Anyway, here's the obligatory link to the place where I store the
rest of my stuff:  http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html

Commentary is welcomed and appreciated.

All pontifications are strictly from my omphalos, and offered
on an altar of obsidian.
 

Eidolons

Two - Sanctum

I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain,
Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper^�s eye,

sleeper's  {the apostrophe came out as a non-ASCII character.
Weird that it's the only one.}

the roof of a grocer's.  In Ulthar, where all were forbidden by 
law to harm a cat and no sane man would have dared to, the 
village residents had long grown accustomed to the nocturnal

long since grown {?}

not be the last.  The zoogs themselves were immune to the effects
of most of the fungi, and in fact served a useful purpose for
this one by distributing its seeds in their spoor after they 

{While "spoor" ("a track or trail, esp. of a wild animal") might
fit here, context seems to indicate that perhaps "dung" or "droppings"
might fit better; I'm not sure.  Up to you...}

consumed the flesh of those entrapped by it.

upon their hind legs for a few seconds.  They called out to the 
gods of cats; to Meerclar, Bast, Tybalt, the One Who Grins and 

cats:  {perhaps?}

others.  A subtle spell they wove under the cold light of the 
moon, and when they were done an hour later, Ranma Saotome began 
to cough.  They butted him with their heads to turn him over onto 
his side, and he vomited up the spores of the fungus that had 
invaded his body onto the grass.

     Tails swished from side to side as the cats sat back on
their haunches, their night-seeing eyes trapping the moon's 
light, and waited for their new comrade to awake.

{Uh oh.  :) }

     Yellow eyes gleamed.  One of the cats raised a paw tipped
with razor-sharp flesh shredding claws, and Ranma whimpered deep

flesh-shredding

in his throat and looked around for escape but there was no 
escape because the cats were everywhere with claws and teeth so
bright and hard and sharp and terrible.

{Technically, I suppose there are too many "and"s in this sentence,
but I think they work well to convey the relentlessness of the
situation from Ranma's POV, so "bii-da!" to any naysayers.}

{I have the same "problem".  :) }

     Then Ranma stopped being afraid because he realized all 
these nice cats were his friends.  They wouldn't hurt him if he 
was a nice cat just like them.  Ranma purred and stretched out
his body.  These were even nicer cats than he had thought, 
because they told him how they had made the bad moss go away.  
They said Ranma was one of the funniest looking cats they had 
ever seen, and all of them laughed.

{I like the way the syllable-count in the words drops sharply
in this paragraph.  Noticing the shifting of styles from situation
to situation is one of the pleasures of reading this.}
 

     Into the night they ran together, leaping and bounding
through the fields and hills.  They climbed tall trees and called
their names to the stars from the tops of them.  They frightened 
flocks of silver- and ebony-winged birds into startled flight 
from their sleepy nests in the long grass.

{This strikes me as a REAL bad place and time to be a bird or a
small, furry mammal.  :) }

     They ascended the lower slopes of the big mountain together,
which they said was called Mount Lerion.  Curious at first of the

{suggest}  They ascended the lower slopes of the big mountain,
which they said was called Mount Lerion, together.

strange dark tunnels from which the funny bright scents of iron
and sulphur wafted, Ranma stayed away from them after being
warned by grizzled Ironeyes.

would think.  Then he thought, not a cat of Earth.  So when he
touched down upon a barren and icy surface pocked with craters, 
and saw that upon his skin and clothing a fine silver dust was
already drying up and disappearing, he did not wonder at what it 
was.  For a cat does not think of such things as that.

was; for  {?}
 

     The cats of Ulthar pranced around him.  They called for him
to follow in their yowling voices, and turned somersaults and
cartwheels and backflips in the shallow gravity of the moon, each
springy landing sending up puffs of the moon-dust to hover in the
air before slowy drifting down again.

slowly

     They chased each other over the dunes and played hide and
seek within the carbuncles of the moon's surface.  Ranma chanced 

hide-and-seek  {or perhaps}  hide-and-go-seek

{"carbuncles of the moon's surface" is very nice.}

     Vague stirrings of human memory threatened the sanctity of 
his savage heart, but then Foxjaw ran laughing between his legs, 
and he pursued him over a rise in the cold lunar landscape to 
find himself gazing down upon an immense necropolis of worn 
temples.  The sight stopped him cold, and Foxjaw ran on into the 

{suggest}  cold, but Foxjaw

great dead city and was lost to sight behind the shadowy span of 
a fallen archway.  

