Philanthropus Wilding's Grand Day Out

© 1996 Steven Conoboy (UK)

The village of Maudlin was located slap-bang in the middle of the ginormous continent of Ammonia. It was a curious little village, not least for the fact that it was possibly the smallest of its kind.

The curiousness of the place brought it numerous visitors, all of whom, after seeing what their friends told them they absolutely had to, buggered off sharpish in the general direction of the next must-see tourist spot. Maudlin was certainly worth seeing. The miniscule population of approximately two hundred and fifty people lived, quite literally, in the forest.

The architecture of the place was a wonder in it's own right. Many of it's buildings had actually been carved into the stupidly broad trunks of the Ocean Trees. These trees, with their deep blue leaves and similarly coloured fruit, were the fat bastards of treedom.

Of course, anyone who stopped to think about it soon realised the name given to these trees was completely inaccurate, as the sea is not, in fact, blue, but the people of Maudlin, having never seen the ocean, didn't know this, so all could be forgiven.

This particular story goes back a long way, and concerns a young man named Philanthropus Wilding. His friends just called him Phil: you can guess why. One day, Phil was taking a brisk walk along one of the lesser known paths into Mellowed Wood, surrounded by the hazy blue of light filtered through the Ocean Tree canopy far above him.

He was very upset. He had earlier been involved in a bit of an argument with his father, the Head Geezer of the village, and Phil had stormed off in a huff. The reason for the argument?

He'd come home extremely late after a drunken binge. Phil had lost the debate, and so he went of for a brisk walk in the woods. He always went for a brisk walk when he was upset.

He must have been very upset, for, unusually for him, he walked deep, deep into the wood, leaving the path far behind him. For as far back as can be remembered, people have been warned never to stray too deep into the Mellowed Wood, as very strange things lurk there, hungry things, ugly things.

Phil had been warned as well when he was very young, and so he should have known better, but he was too steamed to think straight.

As he walked through the undergrowth, his foot snagged on a vine, he tripped and fell. However, instead of hitting the ground, Phil noticed something odd: he was still falling. He tumbled downward, downward, with earthen walls racing up past him. Seeing the bottom of this pit coming up to greet him at an extremely terrifying speed, poor Phil believed his life was about to end.

 

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