Telling Tall Tales

Excerpt

2024

Playing starbles is very, very, trivially easy.

First, you gather up a foomy little comet. Then you put it down on outer space. Then you knock it with your finger. When you smack stars out of orbit, then you get to keep them forever!

The only problem is, foomy little comets don't like to go the right way. When I shoot them, they fly into deep space and don't even cooperate. So I'm moody of that.

But besides that, the game is a big fat piece of cake!

Here's the story of how I started playing starbles. You tell it like this:

One time, I was moody of something, so Enjiko said I could pick out a star and keep it forever.

I got very pumped and I sposhed up and down in my puddle. I pointed to the hugical one and said "That one."

Enjiko frowned and he was like "That's not a star, Loma. It's the sun."

I said "It is too a star!" and spushed my water at him, which gruzzed his electrics. I said, "It's boily and space-orange and it's the biggest star!"

And he did that adultified face at me. "Loma, you can't have the sun. The Earth creatures need it to live."

So then I got very, very, tyrannically moody all over again. I didn't even remember what it was about the first time.

Enjiko got so steamed his joints were sparkulating, but before he could punish me, Umbiro appeared and shoved him off the bridge.

“No need to blast a casket,” he said comraditorially. “How about this? We can play a game. And the stars you hit, you get to keep. Even the sun.”

“YOU’RE ON, BUSTER!” I said, spashing in my puddle like a duck.

Buuuut, I think Umbiro may have been pulling a tiny scheme. Because I have been trying for centuries now. And I do not have the darn sun.

The other day, I showed Ocha how you play starbles. Ocha is my top-rank friend. She’s from the undersea, so she doesn’t mind my perpetual rain. And I’m a rain-lover, so I don't mind her undersea. Therefore, we work!

“It’s very, very, voraciously hard, so it’s okay if you do very badly,” I said to her.

We went out on the edge of saturn and put its buttery light at our backs. We sat down on the ringroad, priss-pross applesauce. Ocha reached out and got her comet all poached. She lined her finger up and went totally still. Only her head tentacles were still squilling around.

Then, POM!

We both watched very, very, remarkably surprised as a kitsy blue star toppled from the cosmos and went vooming down toward the Earth.

Ocha made a fishy triumphant sound. “I got one! Did you see that, Lobobo? Look! It’s vooming down!”

At that time I became very moody and leaned my cheeks on my palms. “Yeah, well, you can’t keep it,” I brunkled. “‘Cause you didn’t make a deal with Umbiro. So those are the rules.”

“That’s okay,” said Ocha. “At home I can just look down and see all the stars like a big mattress. So I don’t mind where they are.”

That was not an especially satisfying response. I started to get an electrical charge in my little torso, and to discharge it I needed to get complimented.

“Hey, did you know what constellation that was?” I asked.

“What was?”

“The one you just broke.”

“Umm… no! Are you sure that was a constellation?”

I chuckled wiselike. “All the stars have a constellation. It’s just some of them are secret.”

“That makes crazy sense,” said Ocha, with her fishy eyes bug-wide. “So which one was it?”

I opened my mouth to tell a fine yarn, but uh-oh! At that moment it felt like my yarn ball was with the cats. So I glimpsed around flittishly to find quality inspiration.

Miles and miles away, so many lands and boats and doors and roads slipped in their grooves around and round the wide Earth, all winking into whitey slivers compared to the black chalk gullet of space. I saw Mish’s palace on the slowly rotating moon. The rope ladder to curseworld twisted in the breeze. Way up overhead, the waves of Ocha’s squooshy home glimmered green. In the interminable distance, galaxia and nebulae spilled in colored pools from their overturned bottles. I thought and thought and thought very fast.

“Stars,” I said. “It’s the constellation of stars.”

“Really?” said Ocha. “What is it called?”

I thought and thought and thought very faster.

“Estrellus,” I said. “Duh.”

Ocha nodded. “That makes psycho crazy sense. Wow, Lobo. I wish I knew the secret constellations too!”

Bzzzup! I shivered as the static fluffed my fine hairs.

“I’m gonna go again,” Ocha said, reaching for another comet.

