Taking the Beast

Little could ruin this moment for Gallabee though, except for maybe the general lack of interest that all the MOUTHS seemed to be taking in this moment of drama. Despite the shadow bearing down on him, the dodgy artifact dealer continued trying to sell his staff shard as if even being on fire wouldn’t prevent him making a sale.The businessman meanwhile grumbled over his bike lock as if nothing else mattered. While the rest of the commuters kept on marching onward like wet zombies in a hurry for a brain fest.

‘What’s wrong with all these people?’ Gallabee couldn’t hold her tongue any longer about all this lack of stimulus to the leg’s presence, ‘Don’t they see the legs? They should be screaming and running for their lives?’

‘MOUTHS don’t notice a lot of things…’ Gally chose her words carefully, ‘probably better off in this case…’

‘That’s no excuse! They miss so much!’

‘What, like the possibility of their impending doom?’

‘Let’s hope this is their impending doom! Maybe then they will wake up from being so boring!’

‘If their not all flat as pancakes.’ Gally tried to be jovial, even if she was feeling more agitated by the second.

There came a thunderous rumble which was either a clap of thunder or a great boot demolishing a nearby building. That was it, Gally wanted to burrow herself deep into the ground until she’d found the star river beneath the train station and dive into it.

The MOUTH lives carried on unphased.

The businessman had finally unlocked his bike lock so everything was ok in his world. The dealer was almost frowning at the darker sky for talking the luster out crystaline shard he was trying to tout. It was as if only their instant death would finally bring anyone to the attention of anything beyond their daily grievenes and grind. Gally on the otherhand wanted to expolode into nothingness just to get away from this dreaded unease in her heart and at this point Gallabee sensed her worry and kindly transformed herself into a fluffy unicorn so she could hold onto something for comfort.

But just before the great legs looked as if their next step might be on everyone within a half a mile radius, everything lightened again, and the crack of sky over head resumed its simple, steamy greyness.

Now it was gallabee that needed all the comforting.

‘That better not have of been our gallivant! That better not been it!’ She cried,‘i want more! Think of the view we could of got of the legs passing over if this dumb ass wasn’t so in love with his bike.’

‘Well, at least you’ll live to see another galivant.’

Gallabee sensed a sigh of relief in her fairy’s tone she didn’t like one bit and only wanted to react against it.

‘Thats it!’ Her unicorn face went so cruel, ‘I’m flying out of here and i’m not stoping until I’ve had a proper adventure today!’

‘No!!’ Gally had to fight quickly to keep her soft toy from going wildly out of control, ‘you’re my power animal I command you to behave right now!’

‘Whaaa? Command me?’ Gallabee was caught off guard, ‘Ok then, command me to do something then and don’t say you want me to find you a good place to have a nap and recover from all the trauma blah blah blah.’

‘Well….well….um…’ Gally was trying be assertive, ‘Maybe we could catch a new pocket! There’s got be one going in the general fairy land park direction. From the top of the ridge we’d be able to see where the legs were heading! Is that a exciting enough command for you to follow?’

‘Hmmmm, it would want to be a quick pocket to keep up with the legs now!’

‘What about The dealer! His Siman Villa could get us up the mountains in minutes.’

‘Only if he’s going that way!’

‘But those mobile homes are made for cliff climbing. If you’ve got a Siman villa you’d hardly waste time following the bottom of meandering glens when you can take a short cut right over a mountain. I bet you like anything he’ll going our way!’

For a second Gallabee looked like she really wasn’t going to cooperate until she let out a sigh.

‘Ok, so this is going to rhyme. But you’d better be right or I’m talking flight, out of sight, you dig me?!’

Without a second to loose Gallabee transformed herself into a real life mini-unicorn scooping Gally up with the fairy-sized chariot she now pulled and leaping out of the pocket at full sprint.

If the businessman hadn’t payed any attention to a giant pair of legs stepping over him, he seemed even less aware of the girls vacating his pocket and leaving tyre marks down the side of his jacket. He just continued to check his tyre pressure while the tiny chariot sped away across the car park.

At high speed, Gallabee, fearlessly weaved her fairy chariot under the axels of several departing MOUTH chariots, before having to dodge shell fire that had erupted between two family tanks who had clearly got in each others way.

The girls needed to be quick to catch up with the dodgy artifact dealer before he got to his mobile home. After sucessfully selling the broken staff for a good few times its worth he had a skip in his step all the way home. As he approached his front door the Siman Villa began to grunt happily and beat its chest windows in anticipation of its masters return.

