A story about an unlikely friendship that occurs on an expedition to gather chamomile.
Somewhere between waking and sleeping on our journey towards the unfathomable deep, there comes a thin moment where we have one foot in the waking world and the other is in that other world where we relinquish conscious control.
Pausing here and straddled between two planets that drive one another like gears, the attentive traveler will notice a narrow door only wide enough to sidle through.
This is the border of sleep, where imagination and reality are braided together, a chasm in the crust of consciousness, venting the hot pumice of imagery into the irresistible magma of narrative.
Welcome to episode 42 of Stories from the Borders of Sleep, a semi and hopefully increasingly regular podcast of curious tales from bordersofsleep.com featuring original stories by your host Seymour Jacklin.
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The soundtrack for this week's episode is by Uke Mad his album Lights off, which is available from magnitude.com so if you're ready to journey with me, then I shall begin Lady Isabella by Seymour Jacklin Milly took her basket with her, intending upon filling it with chamomile for drying.
As she walked to the gate, Lady Isabella waddled up and quacked at her, as if to say, can I come too?
Go on, said Millie, opening the gate.
The snails are always juicier on the other side, I suppose.
Quack, said Lady Isabella.
She flip flopped through the gate, then broke into a run with her neck stretched out.
Got it.
She buried her beak in the grass of the verge and came up looking pleased with herself.
Millie closed the gate behind them.
Come on then, she said, starting up the lane.
Lady Isabella followed, looking left and right.
Occasionally another snack would distract her and she'd dart into the hedge to snarf it, but she kept up very well, walking behind and to the side of Millie's right ankle.