Once Upon a Time... (Part 2)

A year passed.

During that year, the scribe who still missed his former life in Tri-Metro, decided to embark upon a new project that would hearken back to the material he had written during his time at the place where they hide the books—a project that would again make use of his golden voice. Since his days in Tri-Metro, the scribe had been an ever-growing fan of a new and growing industry related to the Casting of Broad, but which was called the Casting of Pod. In this industry, no one had to join a town criers guild or find a criers station to cast, or ever play Rod Stewart again. Instead, one could “record” such cries from one’s own guest bedroom and make them available to the masses via the web of the whole wide world. It had become a daily ritual of the scribe to listen to the casts of such notable casters of pod as Saint Adam of the Carollas, among many others. Wishing to step into this new medium himself, the scribe bought some equipment and began adapting and recording some of the stories he’d written for Tales from the Place Where they Hide the Books. This new cast of pod he called the Tales from the Place Where they Hide the Bookscast. It soon had tens of listeners.

Meanwhile the goodly wife’s job in the Borderland Immediate Healing Clinic went fairly well during that time. In fact, the place was ridiculously busy, leading to many a late night as the healers had to stay and finish their charting on the many patients they’d seen that day. This led to many requests by the goodly wife that the place of healing hire other healers to lighten the load and decrease the late nights. It took months for this to happen, of course, with repeated promises that it would in the interim. And while it eventually did occur, it did not until the goodly wife had voiced another promise to seek employment elsewhere if the situation did not change. She had even located said employment in the form of a place of healing back in Tri-Metro. The scribe was actually overjoyed at this prospect, because it would mean a return to his favorite place. Then the goodly wife’s bosses listened to her promise and, perhaps because she was one of the more productive healers in their employ, they listened and hired help. It seemed the Tri-Metro return was not to be. In lamenting, this, however, the scribe at last was able to alert the goodly wife of his desire to one day return to Tri-Metro—which he thought she had known all along but which she claimed she did not. This in mind, though, when an opening occurred at the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic, the goodly wife let it be known to her middle-management that she wished to transfer into it.

One of the middle managers, let’s call her Tuesday (as in “See” You Next…), said that it would not be a problem to transfer. It would be a simple matter of scheduling the goodly wife to work in Tri-Metro and continue to do so afterward that. According to Tuesday, the position would not be open for at least three months, so it would take that long before the Goodly Wife could be transferred. This was all right, however, because a new castle would have to be found and the old one sold.

Soon enough, the pair began to travel to Tri-Metro to look at new castles. And because they loved their Borderland castle so much, they were very picky. There was no point in moving if they couldn’t have something at least approaching what they had in Borderland, which was just far enough outside of the city to feel remote and woodsy, yet still close enough to get high speed internet via the Link of Sudden. There were several castles in the land surrounding Tri-Metro that they liked well enough, and most fit their vision of what they wanted in a castle, but each of them had at least one major check against it. Either they were located unsettlingly close to rivers or to avalanche-prone hillsides, or they were so far out to make for an irritatingly long commute to town, or they had an enormous crack in their subterranean basement wall, etc. The other major problem with them all was that they were far enough away from town to not receive proper high speed internet access. All of them had the Net of Hughes, which everyone knows is just awful. In fact, if you check the Net of Hughes’ own site on the web of the whole wide world, they pretty much admit to sucking really really hard. How could the scribe watch his Netflix streaming on the Net of Hughes? How could the scribe play Little Big Planet with his Godson on the Net of Hughes? How could he cast his pod? He could not. And thus the scribe declared his desire to only purchase a castle that had proper high speed internet, preferably from the Link of Sudden.

Just when they thought they would have to settle for the castle with the crack in the basement and an experimental and untested MiFi card for internet, a new castle was located. This one was barely a mile from town, located on top of a hill in the back of a quiet neighborhood with gorgeous views of mountains and countryside and sunsets. There were two massive and gnarled, centuries-old oaks in front of it, casing atmospheric shadows over the property. And the land butted up against a stretch of land with a trail where dogs could be walked and exercise had. What was more, the castle was already equipped with the Link of Sudden. Glory be! The goodly wife and the scribe went immediately to see it and were astounded at what they found. The castle had been built around the same time as theirs in Borderland, so it had much the same feel, if not the same layout. It had loads of space for all their stuff, a nice kitchen, a very nice master bathroom, a huge basement and a heated and air-conditioned outbuilding that had once been used as a woodshop but could potentially be used as a scribing retreat, and an enormous walk in closet that could easily be transformed into a studio for his golden voice and the casting of pods. Granted, there wasn’t as much property as with the Borderland castle, but what it had was all useable, not terribly steep and had a front yard that was not a right bastard to mow. This was not to say there weren’t some issues to be seen, such as a 30 year roof on what looked to be its 25^th year, some pretty hideous choices in wallpaper and some general updating to be done on the place. But none of the issues were of the deal-breaking variety. After all, it had the Link of Sudden. So, with no For Sale sign on their castle back home, the pair began negotiations on the new castle.

Meanwhile, back in Borderland, the goodly wife had been checking and double checking with Tuesday and the other middle managers as to the actual start date she could expect for her transfer to the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic. Tuesday, who was in charge of such scheduling, said that she wasn’t completely certain, yet, but that it looked like a mid-March/early April start date could be expected. It was reiterated by the goodly wife that such knowledge would be helpful to have as soon as possible, as she was about to sign on a new castle and would likely close on it within two months, possibly sooner.

After a week of back and forth negotiating on the price of the new castle, an acceptable amount for all was reached and papers were signed. The new castle was officially under contract. Inspections were soon begun and all came back glowing. If everything went to plan with the home loan, a closing date might even be reached between late February to late March. This looked like it was going to work out for all involved.

It was decided that before the castle in Borderland was to be placed on the market, it needed to get cleaned up but good. The place was awash in dog hair and cluttered with sundry crap. It was further decided that it would be financially beneficial to move a lot of that sundry crap to storage in Tri-Metro themselves rather than have movers do it. And it was during the boxing of said crap on one otherwise fine day that the goodly wife phoned from her workplace to inform the scribe that she had just learned something truly shocking. In an effort to seek an actual start date for her new position in Tri-Metro, she had used the magical telephony device at her place of work to contact the Grand King of all of the Places of Immediate Healing and inquired of him the start date that he had in mind. The Grand King had then responded, “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but there’s no position open in TRI-METRO.”

And at this point the scribe’s own jaw tagged him in the junk.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)