Sentence The Onehundredandfortysixth
Bernie (or Bear Woman) spent the rest of the day exploring – the grog hadn't been so strong after all, but it had relaxed everyone and it seemed that, as there was food – in a store-room she discovered, with various kinds of animals hanging from wedges hammered into the rock-roof, away from vermin – there was no need for hunting today; she gathered from what she saw and picked up from scraps of conversation, and the speech of her carers was scrappy at the best of tines, that there was a kind of mixed economy: mainly hunter-gathering augmented by some basic farming on the terraces she had glimpsed on the hillside, beyond the fingers of rock which partially formed a kind of enceinte protecting the natural forecourt of the Cavern; and indeed there was a second store where grain was piled, but Bernie was forced to admit to herself that she knew fuck-all about agriculture, or hunting or cooking or pre-history (or pre-anything, for she'd hated being pre-pubescent and that had made up her mind on that score) Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, any-other-kind-of-lithic cultures and societies; she had no idea what year this was supposed to be – if, and it was still a pretty big IF, this group she was now with were living in the past, was it Stone Age, well it must be because there wasn't anything in the way of metals about, even the women's needles seemed to be fish-bone or something similar, but did that mean they were living as Neanderthals or Early Human by choice, or force of circumstances, and how do you tell the difference anyway, 'cause these weren't great hulking boneheads but they weren't quite 'normal' whatever that means, 'modern' really, and she had no idea if there was any mixing of the races – are they really races anyway, or entirely different species, or just kind of dead-ends that the next try improved upon – or overlapping of cultures or what – she knew that Neanderthals were here (logically, this must be Scotland) first, but how long before the Early Humans came up from Africa and trekked to the edge of the World, she couldn't guess – and didn't a few Ice Ages drive everyone away to the South of France or whatever it was called then and she knew the last one had receded about 12,500 years ago so, if it was earlier, there's be nothing recognisable after all the glaciers, but if it was less than 12,000 years ago, why, she might just be able to work out where she was (where I am dammit, and she stamped her feet like she used to when she was having a tantrum) – well, places probably didn't even have names: if people were stuck with Ugg, Ogg, Egg, Igg for the guys, Amm, Emm, Omm, and Umm for the women, and Ee or something like it for the kids, why bother racking your brains to name places – Big Hill, or Little Hill, or Faraway, were probably as much as you were going to get; to tell the truth to herself, Bernie – or Bear-Woman (three syllables no less) could feel herself edging towards the hysterical; she didn't believe this was happening, she couldn't believe it, this is all fucking MOOT 'cause there must be another answer, and she felt the stitching around her neck – this is modern, she thought, it's new and very recent, something happened to me, I just can't remember what and somehow I've been brought here, kidnapped or something like in The Prisoner when he wakes up in The Village and he's Number 6 and everyone behaves as it's all normal – 'cause I don't believe it's possible that a cataclysmic event could catapult me backwards – or forwards, don't forget some kind of post-apocalyptic dystopian future scenario, Honey – in time, some kind of defence mechanism, that’s just im-fucking-possible; maybe it's like they're living in a little bubble, parallel with, but separate from, the rest of the world; and she laughed – maybe they've been here forever, just unnoticed by everyone else, like those Japanese soldiers who were discovered on a Pacific Island, decades after the War, who'd no communication with the outside and thought the war was still being fought; she felt like weeping, unable to get her head round it all; if it's a dream, I'll wake up; if it isn't, I've got to get myself out of it and she may have been thinking of the oft-quoted lines from Lovelace's To Althea, from Prison which she had learned by heart at School: Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; well, it's not Big Brother or I'm a Celebrity, so it's either a dream, or a make-believe reality with a bunch of weirdos, there's nothing in between – which was when she noticed Emm watching her from the
entrance to a tunnel she hadn't been along yet, the place was a warren, yes, that's it, like an enormous warren or burrow: crikey, next thing I'll be a rabbit in Watership Down; but she followed Emm and caught up with her at the entrance to a chamber, where lots of furs were strewn around, making it like nothing other than a great nest; oh shit, she thought, so this is where he intends to fuck me, I really don't want this, I don't know if I can go through with it, for the very idea of sex with a man, any man, made her physically sick, and her neurotic mind jumped forward to the possibility of pregnancy – in a place/time where their idea of medical facilities is probably to stick a leech on your neck to draw out the sickness – and then she saw the expression on Emm's face – she's been displaced, by me, I'm his New Woman and she's the Old One and she's been ditched, oh shit, and I don't even want him, this is too bloody crazy, which was when all the emotion welled up and she began howling and weeping and hitting her head with her hands, while Emm came and held her close and began to soothe her like she would a distressed child, which, in fact, was exactly how Bernie felt; and that was how it came to be that Emm took Bear (as she called her, following Ugg's lead) out of the cave, by a kind of back door at the end of a long tunnel, and Bear (let's stick with that for now) got her first proper view of where she was – and recognised it, she felt her strength being drained from her body, felt a wave of something like faintness wash over her and she sat down with astonishment, because it was a view she had seen before, from a place she had been before, and it was the same as it had looked before, but it was completely different!