“Um… no thank you,” I said, smacking up some puddle with my hand to spash the space dust off her fingers. Because I did not want her to get lucky again, of course.

Ocha stucked her tan tongue at me and spushed water back in my face. And that is a war that can go on for days, you should know.

But I steepled my fingers with a better idea. “You know who’s a delightful mountain of secrets?”

“Ooh! Who? Who?”

“Just simply our very tall sister Clether.”

Ocha looked at me like I was making psycho crazy no sense. “What?” she burbled. “But her secrets are booooooooring!” All of her hair wibbled in protest.

“You might say so,” I supposed, tapping my lips. “One could think so. One may. But I suspect that only the immature may say so. And I bet I have become mature enough to enjoy the smartness of our dear huge-hatted Sister.”

“Really…” Ocha said, reflecting planets in her eyes. “Okay! If you have become mature enough then I think I have become mature enough also!”

“Maybe,” I said generously. “Shall we go learn and broaden our thought bubbles?”

“Yes, we shall!”

Then I set about extricating myself from the priss-pross applesauce position. Which by the by is too easy for Ocha, as she’s made of slippery.

*~*~*

Miss Clether is not especially stationary because, like a snail, she carries her favorite building on her head. So I had to ask the rain about where she was. And it hadn't even seen her in like a fort of nights but the last time she got rained on she was in the grotto of Lady Inlin which I basically honestly should already pretty much have kinda thought, anyway.

So Ocha and me caught the whale bus.

We got off on the windy violet fields of Jupiter, where the largish worms thunder in and out of the dirt. I waved to those guys as we scampered through the grass dunes to the vasty Inlin Grotto. It was a gap in the floor miles around, grounded with barren amethyst clay and walled with layers of wet purple sediment. In the center hulked Inlin’s troubling project.

“Hiiiiiiiiii!” I called out, cupping my mouth to best the swooping gale. The wind was scattering my rain like a summer sprinkler.

“Heeeeeeey!” Ocha yelled, doing the same thing also.

But it did not even work. The skeletal sliver of Lady Inlin was way down there with her project, hammering and nailing away.

Ocha put her fingers in her mouth and yanked it way wider. “Hey,” she said, and her megavoice boomed across the entire crater and sprayed dust every which way.

Then she did a spppbbblttt with her weirdy long lips and we both laughed a very lot.

“What?” said Inlin crossly. She was too far away too, but her voice vibrated through all the unseeable microbes on our bodies. How come I can’t do that, I ask you?

“Ask her where Lady Clether is,” I said.

“Where does Lady Clether is?” Ocha asked.

“What, am I my Sister’s keeper?” the crossish voice buzzed.

“I don’t know, are you?” I said in a fit of moody. But Ocha did not actually take my advice that time.

“You saw her very lately, right, didn’t you?” she asked. “Please and thank you,” she added. Because that’s manners, of course. I am proud of her.

The neensy shape of Miss Inlin had now turned to look at us, with her sassy palms sitting right on her illiums. But then that neensy shape straightened up like a happy cobra.

A flicker of friendly sizzled all the way through my microbes. But I was honestly not that chuffed of the sensation.

“Oh! You know what, darling friend girls?” Inlin buzzed. “Why don't you ask the Perfect Human?”

I looked at Ocha. I made a face.

Ocha looked at me. She made a different face.

Then we both looked, very pretty much entirely unwantingly, at the big face.

“Tell me what you think,” Inlin rippled eagerly. “Is she a hell of a beaut or is she??”

“It’s the worst,” I answered. “In fact, it’s actually very, very, unimpeachably hideous. I’m sorry to tell you this, Miss Ma’am Lady Inlin, because you are my much-respected Sister and I am polite and everything, as you very well know, but since you asked, and thank you for finally asking my honest opinion on this very, very, rudimentarily important matter, it’s trash.”

I finally stopped yappering and took a big breath. Then I looked at Ocha expectingly.

“Simply magnifique,” Ocha boomed sweetly.

I sighed a moody note.

Sometimes Ocha is a little too manners.

Also, I think she might sometimes make up fake words.

“Uh… Perfect Human? Sir?” she continued. “Do you happen to know where Lady Clether might be, approximately now?”

