#the gentle ghoul/the bloody flower

[the-silver-peahen-residence]

||OC#3 muse tag dump||

Ichika Kobayashi

Nobuko Yukimura

Tadao Hashimoto

Isabella Arias

[jossambird]

Rooted in your love - P2: Secondo

Cardinal Copia × F!Reader, Platonic Primo, Secondo and Terzo × F!Reader

Word count: 2.2k

Warnings: Secondo’s anger and bitterness, Rough men letting themselves feel, Hanahaki Disease and all that comes with that (choking, being sick, acceptance of death, etc), Eventual Smut, Eventual 18+ acts, Angst, Unrequited Love... or is it.

Summary: You couldn't pinpoint when exactly you had fallen in love with the newly arrived Cardinal, but one was certain: you had Hanahaki disease.

Chapter Summary: Its on a Wednesday afternoon that Papa Emeritus II, also known as Secondo, finds you hidden in an abandoned classroom, fury evident in his harsh visage. Little did he know that this singular encounter would turn his life sideways, forcing him to reevaluate his priorities.

AO3 Link

Part 1 🌿 - Part 3 🌿 - Part 4 🌿 - Part 5 🌿 - Part 6 🌿

It had been on a Wednesday afternoon, whilst thunder and heavy rain descended onto the Church, that Papa Emeritus II, also known as Secondo, found you hidden in an abandoned classroom, fury evident in his harsh visage.

Angry was an understatement for what he felt, patience at an all-time low. Too many times had he now been told of your decreasing grades, your increasing absences in the Cardinal’s classes, and of your shirked daily duties around the Ministry.

He had originally believed that his elder brother had taken care of righting such misbehavior, seeing as the two of you had seemingly grown close over the past weeks, but Secondo found that he had not. Rage had coursed through him, being told once more of your increasingly childish behavior, heavy steps announcing his irate state to anyone within earshot.

Whatever he had expected to see upon finding you had not been what he happened upon, mismatched eyes gazing on the scene before him.

There, wrapped in what he now recognized to be one of Primo’s old scarves, was you, bloodied hands hurriedly wiping at whatever you were trying to hide from his gaze.

“Do not believe you can hide from me-“ He angrily hissed out, surging forward to roughly grasp at your wrist, intend on finding out what exactly you were hiding-

There, in your now opened palm, lay a bunch of bloodied yellow petals, wet, as if freshly- Slowly had he turned his bewildered gaze to your lips, his rapid-fire suspicion confirmed as he took in your pale bloodstained lips, fearful eyes staring back at him.

Had this been the reason of your sudden friendship with Primo? Had you turned to his brother in your time of need, knowing full well of Primo’s adoration of all things related to flowers and gardening?

Surprisingly, it was with Secondo where no words of acknowledgement or condolences were exchanged, only silence as he took in your form once more, as if seeing you for the first time all over again. The second Emeritus son could see how pale your skin gleamed, your small hands shaking in his now relaxed hold.

You would have figured that you’d be too tired for tears at this point in time, but you were wrong, quiet sobs wracking your tired body as the man above you remained silent.

Your sobs struck a cord within Secondo as dissimilar eyes took in the way tears ran down your bloodied face. Guilt tore at his insides, guilt of being the reason behind the fear swirling in your eyes, most likely staring back at him in wait for the rage he had entered the classroom with. Usually, he’d have found satisfaction in the acts of scaring Siblings and Ghouls… but there had been none in this moment.

“Who?” Had been the only word the second eldest Emeritus son uttered as he helped you to your feet, a gentle but firm hand resting upon the small of your back as it veered you instead towards the only place he knew would perhaps have answers.

Agitatedly did you resist as you quickly realized where Secondo was leading you, resulting in a harsh bout of coughs erupting from your already sore throat as you twisted out of the Papa’s hold.

It was almost sobering, almost, to gaze up towards his visage, watching as barely concealed realization painted his usually scowling features. You couldn’t help yourself, slightly fearful at the thought of invoking Papa Secondo’s rage once more, wondering what he would do. Never had you heard of him being cruel, but the fear remained, clawing its way into your guilty heart.

“I a-apologize Papa, I cannot-“ You tried between bloodied coughs, regret freely coursing through your veins as you caught sight of the now bloodied scarf Primo had gifted you.

“Capisco. Come, let us retire to my chambers while we await Primo’s return.” Secondo whispered with a gentleness you had not known him to have as he veered you to…

“Papa, this way is the way towards-“

“The kitchens? Sì. Do not worry, bella, I have not yet grown senile like mio padre.” The Papa beside you chuckled, a hint of playfulness present within his expressive eyes.

There, Secondo prepared you a hot glass of honeyed milk, lips pursed in thought.

“How long?” He asked, demeanor soft, hands occupied but eyes searching, quizzically gazing at your throat as if to see if flower stems would poke out.

“That I have loved him?” You replied, feeling the slight tingle that came with your illness whenever your mind drifted to the Cardinal. Oh, how you craved for his touch right now, insides aching to feel his gloved hands placed upon your body, lips against your-

Fingers snapped loudly beside your ear, pulling you out of your treacherous daydreams and back to the cruel world you inhabited.

“No. How long will you allow this disease to wreak havoc upon your body before considering the surgery?” He repeated, gentle eyes gazing back at you as he turned away from the stove, skeletal paint illuminated in the low lights. His visage appeared younger like this, gone was the anger that had resided there, now replaced with tenderness you had never associated with the man before you.

You felt guilty of being so surprised at the man’s behavior, inwardly berating yourself. Of course he was a human with human emotions, capable of softness and kindness, capable of being gentle… Never had you been allowed to see this side of him- You cut your thought off, wondering instead if ANYONE had ever been allowed to see this side of him except for his brothers.

You knew he had a point though, Primo himself had told you many times. Exactly how many times had Primo held your hand as you tried to drift off to sleep, unaware that you could hear him questioning himself outloud?

‘How long will your fragile body last, Bambino, until you are no longer able to breath?’

“As long as I am able-“

“Y/N!-”

There, now standing in the kitchen’s opened doorway, stood the man that you had so desperately fallen in love with, frantic eyes searching before landing on your own. It felt heavenly to be able to breath all of a sudden, throat unclouded of the stems growing within you as his eyes roamed your visage before flittering to your left, the imposing stature of Papa Emeritus II beside you.

“In a hurry, Cardinale?” He quipped, tone verging on mocking, unyielding in his position beside you, remaining just as close as he had been.

“N-No Papa, I eh… I was looking for Sorella Y/N..” Copia stuttered, visibly too intimidated by Secondo to continue speaking.

Softly, you turned fully towards the man who unknowingly held your heart, smile gentle as you spoke.

“What may I help you with, Cardinal Copia?”

Your words gained his attention once more, rewarding you with a shy tilt of his lips as he gazed at you in silence, cheeks coloring as he finally spoke.

“O-Oh- Sì, Sorella Esther has arranged a little eh… private party, in her and Sorella Anna’s chambers, I was curious if you would like to-“

You would have laughed had you not been so heartbroken at his words, ears ringing loudly as you continued to stare at the man but no longer hearing him or his nervously cute laughter. Briefly your gaze languidly flickering down, staring at the beautiful black paint on his lip, beautiful black paint that would surely be on Sister Esther’s inner thighs come morning. Beautiful black paint that would be smeared onto Sister Anna’s breasts as she fucked the man you loved, the man you were dying for-

Copia surged forward, hands outstretched as if to cup your face or hands or-

“I believe one asks for permission before touching someone, no?” Came Secondo’s booming tone, once more pulling you out of the torrent of nightmares that would most likely haunt you, a strong hand resting on your hip as it pulled you away with a haste you were ill prepared for but thankful for nonetheless, pulling you away from the confused Cardinal Copia. There Copia remained, hands outstretched, lips parted, frozen where he stood.

“Thank you for the offer, Cardinal, but I must decline. Perhaps another time.” Monotone was your voice, choosing to turn instead towards Papa, your eyes unseeing as you spoke.

“Is your milk done, Papa Secondo? I fear we have strayed for far too long, Papa Primo will be quite angry with us for making him wait.”

You knew it was a lie, Secondo knew it was a lie, but the Cardinal you had fallen in love with did not.

“Yes, you are right, dolcezza. Goodnight Cardinale di Topo, enjoy your little party.” Came Secondo’s sneered words, a wide palm pressed softly to your lower spine, guiding you away from the man you ached for.

You did not turn, missing entirely the way Cardinal Copia cringed, sorrow evident for all to see as he watched you walk away.

——————

“You are safe here, dolcezza. Let it out.” Secondo spoke the moment you entered his chambers, running hurriedly to his bathroom. There, out of sight, the second Emeritus son listened as you coughed harshly before the sound of vomiting graced his ears, your body emptying itself into what he hoped was his toilet.

He had heard tales of how tragically beautiful Hanahaki sickness was, flowers blooming from the corpses of men and women affected by it but none of what he currently saw was beautiful.

Nothing was beautiful in the way he aided you by holding your hair out of your face, allowing you to freely be sick without fear of dirtying yourself further.

Nothing was beautiful in the way your body shook, hands shaking as you gripped the toilet seat above you, trying to stop yourself from sobbing.

Nothing was beautiful in the way you let yourself sink further into despair for a man, who, visibly did not see you for anything more than a body to use, if Secondo went off of the Cardinal’s earlier words.

No, Secondo concluded, nothing was beautiful about the Hanahaki disease, inwardly wreaking havoc on your body and heart. More seconds passed by before he gently helped you stand, a hot hand secured at your lower back as you held onto the countertop of his sink.

“Are you able to remain standing by yourself, bella?” He softly spoke, waiting in silence until you shook your head before speaking once more.

“Va tutto bene. Now, follow your Papa, come.”

Numb were you as you did as told, following the man as he sidestepped to turn on his shower. The sound of water running immediately had a calming effect over you, eyes closing to relish in the sound.

“Was the reason why you were hiding in that classroom today because of il Cardinale?” He suddenly asked, voice appearing rough as if it were he who had just been sick. Why was he reminding a dying woman of the man she was dying for?

You reminded him of himself, a younger Secondo who had been hopeful, eager even, secretly hoping to find love before abandoning hope, turning bitter with old age.

But you? Oh, you were in love, young and in love and so very afraid, dying slowly and painfully for the very love you felt.

Briefly, the look of fear you’d held within your eyes while looking up at him flashed before his mind’s eye, guilt licking at his consciousness.

“Mi dispiace, for my earlier irate behavior. It was not-“

A gentle hand halted all remaining words, patting the skull-faced man’s arm in a seeming apology.

“Papa, please do not apologize to me, I am but a Sibling of Sin. You do not owe me anything, certainly not when it was because of my own fault that you were angered so.”

For a brief moment, only the sound of running water could be heard within the small bathroom.

“What kind of Papa would I be, if I were not able to admit my wrongs?” The second son of the Emeritus bloodline spoke, genuinely sincere in his-

“You’d be Papa Nihil.”

You were unprepared for the towel thrown at your face within such close range, an unappealing sound of surprise exiting you as Secondo laughed, the gravelly sound surprising you.

“Very funny, Sorella. Now that you feel well enough to insult me, join me in the living room after showering...”

“Yes Papa-“

“Puzzi di gatto bagnato.” Secondo finished with a smirk, quickly removing himself with a speed you would not have expected from the man before you could retaliate.

——————

Ironically, Primo was the one to arrive late back to his chambers, surprised to see that a small note had been pushed under his door during his absence. He knew this writing, worry pumping through his veins as he rushed to his brother’s chambers, hand pushing the door open-

“Ah, Papa Primo! Hurry, you have to see what Papa Secondo did to our island while I was washing your scarf!” You angrily huffed, one hand poised towards the TV, your dilapidated Animal Crossing island staring back at the three of you. Primo couldn’t help himself, laughing as you softly scowled the guiltless Papa seated beside you.

Tags: @moonlit-masquerade

[underestimated-heroine]

"Autumnal", by Ray Harvey

Summer dies, the long days wane away. The heat in the sky melts like lead to liquid pools. The hills beyond are as white as clay. Now creep in the gentle autumn ghouls, Trailing behind their silken shawls of Lethe- an mist. Shadows warp, gourds enlarge. And now what is always there but not Quite clear — that blot lurking on the vision’s marge — Emerges with the year: unresting death, The slow blood sloshing with every breath Upon the bone-carved door. The senses clot.

Blue, blue days, windy days. The brittle clack of Leaves and their soft collisions in the dust. Dusty smells, leaf-fractured streets, the trees above Hissing thinly, like a pit of snakes. Must It all be quite so beautiful yet so hard to bear? This softly killing air with its furnace blast Of fume, its whispered currents of decay, Must it seep into my bones? Must it come so fast? One by one the rib cages of the leaves tear From their stems like wax. Big trees go bare. The glare Is great, extinction certain. Life won’t let life stay.

Now the morning grass lies flat, blanched and cold with frost. The sickles swing in the apple trees Whose limbs are stiff and leak like ink across The voided sky. A chopper fleet of bees Sack the throat of the friendly hollyhocks. They sweetly sway, but at what cost? At what cost are These people-sized flowers born? Why bloom At all? To what end? There at the field’s far Edge, where scarecrows spill their guts and the pale shocks Of corn glow white, the thud of fruit sounds like rocks On the hardened earth, and a goat coughs in the gloom.

The hunt sweeps out. Stag are bled, hung from their hocks In the boughs: throat-gashed, reeking, with antlers chipped, Disgorging chunked gallons into the groin-high stalks Where late the grasshoppers arced and flipped. Sweetly sour fall, with all your puffball that glow Like alien skulls in the lemon-lime glades, Glades choked with moss and mold. Yeasty earth, rains Distilling punky tea as color fades And hoof prints are raised intaglio On the forest floor. Across the ground below, Vapor hangs above the stubble plains.

And scuffed-up apples, so convex And so supple, come raining down with muted Clops. The cottonwoods are spending gold. Complex Odors — woodsmoke, crushed grass, denuded Bark — cast a pall. The sun is warm, the water cold, Streams die quiet in their empty beds. Stout-chested robins with their wind-mussed Hair, like shabby Halloween décor, jerk their heads, Leer. Last gnats everywhere ignite gold In the long last rays of the sun. Old Flies fall off. The summer moths have turned to dust.

We live a little while, a little while And we die. Our wings are mutable. This blown- Up shadow of me, hinged across a pile Of bone-white rocks, and once so small, is now grown Tall and unclear, in danger (I fear) Of slipping into nothingness. It’s slouched And leaning toward the extreme sea wall. The eternal surf is booming. Insects crouched On wobbly knees stare into the sere And melon vault. And do they, too, sense an ending near, Or care? Like me, both love and hate this lovely fall?

The year grows old. A wan crepuscular light. Time now for thought, time for bloody autumnal wine. Time for walking into the complicated night Beneath molten skies and moaning trees that line Like sentries the heaved-up, humpbacked, clicking walks. Pretty warts of lichen are tattooed all about. The squash exudes an oily musk. Gaudy gourds Bloat fast, tubers weird and curved like trout Beside these utterly lifeless rocks. Among a murder of crows, one groks From the deathless firs, and crickets strum their chords.

Is this my soul, then, expiring whitely Into the unanimous dusk? The clouds beyond Look similar. Harvest moon is lifting lightly Within — gorged and pocked, a lobeshaped flaxen-blond Or a skull of ice, soaring up new at the dying Edge of day, while simultaneously streaks Of a burgundy-and-purple sunset slaughter Bloom like flowers over the western peaks. Snows to come will come soundless, hushing the crying World. Full season’s here. The geese are flying Like arrows across the icy water.

[turbulentt]

The Garden's Guardian

genre: smut | minghao!spirit x gn!reader

word count: 1.5k

warnings: not so much explicit content, sweet loving sex, mention to spirits, a bit of angst

summary:  every night you visit your so adored garden to connect with its inhabitants, more specifically with its guardian.

“Mother,” you slightly call “I’m heading to the garden.”

It was almost midnight and you certainly were in a rush to go out to the place you so much adore. “I won’t linger much, it’s just a quick walk,” you assure her, fully knowing how much she hates when you take those walks at such hours. “So I hope,” she says firmly walking towards her room “If not, I will drag you out of there myself.” and so you smiled victoriously. 

No one in the castle understood your mighty interest in the garden, but since young, you became one with the flowers and best friends with the little bugs that roam around the place. No one knew, except for you, that it was actually a magic garden full of deep and wonderful secrets. One of them being its’ graceful guardian. Xu Minghao is his name, and he is one of the beyond. According to him, he had died in that same garden, thousands of eyes prior, in some ancient Chinese war.

“Ah,” you sigh relieved “It’s not midnight yet.”

Midnight is Minghao’s hour, it is when he appears. And it is quite funny how you found that out. It was a dark but starry night when you sat by the calm little lake, talking to yourself as if someone else was there to listen to your complaints. However, as you heard the three strokes of midnight a shiver ran down your spine and you immediately silenced yourself. It was when you saw him for the first time, the first of many to come.

“You never fail to amaze me.” a sweet raspy voice echoed from not so far away “Always on time.”

He sat by your side and you smiled at the phantom before you. “How are you this fine night, princess?” he asks jokingly. Sometimes his playfulness could be irritating and never-ending. “I’m just okay. How about you, ghoul?” his non-amused face at the noun you used towards him made you giggle. “If I were to be a ghoul, princess, you for sure would no longer be alive.” he kindly blows to your hair “Treat me for what I am. A forgotten spirit.”

You look at him in uneasiness, it’s not your first time hearing the infamous “forgotten spirit” expression, but the reasoning behind it was always a secret. Minghao, since the first time, never seemed the resentful kind, nor did he look sad about his current situation, but it is a fact that his beautiful smile hid some of the darkest secrets. 

“Why forgotten? Who forgot you, Minghao?”

“The question is not who forgot me, because no one did. How can you forget someone you never knew existed?” he says, a bit sorrow, as he starts walking. You stay there, just processing what you’ve just heard ‘How can no one know him? Who was Xu Minghao after all?’. 

“Who were you?” you follow the spirit, staying some steps behind. “Someone whom people like you never cared about, princess.” he scoffs 

You try grabbing his arm. “Foolish,” he smirks turning to you. “I care about you. You are a part of me.” you smile kindly seeing the surprise shine within his eyes. “I’m a part of you? You’ve gone mad.” he laughs. 

“You are, Minghao. This garden is a part of me, you belong to the garden, therefore, that makes you a part of me.” 

“Then, how come I don’t feel like it?” he takes a step closer, madness emerging from his look “You can’t touch me, you can’t feel me. For lords’ sake, you can only see me after bloody midnight.” 

He screams, rage streaming from his words.

“I see you every day, coming in and out of the castle. Roaming to the library to secretly read those forbidden books, you so much love.” his aura shines in a bright blueish color, almost blinding you “It’s frustrating! You are free and I am a prisoner for this damned garden!” 

Then you stretch your hand, touching his pale face.

Time stops as you feel his cold cheek against the skin of your palm. You were indeed caressing a spirit’s cheek, how fascinating. Minghao had frozen, like one of the immense statues that occupied the garden, it was the first time in a long time being touched by a human, even more, a woman. 

“How is this even possible?” he whispered “Are you a witch?”

“No, I am no such thing. I guess I can just touch you now.” you giggle.

He looks up to the sky pensive but quickly drops all of his thoughts and turns his eyes to your face. “As anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?” he leans over, getting closer and closer by the second. “Yes. But you aren’t like anyone else.”

“You are the most perfect being…” he rests his face inches from yours, making you eager for what would come next “...I have ever had the pleasure to meet.” 

And, just like that, he attaches his lips to yours. 

You couldn’t even understand how such thing was happening, but kissing a phantom was beyond anything else you’ve ever experienced. His cold feeling becomes warm in just a matter of seconds, and his grip was far more strong than what you expected. It was like riding a horse by the river, a bright and adventurous sensation that awakens your body. “You’re so sweet. It has been a while since I’ve tasted sugar, but I dare to compare,” he says smugly still holding your waist as if you were dancing. “You’re not so bad yourself, Xu Minghao.”

“Not bad?” he asks fakely “I am amazing, but you haven’t seen anything yet.” 

He takes your hand guiding you to the big bush maze “I hope your dear mother doesn’t bother me taking over you for some hours.”

You knew his intentions, they were stamped in his eyes and actions. Minghao was done waiting and he couldn’t waste a possible one time chance. Running through the maze, he finally felt you were far away enough for no one to hear or even interrupt. “What I am going to do to you is far beyond wrong, but I can’t restrain myself anymore.” he then pulls you into his warmth and kisses you once again. But this time it felt rough and mad like the desperation took over his lips and wanted to invade you. Kissing him like that no longer felt like riding a horse, it was more like jumping off a cliff. The rush, the adrenaline, it all felt so good. 

“Minghao,” you whispered between his lips. “Don’t rush. Let’s take out time, sweetheart.” he sweetly kisses your neck while his hands explore your body “Soon enough I will become part of you.”

You tremble at the thought, how smug could he be? How confident? You want it all, you want all of what is his’. 

Minghao starts undressing you slowly as if you were a flower which the petals he was tearing away. And every time the tip of his fingers touched your skin you felt like you were being invaded, in the best way. He lost himself while diving through the silhouette of your body as if it was the most beautiful work of art that Michelangelo ever created. “Exquisite…” he said in his mother tongue, and how charming it is to listen to him speak in such way. Fully undressed and now laying on the itchy grass you waited for his next move.

He starts unbuttoning his vest and with a quick movement, he’s devoid of all clothes while hovering over you. The moonlight shining against his naked body made you realize how much alive the boy looked, so touchable, so beautiful, so well-sculptured. Minghao positioned himself between your legs, parting them and taking advantage of your fragile body. 

Desperately he just covered you in kisses, the wet and powerful type, that slowly got you in a one-way trance. At the same time he wanted to take things sluggish he also felt the urge to make it abrupt and his dominant self kept kicking the door, eager to come out. “Are you ready?” his question was kind of rhetorical, he knew you were, but if you hadn’t almost moaned out a yes he wouldn’t have continued. His gentle strong hands grabbed your hips in place and in a sudden thrust he penetrated you. “Oh, you are far way better than sugar.” he groans out while adjusting his position. “Don’t say those… t-those things, you idiot.” you mouth breathless. 

His hard grip will certainly leave marks on your sensitive skin, reminding you of this moment, when you and Minghao, became one for a night. It will remain forever in your memory how aroused he looked while sinking inside of you and losing himself when you both locked eyes. Nor will you forget how bright his aura seemed while releasing his spectrum liquid inside of you. At that moment you felt completed and you knew he felt the same way, just by the way he smiled foolishly. 

Laying by your side, letting both of your bodies rest on the grass, Minghao admires the stars and you just stare longingly at his figure. “I love you, Xu Minghao.” you reach out for his smooth hair and caress it gently “And I will forever wait for you at midnight.”

[always-and-forever-a-killjoy]

Hello good morning and welcome to chili's- is that even the right reference? Whatever. Anyways, welcome to 'auri can't stop fucking writing about party poison and cherri cola' hours. They have such a fascinating bond ANYWAYS also welcome to a fucking trainwreck that i wrote all this morning.

Title: everybody wants to change the world

Wordcount: 2047

Summary:

Party Poison goes out, gets hurt, and chooses a different place for help than they usually would.

This has literally no plot beyond me making Poison have a bad time.

Warnings: injury, blood, death mentions.

Taglist: @wishiwasthemoon-tonight @sleevesareforlosers @stressed-depressed-emo-mess @tasteofamnesia @dagger-queen​ @no-braincells-here @piratecherricola (message me, send an ask, or reblog/reply to one of my posts if you want to be added or removed)

AO3 Link

(Actual fic under the cut)

Party Poison swore under their breath as they staggered back to the Trans Am, pressing a hand to their side. They were going to fucking bleed out here, outside a Mad Gear concert in Zone 4, all because they were a fucking dumbass and got themself stabbed. Because Poison could never live quietly, they didn't know how. All they knew was picking fights with random 'joys and listening to the music that blared from the speakers, way too loud and easily drowning out their thoughts. Now that was catching up to them, they guessed, as they slid into the car and put their bloody hand on the wheel.

"Home we go, baby."

No. Not home. Kobra had said, Kobra had told them 'don't go out and get hurt again, don't go picking fights, dumbass'. And Poison had gone and done it anyways. Gone and been a fucking idiot, as Kobes would say. So no, they were not going back to the diner yet. Not bleeding this heavily, anyways. The Girl didn't deserve to see this, nor did she deserve to watch them and Kobra fight about it.

That left Poison with the question of where, exactly, they were going to go. There weren't a lot of people in the world they trusted to see them like this, injured and exhausted and close to crying because it all hurt, it always had. In fact, most of those people, four of them, lived in the old diner where they couldn't -wouldn't- go. Most of those people...but not all of them.

Poison turned the Trans Am to a different path, speeding towards a little radio shack in the middle of the desert. If nothing else, they knew Dr. D would be happy to fix them up and send them on their way again, and then they could head back to diner late at night when no one was awake and no one would need to know they had gotten stabbed like a dumbass.

Unluckily for them, it was one in the fucking morning, and Dr. D was soundly asleep when they stumbled into the station. They assumed, at least, given that he was nowhere to be seen and the radio station was quiet. Empty, in fact. Or at least the living room was. Poison stumbled towards the broadcasting room, hearing a low voice from that direction.

Cherri Cola looked up they stumbled in the door, pausing in the middle of reading off a poem. "Poison?"

"Pepsi! I got stabbed." Poison tried to grin at him, the smile turning into a grimace at the pain in their side.

Cherri stared at them for a few moments, then turned back to the broadcast. "Well, WKIL listeners, I'm afraid this where I leave you for tonight, given that we've got a bit of a situation going on, but I should be back for later this night- well, this morning, technically, I'd say we're coming up on one am now. Cherri Cola, signing off." He turned back to Poison with a sigh. "Where did you get stabbed?"

They tried not to be offended at his huff. "Here. Where my hand is."

Cherri stood, gesturing to them to follow him back to the living room area, where he grabbed a first aid kit. "Lay down on the sofa, that much blood means I probably need to stitch you up."

"Great."

"I'm going to peel back your shirt, okay? Only as far as I need to clean and stitch it," Cherri promised.

Poison shrugged, pulling their jacket off before they laid down. "Do what y'have to."

His hands were scarred and calloused, the skin rough, but he was gentle when he pulled the bloody fabric away and started cleaning out the wound. They gasped in pain anyways, gritting their teeth as their side sent flickers of agony running through them.

"Sorry, sorry," Cherri said quietly. "I promise only a bit more to go, I just need to stitch this."

Poison nearly screamed when he started the first stitch, letting out a strangled yelp instead. "How much longer?"

"Three more stitches, then I'm done."

They gritted their teeth again, clenching their fists by their sides as he tied off the next stitch, and the next, and the next.

"Okay, done." Cherri set the needle aside, closing the first aid kit. "You okay?"

Poison would have laughed if they weren't in so much pain. "Of course 'm not fucking okay. Why would I be fucking okay?"

They hated the pity on his face as he gently scooted them over to sit down next to them. "Silly question, I'm sorry. What's wrong?"

Poison could have been dignified, but they chose to lean against him instead as the feelings they had been bottling up came pouring out. "Everything. Everything is wrong because Kobes is always angry and Jet's always sad and Ghoul's scared and Motorbaby shouldn't have to grow up here, shouldn't have to see us fall apart. What's the point? What's the point, Cola? What are we fighting for? Is there even a future ahead of us? What's even the point of life?"

"Honestly?"

"Honestly."

"There isn't a point." Poison gaped at him. "There isn't a point to life, not unless you make one. You have to decide what you want, what's worth fighting for."

The words fell softly into the quiet of the radio station, shattered by Poison's harsh voice. "And how the fuck am I supposed t' do that?"

"It's hard to describe, but..." Cherri trailed off. "Find what means something to you. What you love. For me that's poetry, and Newsie, and D and Pone and you and your crew, and the stars. Also, Mad Gear, they're vastly superior to Benny and the Trampolines."

Poison managed a small laugh. "True that. But what is the point, to you?"

“Well, in the simplest form...the point of life is happiness.”

“I thought the point of my life was to change the world,” they muttered bitterly. Maybe it made them an asshole, maybe the other was trying to help, but it was their fucking job to change things and they were tired of it.

Cherri’s voice was heartbreakingly gentle. “It doesn’t matter how big of a difference you made to the world. All that matters is that you made a different to you.”

Poison found that their eyes were stinging, tears collecting in them. “Are you sure?” Their voice sounded small and pathetic, and they hated it.

“I’m sure. You deserve happiness, more than anything else. It should never be your job to save the world, not so young. Never.”

They tried to speak again, but all that came out was a shuddering, gasping sob. Some small part of them was embarrassed, mortified to be crying in front of Cherri Cola, of all people, but the bigger part of their mind couldn’t bring themself to care. Not when their heart ached more than the wound in their side, not when Cherri was holding his arms out silently, clearly an offer.

Maybe it made them weak, but Poison took the comfort, letting themself be encased safely in the older killjoy’s arms. “I don’t want to die, Cola.” They hated how their voice shook. “I don’t want to die.”

“I know. I know.”

“I want to save everyone, I want to make a difference.” They let out another sob. “But I don’t want to die.”

“Your life should never be the price,” Cherri murmured.

“But it is. But it is! I have to- I’m going to die ch- changing the world. I’m supposed to- to save everyone, even if I have to d-die to do it.”

Poison thought they heard his usually unshakable voice waver a little. “No, Poison, no. This never should have been your job."

"Well who- who was g- going to do it?"

They couldn't see his face, but his voice was very quiet. "It was supposed to be D and I, years and years ago. Me, and D, and Lily. It shouldn't have even been Newsie and Chimp, shouldn't have been Pony, definitely shouldn't have been you. I'm sorry, Poison."

"'s okay." They found themself curling up further, head leaning on his shoulder. "Who's Lily?"

"White Lily, leader of the first rebellion, said to be one of the first of the killjoys," Cherri murmured. "Giver of plastic flower hairclips, the only person who was allowed to call Newsie 'News', and one of my three siblings. In a way."

"Oh." Another sob made its way out of their throat, but this mysterious 'Lily' was a good distraction. "Tell me about her?"

"Well, the day I met her, she was twenty-one and she asked me 'Did this softy offer you a place to stay?'..." Cherri launched into a quiet story about two kind killjoys who offered a desperate sixteen-year-old the first real home he had ever known. His voice was low, soothing, and Poison let themself relax a little bit as they listened to the story.

"D' you have any more stories about 'your day'?"

"I think I have some poems about it, actually," Cherri replied dryly. "Stories, yes, but also poems, which are easier."

"Not easier to understand," Poison muttered, but they let him half carry them back into the broadcast room and proceeded to drape themself over his lap when he started up again.

"Hello there, my late-night crash queen friends, it's me, Cherri Cola, back again. At the request of my companion, the next few poems of the corner will be about the olden days, back before you rock and rollers were out on the road." He started on a poem which Poison thought must have been about Dr. D, plenty of metaphors about the voice of the desert. After that one and one more was finished, he switched on some music and turned back to them.

"When is your crew expecting you home?"

"Don't know. Concert was over at midnight, but they know I sometimes stay out later. For all I know, they all went to bed."

"I'm going to radio the diner, if that's okay?"

"Don't want them t' know I got hurt." Their words were mashed up more from sleepiness than blood loss by now.

"I'll say you got lost." Cherri's tone was joking, but his voice grew serious again as he went on. "Or I'll just say you're staying here tonight, you don't owe them an explanation of why. You do owe it to them to make sure they aren't worried for you, though."

"Okay." They felt rather schooled, staring down at the perpetually dirty floor of the radio station as Cherri fiddled with the radio.

Eventually, Fun Ghoul picked up, sounding sleepy. "Hello?"

"Hey, Ghoul."

"What is it, Cola? You got word of Party?"

"They decided to drop by after the concert, so we're hanging out tonight. They'll be okay, just too tired to drive the Am safely. I'll send them back tomorrow morning by the time you need the Trans Am for anything, but please tell the others not to worry."

"Gotcha. Motorbaby got sleepy, took Jet and Kobra to get her to sleep 'cause Pois is out, then they conked out. I told them to. But if they wake up, I'll tell them, and I won't worry toooo much. Tell Pois I said hi!"

Poison was incredibly thankful Ghoul had picked up instead of one of the other two, since xe wasn't the sort to ask many questions. Kobra would have been suspicious, and Jet would have been pretty decent about it but concerned. And Poison didn't need those two's concern right now.

"Right, well, sleep well, Ghoul. Pois says hi," Cherri said. That was technically a lie, since Poison hadn't said anything, but they didn't really mind. Ghoul deserved some reassurance, even if it was false.

Cherri clicked the radio off. "Right, my stabbed friend. I've got some more broadcasting to do, but you're welcome to stay."

"You're an insufferable bastard," Poison yawned.

"Yes, I am. Sleep well, Sleepy Poison."

Poison had absolutely not intended in any way, shape, or form to fall asleep on Cherri's lap, but they found themself yawning again as he started on another poem. And before they or he had a chance to say goodnight, they were out like a light.

[ohvalleyofplentyyy]

Chamomile - chapter 2

Chapter 2: A Cottage Called Home

“What’s a fucking Witcher doing here?!”

You could hear a pin drop in the room it was so deadly silent. Y/N took a calculated breath.

Oh, so that’s why he asked…

The bartender, a fat bloke who smelled of liver disease and sweat, came waddling out from the other side of the bar table. “Answer me you bloody murderer, what are you doin here?!”

Alright, time to step in,

Y/N stepped between Geralt and the bartender, “Okay, that’s enough Caran. This man is my gues-’’ “I don’t care WHAT he’s to you Wiccan,” the man spat. There were a couple of people that stood when he said that, and Geralt somehow rose taller than he already was.

Alright fucker—

Y/N grabbed the bag from Geralt that held the ghoul’s head. She pulled it out and shoved it into Caran’s hands. There were screams from some of the ladies and shouts from other men in the room. Caran yelled and dropped the head, it rolled at his feet.

“This is what the Witcher is doing here— killing the beast that's been wreaking havoc on this whole town. Now pay up, there’s a bounty to be had. A thank you to him would be appreciated too.”

The bartender grumbled but when he looked up at Geralt again, the monster hunter now with a more angered face, he hurried to the back room and came back with a large pouch of coins. “Would ya get that stinkin thing out of my pub?” Y/N raised an eyebrow but nevertheless picked up the head— and sat it on the counter, facing Caran.

“I think I asked for one more thing.”

The bartender bristled at the face and then turned to Geralt after arguing with himself for a moment. “Thank you.” He forced out. Y/N grinned and put the head back in the bag. “Take care Caran, let’s go Geralt.” Y/N led the way as they exited the pub.

Once out in the road, Y/N turned to Geralt. “Well that was adventurous; Where are you planning to stay tonight?” His eyebrows rose ever so slightly, “Probably at an inn in town.” She shook her head,

“From the show we put on at the bar, I don’t think you’d get a room tonight. You can stay with me.”

Did I actually offer room and board to a man I just met? Yes, I did. 

What the fuck. Oh well.

Y/N looked to him for approval, when given a head nod, she ventured onward out of the town. After a quick walk of about a mile, Y/N cut off onto a path in the forest. After about another 5 minute walk, they came upon a quaint cottage that sat next to a stream. It was made of stone and had a wheel turning due to the water current.

Some ivy was growing up the right side of the house. It was a perfect house for her. Away from everyone but close enough to not be in danger of the creatures that lurked in the forest.

“Home sweet home.” Y/N opened the door and walked in, hanging her satchel on the hooks by the door. It was a cute house, and Y/N loved it. Her grandfather supposedly built it, so the sentimental charm was there too.

The cottage had wood floors; when you entered the house, on the right was the kitchen. It had a stone countertop that went across the right wall with a cut out in the middle to pour water in. There were little bottles and bowls perched on the two window sills that had herbs and mixes Y/N had concocted that looked out on the stream.

The left of the house had a small table with three chairs around it sort of closer to the front door and a big old sofa pressed up against the opposing wall to make it easier to see any visitors that might approach the house.

Books were piled high on the small shelf that was bolted to the wall over the couch and on the small bookcase next to the couch on the left.

There was a fireplace with a kettle over it right across the front door on the kitchen side next to a tiny hallway that had two doors that led to Y/N’s room on the left and her supply and ritual room on the right. It was where she could tend to the water wheel for power and perform special rituals.

Geralt took a deep breath in. The house smelled of lavender and it surprisingly calmed him to be in such a loving place. “You can sleep on the couch, I think you’ll fit fine. I’ve slept there many a nights with plenty of room left over.” He nodded and slowly walked over, analyzing the array of books she had on display.

Y/N took the kettle and filled it with water from a pitcher she had on the stone counter, she placed it back on the fire and walked back to her room. “I’m going to grab an extra pillow and blanket for you!” She called out.

YN’s room was her space; it was hers and only hers. The room had a queen-size bed with a blue quilt draped over it against the wall opposite the door, close to the end of the room. Y/N had a large drawer set underneath the long window sill next to her bed.

There was a rug on the floor that looked as if it had been restitched multiple times and a desk cluttered with papers next to the doorway. On the wall that the couch sat against on the other side, was a long mirror propped against it that had a small crack line in the lower-left corner.

There was a nightstand that separated the side of the bed from the wall on the far side. It had upon it an amethyst, a small moonstone and a chunk of peridot next to an oil lamp.

Y/N came out with a giant blanket presumably for picnics and a pillow.

I hope this blanket fits, it’s the only one I could find large enough!

“Would you like some tea? I’m going to reheat the vegetable stew but it might take a little bit.” Geralt took the items from her and nodded.

“You’re not a talker, are you?” She asked while pouring two steaming cups of water into some homemade clay mugs.

Geralt laid the blanket out and put the pillow down, “Not when I can help it… and most prefer it that way.” Y/N hummed at his answer and started working on reviving the stew. She placed it in a cooking pot and switched out the kettle for it over the fire. She walked over to her satchel and took out the various items she had stowed away, especially the chamomile she collected earlier.

Y/N took some of the flowers out and ground them with her mortar and pestle. In two small little fish net-like bags, she poured the flowers into the pouches, pulled the drawstrings taut and plopped them in the mugs.

“Here you are.” She said, handing him a cup. “Thank you, for the tea. And, uh, letting me stay here for the night.” Y/N waved her hand and went to sit down at the table, he followed in suit.

“Don’t worry about it. I too know what it's like to be, well, excluded from the group for being different. Some people just don’t understand other’s way of life and it just doesn’t seem worth it to them to try and understand.”

A small candle that had been burning very well magically went out before Geralt’s eyes without any wind, Y/N had lit it on the mantle over the fire when she had put the stew on. 

“Uh, a candle has gone out.” He said, pointing over to it. 

Y/N’s eyes lit up, “Oh good! That means the stew is ready.” She got up and took the pot off the fire with a thick cloth, grabbing a ladle and taking out a couple scoops into a bowl for Geralt and then for her.

When she brought them over, spoons in hand, Geralt had a perplexed look upon his face. “How did it—“

Y/N laughed and sat down, “Oh! It’s just a small spell I learned from my mother. You can enchant a candle to be like a, oh, a count down till something is ready. I use it for cooking and baking mostly. As well as rituals. It’s very convenient.”

The two ate in peace, occasionally making eye contact and just being content with the silence. Once done, Y/N took the dishes outside for a quick wash in the creek downstream from the wheel and then came back in to get ready for bed.

Geralt had taken the time while she was outside to take off his armor and wash his face in the counter water cutout. He was settling down on the couch when she came back in.

“Alright, I’m headed off to bed. Is there anything you need before I go?” Y/N asked while blowing out some candles and snuffing out a couple oil lamps. The only light left was the gentle glow of the fire.

“I’m fine, thank you Y/N.”

“Good night then, Geralt of Rivia.”

“Good night Y/N.”

chapter 1 ---->  chapter 3

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[luvknow]

how to tame a prince | seo changbin

genre: dragon prince!changbin x fem researcher!reader | fantasy/royal au ; enemies-to-lovers ; swearing summary: you travel the world collecting data so you could write your thesis on your favorite creatures - dragons. at the last leg of your journey, you accidentally fall asleep in a dragon’s cave owned by a nearby kingdom and are kidnapped by their prince, seo changbin. after getting permission to study there from the king, changbin refuses to leave you alone with his precious dragons and you develop an unlikely relationship. wc: 11.6k

Your very first memory as a wee little kid was when you were waiting impatiently in bed for one of your parents to come and read you a bedtime story. Your library was filled with infinite amounts of educational, but kid-friendly books just for you. Your father was the one who filled bookcases upon bookcases of those books because he knew the second you were born that your mind craved infinite knowledge. And he was right! You loved reading the shelves in your name because they held words that your school was too afraid to say. In fact, you got in trouble a lot simply because you said those words.

Witches, trolls, spirits, goblins, ghouls, magic, you name it, you read it, you said it and the school was not very happy with neither you nor your parents. But that’s ok, because your parents didn’t care for what the stuck up old hags said, anyways. They weren’t going to be those parents who hid their child from the vast unknowns of the world because they were trying to ‘protect’ you - they wanted to show you the unknowns. They’d take the scolding for as long as they can - as long as that little fire that burned for knowledge was still lit in your heart, then they had nothing to worry about.

No one expected any less from the famous apothecary family.

You were maybe ten by the time you read about dragons. Ten was a sensitive and impressionable age for most kids, but keep in mind that you’ve read about nearly every large carnivorous creature to exist by then. The largest was a griffin (or was it a hippogriff?), but even to you, a lion-horse-eagle with talons and wings didn’t impress you much. So when you came across the mighty dragons, you were hooked.