Bernie (or Bear Woman) spent the rest of the day exploring – the grog hadn't been so strong after all, but it had relaxed everyone and it seemed that, as there was food – in a store-room she discovered, with various kinds of animals hanging from wedges hammered into the rock-roof, away from vermin – there was no need for hunting today; she gathered from what she saw and picked up from scraps of conversation, and the speech of her carers was scrappy at the best of tines, that there was a kind of mixed economy: mainly hunter-gathering augmented by some basic farming on the terraces she had glimpsed on the hillside, beyond the fingers of rock which partially formed a kind of enceinte protecting the natural forecourt of the Cavern; and indeed there was a second store where grain was piled, but Bernie was forced to admit to herself that she knew fuck-all about agriculture, or hunting or cooking or pre-history (or pre-anything, for she'd hated being pre-pubescent and that had made up her mind on that score) Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, any-other-kind-of-lithic cultures and societies; she had no idea what year this was supposed to be – if, and it was still a pretty big IF, this group she was now with were living in the past, was it Stone Age, well it must be because there wasn't anything in the way of metals about, even the women's needles seemed to be fish-bone or something similar, but did that mean they were living as Neanderthals or Early Human by choice, or force of circumstances, and how do you tell the difference anyway, 'cause these weren't great hulking boneheads but they weren't quite 'normal' whatever that means, 'modern' really, and she had no idea if there was any mixing of the races – are they really races anyway, or entirely different species, or just kind of dead-ends that the next try improved upon – or overlapping of cultures or what – she knew that Neanderthals were here (logically, this must be Scotland) first, but how long before the Early Humans came up from Africa and trekked to the edge of the World, she couldn't guess – and didn't a few Ice Ages drive everyone away to the South of France or whatever it was called then and she knew the last one had receded about 12,500 years ago so, if it was earlier, there's be nothing recognisable after all the glaciers, but if it was less than 12,000 years ago, why, she might just be able to work out where she was (where I am dammit, and she stamped her feet like she used to when she was having a tantrum) – well, places probably didn't even have names: if people were stuck with Ugg, Ogg, Egg, Igg for the guys, Amm, Emm, Omm, and Umm for the women, and Ee or something like it for the kids, why bother racking your brains to name places – Big Hill, or Little Hill, or Faraway, were probably as much as you were going to get; to tell the truth to herself, Bernie – or Bear-Woman (three syllables no less) could feel herself edging towards the hysterical; she didn't believe this was happening, she couldn't believe it, this is all fucking MOOT 'cause there must be another answer, and she felt the stitching around her neck – this is modern, she thought, it's new and very recent, something happened to me, I just can't remember what and somehow I've been brought here, kidnapped or something like in The Prisoner when he wakes up in The Village and he's Number 6 and everyone behaves as it's all normal – 'cause I don't believe it's possible that a cataclysmic event could catapult me backwards – or forwards, don't forget some kind of post-apocalyptic dystopian future scenario, Honey – in time, some kind of defence mechanism, that’s just im-fucking-possible; maybe it's like they're living in a little bubble, parallel with, but separate from, the rest of the world; and she laughed – maybe they've been here forever, just unnoticed by everyone else, like those Japanese soldiers who were discovered on a Pacific Island, decades after the War, who'd no communication with the outside and thought the war was still being fought; she felt like weeping, unable to get her head round it all; if it's a dream, I'll wake up; if it isn't, I've got to get myself out of it and she may have been thinking of the oft-quoted lines from Lovelace's To Althea, from Prison which she had learned by heart at School: Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; well, it's not Big Brother or I'm a Celebrity, so it's either a dream, or a make-believe reality with a bunch of weirdos, there's nothing in between – which was when she noticed Emm watching her from the
entrance to a tunnel she hadn't been along yet, the place was a warren, yes, that's it, like an enormous warren or burrow: crikey, next thing I'll be a rabbit in Watership Down; but she followed Emm and caught up with her at the entrance to a chamber, where lots of furs were strewn around, making it like nothing other than a great nest; oh shit, she thought, so this is where he intends to fuck me, I really don't want this, I don't know if I can go through with it, for the very idea of sex with a man, any man, made her physically sick, and her neurotic mind jumped forward to the possibility of pregnancy – in a place/time where their idea of medical facilities is probably to stick a leech on your neck to draw out the sickness – and then she saw the expression on Emm's face – she's been displaced, by me, I'm his New Woman and she's the Old One and she's been ditched, oh shit, and I don't even want him, this is too bloody crazy, which was when all the emotion welled up and she began howling and weeping and hitting her head with her hands, while Emm came and held her close and began to soothe her like she would a distressed child, which, in fact, was exactly how Bernie felt; and that was how it came to be that Emm took Bear (as she called her, following Ugg's lead) out of the cave, by a kind of back door at the end of a long tunnel, and Bear (let's stick with that for now) got her first proper view of where she was – and recognised it, she felt her strength being drained from her body, felt a wave of something like faintness wash over her and she sat down with astonishment, because it was a view she had seen before, from a place she had been before, and it was the same as it had looked before, but it was completely different!
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