) I wrote this one today.
Chandelier Story:
One day, Kristi got a brand new chandelier.
It was shiny, and had fishes, and seaweed, and and and more fishes.
Tenny and Gypsy and Arna happened to be there when the delivery truck brought it to the door. They enthusiastically volunteered to help Kristi install it. And, with Kristi standing on Happy's back and Arna standing on Happy's head and Tenny hanging from another chandelier and Gypsy being very smart and using the only ladder they bothered to find, they soon got it securely fastened in place.
"Yay!" everyone shouted. It was a grand moment.
Tenny examined it for a moment with much satisfaction, and then she announced, "It is time to try it out!"
"Yay!" everyone shouted again. Although Kristi seemed a little uncertain about the whole idea.
First, Gypsy and Tenny swung on the chandelier. Kristi ducked.
Then, Gypsy and Arna swung on the chandelier. Kristi hid underneath the giraffe.
And then Tenny and Arna swung on the chandelier. Kristi and the giraffe hid underneath the rug.
All would have been well, except that...
"Caspy!" shouted Arna, "There's not room for you up here!
"Oh, no." said Kristi. She hid her eyes.
"Craaaaccckkkk!" said the ceiling.
Everybody ducked behind something, for fear of breaking glass.
"CRASH!" said the chandelier on the floor.
"Eek!" shouted Arna, who wisely flew off of the chandelier before it fell.
"Oof!" said Tenny, who luckily fell a good ways away on the green couch.
I suppose that as it was Caspy's fault in the first place, it was only fair for him to get the worst of it. He screamed as he fell and ended up tangled up in the smashed chandelier in the middle of the floor.
Cautiously peeking out from their various hiding places, everybody slowly came out to examine the damage.
There was a largish hole in the ceiling. A robin curiously peered through it at the mess below.
Arna and Tenny were uninjured, as were everyone who had hidden.
Caspy, after being helped up and brushed off by Sir William and Sir Edward, limped off to go change. He seemed to be mostly ok.
But the poor chandelier... Kristi stared at it sadly.
"I suppose it won't work as a chandelier any more," said Happy, "but at least the fishes didn't break!" and she gathered them together and strung them together on a string and hung it across a window. The fishes sparkled in the sunlight. It cheered Kristi up a bit, but the rest of the chandelier had to be thrown away.
Happy climbed onto the ceiling to examine the hole. "Let's patch this up!" she said, so Kristi and Tenny and Gypsy went down to the treasure chamber and found a couple more ladders, and everyone helped to patch up the hole.
"I suppose that we need a new chandelier, again," said Kristi, who made a mental note to ask Lil to charge Caspy for the broken one.
"Oh, goody!" said Islie, brightening up.
Tenny got busy right away. She pulled a chandelier catalog out from under a cushion on the green couch. "I was saving this for just this sort of occasion," she said.
"Oooh!" said a chorus of voices. Kristi sat down on the couch and examined the catalog. Everyone gathered around to look too.
Some of the chandeliers were gaudy, some were just plain strange, and some were very un-Narnian. Some of them were exciting, though. Like the one with a decorative chicken coop in the middle of it. Arna started talking excitedly about chickens as soon as she saw that one.
"I hope you aren't wanting me to buy that thing?!" exclaimed Kristi, a bit alarmed.
"No, not really," said Arna.
Kristi was relieved. Nobody else particularly minded that, either. No matter how much one likes chickens, one generally does not want a chicken coop attached to a chandelier. Arna strongly suspected that chickens would be happier with the normal sort of coop, too.
Then there was the chandelier that had imitation icicles that would dangle nearly to the ground.
"Shiny!" said a few someones, but then another someone muttered something about how they'd always feel like the White Witch was just around the corner if there were year-round icicles in the room. Islie was relieved at this shift in the conversation, as she was afraid that she would always be running into such a very dangly chandelier as that.
"It's more complicated than you might think for one's head to be so far above one's feet," she explained. "Especially if one is rather absent-minded."
