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Lupe Clearing
Unaware of the horror that had occurred just a short
while away, the Lupes in the large Lupe Clearing were enjoying a massive party.
Festive music blared from a DJ's speakers as the Lupes conversed and dined.
A few even had the courage to dance, although Lupe Forest Lupes are famous for
their horrid dance moves.
One of the highlights of the event was
an enormous, cunningly decorated evergreen tree, sticking out of the middle
of the clearing like an obelisk. Perched in the midsection of this tree was
our friend Al, holding a set of binoculars to his eyes and peering out over
the melee of party-going Lupes. Fluffy, curled up on top of Al's head, tuned
out his owner's annoying vocal narration with his Jazzmosis-playing headphones,
half-asleep and enjoying the scenery.
"Amazing! Some of the Lupes are exhibiting
primal behavior through some kind of sluggish attempt at dance!"
Al adjusted the binoculars with one paw,
jotted something into his notebook with the other, and, at the same time, spoke
into the handy dandy tape recorder, which was hanging off a branch nearby. As
he finished writing, he reached into his lab coat pocket and tossed a petpet
treat up to Fluffy, who lunged out and snapped it up greedily before returning
to his own little musical world.
"A lupologist could ask for no better
treat than a social event like this. You get to see all the Lupes, in all their
glory, how they interact with each other through forming friendships, having
territorial reactions, isolating the weak... the difference of behavior in comparison
to how they act alone is astounding! Plus, they always manage to make good food."
Al paused the recording and bit into a
chocolate Chia ornament hanging off the tree before turning it back on and continuing
with his log.
"I can see many recognizable Lupes, and
yet I'm also missing a lot, although I'm not surprised at their absences. Most
are probably participating in more family-oriented events, or are in the parade.
Perhaps some are even now doing last minute shopping..."
As Al spoke into the recorder he got from the Space Station, a large, jet-powered
sleigh appeared in the sky. It dipped around and around, circling like a buzzard
above the party, who had all paused to look up at it. Al, of course, had ignored
it, but Fluffy had bristled on top of Al's head, the partially chewed petpet
treat falling from his mouth and into Al's hair.
"Odd. They've all seemed to stop moving.
I wonder what's the matter with them. Perhaps this is some ritual I missed in
the years before."
Al's hand deftly rotated, hanging the
binoculars on a tree branch, whipping a camera from his lab coat, setting it
up, zooming in on the shocked Lupes, tossing another petpet treat to Fluffy
(which bounced off his nose and seemed to wake him up from his trance), and
rapidly snapping photo after photo.
Fluffy, horrified at the enormous and menacing
snowmobile in the sky, gave a tiny, little squeak.
Al's rapid photography paused as he heard
the noise. He looked up towards his petpet and began gushing.
"Aww, Fluffy, you haven't made such a
cute noise since you were an itty bitty baby!"
The camera disappeared, replaced with
an enormous photo album that Al had somehow concealed in his labcoat. Leafing
through page after page of Lupe photographs, he arrived at a snapshot of Fluffy
when Al had first bought him.
"See, this is you lying naked on a Kau-skin
rug!" Al cooed, not noticing the large shadow that had suddenly blocked out
the light above him. "And this is you when you said your first word! And here's...
hey, I need a little more light."
Fluffy screeched in horror as the lasers
blasted a beam of bright red light, setting fire to the top of the Christmas
tree and melting the intricately carved chocolate Chia resting on top.
"Ah, that's a little better," Al muttered,
leafing through the album to the light of the glowing flames above him. A sudden
bloodcurdling scream from below, followed by many more sudden bloodcurdling
screams, snapped Al from the book.
"PIFFLE!" He gasped, the album now gone
and replaced with the binoculars and the handy dandy tape recorder. "It's HORRIBLE!
Something I can't seem to see is making all the Lupes flee in horror!"
Fluffy was hurriedly spitting negg juice
again and again at the spreading fire, which didn't seem to help at all. The
chocolate Chia in the branches above that Al had bitten into melted and dripped
onto Fluffy's head. Turning a sickly white and trembling at the thought of the
same thing happening to him and Al, he wrapped himself a little tighter around
Al's head, which was swishing from side to side to get a full perspective of
all the chaos.
