With all due respect, I'm not a transgender guitar player at all and nothing here on Shhhh! Digital Media is written by anyone of that description. I'm a heterosexual European Canadian male, and none of the content here on Shhhh! Digital Media is written by the aforementioned person or anyone of their description. I support LGBTQ2 rights, but I retain my rights as a heterosexual male as well.
I am certainly not a part of any group, cult or ideology whose idiom or ideology is founded around the idea that: what's ours is ours and what's yours is ours.
I am not a Lutheran, or a Seventh Day Adventist, Mormon., Jehovah's Witness, Scientologist or a Presbyterian with all due respect, and never have been. I am an Atheist that leans toward (Zen) Buddhism and Taoism.
There are a group of abusive thugs, who are and have been trying to convince you that what I create and write originates from someone else, or even that I'm being remotely controlled by others from whom my ability to write originates, and I can honestly say that nothing could be further from the truth.
This content is ultimately created and written by Brian Joseph Johns, and nobody else, though I do draw inspiration from women (and men) I've known in life, and those by whom (who are many) I'm inspired.
I'm the same writer that writes the parts for Brad Stanton (the almost exact opposite dichotomy in terms of the gender balance found in Tales of the Sanctum). I'm also the same writer that writes The Butterfly Dragon stories as well, whose characters too are very different from both We Who Stand On Guard, and Tales of the Sanctum.
I don't actually become a different person every time I write a story or character, and I stay away from or even go after ideologies that imply that I do, because such ideologies are generally very abusive and operate in violation of the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms and the Human Rights Act of Canada, not to mention the United Nations.
Writers are like actors, and most actors act. That is, they don't actually become the character, but given the fact that during a production they invest a lot of time and effort living on camera (or on stage) as a character, bits and pieces of the character stay with them until the production has finished, at which point they often spend time centering themselves once again before their next role. Its a process jumping between characters and character performances.
Writers are very similar in the fact that we have to step into the shoes of the characters that we write, without actually becoming the character (entirely). The experience is more empathic, though not in the sense of the origins of a character coming from a specific person who actually exists, but rather an empathic creation that is drawn from a writer's experience with people and how they come to understand people, while coming at the experience of being the character from the character's own perspectives.
Writers, just like actors, often visit places that they don't as people in society, and often because of that, people become skeptical of both writers and actors. When you write or act, people get a glimpse into what your line of reasoning is. What's going on behind the character's thought process (which isn't always your thought process as a person, because you're coming at it from the perspective of a different person).
There are some very abusive cults that operate under the idea that what other people think originates from them, and those cults often seek reparations from both writers and actors, if their work becomes socially and/or financially popular. Yes, there are some very crazy people in cults who do attempt to charge you a price for what you think as a writer or an actor. Some cults even become quite obsessive about attempting to steer or control what a writer or actor creates in relation to their characters, and one of the biggest life challenges that writers and actors face, is standing up to such ideologies without over stepping others' boundaries and keeping true to your direction in life.
There are cults that make it a game of trying to throw your compass off course, and then use that justification of having done so to give claim to others who are more closely consistent with your compass, while giving you the claim of others with whose life compass you've been tricked into becoming consistent. Ie, cults that attempt to swap up from their life history to gain someone else's that is better, while swapping down to someone else the worse parts of their history, and that is literally a big social game nowadays and quite a dirty one as well that afflicts many content creators and drives some obsessively to create content specifically geared at tricking others into contradicting the created content of writers like myself, including tricking the writer, as if that justifies taking the writing from the writer.
So, if you regard my content in that manner that it isn't coming from me or that my ability to create it doesn't originate from something that is uniquely mine, then why are you even here? Do you watch movies and assume that the movie is entirely about you? That everything an actor does is a reflection of you? I pride most of my readers as being individual enough to like other people for being themselves, rather than a reflection of themselves. If you don't like other people for their uniqueness or qualities that are theirs, then what is it that you like about other people?
For most people, though they'd never admit it, they like other people because they're the same religion. The same culture. Of the same habits and lifestyle. If those are the only reasons that you like someone, then you don't like anyone at all, because you're only liking them for the things about them that are the same about you. You're not actually liking them for anything that has to do with them as individuals.
Most people who like actors, like them for the exact same reasons. They like the characters that they play, but they don't know the actor, so how could they like them for anything that's related to their individuality?
The answer is because both writers and actors tend to share a lot of very personal aspects about themselves through the context of their characters, or in the case of actors, their performances, but for the most part, those bits and pieces are mixed up into the context of a character performance.
The things that people like about writers' characters and actors' performances have value, enough so that there are very obsessive people out there who make it their life's effort to collect the best things from fictitious characters, both those of writers and actors, and to collect them and accumulate them within their own life, making sure that nobody else has those same things as well. He who has the most toys in the end, wins. That sort of mind set.
That becomes part of a large scale social game where these obsessed fanatics attempt to take aspects of characters and actors' performances from the people who created them, and the fans in the audience who admired them, using techniques such as social auditing and tricking people into contradicting the very nature of the character or performance. This is so involved now, that some people literally spend the majority of their entire life pursuing such ends, and when I think about this, I can't help but think about the story: The Emperor's New Clothes. Please do read it. Its a great story that demonstrates the metaphor at work here.
Now, I'm not telling you how to like something or someone. I'm just saying that being obsessed over collecting bits and pieces of characters and actors' performances is a lot like the Emperor being fooled into believing he's wearing the latest and greatest fashion, when in fact he's wearing nothing but an illusion woven into his mind by these weavers who created his (imaginary) clothing.
