Paranatellonta

The Challenge 

Was she sure her way of interlocking the thread, again and again, was the best way to create a soft, warm blanket? Was she certain this improved on the Goddess’ technique of weaving? Was she willing to take a stand, present her work and be judged by it? 

Of course not. But Goddesses rarely take into account humans’ real intentions. They see a moment, spin a story in their mind, and act upon it without further consideration. If the human was knitting, she must have decided that spending time at the loom was inferior and bear the consequences.

When the Goddess appeared and spoke of a challenge, the human feared the worst. However, this was the Goddess of weaving, of combining threads, and as skilled as she was, she could also weave an opportunity out of two different ideas. 

The human would admire her company while knitting, bring together all the different textiles in one work of piety, and the Goddess would add one more skill under her protection.

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We’re celebrating the 430th edition of Paranatellonta! This story was written by Fie, and the photo that inspired it was taken by Minerva. A big thank you and congratulations to our wonderful model Mattea, who finished this beautiful blanket after more than 3 years of knitting!

Next time we’re back to Fie taking the pictures and Minerva writing the stories. Paranatellonta videos on YouTube are currently on summer break, but keep an eye out for some summer specials in August.

Thank you for reading!

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Escape from Heaven

Tiny footsteps echoed loudly through the church until the child kneeled on the floor and looked up, aiming words directly at God, or at least at the high ceiling. As luck would have it, the child caught a glimpse of a figure in red and black with a long forked tail.

“No panic,” the Devil urged from where he was clinging to a thick, slanted wooden beam. “I’m only a minstrel still in my stage garb after thinking it would be safe to speak my own mind during a performance for the city’s nobility. I had to run and hide, and they did search for me, but not this high up—which I think is ironic, in the house of God.”

The child was still staring, and after a moment of silence asked: “Are you trying to break into Heaven, using the beams of the church as a ladder?”

“Actually,” the minstrel replied, remembering how much more effective than the truth stories can be, “I’ve only just become a demon after breaking out of Heaven. Would you be a dear and check whether there aren’t any humans outside, guarding the church? You’ll understand it’s only safe for me to go out if there aren’t, otherwise I’d terribly tempted to corrupt them.”

As the minstrel slipped away into freedom, he said a grateful prayer to his young lookout and promised himself never to waste his talents on an unworthy audience again.

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Somehow I haven't gotten over the subject of heatwaves yet...

This 15th episode of Paranatellonta on YouTube takes us back to the 232nd edition, Wasteland, from April 2018.

Also want to hear it in Dutch? All my translations come out of my own brain and are read into a microphone by my own voice, no AI involved. Watch the Dutch video here.

Lack of Attack

For so long, a holiday in Oz had been a dream, but now Melia was finally here, happy to check off every tourist trap on the list.

Over a century after Dorothy Gale’s adventure in Oz, many of the places she’d visited were admired daily by streams of people both from Oz and from Melia’s world, celebrating how Dorothy had initiated open contact between both realms. The main attractions were the orchards and flower fields near the spot where Dorothy’s house had landed and the Great Wizard’s palace in the Emerald City, but Melia wanted to have an authentic experience first, and that was exactly what the Deadly Poppy Field offered. Here, both Dorothy and the Lion had fallen asleep, and they might never have woken up if it wasn’t for their friends the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, who’d been unaffected by the poppies’ somniferous scent because they weren’t made of flesh. These days, a team of synthetic staff was always on hand to carry the tourists out to safety, where they’d soon wake up from a refreshing nap.

Melia had been looking forward to that nap for years, and so she was skipping merrily amongst the rows of colourful poppies, waiting for sleep to catch her. She reached the other side of the poppy field and turned back, still waiting, while other humans and animals around her had dropped down fast asleep before they were even halfway through. When she arrived at the start of the track again, she wasn’t feeling sleepy in the slightest, and her skipping faltered. She held up her arm in the Ozian sunlight, studying the glittering of her skin, so similar to the synthetics’ polymer exoskeletons. In thirty-five years she’d never been made aware that she wasn’t an organic life form, so what else was she going to discover about herself during this trip?

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King Par’s Party

It had taken a very, very long drive for Ruby to escape the overwhelming city. Ironically, now that she’d finally arrived in the long stretches of greenery where she intended to hike, she’d give anything to find a car park. Finally, a sign pointed her to where these tiny, winding roads had been hiding one of them. As she got out, she realised that she was standing in the middle of a perfect circle of buttercups…and then the ground gave way beneath her.

