How to Capture a Fartmoodle
chapter 8 : "A wet burrito"
edit #1
by: Nellie Tobey
The gremlin village was not much of a village at all. A few haphazard silk huts had been erected by an enormous Bristlecone Pine. Steve stared at the tree hypnotized He could almost see the centuries radiating around the massive trunk. Tooty was admiring a needle from its branches. It was rigid but soft, and very nicely pointed. A great size to fit squarely under a thumbnail.
OldRed and KettleStruck were obviously ignoring one another. The two younglings had been taken to the base of the ancient pine where a shaman was looking them over and assessing what needed to be done. OldRed stood on two Hawk feet staring down at the little ones. Kettle was in Wolverine form on the outer edge of the tree's base watching everything and pacing. Massive paws were treading a path into the hard earth.
Tooty nudged Steve out of his trance. He swore the tree had been singing for a second. Tooty pointed to the creek downhill from where they stood. "Is that where the younglings got into the stuff?"
Steve looked over his notes and a nicely drawn map that one of the gremlins had provided. "It must be, looks that way on here." Steve led the way to the sandy edge of the flowing waters. "I don't understand why they brought the two little ones with them on this trip. It seems much safer if something was making them diminish, to stay close to home."
Tooty stuck her pine needle down into an iridescent patch of water. It was unnatural and beautiful, and wrong. "Not if the home is where the danger is." She held the needle end up for Steve to examine. "What is it?"
Steve remembered that it had been coming in contact with it had made the gremlins ill. "We don't have anything like this back home. It's definitely human."
Steve handed a piece of tartan cloth to Tooty. She wiped it off. "Look Steve, it leaves that same shine on the cloth." Tooty tried to put it in the water and wash it off. It only seemed to get thinner and spread. "What is this?!" Tooty put the cloth in her pocket deciding that later, at the fire, it would be best to burn it.
*****************************
The younglings had recovered enough to sit next to the fire pit as twilight rolled in and the small branches were being stacked. Kettle and Red started to talk in short bursts with their hands. Even not knowing what it meant, Tooty could tell it was a formal focused set of statements. A gremlin from the town approached them as other gremlins had started to fit Steve and Tooty with new skirts. Tooty's Black with grey trim, and Steve's Yellow with black trim. Tooty imagined her Aunt would love to see the way they sewed the thick cloth. Not a seem was visible. The gremlin, in the shape of a very enormous beetle, pointed to the town lights in the distance, "We will visit the local bar first, See what the humans are saying."
Steve remembered what OldRed had told him. He interrupted the older Gremlin's silent conversation. "The one that can open the door in that factory, will it be there?" OldRed nodded.
Tooty looked over at the two young gremlins kicking at a gigantic pine cone. They were seeing who could get the thing to move.
"They seem to be recovering. I am glad." KettleStruck changed, purple spots ablaze and spear in hand. "Is everything ok KettleStruck?" Tooty watched the grip from those long green fingers loosen on the shaft.
"I have some of our journey-skilled gremlins scouting for a fresh source of water." Kettle looked up at the tree towering above. "The old one has to have water, and if that stuff can hurt us, it can hurt our great Sheperd."
Steve made note of the reverence that was given the giant pine. Tree's were considered sacred in their home region also, but this was something much more. He did not have a word for it yet. "We can't possibly move that tree... can we?"
Tooty looked to OldRed, "We're here to stop the humans, aren't we?"
KettleStruck sighed. "We don't know how to influence the human's like you do. We can add spirit to their drink, but otherwise, we are completely unable to interact with them. I am told the Fartmoodle clan has a specific charm that allows you to talk them into small things, influence them."
Steve dropped his jaw. While other Pixies could make suggestions to the humans, what Tooty had done in the supermarket, getting the human to open the door by influencing his choices, was a clan secret. Suggestions were easily dismissed by most humans, and the other pixies had rarely been able to get a human swayed enough to do as intended.
*** A clan called FistMongers was constantly trying to get humans to physically fight one another, and was only successful by making physical objects move. A very infamous trick among them was to talk cats into knocking objects from surfaces for no apparent reason. It did involve risking ones safety by enticing the cat to believe the fairy was a tiny red light to be swatted at, and some had died in glorious tactics to achieve such feats. Cats were also not prone to suggestion, but they couldn't resist a brightly lit dot placed in the perfect location. The dot most times being the fairy itself. No scholar was sure if the cats could see the fairy itself in this form, but it was debated enthusiastically.***
What Fartmoodles could do with humans was almost direct communication. Steve regained his composure. "How did you know?"