Focus on building aspects of your life that are real. If you want people to believe that you're a horseback rider, then go out and actually do it. It makes the stories the you read and watch (written by writers and performed by actors) a lot more fun, and gives you a lot more insight into what goes into making a character and bringing them to life.
Don't become so obsessed like these people fixated on wearing an illusion, that they begin to believe that people who really do have authentic ability (for instance, being a martial artist, or being a piano player, or a coder or some other skill and ability you've actually developed in life through training or physically applying such skill), are just wearing an illusion until they prove otherwise. Remember, that your illusion is just as flimsy, if not even more so flimsy than to dare someone who has real experience and skill in those facets, especially those of writers or actors who have experience in what they write about or act.
Besides, the best parts about the characters that I create and write, have origins and inspirations through some form of reality, where the absolutely fantastical isn't involved, and when it is, I'd be looking at it moreso through the lens of allegory or metaphor than literally, because you might learn something that's been carefully hidden that way, and I'd be willing to bet that many actors too include parts in their performance drawn from origins and inspirations of reality.
I suppose there is a lower rung on the ladder than being the Emperor who was fooled by his tailors into believing he was wearing the latest and greatest fashions, and that lower rung would be the one in which someone attempts to trick the Emperor out of, or outright steal, their illusory clothing.
The one who believes themselves to be wearing the most extravagant clothing and fashion when in fact they are wearing nothing (or wearing something that to others isn't even close), at least they are convinced and happy in some way, even if it is literally nothing. The one who can be happiest with nothing, is the wealthiest in the world.
That would make the one who attempts to take that illusory clothing, either by trickery, deceit or outright theft, quite blatantly the fool. Trying to trick someone who is convinced they have something into relinquishing it, to someone who knows they truly have nothing, and then puts it on themselves.
These characters in this story and the other stories I write are important and have a lot of heart in them.
But none of that heart comes from Jeff Johnson. He was a school friend I knew a long time ago, who apparently became a Police officer. He was also a writer, though he tended to focus on slasher stories which were very popular back then (in the early 1980s). He was a very creative writer in that sense, bringing a twist to the genre, though most of his characters except the slasher would often end up in a very bad way, female and male alike.
I've known people too who pass themselves off as writers, when in fact they write nothing at all, even taking the credit for the work of esteemed writers such as Margaret Atwood, let alone my writing.
Some people become very obsessed with the idea that if you pursue a skill or talent you have, that someone else also used to do when you were a youth, that you somehow stole the ability of that talent from that person, and I've also known people who became actors and performers for whom this is also the case. Others become obsessed that their talent at performance was stolen from other youth they knew during their school years, and that nobody else has that ability except them, and that everyone else who uses that talent should have to pay that person who they allegedly stole the ability from.
I've known others who were very creative when we were youths, and yet I've never run into debt collectors seeking payment on their behalf for any skills I've clearly demonstrated, but it does seem that with certain ideologies, you'll often run into these debt collectors who seek some form of compensation for your currently demonstated ability to do something, or that they'll in some criminal means attempt to take the merit of it from you.
When you run into debt collectors of that form, I find that in ninety-nine percent of the cases, that they are from specific ideologies who actively attempt to enforce the rules of their beliefs on others in a means that is illegal and in violation of the rights code, and I'd be willing to bet is a growing problem that is creating a lot of social tension these days.
So. For those of you who are convinced that my abilities are illusion. I'd be happy to play piano for you. Go horseback riding with you (I've ridden in a variety of weather and extreme terrain). Study martial arts with you in a dojo, dojang or temple, including very basic kumité (I'm getting up there in age after all). Perform live in a band as a keyboard player. Write or publish my code online for you. You've already read my stories, so you know that I can write and that I'm a writer.
By the way. If I like you, I like you for reasons that have to do entirely with you, and not because I believe that you're some kind of reflection or photocopy of me, or because we have the same religion, or culture, or basic habits and lifestyle. If you only like people for the reasons in which you're similar, then you don't really like anyone. You only like yourself.
I hope that you enjoy these characters, because they are very much themselves, with only a little bit of me, even to the point that in real life, they might have trouble relating with me. Regardless, I still love them with all of my heart, and I'd be willing to bet that with most actors, they feel the exact same with all of their own character performances.
Enjoy!
Brian Joseph Johns
[Spellbound - Siouxie And The Banshees]
Do you like enigmatic characters, engrossing story, magic and the ever atemporal weave?
Play Baldur's Gate 3 [On Steam]
Chapters
- Reali-Tea (Finished April 13, 2025 11:00 AM EST)
- Day Of Truth - Night Of Stars (Finished April 13, 2025 2:00 PM EST)
- Of A Curios Nature (Finished April 14, 2025 2:00 PM EST)
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Shhhh! Digital Media
Brian Joseph Johns
Reali-Tea
Summer, 2006
Neville walked slightly ahead of the group, with Nelony keeping pace beside him. She paid him little regard as he vied for the attention of the group. His voice most often the loudest and interrupting, a fact that Nelony had come to put up with.
In a way, she felt sorry for him, for it was obvious that he was always trying to jut his way into the like of others, rather than simply being comfortable with himself.
Gone were their school uniforms, their attire much more casual and expressive as teenagers on the front doorstep of adulthood.
Nelony was dressed very casually and comfortably, and despite the growing heat, her latest plant necklace hung in place, centered on her breastplate. Its green leaves and bright yellow flower standing out prominently beneath her cherry red lips.
