Land of Discard

[smudgeoffudge]

Pelbert the Poogle looked up at his owner with his new blue button eyes, he'd just been painted
plushie. "Aww, how cute!" his owner cooed and picked him up. Walking away from the Rainbow Pool,
Pelbert couldn't help but notice the admiring glances, or hear the people tell his owner
how very lucky they were. If they were all happy, why shouldn't he be? But inside he wasn't too
sure he liked his new look.

Back home, his owner sat him on the floor and he tried to walk around.

"Hey, I can barley move!" he complained.

"The paint brushes only affect your coloring, not your stats. See
here, it says you are 'super speedy' so you should still be able to move fast."

But Pelbert didn't think he could do it. After a while however, he found he could run around, it was just
a different kind of run. He had to wiggle and bounce to run, and it looked rather comical.
His owner thought it was the cutest thing, and it was kind of fun, like bouncing in a fun house.

"Why don't you go outside for a while, and I'll make some cookies." So away he went.

Like some kids will do, he soon forgot what he was doing and was not careful. He was running up
a hill and then rolling down the other side, when he fell into some bushes. If he hadn't been plushie
colored, he might have had a small scratch and thought nothing of it. But instead he got a rather
large rip! It was the first time he had gotten ripped, and it was tragic. Stuffing was poking out
of his rip, the tear seemed to get bigger each time he moved, and more stuffing seemed to come out.

"I'm ripping in half!" he screamed, but was too far away for his owner to hear him. No one else
seemed to be around, so he would have to make his own way home. "I hope I can make it home in
one piece!" he whimpered. He was running down the street when he suddenly fell into a large
puddle of mud. When he came out, he looked awful.

"Eeek! A Mud monster! Help!" someone screamed, but he couldn't see because of the mud.

"I didn't know Poogles could be painted mutant, I'm getting out of here before
Sloth sees me and gets an idea!" said someone else.

Pelbert began to cry and as he walked home, he knew he must look horrible. "I don't know how
I can explain this to my owner. Is there any way this can be fixed? What if it can't? Maybe
I can be stitched up, but how are we going to get all this mud out? I'll never look
the same anyway. Maybe I won't go home at all." Pelbert cried.

He didn't know that he could be fixed, that a trip to the healing spring was really all he
needed, so he didn't go home. Instead he just crawled into a cardboard box as it began to rain.
He fell asleep as the box began to float downhill and into a gutter. After the rain stopped, a
rather grumpy chia came out of his home and muttered "Stupid Neohome at the bottom of the hill!
The yard always floods and then I have all this junk floating around to clean up! Maybe one
day I'll actually find something useful. What's this?"

[smudgeoffudge]

The Chia poked the box and then looked inside. "Humph, rags and garbage who needs it? Discard!"
he yelled. With the word 'Discard' something strange happened, Pelbert felt as if he were flying, falling,
and spinning. He didn't know which way was up or down. Just when he thought he could stand it
no longer, it stopped.

Pelbert poked his head from the box. All around him were mountains! Huge mountains so tall the tops
were covered in clouds. They were all colors of the rainbow, some were glittery and others actually
seemed furry! After he looked at the mountains a while he noticed that they were not made of rock.
The glittery mountain was really a made of toy balls. The furry looking mountain was made of
cotton candy. It was very organized now that he looked at it, not all jumbled together like a junk
heap.

"Where am I anyway?" he asked, though no one was around. "The last word I heard was 'Discard'."

Just then he saw a little speck of light in the distance, and it got bigger. Then a faerie appeared!
Well, it WAS a faerie, but not a very pretty one. Her hair was long white strings, like a mop. Her
dress was tattered rags, but her wings were the worst. Her wings looked like they had been cut
from a newspaper that was crinkled and yellowed with age.

"I wanna go home!" Pelber cried and the faerie just looked at him with pity. "You speak?" she said
"But if you speak, then you are alive! You shouldn't be here...but you are."

"Where am I?" Pelbert asked.

"You are in the place everything goes when it is discarded! But no Neopet has ever been here!"

"You mean, I can't go home?" Pelbert asked.

