Pocket Taxi

This river of MOUTH feet cascaded down the stairs with opposing currents that could not be tamed, and, if two people came towards each other, they preferred to plough each other out of the way then have any manners about it. There was an impatience in every face to get to where they were going. Only train spotters ever wanted to linger in sweaty station corridors, and anything that got in the way of anyone else ran the risk setting off weary pressure-cooked-heads primed to explode at the slightest inconvenience.

As Gally stood on the pointy-hatted tip of the vine-choked Wizard’s rubbish bin, immersed in the heat of such stress-induced humidity, she was already regretting her abrupt call to pocket. Its amazing how so many plans seemed so simple in theory. How easy it was to be enticed by the eternal optimist in her who wanted like anything to believe something would be straight forward, only to reminded by the chronic pessimist, (and when there was no going back,) how complicated things were in reality.

For Gallabee on the other hand, she never seemed to have an ounce of a lingering gloom in her, or at least, she kept her pessimism locked up somewhere deep inside where it couldn’t spoil her fun.

‘That one smells like it could be going our direction,’ she declared with gleeful sniffs of her sensitive new nostrils, eying up some random incoming man carrying a suit case and wearing a long trench coat.

Gally frowned, trying to hide as much as she could in the vine. She never quite got how Gallabee could be so certain of things just by the sniff of her nose and a gut feeling.

‘Are you sure?’ She wanted to be positive, she wanted to convince herself that, from the mans jacket Gallabee had caught the scent of the Gnome deodorant brewery up on fairyland hill.

‘HMmmm,’ Gallabee was already scheming with a lick of her lips ‘This is the pocket we want. You can’t hide what you’re trying to conseal in that jacket!’

On the other hand, maybe she had just smelt something she wanted to eat

‘Er?’ Gally was already a little put off with such words, ‘sure we should be leaping into his pocket then?’

‘Yes you should!’ Gallabee suddenly sounded distant and muffled.

Gally looked for her power animal only to find her now several feet away, nothing left of her but the end of her tail and a grunting bulge now burrowing down into a MOUTHS trench coat pocket. Before Gally could catch her breath, the tail had unfurled itself and curled back for her. It wrapped itself around her waist and pulled her into the air straight towards the darkness of the pocket.

As gally was dragged into the unknown, her ear drums were plagued by an endless gnawings coming from below, such an unnerving noise until she realized who was doing all this chomping. With the fine subtile neon glow of the night vision all fairy kind possessed, Gally could make out her power animal in the bottom of the pocket, engorged in the side of a cream bun.

‘Gallabee!’ Gally snapped, ‘I knew u had an allterior motive for picking this pocket!’ She wanted to be madder but she got a spatter of cream in her face that tasted so good, that she was lost in its intensity for a second.

Gallabee retracted her cream-faced dog-head, gasping with ecstatic relish.

‘Mmmmm…this is not what it looks like,’ she was trying to sound sincere, ‘I need all the energy i can get for the gallivant ahead!’

‘So, you don’t know if this pocket is going up towards Fairyland hill at all then?’

Gallabee didn’t reply, she‘d gone back to munching, leaving Gally with little choice then to take matters into her own hands and shimmy back up the pocket entrance so she could get a baring on their course.

Pushing the furry wall open just a shade she found herself peering into a narrow valley of heaving bodies. Their pocket’s owner was just another part of this ever changing landscape towering all around her, its mass sweeping towards a ticket barrier ahead ever eager to reach the daylight on the other side. But as they were squeezed and jostled along with rest of the commuters it soon became apparent that there was a bit of a delay ahead. An exceptionally hairy member of the wild man tribe had failed to realize he was suppose to have a Tattoo of the Dead inked in the leg of that hunted stag he had strung over his shoulder. As a result the multi-armed sword wielding ticket statue had no intention of raising the blade on this line until the matter was settled.

This obstruction seemed to be of little concern to the owner of Gally’s pocket though. Being a high ranking member of some chamber of commerce this man had a special tattoo that allowed him special treatment. All he had to do was brandish the tip of his nose with its snobby-faced insignia at another dusty old statue in an alcove and it came to life flinging him like a laundry sack over the ticket statues blades and straight through an open window that took him down a slide and on towards the car park out the front of the station..

‘Told you i chose the right pocket!’ Gallabee’s declared between mouthfuls.

‘Fluke!’ Gally was determined not give her a slap her on the back for such a performance.