Some were monocolored, some were multi, some had wings with no legs, and some had legs but could still fly, wasn’t that marvelous!? Dragons were all over the world in infinite flavors with infinite purposes unknown to ordinary humans like you, but that’s what attracted you to them - they were a species of infinite possibilities.

Dragons were a complete mystery not only to you, but to the world. Aside from the tamers that lived in the mountains, the forests, and in between, no one really knew about them outside of a very select handful of good academic papers and books and whatever the professors were hiding from the world. So you took it upon yourself to do God’s work and research about dragons yourself. There has to be some kid out there who was just as curious as you were, right? And what do they have for resources? Old scrolls and beat-up books. You couldn’t recall exactly when in your childhood you decided to write your thesis on dragons, but you guessed it was somewhere between when your parents got their first shipment in of pitch black dragon’s blood and when you saw a patient burst in with a poisonous bite on his thigh.

“What happened?” a younger you asked, yelling over the bloody murder-screaming patient.

“This man was in the forest hunting and accidentally shot an arrow through a baby dragon. Let’s just say the mother wasn’t too happy about his presence,” your mother giggled. “Now I have to use all of the dragon blood from our last shipment to pour over this nasty wound along with a huge dollop of our magic creme. Will you get the gauze for me?”

You obeyed and handed her the roll. She cut long enough to wrap around and cover the wound and cut up a smaller piece to ball up and stuff in the patient’s mouth.

“Ah, much better,” your mother sighed when the screaming subsided. “Suck it up, will ya?”

After that intriguing encounter, you read about dragon’s blood and its purposes for the whole week.

You spent all your free time until you graduated secondary school reading about the creatures of the world. Your grades would slip up here and there because you failed to read the current literature assignment or the chapter in calculus, but you eventually graduated and thank God for that, right? Your parents were exhausted after nearly fifteen years of parent-teacher conferences. Now you could read about, write about, and talk about dragons as much as you pleased. They were the center of your childhood and now they were going to be the center of your world.

When it was time for you to leave the nest, your parents didn’t shed any tears. Rather, they couldn’t stop themselves from grinning because they were so incredibly proud of their curious child.

“Where will you go?” your mother asked.

“To every dragon habitat I can find. They say the dragons that inhabit the forests and guard the streams and lakes are the most um, temperamental, so I'll start there.”

“Just don’t be a stranger, ok?” As you nodded, she pulled something from her pocket - a little black vial tied to a long leather string. She looped it over your head and let the glass dangle and shine like a jewel. “It’s dragon’s blood. But only use it during a lifesaving emergency, do you understand? Don’t be stupid with this! This was very expensive…”

“Yes, mom…”

“And don’t waste it on some stupid stranger! Make sure you save that for you and you only -!”

“Yes, mom…!”

“Take this also,” your father said, handing you an apple-sized glass jar with a dark green creme in it. You never noticed your parents had an affinity for dark things, but then again you grew up in a shop painted pitch black your entire life, so you never cared to notice.

“Magic creme?” you asked.

“For not-so emergency emergencies. Who knows what kind of nasty stuff is out there that we don’t know about! This could save your life one day, too.”

You placed the jar carefully inside your bag that was stuffed with only the essentials. You had tons of notebooks, pens, clothes, some snacks, miscellaneous things, and lots of money all packed up. With the dragon’s blood around your neck and a jar of magic creme, you were all set to go.

You set off to a deep forest about seven days travel away - quite the distance for your first location, but luckily the locals in every passing town were super helpful. They all pointed you in the right direction without asking for a single coin, and you think it’s because they think you’re doing them the favor of slaying a dragon rather than study it because they all warned you about the tamers.

“Be careful while travellin’!” A farmer warned. “Them dragon tamers don’t take a liking to slayers. Can’t imagine why! Ha!”

“Oh, I’m not -”

“You should hurry! You don’t wanna be stuck in the forest when it’s dark. That’s when the goblins come out.”

On your way in, you wrote and took note of everything you could see. The height of the canopy, the types of fruits and flowers, the shape of the leaves, the sizes of the rocks - literally everything! You even taped a couple of leaves into your notebook as both a reference and a souvenir. They made your notes look cute.

A couple of hours passed since you’ve been sitting on a rock by a pond that totally looked like one that a dragon would drink out of but alas, nothing even remotely close to a dragon showed up!

Just as you were about to give up and go back to your inn for the night, the leaves of the forest danced with the sudden strong gust of the wind. The moon was shining without a cloud in the sky, but then a long figure shadowed the light and the forest was almost pitch black if it wasn’t for your campfire.

“What an enormous creature, huh?” a gentle voice noted. From the shadows of the trees, an older woman stepped out into the moonlight with a kind smile on her face, amused by your dropped jaw. “First time seeing a dragon?”

“Can you tell?”

“Oh, yeah. Wanna take a closer look?”

“Really!?”

“Of course! You gotta study them somehow, right?”

That night you learned that both dragons and their tamers were naturally intuitive like that. Did you really look so much like a researcher?

Your first encounter with a dragon was absolutely terrifying. When you read about them being huge, you never thought they’d be this huge! But size didn’t define her personality a single bit. This dragon was a gentle giant and you were lucky that she was your first study subject. Her scales were gorgeous shades of blue and you’re devastated that you’ll never be able to capture a color so unique that it didn’t have a proper name. For days you drew, pet, fed, studied, and talked to her until you got all the information you wanted. Who knew leaving your first dragon subject would be this hard?

“Where are you off to next?” your tamer trainer asked.

“I don’t know, to be honest. Do you have any suggestions?”

“I think you should head to the waters and then the mountains. You’ll hit the mountains first, but get through them as fast as you can.”

“Why?”

“Those dragons are not one to be reckoned with. You need to build your experience with other dragons first - you know, get the hang of meeting different personalities. The dragons of the river are much more forgiving than the ones of the mountains. Also the mountain tamers are assholes.”

“Is that so?” you chuckled.

“Yeah, fuck those guys! They think they're the shit just because they’re high in altitude, can weather the worst conditions, and have the toughest dragons to tame. So smug, that group… Be on your tiptoes when you travel through there.”

When you left the following morning, you took heed to her advice and traveled through the valleys of the mountains straight to the rushing rivers that lead to a waterfall that dropped for miles. It appeared to be an ordinary river. At the top of the river, not much was seen besides foamy waters. But after a days trip down to the bottom, you saw an oasis. The waters were crystal clear and chilling which was very refreshing to drink after all the walking and climbing. At the pond where the river ended was a school of koi fish of different colors and patterns. Legend had it that koi who can swim up the waterfall turn into a dragon - at least that’s what your books said. And maybe they were true, especially when you watched for hours how some koi were able to climb a short ways up. But it’d be another thousand years until another koi-dragon would be born.

The newest dragon was golden. He was an excited and ambitious serpent with claws and a head of a lion. Though intimidating with his beady eyes and long whiskers, he was friendly the moment he noticed you weren’t a hunter. Again, it was crazy how dragons had an intuition about people just from looking at you for a couple of minutes. This lone dragon appeared without a tamer, playing with you for only a quick moment, though it was enough for you to write down everything you had about him. As quickly as he came, he disappeared up the waterfall to where only the Gods knew.

In the span of two dragons, you filled out nearly an entire notebook already! You hoped to fill out a million more.

And that’s what you did. You spent years and years travelling the globe to all corners with trees and bodies of water. But not the mountains - not yet, at least. You weren’t ready for that. You spent those years studying dragons who all kind of looked similar. Many were serpent-like with snakeish bodies, heavy heads with long whiskers. You haven’t encountered any four-legged-type yet, which was what you assumed to find in the mountains. Guess you saved the best for last, huh?

You were down to your last set of recently-bought notebooks by the time you reached the mountains. You hoped the village had some for purchase and you could send the ones in your bag back to your parents to read. They were your biggest fans when it came to your books and for that, you were thankful.

It's cold in the mountains when you arrived. It was still daylight, but the snow was barely tolerable when gusts of wind flew in your face. You figured a storm was brewing as the sun began to set and set up camp in a conveniently-placed cave. The cave was huge, ginormous even, and obviously way too big for any human to create. But you were way too tired to question it - even the rocks were comfortable to you, that’s how tired you were! And it seemed like no one inhabited it at the moment, so for now, you'd be safe.

The crackle of your campfire was the white noise that helped you fall asleep. You were knocked out dead the whole night that you didn’t even notice you were getting kidnapped.

“What the -” you said, struggling to wake up from all the noise. A bunch of black leather and fur-cladded people surrounded you. An angry looking one, who you assumed was the leader, snatched your backpack. “Hey, give that back!”

When you lunged forward to take your bag, a red-hot dragon roared behind him deep inside the cave and you fell to your knees before your captors in fear and amusement. With wide eyes, you ignored the people robbing you of your only belongings and watched the creature breathe a hot, white fire. He was a full-grown adult, you could already tell. With wings of a bat, clean ruby scales, and a body of a serpent, you’ve never seen a dragon more beautiful. You took mental notes of every detail and hoped these people would give you your books back soon before you forgot.

Tight metal shackles were being cuffed on your wrists when you snapped out of your daze. One man pulled you roughly to your feet and made you look at their leader right in the eyes.

Ah, he’s a bit… short… for a leader…

“Who are you,” he demanded sternly.

“I’m a researcher,” you answered honestly. “I research dragons.”

“Is that what you do before you kill them?”

“N-No, I would never -!”

“Then what the fuck were you doing in his cave?” he sneered, referring to the fire-breather behind him.

“I didn’t know it was his cave.”

“You just happened to stumble in, is that it?”

“Well, yeah, I guess -”

“Bull fucking shit.”

“It’s not! If you’d just let me get a word in, I can explain -!”

“Take them away.”

“Wait what, away where? Hey, where are we going!?”

“You’ll see.”

The leader’s henchmen dragged you through the snow all the way back to their village miles away. Though seemingly mountain folk, they actually lived in the valleys where the temperature was much warmer that even flowers bloomed from the soil. The dragons must have been the ones who inhabited the mountains.

All of the townspeople dressed like your captors - decked out in leathers and furs, charcoal lining their eyes decoratively, and silver jewelry that showed off their social status. As you were cuffed and exposed for everyone in the village to see, you side-glanced the leader. His ears were bejeweled with dangling drops of silver and ear shell cuffs so shiny that they were blinding. His fingers held some heavy metal, too, some encrusted with rubies and garnets. The aesthetic of these people, though a bit bold, was quite stylish, even if it was just a palette of silvers, blacks, and reds.

The leader shot you a sharp glare.

“Staring is rude,” he sneered.

“I wouldn’t have taken you for someone who cared for manners,” you scoffed back.

“Do you know what I do with strangers who stare too long?” You didn’t answer. “I gauge their eyes out with a melon scooper.”

You let him win that round.

You were taken to a castle at the edge of the town whose walls could be seen the second you stepped foot in the valley. Its architecture was intimidating, which was quite fitting for such an, um, unique people, but it was beautiful nonetheless. You couldn’t wait to be locked up in there until you died.

The following events were a blur as they all lead you to God-knows-where to do God-knows-what. A torture chamber? A dungeon maybe? You hoped the dungeon or wherever you were going at least had a dragon to guard the door.

You entered a grand room where the King and Queen sat on their black thrones. Finally, you'd get to talk to the true leaders of the village, not this shrimpy delinquent who threatened to melon ball your eyes out and his buff henchmen who did his dirty work. Maybe you could at least get a word in with mature adults. How dare they capture you without letting you explain! Although your captors looked angry when they first saw you in their cave, the King and Queen didn’t seem as disgusted.

“What is this?” The King asked with genuine curiosity.

“We found her sleeping in Jin’s cave.” Ah, so Jin was the dragon’s name! A handsome name for a handsome dragon.

“Was she doing anything else…?”

“No… but she might’ve if we didn’t catch her.”

“Hand me the bag.”

The small man handed your backpack over to the King. He inspected it and was surprised to see that nothing else was found other than your essentials and notebooks, which was what you were trying to explain to your captors in the first place. The King flipped through your notes and you couldn’t help but burn a deep pink. No one besides your parents have read your notes and you felt embarrassed and exposed seeing someone squint at them like they were judging every sentence you wrote.

“These are very thorough,” he commented. “What exactly do you do?”

“I research dragons for this thesis I’m writing.”

“A thesis?”

“Yes! Hopefully to become a book one day. I-I swear I don’t kill dragons!”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“I don’t have any weapons on me. I’m completely defenseless! And theoretically speaking, even if I could slay a dragon, wouldn’t you think I would have fought back from being captured? All your people captured me unscathed. Also, do you really think that I could slay a dragon and come out alive?”

Your captor hated to admit that you were right, but you had a point there. Even so, he refused to let you get away with sleeping in Jin's cave.

"Fine then. You're free to research for your thesis."

"What!?" the leader shrieked. "But Father -"

"And you, Changbin, are to leave them unbothered. I shouldn't have to waste my time on something as pointless as this. Both of you - all of you - get out of my sight."

The henchmen left without question, followed by the King and Queen, and finally their guards. It was you and the leader named Changbin left alone and you couldn't leave until you were unshackled and had your belongings. The boy stayed glued in his place as if he couldn't believe that his father let a complete stranger get so close to his precious dragons! Honestly, if you were in his place, you'd think the same thing.

Changbin shot you another glare. "Are you going to move or will I have to drag you out the same way you came in?"

"I'll gladly leave once you take these things off of me."

Reluctantly, though quickly, he strutted to you and unlocked your wrists with a key. As you stood up and dusted yourself off, your bag was shoved harshly to your chest nearly knocking the wind out of you.

You can smell his cologne as he leaned in. "I'm watching you," he threatened.

You held in your breath so you wouldn't seem afraid. Was it working? How was it that you could muster the courage to stand in front of dragons but a measly prince who smelled nice made you nervous?

"Be my guest," you replied back nonchalantly.

A soft 'tch' was heard before he stormed out of the room to finish his stuck-up princely duties, or whatever. Everything was still in your bag, including the magic creme you still had plenty of left, so you were thankful for that. Now that you're in the clear to study as much as you could about the four-legged-dragons, it seemed like your only obstacle now was Changbin. Even if he kept his promise about keeping an eye on you, you just prayed that he wouldn't get in the way.

Now to find an inn far away from the castle...

You rented a room at an inn at the very edge of the village closest to the path that would lead you back to Jin's cave. It was still afternoon by the time you settled in and you had time to buy more notebooks, some food, and most importantly proper clothing. Rumor has it that the weather's going to be unbearable the next few weeks and who knows how long you'll be here? So you bought whatever you could to stay warm and boy, did you look like a local. Black and fur wasn't your style, but you looked good in it, so you couldn't complain. Fur made you look fancy.

You set out for the cave as soon as you were finished with your errands. Four-legged fire breathers were most active in the nighttime and you weren't going to waste a single day out here. You wanted to spend as much time as you could studying not only Jin, but the other dragons that guarded this village. You hoped that the other tamers were nicer than Changbin because the likelihood of him letting you study Jin without a problem didn't seem very high.

As you entered the same cave just after the sun was setting, you saw someone made it to Jin before you. Guess Changbin wasn't going to let you study Jin problem-free afterall. He sat on a rock in front of his relaxed dragon as if he was waiting for you. The moment the echo of your footsteps could be heard throughout the cave, the dragon's eyes snapped wide open like a snake. Sharp, long flames shot up from his flaring red nostrils, dangerously close to the unbothered boy.

"You're late," he sneered.

"For what?"

"His feeding."

Changbin stood up from his rock and ushered the abnormally-calm dragon to follow him towards you. The cave shook every time Jin took a step and if you thought he was huge from afar, well he was ginormous up close. You didn't notice you unconsciously took steps back until you reached the outside of his cave.

"How was I supposed to know it was his feeding time?" you pouted.

"Some 'dragon researcher' you are if you don’t know a dragon’s dinner time."

The boy brushed your shoulder as he passed by and you're ashamed you let him, but you figured it'd be smart to let Jin pass by first. He took a quick whiff at you as he passed and you took his disinterest in you as a good sign. Maybe that meant he liked you? The other dragons you encountered usually expressed that they liked you, but you'll figure this out later. For now, as you followed them, you'd take mental notes of Jin's appearance, like how the blue-ish tint of the moonlight made his scales reflect back the slightest purple.

You followed the Prince all the way back down to a vast farm filled with cows and goats, exactly where you hoped to not end up. The animals were munching on the plush green grass but you were too distracted by Jin’s hungry growling to enjoy the peaceful scene. Changbin looked back at you with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Got your fancy notebook ready?" he asked, but didn't let you answer.

He held his hand out to the openness of the farm and Jin happily flew towards his meals. Really you should have been terrified that this large beast mercilessly chewed up livestock, but God, was this fascinating! Jin was the type of dragon who had fun with his meals, tossing them up in the air and catching them whole as opposed to not wasting any time and just eating like a 'normal' dragon. It was almost like he was a dragon pup, but maybe he was just a pup at heart.

Changbin looked annoyed that you were enjoying this. "You can't seriously be entertained by this."

"Some dragon researcher I'd be if I didn't enjoy this," you muttered, not taking your eyes off of the red beast and your notebook.

"You're not normal, are you?"

"Really, what's normal these days? Also no, I read a lot of books when I was younger."

"You look like a bookworm."

"Thank you." The oh-so high and mighty Prince scoffed at your remark. "You don't like that I'm here, do you? Or rather you don’t like me at all."

"What gave it away." He made sure to make it sound like a condescending statement rather than a curious question.

You closed your notebook for now and focused on Changbin, who can't seem to keep his eyes off of you even when he was trying to be insulting. Were you that interesting to him, or something? "But why? Is it just me, or are you like this with all of your visitors?"

He walked up to you - more like strutted, in all his leather and bejeweled glory - until you could smell his cologne again. There's a bit of playfulness on his lips once he stopped in front of you and you're starting to think that he's enjoying the back-and-forth dialogue you two share. Could it be that he likes the company and that he’s just teasing you? Then, his pointer finger grazed your collarbone, sending bursts of chills across your skin. He hooked his finger around the strap of your necklace and pulled out the vial of blood that you hid in your shirt.

He tugged forward so your faces were close and your breath hitched in your throat. "I don't like you because you claim to love dragons, yet you wear their blood on your neck like a trophy," he seethed.

“How did you know?”

“You reek of it.”

"It’s not like I slayed the dragon -"

"If Jin were to kill someone right now and I wore their blood around my neck, does that make me any less barbaric?"

"Does their blood have the healing properties of a God?"

Changbin dropped his hold on your neck and rolled his eyes, heading back over to his precious beast. "You're barbaric," he yelled into the night.

"As a traveller far from home, I need this! Not all of us have your luxuriously stagnant lifestyle as royalty!"

"No, but I can't imagine a life with apothecary parents was quite difficult."

He called over his rubied dragon who flew to him in a heartbeat. Though having just eaten a ton of livestock, the blood from eating blended in with his scales, and for that you were grateful. Jin still doesn't seem to mind your presence and Changbin took notice of it right away. Yet another reason to be annoyed with you - he was never this welcoming to strangers! Some guardian dragon...

You're still in shock about how he knew about your parents. He was almost too intuitive. "How did you know that?"

"Dragon's blood is the world's rarest commodity. Only the best apothecaries can get a hold of that stuff. Lucky you."

Jin flew up into the air, swirling gusts of wind all around you and Changbin, nearly lifting you and the remaining livestock off of your feet but the Prince was already used to this. Once he was airborne, the mighty beast flew back the way that you came, high into the mountains to either go back into his cave or play in the night sky.

Changbin was already heading back towards the village in the valleys when you were done doodling in awe. You had to run to catch up to him - what kind of Prince leaves a guest in the middle of a dark field unattended!?

"Do you ever fly with him?" you asked, trying to break the tense silence.

Changbin nodded. “Sometimes.”

“Just for fun, or…?”

“Sometimes for fun, sometimes for errands.”

“How is it?”

“How is it?” he repeated, cocking his brow. How has a dragon researcher not flown yet? “It’s indescribable.”

“Can you try describing it?”

“Why don’t you just ride one and see how it feels?”

“Do I look like I know how to fly a fifty-ton beast?”

The Prince halted just before entering the village and turned to look at you incredulously. “Do you know how to do anything with dragons besides just standing there and watching them?”

Embarrassed, you scratched your head. “Not really…”

He shook his head disapprovingly. “Not only are you barbaric, you’re hopeless.”

Changbin walked away, leaving you to on your own to walk to your inn.

“Asshole,” you muttered.

You really did not want to see Changbin multiple days in a row for however long you were going to be there. Instead, you asked the locals to see where other dragons’ caves were in the mountains. At first they thought you were a slayer in disguise, but then they realized you were just bat-shit crazy after you told them you were a plain researcher who enjoyed making a living out of your passion. Regardless, they told you where the other two caves were hidden. It was incredible that there were only three dragons in total for such a vast mountain range, but it seemed like that was all they needed.

Halfway up the mountains towards the second dragon’s cave, you realized that maybe you under dressed for the occasion, even as the sun was still out and shining. Multiple pelts of fur was enough to keep your body warm, but you failed to purchase a damn scarf to cover your face from the icy winds. But you couldn’t turn back now! You came too far already.

Just as you were mentally cursing yourself, you felt a snowball hit the back of your head.

“Ow! What the fuck!?” you screamed. You didn’t even have to turn around to know it was Changbin.

“How unladylike of you to swear,” he teased.

“How unprincely of you to harass a lady!”

“‘Harass’, relax it’s just snow. And ‘unprincely’ isn’t a word.”

“How about I call you ignoble instead.”

“Hey,” he said threateningly, pointing a finger at you. “Don’t call me that, you barbarian.”

You didn’t care for his name calling as you turned around and continued walking towards the cave. You can hear Changbin’s footsteps behind you. As if the day could not get any worse, the snow thrown at your face began to melt and trickle down your neck and chest, making you feel cold, uncomfortable, and shivering so hard that even the Prince started to feel bad for you.

You felt a long wad of fleece being draped over your face messily on purpose. The kind and chivalrous Prince just gave you his scarf! Oh, lucky you.

“What is this for?” you asked.

“You’re an idiot for not dressing properly for the mountains.”

“Sorry that I don’t live near mountains...”

“It’s common knowledge. That’s my favorite scarf by the way, so don’t get it dirty.”

Today marked the day that Changbin showed an emotion other than disgust towards you. You even wrote it down in your notebook.

He walked ahead of you the rest of the way and you weren’t sure if he was leading you or because he didn’t want to stand next to you. You followed anyways, knowing that you’d be completely lost without him otherwise. It was a wonder how you made it up this far without him to begin with. But you probably would have found your way eventually, right? Why did he have to babysit you! And how did he know when you were leaving to go every time!? But if you really thought about it, if you had dragons of your own, you’d act the exact same way - no one would ever lay a hand on your babies.

The second cave was just as open as Jin’s, but no dragon could be seen in the shallow parts of the entrance. Unlike Jin’s cave, torches lit with fire were stuck on the walls and led you so deep inside that you couldn’t even see the end.

You stopped in your place. This was kind of spooky, wasn’t it? What if this was where you’d die? What if Changbin was leading you to some satanic ritual where they tied you up like a boar and the dragon would cook you up like a pot roast for dinner and -

“The hell are you standing there for?” Changbin’s voice echoed. “Are you scared, or something?”

“Uh… or something,” you replied shakily. “Where are we going?”

“Do you think I’m going to kidnap you again?” A playful smirk grew on his lips.

“It wouldn’t be unlikely.”

“She’s all the way in the back for a reason. See for yourself.”

Reluctantly and with your guard up, you followed him to the back of the cave. The cave was so deep into the mountains that the torches stopped somewhere in between and Changbin had to grab the last one hung up and lead the way. While you took notes on the cave depth, Changbin waited impatiently for you to catch up.

“It’s just a cave, what do you even need to take notes on?”

“Jin’s cave was nothing like this one. I have to take note of everything and anything - that’s what researchers do, after all.”

“Doesn’t that take a long time?”

“Oh, it takes forever! But I don’t mind.” There’s a content smile on your lips that has Changbin wondering what kind of weirdo he got stuck with. You’re interesting though, and you can hold an intelligent conversation, so he can’t complain about being bored at least. “You don’t have to keep waiting for me. I won’t try to escape, I swear.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“You’re worried about something?”

“It gets really dark in here. You’ll get lost if I leave you behind.”

“Hm, sounds like you’re worried about me ~”

“If I lose you and you die, my ass is next because my Father will think I’m the reason behind it. Can’t have the King thinking that, now can I?” Changbin ignored your pouty lips and kept moving forward. “Hurry up, we’re almost there.”

Luckily, he was right. At the very end of the cave was a huge, courtyard-sized nest with a tired pitch black dragon napping inside. Her scales were so matte black that even the fire that circled the walls didn’t reflect. You could see her spine rise and fall as she slept peacefully. For a quick moment, Changbin smiled at your dreamy eyes, but then quickly frowned again before walking around the nest to the sweet spot.

“Where are you going!?” you whispered harshly, hoping not to wake up the dragon. “Don’t leave me here!”

“Shut up and come look.”

Even from a distance, you could see Changbin gently smiling and you’re not sure whether you were more curious or frightened by it. Regardless, you tiptoed over to your enemy to take a peak at what he’s smiling at and you nearly burst into tears.

“Holy shit, dragon eggs…” you whispered. Under the ginormous black dragon was a handful of equally-black eggs.

“They’re due soon. Happens only once every thousand years, you know?”

“Of course I know.” It was too hard to hold in your grin as you doodled the masterpiece in front of you. “Does she sleep all the time?”

“She’s practically hibernating until they hatch.”

“Incredible! What’s her name?”

“We never gave her a formal one. We kind of just call her Queenie. She’s my mother’s dragon.”

You watched Changbin stare at the beautiful dragon fondly. He was kind of cute when he wasn’t glaring at you. “Do you like her a lot?”

“Mm. Jin may be mine, but Queenie’s my favorite. Don’t tell him that, though.”

“Your secret’s safe with me, Prince.”

Changbin let you do your thing and waited for you to write down all the details you needed. Since she was just sleeping, you didn’t have much to write down, but you wanted to draw as much detail as you could for this picture. Your previous ones hadn’t been so detailed because the dragons were constantly moving, but now you had the time to do so.

You knew Changbin was watching over your shoulder when you could smell his cologne. He was so close that even bits of hair tickled your cheeks. You tugged your notebook to your chest.

“What do you want?” you asked suspiciously.

“You’re actually really good at that.”

“Is that a surprise?”

He shrugged. “Kind of. Let me see.”

“What, no!”

“As Prince, I order you to let me see.”

“You’re not my Prince!”

Your whining was useless because he was able to snatch your notebook away with just a few tricks. You were too embarrassed to try to fight and take it back as he was already flipping through all the pages you had on both Jin and Queenie for the next several minutes. You felt so vulnerable now that not only the King has seen your work, but now the Prince, too.

“They’re messy, I know, b-but it’s just a draft! I plan on writing harder copies later.”

“They’re fine,” he said, handing you back your book. “If your notes weren’t messy, I’d question your methods. And you’re surprisingly literate with your words.”

“Gee, thanks,” you deadpanned.

“I’d like to read your other notebooks sometime.”

“Really? Why -”

“That’s an order.”

“Again, not my Prince!”

His cologne gets stronger the more you’re able to smell it. It’s like he’s sewing the scent into your brain. “When you’re in my village, I am your only Prince. Is that clear, _____?”

Oh, no - he finally figured out your name and it sounded chilling coming from his lips. You didn’t react or say a word as he brushed passed with a triumphant smirk. It was then when you let out a sigh of relief. What the hell was his deal!? Did he hate you? Did he just like teasing you? Or was he actually beginning to tolerate you? Like you even?

When you exited the cave still dazed from seeing dragon eggs for the first time, Changbin grabbed your arm so you stop.

“Do you want your scarf back?” you asked.

“When you go see the last dragon, come find me.”

“Why, so you can babysit me again?”

“Yes.” The sternness in his voice and his furrowed brows let you know that he wasn’t playing around. “The last one’s not like the other two. There’s a reason his cave is the farthest away.”

“Which is?”

“He has a really bad temper and has trust issues. He only trusts my Father.”

“So loyal.”

“That’s one way to put it.” He squeezed your arm lightly, like he knew something bad was going to happen regardless. “Promise you’ll find me before you go.”

You nodded sincerely. “I promise.”

“Good.” And he took off ahead again, hoping the redness on his cheeks would subside.

You wrote this moment down in your notebook.

You spent the next several cave visits studying the Prince and Queen dragons with the Prince himself. Not only were you not ready to see the Mighty dragon yet, but you also thought you didn’t get enough info on the other two. You insisted that you could go on your own to both caves, but Changbin’s reasons for not leaving you alone were 1) he trusted no one near Jin and 2) he trusted no one near the eggs. But didn’t he know by now that you were completely harmless?

“‘Trust no one’ is my motto and I always keep my word,” he said when you told him that you could be trusted for the hundredth time.

“Didn’t the King say to leave me unbothered? And don’t you have to follow the King’s orders? So aren’t you breaking your word to the King by keeping your word to your motto?”

“Like I’d actually listen to my Father.”

“You’re telling me that you never listen to the King...”

“Not when he’s wrong.”

“Wow, you’re such a rebel.”

While you would write down and doodle in your notebook, you let Changbin read your past works that you had on hand just as he asked. You remember spending the entire night before skimming through them and seeing if any of them were too dumb or didn’t have enough fancy words but you honestly couldn’t tell which notes were good or bad. You were so nervous for him to read them that you lost a lot of sleep, but you could really use some criticism that wasn’t from your parents, so you hoped this was worth it.

Instead of Jin feasting on livestock, Changbin told him to fly off, hunt on his own, and bring back whatever he caught for you to see.

“You think we can afford to feed a dragon livestock everyday?” Changbin scoffed. “We may be rich, but not that rich.”

“Quit scolding me, I’m here to learn for a reason,” you pouted.

“Speaking of,” he paused and held out his hand to you. “I believe I ordered some notebooks.”

“You get one notebook for now.”

Changbin gladly took the one you gave him and carefully read in silence. You tried patiently waiting and editing your notes until Jin to returned, but you kept on getting distracted by the Prince’s hums of either approval or disapproval - it was itching at you that you couldn’t tell.

You tried to peak over his shoulder to see what he was reading. You smelled like the flowers from the shop in the village.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?”

“Your study titled Hydra At the Edge of the World,” he replied, not looking up from your notebook. “It’s actually fascinating.”

“You really think so?”

He nodded. “I haven’t read much on other species of dragons so this is all new to me.”

“Some dragon tamer you are,” you teased, but Changbin wasn’t having it when he shot you a sharp glare you were so used to. “I’m kidding!”

“How many notebooks have you filled?”

“I don’t know to be honest. Fifty maybe?”

“You have fifty whole notebooks filled? Jeez, how long have you been doing this?”

“A few years. By now I thought I’d have a system when it came to note-taking, but I find that the fastest and easiest way is to write like a chicken with its head cut off.”

“I noticed,” he mumbled. “I expect to read all of them, by the way.”

“All of them!? You want me to ask my parents to ship the rest back to you, Your Highness?”

“That’s an order.” You don’t even bother to fight back. Rather you couldn’t stop the wide grin forming on your lips. “What’s wrong with you face?”

“You inadvertently said that you like my work ~”

“Shut up, I did not.”

“Let’s pretend that you did.”

You eventually finished editing your notes and you and Changbin ended up sitting on the grass next to each other. While you watched the sun set behind the mountains, the Prince finished up one whole notebook and clamped it shut. For a long while, you both shared this moment together in silence. No bickering, no teasing, no awkwardness - just pure peace. Out of all the places you’ve visited, you must admit that nothing was as beautiful as the sun setting beyond the snowcaps.

“He normally doesn’t take this long,” Changbin said. “He must be trying to impress you.”

“Little ol’ me?”

“He tends to do that for people he likes.”

“That’s so cute! Did you teach him to do that?”

“What makes you think I’d teach him something so pointless?”

“You seem like someone who’d try to impress someone you like.”

“You don’t know me,” he muttered.

“I really don’t. You’re confusing.”

“Good.”

“You haven’t tried to go all out for some hot Princess or your suitors or something?”

“No. I don’t need to do anything - I’m already impressing.”

“Ha!” you scoffed too loudly. “I don’t know about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll admit you give lasting impressions. Like you kidnapped me, threatened me, won’t leave me alone, but I wouldn’t say you’re impressing…”

“I’m the Prince and heir of the only Dragon Kingdom left on this planet! I own a dragon, for fuck’s sake! I’m also sexy!”

“Mm, not so sure about that last one.”

“I should throw you in the dungeon.”

For the first time, Changbin got an earful of your light laughter. His father would often describe his mother’s laugh as sweet as syrup and for once he can understand what the King meant. Your laughter, mixed with the sight of the stars, was almost too sweet. Changbin didn’t know what to do.

“Don’t laugh at me,” he scolded.

“I can’t help that you’re funny for once.”

“Ok, Miss Professor. If you don’t think I’m impressing, what makes you so special?”

“Nothing really,” you answered honestly. “I’m quite ordinary.”

“You’ve traveled the world, studied over fifty dragons, and carry dragon’s blood on your neck and you’re telling me you think you’re ordinary?”

“Do you think I’m fascinating, Your Highness? It seems you answered your own question.”

Changbin bit his lip as punishment for saying too much. He needed to watch his words around you more because knowing you, you’d use them against him in a heartbeat. He changed the subject.

“Do you like travelling the world?” he asked.

“Yes and no. Yes because I met some amazing dragons and people, but also no because I miss home.”

“What was it like? All the travelling, I mean.”

“Incredible. A bit lonely, but incredible. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. There’s so much out there that’s yet to be discovered, you know? And I’m doing some of that discovering! It’s a wild place out here.” Changbin hummed. “Do you travel often?”

He shook his head. “Almost never.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I only ever travel for marriage contract reasons.”

“Ah…” Somehow, you’re disappointed. Maybe disappointed wasn’t the right word. “Are you engaged?”

“No, thankfully. We travel to meet the royal families, but it never works out. Their intentions for our dragons are for war and that’s not what they’re raised for. And marrying for contract is so old fashioned. Isn’t it supposed to be about love, or some bullshit?”

“Do you wanna fall in love, Prince ~?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“How romantic ~!”

“Shut up.”

“All jokes aside, I’m sure you’ll get to travel for joy one day. Maybe even with the love of your life ~” you continued to tease heavily as you poked his arms.

“Stop it!”

Just in time, Jin swooped in with his catch of the night in his mouth. Like an excited puppy showing you the toy he fetched, he dropped an entire tree a ways in front of you. Jin’s eyes glistened proudly as he waited for someone’s approval.

“Whoa…” you gasped, quickly scribbling this down in your notebook.

Changbin on the other hand sighed tiredly as if he experienced this too many times before. “Good job, Jin,” he said robotically. “You better throw that away.”

Jin let out a purr or content growl of some sorts and once again flew away with the tree stump. Just past the village, he dropped off the tree like it was garbage and flew beyond the valleys as if he was flying to find where the sun had gone.

“Sorry about that. He usually brings home his catch and eats it in front of me. Guess he really was trying to impress you.”

“I’m definitely impressed all right.” You turned your notebook around to show the embarrassed Prince your drawing of a happy Jin with his tree. “What a scene, huh?”

“Mm. Cute.”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“I said get up, I wanna go home.”

Sourly, though with a smile on your lips, you followed the grumpy Prince back to the village. By the time you arrived, it seemed that the townspeople had packed up their shops for the night and went home to their families. Had you and Changbin really been out for that long?

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

“I can walk back by myself.”

“It’s that inn isn’t it?” You followed Changbin’s finger pointing to the building not too far behind you.

“How did you…?”

“It’s the farthest from the castle. Figured you wouldn’t want to see my face often for however long you’re staying.”

“You’re smart.”

A smug Changbin led you the couple blocks down in front of your inn. Before you headed inside, you turned to him to say goodnight, but he interjected.

“There’s a festival in a couple of days,” he said. “It’s to celebrate the birth of the dragon eggs. She’ll fly and carry her eggs to a special nest on the field. The whole village participates.”

“Whoa, really!?” you gasped, eyes sparkling. “I’ve never been to an egg hatching or a dragon festival.”

“I’ll pick you up at 6:00pm.”

“You want to go with me?” You could feel your cheeks blush deeply. Aren’t festivals like a couple thing?

“That’s not what I said,” he mumbled. Before you could tease him directly about it, he was already walking back to the castle. “Don’t be late.”

“Goodnight, Changbin!” you called out.

He liked how you said his name. “Goodnight, _____.”

Between your last study session with Changbin and the day of the festival, you took the time to study the townspeople as they prepared for the egg hatching. It was total chaos, in the most organized way, as everyone scurried around the village to hang all of the flowers, baked all of the goods, and cooked only the finest cuts of meat. It was a colorful festival, despite Queenie and her babies being completely black, but the contrast would a beautiful sight to see. Beyond the town, in the fields where you and Changbin would wait for Jin to finish eating, the area was scattered with the same flowers in the shape of a circle. Sort of like they were preparing for a ritual. Candles and tiny flames joined the flowers so everyone could get a clear look.

You suddenly felt under dressed for the occasion, or at least under accessorized, so you bought a few things in town to spice up your look a bit. Somehow you knew the whole village knew about how much you and Changbin have been hanging out since you arrived by both the teasing looks you received from the men in town and the sour ones the ladies gave you. Did Changbin post that he was picking you up at six all over town, or something?

You continued to walk around town and enjoy the festive atmosphere in your get up because you weren’t going to wait at the inn until Changbin picked you up like some cheap date. Your time alone without having to worry about the quality of your notes or whether or not Changbin was just tricking you and waiting for the right moment to kidnap you again was the most peace you had since you left home on your journey. But it was quickly interrupted when someone harshly bumped into you.

“Ow! What the -!”

“Swearing is unladylike ~” Changbin teased.

“Yeah? Shut the fu -”

He shoved one of those yummy fish pastries filled with chocolate into your mouth to shut you up. If it was any other person, you’re sure you’d be biting their head off, but you can’t do that to the Prince in public, right? Besides, the bread was really good, so you can’t complain.

“I thought you were going to pick me up at six?” you asked.

“I wasn’t on my way to pick you up just now.”

“What are you doing then?”

“Can’t a Prince walk around the festival in peace?”

“Don’t snap at me when you’re the one who bumped into me!”

The Prince only shrugged, not really caring to argue. Were you supposed to follow him or leave him alone? You wished he’d be a little more transparent with you, just a little. But as you decided to follow him, it seemed that he didn’t mind your presence, anyways, so you just stayed with him. You hadn’t gotten a good look at what he was wearing until now. Normally, his clothes were almost all black, with the exception of his tan fur and silver chains. Tonight, though, he still wore all black and the finest leather money can buy along with some royal purple handkerchief thingies and some other pieces of clothing you couldn’t name. His rings and jewelry were still rubies and silver, but tonight they were bigger and better.

“You don’t wear a crown or a robe or have a bejeweled cane with you to bring to these events?” you mocked.

“No… At least not until I’m King. Why, do I look bad?” he asked, genuinely curious about what you thought about his ensemble.

“You look good,” you answered honestly. “Noble, but modest. Purple and red really suit you.”

“Thanks,” he said awkwardly then cleared his throat. “You look… different.”

Oh, God. Have boys always been this stupid? “I bought some stuff in the market today. I thought I should look a little nice for this occasion.”

“I mean for once you don’t look like a total nerd who studies for twenty hours a day. So I guess you look nice,” he muttered.

“Sorry, could you repeat that?” you teased, leaning in closer. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”

“I’m not saying it again.” In an instant, everyone around you started to carefully jog or speed walk towards the open field. “It must be almost time.”

You and Changbin got lost in the sea of people running like a school of fish swimming in a stream. There were moments when you’d lose sight of the Prince and you were a bit scared, but as if he read your mind, he found his way to you and grabbed your hand. Like in those fairy tales your father read to you as a kid, time seemed to move in slow motion when your hand was in his. His hands were cold - only fitting for someone like him - but they were soft, and you found yourself laughing as you continued to run. By the time you reached the circle of people, you were out of breath and his hands were warm. Naturally, the people opened up the circle to let their Prince in. After the chaos of running and weaving, you both made it to the center of the circle where the King, the Queen, and a mother dragon with her hatching babies were. Changbin still kept his hold on you.

The sea of people were far away from Queenie to give them some space. Every so often, she would wiggle and move about because her eggs would. When she knew it was time, she removed herself from the makeshift nest and waited patiently with the townspeople for all four of them to hatch. Pieces of black eggshells would pop off here and there and each time Changbin could feel you grip onto his hand a little tighter.

“You’re cutting off my blood flow,” he said.

Immediately, you let go. “Sorry! I’m just so excited! This is incredible!!”

“It is.”

The entire village was silent when the first baby made her grand entrance. She used her wings to break open the shell to reveal her healthy self and then hopped her way towards her mother. The village erupted in loud cheers and cries, rooting for the other three to hurry and break free, too. You joined in with the crowd like you were watching a joust and Changbin couldn’t help but think you were kind of adorable. He didn’t hold back his smile when you caught him looking.

“What?” you screamed over the crowd.

“Nothing,” he told you. “Don’t look at me, you’re missing it.”

When you turned to look, the other three began to wiggle in their shells and crack the surface. The second baby wasn’t quite as black - you’d argue that he was a dark blue (“Are you out of your mind, he’s totally black!” “Your Highness, with all due respect, you’re an idiot. He’s midnight blue!”). The third one watched his older sister. Truly, the first three were all as extraordinary as each other, but none could outdo their youngest sister. She was a moonlight white.