"I don't know, If you were Discarded that obviously means you were not wanted."

"But my owner didn't discard me, she loves me and I love her. I got all dirty and ragged, and I'll
probably never be pretty again. But my owner will love me. I should have never ran away from home. If
my owner wants me, that should be enough to send me home."

"I'm not so sure about that. Well, I can help you get clean at least." She said and disappeared.
She returned a few seconds later with a healing potion.

"You mean, all I needed was a potion? I thought I was ruined forever!"

The faerie just smiled sadly. When he looked at her, Pelbert realized something. She was
a Faerie, what was SHE doing here? And she looked about as awful as him, why didn't she take a healing
potion too?

"So, you are a Faerie. What do you do here?" Pelbert asked.

[smudgeoffudge]

"Well, all the faeries have an element. Some are air faeries, Some are light faeries. Me,
I never could figure out what I was. My best friends, the Cooking Pot faerie, and the
Soup faerie, had the same problem. You see, sometimes special faeries are born and we
don't seem to really fit in anywhere. But there is always a place we belong, if we can find it.
I finally found out I belong here, sorting the discarded items. I go to each item
when it appears and I sort it into a pile. I put all the blue fuzzles over there, and all
the red ones over there..and sometimes I even find discarded pet pets...but those won't stay
in a pile..but anyway..I just sort what I can."

"What! People actually discarded pet pets?!" Pelbert asked.

"Yeah, people discard all sorts of things. Look over there at that mountain of faerie paint brushes!"
the faerie said as she gestured as gracefully as she could.

"Wow, that is something!" Pelbert said "But is it all just going to sit there?"

"I'm not sure, maybe some day there will be a way to get back discarded things. But most people do
intend to discard something, and wouldn't want it back. But it doesn't hurt to have it all organized. Maybe
the day will come where people might want something back, and there will be a way to get it back." the faerie said.
But this just made Pelbert feel worse. When would that day come? Well, he knew one thing, he wasn't going to just
sit in a pile and wait.

"Listen Mrs. Faerie, I don't belong here. It has to be a glitch or something! It isn't fair."

"What did you say!?" the faerie half whispered.

"A Glitch. It has to be a Glitch."

"How do you know about the GLITCH?" the faerie asked and now she seemed scared or angry. Pelbert
didn't know what she was going to do.

"I..I don't know any glitch..it is just a thing people say when things go wrong..wait..why
did you said THE GLITCH..as if it is a person?"

"The Glitch is..a person..well..it is alive..sort of..but we aren't supposed to say his name.
He..It..might hear you."

"But if the Glitch brought me here then maybe it has to bring me home. Don't Glitches work in people's
favor at times."

"The Glitch does sometimes work in one's favor, but only if one is very greedy and has bad intentions.
You want to go home, but I don't think it is because you are greedy. I don't think the Glitch ever just
helped anyone." but Pelbert wasn't listening. He was going to go find THE GLITCH!

[smudgeoffudge]

He climbed over a mountain of jellybeans, and then over a mountain of rugs, but all
around him were just more mountains. "Doesn't this place ever end?!" he asked

"Eventually.." the Discard Faerie said.

"Hey, I didn't know you were following me." Pelbert said

"Well, I don't have much else to do. Yes, this place ends, but it'll be hard to climb all
the mountains, there are so many."

"Is there any other way? You know, you could carry me if you wanted to be nice." Pelbert asked

"Nope, I am afraid not. If you want to give up it won't be so bad. You'll have plenty
of food and things. You'll never want for anything here. Here, let me read you
a nice book." the faerie said

"No!" said Pelbert. "I see it now, you don't want me to leave because you are lonely and
want someone to talk to. Well, I want to go home and I will, no matter how long it takes."

"You're right, I am lonely. It's boring here. I've played with all the toys, I've read all the
books, I've eaten all different kinds of food, but I don't have anyone to talk to."