Tooty stood silent, waiting for an answer. She had just learned the skill not that long ago and hadn't known about it until it was her turn to be taught it.
Steve said she was a natural, and better even than her mother.
OldRed answered this time, "One of our elder members was once friends with a pixie of your clan in the old lands. They would often sneak off to human grounds and ... "
KettleStruck finished for Red, "They would cause mischief of legend."
Tooty tried to imagine what pixie it must have been to cause the kind of bravo-ed tones happening between Kettle and Red. Steve was excited, "Who? Who was it?"
Red and Kettle made a hand gesture that resembled a great claw, and then what could not be mistaken, 'NO'. "We can not tell you."
Tooty remembered the piece of cloth in her vest, "What can you tell us about this stuff in the water?" She unfolded it and the Gremlins both had to stop themselves from backing away suddenly.
"That's what is making our kind ill. The younglings got into it, thinking it was pretty, something from our great Shepard. They were down for days. We had to take them to our sunniest clearing in these woods to keep them from blinking away." Kettle picked the cloth out of Tooty's hand carefully avoiding the spots where the liquid shimmered.
Red stepped forward, "I'm going to show them KettleStruck." Kettle held the cloth out. OldRed put one green wrinkly hand on it to demonstrate. The skin began to fade. A dimly glowing skeleton shape in glistening lime-green fog.
Kettle pulled the cloth away. "That's enough. We can't have you getting sick on us too." Tooty took it from KettleStruck and walked to the fire. She tossed it in, letting the vile thing burn. The thing sparked and hissed, sending tiny wisps of white-hot embers from its surface.
Steve wrote more notes. "We shouldn't try to burn it." Steve pointed to a torch in the distance that had been placed by the huts set up for himself and Tooty.
*** The Gremlins, while having no issue with doing the extra work to put the structures up, had been thoroughly baffled that Tooty and Steve did not sleep in the same space. According to BrewMinister, the safest and more logical thing to do for creatures that required such a state of unconsciousness would be to be side by side, in a group. The others had nodded in agreement with BrewMinister. ***
Steve then pointed to the embers still emanating from the cloth. "If it isn't safe to touch, it is probably more dangerous when it has that kind of reaction."
Tooty noticed the scouts had returned and gathered around a large black cauldron that they were.... what looked like, urinating in.
KettleStruck let out a snort and a giggle when Tooty's concern couldn't be hidden in her face. "It's tradition, to bring a little brew with us on these missions. It loosens the human's tongues, and we need to find out what that poison is."
Steve looked over at the gathering around the pot. "Oh well, that makes sense!"
Tooty admired Steve's ability to glean information from the world around them, but in this case, she was pretty sure she did not want to know what 'made sense'.
***************************************
chapter 8 : "A wet burrito"
edit #1
by: Nellie Tobey
The gremlin village was not much of a village at all. A few haphazard silk huts had been erected by an enormous Bristlecone Pine. Steve stared at the tree hypnotized He could almost see the centuries radiating around the massive trunk. Tooty was admiring a needle from its branches. It was rigid but soft, and very nicely pointed. A great size to fit squarely under a thumbnail.
OldRed and KettleStruck were obviously ignoring one another. The two younglings had been taken to the base of the ancient pine where a shaman was looking them over and assessing what needed to be done. OldRed stood on two Hawk feet staring down at the little ones. Kettle was in Wolverine form on the outer edge of the tree's base watching everything and pacing. Massive paws were treading a path into the hard earth.
Tooty nudged Steve out of his trance. He swore the tree had been singing for a second. Tooty pointed to the creek downhill from where they stood. "Is that where the younglings got into the stuff?"
Steve looked over his notes and a nicely drawn map that one of the gremlins had provided. "It must be, looks that way on here." Steve led the way to the sandy edge of the flowing waters. "I don't understand why they brought the two little ones with them on this trip. It seems much safer if something was making them diminish, to stay close to home."
Tooty stuck her pine needle down into an iridescent patch of water. It was unnatural and beautiful, and wrong. "Not if the home is where the danger is." She held the needle end up for Steve to examine. "What is it?"
Steve remembered that it had been coming in contact with it had made the gremlins ill. "We don't have anything like this back home. It's definitely human."
Steve handed a piece of tartan cloth to Tooty. She wiped it off. "Look Steve, it leaves that same shine on the cloth." Tooty tried to put it in the water and wash it off. It only seemed to get thinner and spread. "What is this?!" Tooty put the cloth in her pocket deciding that later, at the fire, it would be best to burn it.
