Chapter 4

Jimmy didn’t want to learn a new language just now, and felt guilty toward Japan for losing the village dog. Irrational but he now felt uncomfortable there. He wanted to ‘lay low’ so staying in North America wasn’t wise, he well knew that government bureaucracies had no gratitude and he had no intention of being sacrificed on the alter of politics should his identity be revealed so he went to Australia, intending on learning more of the beings in the big Dream like Ma Wombat, he was certain there were more whom he’d like to meet.

He didn’t expect to be met by two fellas in full regalia, who somehow were expecting him however. He went with them, as he was more nearly their shade anyway, more so by the time they got to the places they were going, which were sacred and protected and limited to ‘Abbos’. Jimmy was blessed and purified and painted up, and joined the procession through hidden ways to the sacred places. There, by use of chanting, dance and rhythm/beat they entered the world’s shared Dream, taking Jimmy with them. As they entered the world’s timeless/alltime each one turned into their dream-form, some small creature, an lizard or snake or some larger totem for a few, dingo and wallaby. Jimmy’s Dream-form was a chimera. Bits of this and pieces of that. It was pretty cool.

Jimmy’s invisible friends were fully realized in the Dream time, but Jimmy was glad that Grandfather One-eye hung back and he never got more than a fleeting glimpse of the nightmare killer’s instinct triggering terrifying form, if pissing yourself in terror is instinctual as well as stinky. His guides seemed to take it in stride, it seems that all sorts of things are in the timeless, and some are pretty frightening.

Jimmy had a thought, and reached into his pocket where he kept his tuned diamond crystal. It was such an automatic gesture that the crystal was in his paw/claws before he could think that he was a chimera and didn’t have pockets. He now had his tuned crystal and it was humming happily, creating an area of brightness and solidity around them in the dim of Dream time. Various denizens gathered closer like moths drawn to a lantern, while other lurkers which had been showing interest in the little group of visitors pulled further back into the contrasting dimness, not wanting to be solidly defined and constrained by an objective reality.

Jimmy’s new friends were astounded, by his being able to manifest an object in the alltime, and such an object! They all had to admire it, and listen to the pure exhilarating joyful harmonics it spontaneously emitted, as it never before had done in the sea or on the earth. They were also surprised that Ashe and Grandfather One-eye seemed to fully associate with Jimmy, as well as being aware that he had Ma Wombat’s blessing. That was why they felt Jimmy wasn’t in horrible danger entering the Dream time. Not any danger at all now, with his crystal. In fact, his crystal was drawing all the friendly dwellers of the Dream, encouraging their association with Jimmy. Jimmy was very happy, this is what he had wished to do ever since his collaboration with Ma Wombat.

Timeless or not eventually it was time to go, and they returned to a sacred dawn, and after a ceremonial cleansing and purifying that helped put a wall between the world and the Dream, they left the sacred places and returned to the men’s families for a celebration feast of guanna and crock-tail. Jimmy was accepted and felt welcomed by these people with their ancient culture.

Soon enough though the turning of the seasons drove Jimmy north again, it was just a fact of his new extended life. He took some time exploring the dwindling rain forests and established zones protected by superstitious dread, with help from his invisible friends, mostly Grandfather One-eye and Ashe, but numerous dwellers from the Dreamtime on occasion joined in. No one dared to cut the Forbidden Jungle. Jimmy enjoyed lurking and prowling in the dark understory, watching all the varied plants insects reptiles birds amphibians snakes rodents monkeys and predators interact in an equilibrium of balance and give and take. The jungle held millions of untold stories, interactions between various life.

Somehow Jimmy felt cleansed by watching the cycle of life and gave up the residual anger and guilt over Jinjur which had been making him unhappy. Now with a renewed joie de vivre Jimmy felt willing to learn new languages again. He wanted something useful on both sides of the equator, and decided Spanish was the one most spoken in both the northern and southern hemispheres, after English that is. Jimmy had by virtue of working in a landscape supply yard been exposed to Spanish quite a bit, so he wasn’t slow when he applied himself to making it his.

He traveled to various Countries where it was spoken in various accents, and his improved ear and vocal control allowed him perfect mimicry of every accent he encountered. His improved memory allowed him an enhanced vocabulary which he had to learn how to tailor to the accent. It was all well and good to be called ‘Professor’ when speaking in an upper class accent, but it rubbed people wrong if that highfalutin’ fancy talk was said in everyday normal people accent. Puttin’ on airs.