Neville wore a stylish t-shirt, a rather expensive one for which he'd saved his pay from his part-time job for two weeks to be able to afford. The shirt sported a grafitti like motif in a variety of bright colours, the sleeves just short enough that they revealed the stylish tattoos on both of his arms.
Shaela walked side by side with Mila, Wes between the two of them despite the fact that they talked around him, though they both enjoyed having his company where it was. He remained quiet mostly, enjoying hearing their banter and remarking little unless directly broached by them.
Shaela of course wore the darkest of gothic shades, a long black lace figure hugging dress spanning down to her Doctor Martens, which fit her style perfectly. Her face was pale white with foundation, while her eyes were dark with eye shadow and liner, while her deep red lips underlined her entire look, her forboding blue eyes standing out amidst the cacaphony of shades.
Mila on the other hand was the apparent bookend antithesis, wearing a white summer dress and a white sun hat, protecting her pale complexion and make-up accented natural look, while Wes between the two of them seemed to be a great bridge for the dichotomy of their styles. He lay somewhere between gothic while still sporting a loose fitting tie and a tweed vest atop of his button down shirt. His dyed black hair, messy and spiked.
"No skateboard today Neville?" asked Shaela confronted him during a moment silence in their conversation.
"The bearing casings are shot. Besides, I'm kind of done with it. Saving up for a moped. That way, I can pick Nelony up and drive her to summer school," Neville admitted to them.
"Maybe in your dreams, but not on my flower here," Nelony responded defensively, gesturing to her eco-necklace.
"Can't blame a guy for trying," Neville's attention span was short, and after he'd replied to Nelony, he directed his gaze to another blonde haired girl ahead of them on the sidewalk.
"Excuse me miss. You dropped something," Neville ran up to her, and handed her a slip of paper he'd withdrawn from his pocket.
She looked at the slip of paper and her eyes rolled, for on it was written his name and phone number.
She picked up her pace to get away from them rather than be the subject of a group's amusement.
"I love it when they run. I might not want what I haven't got, but I want more than anything what I cannot have..." Neville laughed as the girl ahead of them picked up her pace, seemingly unphased by the rejection he'd just experienced.
"You disgust me!" Nelony smirked at Neville.
"What? Would you think better of me if I'd been crushed by your rejection of me? Who's the creep now?" Neville challenged her.
"You! Instead of waiting and trying again with me later, you instead went right away for the nearest woman matching my description! You don't want what you cannot have. You want what takes the least effort!" Nelony reasoned with him, perhaps slightly flustered that he'd embarrassed both her and the other woman he'd approached.
"Are you saying that you're worth it?" Neville countered her.
"You have no clue, do you?!!!" Nelony responded.
"If you'd have waited and tried again with her later, that would mean that you really want her!" Wes responded to Neville's antics.
"You're just jealous that I went for someone else, not to mention, you'd have preferred it if I was destroyed by your rejection. Gives you a sense of power!" Neville turned his back on her just as they arrived at the front door of their favourite tea shop: Reali-Tea.
"Lets just get our morning tea and crumpets and get to class..." Shaela interjected.
"I take it that you two have a history?" asked Mila of Nelony and Neville, as Wes secretly tried to stop her from asking, shaking his head and mouthing: NO! NO! several times.
Just as Neville was about to answer Mila, the loud siren of an ambulance interrupted their conversation as it pulled up to the corner shop next to the tea shop.
A pair of paramedics jumped out of the ambulance and retrieved a gurney from the back of the vehicle, then wheeling it into the front door of the corner-lot shop.
"What happened?" asked Nelony, turning to face the shop.
"That's the store that old man runs..." Neville responded as a crowd slowly started to gather.
Neville and Wes peered into the window of the shop, catching a glimpse of the paramedics performing Cardio-Pulminary rescucitation on a balding, older man who lay on the floor unmoving.
"I think he's pushing up daisies..." Neville remarked, looking to the flower around Nelony's neck.
"Sorry..." Neville added, a look of mischievous malice on his face.
Nelony just shook her head in disgust, when out of the corner of her eyes, she caught a glimpse of a man leaving the shop.
A familiar man, in a hood and cloak.
"Look! Its Mr. Norbid!" Nelony exclaimed, as the man turned to get a glimpse of her.
Their eyes met and time seemed to stand still.
"One by one they all will fall. The truth be gone and that is all," Mr. Norbid said to her as time remained at a stand still.
"No!" Nelony tried to scream, but nothing, no sound, no air came out.
Mr. Norbid then turned and disappeared around the corner and a moment later, time resumed.
"Who did you see?!!!" asked Wes of Nelony.
"It was... I... I can't remember..." Nelony responded, the name and face now gone from her memory.
Nelony saw a vision of a withered squirrel caught in the grip of a man who's face she could not recall.
"What happened?" asked Mila of Wes and Nelony.
"I saw someone... someone who hurts squirrels... He... I can't remember. His name was just on the tip of my tongue..." Nelony responded, once again receiving a blurred flash of a memory.
"He was wearing a cloak and maybe a hood..." Nelony shook her head.
"I think the old man's gone..." Wes looked inside of the store through the glass window.
A bald Japanese man well into his nineties appearing shriveled and gaunt lay on the floor, his face lifeless. The paramedics lifted him onto the gurney.
They then pulled a plastic cover over his face and wheeled him out to the ambulance.
Mila watched as the old man was carted over to the back of the vehicle and carefully fastened within, the life that had once flowed through his body and much like his memories, now beginning their journey into obscurity and effacement.
