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Creative Writing / Re: Cloud cuckoo Land
« Last post by Palustris on October 10, 2022, 08:43:39 AM »Chapter Five.
The Rolling Hills
Lemmy looked back at the town. It occurred to him that the place was very scruffy. The buildings looked as if they could use a lot of repair and a lick of paint.
He nudged the Cuckoo. "Don't the people who live in One Way Town notice how bad the place looks?" he asked.
The Cuckoo shook its head. "They are so busy minding everyone else's business that they only see what they want to see, and what they want to see is their town looking good."
"That's sad," said Lemmy.
"Very true," agreed the Cuckoo. "And even worse is that if you told them, they would not believe you. They'd conclude that you were being unpleasant and rude about their houses. They would still do nothing about it."
As they moved slowly along the road, the Great Grandfather clock chimed six times. It said "Gnob" though, rather than "Bong".
"I didn't think I had been here that long," said Lemmy.
"Time flies here," remarked the Cuckoo. "Or in this case, it flies backwards. We had better get a move on."
Lemmy chuckled. "You could always fly there," he said.
"Oh, no ,no ,no," replied the Cuckoo with a shudder. "Flying is not for me. I prefer to keep my feet firmly on the ground. I was born with a total fear of heights."
"Oh dear. "Sorry," said Lemmy.
"It does not matter," replied the Cuckoo. "In any case, it is not me who is going to put the time right, it is you."
Lemmy gave a shake of his head. "You hope," he said to himself.
Before they had gone very far, he heard the sound of a different band coming from somewhere in front of them.
"Oh dear," said the Cuckoo. "That may be a problem. There is another bandwagon coming our way."
Sure enough, even as the bird spoke, Lemmy could see another wagon. It was moving far quicker than the one they were riding, but it was going back the way they had come.
It pulled alongside. Immediately, most of the people on Lemmy's bandwagon leapt out of the back and rushed across to the new one. Most of the pushers did the same.
Lemmy and the Cuckoo's wagon came to a halt.
"I was hoping this would not happen," complained the Cuckoo.
"What?" asked Lemmy, feeling utterly confused.
"That is a much more popular bandwagon, so almost all of our people have jumped on the new one. Ours will stop here now," the Cuckoo answered. "We will have to get off and walk for a while."
Lemmy climbed down. The Cuckoo walked off, and Lemmy followed him.
After a few yards, he looked back. The bandwagon was motionless on the road. The new bandwagon was almost out of sight already.
"What will happen to our old wagon?" he asked.
The old and abandoned bandwagon.
"It will just sit there and become old hat," the Cuckoo replied. "Very, very occasionally, an old bandwagon can start up again, but generally speaking, once the wheel pushers, the bandwagon riders, and the band have gone, the whole thing just dies."
But not to worry, we are very close to the Rolling Hills. We can ride them quite to close to the Great Grandfather Clock. "
The further away from the wagon they walked, the more and more it looked like a hat.
As promised, the Rolling Hills were very close. Lemmy was not so sure about them, though. He was used to the green, grass-covered hills that he had seen when he had been on holiday with his parents.
These hills were the same colour as the rest of the ground, a sort of whitish grey.
The rolling hills really did roll.
Still, they were actually rolling.
"Find somewhere comfortable to sit," advised the Cuckoo, "And let the hills do the work."
Lemmy sat down and felt himself gradually moving along. It was an odd sensation, rather like being on a very slow moving roller-coaster.
All the while, he could hear the Great Grandfather clock going tock-tick.
He gave a great big yawn. The motion was very soothing.
The Cuckoo poked him hard with its beak. "Don't go to sleep. The hills are not as safe as they seem."
Lemmy giggled. "Don’t tell me they are alive with the sound of music."
"Hardly likely," said the Cuckoo.
"I know then there is gold in them there hills," sniggered Lemmy.
"Even less likely," said the Cuckoo. "No, the movement often makes it rain, and here when it never rains but it pours. Worse still the rain does not fall, it rises."
Lemmy looked puzzled.
"You'll see!" warned the Cuckoo. "Do you see that black patch of ground over there?"
He pointed off to the left.
Lemmy nodded.
"Well, just watch what happens," advised the Cuckoo.
Sure enough, it began to rain. Upwards. It was light at first, but within seconds, the air above that bit of cloud was full of water. It did not last long, but if Lemmy had been caught in it he would have been soaked to the skin.
"Glad we missed that," said his right shoe.
"I'll say," agreed his left. "Not like the other day when we went in that puddle."
The rain fell upwards.
"Just because you have tongues does not mean you have the right to complain," said Lemmy. "If you had used your eyelets, you could have warned me, but you didn't.
Lemmy stood up and stamped his feet.
"All right, all right," said his shoes. "No need to get violent."
Lemmy and the Cuckoo spent the next hour or so watching the rolling hills turn dark and begin to rain. They were able to dodge the showers, though.
The thing that puzzled Lemmy most was where the water went. He knew that normally, when it rained, the water went down the gutters and into the gratings in the road and thence into the drains. Here the water just disappeared.
He asked the Cuckoo, who just grinned and said, "Heaven knows."