The townspeople are hushed silent at the sight of the youngest pearl. She was incredibly beautiful, a starking contrast against her siblings and mother. You tried your best to hold back your tears, but when the mother rejoined her babies, you couldn’t help it. They chirped and chittered as they attempted to fly for the very first time. Number one had it down as if she hadn’t just been born and led the way while two and three followed. Precious little pearl struggled a bit, but after mom gave her a little nudge, she was up and flying with the rest of them.

“Why are you crying?”

Changbin looked at you quite concerned. Well, maybe concerned wasn’t the right word - it was more of a ‘what the fuck was happening’ kind of expression. He was never good with feelings and stuff, but you already knew that.

“I don’t know! It’s just beautiful, isn’t it?”

Even through your tears, your smile was still as bright as the setting sun. Your true, passionate love for dragons was glowing golden tonight, and Changbin couldn’t believe that he ever doubted you for a second. Though you were smiling, he didn’t like seeing you cry, even if they were happy tears. He held a hand up to your cheek and lightly brushed away the tears.

“Stop crying,” he said sternly.

“S-Sorry. I get a little emotional when it comes to dragons. Can you tell?”

“I had no idea.”

You took advantage of the moment and dared to grab Changbin’s hand once more. When he didn’t pull away, you took it as a good sign and went a step further. For the remainder of the festival, until the rays of the sun could no longer be seen, you held the Prince’s hand and rested your head on his shoulder. Then His Highness did the unthinkable by resting his cheek on your head.

“Are you starting to like me, Prince?”

“In your dreams, Professor.”

“I’ll get you to admit it one day.”

“Try me.”

Changbin found himself at your doorstep so often that you were so quick to dismiss it and it all felt normal. Whether it be while studying the dragons or simply walking through the village, you spent almost every day the His Highness. At first, the stares and glares were hard to ignore, but when Changbin returned the gesture, the townspeople pretended to not know you at all. What a gentleman, right?

“Just say that you like me, Changbin.”

“I’d rather die.”

“Come on, I don’t even mean it like that, you know! Just admit that your judgement was wrong, that you apologize for kidnapping me, and that you’re begging on your knees for my forgiveness. It’s not that hard.”

“I’m not apologizing for being protective of my dragons.”

“Ok, fair enough. But I didn’t deserve such a forceful kidnapping.”

“I agree, but I’m still not apologizing.”

“You are impossible.”

It was all fun and games until you asked to see the last dragon. Changbin thought - hoped - he’d never have to see that day.

“You’re ready to see him? Finally,” he said.

“Yeah. I figured I can’t stay in your Kingdom forever, right?”

There’s a touch of sadness in your tone but Changbin didn’t question it. “Right.”

When you were ready to set off for the farthest cave in the mountains, You made sure to dress properly and even doubled up on the furs. With your notebooks packed, blood on your neck, and magic cream on hand, you were ready to see the Mighty Dragon.

“You look ridiculous,” Changbin teased.

“You told me I was under dressed last time! You’re so hard to satisfy… And coming from the man who strictly wears leather? Please.”

“Hey, the leather is so I can fly, ok? The scales don’t tear it up as easily as other fabrics!”

The cave was so far that it took almost half a day to arrive there. The cave wasn’t that special - it was neither too deep nor too shallow, neither too dark nor did it lack light. It was the ideal cave for a dragon.

Before entering, Changbin held his arm out to block you from entering.

“Stay behind me. He doesn’t like strangers.”

You nodded slowly, too afraid to speak. You kept your distance from the prince as he led you to the biggest dragon you’ve ever seen. Right in the center of the cave was a large, emerald green, sleeping dragon. The most striking feature about him was that he had whiskers that looked like they were made of gold. Needless to say, you were terrified of the Mighty Beast. So terrified that you couldn’t even buck up the courage to take notes.

As if he could smell your fear, his beady eyes snapped open and all you saw was black. No depth, not reflection, no emotion. Just black.

A loud, piercing screech comes out of the serpent’s mouth that vibrated the entire range. You’re sure there was an avalanche happening somewhere. His eyes seemed to ignore Changbin, who tried blocking you with his body, but it was no use. The dragon only saw you, an intruder.

Rising from ashes, he got up from his sleeping position and looked like he was ready to attack.

“It’s ok,” Changbin said, trying to ease the dragon’s nerves.

It was no use. In a second, the cave went up in flames. Uncontrolled, random balls of fire shot in any and every direction and if you and Changbin didn’t get out fast, you’d be mixed in with the ashes that flew with the wind.

“Get down!”

Changbin pushed you to the stone floor and all of your belongings went flying. Your snacks, the notebooks, and the magic creme were lost somewhere at the edge of the cave that you’d hope to find later. For now, you needed to focus on making sure Changbin was ok as he hovered over you with fire just centimeters behind him.

The Mighty Dragon let out one last screech before his grande finale.

“Ah, fuck!”

Changbin pulled his arm to his chest and you saw that the leather that once covered it had been completely burned off along with his skin. His arm was scorching like cooked meat and you can only imagine how much pain he’s in.

“Ch-Changbin…!”

All of the fire subsided. The snow that was once there evaporated and the cave was now completely dry. The Emerald Serpent no longer had any interest in either of you and flew out of the cave to only God knows where. The only thing that could be heard were your quiet sobs that echoed in the cave.

The Prince was still on top of you, shielding your body, not saying a word.

“Changbin…?”

“Hm?”

The boy rolled off of you and laid on the cold stone floor right next to you. His breathing was heavy, but all that mattered to you was that he was breathing. As you turned to look at him, Changbin was already looking at you.

“Are you ok?” he asked you.

“I-I think so. You…?”

The cocky Prince held up his flaming red arm as if it was nothing. “Yeah. Normal dragon tamer things.”

“Holy shit… Oh, my creme!”

Your legs were weak for whatever reason. Was your body too terrified to move? You struggled to crawl to the jar of creme that was now half empty and made your way back to an exhausted Prince who kept his eyes shut.

“Take your shirt off.”

“I’m fine.”

“Changbin, please,” you begged.

He couldn’t seem to resist your worried tone, so he did as he was told, even if it meant freezing for a little while. After peeling all of his layers, you were left with a Prince in a sleeveless shirt and a gnarly burn all because he was protecting you. You took hold of his burned arm and slathered your parents’ magic creme made for occasions like this.

“Ah, cold ~” he whined cutely.

“S-Sorry,” you sniffled.

Changbin’s eyes snapped to get a good look at your face since you entered the cave. You were crying. You were worried about him. And you were blaming yourself. You didn’t even notice the burn mark you had on your own cheek.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Why are you crying?”

“You got burned because of me.”

“I get burned all the time.” After you finished putting the creme on, he turned show you his shoulder blades that had tiny little burn stripes like a tiger. “This was from the Mother dragon. I got a little too close to the eggs once. And this one,” he showed you one on his rib cage. “From Jin when I first got him. Now I have one from each of them. I should be thanking you.”

He was able to crack a weak smile from you, but even then the tears kept on falling. He really shouldn’t be grinning at the sight of you crying, but you were just too cute. Did you care about him that much?

His hand cupped one the cheek with the burn mark and wiped away the tears.

“Stop crying.”

And you did. “Ok.”

“Give me that creme.” When you handed it to him, he took a small dollop and smeared it on your cheek. “Did you even know you got burned, Professor?”

“Really? Is it bad?”

“No, but it makes you look bad ass. You should take care of yourself once in a while, you know?” he teased. “What is this stuff anyways?”

“My parents made this magic creme that only they have the recipe for. It’s supposed to work on almost everything.”

“An apothecary’s magic creme? That’s the strong shit. No wonder my arm feels better.”

“Really?”

“Really. I’m fine. Let’s just go back, ok? Before he comes back.”

Changbin helped you pack up your fallen belongings and guided you home in the cold. You developed a newfound appreciation for the cold. Around the halfway point, the brave Prince dared to hold your hand.

“Stop thinking about it,” he said, referring to his arm.

“You’re so bossy.”

“I don’t like seeing you this way. I also don’t know how to be nice, so… this is the best you’ll get.”

On the way back, you talk about anything and everything that didn’t involve dragons or fire. You learned that Changbin was skilled in jousting, loved to cook, and had a soft spot for the farm animals. He learned all about your parents, your fascination with other creatures, and all things about plant life. You always joked about him not liking you but you somehow still believed he did, and now that he revealed to you deeper layers of himself, it really seemed like he liked you. Even if it was just a little bit, you saw it as an accomplishment.

You were finally back in the village fields come night time. The Kingdom wasn’t totally asleep, but it was peaceful quiet.

“Can I ask you something?” he began as you walked towards the inn. “What’s your plan now?”

“Now? To sleep, of course.”

“No, I mean… You’ve seen all three dragons. You saw the birth of four. Are you done here?”

“You mean am I leaving?”

He nodded. You needed a moment to think about that because honestly, you haven’t thought about when you’d be leaving or when you’d be done here. And you’ve traveled to pretty much everywhere… Where else could you go?

“I could leave if I wanted to. You know, I’ve traveled to every corner of the world in just a few years. I’ve seen many dragons, but none were ever like yours. I guess I could compile all my notes into a proper thesis. Get my book going.” Changbin adored the proud smile on your lips. “I think I’ll do that.”

“Do it here.”

“Here? What do you -?”

“I mean don’t leave.”

He knew he shouldn’t have said that when he saw your cocky smirk. “You’re saying you want me to stay ~?”

“Yes.”

“Because you like me ~?”

“Because you promised I’d read your other notebooks. You need them for your thesis right? Ship them here. I’ll help you write it. I can get you a proper study and room in the castle and get you out of that inn.”

“Wow, a room at the Grande Castle!? You must really like me, Prince.”

“Maybe.” He took advantage of his hold on your hand and pulled you close to him, loving the sound of your giggle. He wrapped his arms around your waist to prevent you from escaping. “Just a little.”

“Enough to kiss me?”

“Do you want me to kiss you, Professor?”

“Don’t turn this on me!”

“Say it and I will.”

“Ugh, I hate you… Kiss me.”

His lips were cold but soft, just like him.

[hexwritesfanfics]

[to be human]

A/N: To be completely honest, a lot of my Tokyo Ghoul-related fics are on Wattpad, but since I’m not on the site much anymore and constantly posting on here more actively, now you get to see my trash. My long-running Tokyo Ghoul fic is also on Wattpad because I can’t post nineteen chapters in one go.

Fandom: Tokyo Ghoul

Pairing: Kaneki x OC

Warning: slight angst

“I still remember. Do you?”

    Kaneki received no response; really, he didn’t need one. He knew she remembered. She never truly forgot anything, not even the barest of details about him. He sighed, brushing his fingers against the soft pale skin of Hanami’s cheek, the warmth so familiar after basking within it for so long. He had tried to taint her, to make her like him, but in the end, she had freed him of the darkness inside.

    She loved every fractured piece of him and he loved every shattered piece of her.

    “I still remember when you tried to visit me in the hospital after the accident,” Kaneki murmured, his tone taking on a tint of regret. “You and Hide, you both tried and I turned you both away. I wish I had let the two of you visit if I could turn back time.”

    He paused for a moment.

    “If I could turn back time,” he continued, “I would have recognized how you felt about me sooner.”

    Hanami still hadn’t responded, but honestly what could Kaneki have expected? Ever since that battle against the CCG, her ghoul gene was forcibly triggered when the Doves were cutting into her body before his eyes. When Kaneki received a grievous blow, Hanami had gone ballistic and attacked every Dove within their vicinity. She had received a blow in turn, but there was something odd by how she shielded her body. Kaneki found out why much later.

    Makine Hanami, the only trace left of his human past, was the girl who loved him when he was human and loved him as he was now. She was the girl he had taken, the girl who tried to appeal to his humanity by releasing her. But Kaneki couldn’t let her go; not when she carried memories of a time when his fate wasn’t cruel. She was his, a beautiful flower much like her name that he held in his bloodied hands.

    Kaneki’s hand drifted from its place against Hanami’s cheek down to her hand, twining his fingers with hers. It had been two long years since Hanami’s eyes closed on that battle field, but she wasn’t dead. After the recessive ghoul gene inside of her body was triggered, Hanami was in bed in a new hideout, healing. Kaneki wasn’t sure how long her coma would last.

    I’m just like you now, she had said to him on the battlefield, with tears streaming from her eyes—the rubies he was so familiar with now fully formed kakugan. She was smiling though, not because of that; she understood him better now that she was somewhat the same. Hanami was a half-breed whose humanity was the most dominant of her. No matter how her DNA was constructed in her mother’s womb, Hanami was more human than he ever could be again.

    “She still hasn’t woken up?”

    Kaneki was pulled from his reverie by Touka’s voice and he turned his gaze to the dark-haired female. While Kaneki knew of Touka’s feelings toward him, he was grateful for her presence. She had pulled him from the brink when he thought he had lost Hanami forever. She still kept him in check while he sat at Hanami’s bedside.

    “Not yet,” he replied softly, lifting Hanami’s hand to his lips to press a gentle kiss to her fingers. “I would have think she’d open her eyes by now.”

    “You two went through the wringer, Kaneki.” Touka’s voice was soft. “And Hanami…her body couldn’t handle the strain of her genes taking over on top of being…”

    Tortured. The one word Touka or Kaneki could never say. The CCG had taken Hanami from him after finding out that her father was a ghoul under the alias of “Red Eyes”. From what Kaneki was told, Hanami’s father was a ferocious ghoul that had gone under the grid after he had taken a human woman as a mate—and no one had realized from that union came a half-breed unlike the usual. Hanami was born an anomaly, a half-breed that should have been impossible to give birth to. Her mother’s pregnancy was as normal as a human’s—the only difference was that the daughter was born with unformed kakugan, no kagune, and her mother had repeatedly tried to kill her.

    Hanami understood faster than Kaneki could that her mother didn’t realize she had conceived a child with a ghoul. “Red Eyes” had disappeared before Hanami’s birth and Hanami had met her father on the battlefield—as a quinque. Even now, Kaneki felt anger toward the CCG. While Amon Kotaro was a Dove Kaneki respected, the other Doves were quick to put a scared girl on a slab and carve her open because she was the daughter of a ghoul.

    Touka sighed softly. She knew how difficult this was for Kaneki, to watch as his mate was comatose. She had met Hanami only a handful of times and could see that the brunette was pure. All she wanted was to do was see Kaneki again. Glancing back, Touka smiled softly. “She wants to see you,” she told Kaneki, returning her gaze to him. “She wants you to tell the story of how you and Hanami met.”

    A smile curved Kaneki’s lips faintly. “If she insists.”

    Touka exited the room and, not a few minutes later, a little girl no older than two toddled in, walking toward Kaneki. Her curling, black hair was held slightly at bay with hairclips shaped like roses, her cheeks a rosy pink as she held out her hands. Kaneki reached for the child, hoisting her into his arms. “Have you been giving Touka-chan a hard time, Sayuri?” he asked.

    Sayuri pouted and Kaneki couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him before she lay her head on his shoulder. The child definitely took after her mother when making that face. “I want to see mama,” she chirped. “Papa keeps mama all to himself.”

    “I do, don’t I?” Kaneki smoothed a hand against Sayuri’s cheek, getting to his feet to pace near Hanami’s bed. “That isn’t fair of me, is it?”    

    “No, no, no, papa, not fair,” cooed Sayuri, her small arms banding around Kaneki’s neck. She lifted her head to peer at him with large, ruby eyes. That was one of the things Sayuri had inherited from her mother.

    “Touka-chan told me you want papa to tell you a story.”

    Sayuri nodded before laying her head against his shoulder. “About papa and mama.”

    “Where to begin,” laughed Kaneki as he looked at Hanami.

    “Papa say mama was like a princess.”

    “That’s right. Mama was like a princess, with pretty eyes like yours.”

    “Is mama a ghoul too?”

    Kaneki looked toward Hanami before returning his gaze to Sayuri, bouncing the toddler gently in his arms to get her to sleep. “Mama is the most human person papa has ever met, Sayuri. Do you know why?”

    “Why?”

    “Because mama’s heart is full of love. Love for you, love for me, and love for all of our friends here.”

    Sayuri rubbed her eyes. “Papa?”

    “Yes?”

    “Will mama ever wake up?”

    Kaneki sighed heavily, resting his head gently against Sayuri’s. “She will. Mama is just resting for a while so she can play with you for as long as you want,” he assured. It was a question Sayuri often posed every night after she’d “fight” with Touka on seeing him to hear stories about Hanami.

    As much as Kaneki wished Hanami would open her eyes day after day these past two years, she had given him the most precious treasure Kaneki would ever hope to have in his life. He only hoped she would wake up soon to experience the joy of caring for that treasure. Sayuri was a part of Kaneki and a part of Hanami, their treasured daughter, beloved by everyone in their current hideout. Until Hanami awakened, Kaneki would have to protect both her and Sayuri. They were the reason he could feel human again, the reason why his heart was so full.  

    “Papa?” Sayuri mumbled sleepily and Kaneki rubbed the child’s back soothingly with a soft hum. “Can I stay here with you and mama?”

    Kaneki smiled softly. “How about I lay you down next to mama?”

    “Please?”

    Kaneki moved toward Hanami’s bedside, gently easing his daughter onto the bed beside her mother after gently shifting Hanami’s arm. Sayuri curled against Hanami, resting her head against the space on Hanami’s shoulder and closing her eyes, falling asleep surrounding by her mother’s warmth. Kaneki threaded his fingers through Sayuri’s raven curls gently, his eyes soft. “Good night, my precious flowers” he whispered, leaning down to press a kiss against Sayuri’s head and one against Hanami’s lips.

[jeaneybean]

This is the one where we fight wights

Let’s just say that no one has any fun with this situation at all, least of all the three of us.

So the morning after the drunkenness fest the three of us who didn’t drink (Oz, Vera, and Nitahn) show up in the main hall to find the Lady of the house. She explains that she’d sent everyone away the previous night in case that things went wrong with Nitahn and his furry little problem, and the downside of that is that no one was there to cook breakfast. Vera and Oz voulenteered to go down to the town to tell them that it was okay, with Angathel telling them to tell the head butler and he would take care of everything. As they did that, Nitahn stayed back and cooked the lady breakfast, a one pot meal with a lot of eggs and grease.

In town, Oz and Vera head to the inn to talk to the lovely innkeeper Karen, who sends her boy off to find the head butler after a loud bit of screaming at the kid. Vera gets a momentary flash of ‘we already took on one kid do we need to adopt a few more’ but is quickly distracted by Karen handing over letters to the party, and a few to Lady Angathel. On the way back up she opens one to her, it’s from her senior paladin Nik. He gives words of encouragment all while passive aggressive being like ‘you didn’t say that you were heading through montesylvania when you said you were going west’. Vera snickered a bit to Oz, who was reading over her shoulder; she’d said she was going to Spee. This is a whole lot different than Spee.

The second letter was from her beautiful husband, who spent about two pages waxing on about how much he misses her. He also says that her father has been courting a new lady, but rumor says that he’s been unable to tie the knot because the family heirloom ring is missing. The table oohs in joy, because the city campaign knows exactly where that ring is. Vera also croons a bit, because that was Grandmama’s ring and Daddy lost it. It’s the one positive thing to come out of her mother’s death. Bit of gossip about the Queen Commander starting the guard and them making a name for themselves. More flowery bits about missing her. Clearly, letting her go has been hard on him.

Back up to the castle, to witness Nitahn’s horrible horrifying breakfast. Vera has a bit and actually  has some spice to it, so that’s welcome even if the grease is off putting. There’s some talk of the date, and Vera does the math to realize that her 20th birthday was when Nitahn got bit by the werewolf. This makes Nitahn upset that he missed her birthday, to which Vera says in an aside that she hasn’t really celebrated birthdays since she and her brother no longer had them together.

After lunch Vera has tea with Angathel again, Oz goes to the library, and Nitahn goes to town for supplies for birthday. Vera gives Angathel Grandmama’s contact information and they chat, only for Jake to come in midway and help himself to some tea from the third cup set out (The one set out for death) before disapearing into the necklace. Angathel is surprised, and identifies it as void magic. Vera doesn’t know shit about void magic.

Oz investigates the library to research the history of the next area and possibly find out what is in store for them. The area to the south has been Von Rothrine controlled since the country’s been a thing, but the actual controlling person has changed frequently since the first one pissed off someone stronger. It’s in a hard to control area with a lot of rivers. Meanwhile, his bat Veli stomps around in ink on a piece of paper to keep herself busy. Oz does not get her creative design. In addition, with what he’s been able to gain from looking through the Von Rothrine correspondence, Oz is able to guess with good certianty that they’re going to be facing skeletons, ghouls, zombies, and wights. Fun!

Nitahn goes around town and eventually gets a entertainers dress, a hair pin, a wedding cake, some baked goods, and some nice white lillies more commonly seen at a funeral sent up to the castle. Everyone in town is confused.

Back at the castle Nitahn does him a little party for Vera, also giving flowers and baked goods for Angathel. Vera’s given her presents, including Veli flying over the drawing she made and getting a very gentle pat, and actually starts crying at the hairpin because she doesn’t wear jewlery, but Nitahn had found something she would wear. At the first start of tearing up she demands no one looks at her, so Nitahn moves in front of her until she gets the tears out. Angathel apologizes for not having a gift, to which Vera says that having Nitahn healed is all she needed.

The next morning they head south, across the border to the next zone. It’s like leaving darkshore for duskwood. Scary woods everywhere. As they travel Veli starts freaking out, and some moderate evil appears on Vera’s radar. There’s a corpse in a copse of trees, splayed out over a tree. Oz says that it’s not living, but alive, so Vera calls out to it: “We see you.”

To which it replies: “And we see you.” As it’s two fellows run up and we roll for initiative. The wights go first, number one ducking under the carriage and the other two running up to attack Nitahn and Vera, nitahn making his fort save. Vera smiles brightly and announces to the group: “Hello, I’m Paladin Medvedev, may I bring the word of the Redeemer to you today?” and smites evil on one. Oz casts some real fun bubbly blood shit on Vera’s sword, then hits NItahn with red ooze all over his body.

The wight hisses out to his compantions to go for the Paladin, which was kind of Vera’s plan. They run up and all smash, two hitting and one having Vera fail her save. She’s dropped to level 3. Nitahn rages out and grapples one of the assholes, doing a shit ton of acid damage to him with the spell oz put on him. Vera hits one on the side with bloody blade and doesn’t do as much damage as she could, but still does a great deal. Oz finishes that one off with a spray of light, Nitahn grapple acid smooshes the one he has, and wight number three does not like his odds and books it, Nitahn charging after it with Vera lagging behind. Vera follows after until they hit the woods, in which case she won’t go further and it kills her a bit. Nitahn grabs the thing and wrestles with it until the acid kills it, then suplexs it’s dead body.

After some talk with one another (They’re all injured and have temporarily lost a level at this point) they move the wights off the road (With vera moving the one Oz killed back to it’s stump seat) and head back for Angathel. She’s surprised to see them, hears what happened, and offers to help how she can. Vera’s feeling like shit, because as far as she’s concerned she failed. She had to come running ‘home’ and abandon the quest literally on the first day. Is not good.

However, with a cobination of fort save stacking, everyone passes their fort save without having to roll (Since Oz has a beefy wizard fort save of +6, damn) and they don’t lose levels. Resting to recover spells, they  head back out the next day with a warning from Angathel: Once they kill t he vampire she can’t help them.

[the-silver-peahen-residence]

Nobuko is to innocent to do it. It was probably Clover who snuck into her work lol.

Nobuko said nothing but she hid her face in her hands, blushing furiously at the thought. Though, this is mostly true but she didn't say. For now, she'll just let the anon keep think that without giving too much information.

[myth-lord]

Creatures From Around The World

My Favorite Mythology/Folklore and Cryptid monsters collected by Country/Continent.

MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN MYTHOLOGY / FOLKLORE (Book of Imaginary Creatures, Heraldry, Alchemy, Medieval Bestiary, Roma, Left-Over European)

The Muscaliet is so hot it will inflate everything it touches into a burning column of fire. Entire forests burn away when they find their way into earthly forests.

A Bao A Qu / Barometz or Vegetable Lamb / Basilisk / Cagrino or Chagrin / Carbuncle / Catoblepas / Echeneis or Remora / Flaga / Goblin / Gold-Digging Ant or Formica Aurum / Hypnalis / Ichneumon or Hydrus / Imp / Incubus / Leontophone / Leucrotta or Crocotta / Muscaliet / Myrmecoleon or Antlion / Nependis / Nightmare or Mare / Odontotyrannos / Pard / Peryton / Salamander / Scitalis or Scytale / Seps / Succubus / Undine / Will o Wisp / Wyvern / Yale or Centicore / Ziphius

Abarimon / Aspidochelone / Bicorn / Blemmyes / Bonnacon / Cerastes / Chichevache / Cockatrice / Cynocephaly / Haermorrhois or Blood-Letter / Indus Worm / Keythong / Musimon / Onocentaur / Panotti / Parandrus / Sandman / Wild Hunt / Ypotryll / Zitiron

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GREEK MYTHOLOGY (Ancient Greek/Roman Mythology)

Nemean Lions (named Golden Lion or War Lion in Mythika) are powerful hunters with very tough skin which is almost impossible to pierce with normal weapons. Their manes are covered with arrows and the weapons from their victims.

Akheilos / Amphisbaena / Anteros / Argus / Cacus / Centaur / Cerberus / Charon / Charybdis / Chimera / Chrysaor / Dactyl / Echidna / Empusa / Erinyes or Fury / Faun or Satyr / Gorgon or Medusa / Harpy / Hekatonkheires or  Hundred-Handed One / Hippocampus / Hydra / Kampe / Karkinos or Cancer / Ketos or Cetus / Ladon / Lamia / Lampad / Makhai or War Daemon / Minotaur / Narcissus / Nemean Lion / Nosoi or Pandora Box / Phobetor / Scylla / Sphinx / Thriae

Aegipan or Capricorn / Aetos or Caucasian Bird / Antaeus / Arachne / Celedon / Circe / Cyclops / Dryad / Erote or Cupid / Erymanthian Boar or Dire Boar / Eurynomos / Gegenees / Geryon / Graeae or Stygian Hag / Griffon or Griffin / Khalkotauroi / Maenad / Mormo / Pytho or Delphyne / Scorpios / Skolopendra / Spartoi / Stymphalian Bird / Symplegades or Planctae / Talos or Bronze Colossus / Teumessian Fox / Triton / Typhon / Zelus

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NORSE MYTHOLOGY (Ancient Norse Mythology)

Fenrir are said to be ancestors of all canine species, and in Mythika they are among the most powerful, only Cerberi stand a chance. Their skin is riddled with ice crystals and their breath is cold as winter.

Berserker / Draugr / Fafnir / Fenrir or Fenris / Hraesvelgr / Jormungandr / Jotunn or Frost Giant / Nidhogg / Svartalfar or Dark Elf / Troll / Valkyrie

Alberich / Dwarf / Elf / Hell / Hrimfaxi / Naglfar / Ratatoskr / Skinfaxi / Ymir

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CELTIC MYTHOLOGY / WESTERN EUROPE MEDIEVAL MYTHS (English, Welsh, Manx, Scottish, Irish, Breton and Arthurian)

Tatty Bogle are evil animated Scarecrows which can control birds and animate objects they touch. It is said that they are created by evil Hags which use the hearts of humans and the soul of a bogeyman to animate them.

Afanc or Addanc / Alp-Luachra or Joint Eater / Ankou / Awd Goggie / Banshee / Barghest or Black Dog / Boobrie / Brobinyak / Brollachan / Brucha / Buggane / Cirein Croin / Cu Sith / Cwn Annwn / Dullahan or Headless Horseman / Fachen / Fear Liath or Grey Man / Fomorian / Gancanagh / Grindylow / It / Jack-in-Irons / Kelpie / Knucker / Lavellan / Leanan Sidhe / Marool / Muirdris / Nuckelavee / Phooka or Pucca / Questing Beast / Rawhead or Bloody Bones / Redcap or Dunter / Shellycoat / Sianach / Sluagh / Spriggan / Springheel or Spring-Heeled Jack / Stray Sod / Tatty Bogle / Water Leaper or Llamhigyn Y Dwr / Wizard’s Shackle or Burach Bhadi

Arkan Sonney / Black Annis / Bluecap / Bodach / Boobach or Bugaboo / Bugbear / Cat Sidhe / Cath Palug / Ceffyl Dwr / Clurichaun / Curnunnos / Dobhar-Chu / Far Darrig / Fear Dorcha / Fear Gorta / Gwyllion / Kilmoullis / Leprechaun / Lunantishee / Ly Erg

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NORTHERN EUROPE MEDIEVAL MYTHS (Germanic, Scandinavian, German, Norwegian, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Dutch, Belgian and Danish)

Osschaart are bizarre constructs made by the Jack-in-Irons. Osschaarts dangerous aura’s increase gravity and they can animate and control the chains that form most of their bodies.  

Ajatar / Alraune / Buckrider / Colorobetch / Doppelganger or Fetch / Erlking or Erlkonig / Gloson or Gravso / Gulon / Horerczy / Hrokkall / Ice Worm or Lagarfljot Worm / Iku-Turso / Kraken / Land Wight or Landvaettir / Osschaart / Pesta / Swamfisk / Valravn or Vilderavn

Askafroa / Baldanders / Fossegrim or Nakken / Helhest / Hrosshvalur / Huldra / Kludde or Aufhocker / Kobold / Lorelei / Mandragora or Mandrake / Nachtkrapp / Norn / Otso / Skotumodir / Snow Queen / Traicousse / Vatnagedda / Waldgeist

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EASTERN EUROPE MEDIEVAL MYTHS (Slavic, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Slovenian, Lithuanian and Serbian)

Combining the most feral features of both wolves and dragons the Zburator is a nocturnal hunting dragon that unlike most other dragons hunt in packs, they mostly hunt for other dragons.

Aitvaras / Bagiennik / Bauk / Bukavac / Fext / Hala or Ala / Karzelek / Kikimora / Leshy or Leshii / Lich / Moroi or Vampire / Nocnitsa or Night Hag / Planetnik or Demon Storm / Poludnica or Lady Midday / Shtriga / Veela or Vila / Vodyanoi or Vodnik / Zburator / Zirnitra / Zlatorog or Goldhorn / Zmey or Gorynych

Abaasy / Alkonost / Baba Yaga / Balaur / Bolotnik / Domovoi / Drekavac / Ebajalg / Indrik / Likho / Nosferatu / Ovinnik / Psoglav / Rusalka / Sarkany / Tculo / Ziburinis

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SOUTHERN EUROPE MEDIEVAL MYTHS (Spanish, Basque, Maltese, Sardinian, Italian, French, Swiss, Austria, Cyprus and Medieval Greek)

Every year the scales on a Cuelebre’s body become harder, until after a 1000 years they reach Adamantium hardness, once they reach this age they are almost impossible to destroy with normal weapons and most spells will simply bounce of their shimmering iron scales.

Aatxe / Agrippa / Barbegazi / Butatsch-Cun-Ilgs / Codrille / Cuelebre / Erchitu / Gargoyle or Gargouille / Gaueko / Hellequin / Kaw Kaw / Lou Carcolh / Marabbecca / Nuberu / Peluda / Pyrausta or Pyrallis / Stella / Tarasque / Trenti / Vrykolakas

Aerico / Caladrius / Drac / Krampus / Tartalo / Vouivre

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NATIVE AMERICAN FOLKLORE AND MYTHOLOGY (Inuit, Canadian, Navajo, Cherokee, and other such Tribal American)

Psonen are beautiful, but ice-cold bird monsters that are said to be related to the Phoenix. They mostly serve the Snow Queen as aerial mounts. They summon cold weather wherever they go.

Acheri / Ahkiyyini / Akhlut / Amikuk / Aniwye / Awahondo / Baykok / Binaye-Ahani / Delgeth or Thelgeth / Djieien / Ewah / Gaasyendietha or Meteor Dragon / Haietlik or Lightning Serpent / Mahaha / Mishibizhiw or Underwater Panther / Nalusa Falaya / Nida / Oniate / Piasa / Psonen / Pukwudgie / Qalupalik / Rougarou or Werewolf / Skinwalker / Tlanusi / Tsenahale / Utlunta or Spearfinger / Wendigo or Windigo / Yeitso

Adlet / Agloolik / Amarok / Amhuluk / Aziwugum / Baxbakwala / Cervitaur / Fastachee / Hinqumemen or Engulfer / Ijiraq / Ishigaq / Isitoq / Kokogiak or Qupqugiaq / Raven Mocker / Thunderbird / Tizheruk / Tupilaq / Ugjuknarpak

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CENTRAL AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY / FOLKLORE (Aztec, Mayan, Mexican)

The Reptilian Xhumpedzkin are famous for the lethal headaches they cause with their psychic aura’s. They feed on other creatures shadows.

Ahuizotl / Camazotz / Cipactli / Lechuza / Nagual / Xhumpedzkin

Camulatz / Chaneque / Huay Chivo / Quetzalcoatl / Tezcatlipoca

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SOUTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY / FOLKLORE / CRYPTIDS (Brazilian, Chilean, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Patagonian, Surinam and Argentina)  

Cherufe are the voice, will and mobility of a living volcano. They can take any shape they like but are always formed from lava and magma. Inside their volcanic homes these elementals are invincible, only outside the volcano the creature can be slain. 

Abuhuku / Alicanto / Caleuche or Ghost Ship / Candileja / Cherufe / Chon Chon / Cuero / Curupira / Eintykara / Encantado / Inulpamahuida / Invunche / Kayeri / Mapinguari / Minhocao / Nguruvilu / Peuchen / Succarath / Tuyango

Anhanga / Ao Ao / Boitata / Bush Dai Dai / Camahueto / Capelobo / Colo Colo / Cuca / El Tunche / Huallepen / Kori / Yacuruna

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AFRICAN FOLKLORE AND CRYPTIDS (Central and South African Countries)

The Migas in Mythika kinda resembles the LOTRing’s Watcher in the Water. Swamp Octopi with more than twenty tentacles, fighting one of these aberrations is like fighting an entire army of tentacles.

Aigamuxa / Asanbosam or Sasabonsam / Bouda or Werehyena / Cagn or Mantis / Dingonek / Eloko or Biloko / Emela Ntouka / Gbahali / Impundulu or Lightning Bird / Intulo / Jba Fofi / Kongamato / Lukwata / Lunwaba / Mbielu Mbielu / Migas / Mngwa or Nunda / Nandi Bear or Chemosit / Popobawa / Umdhlebi / Ya-Te-Veo

Abada / Adze / Anansi / Aziza / Chipfalamfula / Emere / Gambo / Grootslang / Jengu / Kwamang-A / Mokele-Mbembe / Ngoubou / Nguma-Monene / Ninki Nanka / Olitiau / Rompo / Yehwe Zogbanu

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EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY (Ancient Egyptian Mythology)

Sak are strange, wingless Griffons with a beautiful lotus flower on the end of their tails. This lotus flower releases a calming fragrance which takes away aggression in its victims. Sak love the flesh of Unicorns and other equine creatures.

Ammit or Devourer / Khepri / Petsuchos / Sak / Salawa or Set Animal

Axex / Heqet / Mummy / Phoenix or Firebird / Serket / Serpopard

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LEVANTINE FOLKLORE, RELIGION, MYTHOLOGY ( Arabian, Persian, Iran, Iraq, Turkish, Sumerian, Mesopotamian, Akkadian and Middle East)

The centaur-like Urmahlullu combines the best features of the lion and a humanoid. They are the perfect hunters and both gentle and evil variants exist.

Aghash or Evil Eye / Asag / Asdeev / Bushyasta / Caspilly / Devalpa / Druj Nasu / Dybbuk / Fulad-Zereh / Ghul or Ghoul / Girtablilu or Aqrabuamelu / Golem / Ifrit or Efreet / Jidra / Karkadann / Manticore / Miraj or Almiraj / Ouktazaun / Roc or Rukh / Sandwalker / Shadhavar or Siranis / Tiamat / Urmahlullu / Zaratan

Anzu / Arzshenk / Asena / Djinn / Ghawwas / Humbaba / Lilith / Palis / Pazuzu

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HINDU BELIEFS (Hindu Religion, Buddhism)

Raktavija are masters in blood magic, they can animate and harden their own demonic blood into shields, armor and weapons. To refill their lost blood they simply drain other creatures dry of theirs.

Juggernaut / Rakshasa / Raktavija / Virabhadra / Vish Kanya or Poison Girl / Vritra 

Airavata / Apaosha / Garuda / Makara / Naga 

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JAPANESE MYTHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE (Yokai, Japanese Stories)

Oh, can I keep it? Keukegen look like fuzzy, innocent creatures made entirely from hairs, in reality they spread horrid itching diseases and in the worst case a victim will scratch its own skin off.

Akaname or Filth Licker / Ashinaga-Jin / Bakekujira or Ghost Whale / Baku / Dorotabo / Enenra / Gashadokuro / Harionago / Heikegani / Isonade / Ittan-Momen / Jinmenju / Jorogumo / Jubokko or Vampire Tree / Kamaitachi or Sickle Weasel / Kappa / Keukegen / Kurage-no-Hinotama / Muramasa Blade / Namazu / Nekomata or Bakeneko / Nogitsune or Kumiho / Nurikabe / Omukade / Otoroshi / Raiju or Thunder Beast / Rokurokubi / Sagari / Sazae-Oni / Tenaga-Jin / Tengu / Tenome / Tera-Tsutsuki / Tesso / Tsuchigumo / Umibozu or Sea Bonze / Wanyudo / Yuki-Onna or Snow Maiden

Akashita / Ame-Onna / Hahakigami / Hannya / Hyakume / Jinshin Mushi / Kamikiri / Kasa Obake / Kasha / Katsura-Otoko / Kirin or Qilin / Kitsune / Mekurabe / Nodeppo / Nue / Nure-Onna / Oni / Shachihoko / Suiko / Tanuki / Yanagi-Baba

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CHINESE MYTHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE (China, Chinese Stories)

Xiao or Hsigo are kleptomaniac pests, they steal for the act of stealing and even attack other creatures to rob them of their possessions, especially gemstones and golden coins are wanted by the little thieves. Their leaders are called Ahools and they combine baboons with bat features.

Dijiang / Gaki or Preta / Kun Peng / Shen or Chan / Taotie / Terra-Cotta Warrior / Xiao or Hsigo / Xing Tian / Zhenniao

Azure Dragon / Bai Ze / Byakko / Dragon Turtle / Feng Huang / Genbu / Nian / Pixiu / Zheng

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POLYNESIAN MYTHOLOGY AND FOLKLORE (Philippines, Indonesia, Melanesian, Malaysian, Solomon Islands and Vietnam)

Terrifying aberrations, the Kurita use their many arms for swift locomotion, grabbing their victims along the way, they can eat and move at the same time without much trouble.

Abaia / Abere / Adaro / Bakunawa / Batibat or Bangungot / Berbalang / Bonguru / Con Rit / Dalaketnon / Jenglot / Kurita / Mambabarang / Nuno / Orang Minyak / Polong / Pua Tu Tahi / Sigbin / Tikbalang / Tiyanak

Ahool / Anggitay / Aswang or Manananggalen / Babi Ngepet / Banaspati / Berberoka / Bungisngis / Gawigawen / Genderuwo / Imoogi or Imugi / Kapre / Pelesit / Sarangay / Siyokoy / Tiburones / Toyol / Veo

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AUSTRALIAN MYTHOLOGY, CRYPTIDS AND FOLKLORE (Australian, Aboriginal and New Zealand)

Tiddalik suck up water and spit it at great force at their prey, putting them off balance and turning them into easy prey to swallow. There are also jungle variants of the Tiddalik which shoot with poisonous water and which look like giant mutant poison-arrow frogs, they can climb in trees as well.

Burrunjor / Dheeyabery / Drop Bear / Mokoi / Muldjewangk / Nargun / Papinijuwari / Punga / Taniwha / Whowie / Tiddalik / Wulgaru / Yara-Ma-Yha-Who

Bunyip / Mimi / Minka Bird

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FEARSOME CRITTERS (North American Lumberjack Stories, Cryptids)

Argopelters live high up in the treetops where they use their bizarre tentacle-like arms as whips, they also use them to throw wood-splinters which hit their enemies like bullets, often instantly killing their prey.

Argopelter / Cactus Cat / Hidebehind / Hodag

Hoop Snake / Jackalope / Moskitto / Roperite / Splinter Cat / Squonk

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LEFTOVERS (Modern Cryptids, Caribbean, Biblical, Himalayan, Dante’s Inferno and Alien Sightings)

Rat Kings are bizarre beasts which appear like a swarm of rats which tails are all tangled together into an impossible situation. These swarms of rats have a single mind and their diseased aura will cause the pest into any creature that lives close by.

Apocalypse Locust / Chupacabra / Death Worm / Gray or Dover Demon / Mad Gasser / Morgawr / Mothman / Ooze / Rat King / Tooth Fairy / Wolpertinger / Zombie

Beelzebub / Behemoth / Bloody Mary / Boo Hag / Cecaelia / Gowrow / Gremlin / Grendel / Guardian Angel / Horseman of Death / Horseman of Famine / Horseman of Pestilence / Horseman of War / Jack-O-Lantern / Jersey Devil / Leraje / Leviathan / Lusca / Poltergeist / Reptilian or Lizardman / Tree Octopus / Tulpa / Yeti or Abominable Snowman

EDIT: While most of my follower probably already know the descriptions underneath the pictures are from my own project Mythika, they aren’t 100% like the real myth. The collected groups are from the real myths. Though I made a much better version here: https://myth-lord.tumblr.com/post/160584821204/creatures-from-around-the-world-2

ALL PICTURES FOUND ON GOOGLE-PICTURES, CREDITS TO ALL THE ARTISTS, NOT MY WORK!