     It was a city composed of pillars and heavy blocks of stone, 
low squat buildings and slender towers whose spires seemed to 
prod the stars.  Dark granite, pale marble and black basalt 
dominated, as if the city had been born from the lunar landscape 
itself and strived like a child to emulate its parent.

and had striven, like a child, to  {perhaps?  I'm at the limits of
my ability here...}

Ranma from his place near a fallen column.  But Ranma looked 
away at the sound of Stalkfast's questiong meow, and when he 

questioning

turned his head back, the beautiful youth was gone and in his 
place a shattered wine jug dry as bone lay in faded fragments.

wine-jug  {?}

studded with iron nails for claws and whiskers.  Nearby, a chubby 
white cat with big blue eyes raised one paw in seeming blessing 
of the tiny brood of delicate porcelain kittens at his feet.

{heh.  I have one of those somewhere.  :) }
  

courtyard had been strewn with their statues.  There seemed no
rhyme or reason to the composition; there were mosaics, frescoes,

rhyme nor reason  {?}

paintings on black velvet of cats playing poker,

{No!  No!  Anything but THAT!  Horror, ghastliness, but not tacky!}

ink drawings on
ivory-coloured paper, delicate miniature images on china plates.  

     Ranma stood on his hind legs and balanced on the wall to
gaze directly at one of the odder paintings.  A great lion stood 
amidst a winter landscape.  Around him, the snow was melting and 
flowers were springing up from the grass.  Human children knelt 
at his feet and wove the blossoms into his mane without fear.

{uh... anyone we know?  :) }
  

     Be a crucible to me, he begged of the goddess.  Let me
please you.  Take from me this wrong that I have done and let me
be beautiful in your eyes.

{Aiya.  Ranma's cat-side is pleading for deliverance from his human
side?  I... never thought of it that way before.}
 

     Fingers touched his stomach through his shirt.  In any
moment, the goddess would flex her hand and tear out his

at any moment  {?}
 

entrails.  He was nothing in her sight, and for that he loathed
himself.

sheeted darkness.  The goddess had transformed him into a form 
more pleasing to her eye; he was shaped like a housecat, though 
large as a lynx, and his fur was the colour of flames.  His eyes 
were the bright and piercing blue of a newborn kitten.

kitten's.  {unless it's a really weird kitten, which I suppose is
plausible under the circumstances.  :) }
 

struggling to keep up in the rear.  Their voices echoed from one 
end of the city of dead gods to another, and singing thus they 
passed out of its cold architecture and went to do great and 

{suggest}  went forth to

heroic deeds against their ancient foes.

     There are a lot of worse ways to wake up then in bed next to

than

a beautiful woman.  Then again, there are better ways, 
particularly when you can't remember her name or how you got 
here, but you can remember that by every law of the universe you 
know, your fiancee is going to walk in and clobber the hell out 
of you at any moment.

{Bwahahaha!  Poor Ranma... good thing he's not in the universe
he knows, isn't it?}

     The woman grinned at Ranma as she sprawled seductively on 
the other side of the bed, her head propped up on one palm and
resting her elbow on a tasseled pillow.  Ranma tried to back 

{suggest} palm with her elbow resting on a tasseled pillow.

away, and fell out of the bed onto the hard floor.  