They had arrived in a cobbled carpark, with high shadow sword topped walls and the odd gnome-maintained flower bed. This ancient-looking yard was the typical jumble of different shaped vehicles. Of course many were bog standard Laneblocker family tanks or even the odd sporty vintage street fox, as well as various spike-wheeled chariots. But a few of them took quirky to a whole new level with the way had they had various feet, stilts or even tongues instead of wheels or the head of a rhino instead of the more typical battling ram most bumpers consisted of. One vehicle even looked like a armored boulder with propellors.

Gally hoped like anything that their pocket wasn’t going to drive off on the boulder, she couldn’t see how it would have enough acceleration to even get up one hill before the great legs had passed off. But it quickly became apparent that there pocket owner form of transportation was even more basic then that, a rickety-looking bike chained to the station railing.

‘Not so smug looking now are we?’ She relayed the information back to Gallabee.

For a few moments Gallabee was too busy finishing off the last of the cream bun to care but when she observed the two hands infront of them, fiddling with the combination on the bike lock her expression crumpled a little.

‘Damn health freak!’ she snapped, ‘He’ll barely be out the carpark before the great legs have caused the apocalypse! Couldn’t we get him to steal something a bit more speedy?’

‘And just how we going to get him to do that? Swap one of our brains with his?’

Gally had to bite her lip to stop herself saying any more. Gallabee was easily inspired. She could already envision the outline of the brain Gallabee was considering turning into.

Rapidly she jerked her head around in circles pulling as much of her hair out of her eyes so she could look for other options.

Just then, her ears were drawn to the cocky wail of some MOUTH on a sales pitch bender.

Weaving in and out of the commuters at the station entrance there was a man, so adorned with various broken magic staffs and enchanted stones that he almost looked like a walking magical artifact himself. Dodgy Artifact Dealers had grins that could melt butter and tongues that could sell wood chips as golden nuggets. This one was attempting to sell his faulty looking artifacts to any one would didn’t instantly try to kill him and in some cases even a light punch in the gut didn’t put him off.

‘You look like someone who could do with a head in the shaped on a giant spanner.’ The dealer put his arm around the neck of a large red faced woman, ‘Got a toy here that can turned you head permanently into tool set if thats you kind of thing. Why be stuck with one useless head when you could have ten different useful options, madam.’

When that angle didn’t work he made a beeline for someone who didn’t looked armed with so many swords.

‘You look like someone angry enough to start a war with his neighbor for no good reason! I have just the piece of a wizards staff here that you could start it with too. I know what you’re saying, what on earth is the good of just a bit of a staff, but can you afford to miss on opportunity like this? Of course a mere splinter of glowing glass could turn out to be completely useless, on other hand when else are you going to get a chance to purchase a bit of such a mysterious artifact?’

The dealer seemed to determined to talk his victim against a wall until he sold him this fragment of junk. The only thing that distracted him from his prey was a sudden and snorty grunt out of a vehicle down in the car park.

Gally looked in the direction of the grunt to find a form of transportation that loomed positively animal-like above the rest. Best described as a tower house with the arms of a gorilla, this home on wheels, with its two smoking nostril-like exhausts, took up several parking spaces to accommodate its wide shoulders, had chimney pots for horns and a green house for a hat.

‘Pipe down! Be home in a moment!’ The dealer yelled across the carpark at this strange house like a family member.

‘I think that dealer owns a Simian Villa!’ Gally recognized the style of transportation.

For a moment Gallabee looked she might have been soothed by the sight of such a fantastic looking machine, that was until something even more fantastic had caught her eye.

A dark shadow had began to fall over the landscape. Within moments roof tops a mile away had gone darker shade of blood red.

The girls immediately looked skywards to see what was causing the rapid reduction in light levels, but between the pocket’s owner hunching over his bike and the roof of the train station, their view was limited to a small crack of sky inbetween.

But what filled this slither of sky was widening Gally’s mouth in horror, and bulging Gallabees eye into two shimmering suns of excitement. For a few moments billowing grey blue mist appeared to be smothered by a great leg of fur and stone, the rain easing to an eerie drizzle as if its flow was impinged by this vast obstruction. All the evidence seemed to point to the fact that the great legs were now literally moments away from casually passing over the station in one footstep.

‘Oh wow wow woooooow!’ Gallabee screamed, ‘think were about to flattened?’

‘I hope not.’ Gally was beginning to question why she had ever been so excited about these legs in the first place.