Words for Wednesday 22 January as given by Mark:
Deviled and / or
Gargled
Interdependence Presence
Watery
Yelling
Figs
Andalusia
Zoom
Snowdrifts
Headphones
Exfoliate
Well, I decided to end this story as I had planned, and I got to use the word I needed for this final installment.
The word, I hoped for to get was: Interdependence.
Here at the ending of this story, I want to thank you all for comments, encouragement and corrections. Although I have not answered all comments, I have read them all and appreciate them very much.
Thank you all!
Allan rubbed his eyes, and rubbed them once more. Then he jumped up and down on the slippery surface, he slipped and almost fell, He stood still and then he yelled at the top of his lungs: "Here. We are here. Up here at the white cliffs!" He pulled off his jacket and waved it through the air. Richard came running up to him. "Look," Allan said, "I think I can see something sailing over there. He pointed landwards and to the north. "Could you run down, carefully, fetch that megaphone, and ... oh just get everybody up here and whatever they find useful.
In an amazingly short time everybody had congregated at the northernmost end of the cliffs. Hank had brought binoculars, Tom the megaphone, Ulla held a twin in each hand, while her husband carried the baby sister under one of their very few umbrellas. Richard had grasped a pair of father Paul's lanterns and a long branch. He tore strips of a rag, and after wetting them in the oil, he made a primitive torch by twisting them around the branch. He lit it and carefully waved it to an fro. Tom yelled into the megaphone, and Allan still waved this jacket.
Hank said: "What strange looking boats. It looks like huts only on rafts. It is, as far as I can see, pulled by a rowing boat of great size, manned by only four."
"Taking turns rowing, like we are, Ulla guessed. "Can you see more?"
"Yes. And they've seen us - a person in the boat is standing up and waving with something bright and yellow. and they're getting over here."
"That's a freaking settlement," Hank said. "Complete with floating gardens and huts. Whoever build something like that?"
"My Mary." Allan said in a disbelieving voice. "It would be just like her to have a garden no matter what - even the end of the world."
As the floating village came closer still, faces could be seen in the doorways of the huts.
All the people from the plane walked gingerly down the cliffs to the place where the settlement would land.
Allan tapped Hank on the shoulder and asked for the binoculars, Hank handed them to him without a word. "It IS Mary!" Allan yelled: "Hello Mary! Welcome to Møn." And then he began crying again.
Robert plucked the binoculars from Allan's hands and began studying the settlement.
***
They all sat inside the plane in the evening, feasting on hot coffee and only slightly dry lebkucken. "Finally lebkuchen," Allan sighed. It was time for tales.
***
"As the water began rising," Mary continued. "we realised that we would need boats or at least one boat. It was a slim chance, but Pete and George sat out on foot. They walked to Castle Kronborg, because some of us remembered seeing bots inside the museum in the dungeons there. And they found boats, two small boats. What more is, they found people. They found Elizabeth there," Mary pointed the the smiling young woman, sitting next to and hand in hand with an incredibly happy and young looking Robert. "She had been visiting the dungeons with her aunt and uncle, and helped hunting down those four children over there who had been lost playing tag in the big rooms and corridors down there. When they returned ... well you can all guess. They had been living off bags of candy and their lunch packages ever since, water was no problem as it steadily runs down the walls in there."
"Nasty place." Lisa said. "We were really getting desperate, debating whether to just go out and see what would happen, when you arrived."
"And then, in the two small boats, we crossed the Øresund, then only a bit wider than its normal 3 kilometres, and rescued Bengt and Astrid here from the dungeon in Helsingborg.
"Oh dear," Astrid said. "We had been visiting Kärnan, the old fort in Helsingborg. As we were about to mount the stairs leading up from the dungeons, I slipped on the lover step. I think my arm is broken. Anyway, Bengt stayed with me, they promised to send help. But then an almighty roaring sound was heard, and rubble fell from the hatch. Bengt spent the next many days painstakingly pulling down rocks, stones and rubble, while I just sat, or lay half conscious from pain. When he finally reached the surface and told me about what he had seen outside, I thought that I was having a nightmare. But as no help arrived, I realised it was true. We had resigned, and as the staircase broke as Bengt removed a really stubborn stone, we just gave up. Then one day we heard Pete yelling outside. We were pulled out ... and here we are."
Sarah and Fred took care of her arm, It was broken, and badly set. All they could do was bandaging and supporting it. "It might never be as good as new," Fred said. "But it should stop hurting at least."