*****************************
The younglings had recovered enough to sit next to the fire pit as twilight rolled in and the small branches were being stacked. Kettle and Red started to talk in short bursts with their hands. Even not knowing what it meant, Tooty could tell it was a formal focused set of statements. A gremlin from the town approached them as other gremlins had started to fit Steve and Tooty with new skirts. Tooty's Black with grey trim, and Steve's Yellow with black trim. Tooty imagined her Aunt would love to see the way they sewed the thick cloth. Not a seem was visible. The gremlin, in the shape of a very enormous beetle, pointed to the town lights in the distance, "We will visit the local bar first, See what the humans are saying."
Steve remembered what OldRed had told him. He interrupted the older Gremlin's silent conversation. "The one that can open the door in that factory, will it be there?" OldRed nodded.
Tooty looked over at the two young gremlins kicking at a gigantic pine cone. They were seeing who could get the thing to move.
"They seem to be recovering. I am glad." KettleStruck changed, purple spots ablaze and spear in hand. "Is everything ok KettleStruck?" Tooty watched the grip from those long green fingers loosen on the shaft.
"I have some of our journey-skilled gremlins scouting for a fresh source of water." Kettle looked up at the tree towering above. "The old one has to have water, and if that stuff can hurt us, it can hurt our great Sheperd."
Steve made note of the reverence that was given the giant pine. Tree's were considered sacred in their home region also, but this was something much more. He did not have a word for it yet. "We can't possibly move that tree... can we?"
Tooty looked to OldRed, "We're here to stop the humans, aren't we?"
KettleStruck sighed. "We don't know how to influence the human's like you do. We can add spirit to their drink, but otherwise, we are completely unable to interact with them. I am told the Fartmoodle clan has a specific charm that allows you to talk them into small things, influence them."
Steve dropped his jaw. While other Pixies could make suggestions to the humans, what Tooty had done in the supermarket, getting the human to open the door by influencing his choices, was a clan secret. Suggestions were easily dismissed by most humans, and the other pixies had rarely been able to get a human swayed enough to do as intended.
*** A clan called FistMongers was constantly trying to get humans to physically fight one another, and was only successful by making physical objects move. A very infamous trick among them was to talk cats into knocking objects from surfaces for no apparent reason. It did involve risking ones safety by enticing the cat to believe the fairy was a tiny red light to be swatted at, and some had died in glorious tactics to achieve such feats. Cats were also not prone to suggestion, but they couldn't resist a brightly lit dot placed in the perfect location. The dot most times being the fairy itself. No scholar was sure if the cats could see the fairy itself in this form, but it was debated enthusiastically.***
What Fartmoodles could do with humans was almost direct communication. Steve regained his composure. "How did you know?"
Tooty stood silent, waiting for an answer. She had just learned the skill not that long ago and hadn't known about it until it was her turn to be taught it.
Steve said she was a natural, and better even than her mother.
OldRed answered this time, "One of our elder members was once friends with a pixie of your clan in the old lands. They would often sneak off to human grounds and ... "
KettleStruck finished for Red, "They would cause mischief of legend."
Tooty tried to imagine what pixie it must have been to cause the kind of bravo-ed tones happening between Kettle and Red. Steve was excited, "Who? Who was it?"
Red and Kettle made a hand gesture that resembled a great claw, and then what could not be mistaken, 'NO'. "We can not tell you."
Tooty remembered the piece of cloth in her vest, "What can you tell us about this stuff in the water?" She unfolded it and the Gremlins both had to stop themselves from backing away suddenly.
"That's what is making our kind ill. The younglings got into it, thinking it was pretty, something from our great Shepard. They were down for days. We had to take them to our sunniest clearing in these woods to keep them from blinking away." Kettle picked the cloth out of Tooty's hand carefully avoiding the spots where the liquid shimmered.
Red stepped forward, "I'm going to show them KettleStruck." Kettle held the cloth out. OldRed put one green wrinkly hand on it to demonstrate. The skin began to fade. A dimly glowing skeleton shape in glistening lime-green fog.
Kettle pulled the cloth away. "That's enough. We can't have you getting sick on us too." Tooty took it from KettleStruck and walked to the fire. She tossed it in, letting the vile thing burn. The thing sparked and hissed, sending tiny wisps of white-hot embers from its surface.
Steve wrote more notes. "We shouldn't try to burn it." Steve pointed to a torch in the distance that had been placed by the huts set up for himself and Tooty.
