Good-day fellows!
I seem to remember promising you a look at some of the marvellous Temporal Expedition reports I have been reviewing. Well I have discovered some excellent ones and no mistake!
It was quite the thing, after my encounter with Lontra Bigondegigantes I began to wonder if I had missed a thing or two in these reports. Last I saw was otters flinging themselves about through time, splashing into existence into the future history of Brazilian rivers and then sploshing themselves home again with seemingly no plan or timetable. Although now I think about it Peter Paddlefoot and Brian Russetcoat were involved so I imagine that there was a plan and it was extremely well written down. Furthermore I suspect that someone explained it to me using a lot of unnecessary words and gestures and probably the odd significant pause or two. Knowing those two they did all this explaining without the aid of a fortifying snack which does nothing for my brain’s capacity to retain, or even pay attention to long explanations!
Anyway the upshot of my recent investigations was that a pile of Brazillian river reports and Temporal Exploration reports and whatnot had found their way into a pile that was doing a sterling job at propping up a lamp on the corner of my desk. I remember now that I very much needed the lamp to be higher and this pile of paper was perfect. Once I had rediscovered them I gave them a read and those Temporal teams have really been putting in the hours on the time wheel I can tell you! So without further ado, after all I am not a fan of ado, here is Zsofia’s wonderful account of how they finally tracked down the Rainforest Raft again…
Temporal Team 1 Brazilian Exploration Report 15
Peter and I arrived bright and early at the Temporal Test Lab, I keep telling them that when it comes to adventures in time travel, early starts are not actually necessary as we can be when ever we need to be, but Debbie and Brian will not budge. They claim that they need the whole day ahead of them for important time wheel operations, but I fail to see why this means I have to paddle myself out of bed at 0530, I mean things almost never go wrong these days. Nevertheless, it was bright and indeed early when we got going on the now familiar routine of clipping all our stuff in place and swimming our way into the timestream while little Cedric ran his paws off!
We were aiming for Split loop number 17 on bend 12 of the Amazon River in September 2023. I’ll add a map for those of you unfamiliar with Brian’s River identification system.
After the customary moments of feeling like our noses were being stretched ahead of us to infinity while our feet all tried to overtake each other, we bobbed into existence in somewhere very green and enormous that I could, by now, recognise as the Amazon. I was all set to get swimming when Peter pointed out that we had been given strict instructions to find out that we were actually in the right place before we dashed off this time…
So off he went to sketch the area (he’s remarkably good at that) while I sniffed around our immediate surroundings. So far this was shaping up to be another jaunt around a very picturesque river with no sign of otters, when a very long shape slid down the bank and in no time at all popped up right in front of me! I immediately reversed out of his path, but the large chap just chuckled a little and said:
“Olah Zsofia, vem comigo rapidinho, não se esqueça de Peter!”
(we later found out this means: “Hi Zsofia, come quickly, don’t forget peter!”)
He seemed to be expecting more than my quizzical head tilt and it took some frantic gesturing before I grabbed peter by the satchel and swam off after the rapidly disappearing giant river otter!
We paddled along as fast as our paws could manage, as the river fellow swam on oblivious to the limitations of our little legs! As we went more long smooth shapes appeared at our sides and all around occasionally lifting their heads and yelling words of what seemed to be greeting. I caught some of the words such as:
“olá” “oi” “ei” and once I am almost certain I heard “jacaré” which come to think of is didn’t sound quite so much like a greeting…
Eventually just as I thought my paws would give out we swerved abruptly off to the side and scurried (in the case of peter and I), and loped (in the case of the rainforest contingent), up a shallow bank. The fellow who had been leading us disappeared swiftly down a large tunnel, closely followed by the others, by this time there was nothing to do but follow, so Peter and I hurtled headlong after them!
Some small amount of kerfuffle and a lot of corridors later, we found ourselves in a very large meeting pool with the first otter I met this trip who, it turned out, was called Luiz Peloliso, the otter who gave us that lovely soup on or first trip, Camila Cuadacurta, and of course Lontra Bigondegigantes. There was also quite an impressive buffet that had been laid on especially!
(I will provide a seperate report on the snacks, Peter got all the details from the chefs before we left)
After all that, Lontra decided that some sort of explanation was in order. This was, as far as they were concerned something like our 100th visit to the Toca and we had slightly overshot our time frame, this being late 2025!
(Note I am going to have to have a word with Brian about changing the “swim like billy-o” part of the time travel procedure, or possibly change the gearing on the time wheel, we can’t keep overshooting like this!)
The Rainforest Raft had been expecting us following a previous/future visit where we told them all about it, Luiz was sent out to meet us as there had been Caiman Crocodiles (jacare means caiman apparently) spotted in the area, these are not much of a threat to the giant river otters but could have been quite a problem for us. They called us pequeninos which Peter (whose Portugeuse is much better than mine) says means littlies… I am not sure how I feel about that but I let it go, I was just happy not to have been eaten by a crocodile!
The rest of the discussion centred around our other visits, and Peter and Camila started hatching a plan to develop a time line of visits so we all know when we are and have at least some small idea of what is going on. Peter and Camila seemed to be getting on famously too, she is not only the purveyor of well timed soup but the Toca’s resident Temporal Archaeologist, a post which apparently didn’t exist until we popped into existence in their lives some time in our future!
Lontra told us some of the history of the Rainforest Raft and a little about the otter families they have in Brazil. He appeared to know more than he was letting on about the otter of the apocalypse, but kept saying that the purity of our reactions and the future actions of our team are vital to the fabric of time and space and possibly all of otter society! He did let slip however that we have become known as the Lontras do Tempo (otters of time) around the Toca!
Simon Swifttail is going to love that!
My goodness! How marvellous!!
A whole buffet just for them, that is fantastic news indeed! I must head over to the catering department and find out if Zsofia’s list of snacks has made it that far yet!
New exotic snacks, this is indeed just splendid, and from the future too!
The Otter Chronicles 