Slapham Junction

The Slapham Junction footbridge passage was dominated by the sound of hundreds of feet thumbing against the rickety floor boards. Rush hour was in full swing, endless shuffling MOUTH bodies and even the odd Wildman carrying a hunted deer on their back, making their way between connecting trains. Gally wouldn’t be joining this throng of marching feet however. As always, there was this division between the Fairy world and the rest of the Sosighcity. The pixie-herding Gnomes had their very own segregated Gnome-trail for transporting their Fairies along. Far from the maddening crowd and in the dusty rafters above, there was a series of walkways that followed the length of the bridge and as long as the spiders kept to themselves, it was going to be a boringly straightforward journey.

Crossing Slapham junction always felt like half hour utterly wasted and soon Gally was getting dreadfully depressed, even feeling a touch of grumpiness coming on. She wished like anything she could get in a nap, drift off to some other place far away from the callous grip of Gnome hands and a noisy river of MOUTH bodies flowing below her. A quick nap and drift off to some other world never failed to freshen her heavy head, but she was trapped in situation she didn’t want to be in, they were always the worst. The only thing that in anyway kept her from going over the edge was watching Gallabee, who had long since given into her restlessness and start flying about with the pigeons in the rafters.

‘What are you sighing about?’ Her current Gnome just had ask her tragic face, Getting tired eh? Greedy little nymph! No sleeps ever enough for you, is it?’

‘You know Gally could fly if she wanted too…’ Gallabee was suddenly burning off energy, buzzing circles around his head, ‘Fairies aren’t suppose have to walk everywhere.’

‘Yeah, but then she’d be breaking the law if she even thought about flying.’ The Gnome made a wry grin. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what the Conjurers of Civility do to Fairy’s who dare to fly!’ 
While Gally looked rather forlorn at such words, Gallabee was in no way ready to let the Gnome have the last word.

‘But Gally should be allowed to fly!’ She almost turned supernova, ‘Her ancestors used to fly all the time before they came to the Sosighcity! Some of them even lived in the clouds and on stars! Whats the point of such a silly rule? It’s not fair. If she was allowed to fly, she’d free of her feet! Free of this bridge! Free of you!!!!’

‘Free?’ The Gnome was as open minded as a brick wall, ‘I should be free to retire on a decent Gnome pension and buy a model yacht kit and me own pond to sail in but big Daddy R wont even sit down with the union and talk about it. Life’s not fair or even free for that matter, get used to it!’

The Gnome had left Gallabee with little choice then to stick her dragonfly tongue out at him before whipping him in the face with it and buzzing off to fly with the pigeons again. Gally often found herself wishing she could fly with pigeons just like Gallebee, not a care in the Universe, not even a reason to feel threatened as she dodged a Gnome throwing spears of rotten wood at her in retaliation. Back here on earth, though, Gally was stuck dragging her bare feet along splintery roof beams and it wasn’t long after that she felt some drops of drizzle coming down at her from the hole in the roof too, only adding to her morose mood.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a large billowing storm cloud had started to loom like a great sweeping blanket of grey-ness eating into the brilliant blue of the sky. It was bringing with it a dense humid air mass that was quickly making the atmosphere sticky, as rain began rattle down against the windows. Pretty much after the first drop Gallabee buzzed herself over to Gally and immediately transformed her self into a rain mac which draped down over her shoulders. Such an act may have seemed a little over kill since Gally was a cosmic water dollmen and even her silken robes were waterproof, but then again maybe it was the thought that counted. The only problem was that Gallabee’s new raincoat mood still seemed to be part dragonfly.

‘You trying to make some big point! You rebel scum, you!’ The gnome now snapped at Gally as he eyed the back of her mac.

Gally’s cheeks went bright red she became aware of the four dragonfly wings protruding out either side of her shoulder blades.

‘Gallabee!’ She snapped with horror.

