Edemia World

Kibu came to my tent the morning of the Great Milking (which is what I’ve decided to call the Nourishment Festival). He looked a bit miffed that I wasn’t wearing my pink hat; he made me put it on and said I needed to get changed. “People have been putting their bowls up since dawn, Lady,” he said. Great.

Ten minutes later, I was escorted to the town centre in a sheet (which actually was more holes than sheet) and the hat. Pigmy bowls, guarded by sleepy, hungry, and eager-looking owners, lined the village from the town hall to the outskirts. An old Pigmy licked his lips as I waddled by.

Great.

I had sent word to Grok and the goblins via messenger worm. According to my calculations, it would take four hours for the worm to reach the farm, two hours for Grok to read the message, fifteen minutes for the gang to agree over who goes on the rescue mission, and four hours to get here, plus about an hour for finding their way back in case they get lost. They were already three hours late.

So there I was in the milking chair, the village elder standing before me with what I supposed was the milking... apparatus. Its center was lined with buttons, and from it extended several rubbery arms whose ends looked like giant purple lips. They were finishing the Nourishing Song, and a bunch of important-looking Pigmies (as important as you could look at two feet tall, anyway) marched up and took an arm each.

They had just started walking towards me when an ogre-shaped hole opened up in the fence and Grok came bounding up the aisle. Pigmy guards leapt into position and tossed up their best spears (eight whole inches!), which bounced unceremoniously off Grok’s knee calluses. Police carts drove up beside him and promptly got picked up and thrown aside. The old lip-licking Pigmy staggered onto the platform and stood before him, held out his walking stick, and hollered, “Lay not a finger on our Queen, you beast!”

Grok flicked him aside, pushed me out of the chair, and started rolling me out of the village, grumbling about how he’d had to pick his own worms for the last few days.

Most of the Pigmies were too shocked and/or scared to try and stop us, so we made our way out pretty easily. They came to their senses just as we were getting back on the forest path -- I could hear faint cries of “Our Queen!”, “Who shall feed us now?”, and “The hat! She still has the hat!”

That was two days ago. I’m back on worm duty and sort of missing the special treatment, but then I picture the milking apparatus and change my mind.

Oh and I gave the hat to Bob. Joe says next time we’re in Clockwork City, he’ll get him a dress to match.