Par, the fairy king, threw the very best kind of parties: dancing was, of course, encouraged, but there were also cakes, the freshest mixed juices, and boardgames of all types. King Par—short for Paranatellonta, not because these fairies were particularly into astrology but because he was named after their favourite source of short stories inspired by photos—danced and played with Ruby all night, and she forgot all about the worries in her concrete life. By sunrise, she decided to leave, and the fairy king merely smiled and let her. Oddly enough, the sign pointing to the car park looked very different in the daylight: it hadn’t been so bent before, so worn, so overgrown with moss; the houses shining their lights in the distance had changed their shapes, and the trees and flowers looked untouched by a human hand. Those of you familiar with fairy stories will know that time passes differently in the fairy realm, and that it only ever moves forward, no matter how hard Ruby tried to walk backwards into the circle of buttercups.

“Ah well,” the fairies said, holding out their hands to invite her to another dance, “what would be the point in returning to a time when ‘parking’ had to do with concrete rather than trees?”

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It's 32°C today, so have a refreshing new Paranatellonta video!

Rabbit's Restaurant was the 152nd edition from July 2016. Almost 10 years old!

Rather read it in text form? Find the original Tumblr post here.

Grandfather’s Papercut

In the house of Grandfather Mouse hung a colossal picture of a black blossoming tree—colossal, at least, in the eyes of the four little mice.

“I nibbled its shape out of paper myself, every petal and every leaf,” said Grandfather proudly when his grandchildren asked him about it. “It depicts the happiest day of my life, and I would say you are now old enough to hear the story.”

This, of course, is something grandchildren are universally glad to hear, and they gathered around him on plump, velvet cushions and pricked up their tiny, round ears.

“There was a time when there was no greenery to hide in, no grass or dandelions, no food or fair, when fierce winds swept away grey ashes over a plain of emptiness and sorrow.”

“And that was your happiest day?” asked one of the little mice sceptically.

“It became that, when I went exploring and found a young apple tree raising its thin branches on which it was growing small, pink blossoms. I climbed onto one of those branches and suddenly felt filled with hope and joy, because, while it might have been just a single tree growing on its own, it was as if I knew the future: both mice and farmers returning to the land, litters of children and grandchildren born in safety, the farmers’ cats so overfed and lazy we’d never have to fear them.”

“We won’t fear a cat when we know Edgar!” giggled the smallest grandchild, who was thinking of their neighbour, a large tuxedo cat who spent his days either basking in the sun or giving Grandfather and Grandmother rides on his back to the market.

Grandfather smiled, and wished the children would never have to spare a thought to the beginning of his story, or to the reason why the paper was charred.

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Cloudy weather put me back indoors to read you all a story about clouds.

Enjoy Cirrus, the 385th edition of Paranatellonta.

Rather just read it in text form? Find the original Tumblr post here.

Hidden Straw

I hid my final straw among the flowers, and the cat looked for it relentlessly.

He tore up each box, regardless of the magical objects they might hold. He crashed into stacks of books until they fell over and blew out spells, ghosts, potential doom. He opened the oven and crumbled my bakes, shredded my boots, slashed through my broom’s brakes. He hopped onto a bench where I’d placed the beaker in which I’d brewed myself a boost, and beat it so it tipped onto the carpet. He batted at flowers floating in a test tube, an experiment that had yet to reveal its goal and now never would. The cat knew he was getting close to the end of his quest, and he crashed and burst and boomed into every plate that I had kept spinning.

I wasn’t angry with him, even if I stayed close to the last straw throughout all of this—but my patience kept stretching, no matter how thin. The boxes, the books, the bakes, the boots, the broom, the brew, and the blooms were all out there because I hadn’t finished the tasks they represented. Once I did, the cat would no longer be able to get to these objects, and peace would return to my brain.

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[Image description: The photo looks down on a small, brown side table with a transparent glass vase of white flowers, a tealight in a round wooden holder, a small framed flower painting, a small transparent glass bottle with purple flowers, a gold-coloured dish in the shape of a ginkgo leaf, a black cylindrical candleholder with a circular pattern of holes letting out the light from the sides, a piece of cross-stitch embroidery standing up in an embroidery ring and depicting an orange cat reaching out to a steaming purple cup on top of a stack of books, and a transparent cat out of metal wire that holds a test tube filled with daffodils, so that they form a flower crown for the cat.]

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I met a new friend in Domain Kiewit, and recorded the 313th edition of Paranatellonta: Fishy Fortune!

Chasing the Gods

“They’re almost here,” whispered Safirne, child-goddess of wisdom, while she hugged her fluffy cloud in the shape of a duck close to her chest.

“They might still get tired and give up,” comforted Tirleva, Safirne’s parent and the elected ruler of all the gods of Nerfia. However, even as xe was petting Safirne’s long, dark hair, xyr gaze didn’t move from the group of cyclists who were steadily climbing the mountain. The top reached all the way up to the gods’ palace in the clouds, and if these humans on their bicycles persisted, there was no gate or guardian to keep them from walking in and making unpredictable requests. Granting the wish of one human might have negative consequences for another, but would they react peacefully to being denied?