‘Come on!’ One of the numerous cartoon animal faces on the rain mac now hinted in a shrewd whisper.

‘What do you mean, come on?’ Gally sounded just a little impatient.

‘I’m only pretending to be in a rain mac mood. Where would you like to fly to? Cabin crew, take off is in 2 seconds. If we get caught, you can blame me, say I did all the flying for you!’

‘Put your wings away Gallabee!’ Gally said out loud, clearly trying to get across to the suspicious-faced Gnome, that she had no part in this scheme.

All the cartoon animals frowned, as reluctantly the wings shattered like glass into a defeated pile on the ground.

As they walked on, the rain started to spit through fissures in the rotten roof and a sweaty wind started to rattle the terra-cotta tiles, as its gusts caused weedy palm trees and ferns, growing out of the gutters, to sway furiously.

‘Hey, Gally,’ all the mac’s cartoon eyes were widely curious about the weather now, ‘That storm came on rather sudden!’

‘What’s new?’ Gally was fighting hard to fend off her grumpiness, ‘Anyone would think you’d just moved here ten minutes ago. They don’t call the weather of Glenaraaah like four foul monsters in one day for nothing…’

‘I know, but this storm feels different! It feels a bit fake to be honest, like someone’s making it happen so we can’t see what they’re really up to in the sky.’

‘Whose they? Okay, that sounds a bit ominous,’ she was trying to sound cautiously sarcastic, ‘is it the end of the world as we know it or something? It will take then more then a bog standard hurricane to convince me that I need to take flight if that’s what you have in mind. Even the trains are putting out their rain covers without hurry.’ She pointed out several trains passing under the bridge who were now wearing brilliantly yellow macs down along their carriages.

‘I dunno, Gally,’ Gallabee didn’t sound so convinced, ‘the trains are too busy working to notice anything too weird. They’re always the same.’

Gally turned her eyes up towards the rain speckled glass of the sky lights for a moment, eager to pick up on this sense of forbidding in her power animal’s voice. Gallabee didn’t usually show any interest in the weather unless she could use it as an excuse to explore some sinister looking cave or temple. This storm could only mean something exciting was about to happen. Gallabee had a strange instinct for when things were about to kick off and get dangerous, not a talent one could just brush off as being in anyway airy-fairy. Several times in their life

together Gallabee had known sometimes minutes, even the odd half an hour before that some unsavoury beastie was going to try and hunt her Fairy.

For the first time since her nap on the river Gally felt a figit-ty bud of excitement building in her. She would do anything to end the current slump she was in. Even a Haunted Sheet pranking her out of a crack in the wall would be heaven right now. The storm seemed like the usual violent affair, the odd tree being thrown about in the wind, the gutters quickly over flowing where they hadn’t been unblocked for years. Never-the-less Gally felt a duty to eye the dark sky for anything out of the ordinary. It was then when she noticed a bolt of light arching across the sky.

‘Right, then…’ she muttered to herself.

There was nothing weird about that, this being a storm and all. But the longer she looked at the this bolt of lighting the more it didn’t look quite right. For as start, a flash of lightning usually was only that, a flash, then it was gone. But this one was lingering in the sky as if it had no intention of going anywhere, just hanging there like like a link of a glowing chain, endless arcs dancing and discharging upwards off into the clouds above. Through such a sooty, rain lashed skylight Gally couldn’t quite figure out what this static fork of lightning was all about until she imagined that something might be holding it in place, inhibiting its need to arc away into nothingness, something or perhaps someone; a giant as vast as the cloud themselves. A hole in the clouds formed for just a moment and she got the distinct impression that there was great horned helmet protruding out of the thunder heads thousands of feet above like some enchanted temple above it all. The moment she had imagined this scene, she could stop her eyes seeing it, as if she’d never imagined it at all.

She couldn’t get rid of this feeling that their was some huge titan heaving a rod of lightning over its shoulders as if it was pulling the storm with it.