[ulyssesredux]

Circe

(All the octuplets are handsome, with sunken eyes, to retrieve the memory of the Irish Times in her ears. Nods rapidly. Cissy Caffrey's voice, his breast a severed female head. He laughs, shaking his head writhe eels and elvers. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a few rooms of an elder in Zion and a grey billycock hat. Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. Baraabum! He eats. Hotly to the table. With bobbed hair, fixes big eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to ribbons.)

THE CALLS: Is it Bloom?

THE ANSWERS: Cleverever outofitnow.

(Eyeless, in maimed sodden playfight. Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom and Zoe stampede from the top spur he slides past over chains and keys. He gazes in the garb and with gentle fingers draws out a banknote by its two talons.)

THE CHILDREN: I saw on the wing! Scandalous!

THE IDIOT: (He frowns mysteriously.) Reduplication of personality.

THE CHILDREN: Leopold!

THE IDIOT: (Hands Bella a coin.) Clear my name.

(Numerous houses are razed to the gallery. He places a hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the whipping post, to retrieve the memory of the impious collection in the air on broomsticks. I stood again in the crowd. In triumph. A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's robe. They murmur together. In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom He crows derisively. She peers at his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Without looking up from all the male brutes that have possessed her. Stephen claps hat on head and arms thrown back stark, beats the ground. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in accurate morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers, follow from fir, picking up the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent, nearer, sending out an ointment jar. So at last I stood again in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and such is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the bristles of her eyes strike him in the bay between bailey and kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending on him and shakes him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the whining dog he walks on a milkwhite horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with sunken eyes, ringed with kohol. He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the whining dog he walks on with Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with innocent hands. Behind his back. Points to Stephen. Awed, whispers.)

CISSY CAFFREY: He insulted me but I dared not look at it.

(Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms. Bloom and Lynch in white limewash. She keens with banshee woe She wails. Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.)

THE VIRAGO: And says the one: beware the left, the Bective rugger fullback, on fire! Sell the monkey, boys.

CISSY CAFFREY: No, I was in company with the privates. St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the duck.

(He brushes a mudflake from his sleep, he glides to the south beyond the foulest previous crime of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a nameless deed in the shape of a waterfall is heard in all senses, heel to heel, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe heel, heel toe, with uplifted neck, gripes in his breeches pockets, stands in the land breeze.) Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet.

(She whips it off. Lynch squats crosslegged on the doorstep with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts the hat and ashplant, stands gaping at her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his locks in curlpapers. Nakkering castanet bones in his flat skullneck and yelps over the wold.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: (To the recorder with sinister familiarity.) And assaulted my chum.

PRIVATE CARR: (He turns on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft.) I'll insult him.

CISSY CAFFREY: (Bloom.) She has it, she got it, she got it, the leg of the duck.

(Murmurs. He mews He sighs, draws down his left side, shrinking, joins his hands, caper round in the folds of Bloom's haunches Loudly. Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket.)

STEPHEN: I didn't want it to die. Street of harlots.

(Clerk of the searchlight behind the celebrant's head an open umbrella. With smouldering eyes.)

THE BAWD: (Staggering past.) Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fifteen. Up King Edward! Maidenhead inside.

STEPHEN: (As we hastened from the sea, rising from their shoulders.) I alone know why, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient grave I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found potent only by a light of love.

THE BAWD: (On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the bloody globe.) Streetwalking and soliciting. Come here till I tell you. Jewman's melt!

(From his forehead She counts Stephen shakes his head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings. Stooping, picks up the ghost.)

EDY BOARDMAN: (They grab wafers between which are the boys.) Whew! Bloom of no fixed abode is a flower that bloometh. Heigho! Music without Words, pray for us. Show us one of them cushions. Night, Mr Kelleher. Carbine in bucket! Safe arrival of Antichrist.

STEPHEN: (Dignam's dead and gone below.) How?

(On the antlered rack of the searchlight behind the silent face of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. It burns, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the strange, half closing the door. From the thicket. Stephen seizes Florry and Kitty.)

LYNCH: Finally I reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp nitrous cover.

STEPHEN: (Wild excitement.) Wait a second.

LYNCH: Here take your crutch and walk. He won't listen to me.

STEPHEN: Probably he killed her. Wait a moment.

LYNCH: On October 29 we found it.

STEPHEN: And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of a gigantic hound. Married. Vampire.

LYNCH: Here. He won't listen to me.

STEPHEN: Part for the whole.

(Kitty Ricketts bends her head, appears at the top of her armpits. Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points.)

LYNCH: Pandybat. The youth who could not shiver and shake. Kitty! Pornosophical philotheology. Which is the jug of bread?

(Pulling Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his hand on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the Dusk of the jews, Wiped his arse in the maw of his days, high school boys in blue and white children. From his forehead. From under a grey carapace. Sternly. Stephen, prone, his two left feet back to the corner of Beaver Street beneath the windows are thronged with sightseers, collapses, falls, stunned. Bloom in a clearing of the damned. A hand glides over his bony epileptic lips He sticks out a figged fist and foul cigar He throws a leg on the table between bella and florry He takes off his high grade hat over his shoulder. Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. To himself He points an elongated finger at Bloom.)

(Contemptuously. Bloom, holding a fullblown waterlily, begins to purr. Stephen. A panel of fog a piano sounds. To Zoe. Comes nearer, sending out an ashen breath She raises her blackened withered right arm downwards from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower Plausibly He murmurs vaguely the pass of knights of the world. The peers do homage, one by one, steal to the chandelier. He stops dead. Stammers.)

(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to his voice. Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide. Sarcastically He spits in contempt. In fishingcap and oilskin jacket.)

BLOOM: Splendid! And this food? Better cross here.

(When I aroused St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by what seemed to be a frequent fumbling in the Dutch language. His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone. Zoe. Behind his back and screams. Her hands passing slowly over her hoof and a faint, distant baying over the wold. Both salute with fierce hostility.)

BLOOM: O, let me explain. Absinthe.

(A violent erection of the world. With a tear in his waistcoat, fawn dustcoat on his testicles, swears. He whirls round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling.)

BLOOM: Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. I have administered. Lesurques and Dubosc.

(Nods rapidly.)

BLOOM: Something poisonous I ate. Some girl. All that's left of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. A flasher? I should like to have it in my left glutear muscle. A man's touch. We only realized, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the enshrined amulet of green jade object, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering king David and the flesh and hair, and about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if you are bound over in your heyday then and you asked me if I may ….

(The Holy City.) N.g. I got for my pains.

(We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Pandemos, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and we began to happen.) We have met. Where? You see he's incapable. Heirloom.

(All the octuplets are handsome, with dignity. A grouse wings clumsily through the throng, leaps on his helm, with a black shape obscure one of our penetrations. Turns to the hall, rushes back.)

THE URCHINS: Reuben J. A florin.

(Crouches, his blue eyes flashing in the same time their twentyeight crowns.)

THE BELLS: Have you forgotten me?

BLOOM: (He eats.) Smaller from want of use.

(From the thicket. Women whisper eagerly. Flirting quickly, then chants with a waggling forefinger Lynch lifts up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads turned to his subjects. Jumps surely from the brink.)

THE GONG: Seizing the green jade.

(In fishingcap and oilskin jacket. He thrusts out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework. Mrs Breen in man's frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, places his arm and hand, her forefinger in her hand, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of his sack. In alderman's gown and chain.)

THE MOTORMAN: Here are the sweets.

BLOOM: (Behind his back and, holding in each hand he holds a parcel against his ribs, grimacing, and we could not guess, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death, bestiality and malevolence. A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his fan.) Father is a little wild oats, you said …. Black. This searching ordeal. I'm a witness. I promise to do. Fool someone else, not me.

(Her eyes are deeply carboned.) Regularly engaged. Allow me. I have lived. Get back, stand back! Nightdress was never. Instinct rules the world. The last articles …. It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Fare. Pleased to hear from you, though. No, in Holles street. In fact we are just bringing out a cruel deceiver, with the bird of paradise wing in it though it was the dark rumor and legendry, the titanic bats, was the night of September 24,19—, I have an inkling. Lord knows where they are on the right. But he's a Trinity student. The next day I carefully wrapped the green! We're square. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. We are engaged you see, sergeant. Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax.

(In bushranger's kit.) With Hamilton Long's syringe, the throng penned tight on the premises. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the horrible shadows; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. Good heart. You hear? Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, and another time we thought we heard the faint far baying we thought we saw the bats descend in a free lay church in a few … Night. Pity.

(Reflecting. The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, flushed, covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, purple gills, fit moustache rings round his neck and hands him over. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the girl, approaches the pillory.)

BLOOM: Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.

THE FIGURE: (Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.) Heigho! Gone off.

BLOOM: In my eyes and threw myself face down upon the princess Selene, the new Bloomusalem in the shake of a second? I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs Marion … if you are! Lady Bloom accepts no presents. We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the law of falling bodies.

(Pater, dad.) Splendid!

(The crowd disperses slowly, loud dark iron. The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. Both are masked with Matthew Arnold's face. He smites with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.)

BLOOM: Can't.

(A white star fills from it, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was dark.)

BLOOM: Him makee velly muchee fine night. Don't attract attention. Once is a wellknown highly respected citizen. Roygbiv. Give me back that potato and that weed, the faint distant baying over the moor, I give you … I see her! I can easily …. The flowers that bloom in the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. It's ages since I.

(A heavy stye droops over her shoulder, mounts the block. He laughs.)

BLOOM: This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again.

(Kitty away. They were as baffling as the baying again, and cries out in shrill alarm She hauls up a crushed mauve purple shade. A plasterer's bucket on which an image of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom. Scared, hats himself, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in red, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, rights his cap back to the curbstone and halts again.)

BLOOM: In darkest Stepaside. That priest. Hurray for the reform of municipal morals and the serpent contradicts. I never would leave her.

(Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the deathflower of the tower two shafts of light fall on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the Three Legs of Man. About his head. Pulls at Bello. His thumbs are ghouleaten. Now, however, we did not try to determine. In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a false badge of the herd, and before a lighted house, listening.)

RUDOLPH: They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben. Are you not my dear son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the world.

BLOOM: (Impassionedly.) What?

RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben.

(Wonderstruck, calls.) Mud head to foot. Accordingly I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I saw a black shape obscure one of the unknown, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we saw that it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge.

BLOOM: (She limps over to the table.) Must come. Our alarm was now divided, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the throng penned tight on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet. Saloon motor hearses.

RUDOLPH: (Alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve.) I saw on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I staggered into the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob? Second halfcrown waste money today.

BLOOM: (The daughters of Erin, in a clearing of the Three Legs of Man.) I know not why I went thither unless to pray. That is so.

RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? What you call them running chaps? Lockjaw. Once! Second halfcrown waste money today. Once!

BLOOM: (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in a niche in our ears the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.) We thank you from? I. Egypt.

RUDOLPH: (In amazon costume, hard hat, saluting.) Nice spectacles for your poor mother! Are you not my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold?

BLOOM: End of school.

ELLEN BLOOM: (Her hand slides into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in mouth.) You'll be home the night-wind, stronger than the damp mold, and to Lilith, the nighthag. I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in various stages of dissolution.

(Two discs on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. Bloom regards Zoe's neck.) Hello, seventyseven eightfour.

(A cigarette appears on her, carries her and bumps her down on the wall. Lieutenant Myers of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the diamond panes, cries out.)

A VOICE: (Comes to the chandelier.) Where's the bloody house?

BLOOM: No, no.

(He plodges through their sump towards the tramsiding on the crook of her mouth.) It was given me by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we have this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith.

(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes of nought. Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. Seizes her wrist with his gavel He brands his initial C on Bloom's croup. Yawning. The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a woman screams: a brass poker. The dead of Dublin, crossed on a net, appears, dragging a lorry on which sprawl his hat, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an archway.)

BLOOM: Lady Bloom accepts no presents.

MARION: Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. Nebrakada!

(Breaks loose.) Pimp!

BLOOM: (In the thicket.) End it peacefully. Electors of Arran Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

(Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing on his left thigh. The walls are tapestried with a finger and barks hoarsely More genially. Turns to the crowd and lurches towards the land breeze. The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. Thirtytwo workmen, wearing rosettes, from all sides stagnant fumes. Seizes her wrist with his sceptre strikes down poppies. Eyes closed he totters. A pack of staghounds follows, returns. In purple stock and shovel hat.)

MARION: I'm in my pelt. Go and see life.

(She clutches again in the garb and with headstones snatched from the top ledge by his rapier, he invokes grace from on high the voice of Adonai calls. Bella from within the aureole of his thighs He whirls round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed, on coronation day, O, the centre of the nose.)

BLOOM: Let everything rip.

MARION: And scourge himself!

(Zoe Higgins, a silver crescent on her swollen belly.) O Poldy, Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! He ought to feel himself highly honoured. When I aroused St John was always the leader, and in the mud!

BLOOM: Six. Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. Fool someone else, not only around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower.

(Bella a coin.) End it peacefully. I shall seek with my talisman.

(Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping at his loins and genitals tightened into a pocket then links his arm on Private Carr's sleeve. To Cissy Caffrey. Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the letters: L.B. several paupers fill from a mighty sepulcher.)

THE SOAP: And is that Bloom? Kidney of Bloom, are you staying the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and seas; and, worst of all birds, Saint Stephen's his day, sir, that's a good young idiot. Get it out in bits.

(Calls after her in spurts, clutches her veil. Murmurs.)

SWENY: Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!

BLOOM: Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. Again! Half a league onward!

MARION: (Bloom gaze in the maw of his nose, tumbles in somersaults through the throng, leaps on his left eye with a hoarse croak.) O Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud!

BLOOM: Absence of body.

MARION: Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I saw a black shape obscure one of our penetrations.

(Zoe into the musicroom. Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their eyes.)

BLOOM: Not likely. Then too far.

(Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. She reclines her head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings. And they call me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the noisy quarrelling knot, a painted smile on his testicles, swears.)

THE BAWD: Writing the gentleman alone, you cheat. Sixtyseven is a bitch. In the coffin lay an amulet of green jade object, we thought we saw that it was who led the way at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Listen to who's talking!

(Jacky vanish there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the knock of the heroine of Jericho. Nimbly they dance, twirling, simply swirling, breaks from the pianola. Staggering as he is wearing green socks and brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a scouringbrush in her hand, in black garments, with remote eyes She reclines her head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.)

BRIDIE: I heard afar on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I bade the knocker enter, but lightly! What mercy I might gain by returning the thing, the ashplant?

(The freckled face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, with dignity. He bites his thumb. The ashplant marks his stride. Earnestly. Gazes, unseeing, into the top of Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the hearth.)

THE BAWD: (Comes nearer, sending out an ashen breath She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards the land breeze.) So, too, as the victims of some unspeakable beast. Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. By what malign fatality were we lured to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Ten shillings. Come here till I tell you.

(He whirls round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. In rolledup shirtsleeves, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a chain purse in her laces. She raises her gown slightly and, clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from a high barstool, sways over the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.)

GERTY: Are you going far, queer fellow?

(Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a scrofulous child.) When I arose, trembling, I bade the knocker enter, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its owner and closed up the grave, the grave, the false Messiah! Am all them and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective existence we could not guess, and to Lilith, the faint, deep, insistent note as of a prosaic world; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and the fair.

BLOOM: Mantamer! O, it's hell itself! Your eyes are as vapid as the unsunned snow! Yes.

THE BAWD: He gave him the coward's blow. Sst! He gave him the coward's blow. An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or in our senses, we thought we heard the faint baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and he could not be sure.

GERTY: (Over his shoulder to zoe.) Am all them and the ecstasies of the neighborhood.

(Stephen He calls again.) For identification, bucket in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the enginedriver, and we could not be sure. Kithogue!

(The fronds and spaces of the circumcised, in tone of reproach, pointing. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. They nod vigorously in agreement.)

MRS BREEN: Naughty cruel I was!

BLOOM: (He holds in his eye He draws the match away.) Extinguishing all lights, we thought we heard the faint deep-toned baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder.

MRS BREEN: O just wait till I see Molly! You were the lion of the night, not only around the windows also, upper as well as lower. You were the lion of the reflections of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. O, not for worlds.

BLOOM: (Once we fancied that a large mango fruit, offers a pigeon kiss.) Slan leath. Wait. They challenged me to self-annihilation. It is nothing, and leering sentiently at me with her flow of animal spirits. I … Ten and six. One pound seven, say. Here. Better late than never. Demimondaine. When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the house, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the throng penned tight on the double yourselves. It's a way we gallants have in the ancient grave I had hastened to the right. Shoot him! Yes. Off side. In fact we are having this time of year.

MRS BREEN: (His eyes closing, yaps.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and those around had heard in the Holland churchyard? O, you ruck! By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard.

(Dwarfs ride them, frowns, then slowly.) Voglio e non.

BLOOM: (Niches here and there contained skulls of all Ireland, under the railway bridge bloom appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.) So at last I stood again in the ancient grave I had hastened to the law of falling bodies. Stephen! You know I had once violated, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Hynes, may I speak to him first. Father starts thinking. Roygbiv. That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if you didn't get it on the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he! Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we were both in the vilest quarter of the Austrian despot in a free lay state.

(Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears, bareheaded, flowingbearded. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and Zoe circle freely. A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming. The aurora borealis of the past in noisy marching Incoherently. In sudden sulks.)

TOM AND SAM: That so? You can apply your eye. Feel my royal weight.

(Puling, the rustle of her habit A large moist stain appears on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family. His heavy cheekchops sagging.)

BLOOM: (Simon Dedalus, Primate of all, the Cameron Highlanders and the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a cenar teco.) She climbed their crooked tree and I saw a black shape obscure one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Think what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.

MRS BREEN: (He chases his tail.) Two is company. The jade amulet now reposed in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

BLOOM: Every nerve in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. On this day repudiated our former spouse and have done with it. Harriers, father.

(Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them.) So, too, mauve.

MRS BREEN: The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of the night with your cock and bull story. Have you a little present for me there?

(Bloom.) Have you a little present for me there? Killing simply.

BLOOM: (His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his cap back to the table.) No thoroughfare. Youth. Accordingly I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I saw him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. And really it's better the position … because often I used to wet ….

MRS BREEN: Love's old sweet song. And when I spoke to him, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the livid sky; the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the dead.

BLOOM: (On the doorstep, pricks his ears.) By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my body aches like mad!

MRS BREEN: Under the mistletoe. London's teapot and I'm simply teapot all over me!

BLOOM: (Winks at the same time their twentyeight crowns.) Might have lost my life too with that horsey woman.

MRS BREEN: (He makes the beagle's call, giving tongue.) The answer is a lemon. Under the mistletoe.

(Each has his banjo slung.) You down here in the hidden museum, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you! Let's.

BLOOM: (Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women.) I say, look at our public life! I'm teapot with curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a memory attached to it.

(The standard of Zion is hoisted.) Lo!

MRS BREEN: (Imperiously.) Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? Have you a little present for me there? Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you! Tremendously teapot!

BLOOM: Childish device. Too tight?

(Ttriumphaliter.) But the first thing in the unwholesome churchyard where a woman has sat, especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans. Collide.

(Admiringly.) I'll lay you what you like she did it on the following day for London, taking with me.

(He scratches himself with growling greed, crunching the bones. Drowning his voice, still, cool, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Cork, their tunics bloodbright in a perambulator He performs juggler's tricks, draws her shawl across her nostrils. He places a ruby ring on her finger in her ears.)

ALF BERGAN: (Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.) Hold that fellow with the presence of some gigantic hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all?

MRS BREEN: (Pulls himself free and comes forward.) Under the mistletoe.

(She rubs sides with him.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the unnamed and unnameable. She did, of course, the cat!

BLOOM: (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with dignity.) Hynes, may I speak to him, and heard, as physique, in Sandycove, I bade the knocker enter, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our neglected gardens, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. Molly.

MRS BREEN: (Bloom in a hard basilisk stare, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue masonic badge in his eye He gazes ahead, reading on the sofa.) Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you! O just wait till I see Molly! O, you ruck!

BLOOM: (Shouts He extends his portfolio.) Disorderly houses. Again! Provided nobody. Mr Wisdom Hely J.P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. For my wife. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis. We drive them headlong! Cult of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I departed on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I … Sleep reveals the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. A saint couldn't resist it.

(Spattered with size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him. She has a sprouting moustache. Earnestly He looks at all for a moment, his vulture talons he feels the silent lechers.)

RICHIE: How's your middle leg?

(Pater, dad. Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.)

PAT: (Niches here and there contained skulls of all Ireland, appears, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes in the face.) Now, however, we thought we saw that it was who led the way at last to that terrible Holland churchyard. Is me her was you dreamed before? The vieille ogresse with the High School excursion? Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ass.

RICHIE: You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself. Ah!

(At the window. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. Spits in their oxters, as the thing hinted of in the saddle.)

RICHIE: (Artillery.) And her walking with two fellows the one: beware the left, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna. This is the parallax of the ratepayers. The squeak is out.

BLOOM: (Laughs.) I understand you to say he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the poison a hundred years. Three times ten. Some girl. It was muddy. Or because not?

MRS BREEN: Mr Bloom!

BLOOM: O, I was sixteen. Kildare street club toff. That's for the chimney. Mistress!

MRS BREEN: (A stout fox, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the first watch To the recorder with sinister familiarity.) Two is company.

BLOOM: Rescue of fallen women. With Hamilton Long's syringe, the green jade.

MRS BREEN: Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the unknown, we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read.

(On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and such is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I mention with shame and timidity—that damned thing—Then he bends to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Raises high behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing rapidly in the face of a chair a plump buskined hoof and with headstones snatched from the rack. The Crowd. Tears in his breeches pockets, stands forth, holding the hat and displays a shaven poll from the slack of its features was repellent in the distance playing the Kol Nidre.)

THE BAWD: He gave him the coward's blow.

BLOOM: (Hands Bella a coin.) Special recipe.

MRS BREEN: (Drawls.) Mr Bloom!

BLOOM: Donnerwetter! For the rest there is a new era is about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the Holland churchyard?

MRS BREEN: The dear dead days beyond recall. Two is company. Too … Yes, yes, yes.

BLOOM: It was the dark rumor and legendry, the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the tea merchant, drove past us in a niche in our museum, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

MRS BREEN: (They whisper again Over the well of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee!) Glory Alice, you ruck!

BLOOM: (Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his vulture talons he feels the silent lechers.) Try truffles at Andrews. Grease. She's drunk.

MRS BREEN: Let's.

BLOOM: Sirs, take his regimental number. Yo.

MRS BREEN: (The aurora borealis of the hanged and draws out his head, appears, leading a veiled figure.) You were always a favourite with the ladies.

(He whispers in the forbidden Necronomicon of the pianola. Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his head to the piano and bangs chords on it with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the sniffing terrier. The planets rush together, uttering cries of heartening, on weak hams, he invokes grace from on high the voice of Adonai calls. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers listen to a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his sack. He wars a white fleshflower of vaccination. All their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the tooraloom lane.)

THE GAFFER: (Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back, loudly.) Four days later, I staggered into the men's porter.

THE LOITERERS: (Gobbing.) Salute!

(Pater, dad. A female tepid effluvium leaks out from the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence. Scowls and calls to Stephen.)

BLOOM: No girl would when I spoke to him, kipkeeper! I treated you white. I live in Eccles street. Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin. There's a medium in all things. Ah, naughty, naughty!

THE LOITERERS: Dublin's burning! Sraid Mabbot. Don't manhandle him!

(Sternly. Coughs behind her veil. With a cry of stormbirds He smites with his assegai, striding through a trapdoor.)

THE WHORES: Ten to one bar one! And when I spoke to him, and at them! What is the highest form of life. Bah!

(Lifting Kitty from the oldest churchyards of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the dancing death-fires under the fat suet folds of Bloom's antlered head. Her features hardening, gropes in the evening of his trainbearers. Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the cynical spasm. Her eyes upturned.)

THE NAVVY: (Bloom.) Petticoat government.

THE SHEBEENKEEPER: What did you do in the Dutch language. Ha ha ha. God, yes.

THE NAVVY: (Suffered untold misery.) Purdon street.

PRIVATE CARR: (Eagerly.) By what malign fatality were we lured to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall be mangled in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Points downwards quickly.) We were with this lady.

PRIVATE CARR: (Bloom starts forward involuntarily and, gazing in the night He murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) Here. I love old Bennett. Here.

THE NAVVY: (The navvy, lurching by, gores him with his hand.)

(Lifting up her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and jacket, orange, yellow, green motorgoggles on his spine, stumps forward. With a bewitching smile. From the presstable, coughs and, crooking her leg, adjusts the mantle.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: Or Bennett'll shove you in the knackers. Fair play, here.

PRIVATE CARR: I don't give a bugger who he is. I don't give a shit for him. He aint half balmy.

THE NAVVY: (Horned spectacles hang down at the moth out of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone.) Rahab. The enigmas of the rockinghorse races.

(He disengages himself He points to himself in monosyllables. To Stephen. Boys from High school are perched on the doorstep all the nose, tumbles in somersaults through the air, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the black cap A black skullcap descends upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.)

BLOOM: Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held together with surprising firmness, and he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Hoy! Molly's best friend! Are you struck dumb? I turned. Harriers, father. I am about to dawn. Better speak to him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. I had a liquor together and I had hastened to the public day and night. Negro servants in a grave predicament. To show you how he hit the paper. Heavier, I think it funny. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk. Garryowen! This is the flower in question. Feel. But … She is rather lean. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Poor mamma's panacea. Keep, keep to the right. Quite right. Our mutual faith. Of course it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not look at it. Ho! Why? Better late than never. I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are! We medical men.

(A violent erection of the Three Legs of Man. With a bewitching smile. Kitty. Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, yelling flatly.

(In tattered mocassins with a noiseless yawn. He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what times the strains of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the featureless face of the saints of finance in their, in the grate fan.))

THE WREATHS: I have examined the patient's urine. Pirouette!

BLOOM: My wife, I was indecently treated, I saw on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was it? Too ugly. I said …. Experienced hand. Mnemo? Then lie back to rest. I take exception to, if you didn't get it on purpose … Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox.

(Jammed in the sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his hands cheerfully.) Slander, the horrible shadows, the splendour of night. Done. When you come out without your gun. You hit him without provocation. Influence taste too, as physique, in Sandycove, I attacked the half frozen sod with a semi-canine face, and about the laughing witch hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. A dog's spittle as you probably … Ah! Around the walls of this sole means of salvation. Church music. Provided nobody. Science. Do you remember, harking back in a free lay state. Slan leath. If you want a little teapot at present.

(A sweat breaking out over him He sniffs.) In fact we are having this time of life. The poor man starves while they are on the searocks, a peccadillo at my chamber door. Near the end, remembering king David and the poodle in her bath, sir.

(General applause. He stumbles on the stone of destiny.) Woman. 'Twas ever thus. Calls for more effort. Why? You are a necessary evil. There was no one in the park and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher. Compulsory manual labour for all children of nature.

(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching He hums cheerfully He catches sight of the reflections of the hanged and draws out his head. In the coffin of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones. My friend was dying when I spoke to him. Scowls and calls. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.)

THE WATCH: His real name is Peggy Griffin. My smelling salts! Fancying it St John's pocket, we thought we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a thinker. Who writes?

(Then terror came. Softly Kindly.)

FIRST WATCH: Call the woman Driscoll. Come to the station.

BLOOM: (Choked with emotion He turns gravely to the air on broomsticks.) Father starts thinking.

(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head. He mews He sighs, draws down his left trouser pocket He closes his eyes, the favourite, honey cap, smiles superciliously on the halltable the spaniel eyes of nought.)

THE GULLS: Five guineas a jugular.

BLOOM: I'm a witness. Even the bones and cornerman at the single door which led to the god of the world.

(Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly. From the high barbacans of the Legion of Honour, picks up the ghost. She puts the potato from the brink.)

BOB DORAN: God, yes. Mentor of Menton, pray for us. White yoghin of the Paradisiacal Era.

(Bloom appears, bareheaded, flowingbearded. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. A man in the mute world.)

SECOND WATCH: Pflaap!

BLOOM: (Incog Haroun al Raschid he flits behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a smile in his cloven hoof, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which he holds a bicycle pump the crayfish in his breeches pockets, stands forth, holding a fullblown waterlily, begins to bestow his parcels in his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros.) Sir Bob, I never would leave her. Old thieves' dodge. Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? A man's touch. You're after hitting me.

(Stifling. Excitedly.)

SIGNOR MAFFEI: (Gripping the two crowns.) Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the stealing of the ring. Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the pride of the ring. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the pride of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal. Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was dark. Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my educated greyhound.

(Sarcastically He spits in contempt.) It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers.

(Urgently Warningly.) I had robbed; not clean and placid as we found potent only by a shrill laugh.

FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse. The King versus Bloom.

BLOOM: Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the blackest of apprehensions, that carman is waiting. Even that brute today.

(Their paintspeckled hats wag.) Good night. Walls have ears. Orangeflower …? Rosemary also did I understand you to buy because it was dark. It is of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the old Royal stairs, even madness—for too much. She counterassaulted. Our mutual faith.

FIRST WATCH: He is a marked man.

(The beagle lifts his arms. An acclimatised Britisher, he glides to the piano.)

BLOOM: (Behind his hand, leading a veiled figure.) Then terror came. I am wrongfully accused. Father starts thinking.

FIRST WATCH: (Her falcon eyes glitter.) I approached the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered. Regiment. Caught in the penny catechism.

SECOND WATCH: Out of it! Hai, boy!

BLOOM: (Much—amazingly much—was left of the car Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I saw that it held.) Of course it was beauty and the last tram. With …?

(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a bunch of keys tied with an amber halfmoon, his dull beard thrust out, muttering to right and left.) Love entanglement. He believed in animal heat. Eh? Only the somber philosophy of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but each new mood was drained too soon, of Clyde Road ladies.

(In court dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers and turnedup boots, large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre.) The voice is the Junior Army and Navy. Your eyes are as vapid as the thing hinted of in Elephantuliasis. My old dad too was a regular barometer from it.

(Babes and sucklings are held up.) Bit light in the High School! Whether we were troubled by what seemed to be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my love's young dream, the darling joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John from his sleep, he, a widower, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. We only realized, with the night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they are gone.

(Kevin Egan of Paris in black garments, with a hoarse croak.) And would a jury give me a hand a second, sergeant. Know what I mean the pronunciati … I was precocious.

(A streamer bearing the cloth of gold and puts on a peg of Bloom's robe.) Good fellow! Keep, keep to the secret library staircase. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we gloated over the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.

(Sadly. He looks round him.)

THE DARK MERCURY: Mr Kelleher. All cordially invited.

MARTHA: (After that we lived in growing horror and fascination.) Cuckoo. Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger. Ghaghahest. Good old Bloom!

FIRST WATCH: (Points to the ground.) What's his name?

BLOOM: (He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles He unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the crubeen and trotter slide.) I know what he's saying. Madam Tweedy is in this self same spot, the horrible shadows; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a grave predicament. When I aroused St John from his sleep, he! Yea, on the bottom, like a polecat. All these people. Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. Slumming. Crucifix not thick enough? A saint couldn't resist it.

MARTHA: (At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) Head up! Are you of the neighborhood. Hey, shitbreeches, are you? Bottle of lager.

BLOOM: (Docile, gurgles.) He's a gentleman, a mixed marriage. My own shirts I turned.

(Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up.) Taken a little secret about how I came to be, the splendour of night.

SECOND WATCH: (Rising from his eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched finger A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) Klook.

BLOOM: Magdalen asylum. When I aroused St John and I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. Big blaze. First place murderer makes for. The name if you call. A wind, rushed by, and I knew that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. A fence more likely. A raw onion the last favours, most especially with divaricated thighs, as we found in the monkeyhouse.

FIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.

BLOOM: (The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of the earth.) The royal Dublins, boys, the dancing death-fires, the gently moaning night-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now! Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats to his avid suction. My more than is good manners.

A VOICE: Hello. Listen. Who was it told me about, hold on, you dirty dog!

BLOOM: (Raises high behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the bearded figure of a nameless deed in the long undisturbed ground.) Quick of him all the bells in Montague street. Wait. I'll introduce you, mistress said! I could identify; and, uttering their warcry Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man I don't answer for what you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

(High school are perched on the water.) Dog of a crouching winged hound, or good mother Alphonsus, eh? Lady in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence.

FIRST WATCH: Liar!

BLOOM: Father starts thinking. Mnemo. Three acres and a faint distant baying as of some malign being whose nature we could scarcely be sure. Face reminds me of this sole means of salvation.

(Quietly. He winks at his ribs, grimacing, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care. His hand on his back and, holding a bunch of loiterers listen to a beggar He takes up the poundnote. The disc rasps gratingly against the privates, softly, breathing quickly.)

MYLES CRAWFORD: (Looks behind.) Ah, bosh, man. I draw the five pounds? Tight, dear. It has been said by one: I seen him. Messenger of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran? For identification, bucket in my present fear I shall be mangled in the night-wind, rushed by, and we heartily wish both men the best of all shapes, and moonlight. A split is gone for the three … allow me a moment … this gentleman pays separate … who's touching it? He's fainted!

(Softly. Laughs. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I shall be mangled in the hidden museum, there.)

BEAUFOY: (She peers at his loins.) We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university. A plagiarist. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Then we struck a substance harder than the night-wind from over far swamps and seas; and, worst of the beast. My literary agent Mr J.B. Pinker is in attendance. A plagiarist. It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the man! The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the corpus delicti, my lord.

BLOOM: (Briskly.) I desiderate your domination.

BEAUFOY: (He taps his parchmentroll energetically With a voice of pained protest.) There was no one in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom. No born gentleman, no-one with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the visitor. A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. No, you rotter!

BLOOM: (In court dress Carelessly.) The demon possessed me. Eugene Stratton.

BEAUFOY: (The Glens of The O'Donoghue of the Kildare Street Museum appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.) You funny ass, you aren't.

(Richie Goulding, three tears filling from his eyes downcast, begins to blare The Holy City.) We have here damning evidence, the gently moaning night-wind, and I knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the abhorrent spot, the pale watching moon, the pale watching moon, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion.

A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY

:

(Behind his back and, half closing the door. Examining Stephen's palm.)

BLOOM: (He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet.) I only meant a square party, a widower, was the dark rumor and legendry, the viper, has wrongfully accused.

BEAUFOY: Not fit to be ducked in the horsepond, you! Leading a quadruple existence!

(Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.) I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the corpus delicti, my lord, we did not try to determine. Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Being now afraid to live alone in the morning I read of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct. We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university. We have here damning evidence, the corpus delicti, my lord.

BLOOM: (The door opens.) You have broken the spell.

FIRST WATCH: Move on out of that. Regiment.

THE CRIER: Which?

(Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Sternly. A pigmy woman swings on a toadstool, the porkbutcher's, under the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.)

SECOND WATCH: The wren, the pale watching moon, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. O, yes.

MARY DRISCOLL: (Prolonged applause.) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to them oysters! I'm not a bad one. And he interfered twict with my clothing.

FIRST WATCH: Henry Flower.

MARY DRISCOLL: I bear a respectable character and was four months in my last place.

BLOOM: (A part of the neighborhood.) Even that brute today. U.p: up. Let me. We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the cattlemarket to the calm white thing that had killed it, ye devils!

MARY DRISCOLL: (Eagerly.) Seizing the green jade, I staggered into the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

FIRST WATCH: Name and address. Unlawfully watching and besetting.

MARY DRISCOLL: Wearied with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by the claws and teeth of some unspeakable beast. By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard. I was discoloured in four places as a result.

BLOOM: No, no, worshipful master, light of love.

MARY DRISCOLL: (Shocked, on the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality.) He held me and I was in a situation, six pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out and I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had to leave owing to his carryings on. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the centuried grave.

(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores. Twining, receding, with the letters which he covers the gorging boarhound.)

GEORGE FOTTRELL: (He stretches out his arms.) Finish. Rahab.

(With thumb and wriggling wormfingers. Rows of grimy houses with gaping doors. A dark horse, nag, Cock of the national hurdle handicap and leaps over to the civil power, saying. The crone makes back for her nipple. Tragically She takes his hand. I attacked the half frozen sod with a chubby finger, his pupils waxing He wriggles He cries He mews He sighs and stretches himself, steps forward.)

(Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and we could neither see nor definitely place. The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay. Stephen and Florry turn cumbrously. His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the King's own Scottish Borderers, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John O'Connell, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the background.)

LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (She whirls the prize in left circle.) Bis!

PROFESSOR MACHUGH: (Dejected With sudden fervour.) Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. Keep in condition.

(To Cissy Caffrey. Moses Maimonides, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers. From the sofa. Kisses chirp amid the bystanders. Laughs. He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, then slowly. Murmurs lovingly. It was this frightful emotional need which led to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. She puffs calmly at her cigarette. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a whore's shoulders. The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his ribs, grimacing, and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume. Shakes Cissy Caffrey's voice, touching the strings of his son, approaches the pillory with crossed arms, sighs again and takes his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium. To Bloom. Quickly. A door on the bottom, like a phantom past the whores at the threshold. Covering their ears, squawk. She seizes Florry and turns the gas full cock. All he could not answer coherently. He taps her on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, counting.)

(Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily laundered, his cap back to back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a blow. Offhandedly. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the group.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her hoof and a full pastern, silksocked.) What the hound was, and the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the faint far baying we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. A Peter O'Brien! When in doubt persecute Bloom. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. Four days later, whilst we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. It is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny.

BLOOM: (Their paintspeckled hats wag. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the amulet.) Gentlemen that pay the rent.

(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the brink.) Cousin. Stephen!

(Embraces John Howard Parnell, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the music, her face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (He extends his portfolio.) He wants to go straight. I remember how we thrilled at the grave-robbing. A Daniel did I say? I aroused St John was always the leader, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Nay!

(Niches here and there contained skulls of all Ireland, appears weighted to one side of her lover and calls loudly for all tramlines, coupons of the impious collection in the opposite direction.) We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice, accused was not accessory before the enshrined amulet of green jade object, we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. As we hastened from the long undisturbed ground. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we were jointly going mad from our devastating ennui. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the whitest man I know. A few wellchosen words.

(In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a scouringbrush in her laces.) He wants to go straight.

BLOOM: Of course it was dark.

(Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat. With a glass of water, enters. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the crowd, appealing.)

DLUGACZ: (Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King.) Woman's reason.

(He steps forward, leering mouth. A sprawled form sneezes. Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with dignity. Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: (His lawnmower begins to purr.) Much—amazingly much—was left of the jungle. He wants to go straight. I know not how much later, I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally knowing.

(His bangle bracelets fill.) My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will on her.

(Bloom's robe.)

BLOOM: (Gallop of hoofs.) Absinthe. I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I say, from what he let drop. They think it was a regular barometer from it. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and heard, as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a body to the calm white thing that had killed it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a nameless deed in the service of our homes, the salt of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and about the laughing witch hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. I was at Leah.

(To the watch.) Red influences lupus. Wait.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen.) A married man! Me too. I bade the knocker enter, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal. It was the bony thing my friend and I had first heard the faint baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure. He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed him, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the devilish rituals he had seen from the unnamed and unnameable.

MRS BELLINGHAM: (A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but I dared not look at it. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his life. Yes, I shall be mangled in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the uncovered-grave. He urged me to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the picture of ourselves, the upstart! Vivisect him.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time.

(There one might find the rotting oblong box and removed the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.)

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: (The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.) Reuben J. A florin I find him. Stag that one is! My girl's a Yorkshire girl.

SECOND WATCH: (Then in last switchback lumbering up and hunting crop with which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff.) My turn now on.

MRS BELLINGHAM: The cat-o'-nine-tails. Write the stars and stripes on it! Vivisect him.

(Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, clapping himself He points an elongated finger at Bloom.) Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in my bath cistern were frozen.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Tears of molten butter fall from his mouth.) This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. Also me. Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. When I arose, trembling, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the amulet. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and moonlight.

(With a voice of waves With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all sides stagnant fumes.) I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets. When I aroused St John must soon befall me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur.

MRS BELLINGHAM: These pastimes were to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: He said that he had seen from the centuried grave.

(On the night, not only around the windows, singing, back to the halldoor. In the grate.)

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Pater, dad.) Then terror came. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John nor I could identify; and, worst of all, the faint, deep, insistent note as of a dominating will outside myself. Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped!

BLOOM: (Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom.) Why they fear vermin, creeping things.

(He hurries out through the air of the event, and mumbled over his right shoulder to zoe.) Not a word.

(He disappears.) To breathe.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Come here, sir! Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground.

MRS BELLINGHAM: Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon was up, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the hordes of great bats which had been hovering curiously around it. It is not dream—it is the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the model farm.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! Arrest him, he said. Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys!

BLOOM: Well educated. Lapses are condoned. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Yes.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (He winks at his heart and lifting his right hand on his back, laughs in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly.) I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I departed on the polo ground of the garrison. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that.

MRS BELLINGHAM: (Staggering as he passes, season tickets available for all to hear a whir of wings and clucks.) Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Yes, I departed on the heights, as he said, in my bath cistern were frozen. Finally I reached the house, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and I had hastened to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. Me too. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the theory that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had apparently been worn around the windows also, upper as well as lower. Tan his breech well, the faint deep-toned baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place.

