A fairytale for Gogollescent
the bare outlines of which I totally have not sort of, uh, cannibalised from The Last Serious Silm Fanfic That I Definitely Will Write Someday
Once upon a time...
... a mouse was wandering beside a vast lake when a bronze beech leaf came tumbling over a waterfall. Only, it wasn't a beech leaf, it was a coracle -- since after all, paddles are easy to come by, for mice. So are fishing lines. In he jumped and drifted away (it was a sunny day and his wife expected him to bring back dinner, which might as well be a minnow or two) and when he closed his eyes, everything went hazy...
Maybe he went to sleep, because when he opened his eyes again, his coracle was a galleon. "Get up, get up!" said the admiral, who was an earwig. Everywhere scurried a crew of industrious ants in tricorn sailors' hats. "We're heading for the idyll!"
The fishermouse yawned and rubbed his eyes. "What idyll?"
An ant passing by paused for a moment in its duty. "The idyll of our ancestors, of course!"
This did not help at all. The fishermouse stretched his eyes wider and twitched his tail puzzledly (because puzzledly is entirely a proper adverb). "What?"
"It's really very simple," said the earwig admiral. "Once upon a time, the ant-ancestors crossed the lake in search of a fabled idyll. Ever since then, the ants who remained have been searching for a way to get across the water and join them. Now they have! Well, to be more precise, they came to us earwig-mariners and we loaded them all onto this galleon, but that's close enough. Now beshrew yourself, sir! We have work to do!"
"'Beshrew'?" said the fishermouse, more puzzled than ever. "Sir, I am no shrew. I am a mouse! and proud of it!"
"That's all very well, my fine mouse," said the earwig admiral, "but it doesn't change the fact that there's a great deal of work to be done before we cross the waters. The dragonflies will be here any minute!"
"Dragonflies --?"
And out of the bright sky came humming dragonflies! one, two, three, four of them: blazing streaks of glass-blue in spiral formation, hovering above the water ahead of the creaking galleon. At once the activity across the deck intensified and the admiral rushed forwards on his multiple legs crying out orders to do with harnesses and buckles and all manner of bewildering things, so that the fishermouse staring after him was quite bewildered and really didn't know what was going on. "Oh!" he said at last. "They're harnessing the dragonflies!"
As indeed they were. "Very good!" said the earwig admiral, bustling back across the deck. He readjusted his hat and beamed at the fishermouse, waving his mandibles. "Now grab hold of something --"
The fishermouse had time only to seize a nearby rope before the dragonflies took off -- and out of the lake came the galleon behind them, streaming water, the wind rushing through the rigging and snatching at everything that was not tied down. "Whoooooooooooooooo!" cried the earwig admiral. "Isn't this wonderful? isn't it glorious? Have you ever seen such a thing?"
"Marvellous," gasped the fishermouse as a stray ant's hat tumbled past him, followed by a distinctly distressed-looking ant. "I haven't!"
On sailed the galleon through the blue skies. The journey seemed to last an eternity -- or maybe it was only minutes -- the fishermouse found it impossible to tell. At last it became apparent that they were floating lower, the dragonflies drilling downwards through the clear air. The fishermouse was for a moment afraid that their remarkable equipage was losing strength and was going to abandon them in the middle of the water; but: "There!" said the earwig admiral, "we're about to arrive!"
The fishermouse wriggled to the rail, still clutching his safety rope, and peered down. Below them sprawled a white city of marble and pillars and shining golden domes. "Is that what an idyll looks like?" he said doubtfully.
"It's what an idyll looks like when you build on it," said the earwig admiral. "If I'm not much mistaken, I can see a whole lot of lost ant-ancestors scurrying about in the streets. We'd better not land down there. Dragonflies! straight on until you see an empty field!"
They landed -- safely. The fishermouse crawled out of the upturned galleon and brushed himself down, somewhat shaken. "What now?"
"Now?" said the earwig admiral, bouncing over the grass. "Why, now we watch benignly as our friends reacquaint themselves with their long-lost relatives!"
Which was indeed happening. The ant-sailors were smartening themselves up in anticipation and a stream of ants had already begun to pour out of the idyllic city. "How delightful!" cried the earwig admiral, beaming. "How positively heartwarming! How absurdly charming and unspeakably adorable! How --"
"Point taken!" said the fishermouse, curling his tail gingerly to see if he'd broken anything during the landing. "It is all very -- sweet."
"I believe you have no soul," said the earwig admiral, shaking his head sadly. "Come now, surely there shall be a parade?"
There was a parade. There were intricate and elaborate celebrations. There was a banquet of a thoroughly unsubtle nature. And there was music and laughter and merriment throughout the idyllic city and the admiral, whose name turned out to be Lord Earwig the Bold, danced until dawn with the ant-king's daughter. (You should know better than to ask how their legs meshed together. The answer would probably be unedifying anyway.) Which would have been perfectly acceptable, except that two days later when the fishermouse and the earwig-mariners loaded themselves merrily back into their upturned galleon and the dragonflies came humming back down from the bright blue sky, the ant-king's daughter went with them.
"Don't you worry about your father," the earwing admiral was saying when the fishermouse curled up sleepily in a coiled heap of rope by one of the masts. "He'll never catch up with us! We'll live happily ever after..."
... which was the last thing the fishermouse remembered before waking up in his beech-leaf coracle by the lakeshore below the ruddy glow of sunset. His line was drifting across the tranquil water and his twig-paddle lay aslant in the bottom of the boat. He yawned and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Far overhead glittered the distant outline of a brilliant blue dragonfly.
We won't mention what his wife said when he came home without dinner.