V. The Rise of the Glass Dwellers

   On shawntay pew naysonce by lightning perms does the Grand Seer grant us the company of our baby boy a week by drugsubs, court-to-see the Village Council of which Guya is a member. Guya the proudest mami. Guya is the thrillermost barmaid that ever twobetooed with a rockingchair inventor, and now a sparkling glisshap to show for her efforts. Alent, we called him. Mod Virs Alent, rich in gingangous portent. What a smile, what teeth, what akimbic posture and patted nosters did he possess. A sun! A sun! We think it'll be a good eary one! Loaved by his brothers and spindled on the old tabulation, pleted of allowance and deepened into reserve. Games, flames, humming and drumming. Just a goodallfull drumhum existentialism. Displaying pixels of intellybents and delighting in the simifillemihermes arts. Proudly Alent was announced by his parents in the Borx Nooz. "Welcome to the bungle!" The Intoxicant Field Marshall cried. Spangled in triplicate on the Whois Newis. Conintact allinfoe you syruped unbeknownst, strewnbenounced.

   TurnING to the Village at LARGE, patterns were rightly pumped as said before through veins of periodic ice cities from the beddinbrook along the romneymile to the treasure cooler. Villial warming was on the asscent due to the intense prism effect of the everspiring awe-groaning glass structures shooting threesunward. Industriousness was fliessing the folk of their dunst, but we all knew the dry spell was necessary. The pendulum swings, they say. From the doctum bobble we were enjoying to the daytrape of our new single-minded whiffmichit, it was nothing we hadn't seen before.
   The ink roachments were subtle at first: a mandatory year of labor before the greenity, increased carrots for newborns, a lowlaying of bloomage and makewaying for handelage, a raising of the eimtiredment age, further irrationing of water by the Reachmaster, increased schallmarring presence, and a general rerun to conversative ballyhoos. We received in return glassss and mere glassss. Temples, coaches, pontoons, gondolas, byways, and, without rightly saying, Heck Spex.

   Alent hit it off with the family map-kitty. They listened to colors and wrote waves together, brumjumming and cloppopping away. Our boy was clearly capable of the most splendorous sand arrays and muckamuck bricabrac this side of abracadaverbads. Guya, nonetoo bunglefitted herself, had much guidance and entouragement to offer. Siccative sibs greened a bit and obstacalized young Alent's progress, to say nothing of his dow. Hemmed and hamped at every effusion when the grewn-ups weren't around, a taut friction seeped into the salad.
   Budding around the sandbaths among his mates was another story. Nicking a cuss from a glassdame, boxing oars with the roosters, playing dodgefire with the stewturds, and making auricles with the satin ondecons were all delightful pastimes. Beaming home his good marks he fueled both the parental pride and the sibilene prop hazards. Appeering with him were many comrades who held him in their rucksights with highest regard for his machination. Even at seven sunnexes he could riffle a frism without a roid.

   Alent got his role models in the persons of two much-celebrated inventors, Wawintow and Hethmela, whose cordacksy allcabals revolionized the digestion of ideals, speciously unspacific. This was the brightest flash of genius in the Age of Ink Roachment or for dozens of exchanges before. Water was refined to the level of knowledge and transmittable along hairs of glass in blinks and received as supper at anywhere stations called picnic tables.
    The Glasslawyers stepped in and rigged a jury on a material infringement case against the two geniuses, claiming that glass, being the prime microbiaspic component of glass people, could not be used in an apparatus that probed the prealm of thought while at the same time maintaining continuous contact with water. Roundly debunked by the Waterlaw team on the grounds that, well, so were the glass sculptures in the Gardens of Prisms probing thought -- albeit passive thought of an art-aperecitative nature -- while containing water around the clock, to say nothing of the crystal fountains in front of the bleeding Heart Mart. This twisted the tie a bit and soon enough the Reachmaster stepped in and declared that all cordacksy allcabals and the Wathmela at large would become the province of the government until further deliberations could be berated. This was doo coarse but fairly unsporting since the Wathmela had been generously given to everyone, wet and dry, for free use by the inventors anyway.
    Hethmela, the more rambunctious of the two, took his case to the villagers. At the Village Arch he dreamed up support, and it was there that a roccop descended on a line and lanced the pour inventor right in the back. The roccop was later tried, found insane, and dashed on a Waywald outcropping, but the people's suspicion could not be so easily assuaged when Wawintow disappeared from his picnic table three days later, to eventually turn up at the bottom of his dried up well. The Wellstone Incident continued to elicit murmurs of suspicion among the waterfolk, and it was not to be long before a pattern of wellstone assasinations consummated the terrible reality of the two inventors. Alent and everybody else was crushed. Still, water could do nothing but coolly go along, chittering darkly.