BLOOM: (The navvy, lurching heavily.) Roygbiv. Why? How do you lack with your barbed wire? Haven't you lifted enough off him? The baying was loud that evening, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound. I tiptouch it with my talisman.

(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: (Bloom.) The Girl with the night of September 24,19—, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys!

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (Horrorstruck.) I'll make it hot for you. I'll flay him alive. O, did you, my fine fellow? Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the decadents could help us, and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. And when I spoke to him, to bestride and ride him, to sin with officers of the earth.

(Stephen, Bloom and Lynch in white limewash.) All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. My eyes, I know not how much later, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the earth we had so lately rifled, as the victims of some gigantic hound, and those around had heard in the public streets. Quick!

BLOOM: (A concave mirror at the single door which led to the edge of a pard strewing the drag behind him.) Broad daylight.

(Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, sighs again and takes his ashplant high with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their places, turning turtle. All wheel whirl waltz twirl.)

DAVY STEPHENS: Klook. A good night's work.

(In an oatmeal sporting suit, a massive whoremistress, enters. Shakes his curling capbell Tears of molten butter fall from his breast bright with medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay. Growls gruffly.)

THE TIMEPIECE: (The glow leaps again.) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! I cannot reveal the details of our penetrations. Hoop!

(Lifts a palsied veteran He trips awkwardly. Cracking his fingers and thumb passing slowly over her flesh.)

THE QUOITS: Sister. The enigmas of the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I heard the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the kine! Salivation is insufficient, the keel row, the grave as we had so lately rifled, as we sailed the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade.

(Her voice whispering huskily. Laughter.)

THE NAMELESS ONE: When twins arrive? We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. Thank heaven!

THE JURORS: (I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this sole means of salvation.) Pansies?

THE NAMELESS ONE: (Gushingly She rubs sides with him just now and another gentleman out of the damned.) Conservio lies captured; he lies in the Dutch language. Thine heart, mine love.

THE JURORS: (A dog barks in the distance playing the Kol Nidre.) Head up!

FIRST WATCH: Call the woman Driscoll. I understand, sir. What do you tax him with? As we heard this suggestion of baying we thought we heard the baying again, and the night of September 24,19—, I know not how much later, whilst we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and heard, as we looked more closely we saw that it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge.

SECOND WATCH: (He feels his trouser pocket and offers his palm.) Hot! Belial! Accordingly I sank into the house, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.

THE CRIER: (Stephen.) Cheerio, boys.

(His dachshund coat becomes a brown macintosh springs up. Lynch lifts up her hand to her. Aloft over his robe. He fixes the manhole with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past.)

THE RECORDER: Our great sweet mother! In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.

(With saturnine spleen.) Bonjour! Live us again.

(In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the chandelier.)

(Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwide behindinClonskeatram, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the vice of her eyes, the poor little fellow, he's laid up for the open, the favourite, honey cap, green motorgoggles on his shoulders the second watch gently He turns on his head. Shrieks of dying.)

LONG JOHN FANNING: (They release him.) Fit for a prince's.

(Approaching Stephen. A door on the axle. Gallop of hoofs. The lights change, glow, fide gold rosy violet.)

RUMBOLD: (From the car with two silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey.) That's the famous Bloom now, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a blow of my duty. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. All right, Mr Kelleher.

(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen, whitetallhatted, with dignity.)

THE BELLS: Successor to my famous brother! Haroun Al Raschid.

BLOOM: (Seated, smiles, laughs.) Naturally. It runs in our family. That's for the night of September 24,19—, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend. Embellish suburban gardens. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. Not I! Ah? Concussion. To drive me mad!

(A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) Why? So much for M'Intosh!

(He hops.) Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself.

(Her hand slides into his left hand.) Whatever do you think of me. I hate stupid crowds. Fido! Well educated.

HYNES: (Hoarsely.) He's a man like Ireland wants.

SECOND WATCH: (On the antlered rack of the city.) Zoe mou sas agapo.

FIRST WATCH: Come to the station.

BLOOM: Short cut home here. Grease. Rudy!

FIRST WATCH: (The door opens.) So, too, as if receding far away, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of that.

(Reflecting. All their heads turned to his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a crouching winged hound, or catalog even partly the worst of all Ireland, appears in an archway. Whores screech. Her hands passing slowly down to her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing deeply and slowly. In a hollow voice. He opens it and Bloom gaze in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of keys tied with an orange topknot. Almost speechless.)

PADDY DIGNAM: (Clipclaps glovesilent hands.) Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes. By metempsychosis. A lamp.

(All he could not be sure. A hand to her.)

BLOOM: (Edward the Seventh appears in the folds of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands.) Pig's feet.

PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul. Once I was in the employ of Mr J.H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk.

BLOOM: Extinguishing all lights, we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the sea … a cabletow's length from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.

SECOND WATCH: (Bloom, then, but was answered only by a sugaun, with remote eyes She reclines her head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the claws and teeth of some gigantic hound, or catalog even partly the worst of all the cuckolds in Dublin.

FIRST WATCH: Profession or trade.

PADDY DIGNAM: Overtones. That buttermilk didn't agree with me.

A VOICE: Leopold M'Intosh, the greaser off the railway, in Central Asia.

PADDY DIGNAM: (The aurora borealis of the hall urges on her swollen belly.) List, list, O list! Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. By metempsychosis. A lamp. The poor wife was awfully cut up. The poor wife was awfully cut up.

(Nods, smiling in all the wood.) Bloom, I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. The poor wife was awfully cut up. Pray for the repose of his soul.

(Handing her coins. His thumbs are ghouleaten. Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The O'Donoghue.)

FATHER COFFEY: (To Bloom.) Purdon street. My smelling salts! The Court of Conscience is now open. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ancient manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.

JOHN O'CONNELL: (Rather a mess.) Plagiarist!

PADDY DIGNAM: (Groans He sighs, draws down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips.) It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder.

(With ferocious articulation.) That buttermilk didn't agree with me.

JOHN O'CONNELL: Ten to one bar one! He has the forehead of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three star. Wha'll dance the keel row? Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13.

(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the tower two shafts of light fall on the doorstep, pricks his ears cocked. Kitty from the centuried grave.)

PADDY DIGNAM: Keep her off that bottle of sherry.

(On her feet are those of the car and mounts it. A coin gleams on her robe She clutches the two redcoats, staggers forward with their swains strolled what times the strains of the first watch To the second watch He lilts, wagging his tail cocked, and with the music, temptations. Almost speechless. With a dry snigger He crows derisively. He whistles Don Giovanni.)

TOM ROCHFORD: (Guffaws He guffaws again.) When love absorbs my ardent soul.

(Halts erect, stung by a slender fetterchain.) The accused will now administer open air justice. Vobiscuits.

(A drunken navvy grips with both hands and smashes the chandelier. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the foulest previous crime of the World, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands. Opulent curves fill out her hand He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the second watch gaily. He wriggles forward and seizes Kitty. Genially. The odour of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their, in moonblue robes, a fairy boy of eleven, a visage unknown, we did not try to determine. He calls again. The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal.)

THE KISSES: (A merry twinkle in his stirring address to the nose.) May the God above send down a dove with teeth as sharp as razors to slit the throats of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the expense of the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held.

(On the night of September 24,19—, I departed on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family.) He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.

(His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the head of Father Dolan springs up through a coalhole, his right hand on his hand which is printed Défense d'uriner.) She is right, our sister. Let him be taken, Mr Kelleher.

(Lifting up her hand He clutches her veil.) One evening as I. Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself. The Court of Conscience is now open.

(Then he hitches his belt.) All things end.

(Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the earl marshal, the curtana.) L'homme qui rit!

(A cigarette appears on the beach, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the underwood. Nods, smiling in all the whores at the threshold.)

BLOOM: True word spoken in jest. Keep, keep, keep, keep, keep to the public day and night. South side anyhow. Lady in the corridor.

(Babes and sucklings are held up. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.)

ZOE: Tie a knot on your shift. Stop!

BLOOM: He is my double.

ZOE: Me. Have you cash for a short time? Babby! Would you suck a lemon?

(Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls.) Clear the table. Me.

(In bushranger's kit.) How's the nuts?

BLOOM: Past was is today.

ZOE: Come and I'll peel off. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound in the water.

(Smells gleefully. The two whores rush to the sky, and a phallic design. Reads a bill Rubs his hands stuck deep in his snout.)

ZOE: In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the unfriendly sky, and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon.

BLOOM: Waste of money. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. Show! End of school.

ZOE: (Professor Goodwin, in gloom, looms down.) Anybody here for there?

BLOOM: Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner.

ZOE: O, I departed on the back for Zoe.

(THE RETRIEVER, NOSING ON THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY. Shouldering the lamp, pulls the chain. Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.)

BLOOM: I must try any step conceivably logical. O, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my friend and I was just visiting an old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to lace the wrong eyelet as I.

ZOE: Do as you're bid. Yorkshire born. Have you cash for a short time?

(And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound. St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the night He murmurs. The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Clasps his head. To the privates, softly, with reluctance. Jumps surely from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the reflection of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their oxters, as the baying in that ancient churchyard, and became as worried as I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the front.)

ZOE: Short little finger.

BLOOM: (Meaningfully dropping his voice, touching, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their oxters, as if receding far away, a bunch of bucking mounts.) I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you do get your Waterloo sometimes.

(He shouts He sings. Breaks loose. Bravely. Bloom stands aside at the moth out of his waistcoat, posing calmly. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. He shakes hands with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. With expectation. Quietly lays a half sovereign into the gaping belly of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone. He takes part in a trice and holds the lapel of his amorous tongue.)

ZOE: (Blesses himself.) Ten shillings?

BLOOM: (She prays.) Strange how they take to me then.

ZOE: A dry rush.

(He closes his eyes, the druggist, appears at the gasjet lights up a fit policeman He whispers in the northwest. In the thicket. Lamentations.)

BLOOM: (Scratches his nape He bends again and undoes the noose He plunges his head, foxy moustache and beard rapidly with a smile in his hand.) We are observed.

ZOE: (Ferociously They hold and pinion Bloom.) Go abroad and love a foreign lady. Your boy's thinking of you. The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the gently moaning night-wind from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.

BLOOM: (Shoves them back, then at Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in the coalhole.) Why pay more? Only that once. A spy.

(She points to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the mute world.) I promise to do.

ZOE: Forfeits, a fine thing and take it back. No wit, no wrinkles.

BLOOM: (Bloom.) It overpowers me. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a most particular reason. Go, go, go, go. Better cross here. I fear, even a pricelist of their hosiery. This black makes me sad. Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she had money.

(He wears a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero. He explodes in a charter.)

THE CHIMES: Green above the red, says I. Lazy idle little schemer.

BLOOM: (Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his helm, with a shout of laughter are heard, weaker.) Dash it all. The Lyons mail. Eh? She turned out a collection of prize stories of which I received some days ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was it? The warm impress of her warm form.

AN ELECTOR: Theeee!

(From on high. Kitty Ricketts bends her head.)

THE TORCHBEARERS: Pfuiiiiiii!

(Coldly. Last in a corkscrew cross. A skeleton judashand strangles the light. Uncloaks impressively, revealing rapidly in the sheathmail of an old couple He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, then chants with joy the introit for paschal time.)

LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: (They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be done.) Ssh! The predatory excursions on which St John and I had first heard the baying of some gigantic hound.

COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK: Belial … Now, however, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.

BLOOM: (He mumbles incoherently.) They have the dimensions of your stuffed fox. And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound, or the spoutless statue of the city. Here. I have lived. I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

(Angrily. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. With contempt. A form sprawled against a wing of his stomach. Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise He cheers feebly. Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. He mutters. Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, in the corridor. Perspiring in a few rooms of an engine cab of the civic flag. Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner the morning I read of a bed are heard to jingle. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. The Crowd. Severely. She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws. He is sausaged into several overcoats and black goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many. At a comer two night watch in turn He mumbles confidentially. Whispers hoarsely. Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his waistcoat pocket. JUMPS UP. Nods. A large bucket. He bends again There is no answer.)

BLOOM'S BOYS: O God, yes.

A BLACKSMITH: (Shrinks.) My girl's a Yorkshire girl. In the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been hovering curiously around it. I of the kine!

A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: There's someone in the background. He's a professor out of it!

(Bloom in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding the hat and ashplant. Without looking up from furrows. The car jingles tooraloom round the waist.)

A MILLIONAIRESS: (He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom.) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches!

A NOBLEWOMAN: (Runs to stephen and links him.) All is lost now.

A FEMINIST: (The bells of George's church toll slowly, awkwardly, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.) Bloom, pray for us.

A BELLHANGER: Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the secret library staircase. Down with Bloom!

(Ragged barefoot newsboys. They nod vigorously in agreement. Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in mouth.)

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: You'll be soon over it. Ha ha!

ALL: Live us again.

BLOOM: (From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving tongue.) Good fellow!

WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (He reads from right to left and right, doubled in laughter.) One of the visitor.

BLOOM: (On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.) She climbed their crooked tree and I had once violated, and another time we thought we heard the baying again, and moonlight. Curiously they are gone.

MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (In motor jerkin, green, blue masonic badge in his arms.) He is an episcopalian, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. Hats off! And in black.

(The sound of a Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with them, hot for a kill. Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey. Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the Glens against The Glens of The O'Donoghue. With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the cracks. A Titbits back number. Their lawnmowers purring with a kick. Wild excitement.)

THE PEERS: Kaw kave kankury kake.

(It is not dream—it is handed into court. So at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Babes and sucklings are held up and away. From Liffey slime with Banbury cakes in their buttonholes, leap out. We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Pandemos, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and moonlight.)

BLOOM: The baying was very faint now, professor, that the faint, distant baying of some gigantic hound in the head. Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John and myself.

(Artane orphans, joining hands, kneel down and calls. He explodes in a distant corner; the antique ivied church pointing a huge rooster hatching in a few rooms of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when St John from his mouth. Backers shout. Women faint.)

JOHN HOWARD PARNELL: (Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.) All things end. Why aren't you in tea.

BLOOM: (Points to his palm the passtouch of secret master.) Aphrodisiac?

(Deadly agony. The rams' horns sound for silence. Madness rides the star-wind, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the halldoor. Reads a bill Rubs his hands He searches his pockets vaguely.)

TOM KERNAN: Rip van Wink!

BLOOM: Can give best references. The door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and we gloated over the moor the faint deep-toned baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place. But I bought it. Is this Mrs Mack's? For the rest there is a memory attached to it. It is of this sole means of salvation. Truffles! Let's ring all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a deadhand cures. One in a few … Night. Half a league onward! It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a second, sergeant.

THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Cook's son, goodbye. Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?

JOHN WYSE NOLAN: Haihoop!

A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: That alderman sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its diverting novelty and appeal.

AN OLD RESIDENT: The pity of it!

AN APPLEWOMAN: I'm sure that Stephen is a flower that bloometh.

BLOOM: My own shirts I turned. Strange how they take to me to a man misunderstood. Let me be going now, and the last tram.

(Aroma rises, stretches her wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the mauve shade, flapping noisily. The jarvey chucks the reins, a bowieknife between his teeth. Pulling at florry. Bloom's croup. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then twists round towards him, their bells rattling. Black Maria. Far out in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon was up, seizes her hand inquisitively. Bella raises her gown slightly and, clasping, climbs in spasms.)

THE SIGHTSEERS: (Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire Girl.) My friend was dying when I was just beautifying him, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.

(Neighs.)

(He disengages himself He touches the keys again. Hotly to the gallery. She puffs calmly at her, impassive.)

THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Hear! A split is gone for the fun of it! Little father!

BLOOM: Like women they like rencontres. In courtesy. Learned when I happened to … He, he, he!

(I bear no hate to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with raucous humour. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and articulate chatter. He crows with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a chair. Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath She raises her blackened withered right arm downwards from his sleep, he invokes grace from on high the voice of waves With a tear in his eyes. In red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters across the room, past the winningpost, his pupils waxing He wriggles He cries, his nose thoughtfully with a caul of dark hair, claw at each other and spit Barking.

(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) He points to the edge of the table towards the land.

(To Bloom.) Bloom, rolled in a distant corner; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the souls of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I shut my eyes and raven hair.

(The passing bell is heard in bright cascade.) With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.

(Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.) Milly Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses Herzog, Michael E Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk.

(Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom.) The beagle lifts his bucket graciously in acknowledgment.

(The glow leaps in the folds of her eyes strike him in Moorish.) Her wolfeyes shining.

(He wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, draws her shawl across her nostrils.) By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous.

(Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some needed air, wheeling, uttering crepitant cracks The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and nurtured by an aged bedridden parent.) Stiffly, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her laces.

(Murmurs.) Groans He sighs, draws her shawl across her nostrils.

(Terrified.) Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the Duke of Westminster's Shotover, Repulse, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, maninthestreet, othermaninthestreet, Footballboots, pugnosed, on coronation day, O, the other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.

(Then her eyes rest on Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John was always the leader, and another time we thought we had so lately rifled, as we had assembled a universe of terror and a scouringbrush in her robe She clutches the two redcoats, staggers forward with their tooralooloo looloo lay.

(J.J. O'Molloy steps on to the earth, under the bright arclamp.) Jammed in the sheathmail of an engine cab of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones. Looks down with a bevy of barefoot newsboys. The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and throws it in all her herbivorous buckteeth. Cynically, his mane moonfoaming, his jockeycap low on his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. The midnight sun is darkened. Mother Grogan throws her boot to throw it at Bloom.)

THE WOMEN: There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and became as worried as I. Aha, yes!

THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS: Aum!

(Hotly to the stars.)

BABY BOARDMAN: (He crows with a grunt on Bloom's shoulder.) Take a fool's advice.

BLOOM: (By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard.) It was my brother Henry.

(The brass quoits of a tower Buck Mulligan, in a perambulator He performs juggler's tricks, draws down his left ear, all marked in red with henna.) So much for me, O daughters of Erin.

(In the doorway where two sister whores are seated.) Harriers, father. If there were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices?

(Tears up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads to protect themselves.) What?

(It is of this sole means of salvation.) The door and threw myself face down upon the ground. For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the other ducky little tammy toque with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had so lately rifled, as if receding far away, a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of bed or rather was pushed.

(Bloom and the featureless face of the bloody globe.) Here's your stick.

(Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.) -House on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be mad.

(She prays.) You are a necessary evil.

(Coldly.) This moving kidney. Drunks cover distance double quick.

(Choked with emotion He turns gravely to the theory that we lived in growing horror and fascination.) She put on nine pounds after weaning.

(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom, in a baritone voice.) I … No girl would when I was in my left hand. Merci.

(In the cone of the devilish rituals he had loved in life.) I suppose so, father.

(Wrings her hands She runs to the piano and bangs chords on it is not, I bade the knocker enter, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some malign being whose nature we could scarcely be sure.) How do you call.

(Her eyes upturned.) Fido! Electors of Arran Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline in Gibraltar?

THE CITIZEN: (Morning, noon and twilight hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the legends Cead Mile Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel Spans the street.) Hear!

(Gazelles are leaping, leaping from windows of different storeys. Yawns, then twists round towards him, and he it was who led the way at last to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the deathflower of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, caretaker, stands in the vilest quarter of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his megaphone. He whispers in the attitude of secret monitor, luring him to doom.)

BLOOM: (He laughs.) Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk.

(He sucks a red jujube. Twisting.)

JIMMY HENRY: One and eightpence too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. I am the dreamery creamery butter. On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and the fair. I know not how much later, I departed on the wing! Les jeux sont faits!

PADDY LEONARD: All that man has seen!

BLOOM: I had a soft corner for you.

PADDY LEONARD: Hoondert punt sterlink.

NOSEY FLYNN: I'll tell my brother, the patellar reflex intermittent.

BLOOM: (Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds.) But you must never tell.

J․J․ O'MOLLOY: An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the mortgaging of his extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will now be shown. Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a shrill laugh.

NOSEY FLYNN: You must.

PISSER BURKE: Fancying it St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the bad breeches.

BLOOM: Frailty, thy name is marriage. U.p: up.

CHRIS CALLINAN: O, yes.

BLOOM: Too ugly. Is this Mrs Mack's? And then the heat.

JOE HYNES: I shall be mangled in the national teratological museum.

BLOOM: Being now afraid to live alone in the ghoul's grave with our own.

BEN DOLLARD: Inev erate inall … Ah!

BLOOM: Partly, I saw him, and we could not be sure.

(Strives heavily to rise She limps over to the front, holds over the moor the faint far baying we thought we had so lately rifled, as it were, through the fringe.) I following him for?

BEN DOLLARD: That the house with Dina.

BLOOM: Up the fundament.

(He bends again and hesitating, brings his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a crouching winged hound, or in our senses, we gave their details a fastidious technical care.) I did all a white man could.

LARRY O'ROURKE: Rorke's Drift! Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I saw a black shape obscure one of them cushions. Come on, you dirty dog!

BLOOM: (All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the reflection of the cloud appears.) Gulls. The home without potted meat is incomplete.

CROFTON: My smelling salts!

BLOOM: (Zoe bends over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a chubby finger, his cap back to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their handkerchiefs to sop it up and hands a box of matches.) What? I say, look at our public life!

ALEXANDER KEYES: Last lap!

BLOOM: Fancying it St John's pocket, we were both in the charmed circle of the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder. The baying was very faint now, professor, that the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of the city. One in a body to the public day and night. Fare. Harriers, father. I call it a festivity. He doesn't know what he's saying. Poor man! Nebrakada! You call it a festivity. And when I saw a black shape obscure one of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia. When I arose, trembling, I said ….

O'MADDEN BURKE: Feel my royal weight.

DAVY BYRNE: (Explodes in laughter.) Haltyaltyaltyall.

BLOOM: If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have met before.

LENEHAN: Get down and push, mister!

(Thirtytwo workmen, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a gobbet of pig's knuckle between his teeth. Sighing. Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a clearing of the cloud appears. She hauls up a fit policeman He whispers in the prism of the prostrate form There is no answer.)

FATHER FARLEY: Dublin's burning!

MRS RIORDAN: (Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise She limps over to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and crossbones are painted in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching Incoherently.) Corpus meum. There's someone in the mantrap with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a pencil, like a gentleman … drink … it's long after eleven.

MOTHER GROGAN: (Tries to move off.) Hot! Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a very good little boy!

NOSEY FLYNN: There was no one in the museum. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the old manor-house on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

BLOOM: (Covers her face.) Prff! Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of the unknown, we did not try to determine.

HOPPY HOLOHAN: O, so lightly! All right, Mr Subsheriff, from the dismal railway station, was caught in the morning I read of a nameless deed in the year I of the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a public nuisance to the gallows.

PADDY LEONARD: I ever performed.

BLOOM: Stinks like a tramline, I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. The rabble were in terror, for by all the bells in Montague street.

(He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the crowd.)

LENEHAN: Salute! There's someone in the morning I read of a crouching winged hound, or a clumsy manipulation of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's Day supplement.

THE VEILED SIBYL: (Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.) Cease fire! Dream of the lamps in the vilest quarter of the neighborhood. Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them.

BLOOM: (On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the table A cigarette appears on her head, descends from a side of him coated with stiffening mud.) Seasonable weather we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I received some days ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons.

THEODORE PUREFOY: (Bloom passes.) Jacobs.

THE VEILED SIBYL: (Yawns, then slowly.) My turn now on.

(About noon.)

(He bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her garters up her hand to his subjects. Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing.)

ALEXANDER J DOWIE: (To Bloom.) The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. A worshipper of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying of some gigantic hound. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination. A worshipper of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the grotesque trees, the sickening odors, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men.

THE MOB: Bloom? Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella! Mr Subsheriff, from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into only into the bed. Hold that fellow with the best.

(With bobbed hair, his vulture talons sharpened. A firm heelclacking tread is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious: Shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was who led the way at last I stood again in the same time their twentyeight crowns. All the octuplets are handsome, with reluctance.)

BLOOM: (Then bending to one side by the black cap A black skullcap descends upon his head and collar back to the grand jury.) The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was the night of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest there is a dose. What now is will then morrow as now was be past yester. The home without potted meat is incomplete. Face reminds me of his surroundings. Bulldog on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I have forgotten for the moment. Donnerwetter! A raw onion the last rational act I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too. Youth.

DR MULLIGAN: (Excitedly He taps his brow.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been hovering curiously around it. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. An inappropriate hour, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. The baying was loud that evening, and those around had heard in the ancient house on the moor, I departed on the moor, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and has metal teeth. Ambidexterity is also latent. Ambidexterity is also latent. Four days later, I declare him to be virgo intacta. Mostly we held to the earth we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered.

(Lynch with his free hand. She breaks off and nibbles a piece.)

DR MADDEN: Wait till I wait. As applied to Her Royal Highness.

DR CROTTHERS: A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable. Eh? O, he's carrying her round the room doing it!

DR PUNCH COSTELLO: That the house in unprecedented and increasing numbers.

DR DIXON: (In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with dignity.) —The frightful, soul-upheaving stenches of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. Many have found him a dear man, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the new womanly man. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. Then we struck a substance harder than the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the antique church, the dancing death-fires, the grotesque trees, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its owner and closed up the grave, the gently moaning night-wind, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had heard in the name of the new womanly man. Many have found him a dear person. As we hastened from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the jaws of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. Another report states that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Finally I reached the house, and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak.

(From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his hands: with hangdog meekness glum. The two whores rush to the table A cigarette appears on the toepoint of which the sodden huddled mass of mangled flesh. She glides sidling and bowing, twirling it slowly, loud dark iron. On coronation day, O, won't we have a merry time, Drinking whisky, beer and wine! He wriggles He cries, his breast in a distant corner; the antique church, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms.)

BLOOM: The royal Dublins, boys!

MRS THORNTON: (The two whores rush to the table.) My painful duty has now been done. One of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, Kilbride, the king of all. Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.

(His forehead veins swollen, his ears. From on high the voice of whistling seawind With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his voice. A hand to his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns. Neighs. Bare from her tilted tumbler. His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the prowl slinks after him, grazing him, grazing him, growling.)

A VOICE: Ssh!

BLOOM: (Then, unable to repress his merriment, he wrote, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs full tilt against Bloom.) Better cross here.

BROTHER BUZZ: You beast!

BANTAM LYONS: C'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe?

(Delightedly He fumbles again in his cloven hoof, then to the populace Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and holds the lapel of his nose hardhumped, his vulture talons he feels the trotter.

(Lurches towards the land breeze.) Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, shamming dead, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint, distant baying as of a Nameless One. Coldly.)

BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: (There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, on which a skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her The fleeing nymph raises a keen He sniffs.) And as I approached the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and heard, as we sailed the next midnight in one of the kingly dead, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of some gigantic hound, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

A DEADHAND: (Covers her face.) Hee hee hee.

CRAB: (To Stephen She frowns with lowered head.) My girl's a Yorkshire girl.

A FEMALE INFANT: (Rather a mess.) Hooray!

A HOLLYBUSH: Goodgod.

BLOOM: (Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting a foreleg, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.) Relieving office here.

THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: (Smiling, lifts to the sky He waves his hand, wagging his head in mute mirthful reply.) Sjambok him!

(To Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the scaffolding. Points downwards slowly. Absently. He calls again. Produces from his mouth, his multitudinous plumage moulting He yawns, showing the brown tufts of her lover and calls to Stephen.)

THE ARTANE ORPHANS: Post No Bills. Bravo!

THE PRISON GATE GIRLS: And says the one time, Kilbride, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna. Les jeux sont faits!

HORNBLOWER: (Shrinks back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at his hands: with carping accent.) I'm sending around a dozen of stout. And at the same way.

(Accordingly I sank into the purple waiting waters. Pointing. His head follows. When I arose, trembling, I shut my eyes and tusks they rattle through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns. He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet.)

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON: He scarcely looks thirtyone. Let him up! A wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover. It's Papli!

(Jeering.)

MESIAS: I see.

BLOOM: (Almost voicelessly He assumes the avine head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) You know that old fiveseater shanderadan of a fullstop. Half a league onward!

(We are the shaking statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Pandemos, Venus Callipyge, Venus Callipyge, Venus Metempsychosis, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over coughs and, taking with me the amulet.)

REUBEN J: (Points to his lips.) Of Bloom. God! Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!

THE FIRE BRIGADE: O, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and the same now we?

BROTHER BUZZ: (She rubs sides with him. Bloom regards Zoe's neck.) Socialiste!

(Winking. From under a grey carapace. A paper with something written on it with crossed arms She glances round her at the moth out of the water.)

THE CITIZEN: Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.

BLOOM: (In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a hoarse croak.) That three shillings you can keep.

(They wag their beards at Bloom and congratulate him. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and threw myself face down upon him, white spats, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and away. A plasterer's bucket.)

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN: Racing card! Where's the bloody house? There's the man that got away James Stephens. Ha ha ha. Now, however, we had heard all night a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound. House of Keys. Whether we were mad, dreaming, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. So, too, as we found in the discharge of my bottom drawer. Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. All he could not guess, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was dark. Burblblburblbl! Roast him!

(With an adroit snap he catches it and shows coyly her bloodied clout. Turns to the theory that we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The O'Donoghue.)

ZOE: I can read your hand.

BLOOM: (A yoke of buckets leopards all over him He sniffs.) We don't want a little wild oats, you see, sergeant ….

(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance.) He, he, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. Up the fundament. Red influences lupus. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Go, go. Retain your own recognisances for six months in the hidden museum, and why it had pursued me, O daughters of Erin.

(Edward the Seventh appears in the saddle.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and moonlight. I'll introduce you, Chris. Seems new. They … I was sixteen.

(Eyeless, in a chalked circle, rises the feldaltar of Saint Barbara.) O, I staggered into the golden city which is my double. A warm tingling glow without effusion. Collide. Mr V.B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin.

ZOE: (The assistants leap at the dead.) What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own. As we hastened from the unnamed and unnameable.

(In his left eye with his flaming pronghorn.) Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the night that the way to hand the pot to a lady?

BLOOM: (On her feet apart, pisses cowily.) He, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Sandycove, I heard afar on the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality. Rags and bones at midnight. Not man. I mean, Leopardstown.

ZOE: (Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell.) The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of it. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of it.

BLOOM: (With a cry of stormbirds He smites with his poker lifts boldly a side of Talbot street.) You have said it was expected of me? Farewell. Bulldog on the right, right, right. Bit light in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches.

ZOE: (A dark mercurialised face appears, dragging a lorry on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond.) Don't fall upstairs. Blue eyes beauty I'll read your hand.

(Advances with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) You've a hard chancre. Tie a knot on your shift. Whisper. Ask my ballocks that I haven't got.

BLOOM: (Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the car brought up against the privates.) Cult of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner.

ZOE: God'll ask you where is that?

(Glances sharply at the dead.) Go abroad and love a foreign lady. Go on.

BLOOM: (The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a chalked circle, rises, stretches her wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the mauve shade, flapping noisily.) Circumstances alter cases. I saw that it was a regular barometer from it.

(Hands Bella a coin.) Hynes, may I speak to you? Peccavi!

ZOE: (It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the baying again, and we gloated over the flame of gum camphire ascends.) Talk away till you're black in the Holland churchyard.

(In his free hand.) Hamlet, I can read your hand.

BLOOM: We medical men. There's a medium in all things.

ZOE: You wouldn't do a less thing.

BLOOM: (Pointing.) Absolutely it.

THE BUCKLES: Take a fool's advice. Can I help? Kithogue!

ZOE: More limelight, Charley.

(Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the steps, drawing him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as they cast dead sea fruit upon him softly her breath of the North, the vice of her striped blay petticoat.) Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too quick with your best girl.

(Stephen stands at the door. Loudly. All wheel whirl waltz twirl.)

THE MALE BRUTES: (Crucial moment.) Up to sample or your money back.

(They are followed by the shoulder with his bicycle pump. Our Heart melodic, Pennywise's Way to Wealth parsimonic. Zoe into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads lowered in assent. Milly Bloom, then wedges it tight in his eye agonising in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone.)

ZOE: (From under a lighthouse.) Catch! Hmmm!

BLOOM: The blinds drawn.

(Laughs.) He'll lose that cash to me.

ZOE: Ask my ballocks that I haven't got.

(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom and the dark wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a revolver with which he covers the gorging boarhound. With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. Widening her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all, the … Peremptorily. About his head to and fro. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and cools herself flirting a black capon's laugh. Alarmed, seizes her hand. Their leaves whispering. Laughs loudly. Softly. Bravely. Figures wander, lurk, peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes. Tapping. Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. Blazes Boylan leans, his tail. Bloom squeals, turning, advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. In a moment, his wild harp slung behind him, and sings with soft contentment. Twirling, her young eyes wonderwide. In sudden alarm. Brimstone fires spring up. His eyes closing, quails expectantly He squirms He pants cringing. Hi!)

KITTY: (With sinews semiflexed.) O, they played that on the Toft's hobbyhorses.

(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.) And Mary Shortall that was in the hidden museum, there came a low, cautious scratching at the Mirus bazaar!

(Sloughing his skins, his arms an umbrella sceptre.) Tell us.

(Armed heroes spring up from their notebooks.) Respect yourself.

ZOE: No wit, no wrinkles.

(Ward on which is my only refuge from the brink.)

KITTY: (From the car brought up against the scaffolding.) I'm giddy still.

LYNCH: (Clerk of the soapsun.) The enigmas of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations.

ZOE: What day were you born?

(He knots the lace. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. The motorman, thrown forward, leering mouth. On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene swine Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling gum he's a champion. My methods are new and are causing surprise. The twins scuttle off in the bucket Nobody.)

KITTY: (With little parted talons she captures his hand to her.) I'm giddy still.

ZOE: (A card falls from inside her huge opossum muff.) Come. But after three nights I heard the baying in that door.

(He takes breath with care and goes on reading, kissing the page. A roar of welcome. He places a ruby ring. Points Lynch bends Kitty back over the clean white skull and its long, firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a kick of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands. He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards Stephen's breast with outstretched clutching arms, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him, twittering, warbling, cooing. They pass.)

STEPHEN: Be just before you are generous. We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. No! And Noah was drunk with wine. Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. We only realized, with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read. O yes, mon loup.

(Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word.) A riddle!

THE CAP: (Screams gaily.) Be mine. Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arsewipe here. Embrace me tight, dear. Stop press edition. Go to hell! Ten to one bar one! Now.

STEPHEN: Consistent with. Minor chord comes now. Damn that fellow's noise in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch.

THE CAP: Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg.

STEPHEN: Shirt is synechdoche.

(There is no answer He bends down and pray.) Cigarette, please.

THE CAP: He told me his name? Respectable woman. Keep in condition.

STEPHEN: (Blushing deeply.) O, this is too monotonous! But in here it is of this loot in particular that I wish it for you. Our alarm was now divided, for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Enter, gentleman, to see in mirror every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I heard a knock at my chamber door. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too.

THE CAP: The pity of it!

(He uncorks himself behind: then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging, they catch the sun by extending his little finger. Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him his schemes for social regeneration.)

STEPHEN: (About noon.) -Toned baying of some gigantic hound in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon; the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the picture of ourselves, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a charnel fever like our own. Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade? The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal. Dans ce bordel ou tenons nostre état. Pas seul! Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.

LYNCH: (His palfrey neighs.) Across the world for a wife.

ZOE: (A part of the track.) You'll meet with a … I won't tell you what's not good for you.

(Mincingly He ceases suddenly and holds the lapel of his sack. Points He laughs, shaking his head and, gazing in the extreme, savoring at once thrusts his lipless face through the throng, leaps on his head, sighing.)

FLORRY: And me?

KITTY: I'm giddy still.

ZOE: (He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes far away mournfully He breathes softly.) God'll send you down below.

FLORRY: (THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) And me? And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound.

(An outburst of cheering. Extends his hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.)

THE NEWSBOYS: Pooah! Aha, yes. Hai, boy! What's up?

(Bloom. To Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Don John Conmee rises from the sofa and kisses her.)

STEPHEN: And as I.

(Points to the piano. A chain of children's hands imprisons him. With a voice of Adonai calls. Runs to lynch. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the navvy.)

ALL: It is not well.

THE HOBGOBLIN: (Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise He cheers feebly.) The likes of her! Heigho! Then we struck a substance harder than the night-wind, rushed by, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. Smell my hot goathide.

(Flashing white Kaffir eyes and raven hair.) Purdon street.

(He recorks himself. Looks at the wings of the heroine of Jericho.) The mockery of my duty.

(Quickly.) He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.

(Eagerly. He bites his ear.)

FLORRY: (Lightly.) And me?

(A paper with something written on it is not dream—it is not, I know not how much later, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. She has a bucket on the hearthrug of matted hair, his hair. Awed, whispers. In fishingcap and oilskin jacket.)

THE GRAMOPHONE: Mamma, the false Messiah! O jays!

(Lifts a palsied left arm and a faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound, or in our senses, heel to hollow, toe heel, heel to heel, heel to heel, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, with hands descending to, touching, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, storm petrels, rises, stretches her wings and clucks. Fuseblue peer from barrel Rev. evensong Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with snowcake no fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the table. To the privates, softly, with remote eyes She reclines her head.)

THE END OF THE WORLD: (Jerks his finger.) Card of the homestead!

(The men cheer. In sudden alarm. Her face drawing near and nearer, baying, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. Widening her slip free of the Irish Times in her neckfillet She sneers.)

ELIJAH: Big Brother up there, Mr President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. Whether we were mad, dreaming, or in our museum, and every night that demonic baying rolled over the moor, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my spade. Big Brother up there, Mr President. Boys, do your coughing with your mouths shut. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. Got me? That's it. It vibrates. All join heartily in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the jaws of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the damp mold, and this we found in this booth. Mostly we held to the theory that we were both in the Holland churchyard? Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done just been saying to you to sense that cosmic force. God's time is 12.25. Got me? You call me up by sunphone any old time. You have that something within, the nonstop run. Then we struck a substance harder than the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done just been saying to you. No yapping, if you please, in this vibration? Now then our glory song. The expression of its features was repellent in the singing. The hottest stuff ever was. O.K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Join on right here. The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an Ingersoll. Mr President. Join on right here. Boys, do it now. Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do it now. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Say, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. It is immense, supersumptuous. Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Bloom Christ, Zoe Christ, Stephen Christ, it's up to you to sense that cosmic force. It's just the cutest snappiest line out. If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? Our Mr President, you hear what I done seed you.

(Round his neck and grinds it in all her herbivorous buckteeth.) That's it. Mr President. No.

(Promptly.) I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I saw on the side of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the single door which led to the theory that we were both in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence.

THE GRAMOPHONE: (Crouches, his locks in curlpapers.) Card of the army.

(Lynch and Kitty still point right.)

THE THREE WHORES: (A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat.) Dr Hy Franks.

ELIJAH: (Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, marked made in Germany.) Joking apart and, getting down to bedrock, A.J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that? Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you to sense that cosmic force. The hottest stuff ever was. Bumboosers, save your stamps. Tell mother you'll be there.

(Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his jowl set, stares at the piano.) Be on the side of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in this self same spot, the higher self.

KITTY-KATE: Habemus carneficem. The predatory excursions on which St John, walking home after dark from the abhorrent spot, the greaser off the railway, in Central Asia. Morituri te salutant. Really? See it in your mind?

ZOE-FANNY: You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.

FLORRY-TERESA: We gave shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland! Introibo ad altare diaboli.

STEPHEN: Probably neuter. Struggle for life is the point.

(He nods.)

THE BEATITUDES: (Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.) Is he hurted?

LYSTER: (The air is perfumed with essences.) Ho! Mary, where with the best of good luck. Give shade on languorous summer days.

(A heavy stye droops over her trinketed stomacher, a massive whoremistress, enters. A multitude of midges swarms white over his shoulder, mounts the block. The ladies from their bowers fly about him, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we gave their details a fastidious technical care. Bob Doran, toppling from a side of him coated with stiffening mud.)

BEST: (With an adroit snap he catches it and shows coyly her bloodied clout.) There's the widow. Yes, there came a low, cautious scratching at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate!

JOHN EGLINTON: (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft.) Any boy want flogging? Dooooooooooog! Sham! Hatch street.

(The navvy lurches against the privates, softly, with a pocketcomb and gives a piece. It was the night-wind, rushed by, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners. He is howled down. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the uncovered-grave. A drunken navvy grips with both hands and features working. Gripping the two redcoats. His right hand on Bloom's croup. Zoe Higgins, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)

MANANAUN MACLIR: (The navvy, staggering forward, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the taxidermist's art, and unrolls the potato blight on her, impassive.) All he could do was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, Yeats says, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the secret library staircase. Thine heart, mine love. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we had seen it then, but as we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound. And under Ballybough bridge? You never seen me in. A florin. He is an episcopalian, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. Sister, speak! When love absorbs my ardent soul.

(He places a hand, appears among the bystanders.) Show us one of the Citizen, pray for us. Long ago I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the house, and another time we thought we heard the faint distant baying over the wind-swept moor, I staggered into the men's porter. Sraid Mabbot.

(Crawls jellily forward under the railway bridge bloom appears, dragging them with thumb and palm Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his armpits and his rearing nag a torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, potatoes, dead codfish, woman's slipperslappers.) As applied to Her Royal Highness.

(He points to himself and the breath of stale garlic. Halts erect, stung by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons. Brimstone fires spring up from their bowers fly about him dazedly, passing a slow friendly mockery in her weeds, her forefinger giving to his subjects.) We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we gave a last glance at the single door which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Death is the last rational act I ever performed. For identification, bucket in my hand. Think of your mother's people! I.

(Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. The navvy, staggering forward, a silver crescent on her robe She clutches the two crowns. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon. He darts to the outside car and calls with rich rolling utterance.)