"I'm sorry, it's a nice place to visit, but I don't want to live here. If you want
to talk..then talk..we can talk while I try to find my way home.." Pelbert said

Pelbert kept climbing over mountains and for a while the faerie was quiet, but it had been
so long since she had had company that she began to tell him stories. They were pretty interesting
stories about faeries and adventures. She even told him a little more about
herself, but it wasn't much. Just some stuff about how she had always looked that way and how
people teased her. But she said as least she had found out where she needed to be. Pelbert
was sure she really wasn't very happy, but kept it to himself.
If anyone had told him a few days ago that he would be climbing a mountain of cookies while a faerie
told him stories, and that he would only want to go home, he wouldn't have believed it.

He seemed to climb for hours and got very tired. He napped a few times when he was on a soft mountain.
He snacked on cookies ( there were veggies and healthy food around, but wouldn't YOU eat the candy?) when
he got hungry. He loved cookies a lot, so ate and awful lot of them. But he got a bad stomach ache. He decided he didn't really want to see a cookie again for a while. Sometimes he noticed a pet pet here or there. They seemed happy enough, munching away at whatever was near. Had people really discarded them? Could he bring them home? What about the other items? Would it be possible to sneak just a little of this or a little of that home with him? But he knew he shouldn't be greedy or he'd never get home. But he still wanted to help the pet pets. Soon he noticed that the surroundings were getting nastier. There were mountains of smelly socks and mountains of volcanic rocks. Things were not as brightly colored as before.

"Great, it's only going to get worse..isn't it?" he asked

[smudgeoffudge]

I'm afraid so. It just looked better to do it this way. All the nice stuff at one end and
everything else at the other end. My own design you see. Everything was all jumbled up when I first came here."

"Oh, that must have took a long long time to get it all like this." Pelbert said. He was just a little poogle
so of course he would say something like this. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Oh yes, a long long time. But it is good to finally have someone to see it and appreciate it." The faerie said. And she
really wasn't so bad. When he was hungry he could ask for just about anything and the faerie would fetch it for him. But even
though he had begged her, she said she would not carry him to the end. He would have to make
it there himself, and even if he did, it was pretty pointless. That is what she told him, anyway. But Pelbert was sure that
she was just saying that because she wanted him to stay.

But perhaps the Glitch knew they were coming, because strange things began to happen. As if it
wasn't bad enough to be climbing a mountain of sludge, Pelbert found all kinds of odd things happening.
Everything seemed to turn funny colors. Then time seemed to stand still for a minute and a big sign appeared that said "Neopets
is Temporarily unavailable!"

"Eeek that is horrible!" Pelbert screamed in slow motion as a faerie kougra grinned down at him from
the humongous sign.

Then another thing happened, when Pelbert tried to eat something, the words "feed to Pelbert" didn't
appear on the list. So all he could do was look at the item, but he couldn't eat it.
It became hard to even walk, and he found he was walking backwards. So he had to turn around
to walk the way he wanted to go!

"?Tahw si gnineppah" Pelbert asked.

"We must be nearing the glitch!" the faerie said. "Everything is all weird and you are talking
backwards!"

[smudgeoffudge]

But that wasn't what Pelbert heard. He heard the faerie talking backwards. But somehow he figured out what
was going on. He looked up to see that the sky had turned into html, css, and other codes and when pelbert looked at the ground
it seemed to be made of wires and circuits! They must be very near the glitch then.
But where was he? The traveled down a road made of broken wires. Here and there were little spark-like things.
They looked sad, that is if a spark can look sad. Pelbert thought they looked a bit like Meltons. Pelbert saw that
they were pacing. It seemed like they wanted to travel down the road, but each time they got to a gap in the
road where the circuits or wires were missing, they would hover there. So they couldn't get going to where
they needed to be. Pelbert traveled some more and finally saw a silly-looking black evil fuzzle. It was munching happily on a wire.

"Hehehe..Burp!" it said and started chewing another wire. Then it shot into the air, and the all the codes that were so neatly arranged were jumbled up. They finally just resembled dark clouds.

"The Glitch!" he shouted "Hey, get down here now! I want to go home!"

But the Glitch just buzzed around and messed up some more codes and chewed some more wires.

"Hey look at the mess you are making!" Pelbert shouted but the Glitch just laughed.