     There had been... moss.  And cats.  Lots of cats.  He
couldn't remember anything else.  He certainly couldn't 
remember how he had ended up here.  The woman sat up, dangling
long and almost bare legs over the edge of the bed.  Her garments
were white and silky, and practically translucent.  Ranma vowed
that if he ever got back home, he was going to have a long
discussion with Cologne.

{"Hey, Cologne, where can I get some outfits like that in Akane's
size, huh?"  :) }

     "It's more comfortable up here" the woman said teasingly, 

here,"

moving lithely to the floor and lying down on her stomach.  She
rested her chin on her hands and placed her elbows on the floor
as she kicked one long leg up into the air.  Ranma got a sight
deep into the depths of her tunic, and the rich glitter of gold
necklaces amidst the cleavage of her rounded breasts was not
nearly as enticing as the purely natural sights therein.

     "Bahh," Ranma said.  

{Good thing Ranma's been inured to such things... well, mostly.  :) }

     "Hmm?"  She took his head between both hands and pulled him
up to a sitting position, until their faces were only inches
apart.  "Cat got your tongue?"

{groan}

look at him again, sipping delicately from a silver goblet.  When 
she spoke again, her voice had lost all coquettish or teasing.

coquettishness  {?}
  

     "It is the Dreamlands," the goddess replied.  "Here the
dreams and nightmares of man mingle with those of the sleeping
gods to shape the structure of it."

     Ranma decided to turn on the charm.  "Look, this is all
really interestin' and stuff, and I'd love to stay around and
hear all about it, but I've been gone a long time and Akane's
probably gettin' mad, so if you'd just tell me how to get out of
this place and back to Earth, I'd be really grateful."

{Oh, perfect.}

     "I have done you a favour."  Barely-constrained savagery 
echoed in her voice.  "Now you shall do me one."

{Suggest "do me a service."  Even if a god must make an equal pact
with a mortal, it seems to me that the god would avoid referring to
it as such.  Got to keep us in our place, yes?}

Otherwise, you shall remain here with me."  As suddenly as the 
wind, her mood shifted and she smiled lustily.  "I think I would 

shifted, and

enjoy that as well."

     Ranma found himself on his hands and knees in a roofed
couryard.  Statues of cats were everywhere amidst the crumbling

courtyard

pillars.  A layer of grey dust covered the broken cobblestones of
the courtyard.  He drew a gasping breath and staggered up to his
feet, then walked out to where a road of black basalt cut down 
through an enormous city filled with buildings whose shapes all
seemed subtly wrong, as if built to a scale and geometry that was 
not that of humans.

{Lots of basalt... oddly enough, there's lots and lots of basalt
on our Moon, too.  All the dark bits, the maria, are basalt.  IIRC,
Lovecraft used "basalt" a lot because it's an uncommon rock to
most people, but to one who grew up in Hawaii, where 9 rocks in 10
are basalt, it's... um... not.  :) }

     He looked around at the strange architecture of the place
and the grey dust.  "Ahh, hell."

     He was _really_ gonna get Cologne for this.

{In your dreams, fem-boy.  :) }

FIN TWO

Good thing Ranma wasn't put in a position to be freed of his
Jusenkyo curse... methinks the consequnces of THAT would be even
more dire.

The weird thing (well, one weird thing) is that I'm beginning
to suspect what you hinted at in the prologue: Ranma is not
only capable of returning from journeys into the Dreamlands
with acceptable losses, he is just the sort of person who might
become, well, addicted to adventuring there.  Ranma's never
happier than when he hangs his own butt out so much farther
than anyone else thinks is possible, only to pull it back again;
he's just the sort of overconfident adrenalin-junkie that
would be drawn back again and again to seek excitement there.

Another weird thing is that Eidolons is so much fun to read that
I don't mind that it's probably delaying WUE more than a little.

Thanks for writing and sharing!


Vince Seifert    Network Analyst     seifertv@csus.edu
Techie: http://webpages.csus.edu/~seifertv/
Fanfic: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/seifertv/toth/
CSUS hired me to build their LANs, not to give away the homeworld.