Tales Between the Lines

I.7 Trespassers

"That's rich..." It had a high-pitched voice and tapped its foot. "A bunch of clowns trampling my garden. What do you want? And why haven't you turned into atomic jelly by my gravitational inhomogeneity?"

Destiny took a step toward the thing and crossed her arms, too. "We're metaphors, we can be anywhere. And we're looking for Universe. And who are you, dear... thing."
"I'm The Big Black Grumpy Hole At The Center Of The Universe. But you can call me Blacky."

"Um, well, Blacky, very sorry to have landed in your beautiful garden without advance notice. It was far from our intention to trespass onto your property. In our defence... you really seem to have an overwhelming gravitational attraction."

Destiny, aware she was walking thin ice (grumpy black holes have a certain reputation for mercilessly crushing unwanted visitors, after all), gave her best to cover their faux-pas.

Surprisingly, the grumpy black hole's black-glossed lips stretched in a wide grin.
"Ha, and there's the final proof Universe was wrong. Only last week he insisted black holes were utterly unattractive to each and everyone. I just knew the bugger was lying."

Time scratched its scraggly beard.

"Obviously. But who would trust the word of a Universe that collects metaphors in its store. Metaphors live from being used, not stored. If they are left in storage for too long, they get forgotten, and their powers fade to nothing. It's quite similar as with Santa: If all the children stopped believing in him, he would fade away for sure."

Cat walked once around the roundish man in red still sitting in Blacky's cabbage spot. The sheer time it took the feline to complete this circle made clear it would take a lot of fading for Santa to cease to exist. Especially as he still munched on a fish pancake.
Cat glanced wistfully at the octarine sky, then threw a look of reproach at Time. "Tell me, where did this masterful five-star-cooking Spaceship son of yours disappear to? I could do with a second helping."

Time only shrugged, but the black hole immediately found his grumpy self again.

"Don't tell me you left a spaceship drifting in my private event horizon? Don't you know this is considered extremely rude and uncivilised? I reserve the right to pose a formal complaint with Universe itself."

Out of a belt pocket decorated with shiny metal studs, Blacky pulled a wad of very official looking forms and waved them in the friends' faces. He retrieved a pen from his black jacket. Its rear-end carried a small sphere, painted yellow, wearing dark glasses and a smile.

Santa was intrigued. "Oh, your pen has a cool-smile-emoji. Where can you buy these? They would make a great gift for the kids."

"Shut up." There was no trace of a cool-smile on Blacky's face. His face wasn't yellow either. "You'll now all give me your names and addresses."

Time hated being bossed around. "Fat chance." He took a step towards the black hole and crossed his arms in sulking defiance.

Blacky arched his eyebrows. "Okay, we can do this differently." He stowed the forms and pen away and retrieved a phone. A smartphone, but an old model, so it was not as smart as it could be.

He pushed its button. "He, Cereal, send a message to Universe."

"I see," the phone answered, "do you want me to look this up on the Internet for you?"
Blacky sighed, shook his head, tapped the device's screen and brought up Wattup. He selected Universe's profile and started speed-typing with his thumbs. Then he looked at his unwelcome guests with a menacing grin.

The unwelcome guests looked positively uneasy.

In a flash of light, a figure apparated. It wasn't a blinding flash of light, more of an octarine flicker, which would have made anyone barf if they had looked, at the same time, at Santa's red and white outfit and blue and yellow scarf. Fortunately, everyone's eyes were on the figure that was still doing its apparating.

The apparating was intentionally slow. The only thing Universe had ever done quickly was the big bang, and that had not gone well. So he materialised slowly.

When he finally had apparated fully, he gave the assembled folks his best glare. He knew Blacky as a highly attractive yet tiring nuisance, but the other figures ogling him looked familiar as well. "Well, who do we have here?"