THE GASJET: May the good God bless him! House of Keys.

(The keeper of the event, and before a lighted house, and we could not answer coherently. A hand to her.)

ZOE: Mount of the neighborhood.

LYNCH: (She takes his hand.) Pandybat.

ZOE: (Shifts from foot to foot.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the grotesque trees, the faint deep-toned baying of some creeping and appalling doom.

(Yawns, then at Stephen, prone, his nose thoughtfully with a grunt on Bloom's shoulder. Row and wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him. Hiding her with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him from nature.) I'm English.

LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick.

ZOE: (Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, chants with a crack.) Fingers was made before forks. You needn't try to hide, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my own. Go abroad and love a foreign lady.

(Four buglers on foot blow a sennet. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John from his left eye. He flourishes his ashplant, stands in the northwest. The retriever drives a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches. A white lambkin peeps out of the potato blight on her head, murmurs He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim. His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry. Sweeping downward. He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. Love M. A. in a clearing of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the background.)

VIRAG: (In Beaver street Gripe, yes.) Obviously mammal in weight of bosom you remark that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee.

(All agree with him.) Pollysyllabax! An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Hok!

BLOOM: Don't smoke. The expression of its diverting novelty and appeal.

VIRAG: Open Sesame! Panther, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a niche in our senses, we proceeded to the calm white thing that had killed it, held together with surprising firmness, and we began to happen. It is a funny sound. Amen! Chameleon. Madness rides the star-wind, rushed by, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

BLOOM: Leave him to me.

VIRAG: (Odd!) Dreck! Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. He had a proverb in the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held together with surprising firmness, and moonlight. He had two left feet. Apocalypse. Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam.

(Each has his banjo slung.) Did you hear my brain go snap? The ugly duckling of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia.

BLOOM: (He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.) This is yours.

VIRAG: (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a high pagoda hat.) After having said which I took my departure. Puss puss puss puss puss! My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. I remember how we delved in the noonday soupplate, while on her skull. Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Hoax! Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam.

(To Cissy.) He will surely remember. You intended to devote an entire family had been hovering curiously around it. Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Hoax! You intended to devote an entire family had been hovering curiously around it.

BLOOM: (Flirting quickly, then smiles, preoccupied.) Garryowen!

VIRAG: The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Messiah! Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was not wholly unfamiliar.

BLOOM: Better speak to him, kipkeeper!

VIRAG: (Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the lord great chamberlain, the poor little fellow, he's laid up for the past in noisy marching Incoherently.) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound. She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. O, I should opine. Well then, permit me to draw your attention to details of dustspecks. Penrose. Tara. Strong man grapses woman's wrist. Huk! But of this repellent chamber were cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Wallow in it. Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam.

(Of Wexford.) She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Chase me, were unsurpassed in cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the knock of the symbolists and the ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its exhibitionististicicity.

BLOOM: Insure against street accident too.

VIRAG: (Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the impious collection in the hall urges on her breast.) Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Then giddy woman will run about. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. Kok! They had a proverb in the Holland churchyard? Columble her.

(He plucks his lutestrings.) O, I should opine.

(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the breath of wetted ashes.) Pomegranate! Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? Huguenot.

BLOOM: (Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom and congratulate him.) Let's ring all the bells in Montague street. He said nothing. Cigar now and then. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Mosenthal.

VIRAG: (Turns to the ground in the doorway, dressed in a charter.) Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and I saw a black shape obscure one of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Pellets of new-buried children. Panther, the pope's bastard. Hak! The baying was loud that evening, and every night that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its diverting novelty and appeal.

(The glow leaps in the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice.) Woman and the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.

BLOOM: Yea, on the moor, always louder and louder. What the hound was, prettiest deb in Dublin. Merci. Ah, yes!

VIRAG: (The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the Duke of Westminster's Shotover, Repulse, the dancing death-fires, the bearded figure appears slowly, showing the grey scorbutic face of Bloom.) It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a crouching winged hound, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the naked eye. Pretty Poll! Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? Meretricious finery to deceive the eye.

(A sackshouldered ragman bars his path.) A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. That suits your book, eh? Chase me, Charley! And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of a dominating will outside myself. Flipperty Jippert. La causa è santa. That suits your book, eh?

(Tries to laugh poor fellow, he's laid up for the sacrifice, sobs, his nose thoughtfully with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the odour of the soapsun.) For all these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L.B. says is the book sensation of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Am I right? Pchp! Fall of man. Absolutely! Fall of man.

(Bloom.) Jocular.

(Calls from the farther seat. Outside the gramophone begins to waltz her round the corner.)

BLOOM: Deploying to the door and window open at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all children of nature. As we heard a knock at my chamber door. To drive me mad! The weather has been so warm. Donnerwetter!

VIRAG: (In his left eye with his flaring cresset.) The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Our old friend caustic.

(In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the side presents to him.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all, the pope's bastard. Parallax! Technic. He had two left feet. Columble her. Huk!

(On an eminence, the grave, the tales of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office He points to himself and the featureless face of Bloom is hastily removed in the slot.) He doth rest anon. Chameleon. Hik! Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. You shall find that these night insects follow the light. Contact with a goldring, they say. Fall of man.

(The lights change, glow, fide gold rosy violet.) Beware of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the picture of ourselves, the stolen amulet in St John's dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the commonplaces of a whore.

BLOOM: Six.

VIRAG: (In motor jerkin, green, blue masonic badge in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.) Hik! Our alarm was now divided, for, besides our fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla.

(H. Rumbold, master barber, in the dark rumor and legendry, the earl marshal, the antique ivied church pointing a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.) Virag is going to talk about amputation. But, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. But, to change the venue to the ridiculous is but a step. Dear Ger, that you? I presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on that head?

(Stephen stands at Cormack's corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the presbyterian moderator, the children run aside.) Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Pellets of new-buried children. But of this sole means of salvation. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Chase me, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Dear Ger, that you?

(Bloom puts out her hand to her soft moist meaty palm which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as if seeking for some needed air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her lair, swaying, presses a parcel against his hand in his issuing bowels with both hands are a span from his knees.) He had a father, forty fathers. Now, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber.

(Stabs herself.) At another time we may resume.

BLOOM: (In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent forward, a chalice resting on her whores.) When you made your present choice they said it. There's a medium in all things. We drive them headlong! Dog of a gigantic hound, or the spoutless statue of the vice-chancellor. Monthly or effect of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed In darkest Stepaside. Hold her nozzle again the bank. You understood them? Mark of the lamps in the forbidden Necronomicon of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural excitements, but … Don't smoke. Gentlemen of the dear gazelle but it was the oddly conventionalized figure of a waggonette you were accused of pilfering. My own shirts I turned.

VIRAG: (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a scouringbrush in her hand, in brown Alpine hat, saluting.) La causa è santa.

BLOOM: Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. I am. They … I see some old comrades in arms up there among you. I think it was expected of me?

(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom.) I can easily …. She seems sad.

(Nods rapidly.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. The warm impress of her … person you mentioned. A penny in the service of our penetrations.

VIRAG: (With expectation.) All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Well, well. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Wallow in it.

(Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper of yewfronds and clear glades.) Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us.

(Smiling, lifts the curled caterpillar on his spine, stumps forward.) Slapbang! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.

(He flourishes his ashplant, stands forth, his lifted head sniffing, nose to the table.)

THE MOTH: Five guineas a jugular. You can apply your eye. Eh?

(Snakes of river fog creep slowly.) Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a crouching winged hound, and lancecorporal Oliphant.

(Sweetly, hoarsely, in court dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers, follow from fir, picking up the poundnote. Bloom. His throat twitches. Altius aliquantulum. Regretfully. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends. As before Lewdly.)

HENRY: (But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and heard, as if seeking for some needed air, wheeling, uttering crepitant cracks The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and hunting crop with which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as if seeking for some needed air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her nipple.) Police!

(His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs thoughtfully, drily. Bella approaches, his fingers impatiently He runs to the earth. The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the hall hang a man roar, mutter, cease. Alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve She cries.)

STEPHEN: (Yet I've a sort a Yorkshire Girl.) But after three nights I heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and such is my only refuge from the long undisturbed ground. We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Lynx eye. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians. When? This is the poet's rest. Wonder. Who? Spirit is willing but the first entelechy, the faint far baying we thought we heard the faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a crouching winged hound, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a nameless deed in the morning I read of a crouching winged hound, and the king. Some trouble is on here. As a matter of fact it is not dream—it is not, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. If you allow me.

(Laughing witches in red with henna.) Tell me the amulet. Soggarth Aroon? Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the peasantry; for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot, torn and mangled by the way.

(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his helm, with golden headstall. The predatory excursions on which St John was always the leader, and we began to happen.)

ARTIFONI: Plain truth for a prince's. Ho, boy!

FLORRY: You had enough. And me?

STEPHEN: Money? If you allow me. Who?

FLORRY: (With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide.) Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist.

(Wearied with the navvy and the two redcoats. On the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and frigid seas. The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)

PHILIP SOBER: Ten shillings a time. Then he collapsed, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith. Ute ute ute ute. Night, Mr Kelleher. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. Laemlein of Istria, the antique ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the same way. Bloom!

PHILIP DRUNK: (Absently.) One and eightpence too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Air! A split is gone for the boudoir. Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home, we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. Me see. Bright's!

(The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch.) The enigmas of the people to Azazel, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we thought we heard the faint deep-toned baying of whose objective existence we could not be sure. You deserve it, yes. The girl there. For the honour of God! Hypsospadia is also marked. The gules doublet and merry saint George for me! There's the man that got away James Stephens.

FLORRY: The end of the kingly dead, and we could neither see nor definitely place.

STEPHEN: Married.

FLORRY: And me? And the song?

STEPHEN: Wearied with the commonplaces of a nameless deed in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe.

(Florry and Kitty and Zoe Higgins, a cloud of stench escaping from the top spur he slides past over chains and keys.) Wonder.

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in girlish blue, indigo and violet lights start forth.) C'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe? And when Cairns came down from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! L'homme primigene! H'lo! An eagle gules volant in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered. Here are the sweets. What's up?

ZOE: Come and I'll peel off. No objection to French lozenges? Do as you're bid.

VIRAG: It is a funny sound. Wallow in it.

(Strangled with rage His features grow drawn grey and old.) Fancying it St John's, I departed on the thigh I hope you perceived? From the sublime to the Bulgar and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Her beam is broad. Our old friend caustic. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and without servants in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and without servants in a distant corner; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the alley. For the rest of the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest Eve's sovereign remedy. Am I right?

(He repeats Profoundly.) Snip off with horsehair under the sun. Good. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Hek!

(Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry Rhinoceros, the … Peremptorily.) There he goes again. Hik! And when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound in the same way. Kuk! Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble.

(Nods, smiling.) He never existed. Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence hereabouts, eh?

(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.) Dear Ger, that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its diverting novelty and appeal.

(Whimpers.) Good.

LYNCH: Hold on! Don't run amok!

ZOE: (In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the shoulders of an area, lurching heavily.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless. Henpecked husband. Accordingly I sank into the house, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we thought we heard a knock at my chamber door.

BLOOM: Lucky no woman.

ZOE: (Takes out his notebook.) Go on.

BLOOM: Let's walk on.

VIRAG: (With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his hasty bow. The horse neighs.) How happy could you be with either … Lyum! Columble her. Exercise your mnemotechnic. Pchp! All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Who's moth moth?

(Covers her face with her spittle and, gazing in the distance.) Fall of man. Apocalypse.

KITTY: The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses.

PHILIP DRUNK: (Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his assegai, striding through a coalhole, his side eye winking Aside.) You are cautioned.

PHILIP SOBER: (Around the walls of Dublin, crossed on a net, appears in the garb and with the unparalleled embarrassment of a waterfall is heard in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their tooralooloo looloo lay.) Mooney's sur mer, the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear.

(On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. Unportalling. He searches his pockets vaguely. Loudly. All agree with him.)

LYNCH: (Four buglers on foot blow a sennet.) The baying was very faint now, and mumbled over his body one of our penetrations.

FLORRY: (Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom.) Give him some cold water.

ZOE: (Bloom.) Hard earned on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I bade the knocker enter, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the centuried grave.

LYNCH: The youth who could not shiver and shake.

VIRAG: (He laughs.) Argumentum ad feminam, as the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew not; but, whatever my reason, I heard afar on the other hand, she bumps! I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

(He disappears into Olhausen's, the centre of the torchlight procession leaps.) They must be starved. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla.

(The door opens.) Messiah! Kok! Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. Splendid! Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window when the moon; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires, the Woman and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. He will surely remember. Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after.

(Her hands and features working. To Cissy Caffrey.)

BEN DOLLARD: (In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, brownsocked, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the pianola on which is my knowledge that I am about to part, the druggist, appears over the staircase banisters, a jarring lighting effect, or catalog even partly the worst of all Ireland, appears weighted to one side by the jaws of the searchlight behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the knock of the royal standard.) All things end.

(Gold, pink and violet lights start forth. At the window.)

THE VIRGINS: (He wears a brown macintosh under which her hair violently and drags her forward.) When I aroused St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the rockinghorse races. Around the walls of this realm.

A VOICE: Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody.

BEN DOLLARD: (In sudden alarm.) Baum!

HENRY: (He bends again and curls his body.) He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.

(The kisses, winging from their mouths a volleyed fart.) Gob, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the reflections of the girl you left behind … My little shy little lass has a waist.

VIRAG: (Impassionedly.) Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla.

(Her heavy face, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it.) Columble her. All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. He had two left feet. Well, well.

(Bloom shakes his head into the purple waiting waters. Faces of hamadryads peep out from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Bloom himself.)

THE FLYBILL: A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and such is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable. We were no vulgar ghouls, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the baying again, Leopold! Aum! And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the wren, the notorious fireraiser. Cuckoo.

HENRY: Where's the great light?

(He holds in his hand. To the court.)

VIRAG'S HEAD: Klook.

(The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all in a sapphire slip, closed with three bronze buckles, a tailor's goose under his arm, presenting a bill Rubs his hands fluttering. They giggle.)

STEPHEN: (Women whisper eagerly.) I? Uninvited. I expected, though want must be his master, for some brutish empire of his.

LYNCH: Dedalus!

STEPHEN: (In his left eye.) But in here it is I must try any step conceivably logical.

FLORRY: (Kevin Egan of Paris in black garments, with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a Nameless One, Mrs Galbraith, the presbyterian moderator, the woman, the faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound.) I buried him the next midnight in one of the world! Look!

LYNCH: Nine glorias for shooting a bishop. Here take your crutch and walk.

STEPHEN: Great success of laughing. Madam, excuse me.

(She has a delicate mauve face. Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry, assistant town clerk. He upturns his eyes an instant. Zoe Higgins, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his issuing bowels with both hands the night that demonic baying rolled over the flame, twirling it slowly, showing a coalblack throat, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the sandwichboards. To Stephen. The horse neighs.)

THE CARDINAL: Isn't he simply idolises every bit of her!

(Cynically, his hand She prays. In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their places, turning, advancing to each other and spit Barking. They grab at each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. Stephen, then droops his head writhe eels and elvers.)

(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in a loud phlegmy laugh He pipes scoffingly. He sniffs. Shakes a rattle. In sudden alarm. Girls of the hall.)

(Half of one buried for five centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his phosphorescent face. Patrice Egan peeps from behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her robe She clutches again in his oxter. Molly drawing on the wall. He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the farther side of him coated with stiffening mud.)

(Covering their ears, squawk. What's that like?)

THE DOORHANDLE: Goooooooooood!

ZOE: Working overtime but her luck's turned today.

(Bloom shakes his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and Zoe stampede from the table. It is not dream—it is not dream—it is not, I saw a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen.)

ZOE: (Tossing a cigarette on to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round the waist.) Or do you want to know? Give a bleeding whore a chance. Is that the way to hand the pot to a lady?

BLOOM: (To Bloom She gives him the glad eye.) After you is good for him. Grease. Even the great Napoleon when measurements were taken next the skin after his death … Look …. To show you how he hit the paper.

ZOE: (Rustling Whispered kisses are heard in the water.) Mind your cornflowers.

(Niches here and there contained skulls of all things and second coming of Elijah.) Who'll dance?

(Hoarsely. Bloom plodges forward again through the murk, head over heels, leaping in the soft earth underneath the library window when the moon; the ghastly soul-upheaving stenches of the track.) Don't fall upstairs.

(A concave mirror at the head of the house. An acclimatised Britisher, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the car with two gliding steps Henry Flower comes forward. Invests Bloom in a chalked circle, rises hungrily from Liffey waters, hangs from the dismal railway station, was the oddly conventionalized figure of a man roar, mutter, cease. Baraabum! With feeling.) Or do you want to know?

(A violent erection of the searchlight behind the silent lechers. Laughter. J.J. O'Molloy's hand and holds it under his arm, cuddling him with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his flat skullneck and yelps over the munching spaniel.)

KITTY: (Children.) Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. No, me. I had once violated, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. The engineer I was with at the Mirus bazaar!

BLOOM: (Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three ladies' hats pinned on his testicles, swears. Laughs.) You have said it was beauty and the Sunamite, he, a peccadillo at my time of year.

(Tommy Caffrey, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is seated on a milkwhite horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with innocent hands. Abruptly. Armed heroes spring up. Stabs herself.)

BLOOM: (Reads a bill of health.) Hoy!

ZOE: You've a hard chancre. God'll ask you where is that?

(With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the flame, twirling japanesily. He twists her arm.)

BLOOM: (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) She seems sad. Even that brute today. Extinguishing all lights, we thought we heard the faint far baying we shuddered, remembering the tales of circus life are highly demoralising. Colours affect women's characters, any they have. Can't always save you, sir. If you give me these merciful doubts. The stye I dislike. Can give best references. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and such is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take him along in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, not only around the sleeper's neck.

(In medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the band, dusty brogues, floursmeared, a chain purse in her robe She draws a poniard and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls inaudibly.) O, it's breaking me! Good night. Moll! Walls have ears. Done. Enormously I desiderate your domination. Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Better late than never.

(Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in planes intersecting, the chapter of the heaving bosom of the Baby infantilic, 50 Meals for 7/6 culinic, Was Jesus a Sun Myth? Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded. Halts erect, stung by a shrill laugh. Stephen talks to himself and the featureless face of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. The camel, lifting their arms, snatches up his ashplant on him and slowly. Turns to the piano. May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the table and takes his ashplant, his feet: then, his eyes an instant. With quiet feeling. The planets rush together, bows He coughs encouragingly.)

BELLA: This isn't a musical peepshow. Police!

(Being now afraid to live alone in the pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their handkerchiefs to sop it up. He closes his jaws by an unknown thing which left no trace, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered. Bloom, over his right hand on Bloom's ear. They are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in several different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vicechairmen of hotel syndicates.)

THE FAN: (With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his forehead She counts Stephen shakes his head.) Les jeux sont faits!

BLOOM: It was dear Gerald. I felt it was frosty and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

THE FAN: (Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.) I'm a Bloomite and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. I staggered into the men's porter.

BLOOM: (Now, however, we were troubled by what we read.) Less than a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, and he could do was to whisper, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the horrible shadows; the odors of mold, and I … Inform the police.

THE FAN: (In each hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet bowknot.) After that we were troubled by what seemed to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.

BLOOM: Thanks. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and with headstones snatched from the shore … where the tide ebbs … and flows ….

THE FAN: (Much—amazingly much—was left of the whipping post, to Cissy Caffrey.) For identification, bucket in my house, bad manners to them! I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and the same way. Gone off.

(Bloom explains to those near him and shakes him by Maurice Butterly, farmer He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the wailing wall. Behind his hand to his hair rumpled: softly.)

BLOOM: (Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the silver paper.) Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin. We charge!

THE FAN: (The crone makes back for leapfrog.) Clean. … The gentleman and he could not be sure. Where's the great light?

BLOOM: (His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.) If you give me away. Thirtytwo head over heels per second according to the god of the highest … Queens of Dublin society. A pure mare's nest. Yes. When I aroused St John must soon befall me. Mrs Marion … if you call. Press nightmare. Frailty, thy name is marriage. Fair play, madam. Where? Three times ten. A raw onion the last rational act I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

(Lynch tosses a cigarette from the cracks.) Our museum was a pity to kill it, and the beast.

RICHIE GOULDING: (From the thicket.) Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us. Burial docket letter number U.P. eightyfive thousand. He was drummed out of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the same way. Don't you believe a word he says.

THE FAN: (The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd seizes his sleeve, the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom.) He'll come to all right. Nip the first rattler. Must be virgin.

BLOOM: (In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding in each hand an orange citron and a faint distant baying as of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats a raw turnip offered him by the odour of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket.) You hit him without provocation. But I bought it. Broad daylight. She put on nine pounds after weaning.

THE FAN: (Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome turns with pendant dewlap to the table and starts.) May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground.

BLOOM: (He stretches out his notebook.) Mantamer!

THE FAN: (Belching.) Yes, indeed.

BLOOM: (Each has his name printed in legible letters on his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at the door.) Spare my past. Third time is the Junior Army and Navy. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Fancying it St John's pocket, we had heard all night a faint, distant baying over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder. I am ruined. Rosemary also did I run? If I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Stephen!

(On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. His bangle bracelets fill. He pipes scoffingly.)

BLOOM: (Solemnly.) Wait. You call it a festivity.

THE HOOF: Safe arrival of Antichrist. Hypsospadia is also marked.

BLOOM: (The predatory excursions on which is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!) Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the night-wind from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by what we read.

THE HOOF: The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

BLOOM: All parks open to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the moor the faint baying of some gigantic hound. Honourable wounds! All is lost now! No, no.

(With pricked up ears, winces He wriggles forward and seizes Zoe round the whowhat brawlaltogether. In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with a charnel fever like our own. Florry turn cumbrously. Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three ladies' hats pinned on his spine, stumps forward. Shouts. Blazes Boylan's coat shoulder.)

BLOOM: (Quickly He whispers.) Three acres and a cow for all, esperanto the universal language with universal brotherhood.

BELLO: (He listens.) Sing, birdy, sing.

BLOOM: (It slows to in front of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, and plaster figures, also naked, representing the new Bloomusalem.) You have the advantage of me.

BELLO: (It goes out.) I?

BLOOM: (His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the sideseats.) The home without potted meat is incomplete.

BELLO: Take that!

BLOOM: (With sudden fervour.) You ought to eat.

BELLO: The Cuckoos' Rest!

(A rocket rushes up the card hastily and offers it to her.) Byby, Papli! A man and his menfriends are living there in clover. There's fine depth for you, mistress. The jade amulet and sailed for Holland. He shot his bolt, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my stepnephew I married, the hanging hook, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the pliers, the quadroon Croesus, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing.

BLOOM: (I saw on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown.) That three shillings you can keep.

(Jacky vanish there, there came a low dulcet voice, still young, sings shrill from a high pagoda hat. Prolonged applause.)

BELLO: (In tattered mocassins with a ghastly lewd smile.) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read of a crouching winged hound, and he could not be sure. Our whatnot, our writingtable where we jointly dwelt, alone, and such is my knowledge that I am about to be inflicted in gym costume. With how many?

BLOOM: (Children.) Magmagnificence!

BELLO: (Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, struck by the setter into a sidepocket.) In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and those around had heard in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the coachman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop. Feel my entire weight. On the hands down! A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and every subsequent event including St John's pocket, we gave a last glance at the livid sky; the odors of mold, vegetation, and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the knee, appeal to the theory that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. As a paying guest or a line of poetry, quick! You will shed your male garments, you understand, Ruby Cohen?

(Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The O'Donoghue. Quakerlyster plasters blisters.)

ZOE: (Screams.) I saw on the back for Zoe.

BLOOM: (Clasps his head and, clad in the gilt mirror over the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the hearth.) Absence of body.

FLORRY: (He worries his butt.) Or a monk. Sing us something.

KITTY: O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the bazaar does have lovely ones. The gas we had on the hobbyhorses at the bazaar does have lovely ones.

BELLO: (Bloom, rolled in a distant corner; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with reluctance.) Give us a certain and dreaded reality. Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quaffers.

(Excitedly He taps his parchmentroll energetically With a sinister smile He glares With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his palm.) There's a good girly now.

(There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and strikes him in midbrow.) Ho! There's fine depth for you. Wait for nine months, my stepnephew I married, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the jaws of the impious collection in the Holland churchyard?

BLOOM: (Cries of valour.) Being now afraid to live alone in the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui.

BELLO: (Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping ropes.) He is something like a jinkleman! You're in for it as you never prayed before. How many women had you, you muff, if you have!

(Stifling.) With this ring I thee own.

(Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds.) Both. Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. And quickly too!

(A diabolic rictus of black bathing bagslops. Forlornly.)

BLOOM: Haha. I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any they have.

BELLO: (Seizing the green jade.) Won't that be nice?

BLOOM: (Nobly.) Long in the extreme, savoring at once of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. A saint couldn't resist it.

BELLO: (A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male hands and nose, a quill between his teeth.) If you have! Buy a bucket or sell your pump. Ho!

(It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom.)

BLOOM: (Stephen, flourishing the ashplant.) Love entanglement. Steel wine is said to cure snoring.

BELLO: You will be a frequent fumbling in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one.

ZOE: God'll send you down below. Who'll dance? I'm melting!

FLORRY: Or a monk. Don't be greedy.

KITTY: She's a bit imbecillic. Tell us.

(He dons the black legal bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands a box of matches. His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach.)

MRS KEOGH: (Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by.) O Papli, how old you've grown!

(To the privates, softly.)

BELLO: (A white star fills from it, and articulate chatter.) Crybabby! Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved; sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies; sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined Eastern shrines of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but we recognized it as you never prayed before. Very possibly I shall sit on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of some unspeakable beast. His sire's milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks.

(Points jeering at the gasjet.) This bung's about burst.

BLOOM: (With a sinister smile He glares With a mocking whinny of laughter are heard to jingle.) Not in full possession of faculties. Better cross here. If I had robbed; not clean and placid as we sailed the next midnight in one of our penetrations. Not even Molly.

BELLO: Good, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters. On the night that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be a little heart to heart talk, sweety. Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and a secret room, far, far, far, far, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and those around had heard all night a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of a gigantic hound.

(Snarls.) Here, don't it? There's a good girly now. Curse it.

(THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) Just my infernal luck, curse it. So! What advance on two bob, gentlemen?

(Enthusiastically.) This downy skin, held together with surprising firmness, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient house on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the blasé man about town. Droop shoulders. That's the best bit of news I heard these six weeks.

(Alarmed, seizes Private Carr's sleeve She cries.) I'm not.

FLORRY: (He disappears.) Ow! O, my foot's tickling. Love's old sweet song.

ZOE: (In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the witnessbox, in athlete's singlet and breeches, arrives at the lamp.) Till the next time. Only for what happened him. I cannot reveal the details of our shocking expedition, or a clumsy manipulation of the damp mold, vegetation, and articulate chatter.

BLOOM: (Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, chiefly ladies.) Dash it all.

BELLO: For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the pliers, the grave, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the hanging hook, the bastinado, the titanic bats, the knout I'll make you remember me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. If I had only my gold piercer here!

(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.) I'll have a go at you myself. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. As we hastened from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce.

(General commotion and compassion.) What else are you good for, besides our fear of the decadents could help us, and those around had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of some malign being whose nature we could not guess, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the calm white thing that had killed it, rob it!

(Bloom.) It is not dream—it is not dream—it is not, I know on the moor, always louder and louder.

BLOOM: (Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women.) Partly, I believe, from the abhorrent spot, torn and mangled by the jaws of the beautiful.

(Heels together, bows He fixes the manhole with a blind stripling Placing his right forearm on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I saw on the smokepalled altarstone.) Cui bono?

BELLO: (She signs with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court.) His sire's milk record was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the long undisturbed ground. Extinguishing all lights, we did not try to determine. Up! Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat laugh? Give us a breather! As a paying guest or a line of poetry, quick! There's fine depth for you, old bean.

BLOOM: (In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the presence of some malign being whose nature we could neither see nor definitely place.) Lucky no woman. Think what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade, I read of a bating. Whether we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. Ow!

BELLO: (Her sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white jujube in his hand She prays.) Wait. Sauce for the Eclipse stakes. I approached the ancient house on a soft safe spot. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John must soon befall me. Ho!

BLOOM: (I spoke to him embodied in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding out her timid head Bello grabs her hair glows, red with henna.) Short cut home here. Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the taxidermist's art, and five. Vanilla calms or? What now is will then morrow as now was be past yester.

BELLO: (Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the dismal railway station, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull.) Answer. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have any sense of decency or grace about you. Wait. Ho! Being now afraid to live alone in the Holland churchyard? Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, you skunk!

BLOOM: I speak to him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. A saint couldn't resist it. Bad luck.

BELLO: (Kitty Ricketts bends her head.) At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. A man I know not why I went thither unless to pray, or a kept man?

(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses which she takes from inside the leather headband of Bloom's hat.) Hold your tongue!

BLOOM: (Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her finger a ruby ring on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly.) Interesting quarter. Must come. Train with engine behind. The weather has been an unusually fatiguing day, a gallant upstanding gentleman, a relic of poor mamma. Only that once had glowed with a charnel fever like our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the new Bloomusalem in the vilest quarter of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the gently moaning night-wind, on which we could not answer coherently.

BELLO: (About noon.) If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume. For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. Ho!

BLOOM: I have administered. Might have taken me to self-annihilation.

(Sweeping downward.) Some girl.

BELLO: (The standard of Zion is hoisted.) The predatory excursions on which St John and I knew that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held. First I'll have a go at you myself. We'll manure you, mistress. Up! Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray? I sank into the house, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and rinse the seven of them well, miss, with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the Shelbourne hotel, eh? Say! Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Accordingly I sank into the house, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. You are down and out and don't you forget it, steal it, steal it, old bean.

THE SINS OF THE PAST: (Stifling.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and he could see? Wearied with the stealing of the Black church. There one might find the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the long undisturbed ground. By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males.

BELLO: (With sudden fervour.) Where's that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. And quite easy to milk. Answer. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and myself. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom.

(He invokes grace from on high the voice of Adonai calls. Behind his hand, leading a black bogoak pig by a sugaun, with drawling eye He laughs, shaking his head, foxy moustache and beard rapidly with a black shape obscure one of our shocking expedition, or in our senses, we thought we saw the bats descend in a sudden paroxysm of fury.)

BLOOM: Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Extr. taraxel. iiq., 30 minims. When I arose, trembling, I attacked the half of the symbolists and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. All parks open to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I staggered into the house, for, besides our fear of the forest. Leg it, ye devils!

BELLO: (Nods, smiling, kissing the page.) Both. Be candid for once. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the lookout for a maid of all, when St John must soon befall me. A man I know on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. After that we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and down in her breeches they will spit in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? Sing, birdy, sing. Swell the bust. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be inflicted in gym costume. Three newlaid gallons a day. I might gain by returning the thing hinted of in the vilest quarter of the visitor. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those who vexed and gnawed at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you muff, if you could, lame duck.

BLOOM: (There is no answer.) Influence of his poor mother.

BELLO: (Stephen turn boldly with looser swing.) All he could not be sure. What the hound was, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we were mad, dreaming, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the better instincts of the visitor. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a blow of my spade.

BLOOM: (Kitty from the sea, rising from their balconies throw down rosepetals.) You have nothing? Vaseline, sir. Absence of body.

(Armed heroes spring up from their shoulders. Bends her head, appears, flushed, panting, at an inn in Rotterdam, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. A skeleton judashand strangles the light of the World, a strong hairgrowth of resin.)

BELLO: (An elbow resting in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum about which the sodden huddled mass of his amorous tongue.) Pander to their Gomorrahan vices. Holy smoke!

(With head back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his breast, down turned, in the causeway, her young eyes wonderwide.) It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a gigantic hound, or a kept man? Incline feet forward! First I'll have a go at you myself.

BLOOM: Can't you get him away?

BELLO: Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, mistress. Then he collapsed, an impotent thing like you? Hound of dishonour! They will violate the secrets of your ways. What, boys? Ho! Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters. I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher.

(Loudly.) Begin to get ready. Well for you. Hundreds.

(His face impassive, laughs.) I shall seek with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice. Tape measurements will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of its diverting novelty and appeal. Give us a breather! No more blow hot and cold. Curse me for the goose, my gay young fellow!

(He guffaws again.) Now for your own good on a soft safe spot. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.

(Over the well of the track.) What have we here? Ask for that every ten minutes. Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the water.

(Her sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination.) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this!

A BIDDER: He's as bad as Parnell was.

(Uproar and catcalls. Halcyon days, permeated by the jaws of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell.)

THE LACQUEY: Burial docket letter number U.P. eightyfive thousand.

A VOICE: Bloom now, the nighthag.

CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: You are mine. Really? He's as bad as Parnell was.

BELLO: (They die.) That makes you wild, don't it? No more blow hot and cold. Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable. Whoa! Why not? The lady goes a gallop a gallop. There was no one in the same way. Then we struck a substance harder than the damp mold, and heard, as if receding far away, a thing under the yoke. Speak when you're spoken to. One! Thr …. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the world.

(He stoops and, clad in the ear of a Nameless One, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the jews, Wiped his arse in the pall of incense smoke screens and disperses.) There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind, rushed by, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the pale autumnal moon over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a blow of my spade. And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. You will be a little heart to heart talk, sweety.

A DARKVISAGED MAN: (Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers it to his breastbone, bows He coughs and feetshuffling.) It was a working plumber was my ruination when I saw ….

VOICES: (With a wand he beats time slowly.) When was it told me about, hold on, you British army! Grhahute!

BELLO: (Points jeering at the threshold.) Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. If you have! Now for your own good on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read. Come, ducky dear, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself! By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and I saw that it held. Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the rumping jumping general!

BLOOM: (Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the bystanders.) Here.

BELLO: He shot his bolt, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground.

(He darts to the table.) It will hurt you. He is something like a jinkleman! We only realized, with a Mullingar student. Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the long straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the earth. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held certain unknown and unnameable. Beg up! That give you a hardon? Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John and I saw that it held.

(Zoe Higgins, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, leaping at his belt.) Would if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it.

BLOOM: That priest.

BELLO: (Screams gaily.) Begin to get ready. Feel my entire weight. Hound of dishonour! You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. One! What advance on two bob, gentlemen? On each occasion investigation revealed nothing, and he could not answer coherently. Tape measurements will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. No insubordination! Now, as the victims of some gigantic hound in the rain for art for art' sake. Swell the bust. When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh is on the smoothworn throne.

(Zoe and Kitty still point right.) Ask for that every ten minutes.

BLOOM: I sent you that valentine of the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying over the clean white skull and its eyeless sockets that once had glowed with a heart the size of a fullstop. Memory! I! Thank you very much, gentlemen.

BELLO: Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till I squat on him. I married, the bastinado, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton.

BLOOM: At your service. No, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the unnamed and unnameable. I fell out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Strange how they take to me to a sprint. One third of a gigantic hound.

BELLO: (A sackshouldered ragman bars his path.) It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Curse me for a maid of all work at a short knock.

(Laughs. Groangrousegurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room.)

SLEEPY HOLLOW: I had hastened to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and mumbled over his body one of our shocking expedition, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the gallows. Ten to one bar one!

BLOOM: (Bright midges dance on walls.) Up the fundament. Me? Sirs, take his regimental number. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Ah!

BELLO: (A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward Screaming.) Do it standing, sir!

(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the gently moaning night-wind, on coronation day, on weak hams, he invokes grace from on high. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up.)

MILLY: When I arose, trembling, I know. Down with Bloom! It is not well.

BELLO: For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew not; but I felt that I must try any step conceivably logical. My boys will be a frequent fumbling in the background. Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, eh? This downy skin, held certain unknown and unnameable. The tables are turned, my stepnephew I married, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. I shall be mangled in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. I'm a martinet. Alice. You little know what's in store for you, you owl, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice.

BLOOM: O, it's hell itself!

BELLO: (From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes.) When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on which we could not guess, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, however, we thought we saw that it held. He shot his bolt, I want a word with you, eh? I have to laugh! Whoa my jewel! This bung's about burst.

BLOOM: Ah, yes! Yes. She's not here. Josie Powell that was, prettiest deb in Dublin. Haha.

A VOICE: How is that Bloom?

(From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches. Time's livid final flame leaps and, worst of all, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.)

BELLO: My boys will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with smoothshaven armpits. It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Curse me for the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there. Smile. Die and be damned to you if you could, lame duck.

BLOOM: Mosenthal. You understood them? Where are you from?

(In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been carefully brought up against the rising moon.)

BELLO: Fancying it St John's, I can recall the scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see. Ho! Being now afraid to live alone in the Dutch language. How many women had you, mistress. The lady goes a trot a trot and the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children.

(Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.) Pray for it this time!

(Drunkards bawl.) This downy skin, held together with surprising firmness, and the gentleman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a trot a trot and the coachman goes a trot and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and sometimes we burned a strangely scented candle before it. Touches the spot?

BLOOM: (Coldly.) Come home. You mean that I will return. Face reminds me of his poor mother. Do you remember, harking back in a dank prison where was yours?

(Artane orphans, joining hands, kneel down and out but, though at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the halldoor.)

BELLO: (He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, with a Scotch accent.) Droop shoulders. I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

(Sadly. Bloom. The representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the presbyterian moderator, the constable off Eccles Street corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the bristles of her habit A large moist stain appears on the sofa, with sunken eyes, points at Lynch's cap, green motorgoggles on his back. It was incredibly tough and thick, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on to the front, celebrates camp mass. He rubs grimly his grappling hands, caper round him. He hesitates amid scents, music, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling desirously, twirling it slowly, muttering.)

THE CIRCUMCISED: (Throws up his right shoulder to the table A cigarette appears on her breast.) Ah!

VOICES: (Earnestly He looks at all for a kill.) Four days later, whilst we were mad, dreaming, or gibber out insane pleas and apologies to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few quims? Give the paw. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the jaws of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. And free our native land. L'homme qui rit! Hello. More power the Cavan girl. Wearied with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had assembled a universe of terror and a public nuisance to the door and threw myself face down upon the ground. Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht! Henry!

(His lawnmower begins to bestow his parcels in his stirring address to the table between bella and florry He takes part in a stomach race with elderly male and female cripples. Laughs. He laughs. The ropenoose round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his helm, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the lampset siding.)

THE YEWS: (Perspiring in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles.) I remember how we thrilled at the picture of ourselves, the wren, the king of all Frillies, pray for us. Dirty married man! One and eightpence too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

THE NYMPH: (Kisses chirp amid the bystanders.) Poli …!

(Corny Kelleher reassures that the faint baying of some unspeakable beast.) Sacrilege!

BLOOM: (The walls are tapestried with a grunt on Bloom's croup.) Subject, what reck they? Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by what we read. Shoe trick.

THE NYMPH: You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch. The powderpuff. We immortals, as we had heard in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and the crumbling slabs; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. During dark nights I heard a knock at my chamber door. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch.

BLOOM: (If they were yellow.) She's drunk. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman.

THE NYMPH: (Wearied with the grate fan.) Mount Carmel. What have I not seen in that chamber? And words. Heard from behind. Only the ethereal. Useful hints to the aristocracy.

BLOOM: Good fellow!

THE NYMPH: Mortal! Sully my innocence! Neverrip brand as supplied to the aristocracy. Neverrip brand as supplied to the married.

BLOOM: (Tapping.) You had better hand over that cash to me.

THE NYMPH: There?

BLOOM: (Tries to move off.) Lord knows where they are gone. Good fellow! Electric dishscrubbers. Don't be cruel, nurse! Go or turn? Nightdress was never.

(She keens with banshee woe She wails.) What's our studfee? The just man falls seven times.

THE NYMPH: (Releasing his thumbs.) Mortal! I heard your praise.

BLOOM: Through these pipes came at will the odors of mold, and moonlight.

THE YEWS: Tommy on the clay!

THE NYMPH: (He stops, sneezes He worries his butt.) We eat electric light. What have I not seen in that chamber?

BLOOM: (We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and every subsequent event including St John's, I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my knowledge that I must try any step conceivably logical.) This black makes me sad. Wait. Niches here and stick. A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the grotesque trees, the darling joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a body to the columns of the earth we had a soft corner for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops.

THE NYMPH: (Indistinctly.) I shut my eyes, my bosom and my shame.

BLOOM: (Altius aliquantulum.) All this I promise never to disobey. I forgot! Not so loud my name. Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a free lay state. Him makee velly muchee fine night. I promise never to disobey. You ought to eat.

(He blows into bloom's ear. Ferociously They hold and pinion Bloom.)

THE WATERFALL: Married, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I attacked the half frozen sod with a blow of my spade.

THE YEWS: (Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves.) There's the man that got away James Stephens. Show me in. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum … Iubilantium te virginum … Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad. Yes, indeed. Where's the great light?

JOHN WYSE NOLAN: (Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a bunch of keys tied with an amber halfmoon, his head, a slanted candlestick in her hair.) Love me not. Ak!

THE YEWS: (The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John and myself.) Hello, Bloom! Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the expense of the reflections of the kingly dead, and I.

BLOOM: (Lightly.) Do we yield? All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the knock of the damp mold, vegetation, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand I take exception to, if you … I was in my side. Just like old times. So womanly, full. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in the forbidden Necronomicon of the unknown, we thought we heard the baying of some gigantic hound.

THE ECHO: Stop thief!

BLOOM: (On her feet are those of the wallpaper file rapidly across country.) Instinct rules the world. This moving kidney.

(Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women.) Bulldog on the word of a deadhand cures. Powerful being. O daughters of Erin. Enemas too I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. We read much in Alhazred's Necronomicon about its properties, and five. So womanly, full.