Kristi turned another page in the catalog and was immediately greeted by a poofy stained-glass frog chandelier. It seemed to be staring at her with a bored sense of superiority. She raised her eyebrows at it and quickly turned the page. She never liked her chandeliers to feel so much above her.
Then in quick succession were a pink and blue chandelier that doubled as a doll cradle, a golden chandelier that was sprawling and spirally and simply dripping with rubies and emeralds, and a chandelier that had little slides and tunnels and things for marbles to roll through.
Kristi turned another page and stopped. This one was perfect.
"Stars!" said Gypsy.
"Look, look, it's the big dipper!" said Islie.
The price was reasonable, so Kristi said, "Someone dig around in the treasure chamber for a bit of money. Let's get it."
Everybody cheered the fisherdess's decision and several persons started running around the treasure chamber looking for the modern American money hidden down there. (So much easier to buy with than gold and jewels!)
So the chandelier was ordered, and everyone waited anxiously for it to arrive. It seemed to take forever, but finally one day (the day after Caspy finally paid for the chandelier he broke), there was a knock at the door.
Upon opening the door, Kristi discovered a delivery Wiggle with a heavy-looking box. After placing the chandelier carefully on a table, he said, "Chandelier. It shall break within a fortnight, I shouldn't wonder."
"I certainly hope not!" said Kristi, looking meaningfully at Caspy.
"I don't think I like swinging on chandeliers," said Caspy, sulkily. "And falling from them is even worse."
"Good," said Kristi, and saw the marsh-wiggle out the door.
Then all was excited activity, opening the box, carefully taking out all the pieces, assembling it, and hanging it on the ceiling. And after it was up, everyone stepped back and sighed in satisfaction.
"The Big Dipper!" said Islie.
"Stars!" said Gypsy.
"Let's swing!" said Tenny and Arna in unison.
Kristi shuddered and hid behind the giraffe, but the swinging went on without any mishap.
First Arna and Tenny swung on the chandelier and scattered shiny star reflections all over the room and everyone in it.
Then Tenny and Gypsy swung on the chandelier and sang Christmas carols at the top of their voices.
Then Arna and Gypsy swung on the chandelier and dropped letter grades on everybody's heads.
While the letter grade shower was still going on, Purple Dragon wandered into the room, looking around for stray treasure to lay down on.
Presently, he looked up at the star chandelier. "Treasure!" he said. "Treasure... swing?" Purple Dragon stood up and put one dragonish paw on the chandelier (prompting much screaming from the kakapo and unicavvey seated thereon) and prepared to hoist himself up.
Kristi shouted, "DON'T YOU DARE!"
Purple Dragon looked at her in surprise. "I only wanted to swing," he explained in his most charming voice.
"NO." said Kristi. "You would break the brand-new chandelier and probably bring the entire ceiling down with it."
"Oh," said Purple Dragon, who hadn't thought past the lure of treasure. He took his paw off of the chandelier (and everyone sighed in relief, especially Kristi and Arna and Gypse) and sat down on the floor with a big bump that shook the entire room.
Purple Dragon considered for a few moments, and then said, "Perhaps I shall go down in the treasure chamber and find some treasure there instead."
"Yes, please!" everybody said. Purple Dragon was a bit surprised by their enthusiasm, as they usually merely tolerated his habit of borrowing treasure from the treasure chamber and leaving it all over the floor for everyone else to clean up. However, he certainly wasn't going to complain about it, so he wandered down to the treasure chamber, where Caspy helped him gather some nice, comfortably pokey treasure and bring it upstairs.
Purple Dragon settled down on his treasure heap, sighing contentedly.
Everyone else looked at the beautifully intact chandelier and sighed contentedly.
And now that Purple Dragon was settled down and not likely to cause any more mischief for the time being, Arna and Gypse climbed down from the chandelier, still a bit shaken from Purple Dragon's attempt to climb up onto it.
Kristi liked her brand new starry chandelier.Statistics: Posted by The Happy Islander — Sun Nov 17, 2013 3:23 am
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