*** The Gremlins, while having no issue with doing the extra work to put the structures up, had been thoroughly baffled that Tooty and Steve did not sleep in the same space. According to BrewMinister, the safest and more logical thing to do for creatures that required such a state of unconsciousness would be to be side by side, in a group. The others had nodded in agreement with BrewMinister. ***
Steve then pointed to the embers still emanating from the cloth. "If it isn't safe to touch, it is probably more dangerous when it has that kind of reaction."
Tooty noticed the scouts had returned and gathered around a large black cauldron that they were.... what looked like, urinating in.
KettleStruck let out a snort and a giggle when Tooty's concern couldn't be hidden in her face. "It's tradition, to bring a little brew with us on these missions. It loosens the human's tongues, and we need to find out what that poison is."
Steve looked over at the gathering around the pot. "Oh well, that makes sense!"
Tooty admired Steve's ability to glean information from the world around them, but in this case, she was pretty sure she did not want to know what 'made sense'.
***************************************
After the scouts had tracked the shiny liquid to an empty reservoir labeled with a town companies logo, A plan had been established.
The small crew of Pixie and Gremlin stood at the portal erected to enter the town built up around the companies factories.
The younglings hopped around the three of them, (BrewMinister, Tooty and Steve) begging to come along. They had chosen the form of tiny barn owls at the fire the night before and hadn't changed since.
The younglings hopped around the three of them, (BrewMinister, Tooty and Steve) begging to come along. They had chosen the form of tiny barn owls at the fire the night before and hadn't changed since.
Tooty and Steve looked to BrewMinister to handle the little ones. They now understood BrewMinister's role was warrior and mischief master. The younglings wanted the warrior's approval.
"When you are recovered, I promise." The two little ones bowed their feathery heads. Tooty watched them hop away and hoot between themselves. BrewMinister led Tooty and Steve through the portal.
In an instant, the small Trio stood behind the local bar. "Our scouts have been keeping track of our target, they say the human is here, with his workmates tonight." Steve was admiring the scent coming from the giant dumpster sitting beside the back door.
BrewMinister continued. "We need to know where they keep it, how to destroy it. The human is seen entering and exiting the place that smokes and stinks.
Steve nodded in agreement. "We may get more information that can give us a better solution. In our experience, no matter how much you try to get the humans to stop doing something dangerous, they will just keep doing it."
Tooty nodded. "They'll just make more."
BrewMinister, taking the form of an enormous cockroach climbed the wall beneath the open window. Brew waved with foggy brown wings from the sill when they were sure the place was safe. Tooty and Steve flew up and crawled under the wooden pane. The kitchen was clean but old and worn. The cook, they had been told, was also the bartender, and she was not to be disturbed if at all possible. There was a certain respect for the human that the Gremlins were not keen to explain.
They made it behind the bar without any issue, and found the target sitting in the corner at a large round booth with the other factory workers. They dressed in similar attire, except the one in the blue suit jacket, he was the one they needed. BrewMinister, hiding behind the bottles of vodka was changed back to traditional form, and pulling out the Gremlin brew. They nodded among one another and Tooty and Steve made their way over to the table to listen to the human's talk. Four of them had drinks, but the suited man had only water.
One of the four tried to offer him a shot glass.
"You know I don't drink." The suited man pushed the glass back at the employee. "You guys have fun, it's bonus week, I'm paying."
Tooty frowned. "Well, the brew is out of the question."
Steve and Tooty listened to the humans talk about sports, movies, and someone at the factory they referred to as "that Dingus." The suited man spoke up when the conversation about the person turned to malicious comments. "I'm not supposed to let you all know this, but the reason he's gotten so bitter, is because his brother down in waste management just got diagnosed with Cancer again."
The employees looked ashamed of themselves. Tooty took the opportunity to get up on the suited man's shoulders. She cleared her throat and yelled into his ear. "WHAT IS IN THE FACTORY?" The suited man stiffened and held up his glass of water. "To Gabe, and all those lost to that vicious disease." The others raised their glasses too, and a somber shadow fell over the group.
Steve fluttered off to talk to BrewMinister. When he came back, Tooty had made her rounds to each of the people at the table, and tried to get them to say what was in the factory. "I'm not sure what to do Steve."
Steve was holding the gremlin brew.
"But it won't work with the water, the Gremlins said it has to have a really distinct flavor to cover it's presence." Steve then walked over to the menu sitting in front of who they now knew was called 'boss', and kneeled in prayer. Tooty followed when she saw the picture and the human words written below it.
"Wet Burrito, extra spicy"
Steve finished his little prayer, and stood. Tooty knew what needed to be done.
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