23. Avalanche
Now that Stellaria found that her wings were no more frozen and she could fly again, there was no need to wade through deep snow. The magical starlight lantern would show her the way, so she wouldn’t even need to follow the path that was winding through hills and mountain passes. She would fly the shortest way to town, find Rattus and be on her way back to Cloud Thirteen in no time at all. How she would get back unnoticed was a problem, but she would think about it later. Now she flapped her wings and felt exhilarated. It had stopped snowing, the sky had cleared, and the mountains were bathing in starlight.
She flew up to a cliff and paused there to take her bearings. The town would be somewhere beyond the peak of the mountain. And the thieves had been returning to their cave… Stellaria turned to look back. Down below was the path, and the men from whom she had escaped were beginning to revive from the knockout avalanche. She was just about to turn her head away when she saw it.
“Oh, no,” she cried. “This can’t be!”
* * *
The two robbers were slowly coming back to their senses.
“What was it? A freight train?”
“It was you, you dimwit! You triggered an avalanche bellowing that stupid song.”
The rebuke died quickly, however, as they discovered that their precious prisoner and her magical lantern were gone. Even a bigger argument ensued and the men were grabbing each other’s throats. Then they saw a brown branch sticking from the snow and they both dived in to seize it. The branch was frozen solid to the ground, however, or…
The men’s bad tempers vanished instantly.
“Oh my, oh my, what do we have here. A fat little sheep!”
“Better a lamb in the roast than caviar and toast.”
And indeed, there was a lamb attached to the brown branch, which in fact was its leg. It was Flammulina.
Flammulina had turned back and followed Stellaria, she had seen how the thieves captured the little angel, and she had thought of a plan to rescue her. She had rolled down the mountainside as a snowball and hit smack in the middle of the target. And, oh well, things didn’t always go as planned. Now she was caught, and as good as roasted.
Flammulina tried to put on a fight but the men were stronger. They tied her legs together and hoisted her on the back of the smaller man.
“Remember, not a word to the boss about the treasures we lost.”
Then the men started talking about different ways of preparing roast lamb and arguing what was the juiciest and most delicious part of a lamb.
“And eyeballs, I gotta have the eyeballs…”
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