Jul 25, 2014
I was inspired to replace the FireLine beading string of this cute fish necklace with vintage silk cord, and take pictures for this blog. Grape fish necklace listed at LeFuret on Etsy.
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I was inspired to replace the FireLine beading string of this cute fish necklace with vintage silk cord, and take pictures for this blog. Grape fish necklace listed at LeFuret on Etsy.
Good news!
Chapter 0 of my comedy serial, 'Furet de Fer,' is coming along nicely and shall be released some time next week. This is how my life was completely changed and how I ended up working for a media giant in what I thought was Australia.
You'll see this installment soon at tearawaymag.tumblr.com
Youpi, c'est mon anniversaire!
Today is my first birthday since coming to New Zealand! Come by the office and I'll make sure there's some cake reserved for you :)
Dook dook!
- F leF
FURET DE FER: CHAPTER -1
Not only did Amelie make regular visits, she soon took up residence in the house next door. That left Raoul by himself, prowling the darker streets of the village, although because of the snow they weren't as dark as they could be. We were both eager to not see him again. It was a strange feeling; never before had I wanted a fellow ferret out of my sensory range. But Raoul was such a meanie-weanie.
“Good morning Amelie!” I said as I slithered into her living quarters.
The old black-furred woman scurried across a wooden rafter toward me. “Good to see you again, François! Are your parents with you?”
Punctuality is another attribute of Monsieur and Madame Lefuret, who chose that moment to poke their heads through behind me. Then we were all three, standing side by side like French soldiers. Unlike French soldiers, the white thing we carried wasn't a flag, but a tea towel containing fresh croissants. We were the Picnic Battalion.
With our pastry treats all laid out, the four of us snuggled together and began consuming this wonderful lunch. Despite her age, Amelie still had the sharp canines of a carnivore, but she liked the occasional croissant to supplement her meat. She had a reddish scar across her snout. I'd been afraid to ask her about its origin; I feared the connard Raoul was involved.
The sound of a slammed door hit us. Bellowing came from below. “I'm late! I have to get to work! Bye kids!” Peeking through a hole below us, we saw a rather rotund guy with a thick moustache and a cigarette in his mouth. He turned away from the round ticky thing on the wall, shoved a beret on his head, then raced out of the house.
“What did he say?” asked Amelie. I had to remind myself that she couldn't understand humanoids.
“He said he's late for work, I believe,” replied Monsieur Lefuret, seizing another morsel with his paws.
“Late? Pah. These people rely too much on time. They let their own routines control them.” Madame Lefuret pointed to the ticky thing and I moved to get a better view of it. “That's called a clock. All humans have one. As far as I can work out, it tells the time to the nearest minute... useless to us. Obviously their circadian rhythms don't work.”
I thought about it, stroking my chin slowly. “Or maybe the clock is an extension of their miniscule brains?”
“Now, now, we shouldn't make fun of them, son. They probably have really big brains under their berets.”
“But wouldn't that give them better circadian rhythms than us?” asked Amelie.
My parents and her continued talking, but I zoned out. Something didn't feel right. Was there something familiar about that man below us? Had I heard his voice before? I tried picturing him in a much darker room... then it hit me. Whatever it was, it went 'SPLOOSH' on impact.
“SURPRISE!” The rascal Jacques was there, with his sister by his side. He held another water bomb in his hand, but it didn't look like he was going to throw it. I squeezed myself through the crack in the ceiling and dropped onto the top of their refridgeration unit. What were the chances – this was the new residence of Jacques and Jacqueline!
“Nice shot there, I'm soaked. How have you been, my friends?”
They laughed and ran over to me as I descended the fridge. “We've missed you so much, François! It's been months since we saw you.”
“Yeah... I couldn't stay away forever though.” I heard the thuds of my companions behind me. “Now I have some other ferret friends I'd like you to meet!”
“More ferrets?!” They made excited squeals as Amelie and my parents bounded over. We were a nice mélange of colours when assembled: my coat with chocolate brown and tan fur was complemented by the ermine white of my mother. My father's fur was light brown striped with black, then the shadowy Amelie completed the portrait.
They greeted the kids with excited “dook dook”s and stretched their heads forward for a pat. I'd rarely seen such large smiles on the faces of Jacques and Jacqueline. But the short bonding session was interrupted by the opening of the front door. My sole human enemy had returned!
