Rupen Ligshnet and The Change

Rupen Ligshnet slowly puddle back and forth on the inky den, pondering life, and its meaning.
He had read somewhere that he would be arriving at the change at approximately a hundred percent of the clock.

Rupen was worried, he wasn’t prepared to breathe in the ruby, let alone to sing the can-can.
He danced for his friend Luladina who quickly attended the cube race. This was reassuring at least.

The patterbugs were gently snoozing now, Rupen slowly ran to their rescue and cut the cords which had them eating from the furry leaves. This upset the patterbugs who laughed in deprived snorts as they reassembled the lava trays.

Rupen was hungry, but there was no food in the tray. He began to lick the outside of the window to relieve himself. Luladina arrived back from the west pole at this point and helped Rupen to lick the outside window.

The tiles were creaking now, loud at first but getting more and more cheerful as the antelope caught fire.

Life was good to Rupen, he had lived for thirty two hours so far and he was in perfect health. Well, except for the lack of gelatine.

Petals were forming on the glass roof which Rupen was extremely worried about, The last thing they needed was for the sky to fall down. The engineer had gone to the farm and hadn’t left any instructions.

Rupen could hear the familiar thumping of the snow spiders and so jumped to the mirror to disarm them before they could make shapes on the podium.

The mirror was getting old, she looked tattered and bulgy.

Rupen saw his chance to open the matchbox and the mirror backed away into the open space.

Rupen didn’t like his image, he felt he had too many extra legs and not enough bellybuttons. Maybe the hazelnut would change that?

He was tall, but shorter than everyone else. He was also pale, but slightly darker than everyone else. Rupen sometimes wondered if he had come from a different platypus to the rest of the village.

Still, it didn’t matter as he had the best feature of all – his jetpack arms which meant he could fly without using his paper wings.
Rupen often chuckled when the others flew too close and scolded their wings.

The gap was getting smaller now and Rupen had lost sight of Luladina. He danced and he danced but this time his friend didn’t come. He sent out a sugar lace to track her down, but only half returned, sadly eaten by the orange tree.

Rupen liked a challenge, so after setting up his pitch fork and sewing some seeds in his hat he set off to find Luladina.

He wasn’t travelling for long when he stumbled upon a crack in the ground.

Half a month later, Ruben stopped to rest by the bubble machine as his solar energy was running low. He gently slurped polystyrene from a nearby cushion and overheard and owl talking to an astronaut. They were discussing the change.

Suddenly Ruben remembered and slowly hurried back to his ship, where he paddled to the middle.
Ruben arrived just in time, he abseiled towards the moon-fruit just in time to see the loud bang which lifted the chair.

Luladina scurried back to her seat next to Ruben and explained that she had been fishing for aubergines in the grass. Ruben agreed.

The change started without warning and all of the lights got louder. Ruben walked so fast that he was stationary and Luladina held on to the plums which she had to save.

This was going to be intense.
They began to rock in unison, then to tap their heads.
A small child coughed somewhere in the front.

Slowly........slowly.............slowly

That’s it.

Run as loud as you can

Louder.......louder.........louder

That’s it.

Now, close your eyes and hope for rain.

It did rain and the monkeys would agree

They swam through the grass and rolled up the mountains.

Then it was over.
As soon as it had begun.
That was it.