TUNNELING TO THE SLIDE
I produced vague lies in response to Olly Ocksen’s many questions about our supposed origin, some lake somewhere. I got specific after deducing neither Olly Ocksen nor any other charborr of this Forest had visited the lake, whatever lake, wherever lake. Kar annoyed me by continuing to announce she was Oddy Drago. She thought she was amusing. She wasn’t. Olly Ocksen led us to tunnel under the silver glittering drifts of snow. The sensation of oozily flowing along was like as nothing I’d known. I shivered all over with hot heat thrills. I bulged in rolling surges as the snow melted cool around me. While we tunneled and chatted I made effort to slide the conversation around to a place where I could learn what greps were. I couldn’t ask straight out. No. I was a charborr, and so such should have been more than familiar with greps. I didn’t know how to whisper in thought, so I couldn’t ask Kar if she knew about greps. Olly Ocksen had stated with a clarity that Ommy Anthus, the charborr who was key to the Prophesy, left the Dome to fetch greps and failed to return. Greps very well might be something I need to know all about, I thought privately. I tried to flatten my mind, but if I succeeded, no information on greps appeared. I never did know what shapes my mind took, and still don’t. So said, Prophesy delivers information in mysterious ways when you least expect it. So such the puzzle of greps was solved for me like as if it fell on my head.
I’m dimming, thought Olly Ocksen. I need some greps. What of you two? Are you dimming?
Funny, I was just about to ask for greps, I lied in thought. Greps are just the thing, aren’t they, Oddy Drago?
I am Oddy Drago, thought Kar, still playing her silly game.
Having no elbow to dig into her ribs, I bumped against her. We wobbled. Olly Ocksen sank straight down through the snow, which was, truth to tell, getting quite deep. As I sensed the charborr sinking, an urgency to find Ommy Anthus and get that pie wedge boulder eaten bit into me. I didn’t know how much longer the amethyst crystal drop spell would maintain me so such in charborr form. How could I know when I never knew what I knew? I sank after Olly Ocksen to move things along and to witness an expected gathering of greps. Ah. Oh. Such were the thoughts arcing across my mind as Olly Ocksen peeled, in some magnetic way, a strip of greps from the ground. Greps turned out to be the blue-black moss which fairly covered the floor of the Charborr Forest! Kar and I had tasted it and found it oddly refreshing. Blue-black moss it had been when we marched in the Forest as bendo dreen on our way to the Blue Hills. Now we were guised as charborrs, and the moss grew blue-black no more. It glowed bright yellow-green, and the ground from where it was stripped glowed red. Olly Ocksen absorbed the greps, and the charborr’s pale green glow brightened. Another patch was torn somehow and offered to me. I passed it to Kar, knowing well she would sulk if she didn’t taste the greps before I did. She thought, Thank you, and not, I am Oddy Drago, and at least at last that silly game was over. I drew another patch, some magnetic how, from Olly Ocksen and allowed it to filter through my husk. Oh, energy, a steep boost of fizz!
This is fine greps! I thought.
Thank you, thought Olly Ocksen with a modest slither. The slide is beneath the roots of this tree.
I felt the hollow there, thought Kar, and I wished she was back to identifying herself as Oddy Drago.
Yes, the Dome of Charborr. We would be honored to descend. I have an extreme message of delicate importance for Ommy Anthus, I communicated while bumping Kar.
I wonder if the slide is anything like the Blue Hills slides. That would be good and fun. I should go first, thought Kar.
I bumped her again harder and chattered away in thought to Olly Ocksen. The three of us, Kar scrambling to the front, slipped beneath the roots of a tree and in the dimness of a pale green light, began the long slide down a pulsing pale green smoothness. We gained speed, and our husks began to hiss, and wherever our blob bodies touched the slide we were fiercely tickled! We writhed and turned and bulged, laughing HAHAHAHAHAHA helpless.