"And while the boys were out saving those precious people, the rest of us were building a floating village and planting seeds. Somewhere along the planting, we also discovered, found out might be a better word, that when it has been wet through for some time, the fluff stops itching, stops being fuffy and begins acting like normal soil again.
"Yes," Allison said. There's some organic, needle like compounds in it. They're quite interesting ... but your tale is more so, do continue."
Mary smiled and continued: "When they returned, by boat, and faster than expected, we sent them to more places with deep cellars or dungeons, but no more people were found until we, slowly and towing our village with the two small boats, came to the Fort and War museum in Stege. There we found two young girls, Susan and Janne and a boy Michael, from the fort. They had been on duty in the lower ends of the fort as the Wave passed. They lived off the cafeteria food and were about to set out in that big boat after having prepared all the edibles down there for a longish trip. Then we came here, and the rest is history."
The next day was spent moving crates and luggage from one place to another, It was not a question whether to bring the village or not, but how to. The small cooking hut was given over to storage of heavy crates after dumping of the slabs of glazed ground used for fireproofing.
In the evening, Mary, Jill, Granny T and Matthew were happily cooking, comparing stashes, notes, and plants and all in all felt very happy.
After the evening meal a discussion arose. Most of the people spoke for several small, self-containing settlements spread at equal distances along the foot of the mountain range. Those not in favour, were mostly found among the older segment, and were not taken quite seriously.
Then Mary rose from her seat next to Allan: "Now you listen to me," she said. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks had red spots. "This is important: The thing that has made humanity top notch is not our muscle power - we're a scrawny lot compared to most species. It's not our big brains either. Many species boasted bigger brains compared to size, and even smarter brains. No our asset, our sole asset, is knowledge, more specifically our ability to share and the pooling of knowledge." They all fell silent and listened. Mary drew a deep breath: "And if there's one thing I have learnt, first from the reading of books like
The Day of the Triffids, and later from my voluntary working with refugees, it is how quickly knowledge is lost or deteriorates. Of course we could manage in small communities. We could stay alive and eke out an existence. Maybe. You're all young and strong, and we oldies could be spread out, teaching, taking care of the children? They would most decidedly not learn all I know, even less yet all we know all together. No way. We'd be back to the stone ages in a few generations." A stunned silence ensued, and Mary continued:
"Take the refugees I used to teach as an example. They were neither stupid, nor unintelligent. The old ones were mostly quite erudite; doctors, technicians, engineers, most of them speaking more than one language fluently apart from their own, as was a few of the parents too. The very young ones were OK, noting special. But the teens and the young adults! Those who had spent their formative years being on the run, surviving ... So many basic skills and knowledge they did not have. I remember proposing an outing to the forest. Many of those teens did not want to come. As I asked them why not, it was because they were afraid of dangerous animals in the woods. At that time I just smiled, and told them that vipers, wasps and ticks were the worst they could come up against. But I've been thinking. They had been to school here, they had learned Danish, how to read and write and so on. But some basic skills were not present, those skills, basic understandings, call it what you like, that we assume is learned automatically as we grow? It is not the way it happens. You have to have time for learning, for playing and growing, even for being bored. Else you grow up an ignorant." Mary drew a deep breath and went on: "Take Robinson Crusoe. Did he survive on his own? Yes and no. He had books, he had knowledge, he even had tools. He was never really alone. Now imagine him wholly alone, cut off totally from the rest of the world on that island of his - give him a wife and imagine them having children. How much would they learn? And their children's children? Learning, coping and development all stems from a surplus. If the children have to work from early age to avoid starvation, how will they ever learn?
"But what does this mean for us?" Ben asked.
"The answer is interdependence! This means that we'll have to stay together. And even try to find more people. Make a town, an old fashioned rural community with houses in the centre, fields all around. And many small towns like this centered around an even larger one for higher education and for luxury items like soap, candy and books. This is a dream, the ideal state, I said, I don't even know if we can find enough people to get over critical mass, to have this surplus." Mary said soberly. "So far we do not know haw many survived, or even if we will survive the coming years. But together we have a chance. Together we have hope."
Mary sat down to a thundering applause.
And this is where I end.
Maybe the Snowdrifts will make their way into a chapter of Susan's story. I have been sorely neglecting her. And tomorrow is a new Wednesday with new words.
But I think I'm going to have an itsy-bitsy writing break first. I have written more than 25.000 words to tell the tale of Mary and Allan.
