h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Late one evening, in an improbably damp August, a telephone rang in a pleasant suburban living room.

The Lady of the House answered, and promptly scowled. She passed the receiver to her cowering husband, announcing imperiously that it was his "favourite, long-legged blonde".

She was quite wrong. The voice from the past was that of a male, sleek and black, with rather minimal pedal appendages.

"Hello, Pinniped", said Lion. "Remember me?"

And the walls shimmered and dissolved into frosted timbers, and the polar gale ripped through. And nothing would ever be quite the same again...

Pinniped looked around at the bleak and barren place that he had come to land in.

He remembered this place. This was where he had been born, in this barren land but his people were here no more.

There was a sad tear in his eyes, as he looked at the frozen lands.

This is where the golden wheat had grown,
This is where the sun shone,
This is where the wind breezed,
This is where it had been fun to sneeze,
This is where he had met Mary,
This is where he had learned to parry,
This is where they had got together,
This was no more.

A tear from his eyes flew away in the howling gale...

I take it that none of you are actually interested in Lion, then?

( and to Lion, it would appear)

oh ... Hello Pinniped....

I thought you were trying to start a continual story, where I would make something happen... then someone else... then someone else.... never two in a row....

I was waiting for you to continue the story on a bit.... and I would do the same....

but I guess it was about a certain lion???

Hi bc
Yeah, it's a real person, dressed up.
She introduced me to hootoo, three years ago. At the very beginning, she was feeding me ideas through RL e-mail, and so I wrote her into the story of the Pier. But we lost touch, and I never did find out her hootoo persona.
She phoned out of the blue a few weeks ago. This was a cryptic way of letting people know. I'll tell more of the story one day, if she doesn't do so herself, because it's neat.
Don't worry about the misinterpretation, yeah? Chain-stories like that are . We did one, and tried another, but that second one hasn't quite clicked. Maybe sometime. Just now, I'm trying to be a little more rooted in my writing, though I'm not sure that peers see it quite that way.
Pin

I wondered if you'd found the Lion, or a Lion, or a seaLion, or were just fishing, or had been fishing and caught a black cat with short legs...and waited to see what happened next.

So...

"Late one evening, in an improbably damp August, a telephone rang in a pleasant suburban living room.

The Lady of the House answered, and promptly scowled. She passed the receiver to her cowering husband, announcing imperiously that it was his "favourite, long-legged blonde".

She was quite wrong. The voice from the past was that of a male, sleek and black, with rather minimal pedal appendages.

"Hello, Pinniped", said Lion. "Remember me?"

And the walls shimmered and dissolved into frosted timbers, and the polar gale ripped through. And nothing would ever be quite the same again..."

Sounds less like reportage and more like fantasy to me. How would a Lion hold a phone?