“I always wanted to break down the 4th wall,” Alice responded when I asked her if she liked her new home in the woods. “Now I can speak directly to you, the observer! We have no barriers between us.”
“Ka,” exuded Ka to her left, also joyful. “Skwi,” squeaked Skwi in glee to her right. If Mistress Alice is okay with this then her pet cat and squirrel respectively are too. Let the Flathardt experience commence!
Oh. I guess I should explain where we are. It’s a bit difficult. Let’s just move around and see who else is here and I’m sure everything will become crystal clear as soon as possible.
“Where do you want the Big Arm,” issued Ted the dump truck driver, tired from a long journey across upper Woodlawndia to get here.
“Just over there. Beside the Big Banana,” said pointing Pinky, sort of a manager here I suppose and dependent on outside help until the village gets its own fleet of trucks and drivers. “Ellie, give him a, er, *hand* if you don’t mind.”
“Sure thing,” the elephant said after they all had a chuckle over the joke, even tired Ted, although he laughed the least. Still about 5 seconds.
Not really becoming clear yet… oh, here’s another group to investigate.
“This giant frog skin is soo smooth and colorful,” gushes Pantomime Penny to her father or perhaps her brother.
“Don’t touch it,” he says down to her. “Warts,” he summarizes. I was thinking poison and I believe by the look the lamb is giving him she did too.
Well, let’s just back up, zoom out. Out out out.
There we are. That grove of green pine trees, with undergrowth consisting only of rhododendron which you can’t really see from the air. And, most remarkable, despite this being the top of a hill, all land in this grove is completely and utterly flat. Hence the name Flathead, as in flat head of a hill. Plus that whole Montana thing we’ll get back to in a while.
The toy avatars that are already here debated whether to name their new community the same as the hill, Flathead, or instead go with Flatheart, meaning the heart of the hill since their community is much smaller than Flathead itself and in the basic center or “heart” of everything. At least in their eyes. They settled on a portmanteau of sorts: Flathardt, 1/2 head 1/2 heart (kind of). And one of the more vocal citizens at the meeting was a big Dale Earnhardt fan and owned a #8 toy race car in his honor (see right of frog above). So that probably played a role in the compromise name too.
What next for Flathardt? I’m guessing toy train tracks, since I’ll be the one hauling them up here and laying them down. I wanted to bring the tracks up today but I couldn’t find them in the junk heap that is our basement. So I settled for some other toys. Hopefully tomorrow, then. Weather should be okay again.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 