Shaela looked up at the sign above the shop's front door:
Sato's Curios And Treasures.
Within the shop, they heard a yelping sound, coming from a tiny animal.
Nelony and Mila immediately ran in through the front door of the shop, and wandered within until they found an apartment in the back. There within on a tiny cushion in a wooden box, a tiny pug puppy jumped up at the sides, yelping at them playfully.
"He's got nowhere to go. They'll put him down..." Nelony spoke sadly as she bent down to comfort the poor little animal.
Mila quickly grabbed a tiny blanket that lay beside the wooden box and used it to line her purse. She then bent over and picked up the puppy ever so carefully and placed him gently inside of it.
"He's got a home now. I wonder if he's got a name?" Mila stroked his head, as Nelony bent over and picked up a card that had been fastened to the wooden box.
"Here," Nelony handed the card to Mila, who then opened it and read it aloud:
To my best friend Mishima Sato on his birthday. May this new friend bring you much joy and luck!
B.W.
PS: His name is Happiu~isuka.
"That's Japanese isn't it? What does Happiu~isuka mean?" Nelony asked Mila.
"I think it means: vomits happiness..." Mila responded, then looking to the puppy, who'd just vomited in her purse.
"What's that smell?" Nelony began sniffing, getting a scent of the pug's vomit.
"Happiness, I'm guessing..." Mila responded to Nelony's question as she gently wiped the puppy's face with a tissue.
At that moment, an older man who had been in the shop as the events unfolded, moved closer to Mila and grabbed her by the wrist.
Startled, she looked to his face, and for a moment saw someone very familiar to her. The feeling quickly receding only a moment later.
The withered old man stared at her for a moment, a distant and forboding look in his eye.
"They'll take it all from you... please believe me!" the old man said to her, his lower lip quivering.
"Sato...? He's gone..." he released her wrist, and then turned and headed out of the door of the shop, and for the ambulance, getting in the back to accompany the deceased man on the gurney on his voyage to the morgue.
"Mila. We'd better get out of here. I have a very bad feeling about this..." Shaela arrived from outside of the shop.
"Keep the puppy safe. Lets get our tea and make it to class," Nelony urged Mila, Neville and Wes now tapping on the glass window from outside and urging them to pick up their pace.
The five of them made their way into Reali-Tea to get their tea and crumpets as a group of local workers arrived to seal off the old man's shop, putting a sign across the door:
CLOSED PERMANENTLY.
THOSE INTERESTED IN THE PROPERTY MAY SEND INQUIRIES TO SHEPPERTON REAL ESTATE AGENCY.
Day Of Truth - Night Of Stars
Wes had decided that he'd be the one to open the door to their summer school classroom, as the class had already started and they were late. He figured he'd be the one to bear the brunt of the teacher's scolding of their tardiness and so his hand gripped the doorknob as he turned and opened the door.
He quickly scanned the room for a set of unoccupied desks, and upon having spied five of them together, he stepped aside, between their thirty-something teacher and his four friends behind him as they snuck their way to the desks he'd earlier spied.
"Sorry M'aam," Wes said to her, she turned to face him, brushing her hair aside of her forehead.
"For what?" she asked him.
"For being late and interrupting class," Wes said humbly.
"Relax, though don't make it a habit. The only reason that you're here, is because the lot of you did horribly on your non-elective sciences. As much as you might like to get by in this world on charm and magic alone, you're going to need the help of the sciences, and in this day and age, more than ever," she said to Wes, looking to his four other friends as they found their way to their desks.
"I'm Mrs. Trufflebury, though seeing as this is a summer class, you can call me Cheryl," she smiled at them as they found their seats.
"I know that the reason many of you are here is because you find maths and sciences boring. Lets face it, on a cold bland page or a computer screen, some of this can seem
very boring compared to say...
High School Musical or
The Last Kiss. Until Apple, Microsoft, Google or MindSpice invent a medium that brings the sciences to the masses in a very interesting way, like some of the more creative publicly funded television channels, its up to us summer school teachers to re-introduce you to it in a way that the teachers of the regular school year couldn't, given the sizes of their classes," Mrs. Trufflebury explained to them.
Shaela and Wes looked around, only then realizing that there were actually very few students with them in the classroom. The entire class appeared to be about fifteen people in all.
At that moment, Happiu~isuka let out a tiny little bark from where his head poked out of Mila's purse in her lap.
"Whirp!" Mila let out a yelp of her own, immitating the puppy.
"Are you quite alright?" Mrs. Trufflebury looked to her, confused.
"Just the hiccups..." Mila replied, secretly tearing a bit of her crumpet and feeding it to the pug.
"Now that we're all comfortably, how many of you know what science actually is?" asked Mrs. Trufflebury of the class.
One of the other female students, a pretty girl wearing thin rimmed glasses raised her hand.
"Miss Dorens?" Mrs. Trufflebury acknowledged her.
"Its the study of the world and the universe..." Jessica Dorens responded.
"Yes and no. Yes, in that there are sciences that study the world. Geology for instance, and there are sciences that study the universe. Cosmology for example. I need a more encompassing answer, and one that you might never have suspected. Maybe something you'd expect to find in a philosophy text?" Mrs. Trufflebury hinted.
"Anybody?" Mrs. Trufflebury continued.
She waited, one of the students coughing ever so slightly.
"Science, to put it quite simply and yet very profoundly, is the search for truth," Mrs. Trufflebury told them and waited for that concept to fully sink in.