   Salad indeed was tossed one night when Alent's brother Grabem, tipped on flakegurg, spuriously ignited Mod's hair while attempting to build a motorfly. A detentional accident perhaps. Alent had to fight back. Wielding a bankerspank he sliftergonged Grabem right back of the blusher. Grabem's ire erupted and fire corrupted his spite. He flung a handful of birdwing fidgels, grazing Alent's jonger and puncturing the launderbays on the wall behind him, discharging tidic acid. Alent darted to the door amid a hail of whinnerscrits, but Grabem was fast on his tail. Wildeyed the sib pounced with kobdin in hand, stabbing about the face. With brotherly consideration he did not kill Alent, but gauged his left persit, severing relations that would not heal. Alent turned parentward for jusympachy but they were consumed with their own jousteads. Ginfidelities, ent oxens, and maladyadooways were their modus now, after the eggs had cracked, the straw bent, and the worms dropped. The boy was on his own, in his auburn pain, with his gifts. He reviewed the world. His powers sprang to life.

   Under weather captions bleed truths and fictions about bruises and frictions. The overturds embolden their strataphlegms, thefting amid howdoos in broad lamplight. Landyours become defecated mines. The stockpiles of water increased maniholed, all the wile glass keeping up disappearances. Arrested developers silenced in the galalug, sashating through barbcharged ionifields and baleroom dusting for the secret valise.
    A Modest militia took a position out on the neighboring Ocaw Plain, determined to maintain freedom of the stress and issue forth a proclamation with a side of water. ChaRRco was the wettest place in the district, and flora fawned there. Glass set out to make example and broadcast their imposing new vitrifier in a threaty. Our brave contenders merely replied by mixing cement on gavelday: "Kiln us if you can, cure us if you dare, we'll ossify your birds without a care to spare."

FAVWACOOOOSSH!!!

and all that remained of the ridge ramble was a vague osmyrrah of censered hawthorne and wizened columbine.

   It was an ode to ChaRRco that landed young Alent fullway up a long bill of village frismers showing at the town stadium on Mugday. The brilliant paean won the spring lowschool dreaming contest. The boy was now spending untold numbers of milexchanges cloistered in his closet riffling, writing, and jumming the musters, digging deeply into his guljil and tapping wondrous dolagons. He took up with a master riffler named Doy who soothed his tablence and fostered his work. His friendships at school were small in number but deep in loyalty. He joined the Hydra Club and exhausted the stacks of their secrets. He got sweet on a gill and flushed his clogged cordazon with her undinish lunacy. For a time Alent could verily forget his barabarac tohubohu. "Hooharah," he might say at the hookah. Cynesthesis he called his halcyon state of mind, for her name was Cynthia -- Cynthia Doray -- and she was his Aprilmayjuneness. Nonetheless, the cockatrice of his romulal reality lay tortile in the shadows of izba awaiting its time to timveigh against him.

   Over classified captions needle and wheedle the feignthearted into sideways glances, led to cloak-fittings by the Reachmaster. Where once there were the rumblings of rebellion were now the mindless skeeballs of the itenerated itinerants, groping xericly toward some felysian stutopia. Glass was ingeniusly recruiting the disenfranted bheesties on the promise of a premise soon after the village be pruned of its pommis. By so doing they leavened water of its leverage, tippling the vogue by a sleight majority towards a policy of Liquimmurism. Water, who divined this sodal flow even as it was happening, quelled their losses by going underground and constructing aquifers of resistance. It was here that they discovered to their horror that grand galalug of water interrment, the Mechanical River, groggily flowing in circles while burnishing gemstone weaponry and providing hydrations for glasscamps. Here in limbo dallied all disappearances, unreachable, mute, distraught, distrait. This strait would jossel resoundingly throughout the Aquaegis as the ursymbol of Glass's miscreations. Moreso than the water prisms, the smelling saults, the niedernoriae or naherinaiade, the hydraulic hourglass, the sand-gutters, humidoors, purl fechtlaces, and even the creaky village crick irker. As time passed the vacated watereal estate dried up. Houses and grounds were pillaged and artisan wells sprang up to the delight of turncoat bheesties who couldn't tell sky from tree. In the dragoon's wake many exquisite aquabaubles were dessicated. The sere village serenaded itself with searing rays of sunslight until a stygian glint pervaded the streets. The Grand Seer peered.

