Chapter 1
A life debt
by: Nellie Tobey
Edit 1
Steve, the pixie of the Fumonology clan, who's parents where not at all intrigued with naming their spawn in the Fartmoodle tradition, was seeking Tooty.
His job was to teach. Tooty was a difficult student. At best she was the worst Fartmoodle at instigating any sort of methane dispersal he had ever known of.
She could usually be found smelling flowers, or searching for spices in the community vault. Experimenting with spices was an educational pursuit. On almost all occasions, a Fartmoodle had a duty to try a variety out on the humans.
Broccoli shavings were a huge success. Chili powder a must have on any expedition. Tooty had a different way of experimenting that some moodles thought shameful. She would look over the log books, find failed combinations, or spices, and put it in her morning mash. No one understood this strange ritual, but the Fartmoodles were a very accepting breed, and truly believed, "Unto each their own".
*** But preferably a right nice whiff-er would accompany it. ***
When Steve found his student, he was not pleased. She happened to be on the outskirts of their village. Taking her time outside to smell a flower that most Fartmoodles avoided for fear of ruining their senses for eternity.
*** Imagine a smell that sticks so hard in your memory that any time you even think about it, the olfactory part of the brain goes haywire and will only percieve that memory of that particular smell. ***
Steve stayed well away, and yelled into the tall grasses where he could see a pair of spiky wings fluttering madly in the distance.
"Oi!" she might have heard him.
"O i !, Miss Tooty!! We have a lesson and you are very late!"
Tooty heard the voice of her young instructor, and took another great sniff of the deep blue blossom--(half the size of her head, and OH so fragrant). If she were forced to go hunting for human emissions today, at least she could hold on to this one for a small time.
Steve stood, arms propped on his hips, looking very annoyed. Tooty understood that the others hated the flowers, but why, she could not fathom.
"We should have left for the human space hours ago!" Steve wanted to grab her arm and run. The pollen was way too close.
Tooty smoothed out her long thread bare tunic and cinched her belt tightly for travel. "Where we going professor?"
While she despised these lessons, Steve was a good pixie, dedicated and knowledgeable in all things gas related.
"I am going to introduce you to the super-market" Steve had a slight grin on his face that said he was about to impart a prized secret upon her.
Tooty nodded her head and looped her arm into his. "I'm ready."
With a 'pop' and a 'fizz' and a little bit of waving around of mystical forces, Steve transported them to the nearest grocery.
They stood, about 13 inches tall, invisible to the humans, on top of the middle freezer of the frozen food isle.
Tooty was curious. "But they don't eat here, they just buy food. What is this?"
Steve beckoned her to follow and fluttered down to the glass door beneath them. "Do you see what is in there?"
Tooty was not very good at reading the language yet, but the picture on the packages had food stuffs, wrapped in a bread like blanket, filled with some brown mush. The word she did recognize was 'spicy'. " Are those.... Burritos?"
Steve beemed with pride. While his student had no capability in scent, She was quite a rare connoisseur of edibles. Useless in most parts of the moodle tradition, but still a skill that he could work with.
*** Fartmoodles were devoid of real taste buds, and had no need to eat anything that didn't give them nutritional and energy efficient fuel for the day. That is, all of them except Tooty. Which will be discovered much to late in this story to matter. ***
Steve waited for a human to approach who looked interested in this particular section. "Follow me." Steve carefully made his way up to the woman's ear. "This lesson is about persuasion." Steve cleared his throat and began yelling quite fiercely into the female's ear. "THOSE BUrrITOS LOOK MIGHTY GOOD!"
Tooty watched the woman debating about the contents of the lower shelves.
Steve brought Tooty in closer. "You try. Yell real loud, but do try to enunciate."
Tooty took a nice deep breath. "THOSE THINGS WILL MAKE YOU CRAVE BEER AND CHIPS LATER! BEANS ARE MAGICAL!"
Steve shook his head... that would never work.... But then the human opened the door. He was in awe, and did not realize that Tooty had jumped out of the way. He was firmly on the other side of the door watching the giant hand reach in to the plastic wrapped bundles to grab quite a few of the target.
He smiled up at Tooty, saw the look of horror on her face too late, as he was closed into the frigid temple.
*** Any container that held Burrito's in such a loving and protective way was deemed a temple. It was declared in 1942 by the high Foomagate, after a particularly rancorous session of parliament in which many Fartmoodles had campaigned to get a burrito dinner served to the European courts for lunch.***
Tooty flew to the handle and tried to open the very large, very heavy, and very cold door. Two were required for the pop fizz travel, and he could not escape on his own.
Steve remained calm. He flung his arms up, laid a top the Bean and Cheese, and said a silent prayer to his mothers of old. It was really not a bad place to die.
Tooty however, was not a pixie that gave up. She flew widely around screaming into the ears of humans:
"YOU MUST VISIT THE BURRITOS!"
One couple with a small child debated this:
"Oh man, burrito's sound really good."
The other rubbed the lower part of it's abdomen, "Not after last night."
The first one, "I told you to be careful with that wasabi."
The child pointed at Tooty, and laughed. "That's like the one we had in our house last night!"
It had to be her cousin Maloudorous. He was quite in favor of naming Wasabi a tribal treasure, and brought it up at almost every family meeting.
She had to try something else.
She headed toward the cheeses screaming, "DON't YOU CCraVE SOMETHING SPICEY!!"
A young male seemed to have heard her, and was glancing at some pepper jack cheese. It had to work. "THAT wOULD GO GLORIOUSLY WITH A MICROWAVE BURRITO!!!!"
She had heard of the microwave, a cooking device the humans used, but only knew it was the Most Holy Temple of Modern Warming. She hoped one day to see it in action, but preferably not from the inside. A distant Welshian cousin got blown up by accident in one on his inauguration night. Whiskey was definitely involved.
The boy human headed toward Steve's freezer. She flew as fast as the little wings would allow, to alert Steve to be ready to flee.
She pounded on the glass, as the male approached. Her instructor, with his eyes clamped shut in prayer to the Mother of Noxious Expulsions, looked up at her in surprise.
He noticed the hand reaching for the handle and got ready to bolt. And he did.
They sat on that dusty freezer top for a long time before Steve reached over to hold Tootie's hand. "I owe you a life debt. You have saved me."
Tooty blushed, as much as a pixie could blush. While they came in every sort of color imaginable, Tooty had been born a certain kind of violet, that resisted any real definitive aberrance of color differentiation. Her hair though did glow a slight green.
"You would have done the same for me..." She smiled. This had been her favorite lesson thus far.
As they sat, a certain older male came through the isle. He looked around a bit suspiciously and you could hear the slight rumble of a Fartmoodle's favorite thing.
Tooty's nose crinkled uncontrollably. Steve took large grand sniffs and smiled with the widest sharp toothed grin any pixie could muster without looking completely insane.
"That Tooty is your second lesson of the day!"
She tried not to be rude as she covered the gagging sensation. "Why the hell is it so bad!"
Steve frowned, but was not offended by the trouble Tooty had with the most divine odors. "My dear, when the air is cold, and does not circulate well, This is what we call, 'the linger'." Tooty did seem a bit weakened by it's magnificance.
And now it was not her favorite lesson, but almost assuredly the most memorable.
"Let's get back home." Tooty was eagerly wrapping her arm into his when they popped, fizzed, and whirled away.
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