution to our work. Frankly, I’m getting a bit narked that she’s muscling in here, using up MY turns at bat, so that my own rules bar me from contributing original additions of my own. It is only crass commercial calculation (you see: I have a turn for alliteration) that urges me to cede my rightful place to her. After all, we’ll be able to splash “The NEW novel by JANE AUSTEN (and co-writers)” all over the front cover.

May I take this opportunity to urge ALL casual lookers-in to spare just a few minutes to add to this ambitious project? As mentioned elsewhere, what an opportunity to add to your CV: “I co-wrote a novel with Jane Austen.” (No need to mention that she was a zombie at the time, though – with some agents – this might work even more in your favour!) If more of you take part, I might even get to add some material of my own (sighhhh!) Anyway, here’s the Austen’s piece (and, frankly, she seems to me to have NO capacity for “getting into” her characters… but then, I always thought that she was highly over-rated).]

“To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment,” opined the kangaroo.

Opined? He said, she said, are the most commonly used reporting clauses, others have to earn their keep and be used sparingly.

“And yet there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort, do not you agree?” enjoined her as-yet invisible travelling companion. He could not forbear from adding: “A single kangaroo with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid - the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single sheila of good fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.” – JA

Several cans and enthusiastic ballads later, Aisha perched unnoticed in the violated tree assessing the peculiar scene. Shoes in hand, she was poised for attack. She absolutely had to act while she still had the strength and while there was still beer. – VF

After 3 final full rounds of “Waltzing Matilda” (unexpurgated version) and 2 of The Pogues’ homage to that classic (not to mention several more “tinnies”), even the kangaroo was spiffed. The three dringing, sinking companions fell into a stupor (do you really need an adjective to go with that?)

Aisha saw her chance! – JHiD

'How the bloody hell did we end up in Australia?' muttered Aisha as, hands on hips, she surveyed the scene. 'Oh well, if you can't beat 'em...'

Picking up the closest tinny, she swished it around before downing the remaining contents, as she considered what to do next. – HJ

Of course, it was OBVIOUS what to do next: open a few more tinnies, then make sure that they didn’t spill their contents onto the forest floor.

Half an hour later, Aisha was feeling a lot more clear-headed.

Or WAS she? – WL

[editor’s note: Evidently, after drinking the beers, Aisha climbed back into the tree, because:]

From her position stood in the tree, Aisha leapt beserker-like to the ground and brought the fatal Austen shoe down on the head of the groggy Jon. However, a thorough soaking of zombie guts and a two kilometre jog had reduced the once feminine killing tool to impotent sound effect. 'Shcloppp' went the shoe. – VF

"Did you think you could just leave me behind?" screamed Aisha, at the same time that Jon was spluttering: "I knew you'd catch up… There was no need for us both to slow down, or we'd never get back to civilization before..."

Changes of POV, Camera swings, Aisha to Jon, then to a python.

"Let me dissspatch him for you," hissed a scrub python, slithering under her shoe and onto his neck. – VW

“What are all these Aussies doing in the middle of Hampshire?” asked Aisha. “Kangaroos, wombats, scrub pythons... bloody foreigners!

“Maybe we should have a referendum to break out of the Commonwealth as well as Europe.” – EvD

“Besides,” hissed Aisha back at the antipodean reptile, “I’ll thank you to mind your own bizzo (as you Orstr-eye-lians say). In your own lingo: rack off hairy legs! This boy is MY meat!” – JHiD

Hissed as a reporting clause would serve the python better

Jon, being – as they used to say in Private Eye – “very tired and emotional”, decided that this was no time to allow himself to be tired, so he’d better concentrate on emotional, and see if that helped at all. He didn’t need to fall on his knees as he was already lying down, so he crawled over and began covering Aisha’s feet with kisses: not a pleasant penance, as she’d just been jogging 2km in the shoes of a zombie.

“Aisha, dearest!” he began to sob, but she cut him short. – WL

“Don’t you ‘Aisha, dearest’ me… after slinging mud in my eyes!” she spat at him.

The scrub python (Morelia amethistina amethistina), rebuffed in such an UNFLATTERING way, had taken severe umbrage (after all, was not she [bloody hell! – now she’s got ME doing it!] particularly popular among reptile enthusiasts, noted for her coloration and size?), and decided to teach this upstart human a lesson she would not soon forget.

Ignoring the prostrate, whimpering Jon, the 7-metre-long snake (far above average for her species, but shorter - by 20 cm - than the title holder officially recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records [a fact that did nothing to improve her temper]) began to slither up Aisha’s legs. – EvD

“Morelia amethistina is a non-venomous species of snake, known as the amethystine, scrub python or Sanca permata locally, and is found not only in Australia, but also in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea,” explained Professor Wombat, chair of Reptile Studies at Wangaratta University (Wangaratta, Victoria), and who had been awakened by the sound of slithering.

Was it loud slithering?

“One of the six largest snakes in the world, as measured either by length or weight (and the largest snake native to Australia), it is a constrictor, crushing it’s prey by its powerful muscles. This specimen is obviously a female as the males are much smaller, and you will have noticed the milky iridescent sheen on its scales, which gives it an amethyst-like color.. and therefore its specific name, amethistina.” – JHiD

“I thank you kindly for the biology lecture,” said Aisha, as Ms. Amethyst (“call me Amy”) Python began to wrap her coils around her, “but could somebody please GET THIS BLOODY THING OFF ME?!”

Perhaps – who knows? – it was the choice of words “some BODY”, but be as it may, Jane Austen (deceased but surprisingly active) came to Aisha’s rescue for the second time.