"The search through all that obscures it. Truth. How and what has happened, so that we might one day be able to use creatively, what can and will happen. Including what we can create ourselves using what we've learned from that truth," Mrs. Trufflebury wrote the word truth on the chalkboard, underlining it three times.
Nelony raised her hand.
"Miss... Ardbloem?" Mrs. Trufflebury gestured to Nelony.
"But what is truth?" asked Nelony.
"Now we get to the bizarre and sometimes confusing philosophy of the answer to the question of what is science? If science is the search for truth, then what is truth?" asked Mrs. Trufflebury.
Wes raised his hand.
"Mr. Emerson?" Mrs. Trufflebury got his last name correct as she acknowledged him.
"My backpack is heavy. That's truth, isn't it?" he said, lifting it with both of his arms, it being filled with library books he'd planned to return after class.
" What about to someone like Mr. Cooper here? Our class athlete it would seem...?" Mrs. Trufflebury introduced John, a tall somewhat muscular fellow who humbly stood and bowed like a gent to the rest of the class, drawing a fair bit of laughter and at least one cat call whistle from one of the women.
He blushed as he sat back down.
"Try lifting Wes' backpack, would you John?" asked Mrs. Trufflebury of the student.
John went over to Wes' desk, Wes handing him the backpack. John at first played along, and seemingly dropped it because of the weight, again drawing some laughter.
"Just kidding..." he said, then easily hefting Wes' backpack with one arm.
"Its a little heavy. Not much though. I can easily lift it with one arm," John handed the backpack to Wes and returned to his seat.
"So it would seem that we have two truths simply by conducting science on Wes' backpack," Mrs. Trufflebury explained to them, pulled a scale from a cubby hole under the counter space at the front of the class.
"So, lets deal with that by sorting this out so that we have one truth about Wes' backpack that we can all agree upon. Wes, could you bring your backpack to the front of the class?" Mrs. Trufflebury adjusted the scale and then beckoned Wes to join her.
He carried his backpack to the front of the class, and lifted it up onto the counter.
"Now place it upon the scale here and then read for the class what you see in the digital display," Mrs. Trufflebury instructed Wes.
"It says six point five kilograms," Wes said aloud to the class.
"I'll confirm that for him, and assure you that it does in fact say six point five kilograms in weight. There, we've conducted science and yielding truth from it. Something that we can all agree upon as being fact. Its not six point five according to Wes, and three point two according to me. The scale upon which we measured it says the same answer for both of us. Truth," Mrs. Trufflebury explained to the class.
Mila raised her hand.
"Miss Ren Dubel?" Mrs. Trufflebury gestured to Mila.
"My favourite kind of drink is raspberry bubble tea. Isn't that science?" asked Mila quite cleverly.
"Now we're getting somewhere. We have discerned something very important about the nature of truth, and therefore science. Mila's favourite drink is without a doubt her truth. Her truth, but it might not be someone else's. Wes found his backpack to be very heavy, but to John it was a little bit heavy. How is it that they can both be right, but have different answers to the same question?" asked Mrs. Trufflebury of the class.
The class remained silent as Mrs. Trufflebury waited for someone to respond, but nobody did.
"When it came to weighing Wes' backpack, we have one truth that is the same for everyone, but when it comes to something else, like whether something is heavy or not, or a someone's favourite drink or food, we can have more than one truth. One truth in fact, for each and every person. Therefore, there are different kinds of truth. The truth relating to the weight of Wes' backpack is called objective truth. Objective truth is a kind of quality or measure for which there is only one answer, no matter who measures it. Subjective truth is a kind of quality or measure for which there can be a different answer for everyone who measures it, therefore, science mostly concerns itself with objective truth, while sciences like philosophy quite often deal with subjective truth," Mrs. Trufflebury explained to them, sending Wes back to his desk with his backpack and allowing time for the concept to sink in throughout the class.
"Remember, how I said at the beginning of this class, that truth is something that assuming it doesn't change over time, can be used to predict and create things that we can use to better our lives, but it goes much farther beyond that. If we know where we've been, and when, and what happened accurately, both objectively and subjectively, we have something we can build upon. Something stable that doesn't move or change, putting at risk everything we built atop of it. Science is just such a thing, but it just so happens that science had an early friend in the form of mysticism a very long, long time ago. A time when we obtained truth from a source that simply could not lie to us. That source was in the sky. The stars. The constellations. From distant places their light came to us from across the heavens, to reveal to us the truth as it happened somewhere so distant from us, that millions if not billions of years passed for that light, that truth to reach us. For next class, I have a project for you. I want each of you to go to a library or read a book and research until you've found what a constellation is, and which one is your favourite constellation and why. You're each to give me one objective truth about the constellation as well. For instance, the star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion, is a Red Giant class of star, whose apparent magnitude is zero point five. That's your homework, and on Friday evening, you are each going to attend with me a special class at 9 PM, where we will visit the Norman Fisher Observatory, and get a look at your favourite constellations in person. Be here at no later than 8:15 PM and we'll be taking a chartered bus from this school. Enjoy the rest of your day, and Wes, try to make sure you have your friends here on time next time," Mrs. Trufflebury smiled at them.
Happiu~isuka chose that very moment to yelp once again, causing Mila to hiccup loudly in order to cover up for the puppy.
"Hic! Pardon me..." Mila blushed, causing the rest of the class to laugh as she tucked Happiu~isuka's head back into her purse as she stood.
Nelony and Shaela stood with Wes, and the five of them left through the classroom door.
