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Julio thought
for a minute, to the tune of the fairy music,
harp and violin … and then said: "Eat
or starve. That is the question." There
was a moments silence and they both dug in.
Hhhmm mmm hhhmmm, it was heavenly. The juice
of the berries was running down their chins,
and with whipped cream on their noses, who
cared if it was enchanted? Julio looked like
a clown: whipped cream from ear to ear streaked
with red strawberry juice, with just a hint
of blackberries outlining his mouth. Granma
had to laugh. When she did, all of the fairies
stopped playing music and little giggles were
heard way up high towards the ceiling.
Then from the back of the mushroom, in the direction
where da Muff has disappeared, there came roarous laughter.
Out rolled a huge, blubbery, roly poly, yellow-green
catepillar with a pink tummy. When he laughed again,
his whole pink belly shook like a bowl of jello. He
inch-wormed his way over to Granma and Julio … looked
up something in a book, (that looked suspiciously like
a dictionary) and wheezed out between laughs: Je- loooo
! Je-loooo tu UUUUUU! Julio and Granma looked at each
other, their faces wiped clean now with napkins of
velvety forest leaves, and decided the caterpillar
was tyring to say : Hello to you! So they grinningly
twisted up their mouths like his, and hollered right
back: Jelllooooo ! TuUUUUU Tuuuuu !
Then they all had a good laugh. The caterpillar must
be the owner of the huge mushroom they figured out
… and the fairies were like servants or something. "Maybe
he is the King?" said Julio. "We can call
him King Cat!" and they laughed again! Then all
the fairies laughed too and the caterpillar. The place
was roaring with laughter until King Cat was on his
back in spasms of laughter with tears coming out his
big round eyes, and he couldn’t get up. After a good
45 minutes, Granma decided that he really couldn’t
get up and she would have to help him. His belly rolled
back and forth, pink to cream and back again, while
she took hold of one of his spikey little arms. "Julio,
give me a hand will ya’?" asked Granma. So Julio
got on the other side … and as smart as he was, he
used a forest floor leaf-napkin to grab hold of the
spikey arm and they counted : "one, two, three
~ pull!" They didn’t exactly manage to set him
upright, but they did get him rolled over onto his
belly so he could inch-worm around. And this was just
fine, for this is what he did anyway. So he inched
on over to the hearth and folded himself up into a
puddle. He looked like pink and cream pudding folded
up with mint green edges and a kinda pointy darker
green head on top. His huge yellow eyes rolled with
laughter. He folded his spikey green arms around his
belly, as much as for balance as anything, I think,
and there he sat, while the apron fairies returned
with new plates of delicacies.
This time the plates were covered with something
brown that looked like steak, except it was kinda
pointy at one end …. Granma poked Julio in the
side and whispered: "earthworm, I betcha’." The
sides of the plate were garnished with something
green that looked like moss and a round, red,
radish-like thing. Julio says: "Well the
brown thing is crispy and smells good; I’m gonna
bite it and see if it’s alive ! Hahahaha! Then
all the fairies started laughing again and the
roly poly caterpillar laughed so hard he fell
over. A myriad (that’s about 50) fairies took
little pinches of his skin and stretched him
back up into sitting position. He tried not to
laugh again, but you could see his stomach almost
bubbling up with laughter. However he quite controlled
himself long enough to down 7 plates of the brown
stuff, garnish and all. So Granma, amazed, that
he didn’t keel over and neither did Julio, tried
a teensy weensy bit with her eyes closed. It
was delicious … something between a mushroom,
an eggplant and filet mignon. You know what that
is right? Some very expensive kinda meat in our world.
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