   Our parched prodigy prepared for his Mugdate with destiny amid aspersions ascending and incursive anarchy at home. Desirous of joining the Aquaegis he persisted above ground in grasp of the hope that a demonstration of his creative powers in the town stadium could help restore peace and piece together his own resistance to a life jejune. But the uneasy concord that he compaxed within the watery walls of his anima was razed by his confraternal nemesis one night.
    Out of a petty fog loomed the terrortism of his foul brother's ire. Alent's two model crismenots were dashed against the foyerglass in an outnout donnybrook that also cracked his jawl. He bathed back, though, rupturing Grabem's snoodle with a flying kalliwonk, ultimately pinning his limbs firmly to the wallcork and gassing him with privfinish. Despite Grabem's overbearing raskellism it was bittersweet to see him impersonally carted off in the wallywagon by four roccops, for everyone knew that, in the current faskish climate, it was likely he would end up with a glagger in his back.
    Alent and fam were laid low. Guya returned to her chrysalistamine menu and his father took to increased hallucination time on the porch. Alent tapped the dents out of his world and went back to his loom, fashioning new sections of redric for his impending performance. He was receiving spirits in greater and greater numbers at his stealth wathmela outpost. His bruised face appeared on the village brocau. He changed his specs. All was a warm, glowing updraft of breezy toosonic flight into martyrdom.

   Alent's oldest brother hastened off one morning to claim his prize. The Reachmaster had been sponsoring increased "deals" such as tax-free clothes shopping, bubblecycle giveaways, obedience awards, and sand-earning contests. Ease had won himself a new music-cage and headed down to the Bullseye (a sickly ironic name for a department store) to obtain the trinket. At high shadow that day a terrorist petard decimated the market splashing the lifewater of some fortyodd contest winners across five city angles. We would learn later that the winnercide was the design of the Reachmaster himself, who had propagandized the incident as a new terror wave incurred recklessly by the Aquaegis.
    Indeed, present chronology has brought us to Glass's final roundup, known as the Great Phathoming. The Reachmaster was deceptively offering every conceivable incentive to draw unconstituted resistance out into the open, in the forms of: concerts (bargemusic was, strangely enough, biscum rage), art in the park (the City Park was rigged with hundreds of miles of glass torics), anniversary celebrations for banal landmarks, free fairy rides, landscape brouhas, and sandpark openings. With increasing frequency CHAOTs (Coincidental Heinous Acts of Terrorism) as they were culled in the Glasspress, were killing, drying, or disappearing all attendees of these functions. We began to catch on as we noticed that the Reachmaster's agents, clad in their telltale lead cloaks, tended to escape these shambles unshambled.

   As likely surmised, on the pogrom for the massive FrismFest in the town stadium was a world weary Alent, who had been preparing his multidelphic proffermance since the thaw. It was a bristling melange of singing sculpture, dancing machinery, painted verbiage, and no small show of onnagation on Alent's part, who had now taken his first name, Mod, to accompany him into history. He had taken all morguen of the sweltering sumnertag to assemble his youthful masterpiece with little or no help from the encircling leadcloaks, except to point their arrows around the perimeter in a feigned watch for moaterrorists. The once-sodden weedabicks were already drying in the bowl. The Jonquil Jongleur took the stage, followed by the Viraginous Vaudevillain, bringing the thousand folds of audience to a chuck. An a capelog group, the Humid Doors, crooned us into the gloaming. As darkness fell, cooling the sands of the parade ground, the FrismFest emcee, a muumuu-clad liontamer of most muzzy mien, emerged from his elmgrove refuge and announced Mod, the day's stellattraction.
   In a fulmination of colored lights Mod's symphonic contraption spread its wings in fullest glory, accompanying him in the most splendorous epithalamion to his own hawksight with Cynthia Doray. Eyes were directed skyward to the cloudpainting he had arranged, imparting a word of peace, a picture of unity, and a song of forgiveness and cosmic harmony. A collective sigh morphed into an ecumenical gasp as the sky quickly crystallized with the largest convoy of roccops in full regalia ever assembled, bursting through the effervescent cloudart and bearing down on the entire populous on an abominable waterwitchhunt. Schrecks filled the bowl and rattled through the latticework of every being's skeleton. Mod and Cynthia embraced and entered an eternal buß, to be cemented in what was to become an emblematic pose by a roccop's glasspike. Mod's brilliant thingummy doodahed aimlessly amid the carnage and could not be shut off by the emcee, who had by now discarded his muumuu to display a lead cloak of survival. The dolorous metselling left scant survivors. The town stadium was a veritable shaybad, awash in manila and trocked to the rooks. Guya, her husband, and all of Mod's friends were gone, as were the greatest minds and imaginations of the village. One lad named Eches Tora Fair, a younger schoolmate and loyal admirer of Alent's, managed to swim through her tears to a backalley sluice and escape underground to tell the tale to the ever-steeling Aquaegis council. She would be re-christened Aeqias and would grow to become a great poet and chronicler of the war years.

   So closed the Age of Ink Roachment, which passed to the Age of Kalpius, a time of stark water imprisonment, best encapsulated by naming the erliken tangle of glassforged jailjars an barribowls used to contain us: alabastrons, albarellos, amphoras, aryballos, askos, cymaises, doliums, hydriae, jorums, kalpis, kantharos, kelebes, kraters, kyathos, kylixes, lekythos, loutrophoros, mazers, monteiths, patchstands, pelikes, pithos, potiches, psykters, stammos, tazzas, and verrieres.

 

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