"Oh, and Mila?" Mrs. Trufflebury addressed the young Japanese Canadian artist.
"Yes?" Mila stopped just shy of the classroom door, almost having evaded the scrutiny of the teacher.
"Make sure you get your puppy a proper meal and home for next time," Mrs. Trufflebury revealed that she'd known about Mila's ruse the entire time.
"Yes Mrs. Trufflebury," Mila bowed once with an embarrassed smile on her face, and then turned to catch up with her friends.
Of A Curios Nature
"Well that was ever so utterly boring and yet very captivating at the same time..." Shaela said with a pouty lips, which despite that fact still managed to hold Wes' attention quite thoroughly.
"That figures. I thought it was kind of uplifting, given the passing of that poor store owner..." Nelony responded to Shaela's sardonicism.
"Now that was sad, but to tell you the truth, we didn't really know him all that well," Shaela reminded them.
"I went in there once and picked up an old dusty book from his basement collection, but I never read it. Something about mysticism though. He was very sarcastic to me when I bought it. He said: Oh well. Another great book falls victim to the ever so deteriorating grip of pop culture! I suppose next time I see you in here, you'll be wearing the t-shirt with the book's title as if it had been your bling all along," Wes admitted to them what he'd remembered about Sato.
Mila somehow found the statement to be very funny, and covered her mouth as she laughed at Wes' recollection.
"I never met him, but that strange man that grabbed my wrist? It was like I knew him," Mila then admitted to them.
"What? That dirty old man? He was very strange. A bit creepy too. I'd never seen him in that store before and I've been there a few times. The puppy wasn't there last time I went in, and that was only a week ago," Nelony finally admitted to them.
"So the puppy was a gift given to him by B.W. then?" Mila confirmed with her friends, showing them the card that Nelony had given to her when she'd found the puppy.
"I guess so. B.W.? We could ask around maybe?" Neville suggested, suddenly interested in anything that might help him repair his dwindling friendship with Nelony.
"Mr. Norbid! That's who I saw at the shop!" Nelony sudden recalled the man she'd seen leaving Sato's Curios And Treasures.
"You mean that guy that hates squirrels?" Wes confirmed with Nelony.
"And tried to take you away from me... I mean us..." Shaela added, quickly correcting herself, though her foundation hid the fact that she was blushing over her own words.
"Yes. The same one. The man whose grasp seemed to wither everything..." Nelony described for them, recalling her experience as a little girl outside of the school.
"I think that we should look into this..." Mila urged them.
"I have to return my library books... but afterwards...?" Wes responded to Mila and then turned to Shaela.
"Sounds like a mystery to me. Might be fun. A lot better than looking up constellations in a book..." Shaela said to them.
"We can do both at the same time, but first lets get my books back to the library and then we can check out Sato's store again," Wes suggested.
"I still have the puppy with me. We need to get him somewhere safe, and somewhere he can... you know?" Mila said to them, opening the purse enough so that Happiu~isuka could poke his little head out and watch the world as they walked the streets of Shepperton.
"There's a park across the road from Sato's shop. We can take him for a quick little run there," Neville suggested, softening his approach, which seemed to draw Nelony's forgiveness of him.
"Not to mention he might be able to tell us something while we're there," Nelony suggested.
"And I suppose you can speak with animals, can you?" asked Neville responded slightly sarcastically, losing a bit of ground with her.
"That's nature girl. She can speak with birds. Cats. Dogs. You name it. If its got fur or feathers, she's a walking translator for them," Shaela remarked sarcastically about Nelony.
"Then its decided. To the library first, and then to Sato's Curios And Treasures..." Mila stroked Happiu~isuka's head gently as the five of them began their journey into the second half of their day.
...
"So who exactly is this Mr. Norbid to whom you referred?" asked Mila of them as they exited the library.
"Remember how we said that something happened to us a year ago that we all agreed never to speak about again?" Wes began.
"You mentioned that earlier," Mila agreed.
"The three of us, Wes, Shaela and I were in our last class of the day. Our regular teacher for that class, Mr. Corkham was away and so there was a substitute teacher. Someone who introduced himself as Mr. Norbid," Nelony explained to Mila.
"And that's when things got really bizarre..." Wes added.
"And Neville wasn't there...?" confirmed Mila.
"Nope. I was in another class sweatin' beads that day," Neville explained to Mila.
"Mr. Norbid started quizzing us about history, especially about the time of colonization in the sixteen hundreds, and that's when the storm started just over the school. The roof disappeared and the three of us were somehow at the foot of a pyre that was being set to burn Wes to cinders," Nelony continued again.
"Who was going to burn him?" asked Mila.
"Mr. Norbid. He literally grabbed hold of Wes and tried to cast him into the pyre, but we held onto him..." Shaela interjected.
"With a little help..." Nelony began, pausing as she arrived at the part where she'd have to explain the details.
"Help from who...? Neville?" confirmed Mila.
"Nope. I was still tearing up turf jogging for gym class," Neville stated quickly, as if to be sure that none of their topic stuck to him.
"...my plant necklace..." Nelony said quietly.
"Your plant necklace? You mean it helped you?" Mila seemed quite shocked by the prospect, though it was not beyond her imagination.
"Its alright Nelony. Let me explain. She doesn't want to say because you'll think she's gone off the deep end. Bonkers, if you get my meaning?" Wes stepped in for Nelony.
"My plant necklace freed itself and became rooted in the dirt around us. It quickly grew large enough to anchor both Shaela and I to the ground, helping us to hold onto Wes against Mr. Norbid..." Nelony found some confidence to speak about what she'd experienced.