“Oh darn it, where could I have left my-” Then he saw us. One ferret in the house could be accidental, but four? I remembered my first encounter with him and hoped he didn't have four ferret cages around.
Whatever I was expecting wasn't what he did. With the speed of a glacier he backed out the door, his gaze fixed on me, his 'stache barely daring to twitch. Finally the door was returned to its non-open state and we were alone.
“He still doesn't like ferrets,” explained Jacqueline, “but now he's scared of them. You must have really shocked him, François!”
I giggled. Then she took me in her skinny arms and gave me a crushing cuddle. Everybody else joined in. I'd never known such warmth.
Mon boulot, c'est mélange
One day I'm writing about graphene cells, the next designing a semi-automatic rocket launcher. Just another day at the office...
Coming this summer!
As a distinguished Assistant Assistant Sub-Editor of Biro Productions, I'm obliged to tell you of our plans for this summer. In case you live in the northern half of the world, that's the period of time starting 1th December in NZ and ending NEVER.
In addition to more chapters of my own serial, 'Furet de Fer', we'll be producing a new comedy serial. This one isn't like anything we've done before! It will be hosted on a special blog for all to see and feature a wide array of multimedia. The story shall be told through photos, animations, music and side-splitting prose.
At the moment we're calling this project 'The Return of Dekar': it hails back to the early days of Lego parodies. Dekar is a bio-mechanical villager who makes his living by keeping pests out of the neighbourhood. On a fateful morning he's attacked by something spoken of only in legends: a Rahkshi. This creature has a terrifying power that enables it to control the very fabric of the world.
Before Dekar can stop the beast, it has dived into the black waters to the west. His elders order him to chase after it, but he has memories of that sea which he'd rather have forgotten. In the abyss below is a shattered prison inhabited by monsters even worse than Rahkshi....
With plenty of action and equal amounts of laughter, this is a story not to be missed! The first installment is expected to be released in the first week of December.
Meanwhile, keep checking back for updates to 'Furet de Fer' (which you should definitely read, if you haven't already). It can be viewed on the blog of Tearaway Magazine for you magical Tumblr people!
tearawaymag.tumblr.com/
That's all for now, thanks for reading! Dook dook!
-F leF
FURET DE FER: CHAPTER -4
I'd thought it a reasonable time to show up. More like catastrophically bad timing. As I crossed the empty alleyway between my accommodation and theirs, only the merest hint of night could be ascertained. At this hour they'd be in their room, free from parental influence but not yet asleep. Mischief time.
I refer to Jacques and Jacqueline, of course. Since my first meeting with them, my parents had moved on to another house, in their long-established nomadic lifestyle. However I wasn't content to leave two humans (who considered me cute) behind. So I visited them at least once a week. We got up to all sorts of hijinks together; raiding the pantry for croissants, making muddy footprints on the carpet, gluing the toilet seat shut. For some reason this last thing made their father very angry, but we kept doing it anyway.
On this particular week, events weren't to be so amusing. In usual fashion I scurried up the rusting drainpipe to the bedroom window. It was summer, so there was no frost to impede my climb. As usual, they'd left the window open a crack for me. Any human would consider the gap miniscule, but for a ferret-ling it was like an inviting cave. I slithered through, just as usual.
So far, so good. Yet there the usualness stopped. No longer did I smell my friends. Some residual odour was present, as you'd expect in a bedroom, that of the boy particularly strong. But there was no sign of the convivial units themselves. Perplexed, I was.
Also the lights were off. That's why I had to use my nose, you see. Compared to the sunset outside it was exceptionally dark and my eyes needed time to adjust. If only I'd let them do so before jumping down off the windowsill. What a fool I was. No, I just leapt straight to the floor with no vision. When I landed in a cubic cage I got the shock of my life.
“Aha!” A typically French-smelling chap pounced on my new lodgings. His fingers were above me but I couldn't see what they were doing. I was suddenly quite terrified. This must have been the man who – apparently – killed and roasted ferrets on sight. In my fright it didn't occur to me that, if he was locking me in a cage, that statement must have been wrong. Unless he planned on boiling me alive.
“Now you see, I've caught you! Did you think you could sneak around this house without me noticing? Stupid ferret!” His voice boomed and his breath reminded me of a dragon. Looking back, I'm surprised he didn't have lung cancer from the thirty cheap cigarettes he smoked daily.*
“For weeks I've looked at the damage you leave here, you with your disgusting pawprints and your hideous musk! Everything you've touched smells like an Englishman! Pah!” At this point he lowered his nose toward the cage, sniffed, and waved over his nose with a contorted expression. (My parents had told me I wouldn't have musk for another month or so.)