Gallabee and Gally didn’t catch up with him until he was half way up his steps and about to disappear inside. They were just about to reach the doormat when there came a heavy metalic slam as the hatch was sealed close and the Siman Villa began to belt copious amounts of velvety smoke out of its nostrils, arms stretching and flexing to life.

Before Gallabee could use this as an excuse to stretch into something with wings and do a flyaway, Gally was like a battle commander on her chariot pointing out a fresh direction for them to take.

‘Change of plan, lets catch a hanging basket instead!’ She made a decessive order.

She was talking about one of the flower-filled pots which hung like earrings from the Siman villa’s horns. Spying an exciting mode of transportation when she saw one, Gallabee went along with Gally without a whine. She now transformed herself into a snake so she could reach out for a vine of ivy trailing off the nearest basket and slither all way up until she had coiled herself in among a nice display of orchids and pansies.

‘Better strap you in’ Gallabee mused thoughtfully.

Before Gally could ask, Gallabee had used her stripy stretch to bind her fairy almost-sacrifice-like to the chain of the hanging basket. Gally was soon lying at the heart of a pansy forest and pinned down by snake, moments from finding out exactly why there was a need for such stringent health and safety.

With out warning, the simans strong back legs now sprung into action, one leap talking it from ground level to the roof of a rail shed 100 ft away in a heart beat.

From where the gates of the station opened out into the street, the terrain of vine-choked rock-faces towered rawly into the sky towards the exotic lushness of Arbutus Gullies and Fairyland Ridge further up. With little regard for the severity, streets steeply zigged zagged like cobbled mountain trails, weaving in and out among ledges and ravines where avenues of houses somehow managed to cling to the sides of the mountain and fend off the dense jungle at the same time.

The Simian Villa used the terra-cotta roofs of the rail shed to gain higher ground towards old warehouses half crushed by great boulders before clambering up with its strong arms on to the rooftops of houses that squeezed themselves in between savage cliff faces and foaming white water cascades. Free climbing like a mad house, it used its many wheel-claws to grind against rocky under hangs and cornices getting all the traction it needed to traverse a 100 feet of mossy slabs in seconds.

With every leap of faith over a bottomless abyss, every shimmy along a creaking vine, the hanging basket earring the girls were strapped to swung backwards and forwards like a swing doing somersaults. All this time Gallabee’s eyes never broke contact once with the great legs position, watching them wander on down the glen below, her neck coiling and counter-swaying to compensate for every lurch. On the other hand, all Gally could do was lie among the flowers looking sicker by the second, the sky and the earth spinning circles around her.

Despite being such a stomach churning ride, a swinging hanging basket did have have its advantages for those who wanted good nose into the lives of others. Despite all the cliff hanging going on outside, life inside the Siman villa proceed in a far more subdued fashion, and Gally was getting a flying birds eye view of it. One minute the basket would be swaying past the living room window where a soap opera was blasting out of nirvanas dimension, a woman in an armchair hypnotized and reduced to a drooling-wreck in its blinding light, the next, the ape leapt down into small glen and Gally would get passing glimpses through a bedroom window upstairs where some children were doing their homework.

The dodgy artifact dealer meanwhile could be seen schmoving his way through the family environment, hands stuffed full of peanut butter sandwiches. After briefly stopping off to tell his children to do their home work he proceeded up a tight staircase towards a steamy fern filled greenhouse on his roof. As well as being filled with many vibrant orchids and musical-instrument-shaped animals, this conservatory doubled as a chill-out room, floor filled with cushions which the man stretched himself out on and drifted off to the sound of the calming music and sound effects (which his pet ambialligator and sound-squirrel were concocting together.).

For Gally, watching this peaceful scene was almost too much to bare. She didn’t want to feel like a pebble rattling around a tumble drier, she longed to be lying hidden way under the mans floor of cushions drifting off into a state of perpetual, unbreakable bliss. But this was not to be and Gallabee just had to go and ruin her yearning with a smug comment.

‘We finally found someone more lazy then you!’ She scoffed at the relaxing dealer as she took break from staring at the legs (Concentrating on anything for a longer then two minutes, no matter if it was filled with exciting potential never came easy to her).

‘He’s not lazy, he’s at peace,’ Gally fought back, ‘ bet he’s had a long day..’

‘At peace? Yeah, dead did come to mind…but….’ Gallabee’s eyes widened as she looked back for the legs, ‘HEEEEEEEY!’

‘Whats wrong?’ Gally winced at her scream.

‘THE LEGS HAVE GONE!!!’