"...Who you said was trying to put Wes into a pyre to burn him, right?" Mila confirmed with Nelony, speaking seriously about the matter and without belittling Nelony for their outlandish experience.
"Yes. Mr. Norbid said that Wes was breaking the line..." Nelony told Mila.
"What line...?" Mila pressed them further.
"The line between Shaela and I, I'd imagined. We never gave it much thought after that experience. We've always been like sisters to one another," Nelony continued.
"Yes, a lot of bickering and criticism of each other," Shaela agreed with Nelony's statement.
"In the way that we're close, though in all truth, we're not related," Nelony admitted.
"And Mr. Norbid definitely thought that was something Wes was interfering with, hence why he tried to toss Wes into the fire... or at least so we reasoned just after the experience," Shaela surmised.
"And then we were suddenly back in class, on the same day, without the thundrous weather, and Mr. Corkham was there taking attendance and that was it. I was thoroughly convinced that I was bonkers at that moment and was ready to check into a rubber room if you get my drift, except that Shaela and Nelony confirmed that we'd all experienced the same thing," the pressure in their conversation built up, as it accumulated in Wes.
"They saved me. I know we said that it was like a group hallucination between us, but in all honesty, I don't know what would have happened if Mr. Norbid had won, and I'd been thrown into the pyre. Shaela and Nelony saved me. It saved me. Her plant necklace," Wes pointed to the blooming flower around Nelony's neck.
"We saved each other," Shaela corrected him, sharing a subtle but heart felt smile.
"Is that the only time this sort of thing happened?" asked Mila.
"So far, yes..." Wes replied.
"No. When I was a little girl, maybe ten or eleven, I had an encounter with Mr. Norbid at that time. It was a sunny day during the lunch break at school, and I was feeding the squirrels over by my favourite tree, when Mr. Norbid shows up, in a dark cloak and all, and grabs up the mother squirrel in his hand," Nelony interrupted Wes.
"He asked me if I liked talking to animals, and said that I was a special child because I could. That's when I noticed that he was hurting the mother squirrel..." Nelony explained to Mila, as well as the rest of them.
"How?" asked Mila.
"He wasn't being violent or anything. He was just stroking its head, but it was strange, like the squirrel was caught in a trance, and it began aging... withering... as if time was suddenly moving very quickly... even the grass and plants around Mr. Norbid... it was all withering and that's when I screamed..." Nelony was lost in that moment of a nearly a decade earlier.
"I take it someone came to help you...?!!!" Mila responded in shock.
"Yes. The birds. They flew down from the tree and began attacking Mr. Norbid. He disappeared and the mother squirrel slowly regained her health... though she'd clearly lost something by the experience. She ran off with her little ones, and that's when the teacher came to get me," Nelony finished her recollection of her tale.
"No. Wes isn't bonkers. All three of them certainly are though, I'd have to agree," Neville remarked sharply, perhaps trying in his own way to diffuse the tension only to have it backfire on him.
"My hero...!" Nelony pushed Neville away and moved closer with Shaela to Wes' side.
Neville kept the mischievous smile on his face, while inside it hurt him that his role in life often seemed to turn out that way.
"So you have had very unique experiences in life, perhaps even paranormal?" confirmed Mila.
"Its not me for sure. My life was pretty boring until I met them. Shaela and Nelony," Wes admitted.
"Thanks mate," Neville responded to Wes' statement, taking it personally as they'd been friends since they'd met five years earlier.
"What are friends for," Wes responded sarcastically, still a bit edgy that he'd even joked with Shaela and Nelony about such a difficult topic.
What hurt Neville the most was that he'd not been part of the experience that had helped Wes to form such a strong bond with Shaela and Nelony. That he'd always be on the outside of their mysterious experiences, and that he'd lost the chance to prove himself to Nelony.
Mila could see much of what was going on from behind her intuitive shroud, though she dared not delve into those aspects of their interpersonal relationship. She hoped that with time, that the four of them would have a much better understanding of each other, especially given their proximity near and far from these experiences.
Neville might have been a jerk at times, but he often bore the weight of fault for his friends unbeknownst to them. Neville clung fearfully to his masculine, as if he'd be losing something he'd never be able to get back simply by trying to put himself in Nelony's shoes.
Wes on the other hand had demonstrated that he had no issue with delving into the feminine aspect of life when making effort to understand the opposite sex. All the while, retaining a confident hold on his maculine side without it dictating his conduct or treatment of the opposite sex. What Neville resisted so fervently, kept him confined to the extreme of his understanding of what it was to be a man, while to Wes, that very idea meant something very different. Mila respected Wes for reaching out to Shaela in the way he was, for she knew that theirs would be a very difficult path on the road to finding each other.
For Nelony and as much so for Neville, she could see that the hurdle they faced involved their overcoming of the extremes. The ability to meet each other in the middle, and without the natural reaction that fear could muster to polarize even the most balanced of souls.
Fear. Like what she'd experienced in her nightmares, watching her parents depart on an airliner that was ultimately destined to explode in a fireball and come crashing to the ground.
All on board dead.
Mila was well acquainted with fear, and it was something with which she contended every day, secretly keeping it at bay, while fooling everyone around her into the idea that she was perfectly perfect.
She could see what it was about her friends that kept them so close together, and so far apart, and yet she could do little to heal herself from the same.
In both cases, she kept quiet about such matters altogether, both in her dialogue with her friends, and with her own inner dialogue of coming to terms with her new life.