Still scared, I could do nothing but cling to the wire cage and look sad. He picked it up in his beefy right hand and raised me off the floor. I was sure I'd be meeting the Grim Squeaker in a few minutes, he of the black cloak and elongate skelington.
Squeaking, I knew, wouldn't do any good. This man had no remorse and he was carrying me out of the room. He chuckled to himself and I reflected on the abyssal deepness of his voice. Wait a minute...
I had a voice too. Almost the opposite in tone of his voice, but I had one. The kids had been surprised when I used it. Voices weren't normal for ferrets. Did their father know that? I hoped like heck I could induce the same surprise in him. It was the only thing I could do.
“Please put me down.”
He stopped walking. Slowly he looked down, until his narrowed eyes met with my dish-like ones. Had he got the message?
“Please sir.”
His reaction was even better than I'd been expecting. He screamed. “ZUT ET MERDE, IL PARLE!” I keep this remark in French because its translation, if read in English, would probably get me banned from this forum.
Next second I was on the floor again and he was running for it. The words for “demon” and “witch” were among those flowing from his moustachio mouth. He'd let me go. It worked!
Except I was still trapped. Some kind of shiny, portable locking instrument had been secured to the cage door. At least it wasn't above me any more; he'd dropped the cage on its side. Through the wire mesh I poked my nose. Some light came in from the hallway outside.
A shadow passed back through the door and, to my relief, it was too small to be my assailant. Jacqueline crept over and inserted something shiny into the lock. It came undone and she pulled it off.
“Get out of here François, I'm so sorry this has happened! I don't think you should come back.”
“Fufuff. My feelings are the same.” When she wrenched open the cage door I didn't hesitate to leap out and race up to the window.
Once there, I looked back and heard something peculiar. Jacqueline was kneeling on the floor with her hands over her face, making a rhythmic but distressing sound. I realized she was sobbing. Poor girl.
“Thank you, my friend. Goodbye.” And I was gone, vanishing into the night as sugar does into coffee. Soon after I discovered that crying is contagious.
*Another 'Jacques et Jacqueline' fable; I can't vouch for its accuracy.
FURET DE FER: CHAPTER -6
Thomas Stevenson presents:
FURET DE FER
CHAPTER -6
Monsieur William Blake once said “No bird flies too high if he flies with his own wings.” For some time I had no idea what this meant. Looking back now, I guess it was because the quote was in English and I could only understand French. How things have changed. Nose in front, tail always behind you, but everything else is fluid and unpredictable.
The three important things you should know about me are as follows. My name is François Lefuret, I was born in a northern French village called Quelquepart, and I'm a ferret. Dook dook.
My parents, Monsieur and Madame Lefuret, were born with exceptional intelligence and charisma. They were able to understand the language spoken by the humans inhabiting north France. Being the north, it was friggin' cold and snowed a lot in winter. Communication with humans meant they could negotiate. In winter they'd stay in a cosy Frenchie house, serving said Frenchies as draught excluders in return.
Somewhere in one of these houses, my parents found a quiet corner, snuggled up to each other, played some soft music... then I budded off of my dad. At least, that's how they told me it happened when I was young. Now I know better. They were actually playing Breton death metal the whole time. Liars.
As a kit (what you'd call a baby) I was just like any other ferret, a curious little furball with stumpy legs. Before long I also developed the intellect of my parents and they started teaching me to speak in French. If I remember right, my first word was “canapé,” which is a sofa. At the time we shared a house with this lovely village couple, who owned a massive leather sofa. I was terrified of it; it kept trying to eat me.
For a while I concentrated on growing and didn't pay much attention to the outside. During my childhood, it never occurred that me I wasn't normal. To me the idea of non-sentientness was preposterous! So when my mother eventually decided to tell me the truth, that we were rather special ferrets, I didn't believe it. She told me that most things in the world aren't like us. We had human intelligence but the bodies of morons.
Before I came to accept this reality, a big problem arose. A human-sized problem. That's where I'd like to begin my tale, because I consider it a great turning point in my life. Most mustelids are content to simply run around being cute. I have been gifted, and I intend to use that gift to show you how I grew up with the gift. So here's my story!
- François
PS: I have my own Tumblr, if you want to have a look! Go to http://www.francoislefuret.tumblr.com/