A Bit to Read

Well it’s that time again! I asked for words and you gave me words! LOTS of them. Today I asked for “fun” words, whatever that meant to the person offering, and we got a range.

So here’s the other fun part where I string them together and we get a story. I hope you enjoy! This one is…out of this world. The word list is at the end for ease of reading.

Look. The universe only turns 15,986,905,283 once, and for that reason, Xeguiowey, or Xeggie to her friends, volunteered to throw it an appropriate rollicking-good party, which was probably the worst decision she’d ever made in her tri-fold life. Tri-fold, because like everyone else in her corner of the galaxy, she could exist in three separate timelines.

No, no, not simultaneously, that was only the Clacoothas from the 87th Sector, of which everyone else was alternatively scornful and profoundly jealous, and where the phrase “like you have a third of a brain,” came from, even though they had their full brains everywhere.

But the constant ribbing had most Clacoothas a little grumpy in general interactions with beings from everywhere else. Not to mention restive; since they were always in all three timelines, it got annoying waiting for the tri-folds to catch up and they weren’t ones to keep those thoughts concealed in any of them.

Which is why Xeggie soon regretted the offer, given she was paired up Lsimon, a Clacootha from Quadrant 9 who’d been living in Universe Core since he was a pup, in 2 out 3 timelines. He was also a vociferous know-it-all in 3 out of 3 timelines, which, she was mercifully grateful, she only had to experience one at a time.

It wasn’t an ideal situation for throwing an event of this magnitude.

“Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy,” said Lsimon, mounds of glitter confetti pouring through his Swiss-cheese palms into a snaking rainbow on the floor as he sifted it into packets for the anti-grav. With proper dispersal, it would hang, weightless, in the air, mimicking the universe’s first galaxy.

“A what?” Suppressing a giggle, Xeggie paused mid-leap to hang mercury streamers. She twisted only her top half to face Lsimon, given she knew how he’d take being laughed at.

Having already had this conversation in another timeline, he steamrolled ahead. “Simple bacchanalia. That’s what we should be doing. Not all this…” he sneered his rubbery face, “glitter.” And then successively in the others: “Glitter. Glitter.”

One timeline with Lsimon was more than enough. Three were egregious.

“And,” he continued imperiously, “what’s with all the focus on that has-been little planet of one-ers, the one that molly-whopped itself out of existence?” He wiggled his nose-stem in the direction of a blue-green sphere, now resting on a cluttered folding table, soon to be launched with the glitter and thousands of other planet spheres.

Xeggie lowered herself gently to the floor, and her voice took on a harsh edge as she scanned the room to be certain they were alone. “Hey,” she said, almost a squawk, “you know that way, way, way, way, way back my ancestors took to the skies of that place, and then really took to the skies–“

“Yes, yes, you were something called ‘crows,’ you can stop cawing about it in all the timelines.”

“It’s not all the timelines.”

“Oh, it is. I mean what even is it with these relics?” He gestured vaguely to the rest of the table with the Earth sphere, covered in artifacts.

Xeggie, flummoxed, froze for a moment, but recovered quickly, striding over to the table with muddy brown sphere dotted with silver pockets and yellow clouds. “Oh, and we’re not representing your origins?” she said, picking up a bumpy grey rock. “I mean what even is this?”

The rock let out a happy chirp. Startled, she let it go. In the air it floated, carouseling in a circle. Two other rocks, one pink, one green, joined it.

“I see you’ve met Lsteven,” said Lsimon. He walked over to the Earth table and pushed at something. “What about that? What does it even mean?”

“What?” She said, unable to tear her eyes away from the chirping rocks. Now there were six and soon nine; they wove above and below each other, cavorting as if they were playing an air-based game of Double-Dutch. Their chirps merged and got louder and they sounded like a merry-go-round calliope, a thing that had never existed in their sliver of the vast universe.

“I’d be careful, don’t get too mesmerized, that’s how they get you. I’m talking about this,” said Lsimon, sweeping a banner off of the folding table, holding it up. Slowly, the word “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” slid across the face of it, whole on the banner for only a moment before one part of the word or the other disappeared off the end and wrapped itself around again.

“It’s an ancient Earthen greeting,” said Xeggie, her tone belying her hurt. “It means we’re all connected.”

The mood only lasted a moment, however, as Lsteven and the other rocks, now in a whirlwind formation, wound over to a table with an exact miniature replica–well, not so much a replica as the actual thing shrunk down–of the first bi-planetary InstaTram. The name was more aspirational than anything else, given it actually took sixteen years each way, but the rocks didn’t seem to mind as they boarded the mini and launched into a joyride around the room, zinging and zagging and knocking planets to the floor.

“Can you control these things?” said Xeggie as they whizzed past her ear-hole, barely missing her long, sharp mouthnose.

“No,” said Lsimon. “I told you not to touch them.”

“No you didn’t,” she said.

“Give it a second.”

“Well, it wasn’t in this timeline so it didn’t do any good. What’s your problem with Earth, anyway?” She ducked as Lsteven and the gang dive-bombed her, ramming into the glitter table and sending it everywhere. “Lsunnyside isn’t exactly the nicest planet in the universe to be from.”

Xeggie poked at one of the yellow clouds on the working representation of the planet. It was spongy and it hissed. Which was fortuitous, because Lsteven et al. froze, mid-air, at the sound, and zoomed back toward the table, glitter drifting in their wake.

“I’m not actually from Lsunnyside,” said Lsimon.

“What? I didn’t quite hear that.”

“I’m not actually from Lsunnyside. I’m…all of us…are originally from…Earth.”

Xeggie paused her attempt to summon the BroomBot, which was wholeheartedly resisting in its typical display of slothiness. “From Earth?”

“Yes,” he said reluctantly. “Your people…used to eat my people.”

“I very much doubt that.”

“Mealworms. You’re from crows and I’m from…mealworms.”

“Oh,” said Xeggie. “Oh. Ohhh.”

“I mean we’ve come a long way,” Lsimon said quickly. “Those Lsunnyside clouds helped.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Xeggie pushed the closest planetoid to her back and forth across the table like lumpy ball, trying to be casual while pretending not to be awkward. “It was a long time ago though,” she said, “wasn’t it?”

“It was.” Lsimon avoided eye contact.

“I mean supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, right?”

“Sure, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” Lsimon said weakly.

“Should we get this party going?” Xeggie said a little too brightly, heading for the anti-grav.

“OK,” said Lsimon, squaring his should humps. “Let’s.”

And together they threw a shindig the whole universe would remember. In all three timelines.

Our words were: Flummoxed; confetti; fuddy-duddy; crows; giggle; party; bacchanalia; rainbow; supercalifragilisticexpialidocious; Double-Dutch; restive; joyride; magnitude; calliope; rollicking; chirp; Molly-whopped; fortuitous; slothiness; cavort/cavorting; vociferous; egregious, carouseling!