When they'd mentioned the fact that Mr. Norbid had referred to Wes as having broken their line, she immediately discovered that Mr. Norbid was in fact correct. There was a line between Shaela and Nelony, as much so as there was a line between the two of them and herself.
The three of them were so uniquely different, and yet shared something so very impossible for others to understand.
Even as they'd gotten to know each other going over the details of their experiences, they began to develop their own internal language between each other. A language completely obscured from Neville, and a language whose short glimpses Wes would occasionally find himself privvy.
"You seem to be quite interested in our side of things, but you've shared nothing with us about yours," Shaela took the bold step forward to confront Mila on the current state of imbalance between them, and Mila intuitively understood the situation even before the words had left Shaela's mouth.
"We're sharing an awful lot with someone who appears to be reciprocating very little thus far," Nelony agreed with Shaela, both of them already knowing that Mila had similar experiences she was withholding thus far.
"I only asked because... I'm experiencing some things of my own. Things often difficult to explain. Like when I woke up at four in the morning today to start a painting of the night sky from my back deck, by the time I'd finished it two hours later, I'd not painted the night sky, but a scene of something that actually happened across the lake from my home. An hour after I'd finished the painting, a utility shed maintained by Shepperton caught fire. I heard the sirens, and so I got on my bicycle and rode over to the site. A short trip which took me about four minutes. When I got to the scene, I took a photo with my phone, that depicted a group of fire fighters putting out the fire, which had grown to become a considerable blaze by that time. When I got back to my painting, I compared the photo with the painting and found them to be almost identical, except that I hadn't painted a scene depicting fire fighters. I painted a scene in the evening depicting a group of campers seated around a campfire. However, the painting and the photo looked almost identical, and that wasn't the first time that has happened..." Mila paused.
"The truth is that ever since I started painting, every single one of them has depicted a situation that occurred later, sometimes much later than when I'd finished the painting..." Mila explained to them.
Mila reached into a side pocket on her purse, pulling forth a laminated photograph from within. She then handed it to Shaela, who took a look at it, immediately recalling have seen the painting before.
"This was the painting on your wall? I've seen this painting before. On the telly. It was on the news. A general interest story on art or something like that. Its quite a piece. Like a pocket of light hidden within a dark halo of shadow. Like the night sky," Shaela remarked about the photo, handing it over to Nelony, who then passed it to Wes, and finally to Neville.
"I was paid several million for that painting. I finished it two months before the accident..." Mila told them, wiping a tear from her eye as she pulled forth another laminated piece of paper, this one from a newpaper a year earlier. It was a photograph taken from a specialized camera at the air traffic control tower at Pearson International Airport. The photo and the news story accompanying it depicted an airliner exploding into a fireball only a minute before it plummeted into the ground, killing all on board.
"The painting is almost identical to the photo...!" Wes said in disbelief.
"That... was the airliner... where my parents... they... they're gone now," Mila said to them as she struggled to keep herself from breaking down.
"I finished that painting a three months before the accident, and the whole time, it was trying to tell me. To warn me. Or maybe... it wasn't that at all. Maybe, I made it happen..." Mila's tears flowed, despite her best efforts to stop them.
All at once Shaela and Nelony understood Mila as she was laid bare before them.
Nelony wondered how differently things might have turned out if her plant had instead of trying to save Wes, had tried to kill him.
Shaela wondered how differently things might have been if instead of the horror that tried to snatch her having ended up in the jaws of that tremendous feline hunter, if it had been her that was the prey.
They were, all three privvy to abilities beyond the comprehension of most, let alone each other. Yet, they had no idea about such things or where to begin in understanding them.
"I'm alright..." Mila wiped her eyes once again, and continued as they arrived at the park across from Sato's Curios And Treasures.
Happiu~isuka immediately recognized the smell of the area and began yipping excitedly, trying to jump from Mila's purse.
She placed her purse on the grass, and zipped it open. Happiu~isuka jumped out of the purse and hopped along in the grass, quickly finding a place to relieve himself, which he did unabashedly, even wagging his little tail after having done so.
He sniffed the area around the picnic bench the group had chosen to remain seated before jumping back into the purse again.
"I'm beginning to see what Mr. Norbid was talking about when he said that we have a line..." Shaela looked to Nelony, and then to Mila.
Mila nodded affirmatively.
"That we do. Now lets see if we can't piece the mystery of Sato and B.W. together, shall we?" suggested Mila.
"Look! There's a specialty shop for pets right there, a few doors down from Reali-Tea and Sato's. I bet you that Happiu~isuka would love a designer biscuit or two..." Nelony suggested, already going through her purse to see if she had enough money for such a purchase.
"Put your money away. I'll get it for him, and lunch for us too after we've checked into the mystery of Sato's shop," Mila assured Nelony, then looking to Shaela, Wes and Neville in turn.
Mila picked Happiu~isuka, purse and all up from the ground and the five of them made their way to Sato's shop.
To be continued in Tales of the Sanctum - Era of the Spellbound - Episode 4: Twisted Paths And Missing Pieces
Credits and attribution:
Special Thanks To Rocket Fuel Lakeshore Blvd West, perhaps the best place in history to get a coffee, circa 2001-2004. Miss you all very much.
Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, PhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Borderline Obsession...
DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.
InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.
Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.
Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.
Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)
Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)
Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.
Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life
Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life
Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts
Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history
Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)
Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art
Tapp Brothers Exercise For Better Motion
Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility
Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools
Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!
Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof
Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.
This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.