How could he make it behave? What could he do? Pelbert thought for a moment. The Glitch liked
to mess everything up? But what if he thought he wasn't messing everything up? Could he trick
the Glitch into fixing something instead.


"Wow, look at the Mess you are making! Look at all the broken wires and messed up codes.
This is wonderful! Everyone must be so happy. Now, if someone really wanted to mess things up they'd come along and connect these wires and they'd fix that code up there. Boy would that be a surprise. I bet no one would even
suspect such a thing could happen. And look at me, I was discarded. If I could get put back where I was before,
everyone would be so surprised!" Pelbert said

The glitch was confused of course.

"Broken wires...is what peoples be wanting?" the Glitch said in a funny squeaky voice.

"Oh yeah, everyone just loves all the broken wires, just look at them. They are so curly.
Much better than straight connected wires. Those are so boring. They just lay there."

"Mwahahahaha. Me show them!" The Glitch said and he connected all the wires. The little sparks jumped around happily
and zoomed away at lightening speed.

"And those codes up there, they are so jumbled that it is beautiful. They don't compute
at all!" Pelbert exclaimed.

The Glitch stormed up and fixed all the codes. The "Neopets is Temporarily Unavailable" screen went away.

"Hehehehehe!" The glitch said and suddenly Pelbert saw a big button appear that said "Put Pelbert Back" along with some
other buttons. They had names like 'Fluffy' and 'Snuggums'. They were the pet pets! Some of them could go home because
they were discarded by accident. Pelbert pushed a lot of buttons, so many that he thought he'd never get to the end, but he
wanted to make sure the pet pets got home first.

Finally Pelbert was able to put himself back home. The Discard Faerie cried and said she
would miss him, but he was certain that he didn't want to stay.

"Please don't go! I'll be so lonely!" the faerie cried.

"Mwahahahaha!" The Glitch laughed.

[smudgeoffudge]

Shut up!" Both the Faerie and Pelbert yelled.

Just then something green and white spotted fell out of the sky and landed in the Faeries arms. It was an egg! It cracked
open and a little green Draik's head poked out.

"Mama!" it said looking at the Faerie.

Pelbert snuck away as the Faerie was looking at the Draik. He was sure that someone would be
sad that they had discarded a Draik egg. But then again, maybe the Glitch was at work again. And who was to
say that the egg hadn't been discarded on purpose? But the little Draik was happy and the Faerie was happy, so what did it
matter? When Pelbert finally made it back home, his owner didn't seem to notice how long he'd been gone, it was as if
he had just been out for a walk.

"Oh I am so Sorry I ran away! I got ripped and then got all dirty and ragged! Then I thought you wouldn't want me anymore."

"Oh, it will be ok! See, the dirt comes right off. And I can get a potion for you if you have rip. It will heal like a cut heals.
But I don't see a rip on you. You look fine to me. Are you sure you like being a plushie? If it scares you, we can do something else."

"I don't care what color I am. But I did get all ripped and dirty and I was gone for days and days when I ran away! I just
wanted to come home, that was all I cared about." Pelbert said and told her everything
that happened.

"How could you have been gone for days and days? You only just left. It was a cute story though. And you know I will always
love you, you don't have to worry about anything." she said
That wasn't the end of Pelbert's fun, because from time to time items would appear in their inventory. He told her that they
were gifts fromt he Faerie of Discard Land. Finally she just shook her head and laughed."Well someone out there likes you..." They never stopped getting gifts, usually it was cookies.

"Arrgh anything but that!" said Pelbert

By smudgeoffudge

P.S. If you create a pet and name it Pelbert, please take good care of it and feed it every day. But maybe not too many cookies.

[smudgeoffudge]

I hope you liked this. I am looking for feedback before I send it in. I know I have some mistakes in it. So any help would be appreciated. And if you think I need to explain more about who everyone is or put more detail into the scerery or something let me know.

[aerisangel01]

This was cool! (and Cute!)
I loved it!

[TK]

I think it'ss great the way it is. Yeah, some spelling errors but everyone has those. Interesting read overall.

[smudgeoffudge]

Thanks so much. I have another story I am working on, so I might post it when I get done with it.