“GREETINGS AND GREETS!” crawked a voice of rotting shipwreck timbers. This voice carried through the swirling winds of Jupiter without breaking a sweat. No one was happy about this. “MAY THE ROAD RISE UP! HOW ARE THE LITTER GILL? CLETHER!”

“Y-Yes, her,” Ocha said with a wince in her step. “Do you, um, happen to know…?”

“THE CLETHER IS BEHIND MY VISAGE THIS VERY MOMENT!” the hugantic head hammered. “WILL YOU FANCY THAT? WELL, IF I WON’T BE DAMNED!”

I could hear Lady Inlin clapping very much. Also through the microbes.

I am honestly not so sure why she finds it necessary to build a replica of the human mind out of a snotload of trained ants in a maze of sandy tubes in a three-story paper-mache head.

Sure, the personality is authentical as all giddy-up. But the artistic vision really does not agree with me. And that is all I will say on that matter today.

Sometimes I think that lady could use an organ of sense.

“Wait, she’s – right behind you?” Ocha said, rotating in a triple-axel flop take. “...Lady Clether? You there, Ma’am?”

The tiny tall black outline of one spidery madam stalked right into view in the violet canyon.

“She says, ‘What, child? I was in my library,’” microbed Inlin.

I waved very large and big. I am usually not that jazzied to see this Sister because she is stern and strictish and old and boring and impatient and stubborn and bossy and one big miss KNOW-IT-ALL (at least, some might say so), but today she was about to make me wiser and more better. And then I could be all those things whenever I pleased!

So at that point, Ocha and me rode a worm and went galumphing down all the way into the Grotto. I got motion sickness! But it was the fun kind.

By the time we came anywhere near within earspace, we were both chanting “Clether! Clether! Clether! Clether!” in elegant syncopation. That’s because it was very, very, supernovically critical that she pay attention to us immediately, of course.

Inlin had returned to her passion project. She was sawing and soldering as every kind of insectoid on Jupiter crawled up and down her bleachy bones and damp buggy eyeballs.

That is the life! If you’re her, I mean. Not if you’re anyone else ever.

As our worm parked very parallel, Clether was already waiting for us with a most impatient frown. See? That’s just like how I told you before.

Even up on our rascally vehicle, she towered head, shoulders, knees, and toes above us, because that woman is frankly a space needle. Her skin is paleish lavender, but mostly covered in black, practical cloth, from the pointy of her shoes to the tower of her extended top hat.

You might think that this would make her very invisible out in the cosmos! But you can tell when you are looking at her by the lack of stars. That’s logic.

“What,” said Clether with a dry tongue.

“Clether! Clether! Cle–”

Clether made the sign of the quiet coyote, and the binding magic instantly shut our faces up. Shlup!

She rolled all her glittery little eyes and composed herself. Then she frowned at us a little nicer.

“Yes, Miss Ocha and Miss Lomagai? Can I help you with something this year?”

She un-coyoted us and I gasped in a breath, just for the drama of it all.

“We wanna get smart!!” I announced. “Because we’re old enough and wise enough! That’s the point, you see! It’s that we want new knowledge we can chew on! That’s all, please and thank you.”

“Mm-hm!” Ocha agreed, patting our worm on the whichever end was in front. It snuffled.

Miss Clether blinked eightfold. “Oh!” Even more of the distaste dripped away from her frown at us. “I’m surprised, girls. Impressed. I can’t help but respect an interest in discovery. What brought on this change of brain?”

“Loma,” my friend said, pointing at me in the worm’s left saddle.

“I just feel I have grown and matured,” I explained. “Like stinky cheese that fancy people eat.”

Miss Clether tipped her hat to me in respect. The entire skyscraping stovepipe hurtled down toward me, then yanked back up. I made sure to keep an eye on that thing.

Lady Clether tapped her lip with her finger and the ground with her foot for a second. “Alright then, girls. I’m due any day now on the Earth for an investigation. If you like, you may accompany me as I collect the missing chunk of truth. I will, of course, require you to exercise behavior. Is that well?”

“Well, well, well!” I agreed with a firework in the chest. “I love chunks!”