“It is a little-known fact,” intoned Prof. Wombat, BSc (hons), MSc, PhD, FRSRS, OBE, “that snakes – and very especially pythons – have an extreme and superstitious dread of zombies and (in fact [a fact that I myself find strange in the most high degree]) of early nineteenth-century romantic fiction… strewth, but am I chockers!” – WL

Miss Amethyst Python lost little time in gathering her appurtenances and taking a not over-leisurely farewell of the gathering.

“Why do you come to my rescue when I have robbed you of your footwear, set about you in a most unladylike and unchristian manner, and find your literary style to be quite unpleasant?” asked a certain distraught and bewildered young maiden of the red-haired variety.

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love,” replied Miss Jane, “and, having been disappointed romantically myself, I can not but be mindful of your own experiences in that direction, and have hopes that we may be of some mutual assistance as regards to friendship.” – JA

“Listen, Miss hoity-toity Jane bleedin’ zombie Austen,” exploded our red-haired friend, “and see if you can wrap your head around the fact that there is a BIG difference between being single by choice and suffering ‘the pangs of disappointed love’!

“I’ve got my CAREER to think of, and I’m having trouble deciding between becoming a brain surgeon or one of those people wot work down in the sewers with big rubber boots*

Not that I don’t appreciate your having saved my life, but let’s not base any ‘friendship’ on false premises, hmm?”

[* A nod to Wellington, of the 70s comic strip The Perishers. I wonder if he fulfilled his dreams…] – JHiD

Jon, still on the floor, stared aghast at the scene and at the zombie sidekick in particular. Aisha saw the infatuated gaze and sensed that, despite the lack of moustache, a tacked on romantic storyline was emerging. Where was sturdy footwear when you needed it? – VF

At this point in our narrative it is perhaps only fair to clear up a possible miscomprehension in the minds of some of our fair readers by belatedly coming to the defence of the marsupials’ reputation for alcohol consumption. It may be that some few are under the impression that a few tins of beer were enough to render them insensible of their surroundings, but we must remind them that our antipodean friends had been travelling long and hard, and had also recently been imbibing large quantities of “gooms”, which – for the sake of those unfamiliar with Australian dialect and who have not availed themselves of the proffered connection to Australian drinking terms – we shall reveal are drinks of methylated spirits commonly consumed by vagrants, further explaining that the kangaroo had partaken of these beverages to a greater extent than her academic companion.

Having shed light on that reason for her recent inactivity, it only remains to announce that the kangaroo now awakened from her refreshing repose in time to see the light of dawning affection glowing in the eyes of her newly discovered drinking acquaintance. – JA

[Bloody Hell! Now she’s hacked MY e-mail account as well! Is no-one safe?] – WL

A CIA agent (disguised all this time as the tree against which Prof. Wombat had raised his hind leg [and from whose branches Aisha had sprung]) broke his cover to say: “No, Ma’am! Not even Hillary Rodham Clinton – who is soon to (perhaps) [split infinitive, but what do CIA agents know (or care) about literary correctness?] hold the entire world’s security in her hands, and who is (according to Mr. Obama) ‘the most qualified presidential candidate in history’ (an opinion which you, Ma’am, will allow me and my colleagues to dispute) – is safe against e-mail hackery.”

Having broken his cover, he disappeared into the forest, muttering: “Democrats, you had your chance to vote for Bernie Sanders in the primaries… but you blew it!” and consoling himself with the fact that he had not been the only agent spying on the proceedings. – EvD

Ms. Kangaroo (“Red Ada” to her friends [a little joke for those of them who spoke Spanish]) was still “a little” groggy after her nap. So much so, that she barely registered the sudden appearance (and disappearance) of the vigilant defender of Democracy-as-WE-know-it who had ungenerously (not to say traitorously) cast aspersions on Ms. Clinton’s fitness for ruling the world.

But she WAS noticing the goo-goo eyes that this handsome Pom was making at the frankly dishevelled and glowering new-comer on the scene… and she wasn’t too happy about it. – JHiD

The small clearing was becoming rather crowded with secondary characters and meaningful glances, so Aisha decided to move on before the gruesome literary agents of her zombie acquaintance appeared with amorous designs of their own. She picked up Jon's supplies and stomped away dramatically, leaving the rest to follow her or not. – VF

Fasten your seatbelts and hold on to your hats, Dear Readers, because first we have Aisha, who wandered through sun-sprinkled shadow for half an hour until she came to a bend in the mountain stream, which, at this bend, had widened and deepened into a seductive swimming hole.

Meanwhile (WHOOOOOOSH!), back in the clearing, Red Ada was challenging Jane Austen to 3 ½ rounds of kick-boxing.

At the same time (WHOOOOOOOOOOSH!), at the site of the beginning of this saga, a certain tree-frog was suspiciously eyeing a band composed of furry-footed shorties, an out-and-out dwarf, and 3 taller bipeds, which was making its way towards the stream. – WL

“Corming to narsty oop de ribber, an dey lurks lark spetchally doirty fawks!” muttered the frog... when, suddenly, one of the group disappeared!

“Bleedin’ Mordor: I TOLD you to stop mucking about with that thing!” shouted one of the tall ones.

Meanwhile (WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!) downstream, Aisha, soaking her cares away, little suspected the pollution that was about to disturb her bathing. – EvD

I have made suggestions that I believe would add to the flow and pace of this joint effort. However, I soon became overwhelmed with too many camera swings, tired and stopped editing.

I have tried to do a constructive critique. From my observations and comments you will see why I rarely comment on work in the shared work section. I hope you see value in my comments, but perhaps I am missing the point and tone, here and there.

It cannot be easy to follow a contributor’s three sentences with three more of your own and maintain a continuous flow. I think 5 or six sentences would be better. The combined effort of this first draft has potential. It’s an amusing collaboration. I like the Lewis Carroll-esque sense of the ridiculous.

I hope my contribution helps.

Good luck.