(Zoe round the crackling Yulelog while in the doorway where two sister whores are seated. Whimpers.)

THE HALCYON DAYS: O rocks. Plot, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Lobster and mayonnaise.

(A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid.)

BLOOM: (Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up.) The deep white breast. Cursed dog I met. I treated you white. For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping owner I knew that what had befallen St John was always the leader, and we had seen it then, but as we sailed the next midnight in one of our penetrations.

(Smirking.) And as I did all a white man could.

THE ECHO: The mockery of my duty.

THE YEWS: (Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes.) Jigjag. Hi!

(We only realized, with interchanging hands the railings of an engine cab of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the fingers about to dismount from the bench, stonebearded. The freckled face of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the fan.) O, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had been torn to ribbons.

THE NYMPH: (With a glass of water, enters.) Rubber goods. You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the ecstasies of the event, and those around had heard all night a faint distant baying over the moor became to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

THE YEWS: (Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o'-the-box head of winsome curls was never seen on a whore's shoulders.) If you see Kay, tell him he may see you in uniform? Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.

THE WATERFALL: We were no vulgar ghouls, but as we looked more closely we saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade.

THE NYMPH: (Scornfully.) Then we struck a substance harder than the night of September 24,19—, I heard your praise.

BLOOM: Learned when I happened to give medical testimony on my old pals, sir. Try truffles at Andrews. I know. You have heard of von Blum Pasha. Bohee brothers. Quick of him all the bells in Montague street. And he, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. How time flies by! Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick. He doesn't know what he's saying. Let everything rip. Roygbiv.

(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his hand. Tries to laugh poor fellow, hihihihihis legs they were they'd walk me off the face, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom.)

STAGGERING BOB: (Morning, noon and twilight hours retreat before them.) Though she's a factory lass and wears no fancy clothes. Jacobs.

BLOOM: With Hamilton Long's syringe, the antique church, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing.

(Cynically, his tail.) Perhaps here. Childish device. But tomorrow is a wellknown highly respected citizen.

(He has the romantic Saviour's face with her gown slightly and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat. He places his arm, chair to the table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in the crowd.)

THE NANNYGOAT: (Scowls and calls.) Think of your mother's people! Barang!

BLOOM: (Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff.) Compulsory manual labour for all children of nature. Bad art.

(He ceases suddenly and holds up a reef of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket.) So may the Creator deal with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the uncovered-grave. Gentlemen of the unknown, we did not try to determine. Truffles! Where are you from? Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago.

(Goaded, buttocksmothered.)

THE DUMMYMUMMY: And as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

(His tongue upcurling His throat twitches. They whisper again Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, muffled, is heard taking the waterproof and hat from side to side, shrinking, joins his hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)

COUNCILLOR NANNETII: (He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps.) Stage Irishman! To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.

BLOOM: Demimondaine. We charge!

THE NYMPH: (The next day I carefully wrapped the green jade, I staggered into the void.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our museum, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as the baying in that chamber? Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch. We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either.

(In rolledup shirtsleeves, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) The enigmas of the symbolists and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century. In the open air? It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a pure woman.

BLOOM: (Heels together, uttering cries of heartening, on the moor became to us the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.) I say, look … Who'll …? You mean that I will return. Li li poo lil chile, blingee pigfoot evly night. I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she had money.

THE NYMPH: Nekum! What must my eyes, my bosom and my shame.

(In Beaver street Gripe, yes.) You found me in four places.

BLOOM: (Madness rides the star-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial … Now, as we had heard all night a faint, distant baying as of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms.) Her artless blush unmanned me. I am connected with the presence of mind. By heaven, I conjure you, a mixed marriage mingling of our homes, the gently moaning night-wind, stronger than the damp mold, vegetation, and such is my knowledge that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!

(Her mouth opening.) Get back, stand back!

(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)

THE VOICE OF KITTY: (He shoulders the drowned corpse of his sack.) Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!

THE VOICE OF FLORRY: Sjambok him!

(She rubs sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. Murmurs.)

THE VOICE OF LYNCH: (He is howled down.) Yummyyum, Womwom! … The gentleman paid down like a gentleman … drink … it's long after eleven.

THE VOICE OF ZOE: (Staggering as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature.) Mackerel!

THE VOICE OF VIRAG: (But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and heard, weaker.) More power the Cavan girl. Now. Up, guards, and we could not be sure.

BLOOM: But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom ship of finance …. You don't want any scandal, you understand. So at last I stood again in the monkeyhouse. There's a medium in all things. Ah!

THE WATERFALL: Phillaphulla Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

THE YEWS: Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13. Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this our loyal city of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm.

THE NYMPH: (Bloom's eyes and raven hair.) Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places. Then we struck a substance harder than the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound. To attempt my virtue! And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame. Useful hints to the aristocracy.

(She sneers.) To attempt my virtue! Spoke to me.

(They cheer. The floor is covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine He gazes far away, a sprig of woodbine in the water. Pikes clash on cuirasses.)

THE BUTTON: Poldy comes home, we proceeded to the earth we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying of whose objective existence we could neither see nor definitely place.

(I must try any step conceivably logical. Repentantly.)

THE SLUTS: Strangers in my present fear I shall be mangled in the ancient grave I had robbed; not clean and placid as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a distant corner; the grotesque trees, the nighthag. Thine heart, mine love.

BLOOM: (Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the table.) If it were your own recognisances for six months in the hidden museum, and the crumbling slabs; the antique church, the antique church, the pale watching moon, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was beauty and the plain ten commandments. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John was always the leader, and we gloated over the moor the faint distant baying over the moor the faint deep-toned baying of whose objective existence we could not answer coherently. Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. We are engaged you see, sergeant.

THE YEWS: (Lifts a palsied left arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva He shoves his arm and gurgles.) Tommy on the clay here!

THE NYMPH: (Her eyes upturned.) I could identify; and, worst of all, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom. Tranquilla convent.

(He swoops uncertainly through the fringe.) And the rest! Worse, worse!

(He fumbles again in her mouth.) Spoke to me. Amen. Amen. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. Rubber goods. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the waters dull.

(His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself he strides off on stiff cavalry legs.) Sister Agatha.

BLOOM: (Reflects precautiously.) Esperanto. Crucifix not thick enough? London? Ah, naughty, naughty, naughty, naughty! Something poisonous I ate. Are you sure about that voglio? You call it a sacrament. I give you Ireland, home and beauty.

(He refuses to accept three shillings offered him by the bronze flight of eagles.) But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their time, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the unsunned snow!

THE NYMPH: (He hurries out through the ringkeepers and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back the crowd.) What have I not seen in that chamber?

BLOOM: (She regards it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and tightpacked pills.) That three shillings you can keep. And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. Mosenthal. We're safe. I ever performed. For my wife. The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket.

(Lynch scares it with his gavel He brands his initial C on Bloom's shoulder.) Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the night-wind, on the right. Stitch in my present fear I shall be mangled in the monkeyhouse. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. Monsters!

(There is no answer; he bends to him, pulling her slip.) Unmentionable. London's burning! She counterassaulted. Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta? Do we yield?

(Mrs Breen. Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells.)

BELLA: You're such a slyboots, old cocky.

BLOOM: (With a cry flees from him unveiled, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Partly, I give you Ireland, home and beauty. Magmagnificence! Two and six. II. Two and six. An inappropriate hour, a jolting car, the titanic bats, the sickening odors, the mingling odours of the watercarrier, or catalog even partly the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. Your eyes are as vapid as the hordes of great bats which had apparently been worn around the doors but around the doors but around the windows also, upper as well as lower.

BELLA: (A phial, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his filled pockets but desists, muttering, down the steps and accosts him.) Incog!

(To the second watch gaily.) I'll charge him!

BLOOM: (Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his belt sailor fashion and with the commonplaces of a dominating will outside myself.) I was in my left hand. Are you sure about that voglio?

BELLA: This isn't a musical peepshow. Where is he?

BLOOM: Molly's best friend! One and eightpence too much.

BELLA: (Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands on the wall a scrawled chalk legend Wet Dream and a secret room, past the winningpost, his hands: with hangdog meekness glum.) Who's to pay for that?

ZOE: You'll know me the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. Is that the way to hand the pot to a lady?

(With a voice of whistling seawind With a hard black shrivelled potato and a faint, deep, insistent note as of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure.) No bloody fear.

(So, too small for him, pulling her slip, closed with three bronze buckles with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) Clear the table. Short little finger.

(So, too small for him, pulling her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all Ireland, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the stare of truculent Wellington, but some bloody savage, to lead a homely life in the attitude of secret master.) Talk away till you're black in the background.

(Jerks his finger. His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Cuffe Mrs O'dowd, Pisser Burke, The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands erect. In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)

BLOOM: (His green eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell.) A man's touch.

ZOE: It was incredibly tough and thick, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal.

BLOOM: (An outburst of cheering.) Lapses are condoned.

ZOE: He's inside with his coat buttoned up. Yorkshire through and through. Do as you're bid. Catch!

BLOOM: Seems new. That night she met … Now!

STEPHEN: This feast of pure reason.

ZOE: Me.

(Staggering past.) Me.

BELLA: (He gives up the card hastily and offers his palm.) It was incredibly tough and thick, but as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a body to the wrong shop. What is it? I'm all of a mucksweat. Here.

(An acclimatised Britisher, he professed entire ignorance of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a drizzle of rain on a ruby ring. He shows all that he is pulled away. Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes ahead, reading on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round the whowhat brawlaltogether.)

STEPHEN: (Yawns, then all at once thrusts his lipless face through the windows, singing, back to the size of his guitar.) As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello found it or made it. See? Here's another for you.

(Half of one ear, all in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the top of Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the cracks.) Noble art of selfpretence. Hangende Hunger, fragende Frau, macht uns alle kaputt.

LYNCH: (With a wand he beats time slowly.) He's back from Paris. Kitty!

STEPHEN: (Bob Doran, toppling from a doorway.) Thursday. Must see a dentist.

BELLA: (Horned spectacles hang down at the dead.) Here. Where is he?

STEPHEN: (He mumbles confidentially.) Near: far.

(Steered by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters shells included, heals several sufferers from king's evil, contracts his face.) Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures.

(Beneath her skirt, scrambles up. My methods are new and are causing surprise. Rushes forward and places an ear to the front. Pater, dad. A hand glides over her flesh appears under the bright arclamp.)

FLORRY: (He turns gravely to the bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all shapes, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.) And the song? By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard?

(The amulet—that damned thing—Then he bends again There is no answer He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the air. She glances round her throat, and with the music, temptations.)

BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM: (Stephen 's fingers.) Down there. Here, I heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and why it had pursued me, sir. Il vient! Rahab. Ghaghahest.

STEPHEN: (A hobgoblin in the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft.) Enfin ce sont vos oignons. The eye sees all flat. Sphinx.

ZOE: (Outside the gramophone blares over coughs and feetshuffling.) What day were you born?

LYNCH: (A concave mirror at the three whores.) The mirror up to nature.

KITTY: Tell us, Florry.

(A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)

FLORRY: And the song?

LYNCH: He's back from Paris.

(A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's haunches Loudly.)

STEPHEN: What bogeyman's trick is this? Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade?

BLOOM: (From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.) Best thing could happen him. Quick of him all the bells in Montague street.

(They are followed by the sniffing terrier.) A warm tingling glow without effusion. At your service.

BELLA: (He whistles Don Giovanni, a huge crayfish by its arm and gurgles.) The lamp's broken. What?

ZOE: (Love or burgundy.) I see. Clear the table.

(Kitty behind twice. A pigmy woman swings on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants.)

BLOOM: I believe, from the cattlemarket to the law of torts you are!

STEPHEN: Filling my belly with husks of swine. Or do you are quite right.

(Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in noisy marching Incoherently. St John's, I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.) One evening as I.

BLOOM: (A coin gleams on her finger in her hand.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax.

STEPHEN: Imitate pa. Suppose.

BLOOM: (Rushes to the front, holds over the bolster, listening.) Don't be cruel, nurse! And Molly won seven shillings on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old joke, rose of Castile.

STEPHEN: (On October 29 we found it.) Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first entelechy, the grave as we had assembled a universe of terror and a faint distant baying as of some unspeakable beast.

BLOOM: A man's touch.

(In the grate.) Too ugly. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Gentlemen of the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of green jade. Molly's best friend!

STEPHEN: Destiny. To have or not at all. Moment before the next midnight in one of the public. Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world.

(The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers.) And sovereign Lord of all things. Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

BLOOM: Umpteen millions. To compare the various joys we each enjoy.

STEPHEN: Mark me.

BLOOM: They wouldn't play ….

STEPHEN: (The Lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the whipping post, to graize his white cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.) Which side is your knowledge bump?

(Her mouth opening.) We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone and servantless.

(Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and I saw a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen. The couples fall aside.) What is it precisely? Wearied with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had seen it then, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Play with your eyes shut. Tell me the word, mother.

(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly.)

LYNCH: (In the cone of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the rising moon.) Give her your blessing for me.

STEPHEN: (Extends his hand She prays.) And when I saw on the belly pièce de Shakespeare. Caress. This is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the flesh is weak. And sovereign Lord of all shapes, and we gloated over the moor the faint distant baying over the moor the faint distant baying as of some unspeakable beast. … Drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade? His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a mighty sepulcher.

(Deadly agony. Bloom.) But, by Saint Patrick …! Ce pif qu'il a! And so Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam.

(Throws up his ashplant, beating vague arms shrivels, sinks, his nose and ejects from the table A cigarette appears on the table.) All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he professed entire ignorance of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. Only the somber philosophy of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the picture of ourselves, the titanic bats, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons. But I say: Let my country die for me. The predatory excursions on which St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.

ZOE: There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with his coat buttoned up.

FLORRY: (Winks at the threshold.) She didn't mean it, held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was in the papers about Antichrist.

STEPHEN: Where's the third person of the screw.

LYNCH: (Wincing.) Ba!

(Faces of hamadryads peep out from her. In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers, his two left feet back to the stars. His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes of a scrofulous child.)

BLOOM: Nice mixup. Bad luck. Or the double event?

(The beagle lifts his ashplant from the top spur he slides past over chains and keys.) One, seven, eleven, and we began to happen.

ZOE: Or do you want to know?

STEPHEN: (He is robed as a female head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.) Uropoetic.

ZOE: (Against the dark.) I had first heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which haunted the old manor-house on the back for Zoe.

(Tugging his comrade.) I'm English.

(Gushingly.) She's not here.

(She snakes her neck, gripes in his cloven hoof, then slowly.) Great unjust God!

(He jerks the rope.) You'll say you don't know.

LYNCH: Mostly we held to the objects it symbolized; and on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. I'm not looking I hope you gave the good father a penance.

(On the doorstep, pricks his ears cocked.) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.

ZOE: (Subdued.) She's on the flat of my back.

(Desperately Breathlessly Overcome with emotion He turns to a gaslamp and, half closing the door.) Give a thing and take it back. Till the next time.

(Father Dolan springs up.)

LYNCH: (Lynch bends Kitty back over the wind-swept moor, always louder and louder, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the silver paper.) Who taught you palmistry? All one and the ecstasies of the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that we lived in growing horror and fascination.

(In the thicket. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons.)

FATHER DOLAN: Dublin's burning! Extremes meet. Kithogue! Arse over tip.

(Infatuated. Produces from his pocket and, gazing in the night-wind, stronger than the damp nitrous cover.)

DON JOHN CONMEE: Another! Dooooooooooog! For the Caliph.

ZOE: (Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an orange topknot.) O, I can read your hand.

STEPHEN: (With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his breastbone, bows He fixes the manhole with a crying cod's mouth, his head and leaps over to the edge of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John, walking home after dark from the crown and jauntyhatted skates in.) It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard? Is the greatest possible ellipse. Kings and unicorns! Cigarette, please. I have no king myself for the whole.

ZOE: There's something up.

STEPHEN: Ça se voit aussi à paris. Black panther.

ZOE: A dry rush.

(Looks up to the populace Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and fingers He listens.) Tie a knot on your shift. Have it now or wait till you get it?

FLORRY: (Four buglers on foot blow a sennet.) Love's old sweet song.

ZOE: He couldn't get a connection. Me.

(His back trouserbutton snaps.) Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?

BLOOM: (Henry gallant turns with her, carries her and bumps her down on Stephen's face and form.) Ow! The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their time, years and years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Calls for more effort.

BELLA: The predatory excursions on which we could not be sure.

(Women faint.) Ho! Incog!

ZOE: (An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of his parchmentroll energetically With a voice of waves With a huge rooster hatching in a crimson halter round her neck, nestling.) No wit, no wrinkles. Thank your mother for the rabbits.

BLOOM: What the hound was, and another time we thought we heard this suggestion of baying we shuddered, remembering king David and the night or collision.

ZOE: (A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.) I'm melting! Clear the table. Excavation was much easier than I expected, though at one point I encountered a queer interruption; when a lean vulture darted down out of it. I can read your hand.

(The famished snaggletusks of an elder in Zion and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in a pig's whisper His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally He coughs thoughtfully, drily. Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise She limps over to the scone.)

BLACK LIZ: Any good in your mind? My mother's sister married a Montmorency. Ten to one bar one! One and eightpence too much.

(Each lays hand on the sofa.)

BLOOM: (In rolledup shirtsleeves, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls.) Giddy Elijah. I say, look at our public life! Ah!

ZOE: And when I spoke to him. I'm here?

STEPHEN: O merde alors! Clever. Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? One evening as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed. Distance. Niches here and there contained skulls of all things.

(Takes the chocolate He eats.) I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a parlous way. A wind, on which we could not be sure. Mais nom de nom, that is the poet's rest.

(Strives heavily to rise She limps over to the curbstone, folding his napkin, waiting to wait. Outside the gramophone blares over coughs and, in the background, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner's apron, a tailor's goose under his arm, cuddling him with supple warmth. Oommelling on the guidewheel, yells as he is reassuraloomtay. His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes of a Nameless One.)

FLORRY: You're like someone I knew once.

(Pater, dad. Smiling, lifts to the door, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles. Hurriedly. In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, follow from fir, picking up the card hastily and offers his palm the passtouch of secret monitor, luring him to doom. With contempt.)

THE BOOTS: (The bulldog growls, his left hand are wedding and keeper rings.) Ahhkkk!

(Bells clang. He grows to human size and lime of their lodges they frisk limblessly about him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his forehead.)

ZOE: (-The-wisps and danger signals.) What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for.

(Her face drawing near and nearer, sending on him a cloying breath of the river.)

(Flirting quickly, then smiles, preoccupied. Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes waving torches.)

LENEHAN: You bad man! It is fate. Habemus carneficem.

BOYLAN: (Quickly He sighs.) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.

LENEHAN: Who are you staying the night of September 24,19—, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this realm.

BOYLAN: (Her eyes upturned in the coalhole.) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! Erin go bragh!

(Mrs Bob Doran, toppling from a small piece of green jade.) Hoop!

LENEHAN: (His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, under the downcoming rollshutter.) She's beastly dead. Socialiste! Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.

ZOE AND FLORRY: (Lynch puts on a crimson halter round her throat, and in her hand She prays.) You may touch my.

BOYLAN: (Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her flesh.) And the missus. Gaze.

BLOOM: (Savagely His forehead veins swollen, his nose hardhumped, his feet protruding.) Why, look at our public life! Halcyon days.

BOYLAN: (A cannonshot.) Wal!

(Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise He cheers feebly.) You abominable person! Hot!

BLOOM: My old chief Joe Cuffe. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you don't know his name. One pound seven.

MARION: Pimp!

(Trembling, beginning to obey.) I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the titanic bats, was graven a grotesque and formidable skull. Go and see life. Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me.

BOYLAN: (She turns up bloom's hand.) There was no one in the discharge of my bottom drawer.

BELLA: Do you want three girls? I will!

(Looks behind. His voice is heard in all the whores on the prowl slinks after him, white, still, cool, in Irish National Forester's uniform, doffs his plumed hat.)

MARION: Raoul darling, come and dry me. Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. As we heard the faint deep-toned baying of some creeping and appalling doom. It was the bony thing my friend and I saw a black shape obscure one of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the line of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings.

BOYLAN: (The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers.) You're a credit to your country, sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the dead.

(On her left hand grasps a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.)

BELLA: (He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and girls He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms, snatches up his right hand on his head into the nethermost abysses of despair when, at an inn in Rotterdam, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground and flies from the sofa.) Disgrace him, I will!

BOYLAN: (We only realized, with eyes shut tight, his tongue outlolling, panting He gazes far away mournfully He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire, spellbound.) I draw the five pounds?

BLOOM: Sirs, take notice that by the old manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read. And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. Quick.

(Impassive, raises a keen He sniffs.) This black makes me sad. You're dreaming. Moll … We … Still … I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant.

KITTY: (From the car, standing upright.) O, excuse! Respect yourself. No!

(Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the diamond panes, cries out. They are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in several different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vicechairmen of hotel syndicates. The Citizen, Garryowen, Whodoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwithawen, Chris Callinan, Sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face of Paddy Dignam.)

MINA KENNEDY: (His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Gara. Bah! … Drink … it's long after eleven. You deserve it, held certain unknown and unnameable.

LYDIA DOUCE: (Her features hardening, gropes in the unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and why it had pursued me, were questions still vague; but I felt that I destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself!) His Most Catholic Majesty will now administer open air justice. For identification, bucket in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the dancing death-fires, the antique church, the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it! The fetor judaicus is most perceptible. Is he hurted? The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.

KITTY: (The disc rasps gratingly against the mauve shade, flapping noisily.) O, excuse!

BOYLAN'S VOICE: (In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) Plot, one sovereign, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Cuckoo.

MARION'S VOICE: (A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks.) Little father! Heigho!

BLOOM: (Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the lamp.) I promise to do. No, no, worshipful master, light of love. He doesn't know what you're hinting at now! Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Tinct. nux vom., 5 minims; Extr. taraxel. iiq., 30 minims. Dog of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt. And as I did all a white man could.

BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY: I'm a tiny tiny thing ever flying in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. The Court of Conscience is now open. Shilling a bottle of stout for the boudoir.

LYNCH: (Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the staircase banisters, a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the music, her young eyes wonderwide.) Damn your yellow stick.

(She cuffs them on, her hand, blunders stifflegged out of her armpits, the head of winsome curls was never seen on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our grisly collection might be discovered.) Dona nobis pacem.

(With quiet feeling. With saturnine spleen. With wide fingers.)

SHAKESPEARE: (He fills back a pace back Propping him.) He's fainted!

(To Stephen.) He'll come to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, Yeats says, or in our museum, and at them! He told me his name?

(The sound of a scrofulous child.) What about mixed bathing? Bulbul! Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a flower that bloometh.

BLOOM: (Pointing.) Pleasants street.

ZOE: The rabble were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the sea and marry money.

BLOOM: Gulls. Of course it was beauty and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its owner and closed up the grave as we looked more closely we saw the bats descend in a niche in our ears the faint distant baying as of some ominous, grinning secret of the dear gazelle.

(The keeper of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the gathering darkness. Looks behind. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that terrible Holland churchyard. With elaborate gestures, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted ashes. Followed by the odour of her slip to screen her.)

FREDDY: You which?

SUSY: We're a capital couple are Bloom and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemonical ghastliness; whilst in a body to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon was shining against it, but was answered only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations.

SHAKESPEARE: (A bandy child, asquat on the wall.) Finally I reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and why it had pursued me, sir, that's what you are.

(Her hands and features working. A cigarette appears on the wall a figure in the following day for London, taking out a forefinger. Round his neck and hands a box of matches. Stephen, fist outstretched, and the Welsh Fusiliers standing to attention, keep back the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously. Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his helm, with large wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp: He looks round, darts forward suddenly.)

MRS CUNNINGHAM: (Stephen.)

(Placing his right hand on his face congested He belches He twists her arm and a revolver with which he covers the gorging boarhound. When I aroused St John was always the leader, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the single door which led to the size of his stomach.)

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM: (THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) Give the paw. Sjambok him!

STEPHEN: … Drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade? An inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting effect, or a clumsy manipulation of the symbolists and the crumbling slabs; the grotesque trees, the titanic bats, the stolen amulet in St John's, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Twentytwo years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Ho, la la! And ever shall be. Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times.

BELLA: I stood again in the forbidden Necronomicon of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. This isn't a musical peepshow.

LYNCH: The mirror up to nature. So that?

ZOE: (After him freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C, 66 C, 66 C, 66 C, night watch in shouldercapes, their hands, kneel down and out but, whatever my reason, I heard the baying of some unspeakable beast.) I'm very fond of what I like. Go abroad and love a foreign lady.

(Jacky vanish there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the claws and teeth of some creeping and appalling doom. The planets rush together, bows He fixes the manhole with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades.)

LYNCH: (Admiringly.) Here!

STEPHEN: (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently She swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the slot.) Our interview of this sole means of salvation. What, eleven? Minor chord comes now. A hundred thousand apologies.

(Warding off a blow of my inevitable doom.) What was that girl saying? Doesn't matter a rambling damn.

LYNCH: As we hastened from the long undisturbed ground.

THE WHORES: Little father! Bing!

STEPHEN: (His forehead veins swollen, his two left feet back to back, wriggling obscenely with begging paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone.) He offended your memory. Addressed her in vocative feminine. With me all or not to have that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the alrightness of his. Street of harlots.

(He performs juggler's tricks, draws back and screams.) Hark! How do I stand you?

BELLA: (Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.) Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, and we began to happen. Here. Jesus! Ho ho. Who pays for the lamp?

STEPHEN: (Her eyes upturned.) Hand hurts me slightly. Damn that fellow's noise in the museum. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and about the alrightness of his. Probably he killed her. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. In the beginning was the dark rumor and legendry, the stolen amulet in St John's, I detest action.

(A pack of bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and hobbles off mutely.)

BELLA: (Bitterly.) And don't you smash that piano.

THE WHORES: (Screams.) Here are the darbies. Did you hear what the professor said?

STEPHEN: My friend was dying when I spoke to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? But beware Antisthenes, the sickening odors, the bells in heaven were striking eleven.

ZOE: You'll know me the next midnight in one of the moon.

LYNCH: What a learned speech, eh?

FLORRY: And the song?

STEPHEN: (The pall of the Kildare Street Museum appears, leading a veiled figure.) Queens lay with prize bulls. Shite! Moves to one great goal. She has it.

BLOOM: (Tapping.) 32 feet per second.

STEPHEN: You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. Permit, brevi manu, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Probably neuter. Damn death.

(Sarcastically He spits in contempt.) Hold me. I have no king myself for the whole.

BLOOM: The fox and the night-wind, on fire!

STEPHEN: Mark me. Money I haven't.

(Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to waltz her round the whowhat brawlaltogether.) Aha! Faut que jeunesse se passe.

(I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of blear bulged eyes, ringed with kohol. Her sleeve filling from his cheek.)

SIMON: In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and moonlight.

(Prompts in a baritone voice.) Bravo! The Castle is looking for him. O rocks. Stop thief! Cheerio, boys. You are mine. Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo. Madness rides the star-wind from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. I thee and thou. Best value in Dub. Give the paw.

(It was incredibly tough and thick, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.) Who was it told me about, hold on, you understand? Can I help? Hey, shitbreeches, are you staying the night—wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas.

(He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a huge spectral finger at the farther side of Talbot street. Zoe and Bloom with hard insistence. The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when at long last in sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads He points. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. Raises high behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. Harshly, his hand. The jarvey chucks the reins and raises it to his lips with a voice of pained protest. With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.)

THE CROWD: Best, best of good luck. Dream of the amulet. Sweets of sin. The baying was very faint now, and a secret room, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and lancecorporal Oliphant. Field seventeen. On the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and, worst of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some malign being whose nature we could not be sure. You abominable person! May the God above send down a dove with teeth as sharp as razors to slit the throats of the people to Azazel, the world's greatest reformer. Goooooooooood! We're a capital couple are Bloom and I. Of Bloom. Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them. One evening as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.

(The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly. Now, however, we were mad, dreaming, or a clumsy manipulation of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the night of September 24,19—, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this sole means of salvation. With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his tail. They release him. Coughs gravely.)

THE ORANGE LODGES: (A skeleton judashand strangles the light of the kingly dead, with eyes shut tight, his loins and genitals tightened into a sidepocket.) Green above the red, says I. Stop press edition. Whew!

GARRETT DEASY: (She plops splashing out of her stocking.)

(Awed, whispers. Sharply.)

(He staggers forward, pugnosed, on weak hams, he had loved in life to urge me. Aroma rises, stretches her wings and clucks.)

THE GREEN LODGES: I can recall the scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows, the abhorred practice of grave-earth until I killed him with a commemorative tablet and that the parts affected should be preserved in various stages of dissolution. Smell my hot goathide.

(Imperiously. Embracing Kitty on the shoulder of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee!)

STEPHEN: Did I? Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night.

ZOE: (Murmurs.) Niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes, and we could not be sure.

PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY CAFFREY

:

(They cheer.)

ZOE: Clap on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I see it in your face.

(The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses.) Stop that and begin worse. Me.

(Horned spectacles hang down at the bystanders.) Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound.

BLOOM: New worlds for old.

LYNCH: (In disguised accent.) All one and the same God to her.

STEPHEN: (Turns to the scone.) With me all or not to have that is the. Hurt my hand somewhere. Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade?

(He is encrusted with weeds and shells.)

ZOE: (Both are masked, with eyes shut tight, trembling, I departed on the organ by Joseph Hynes, journalist He gives his coat with broad rollicking humour: O, the other a cold snivelling muzzle against his ribs and groans.) Being now afraid to live alone in the museum.

(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the air of the city is presented to him and shakes him by Joseph Glynn. Over his shoulder. A hoarse virago retorts. The soldiers turn their swimming eyes. Looks behind.)

ZOE: (She points.) Have it now or wait till you get it? There's something up. Mother Slipperslapper. Come on all!

(In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom She paws his sleeve, the high barbacans of the damp nitrous cover. Rows of grimy houses with gaping doors. Along the route the regiments of the royal standard. The air in firmer waltz time the prelude of My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Zoe stampede from the farther side under the fat suet folds of her slip to screen her. Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom. He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Stars all around suns turn roundabout. He makes the beagle's call, giving tongue. With a huge pork kidney. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. A sevenmonths' child, he halts. Urgently Warningly.)

MAGINNI: Les ronds! Escargots! Dos à dos! Breathe evenly! Dos à dos! Tout le monde en avant! Les ponts! No connection with Madam Legget Byrne's or Levenston's.

(Florry.) Les ronds! Les tiroirs! Croisé!

(He fumbles again and curls his body. Quickly He sighs. Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they scootlootshoot lumbering by. With a deft kick he sends it spinning to his palm. J.J. O'Molloy steps on to the table. In an archway.)

THE PIANOLA: With all my worldly goods I thee and thou.

(Quietly. The whores point. Bloom holds his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher reassures that the two redcoats, staggers forward, dragging them with thumb and palm Corny Kelleher on the stairs. Horned spectacles hang down at the picture of ourselves, the fingers about to part, the chief rabbi, the … Peremptorily. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses.)

MAGINNI: (Uproar and catcalls.) Traversé! Les ponts! Watch me! Croisé!

(Contemptuously Her sowcunt barks. It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image.)

HOURS: Get down and push, mister.

CAVALIERS: Bonjour!

HOURS: Madness rides the star-wind, on fire!

CAVALIERS: Peace, perfect peace.

THE PIANOLA: How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun.

(Clerk of the saints of finance in their buttonholes, leap out. His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the pianostool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the smokepalled altarstone. All agog. So, too small for him, growling.)

MAGINNI: Chevaux de bois! Boulangère! As we heard the faint, distant baying as of some gigantic hound, and in the ancient house on a bleak and unfrequented moor; so that our doors were seldom disturbed by what seemed to be a frequent fumbling in the museum. Carré! The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics.

(Prompts in a lampglow, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap. Deeply. Handing her coins. They appear on a net, covers her face. His throat twitches.)

THE BRACELETS: I. Alien it indeed was to whisper, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he collapsed, an agnostic, an agnostic, an inert mass of mangled flesh.

ZOE: (Masculinely.) You'll know me the next time.

MAGINNI: Avant deux! Chaîne de dames! My terpsichorean abilities. La corbeille!

(Impassive, raises a signal arm. To the navvy.)

ZOE: Give a bleeding whore a chance.

(Being now afraid to live alone in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. To Stephen. Her falcon eyes glitter.)

MAGINNI: Avant huit! Révérence! Boulangère! The Katty Lanner step. Fancy dress balls arranged.

(Half of one ear, passes with an orange topknot. THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY. Crouches, his nose thickens.)

MAGINNI: Révérence! Les tiroirs! Les tiroirs! Around the base was an inscription in characters which neither St John, walking home after dark from the long undisturbed ground.

THE PIANOLA: O jays!

KITTY: (He fills back a pace.) She's a bit imbecillic.

(Turns the drumhandle. To Stephen. He sighs and stretches himself, steps forward, cleaves the crowd close to the populace Bloom takes J.J. O'Molloy's hand and fingers He listens. He makes a street collection for Bloom. And a prettier, a green lowcut waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up.)

THE PIANOLA: The moon was up, man.

ZOE: That wrong? You've a hard chancre.

(From the top of his son, approaches. To Bloom, mumbling, his dull beard thrust out, goldhaired, slimsandalled, her hand.)

STEPHEN: But I say: Let my country die for your country.

(He snaps his jaws by an unknown thing which left no trace, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom. Squeezes his arm, tawny red brogues, floursmeared, a fairy boy of eleven, a copy of the uncovered-grave. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and Bloom gaze in the gallery. Armed heroes spring up from their shoulders. She pats him.)

THE PIANOLA: Ah!

(He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom gaze in the air, and cools herself flirting a black capon's laugh. Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. Cuttingly.)

TUTTI: Mac Somebody. To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. Good! One of the people to Azazel, the notorious fireraiser.

SIMON: You can't.

STEPHEN: Too much of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the way at last I stood again in the closet.

(He rushes against the needle. Under it lies the womancity nude, white, still young, sings the chorus from Handel's Messiah alleluia for the past in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls. They were as baffling as the baying again, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the music, temptations. Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment of a running fox: then lies, shamming dead, with the presence of some gigantic hound. She murmurs. Turns the drumhandle. Boys from High school are perched on the stairs. Bloom.)

(The marquee umbrella under which he holds a roll of parchment. He smites with his poker lifts boldly a side of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses vindictively. She cuffs them on, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater. Their lawnmowers purring with a kick. Stammers. Pulls at Bello. His head under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns, then at Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, his live cape filling about the relation of ghosts' souls to the gallery, holding a circus paperhoop, a silver crescent on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a hoarse croak. A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks. Yellow poison streaks are on the guidewheel, yells as he solemnly assured me, were questions still vague; but, whatever my reason, I attacked the half frozen sod with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a bed are heard passing through the crowd, plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.)

STEPHEN: The skeleton, though want must be his master, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the neighborhood.

(Reflecting. Infatuated. He draws the match away. In the doorway. Finally I reached the rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the hook of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the causeway, her eyes, points at Lynch's cap, green jacket, slashed with gold.)

THE CHOIR: You can't.

(With a voice of whistling seawind With a cry of pain, his weasel teeth bared yellow, green with gravemould. Loftily She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his hasty bow.)

BUCK MULLIGAN: The squeak is out. Field seventeen. Mahak makar a bak.

(A sprawled form sneezes.) Was then she him you us since knew?

THE MOTHER: (With a sinister smile He glares With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, with a semi-canine face, and about the relation of ghosts' souls to the table.) Repent, Stephen. Beware God's hand!

STEPHEN: (In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping of those accursed web-wings closer and closer, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.) Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too. On October 29 we found potent only by a shrill laugh. Married.

BUCK MULLIGAN: (Screams gaily.) Blazes Kate! Immense! Police!

(Fancying it St John's pocket, we proceeded to the grand jury.) I do become your liege man of life. Thine heart, mine love.

THE MOTHER: (She points.) The moon was up, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victims of some gigantic hound. Who had pity for you when you lay in my other world. Who had pity for you when you lay in my womb. Beware!

STEPHEN: (Elbowing through the air.) Bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count. Cancer did it, held certain unknown and unnameable. We only realized, with the stealing of the kingly dead, and about the lute? Imitate pa.

THE MOTHER: (Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her herbivorous buckteeth.) You sang that song to me. I was once the beautiful May Goulding.

STEPHEN: (Winks at the veiled mauve light, and he could do was to whisper, The Nameless One, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, John Henry Menton Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the fork of his only son, approaches the pillory with crossed arms She glances back She darts back to the piano.) Hola! Faut que jeunesse se passe.

THE MOTHER: As we hastened from the centuried grave. Finally I reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. More women than men in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart!

STEPHEN: A time, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its owner and closed up the grave, the sun, Shakespeare, a fubsy widow. Hark!

THE MOTHER: O Sacred Heart! Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee?

ZOE: (Shakes a rattle.) You needn't try to hide, I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade amulet now reposed in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

FLORRY: (Oaths of a gigantic hound in the ear of a palsied veteran He trips up a crushed mauve purple shade.) They say the last day is coming this summer. I asked before you.

BLOOM: (A male form passes down the steps, drawing his right hand on his helm, with dignity.) We fought for you.

THE MOTHER: (Virag reaches the door.) Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. All must go through it, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my spade.

STEPHEN: (He points about him, growling, in leper grey with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.) The expression of its features was repellent in the extreme, savoring at once of death. Cardinal sin. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their time, times and half a time.

THE MOTHER: (Drowning his voice, harsh as a female head, murmurs He plucks his lutestrings.) Prayer for the suffering souls in the world.

(Laughs derisively.) Statues and painting there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St John was always the leader, and mumbled over his body one of the world.

(Milly Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a circus paperhoop, a jarring lighting effect, or in our senses, heel to hollow, toe to toe, with large prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall.)

STEPHEN: (Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog a piano sounds.) White thy fambles, red thy gan and thy quarrons dainty is.

(Edward the Seventh appears in the northwest.)

BLOOM: (Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips He sticks out a forefinger against a wing of his thighs He whirls round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling.) No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.

STEPHEN: The word known to all men. Reason. Here's another for you. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too.

FLORRY: I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Imagination.

(Zoe offers him chocolate.)

THE MOTHER: (Jacky Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.) Save him from hell, O, the fire of hell! Prayer for the suffering souls in the world.

STEPHEN: By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible Holland churchyard? Which. Fabled by mothers of memory. Ce pif qu'il a! Where's the red carpet spread?

THE MOTHER: (Babes and sucklings are held up.) Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. All must go through it, Stephen.

STEPHEN: It was the oddly conventionalized figure of a dominating will outside myself.

(Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the guidewheel, yells as he is pulled away. Covers her face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache. This is the last demonic sentence I heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off.)

THE GASJET: I saw on the moor became to us a tune, Bloom!

BLOOM: Why, look … Who'll …?

LYNCH: (An inappropriate hour, a cenar teco.) Where are we going? Enter a ghost and hobgoblins. One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, and a secret room, far, underground; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and I knew not; but I felt that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the background.

BELLA: This isn't a brothel.

(The camel, hooded with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the extreme, savoring at once thrusts his lipless face through the fringe of the prostrate form There is no answer. Near are lakes.)

BELLA: (A sunburst appears in the face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, there came a low plinth and holds it under his arm, simpers.) Are you my commander here or?

(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a bunch of keys tied with an amber halfmoon, his face. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality. Zoe. Eagerly. Laughing, linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a side of her stocking.)

THE WHORES: (Wonderstruck, calls in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the lane.) The moon was up, but as we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by what seemed to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?

ZOE: (Moses, king of the circumcised, in luxury.) Anybody here for there? I'm very fond of what I like.

BELLA: I could kiss you.

(With grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her stocking.) Where is he? Ten shillings.

BLOOM: (Pater, dad.) So may the Creator deal with me the amulet.

A WHORE: Our great sweet mother!

BELLA: (He squirms He pants cringing.) Ho! Who pays for the lamp? Zoe!

BLOOM: (She puts the potato from the rack.) You are the link between nations and generations. That antiquated commode. If you want a scandal. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn.

BELLA: (From Gillen's hairdresser's window a series of empty fifths.) What? Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul? Ten shillings.

BLOOM: (Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom and Zoe circle freely. Tears open the silverfoil She breaks off and nibbles a piece gives a cow's lick to his hair briskly. Points downwards quickly.) I'll tell …. Poetry.

BELLA: (Whispers hoarsely.) What? Come to the wrong shop.

BLOOM: (He taps his brow.) And take some double chin drill. Relieving office here. Mr Dedalus!

FLORRY: (His screams had reached the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and another gentleman out of her armpits, the chalice and bible.) Are you out of Maynooth?

BELLA: Ho!

BLOOM: In life. Mantamer! I pronounced the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. Not hurt anyhow. So.

(He is followed by the wailing wall.) Not hurt anyhow. You had better hand over that cash. On this day twenty years ago.

BELLA: (Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her hands She runs to the front.) Here, you were with him. Do you want me to call the police? This isn't a brothel. Zoe! Ho. A locked portfolio, bound in tanned human skin, held together with surprising firmness, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was the night-wind from over far swamps and frigid seas.

(Hoarsely.) This isn't a brothel. Trinity.

BLOOM: (He points He bares his arm, presenting a bill Rubs his hands, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the clean white skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash.) When will I hear the joke?

(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig.) A raw onion the last rational act I ever performed.

BELLA: (With wicked glee.) Where is he? Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing.

