TaralWayne

*A Day in a New Life* Darl’s first day in Fraggle Rock had been one of extraordinary change. One day he had been trapped, facing a grim ending. The barren tunnel leading down from the outer world had led to a dead end, and despite all the help Kiki could provide, he had expected to die there. Yet he had survived, nurtured for several days by the loving Fraggle. Between them they had solved a puzzle that enabled his transformation to live in Fraggle Rock. No sooner than Kiki led him into the Great Hall than they had been surrounded by other Fraggles, dumfounded not only that Kiki had brought a strange Fraggle home, but that she claimed he was really a Silly Creature from Outer Space. Naturally, no one had believed either of them. The next hours were spent in trying to explain how a huge Silly Creature could have squeezed into a Fraggle body, or discovered a hole in Outer Space to join Kiki at home in Fraggle Rock. In the long run, they had been only partly successful in

Another Sherlock Holmes Misadventure… It had been a quiet evening at 221b Baker Street in the apartment shared by Sherlock Holmes and his companion, Dr. Watson. Worse, it had been a slow fortnight that had drugged on after their last adventures had entirely faded from memory. The Adventure of the Society of Accordion Collectors and The Pork Pie Horror had been notable ones. So harrowing had been the events of those escapades they had taxed even inestimable Mrs. Hudson’s housekeeping skills in her effort to keep their linens adequately laundered. Yet now, time was weighing heavily on the World’s Greatest Detective. He looked up from cleaning the dottle from his pipe to see that his erstwhile roommate had dropped his paper in his lap, his head slumped, and was quietly snoring. “I say, Watson! What ho?” “What? What?” cried the good doctor, startled out of his beery drowse. “I’ll have another round, landlord! Oh … it’s you, Holmes,” he said, a little disappointed by

In Order of Narrative Magic Will Find You Origin First Impressions (Walt Wentz) Jan 2018 Let the Moon Dance First Greater Moon The First Song A few months, Darl picks a job as teacher Rock and Yule – A Christmas Story About 15 months after Darl is changed All Fraggles, Then and Now More than a year, the Rock’s first Halloween Where the Magic Is After 3 or 4 years, Kiki’s Hole open again Home is Where Your Stories Are Darl visits Outer Space now and then Heroes and Villains Prior to discovery of

20 Dec 2023 5.427 words Taral Wayne What If, Unca Darl? Darl was running a little late for school. That school was run by Story Teller Fraggle, in whose care the future of Fraggledom lay. Ever since she had put Darl in charge of several classes of youngsters, he had been conscientious in his duties … up to a point. It didn’t take him long to discover that Fraggles of all ages were constitutionally incapable of keeping track of time. If Darl didn’t turn up on time, no one expected him to, and no one would hold him to blame. All the same, he didn’t like to be unnecessarily tardy for his own classes, and was rarely more than a few minutes late! Most of his young students meandered into the teaching ring anywhere from a quarter-of-an-hour late, to moments before class was dismissed. In any case, most Fraggles learned little that they didn’t want to learn, as was appropriate to an entirely undemanding society. But today, Darl found young Arlo Fraggle already in the teaching ring

5 Sep – 22 Dec 2022 [16,138 words] Doc’s Back Door Taral Wayne In all the years since Darl had come to live in Fraggle Rock, he never seen Gobo this excited. He remembered Gobo announcing – mistakenly – that he had found a cavern, more vast than any he had discovered before, which penetrated all the way through the center of the world to … well, infinity. It was not so, of course. Certainly, the mysterious, mist-filled cistern that was at the bottom of that cavern, ought to have been exciting enough. As were the ghostly voices that Gobo encountered in the Cave of Fading Dreams, singing in the distance, but whose owners could not be seen. Not even the tumbled ruins of the other Gorg castle, which Gobo accidentally stumbled over, had excited him this much! What secrets lay there, Gobo mused, what stories remaining untold, what tragedies lost to memory! But Gobo was even more excited by this new discovery than by any of those previous ones, more exhilarated than Darl had ever

Taral Wayne (idea 2015) Begun Feb 2022 [35,079] Magic Will Find You I. Call Me Darl It began with a hole. It was an ordinary hole, of no great size, nor much to look at. It was in a wall where two blocks of concrete had settled, opening a crevice between them that no one would likely notice. Around it was a concrete play area for children … who were not present at the moment. Around the play area was a parkette, with a slide that wasn’t slippery, a couple of hobby horses on tired springs that sagged, causing seasickness in the rider, and a shallow wading pool. The pool had been without water for a long time, so that dust and leaves had collected at the bottom. In other words, this was a rather normal bit of unused urban space in a neighborhood called Sunnydale, in a large Canadian city that had seen better days, but was always on the verge of gentrifying. Yet always without appreciable change. Had anyone been looking at the hole carefully, they might have noticed

It all began because Wembley Fraggle got into a scrape again. And that happened because Red and Gobo were in an argument over which Fraggle was the better explorer. Without question, the spat should never have begun, since everyone knew that Gobo was the not only the best explorer in the Rock, but also nearly the only one among them who had any interest in poking their noses into unfamiliar corners of the World-as-They-Knew-It. Yet, once again, the two friends were stubbornly pitting their wills against one another in a contest! “C'mon, eh,” said Gobo, “You know you never go exploring." “I have so! Lots of times!” snapped the hot-tempered Red. “Not unless I dared you. Even then, half the time you turned back. And you quaked like a Trembling Stink Lily every step of the way.” Red’s demeanor nearly bristled with electricity. “Gobo Fraggle, you take that back!” The other Fraggle held his ground, however. “You've never even followed me out into Outer Space. Not once! You’ve chickened out