"It seems as though it's raining on them,
which is quite odd since there wasn't a cloud in the sky... Oh no, wait, it
isn't RAINING! It looks like objects much heavier and grosser than rain are
falling. Toilet paper! And rancid eggs! And rotten fruit!"
Al focused his binoculars, too excited
to notice that the monstrous sleigh, which had been zooming around and dropping
the objects had now turned around, sputtered, and began charging towards the
tree he was hiding in. Fluffy had noticed, though, and had begun bouncing on
his ignorant owner's head.
"I didn't know such a thing could happen.
Perhaps the Lupes had been performing a sort of ancient ritual to call rancid
fruit from the sky."
Fluffy, hearing enough of ancient rituals,
tugged Al's binoculars around towards the sickening sleigh sight, which was
coming down from above in a nosedive, flames licking out from behind it and
illuminating the Lupes inside with an unearthly light.
"Hm. That would explain a lot."
A flaming branch from the top of the tree
fell and knocked Al's binoculars from his hands. He yelped, afraid of sparks
hitting his eyes (although his glasses made this impossible), and tumbled from
the tree, Fluffy still clinging to his head. As he fell (yelling quite loudly),
his foot caught on one of the long, red and green tree lights. Dangling just
low enough to catch his still falling binoculars and long enough prevent his
glasses from falling off, Al bungeed back upwards, then back downwards several
times, hanging upside down. He turned his recovered optical enhancer back up
towards the sleigh, enthralled, as Fluffy tried not to toss his cookies.
"It's heading straight for where we had
been camped out! I don't believe it! It's crashing right into the tree!"
Needless to say, as Al said this, the
sleigh crashed right into the tree, near where Al and Fluffy were camped out
earlier. Al continued his commentary into the tape recorder as the light he
was dangling by sudden whipped him around and up and down like a sickening amusement
park ride. The tree, engulfed in flame, slowly began tipping over onto the fleeing
Lupe Forest Lupes below, landing with a deafening thud onto the ground.
"Incredible!" Al screamed above the melee
into his recorder. "What kind of creatures could be inside this powerful sleigh?
How did they DO this?! If they're Lupes, they have remarkable technological
skill to build such an advanced mode of transport! How does it stay up in the
air?!? I must talk to these Lupes and discover where they learned this! Perhaps
they are from a more civilized society, here to conquer the Lupe Forest Lupes!
A challenge for territory, if any-"
Al paused as he noticed something. He
focused his binoculars carefully, brushing scorched pine needles from his hair.
"HM One of the tree lights appears to
have caught on the sleigh. Wrapped on what is called the runner, I believe."
He moved the binoculars downwards, following
the Christmas light cord. It stopped where it was wrapped tightly around his
foot. He put his binoculars into his pocket, where they promptly fell out from
his being upside down.
"HM I appear to be attached to the light
that is attached to the sleigh."
He looked down, noticing that the ground
was inches away from his head. The light has been just long enough to prevent
him from knocking his head on the floor, which probably would have hurt and
crushed Fluffy, who, even though he had escaped the flames, looked as though
he might melt.
Al looked upwards again. The Sloth Sleigh
had turned its rear to them, and was clicking and humming ominously. Suddenly,
a burst of flame ejected from the engine, and it began shooting almost vertically
upwards into the sky. Al turned around to see the ground rapidly retreating
underneath him. The force of their ascent blew off his glasses and whipped back
the hair on his head that wasn't being clung on to by his petpet as he thoughtfully
continued speaking into his recorder, squinting in the wind.
"HM Odd. It seems as though, while I was
commenting on the sleigh, I failed to notice something. One of the bulbs went
out on this light."
Al began digging through his pockets for
a spare bulb and his spare glasses as Fluffy screeched in a high-pitched voice,
again and again, in absolute horror. Chia in tow, Hollypaw's gang sped the sleigh
high into the sky, out of the reaches of the confused Lupe Forest Lupes
To be continued...
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