LIFT OFF !!!
‘I must admit,’ Gally couldn’t resist re-quoting her crestfallen companion, ‘they don’t look like they’re preparing to board any beastly big legs’
The girls angled their ears this way and that to see of they could pick up much of the inane chatter between the many slurping pointy hats.
‘I knew Daddy r was being over the cabbage about these legs,’ they heard one gnome say
‘Turned into just an excuse for a tea party and a gnome grind’ another was jovial.
‘End of the gardens as we know it, have you ever heard a gnome get so serious about about a pair of cardboard cutout calves?’
‘Daddy r needs to think better about his sense of space. When he said the legs came from another dimension he forgot to add that they were three-dimensionally challenged too!’
The more she heard of this idle chatter the more Gallabee’s expression soured.
‘Demented beardos! What are they all talking about?” She said in a constrained grumble.
‘Dont ask me, get a few gnomes together, drinking cups of herbal and an awful lot of dribble usually comes out.’
‘BUT THE GREAT LEGS ARE GETTING AWAY’ Gallabee started screamed at the top of her growl, stamping up and down and digging her claws into the dirt, ‘AND THE’RE ALL JUST SITING THERE STUFFING THERE FACES WITH CUPS OF THE USUAL STORY!!’
The disappointment had finally caught up with her. But even if such an outburst was unlikely to change the mood in the garden it did seem to stir a couple of the Gnomes lying sedate against the other side of the bush she was throwing a fit behind.
‘Damn my ears!’ One of the gnomes almost nearly swallowed his tea cup, ‘Do you think this blackcurrant might have summoned a Toenibbler?’ he was putting Gallabee’s constricted screams down to a type of predatory creature that some of more of the more coniously-aware species of plant sometimes bred from there root stock to fend off any would be pruners.
‘But were not even dead heading it or nothing.’ The other gnome wasn’t so sure.
‘Still, blackcurrant bushes can get paranoid even if you looks at them the wrong way. Do you want to deal with this joker or shall I?’
The other gnome had already pulled a garden hoe from her belt in more then just an act to reduce the pressure of all that tea in her gut.
‘Oh, thats all we need!’ Gally anticipated trouble, ‘some Gnome thinking we’re a Gnome eater. Come on, we better find a new hiding place!’
‘I can turn into a toenibbler if those gnomes want.’ Gallabee was sounding very bitter, ‘that will teach them to be such lazy tea tanks!’
‘Let it go gallabee!’
‘Wheres everyone sense of adventure gone these days? If these gnomes cost me my gallavant then im having gnome toe for dinner!!’
Gally didn’t know how to bring gallabee down when she got this flustered. Even if she was secretly happy that they might be spared any more drama she could sympathize,. Things weren’t loooking too hot for Gallabees adventure right now. In the time they had spent getting to this garden, the great legs had got ever further away and lost in cloud. Even the rain was starting to ease, the clouds begining to pass away as some weak sunshine started to make the tips of the grass gleam. Some of the Gnomes responded accordingly, bodies becoming even more stretched out as they took advantage of that short moment of bliss between the rain stopping and the sun dragon drying them out when it would it became unbearably hot and sticky again.
With this sight, Gallabee was starting to visably shake with silient anger. But Gally suddenly saw the perfect chance to try to bring her around to her way of thinking.
‘‘Another time!’ Gally made a vain attempt to calm her down. ‘Looks like this titans leaving our neigbourhood now. But prehaps it doesnt matter. Maybe these gnomes have a point. Maybe this pair of legs are nothing interesting after all.’
She had the very worst words she could ever say, suddenly Gallabee’s face looked spookily calm and completely resolved.
‘RIGHT!’ All the air seemed to rush out of her lungs at once, ‘I’m going on my gallivant now, you coming?’
In blink of the eye an explosion of fur had engulfed Gally, clearing to quickly to reveal a small rocket with Gallabee’s face, standing there vibrating as if it were about to lift off in next second.
‘Excuse me?’ Gally exclaimed.
‘Ten…nine….EIGHT…SEVEN,’ Gallabee had started a count down.
‘What! You’ll get separated from me if you fly as that thing…’
‘Well you know the solution to that, you can come fly with me….FOUR…THREE
‘What happened to 6?’
Before she could finish her statement there came tremendous wall of glowing smoke as Gally was knocked back, and, with her pointy nose glinting proudly in the sun, defiant look in her eyes, Gallabee rocketed upwards, without so much as a passing glance back to earth.
At the same moment the gnome after the Toenibbler charged into the scene swinging her hoe wildly.
‘Oh, the old smoking bush trick, crunchy wunchy!’ Gally heard her through the smoke, ‘You can eat my friends but you cant get me! Cant get meeeeee!
Gally leapt to her feet, and out of the Gnome’s way. Adrenaline was filling her to the sickened stomach, motivating her into a rampage after her power animal. She didn’t even look back for the voices now shouting from behind. She just kept on running, thrashing ferns and primroses out of the way until she got to the biggest tree she could find. In her mind she was wailing like a lost child who had given up hope of ever being found again. As much as she found Gallabee a pain in a backside sometimes, the though of being separated like this was unbearable.
Within moments she was leaping over the roots of a grand old pine, and clambering up its crumbling bark, no fear for the fact that this tree leaned over the edge of a cliff towards the hazy distance of slapham junction far below. Nothing would stop her getting higher, she wouldnt pause for breath until had taken this tree as far as it would go. Sure, there was no tree she could use to catch up with Gallabee now, but all the hopelessness of helplessness was driving her on like sinking ship trying to make port.
Moments later she was ten Mouth feet up on a branch screaming vainly for gallabee to come back to her, so breathless, her words barely more than a constrained wine. Besides, no matter how loud she shouted nothing was going to get that determined fire cracker to turn around and come back as she fizzled away like a distant shooting star into the dark clouds of the distant legs shadow.
Gally bowed her head, all that hair falling towards the abyss below.
She was stuck here, she had been so lost in a frenzy that she had no idea how she’d just gotton so high up an branch and worse still she could see how she was ever going to find the emotional strength to get down again.