S2.4: My hero

“Where was I? Oh yes: that didn’t help me because he was miles away and he’s only a snail.” 

“A racing snail!” 

“Yes, but how fast can a racing snail really slither? My bulb attackers just smirked, sniggered, belched and farted and then began, horribly, to sing.” 

“Hang on, haven’t we heard this bit before?” pTravis interrupts.

“Yes but haven’t you watched early Doctor Who?” Masongill sounds wearily patient in the face of such ignorance, like a better informed younger brother mildly correcting his slightly dim older sibling. “They often start the next episode with the last bit of the previous one! It isn’t really polite to mention it.” 

“Shut up, both of you! This is my story!” - Lottie - “They began to sing. I couldn’t understand it, of course, but Alcock later told me what it meant.” 

She shudders and continues: 

“Look at my fingers moving, moving,

Look at my fingers moving!
Fingers moving all the time.
Fingers moving just like mine.
Look at my fingers moving, moving,
Look at my fingers moving!

Fingers!

Fingers!

Moving!

“So I watched Fabian coming towards us. And it seemed to me that he approached in two ways: gradually, at first. He didn’t seem to get any closer at all - and the bulbs thought they had time for a second verse and some more, err.. ‘flatulence’., - and then suddenly…

“I realised, they were both dead. 

“It wasn’t very nice, actually.” 

There is a short period of silence in the den as everyone realises that this is a rather more difficult short tale to tell than they had all assumed. 

“What happened then?” 

“Well to be honest, this is where it all begins to go a bit fuzzy. But I think Fabian retrieved Anduril: Flame of the West and offered her to me on the ground, hilt first, and then he must somehow have got me onto his shoulders and carried me home.”