Boating In The

Territory

  by Bonzai Yak

  112 pages

Chapter 7: Territory Expeditions (part e)

 

The sixth seed was strange and a bit obscure, we found it next to the grating of a sewer that drew away the excess water from excessive tides. Hard to describe what this seed was like. First we found a small piece of metal, curved like a petal it made a small cup that made me think of the flower I knew as a Jack In The Pulpit. We found lots of other small metal things too, we examined and tried to combine a few until finally we found a tiny metal ball that seemed amazingly big and small at the very same time. We dropped it into the metal cup. It fit perfectly. And all this time while we tried to arrange all the various things we were finding there, we held them all over the metal grate. It seems quite strange when I think of it now, that none of the pieces dropped in. We turned up The Devil to go with this seed.

The seventh seed was underground in a place that was found by following signs some pirates had scratched into rocks and tunnel walls. A piece of metal that was shaped like a pistol, it fit in my hand like it knew what to do though it didn't shoot bullets, it shot something else that you wouldn't expect. The Knight Of Cups shot out of the deck when we checked it to see what we had.

The eighth seed was found on top of a hill overlooking a vast windy sea. It sat on a rock in a comfortable way as it looked out across the waves. It was shaped like a button of friendly blue that had something to do with a small navy patch that was lying abandoned nearby. The seed was waiting in a patient way as if it knew we were sure to come by. Its card from our deck was the King Of Cups.

The ninth seed we found turned out to be the empty one, although we didn't know right then that that was so. This seed was up on the top of the hill of the Island Of The Empty Twelve. This was how we discovered this island and the first time in fact that we found the place where the Empty Circle came together to make their shadows fall out as twelve trees. The card for this was The Hanged Man.

The tenth and eleventh seed were found right next to each other. It took quite a bit of time and trouble to find them there, but the closer we came the easier it was to come a bit closer. We found the quality of each of the seeds as we approached their common resting place. One seed used an organized way of viewing the world, the other one stayed on a path that amused and went in an easy way. A small metal washer, a short length of chain. The cards they chose: Strength and the Page Of Wands.

The twelfth seed was off very far away from all of the others. The place where we found it was a whole small Territory unto itself, in fact it had the entire story of the Lost Expedition laid out within its tiny domain. The path we had followed to find the others was clearly there in miniature, and there at the end of that miniature path was a seed in the form of a miniature stone that was completely complete and just the right size to take home in a pocket. So we picked it up and picked out its card from our tarot deck: the Page Of Swords.

Later that night just a bit before dawn we took all the seeds to a secret island and planted them there in a pine tree garden. Under the ground underneath the soft needles we hoped they'd take root and start to grow so eventually all of the Lost Expedition would return and be known again.

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