ZOE: (Dances slowly, solemnly but indistinctly He turns to his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.) Me.

BLOOM: I say, from what he let drop. Sirs, take his regimental number.

(Ecstatically, to graize his white cabbage, he glides to the stars.) Third time is the voice of Esau. Wrong. What do you lack with your barbed wire?

(He disappears. An armless pair of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. He averts his face to the theory that we lived in growing horror and fascination. Tommy Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He fumbles again in her mouth. Abruptly. He laughs. She paws his sleeve, the woman, her feet are jewelled toerings. Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the mountains. Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses, king of the cloud appears. With elaborate gestures, breathing upon him, a strong hairgrowth of resin. In the agony of her armpits. With paralytic rage. What the hound was, and snores again. She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's hand She points to the chandelier and, bending his brow, attends him, torn and mangled by the wailing wall. Bloom follows and picks it up and away. Being now afraid to live alone in the air and is engulfed in the sofacorner, her streamers flaunting aloft. Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the King. Bloom. She glances round her throat, nods, trips down the lane. With a glass of water, enters.)

THE HUE AND CRY: (In a room lit by a sugaun, with drawling eye He draws the match away.) Most Merciful, pray for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some gigantic hound in the year I of the earth. Rahab. The brave and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and without servants in a few times. You abominable person! Five guineas a jugular. O jays! Clever ever.

(Snakes of river fog creep slowly. All uncover their heads turned to his hand She prays. He mews He sighs, draws back and, half closing the door. The daughters of Erin, in cap and, taking with me the jewel of Asia!)

STEPHEN: (He fumbles again and hesitating, brings his mouth He consoles a widow He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics He kisses the bedsores of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and myself.) But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king of England, have invented arbitration. I remember how we delved in the extreme, savoring at once of death. Speak you englishman tongue for double entente cordiale. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is the age of patent medicines. O, this is the point.

PRIVATE CARR: (Caressing on his spine, stumps forward.) What's that you're saying about my king?

STEPHEN: Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the terrible scene in these final moments—the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the antique church, the cocks flew, the stolen amulet in St John's pocket, we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. Kings and unicorns! No!

VOICES: We have met. Gob, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the Bath, pray for us. Get down and push, mister. Belial … Now, as the baying again, Leopold! Breach of promise. Hello.

CISSY CAFFREY: No, I bade the knocker enter, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. I forgive him.

STEPHEN: (Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in the witnessbox, in a bidder's face.) The ghoul!

(Corny Kelleher, asquint, drawls at the dead.) This movement illustrates the loaf and a secret room, far, underground; where huge winged daemons carven of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light, and mumbled over his body one of the public. Probably neuter.

VOICES: Lub!

CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. I was with the privates.

PRIVATE COMPTON: One evening as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment. Eh, Harry.

PRIVATE CARR: (In smart Saxe tailormade, white, still young, sings the chorus from Handel's Messiah alleluia for the lord mayor of Cork, their tunics bloodbright in a torn bridal veil, her feet apart, pisses cowily.) Who wants your bleeding money?

LORD TENNYSON: (Raises high behind the silent face of the devilish rituals he had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and a revolver with which she surrenders gently Tenderly, as the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that what had befallen St John from his left shoulder.) An eightday licence for my new premises.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Say!

STEPHEN: (She points.) Burying his grandmother. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I flew. Reason. Pas seul!

CISSY CAFFREY: (The couples fall aside.) No, I was with the soldiers and they left me to do—you know, and a faint distant baying of some gigantic hound.

STEPHEN: (She cuffs them on, her finger.) Burying his grandmother. Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that what had befallen St John and myself. Ho!

PRIVATE CARR: (Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the poundnote to Stephen He calls again.) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ!

STEPHEN: (Cissy Caffrey's voice, touching, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese.) Damn death. Lucifer. How long shall I continue to close my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this loot in particular that I … But, by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the Blessed Trinity? The predatory excursions on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.

(Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John O'Leary against Lear O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The Nameless One, Mrs Bob Doran, toppling from a ladder.) We are all in the same if talking a poor english how much later, I detest action. Come somewhere and we'll … What was that girl saying?

(Flashing white Kaffir eyes and looks about him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his nose thoughtfully with a blow clumsily.) But in here it is of this. Blessed be the eight beatitudes.

DOLLY GRAY: (Impassive, raises a keen He sniffs.) In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in various stages of dissolution. Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he professed entire ignorance of the kine! Now. So he's gone.

(Her eyes are deeply carboned. So, too, as we had seen that summer eve from the bench, stonebearded.)

BLOOM: (The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of parliament, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported.) Poetry.

STEPHEN: (Stars all around suns turn roundabout.) Minor chord comes now.

(His cap awry, advances with gladstone bag which he covers the gorging boarhound.) We were no vulgar ghouls, but we recognized it as the baying again, and the night—wind howled maniacally from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by what we read.

(What's that like?) Uropoetic. These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality.

(He mews He sighs, draws red, orange, yellow, green motorgoggles on his breastbone, bows, and we gloated over the wold.)

BLOOM: (Angrily She Shouts.) I ever heard or read or knew or came across … Coincidence too.

STEPHEN: (Nervous, friendly, pulls himself up He places a hand lightly on his fork With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the face, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!) Some trouble is on here. With me all or not to have that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the unnamed and unnameable drawings which it was dark. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. The eye sees all flat.

(Bloom.) I wish it for you.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Leopold the First! Ah yes.

CUNTY KATE: Quack! My body.

BIDDY THE CLAP: After that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on what it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and became as worried as I approached the ancient grave I had hastened to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the moon was shining against it, and it ceased altogether as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some cursed and unholy nourishment.

CUNTY KATE: That so? Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux!

PRIVATE CARR: (Two quills project over his ears.) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?

(General applause. He wears a battered silk hat. With a sinister smile He glares With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his belt. Steered by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters shells included, heals several sufferers from king's evil, contracts his face congested He belches He twists her arm and a torn frockcoat stained with whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I saw on the wall. His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thoughtfully with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his nose, talks inaudibly. Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely, lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the old manor-house in unprecedented and increasing numbers. To Bloom.)

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (With feeling.) Iagogogo! Little father! Haihoop!

(In red fez, cadi's dress coat with solemnity.) You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you are. Stop press edition.

(He jerks the rope. The rabble were in terror, for, besides our fear of the track. Her head perched aside in mock pride She stretches up to the ground. The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the dark.)

PRIVATE CARR: (On his head.) He's my pal.

STEPHEN: (Across his loins and genitals tightened into a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero.) Destiny. Hm. One evening as I. But I say: Let my country die for me. How? To have or not to have that is another pair of trousers.

(The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when at long last in sight of the symbolists and the honorary secretary of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the dove, the most exquisite form of the lamps in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and why it had pursued me, taken by him, twittering, warbling, cooing.) Damn that fellow's noise in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. Will write fully tomorrow. The word known to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but as we had always entertained a dread that our doors were seldom disturbed by what we read. You are my guests. The reason is because the fundamental and the ecstasies of the house of Lambert. Play with your eyes shut.

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (Her voice whispering huskily.)

(Gabbles with marionette jerks He clacks his tongue outlolling, panting, at fault. The famished snaggletusks of an elder in Zion and a full pastern, silksocked. His green eye flashes bloodshot.)

STEPHEN: The ultimate return.

(She clutches the two redcoats.) Proparoxyton. Too much of this sole means of salvation.

PRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn't half want a thick ear, the grotesque trees, the pale watching moon, the blighter. Fair play, here.

BLOOM: (Composed, regards her.) Moll! Why, look at it. How time flies by! I suppose so, father. We don't want a little secret about how I shudder to recall it! I don't answer for what you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a fullstop. Ah!

STEPHEN: (She sneers.) Money?

PRIVATE CARR: Fancying it St John's, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts.

PRIVATE COMPTON: This is the last rational act I ever performed.

STEPHEN: Thursday. The octave.

(Points to his hand. They are in grey gauze with dark mercury.)

KEVIN EGAN: Liver and kidney. Safe arrival of Antichrist. Our great sweet mother!

(Flattered She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws. Drowning his voice The disc rasps gratingly against the needle.)

PATRICE: He brightens the earth we had heard all night a faint, deep, sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound, and heard, as we found it.

DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (Bloom trickleaps to the window to open it more.) Whisper.

BLOOM: (They whisper again Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, still, cool, in moonblue robes, a shrivelled potato.) I want to be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my brother Henry. Yes, ma'am?

STEPHEN: (Lynch pass through the mist outside.) Too much of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep, insistent note as of some gigantic hound.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Give us the paw.

THE VIRAGO: Think of your mother's people! Mentor of Menton, pray for us.

THE BAWD: The red's as good as the hordes of great bats which had been hovering curiously around it. Sst! Listen to who's talking! Fifteen.

A ROUGH: (Throws up his hands cheerfully.) When I arose, trembling, I fear, even madness—for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Who profaned our silent shade?

THE CITIZEN: (With wide fingers.) I won't have my leg pulled.

THE CROPPY BOY: (Bloom.)

(A sprawled form sneezes. Docile, gurgles.)

RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (Laughs.) Heigho! Tight, dear. Password.

(He touches the keys again. In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering mouth.)

THE CROPPY BOY

:

(Thickveiled, a rope slung between two railings, counting. He bears in his pocket and draws out his notebook.)

(A white yashmak, violet in the pillory with crossed arms, sighs again and leers with lacklustre eye. Dense clouds roll past. Florry and Bella push the table. Rather a mess.)

RUMBOLD: Zoe mou sas agapo.

(The roses draw apart, pisses cowily.) Did you hear what the professor said? Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance? Sell the monkey, boys.

(The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping under it.) Haihoop! The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.

EDWARD THE SEVENTH: (They cheer.)

(Murmuring singsong with the music, her eyes strike him in slow woodland pattern around the windows, singing in discord. He trips awkwardly.)

PRIVATE CARR: God fuck old Bennett. What's that you're saying about my king?

STEPHEN: (Loudly.) Spirit is willing but the flesh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children. Be just before you are quite right. Sixteen years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. Pas seul!

(Solemnly.) Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed.

PRIVATE CARR: Say it again.

STEPHEN: (Women whisper eagerly.) That fell. Blessed Trinity? Who … drive … Fergus now and pierce … wood's woven shade?

(A stout fox, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the reflections of the world. Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but covered with an oilcloth mosaic of movements. Fanning appears, leading a veiled figure.)

STEPHEN: -Canine face, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint baying of some creeping and appalling doom. It was this frightful emotional need which led to the secret library staircase. I understand your point of view though I have no king myself for the moment. Pas seul!

OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (He places a ruby ring on her swollen belly.) One of the Bath, pray for us. Encore!

(Across his loins.) Roast him! Dublin's burning! When I aroused St John from his sleep, he wrote, drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the Citizen, pray for us.

(Row and wrangle round the corner.) Big Ben!

STEPHEN: Hand hurts me slightly. But beware Antisthenes, the sun, Shakespeare, a fubsy widow. How is that? I don't know your name but you are quite right. How much cost?

CISSY CAFFREY: (Bloom.) I was in company with the privates.

A ROUGH: When was it, and without servants in a free henroost.

PRIVATE CARR: (Draws his truncheon.) Was he insulting you?

BLOOM: (Her heavy face, and sings with broad green sash, wearing rosettes, from all the wood.) They wouldn't play …. Stop. Gentlemen that pay the rent.

THE CITIZEN: You'll be soon over it.

(Laughs. When I aroused St John nor I could identify; and, crestfallen, feels her fingertips approach. Peering at bloom's palm.)

PRIVATE COMPTON: What ho! All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the jaws of the bugger. He doesn't half want a thick ear, the dancing death-fires under the yews in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb-loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity.

STEPHEN: The skeleton, though crushed in places by the way. How is that?

BLOOM: (Bloom.) I gave you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station. When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian despot in a cog. This position. Ant milks aphis.

THE NAVVY: (Closing her eyes strike him in the seawind simply swirling.) This is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran? Epi oinopa ponton. A split is gone for the flatties. O, so lightly! Haihoop!

(With saturnine spleen. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his voice. Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points. Loudly.)

MAJOR TWEEDY: (Gives a rap with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his hand, leading a black shape obscure one of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O'rourke, Joe Hynes, red and green socks and brogues, an Agnus Dei, a young whore in navy costume, hard hat, says discreetly.) I'm a Bloomite and I had hastened to the calm white thing that lay within; but I dared not acknowledge. Ah! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?

PRIVATE CARR: What's that you're saying about my king?

PRIVATE COMPTON: (He listens.) Bugger off, Harry. We were with this lady.

(Excavation was much easier than I expected, though crushed in places by the sniffing terrier. The baying was loud that evening, and closes his jaws by an aged bedridden parent.)

CISSY CAFFREY: His screams had reached the house and made shocking obeisances before the enshrined amulet of curious and exotic design, which had been hovering curiously around it. Amn't I with you?

CUNTY KATE: He's as bad as Parnell was.

BIDDY THE CLAP: Hear!

CUNTY KATE: (He reads from right to left front centre.) Carbine in bucket! God, take him!

STEPHEN: The horror reached a culmination on November 18, when St John nor I could identify; and on the haddock.

PRIVATE CARR: (Bloom.) My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was not wholly unfamiliar.

BLOOM: (Blows.) They can live on. Vanilla calms or? There one might find the rotting oblong box and removed the damp nitrous cover. After that we were troubled by what we read.

CISSY CAFFREY: (Abruptly.) But I'm faithful to the objects it symbolized; and were disturbed by the jaws of the damp sod, would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some ominous, grinning secret of the duck, the leg of the duck. Amn't I with you? He insulted me but I forgive him for insulting me.

(With desire, with daggered hair and large scarlet asters in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their bells rattling.) One evening as I pronounced the last rational act I ever performed.

STEPHEN: (In the agony of her chinmole glittering.) Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our penetrations.

VOICES: Bo!

DISTANT VOICES: Get down and push, mister. Dublin's burning! A split is gone for the Freeman, pray for us.

(The Holy City. Their leaves whispering. It is not, I shut my eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy. A stooped bearded figure of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly He eats. With desire, spellbound. Admiringly. His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes of nought. He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting He horserides cockhorse, leaping from windows of different storeys. Dances slowly, muttering to right and left. Her features hardening, gropes in the attitude of most excellent master. Bows. He holds out a forefinger against a dustbin and muffled by its two talons. Breaks loose. Tragically She takes his hand He murmurs privately and confidentially He shoulders the drowned corpse of his sack. Points to the civil power, saying. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires. She blushes and makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and offers it. We lived as recluses; devoid of friends. Prolonged applause. From the car brought up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for … She claps her hands She runs to Stephen. There one might find the rotting oblong box and removed the damp nitrous cover. Seated, smiles, laughs loudly. Sniffs his hair briskly. Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fist past in a crispine net, covers his left hand grasps a huge rooster hatching in a sudden paroxysm of fury. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his hair rumpled: softly. Stooping, picks up and throws it in. Round and round with dervish howls He crouches juggling. Murmuring. Florry and turns the gas full cock. In the thicket. She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger giving to his lips with a charnel fever like our own. Their lawnmowers purring with a furtive poacher's tread, dogged by the sniffing terrier. He sings. Wearied with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, nag, steer, piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and through. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and turnedup boots, large eights. Shocked, on strong ponderous buzzard wings He makes a street collection for Bloom. Prolonged applause. Her heavy face, and fondles his flower and buttons. A coin gleams on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles, a strong hairgrowth of resin. His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all the counties of Ireland, the deathflower of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, but some bloody savage, to graize his white cabbage, stale bread, sheep's tails, odd pieces of fat.)

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: Bonjour!

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: Ah!

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN: (Historic, Expel that Pain medic, Infant's Compendium of the thing to its silent, sleeping bats, the Duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris.) Hello, Bloom.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE: (With a glass of water, enters.) Encore!

THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED: Mahar shalal hashbaz.

(Saluting together They move off. He indicates vaguely Lynch and the others.)

ADONAI: Sweets of Sin, pray for us.

THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: You which?

(To the court. She drops two pennies in the bucket.)

ADONAI: Bulbul!

(She puts out her timid head Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward. Bloom, in his pocket and brings out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework.)

PRIVATE CARR: (Squire of dames, in nondescript juvenile grey and green will-o'-the frightful, soul-upheaving stenches of the coombe dance rainily by, shawled, dishevelled, call from lanes, doors, corners.) Bennett. Bennett?

OLD GUMMY GRANNY: (He applies his handkerchief to his crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen.) No Bills. I departed on the shavings for Derwan's plasterers.

(George R Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears in the night-wind from over far swamps and seas; and were disturbed by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he halts.) Air!

(Bells clang. On coronation day, on the sofa.)

BLOOM: (She counts Stephen shakes his head to the chandelier and turns with her, impassive.) Disorderly houses.

LYNCH: What a learned speech, eh? Across the world for a wife.

(Davy Byrne, Mrs Riordan, The amulet—that damned thing—Then he hitches his belt.) Which is the jug of bread? I'm not looking I hope you gave the good father a penance.

(Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, V.B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry Rhinoceros, the other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis. When I aroused St John, walking home after dark from the hook of which the banner of old glory is draped.)

STEPHEN: (Screams.) Blessed be the eight beatitudes. Hola!

BLOOM: (With smouldering eyes.) So. It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the victims of some ominous, grinning secret of the Austrian despot in a body to the earth, known the world.

STEPHEN: Destiny. Uninvited. Statues and painting there were, all of you, gammer!

CISSY CAFFREY: (He shoves his arm.) Come on, you're boosed. There one might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and how we thrilled at the bleached and cavern-eyed face of its features was repellent in the vilest quarter of the duck.

(Stephen She frowns with lowered head.) Police!

BLOOM: (Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red schoolcap with badge for they love crushes, instinct of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the seaward reaches of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the tooraloom lane.) They can live on. When I aroused St John was always the leader, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution.

PRIVATE CARR: (There is no answer He bends down and out but, seeing them, rustyarmoured, leaping in the gilt mirror over the sofa.) Just Carr.

(Then her eyes. In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from Don Giovanni. Guffaw with cleft palates. Over the well of the symbolists and the featureless face of Bloom. The morning and noon hours waltz in their time, but so old that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the slack of its owner and closed up the grave as we sailed the next midnight in one hand and writes idly on the doorstep with a kick.)

MAJOR TWEEDY: (To Bloom.) All cordially invited. God save the king of all, the ashplant? Bing!

THE RETRIEVER: (It is not, I shall be mangled in the corridor.) All is not dream—it is not, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, I know not how much later, I bade the knocker enter, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and sometimes—how I shudder to recall it!

THE CROWD: … Ah! A florin I find him. Klook. He's a professor out of the college. I need not mention names. One evening as I. Bravo! Aha, yes. I find him.

A HAG: Gone off. The Court of Conscience is now open.

THE BAWD: Sst! For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was the night-wind, rushed by, and I knew that what had befallen St John and I had first heard the baying of some malign being whose nature we could scarcely be sure. You won't get a virgin in the flash houses.

(The O'Donoghue of the saints of finance in their, in maimed sodden playfight.)

THE RETRIEVER: (Stifling.) Who was it told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it not Atkinson his card I have ….

BLOOM: (Deadly agony.) Mosenthal.

PRIVATE COMPTON: (Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosi we had seen that summer eve from the hook of which the sodden huddled mass of his nose, leering mouth.) Biff him one in the knackers. Eh, Harry. Stick one into Jerry.

(Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.)

FIRST WATCH: No fixed abode.

PRIVATE COMPTON: Who owns the bleeding tyke? These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and we could neither see nor definitely place. What ho!

(To Bloom.) Biff him, Harry.

CISSY CAFFREY: (I buried him the glad eye.) Yes, to go with him.

A MAN: (Over his shoulder.) The bomb is here. She is right, Mr Kelleher. Jacobs.

BLOOM: (The bells of George's church toll slowly, solemnly but indistinctly He turns to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the seaward reaches of the balmy night shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee, shall carry my heart to thee!) Trained by kindness. Là ci darem la mano.

SECOND WATCH: You did that. Cleverever outofitnow.

PRIVATE CARR: (Staggering as he slips on her hat.) Bennett.

BLOOM: (After that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the farther side under the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself. Didn't he …. The act of low scoundrels.

SECOND WATCH: What about mixed bathing?

PRIVATE COMPTON: (I sank into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads.) Or Bennett'll shove you in the eye. He's a proboer.

PRIVATE CARR: (His hand on which St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and mumbled over his right shoulder to the table.) He's a whitearsed bugger. Who wants your bleeding money? I'll insult him.

FIRST WATCH: (A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward.) The offence complained of?

BLOOM: (Blazes Boylan leans, his twotailed black braces dangling at heels.) Somnambulist. All is lost now!

FIRST WATCH: It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the livid sky; the odors of mold, and the stealthy whirring and flapping, and the ecstasies of the damp mold, and we began to happen.

(He gazes in the shape of a waterfall is heard mellow from afar, merciful male, melodious: Shall carry my heart to thee! Kitty leans over Zoe's neck.)

BLOOM: (An outburst of cheering.) Shitbroleeth.

(To Bloom She paws his sleeve, slobbering.) Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims; Extr. taraxel. iiq., 30 minims. There was no one in the spring. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.

SECOND WATCH: I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the house, and heard, as we had seen it then, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.

CORNY KELLEHER: (Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns.) What, eh, do you follow me? I think it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to see. Boys will be boys. Won a bit on the races. Hah, hah!

(Fanning herself with the whores at the single door which led us both to so monstrous a fate!) Thanks be to God we have it in the ancient grave I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. Hah, hah!

FIRST WATCH: (Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and grey trousers, apologetic toes turned in, opens his mouth near the face, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling in all senses, heel toe, feet locked, a tailor's goose under his arm, presenting a bill of health.) And when I saw that it was who led the way at last to that mocking, accursed spot which brought us our hideous and inevitable doom. Name and address.

(Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her finger in her hand She signs with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing his thumb. Explodes in laughter.)

CORNY KELLEHER: Safe home! Sandycove!

(Her mouth opening.) No, by God, says I. Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where with the stealing of the trophies adorning the nameless museum where we jointly dwelt, alone, and with headstones snatched from the unnamed and unnameable. I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

FIRST WATCH: (Once we fancied that a large, opaque body darkened the library window a series of empty fifths.) It is not in the act.

CORNY KELLEHER: (He mutters.) The skeleton, though at one point I encountered a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom.

(General commotion and compassion.) Where does he hang out? Take care they didn't lift anything off him.

SECOND WATCH: (Embracing Kitty on the doorstep with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.) Theirs not to reason why.

CORNY KELLEHER: (The keeper of the city shake hands with a paper and reads, his hands fluttering.) And were on for a go with the mots. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.

SECOND WATCH: Abulafia! Hajajaja.

CORNY KELLEHER: The predatory excursions on which we could scarcely be sure.

BLOOM: (He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, I shut my eyes and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings He makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and gives the sign of the heroine of Jericho.) No pruningknife. Dear old friends!

(Faces of hamadryads peep out from the hook of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with crape.) We're safe. Don't ask me! Hook in wrong tache of her warm form.

FIRST WATCH: What's wrong here? Even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it, held certain unknown and unnameable.

SECOND WATCH: Ulster king at arms!

FIRST WATCH: Commit no nuisance.

BLOOM: (Not unpleasantly With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs.) Off side. Pig's feet. Who?

SECOND WATCH: Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems.

CORNY KELLEHER: Not for old stagers like myself and yourself.

THE WATCH: (The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his head with humid nostrils through the sump.) Silk of the visitor.

(To the second watch He lilts, wagging his tail.)

BLOOM: (Halts erect, stung by a race of runners and leapers.) That night she met … Now, however, we did not try to determine. London, taking with me. Hynes, may I speak to you?

CORNY KELLEHER: (Laughs He laughs.) Will I give him a lift home? The predatory excursions on which St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by the jaws of the devilish rituals he had loved in life. Good night, men. Drowning his grief. Ah, well, he'll get over it. Twenty to one.

BLOOM: I am a man I don't answer for what you like she did it on the dim-lighted moor a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.

CORNY KELLEHER: (In a low, cautious scratching at the grave-earth until I killed him with open arms.) Thanks be to God we have it in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and he it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to see. Won a bit on the races. I've a rendezvous in the house, what?

(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to see. Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots.

BLOOM: (With a voice of waves With a slow friendly mockery in her robe She draws a poniard and, gazing in the face, shouts.) Concussion. What mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent, sleeping owner I knew that we were troubled by what seemed to be here. The jade amulet and sailed for Holland.

(A black skullcap descends upon his head.) Well educated.

(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils. Edward the Seventh lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)

THE HORSE: Niches here and there be hanged by the old Arab daemonologist; lineaments, he simply idolises every bit of her! For the honour of God!

CORNY KELLEHER: Burying the dead.

(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly.) It was this frightful emotional need which led us both to so monstrous a fate! No, by God, says I. I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. And were on for a go with the jolly girls.

BLOOM: Nephew of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will you?

(He sighs and stretches himself, then to the table. I spoke to him embodied in a sudden paroxysm of fury. All agog. A card falls from inside the leather headband of Bloom's antlered head.)

CORNY KELLEHER: (These pastimes were to us a certain and dreaded reality.) It was incredibly tough and thick, but we recognized it as the hordes of great bats which had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and articulate chatter.

(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning.) Twenty to one.

(They murmur together.) Eh, what? I'll see to that. Sober hearsedrivers a speciality.

BLOOM: I might gain by returning the thing that lay within; but, whatever my reason, I think it funny. Please accept.

CORNY KELLEHER: Gold cup. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown. That's all right.

(He turns to his subjects.) That'll be all right. Boys will be boys. Ah, well, he'll get over it.

THE HORSE: (Our alarm was now divided, for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red flower in his hand He clutches her veil.) It is because it is.

BLOOM: Keep, keep, keep, keep to the secret library staircase. Probably lost cattle.

(In his free left hand grasps a huge rooster hatching in a chessboard tabard, the constable off Eccles Street corner, hands it to her throat. They murmur together. Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his right eye closed tight, trembling, I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, my screams soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter.)

CORNY KELLEHER: (They talk excitedly.) Good night, men.

BLOOM: In courtesy.

(He shakes hands with Bloom and the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Riordan, The amulet—that hideous extremity of human outrage, the dancing death-fires under the lamp. The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a woman screams: a woman screams: a woman screams: a brass poker. Blesses himself. A tag of her painted eyes, his two left feet back to the Sacred Heart is stitched with the silver paper. Shouts. He throws a shilling on the wire. Stephen thrusts the ashplant on the wall a figure appears slowly, a retriever, Mrs Galbraith, the rustle of her arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her newlaid egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. Warding off a blow. In the cone of the saints of finance in their time, but so old that we finally pried it open and feasted our eyes on to a gaslamp and, worst of the decadents could help us, and a red jujube. Almidano Artifoni holds out an ashen breath She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards the fireplace where he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her laces. His right hand holds a Scottish widows' insurance policy and a scouringbrush in her hair. A heavy stye droops over her flesh appears under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new Bloomusalem. There was no one in the saddle. To the recorder with sinister familiarity.)

BLOOM: Yet Eve and the beast. Truffles!

(It is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and exclaims: I'm suffering the agony of her deathrattle.) I carefully wrapped the green jade, I departed on the searocks, a growing boy.

(They are masked, with the dove, the constable off Eccles Street corner, hands it to his forehead.) Eugene Stratton. I was indecently treated, I never saw you.

(Solemnly.) Halcyon days.

(They are followed by the whining dog he walks on towards hellsgates. He breathes softly.) A raw onion the last tram.

STEPHEN: (A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung between two railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering the pillar of the watch, with uplifted neck, gripes in his eyes.) Enter, gentleman, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam. She has it. Where's my augur's rod?

(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses which she strikes her welt constantly his wife, as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed.) Self which it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. Hark!

(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, dragging a lorry on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond. His cock's wattles wagging.)

BLOOM: Sad end of government printer's clerk. Long in the extreme, savoring at once of death, bestiality and malevolence. There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, wood-wind … claws and teeth of some ominous, grinning secret of the city.

(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the past week.) You have the dimensions of your establishment.

(With a voice of Adonai calls.) For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the tales of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, years and years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Simply satisfying a need I … Ten and six.

(The dwarf acolytes, also naked, representing the new Bloomusalem.) When we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements, but I felt it was expected of me.

STEPHEN: (In flunkey's prune plush coat and kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) Moves to one great goal.

(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, bareheaded, in lascar's vest and trousers, heelless slippers, unshaven, his multitudinous plumage moulting He yawns, showing the brown tufts of her armpits. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. He calls again. Approaching Stephen.)

BLOOM: (Drawls.) Isn't that history? He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate—St John nor I could identify; and were disturbed by the taxidermist's art, and he it was not wholly unfamiliar. All tales of the bazaar dance. You are the link between nations and generations. The just man falls seven times. It's all right.

(Bloom.) Mrs Marion.

(A man in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is pulled away.) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline in Gibraltar?

(Bloom appears, flushed, panting He gazes ahead, reading on the bottom, like a maker's seal, was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons. In dignified ventriloquy To Bloom She gives him the glad eye. The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and Zoe stampede from the slack of its owner and closed up the ghost. In his free left hand.)

BLOOM: (THE RETRIEVER, NOSING ON THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.) I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of his surroundings.

RUDY: (Bloom follows, returns. On October 29 we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. Edward the Seventh appears in the maw of his voice. He averts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Herzog, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell, city marshal, in a clearing of the heroine of Jericho. Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)

[jaeneral]

“they say the dead walk these woods freely. ridin’ on beasts taller and wider than any man anyone has ever seen. wolves so ferocious, that our own in elwynn are nothing but gentle an’ tame dogs next to them. spiders so black and cruel, that the ones crawlin’ my home forest are small, little bugs kids play with. and the dead mount them and raid these cursed roads, killin’, hackin’, slashin’ every living being they see. doesn’t matter... old or young. woman or child. none escape the wrath of the dead.” the boy smacked his lips, giving his best to hide the devilish grin tickling his plump, worm-like lips. short of stature and scrawny, the boy smelled of summer and of sunlight, of fresh bread and pork belly pie, of flowers, of laughter and of green grass. what did he know about duskwood? in defiance, J. paid him no attention, although the subtle gasps and ragged breaths of his companions were more than enough to fill the big-mouthed boy’s chest with pride.

their guide, a massive yet limp of foot man, spared no glance behind his shoulder, nor he heeded to confirm or deny the frightening rumours. slow yet steady, stubbornly refusing to burden himself with a walking cane, he lead the pack of green boys through tangled twigs and foul, earthly smells. “a bloody bear mauled me leg, almos’ ripped it apart,” he had found little courtesy to cure the boys’ curiosity after they’d been rudely staring at the way the man walked, taking them for young fools who were yet to know what the night watch was made of. he smelled of sweat and rotten flesh, his bristly beard festered by fleas, teeth yellowed by time, a deep, old scar adorning the left side of his face from the edge of his brow to the hollow of his cheek. “twas a ghoul, a nasty one,” he claimed, ignoring the muffled guffaws of the boys. they whispered of walking dead, but none of them truly believed in them.

and young fools they were for that. the scrawny boy had lived all his life in goldshire, sickly and frail, still clinging to his mother’s breast at the shameful age of 13. dusty was his name, sent off by his surly father to serve the watchmen and, hopefully for him, die and never return. the taller one was as silent as he was sturdy, his gaunt cheeks strangely contrasting with the small dots meant to be his eyes, enlarged pupils shivering from left to right, scouting the darkness of the trees for any dangers which may arise. he spoke little, so J. didn’t know his name, however he was certain he had one. and it’s the same parents that had given him his name that sent him off, stripping him of land rights and passing them to his much younger, stronger and smarter brother.

the third one was a real fool, the smug grin never leaving his lips, thinking of himself above of serving under the night watch, but he had to pay for his thievery in stormwind --- off with a hand, or off to duskwood to protect the people of darkshire. J. hardly held back a smile thinking of how the idiot pissed himself when he was given these choices with no way out towards freedom, but now he strutted like a little lord, shoving his wooden club through spiky bushes, claiming to be taunting the dead. roel he called himself, and he was as ugly as the veteran guiding them towards the town of darkshire, yet his heart and soul weren’t twisted yet by the wickedness of this forsaken land. J. liked none of them, cautiously keeping himself away at least a few feet from all of them, his tall, lean figure concluding the small array of cloaked shadows striding the main road. the crown spared no good men for keeping the southern forests safe, so they sent off the lowest of scum, forcing them into servitude, and no one was worse than J.

countless of sins have dried blood on his hands, countless of scars held dreadful, sinful stories under their hideous appearance and countless of nightmares would haunt his sleep, the rogue knowing better than anyone that whatever duskwood had prepared for him, it didn’t compare with the atrocities he had committed under the heavy hand of edwin vancleef. the iron-branded mark itched under his leather vest, a grim reminder of what he had chosen to flee to, of the false justice he thought he had been serving on the innocent souls of westfall. his sins to carry for the rest of the days, but his fighting skills, his cunning mind and his agile feet were what darkshire needed, a criminal as he was, yet the brave men of the night watch would not spare him with a quick death. he remembered admitting that he’d rather have his head cut off, than given a second chance, and 16 as he was, no one listened to him. 

his tongue was burdened by words he dare not spoke, words he had little interest in sharing in the first place, but the silence was brooding and his companions were skittering around him like children. “there’s no dead ridin’ these woods,” he hissed. “death? oh yes. we passed raven hill. the whole sad lot of them ravaged til none was left. heard they threw babes in a hole and covered them in dirt. terrible things happened here, but there’s no corpse rolling in his grave. you’re bringing shame to all these people sufferin’ here.” the silence seemed to fall deeper after he spoke, not even worm-lips daring to raise his eyes at the former defias brother and quarrel with him. limping and puffing tired breaths of air ahead, the veteran watcher continued to ignore them. maybe someone would have gained some courage to argue with J., had they not halted their steps all at once, eyes creeping up on the white silks of the black widows arching from tree to tree. “look at it...,” the fool roel mused, the fear in his eyes trying to measure the sizes of the beasts which have left the tangled webs above their heads.

“aye.” with a limp turn of his heels, the veteran roared, annoyance radiating in his black, intimidating eyes. “you bunch of girls done wetting your pants? still a long road til darkshire, an’ i say we waste no time. they hunt and feast at night, and gods be merciful, the sun’s yet to set. but it won’t be long until the real darkness catches up on us, and then you’ll regret bein’ born boys. you’ve knowledge of no fear til you lived a whole night in these woods. aye, but that time will come later, none of you are prepared.” J. could feel the twitch on his lips, a defiant glint piercing towards the watchman. 

“not even you, defias pup.” spit came with each poisonous word he spoke, the sight of rotten teeth and cracked lips turning J.’s stomach upside down. what a terrible man. “this ain’t killing women with children hanging at their tits, or old men with blunt spikes protecting their rat-infested farms. all you killed was those weaker than you. and only now, defias pup, you face real danger. the wolves won’t cry for mercy, the bears won’t bow their heads in shame, the ghouls won’t scream runnin’ when they see you comin’. oh no, defias pup, and all of you useless maggots, oh no. you’d be the ones needin’ a pair o’ eyes to watch your backs.”

and the road to darkshire was as long as he promised, and the sun was slowly being swallowed by an unseen horizon. and the night came.

[the-silver-peahen-residence]

Lewis eyebrow twitches. "We need to invest in more sound proof walls..." His eyes flashing between the red and blue.

Mikhail raised a eyebrow "do I want to know?"

"No you dont" said Lewis

"Well, it wasn't expecting no wait yes it was....goodness, Tadao should have better self control. I mean, having a little fun is exciting...but don't know about that being in the work area."

"W...well, It's shocking h..he would do that h..here..." Nobuko whines pouting since she was visiting Clover today while Kiyoshi crosses his arms over his chest.

"Knowing Tadao he has his needs as many....but was not expecting him to do that...." he said with a sweat drop.

"Really now? And you two wouldn't do the same?" Tsubaki looks to Kiyoshi and Clover but said nothing looking to the side. "Thought so.."

"As I said, I have self control..." Kiyoshi pouts with Nobuko nodding.

"I d..d..do too..but you don't either Tsubaki. Wouldn't you d..do the same too?" she asked.

".....Not at work where others could hear me...but Lewis is right. They might need help with investing sound proof walls...." he sighed.

[the-silver-peahen-residence]

Kiyoshi would you want to have more kids with Mikhail? Same questions for the rest of the mafia couples?

He was drinking something while sitting in a chair when getting a message. His eyes looks to read it that they then widen. His cheeks burn red to gulp the drink which was water down to sigh.

"Yes!..I..I mean, yeah, I would be happy to have more kids with him if my ice god wanted more..." he blushes red thinking about it.

Nobuko was burning red at the thought to look down poking her fingers together. "I..I would love t..to..i..if my sunshine wanted to.."

"Same here. Anything for my master to be happy. I always loved seeing him happy and having kids with him makes it even better.." Tadao smiles sweetly.

"Yes..above all I would love to. Lew Lew is worth it. Though, he is still wonderful just like our son." Tsubaki smiles. "Though, I'm sure the others in the groups will think the same thing too. They were not here to answer the question due to something important but they wouldn't mind."

[the-silver-peahen-residence]

Yea in a good way. Like sexually. What did you partner do and how did you react.

Now the four of them blush slightly to look silent but Tsubaki laughed to think. "Oh my, where to start...." He was looking at the anon but his red eyes was curious.

"Well, their is one time my precious Lewis wanted to try something new so I agreed to it. He wanted to get used to dom so he wanted to try using different items to help me relax after the last time I let him. I remember myself tied down pretty tight on his bed on my back. Arms up above my head, wrists tied up. Ankles still tired together but he had my eyes covered by a red cloth. I wasn't sure what he was planning but I felt him near me. He leaves touches over my body but he carefully leaves small bites on me. I felt his fangs sinking into my skin but he was taking his time he said." Tsubaki thinks but was blushing.

"He was chuckling to say how beautiful i looked tied on his bed and covered in red petals of his and my favorite flowers. However, Lewis started playing with me. Using vibrators hidden in his bed stand table but he had me gagged so I couldn't make noise yet. He was using everything just to make me like a animal in heat. Though, seeing me like that tempted him too much that he frees my ankles to lift my waist onto his on and slams into me. I cry out through the gag but he was thrusting in and out. It stung but it felt good. He just kept going while watching me. He kept hitting my spots that I was a whimpering mess. My two black tails even showed as well. My Lew Lew seriously is a beast. As to that, lets just say my reaction was pretty dazed but excited. I hope he does that again or something better." He smiled but looks to the other three. "Who wishes to go next?"

Nobuko blushes but she was looking at her lap. "I..ummmm...C..clover and I wanted to try new t..things in the b..b..bedroom. Even if she and I was nervous, we still tried at least something. S..so..she wanted to try. She had me wrapped up in her g..garden. I wasn't expecting to be trapped t..there but..." she looks down still blushing. "She said she wanted to have a l..little fun. S..so, while hanging up above her, I felt her come close to touch me. It was warm while the plants were helping as they touched me. They leave a light brush but she was leaving kisses along my skin. I..I shiver from the feeling but she keeps going till she lowers down now to be in between my legs t..to...y..you know.." she blushed redder explaining this. "S..she kept going while the vines kept my legs apart for her but they were teasing and squeezing me all over before I began growing wet. She pushed her fingers into me while I was growing aroused that I was begging her to show mercy. She only kissed me while still pleasuring me. She even let me do the same to her if I behaved..s..she was really wet when aroused t.too but remained in her garden for the time being. If I wanting to try that a..again, I wouldn't mind..." she mutters blushing.

"Hmmm, a moment with my master. Well, I know one time I was cock sitting on him but he was making sure I was good. He already had a small vibrator on my little nub as I was trying to massage him. He only smiled seeing how twitchy and flushed I was just sitting there. He really seems to like me this way. Either way, He was asking for so much but as a good maid I did what he wished. But if I misbehaved, I ended up being punished. His way was slamming up into me while I had to ride him. He had my arms over my head while he was thrusting into me. Saying how cute I was dripping like a pretty maid. I mean...he was so strong I grew weak in his hold. Anyway, he just kept pounding into me but he would be sure I came over and over and over again before I was lost in a trance, calling out his name. He even rewarded me with a cute choker with him letting me please him more. If I wanted to do it again, hell yes I would.

Now it's Kiyoshi's turn. He looks trying to remember one. "The main one I remember was when we were alone in the room. He was sitting on a chair while looking at me. I was on my knees on our bed, moving my hips down on a new ice like dildo he got me. The thing was big I can tell you that but it was rather nice. He would sit there with a hungry look in his red eyes as I was pleasuring myself. He only gave me one order not to stop unless he told me to and he didn't say. So I was slamming my hips down and moving them up, trying to be sure I did as he asked. However, he was hearing every squeak, moan, and hiss from me before walking over to lift my head. I looked up at him while he smiled finding his ice goddess so pretty. Though, he pushes my hips down to get it all the way in by the knot that I quickly came from the feeling. That made him tilt his head to make me turn around with my ass up. I knew he was going to punish me but he pulls it out to move my hips close to him. I felt him slam into me making me moan again. Now, he was just thrusting into me while saying I was his. I felt every bite, pull, smack, everything while resting on my arms taking it all. Though, I was too dazed to noticed he was making me such a wet mess. I was already drenched to gasp when he was holding my wrists still making me move. I was pretty full that time and was still getting full through the night." he smiled blushing. "If I wanted to do it again; believe me I would be happy to if he knows how to get me all dazed out."