Chapter 22. Oreo and Oleo Find Moon Park
The trolls, to a beast, were beginning to feel a little woozy, a little unstable, a little cross-eyed from the hotdogs they had eaten. Botulism, as the reader surely knows, is serious business. While trolls are hardy creatures, and have some amount of immunity to various bacteria that might wipe out whole human populations, certainly the toxins within their bodies were making themselves known.
It’s bad to be sick, of course. It’s worse to be sick while away from the comforts of home: one’s own rocky bed, one’s own dank atmosphere, rich with the strongly aromatic exudations of other trolls, one’s own…well, one’s own people. When you’re sick and not at your best, you want to be able to look around and notice that others, though they might not be sick, are rather miserable anyway. It was difficult enough walking upon the land, with all its potential for over-stimulation; their sickness only made it worse. And, though the dark of night was preferable to daylight, the dark of night wasn’t what it had been in the days of the mastodon: now, the night was pierced by the lights of town. Those lights, in addition to the fact that they glared uncomfortably in the eyes of the trolls, revealed all manner of things that the trolls didn’t want to see.
Still, trolls have it within them to be indomitable. At least for the present, they were able to put their discomforts behind them. They could ignore their rumbling guts for the time being. They made efforts to walk in straight lines, unimpeded by the occasional bouts of dizziness. They focused their attention in such a way that their eyes only rarely showed them two objects when they were actually looking at one. Trolls, through the millennia of their evolution as the toughest customers on the planet, had learned to ignore all sorts of unpleasantries when they had to.
Oreo and Oleo, though, were different. Where most of the trolls were uncomfortable, they were not. They delighted in the fact that their bodies weren’t working as they normally did. With the confidence that comes with youth, they knew that they were indestructible. No troll throughout history, they knew, had ever died of disease or illness. Perhaps their constitutions were strong, or maybe their lives were exciting and violence-prone enough that none of them lived long enough to really get sick. In either case, Oreo and Oleo weren’t worried. When they felt the botulism brewing within them, they thought it was a hoot. They particularly enjoyed the new sensations of dizziness. They zigzagged down the street in an exaggerated fashion, showing off for each other how they could be knocked nearly over by their spinning heads and churning guts, but still remain upright. It was great fun, they thought, to weeble and wobble but not fall down.
They had noticed, however, that the street was awfully hard. Young trolls often have skinned knees, Oreo and Oleo more than most. They moved off of the street and into the grass in a rare moment of caution.
This grass was interesting to them. Where the dinosaur age had sported a lush jungle, and the ice age a flat white wasteland, the grass seemed to lie somewhere between the two. It was green like the jungle, but flat like the ice-scarred plains. It looked for all the world like a huge expanse of mold growing upon the land. A huge expanse, they noted, upon which a single tree reached toward the sky: the beginnings of a new jungle? But the grass felt good beneath their feet, and had an interesting if somewhat fresh smell.
The trolls didn’t get much time to examine the grass, however, before a surprising thing happened. Now, trolls always enjoy the various sounds that their bodies make. Under the duress of botulism, their bodies strained and gurgled with even more interesting noises. Trolls, as we know, always derive a sort of smug satisfaction from their digestive system’s ability to produce gaseous green belches; young trolls all the more so. Oleo, though, was shocked speechless when one of these belches coincidentally accompanied a hiccup. This combination produced not just a small green cloud, but an actual ring of green haze—a smoke ring, except green—that leapt from his mouth of its own accord, then wafted away on the slight breeze.
Oreo saw it too. “Whoa,” he said, impressed to the point of almost religious ecstasy. Both of the trolls stood on the grass at the edge of the park trying to replicate this feat, but to no avail. They produced lots of belches, a few hiccups, and no small amount of aromatic green gas, but no further smoke rings.
This didn’t depress Oleo’s mood, however. Once it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to control his smoke ring production— clearly, smoke rings were a rare bestowal of providence—he walked over to Oreo and put his arm around his shoulder in a comradely way. “Listen,” he said, then belched. He waved away the green fumes—he had had his fun with them—then extended his hand, palm up, out in front of him. He looked Oreo right in the eye. “Listen,” he repeated. His tone was grave. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Oreo counted. “One, two, three…uh, four, five, six. Six!” he answered with gravity. After a moment, though, a look of confusion crept across his face, followed by an embarrassed grin. No troll, of course, had six fingers. He refocused on his twin brother’s hand, then said, “Three? No wait.” He reached out and grabbed Oleo’s hand by the wrist. He willed his eyes to show him the truth, and counted again. “One, two, three, four, five, six.” He glared at Oleo’s hand in consternation. He refocused his eyes. This was a more difficult problem than he thought it would be. But then the appropriate problem solving tactic occurred to him. He grabbed Oleo’s first finger and bent it painfully backwards. “One!” he said.
“Ouch!” cried Oleo, but he was still grinning.
Oreo proceeded apace. He bent down a second finger,“Two!”
He was about to bend down the third standing finger when Oleo crumpled into laughter. Oreo had begun to laugh as well. “Three! Three fingers!” cried Oreo through his chuckles.
But Oleo was so lost in his laughter that he could no longer stand up straight. With his arm around his brother’s shoulder, he swooned. Oreo tried to prop him up, but he overcompensated for his brother’s large mass and the two dropped to the grass in a heap. They didn’t even try to stand up. Instead, they both rolled over onto their backs, their dizziness having gotten the better of them. As they lay there, they enjoyed the slowly spinning crazyquilt of patterns in the sky. Dizziness, Oreo thought, was a mighty fine thing.
Deeply satisfied, his eyes followed the arcs of the stars that swam across his vision. This, he thought, was the life. Here above ground, there were interesting things to experience, even if the fresh air did leave you feeling like you might faint. But, he thought, he could get used to that. Suddenly, Oreo felt fully alive. He felt hopeful about the future. He felt, oddly enough, as if he had found his true home. For the first time in his life, he was deeply satisfied.
He sighed into the night. These thoughts, he knew, couldn’t be communicated with any fullness. That didn’t bother him, though. His heart was full. Oreo took a deep breath and exclaimed his newfound joy across the grassy sward: “Three!” he said. “Three fingers!”