Against all expectations, the cyclists didn’t dismount their bikes until they effectively stood in the palace hall, panting and sweating but somehow cheerfully elbowing each other in the ribs.

As Tirleva majestically strode in with Safirne peeking out from behind xyr skirt, the humans froze and stared, and one of them gasped: “The gods!”

“Brave travellers, what is your request?” asked Tirleva.

“Oh,” said one of the cyclists, doffing their helmet respectfully, “we didn’t come to request anything, but merely to conquer the mountain—and we completed that challenge!”

After a festive meal, the cyclists started on their long descent, and Tirleva and Safirne found themselves watching them again—this time not with worry, but feeling proud of how their own creations still managed to baffle them.

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Wrong Story

We forget the stories we tell in a hurry.

Every evening I came up with something, anything, to make our young queen smile or think or, when I was on particularly good form, both at the same time. We’d sit in the Garden of Wonders, looking out at the sunset, she in one of her floaty pink nightgowns, me in my uniform, our imaginations on fire. And then, all of a sudden, she banished me.

Not just me, everyone. In mere months, the Garden of Wonders turned into the most desolate place in the country, where no bird would land, no flower would grow, not a single living thing would accompany our queen. All because, told a chambermaid who’d heard her crying on the night before our eviction, the queen in the story had failed her entire country when she’d let other beings come close—so our queen had decided she couldn’t take the same risk.

You see now why it was my responsibility to return to her, layers of curses, catapulted rocks, and fences made of complicated spiked chains be damned. Very little was left of me when I reached her, but I knew that it would be enough. She yelled, she kicked, but in the end she leaned in to hear the story her old friend told her, and in that same end, all would be well with her and her country.

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As another spring celebration, I'm taking you into our local Japanese Garden in this video!

Enjoy Holding the Sun, the 328th edition of Paranatellonta.

Flood Defence

It’s raining again, after a drought lasting from late spring until early autumn. Now, of course, everything is flooding, and buckets, rubber boots, and water pumps are in high demand.

So am I, as a dragon biologist specialised in swamp species.

When I approach the flood-meadow, the mossy fallen tree trunks lift up from the shallow water and bend towards me: one pointy head at the trunk’s end giving me a curious stare, a wider head growling threateningly, all six of them equipped with dangerously large horns and sharp teeth.

These days, even when your house isn’t developing leaks, there’s still a chance that a branch-like claw with mossy scales will tear into your roof and rip it plain off. People always get annoyed at me when I assure them there’s a bright side to the growth of these hydras’ population.

I place my foot forward, my moss-green rubber boot hovering just above the surface of the shallow water, and then I make it come down thrice: splash, splash, splash.

The hydra’s six heads turn towards the noise, all with different expressions of delight, and then lower themselves.

Gulp, gulp, gulp, and the beast has drained the entire meadow by quenching just a fraction of its thirst.

Sure, it is a pest that you need to show them the water because they aren’t bright enough to realise they’re literally sleeping in it, but if you splash your boots in enough puddles to let them know they’re there, these “impervious pests” may just save the world.

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We're celebrating early spring with Paranatellonta!

This is the 302th edition, The White Crocus, read to you by Minerva Cerridwen.

The same story is also available in Dutch.

The Queen’s Mistake

Glittering flakes and gleaming bubbles fell from the sky and announced the Snow Queen’s arrival that morning.

The city had lost its colour under her ruling. Everyone was gloomy, hiding under dark caps whenever they weren’t running away from the snow and the freezing cold altogether. This wouldn’t do, the Queen decided: her visit was a reason for celebration, and so she commandeered a crane and forcibly lifted everyone’s spirits.

Now her people danced, all right, and they dressed in bright colours and played the music of a cheerful heart. As they did so, their moods thawed, and they felt better and better. So good, in fact, that they retrieved their courage. Clapping their hands, stamping their feet, their dance became a march, and all of the citizens whirled towards the square where the Queen was to greet them. They demanded the right to rule themselves, and the Snow Queen saw that they were too many and too powerful. She fled, taking her clouds of snow with her, and at long last, spring returned to the city.

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The Bonsai Tree

He had heard the stories of the giants. They could reach the clouds, their roots touched the middle of the earth. They harboured birds and squirrels and caterpillars. But while stories of gods are entertaining, he was happy not to be one of them. He did not need all the excitement, all the heroics. He was perfectly comfortable in his quiet home, branches carefully trimmed and pruned every so often. He moved with the seasons and enjoyed the rest in winter. His leaves had travelled onwards and he came back to his centre. Soon, new buds would sprout and he would be ready to dazzle everyone around him. But first, a few more months of sleep.

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We’re celebrating the 420th edition of Paranatellonta! This story was written by Fie, and the photo that inspired it was taken by Minerva.

Next time we’re back to our usual roles. Thank you for reading!

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