Perla Vardo: The Forgotten Toy

Long, long ago, there was a little pile of fluff named Perla Vardo. He lived in a great old house, that creaked in the night, like old houses often do. He was a yellow plush toy, shaped somewhat like a cat or dog, hand sewn by some caring mother's hand. Several bits of fabric were patched in some places, often with fabric an entirely different color than his natural yellow. He had green eyes, and the insides of his ears were pink. Certain individuals would call him "malevolent", even though he was anything but. In his opinion, of course.



Sure, he was often a mischievous toy, but nothing more than the tan horse, dusty on the shelf, who often would mention that he was too breakable to touch. And he wasn't nearly as arrogant as the tin solder, in his crisp red uniform, and his gold buttons. Even though the other toys had plenty of adventures themselves, enough to fill volumes of books, this story will focus on old, forgotten, Perla.



Every now and then, Perla and the other toys would wonder why there was no humans in the house. Did they at one point have owners, but then the owners moved away? They didn't have any memory of it, all the toys had had always just remembered living the house. Once or twice, they had asked the oldest toy there, an aging teddy bear named Tu, if he knew anything about it. Even at the best of times, Tu could only manage a word or two through the frayed piece of fabric, half as long as it used to be, that served as his mouth. On one occasion, when they asked him about it, he limply rose his left arm halfway in the air, and mumbled something about "ruranog cumign". The other animals supposed that he was simply deranged, and took no heed to his words (which sounded like gibberish to them, anyway).



The old house, an old mansion really, seemed to never be quite the same when Perla went exploring (which wasn't a uncommon thing for him to do, the daily routine of living with other toys could often get boring). Where he once could of sworn was a bedroom, was suddenly, the next time he came through, a hallway. Still, he always managed to find his way back to the nursery, where all the toys lived. One day, Perla was exploring. This probably had something to do with the fact that the other toys were quite annoyed at him at the time (the kewpie doll said that his eye would never be the same after the nitric acid incident).



As he weaved his way through the twisted hallways, he came across a trail of liquid soap. He bent down to smell it; lemon scented. The trail lead to giant door that he was sure he had never seen before. He hopped up, and tried to catch the metal ring that served as the door handle in his teeth. Finally, after much difficulty (it was a heavy door), he managed to open the entrance. He looked into the half-darkness, and from the light that filtered in behind him, he saw what looked to be a giant spiraling slide that seemed to go down for miles and miles. The trail of lemon soap covered the entire slide, all the way to the bottom.



As he was pondering what to do, Perla inched forwards to see all that he could. Suddenly, his yellow foot slipped on some of the soap. He landed on his bottom, and the next thing he knew, the air was whooshing past him as he went down the side. The high velocity of his body surprised him; he had no idea that anyone could go so fast! When he finally got to the bottom of the slide, he was a little discombobulated, and he was also wondering if the soap stains would ever get out of his fabric body.



The giant cavern had very little light: besides the spot of light at the the top of the slide where he had come from, there were some torches mounted about four metres up the wall. The fiery light gave the giant cave quite a atmosphere, although the flames themselves disturbed Perla a good bit (flammable toys are very cautious among fire, for obvious reasons).



Perla decided that simply loafing around wouldn't work, so he decided to strike out in a random direction, and hope that something good would happen. He wished that he could follow something obvious, like the lemon scented soap, but the trail had simply stopped at the foot of the slide. His meandering brought him to a happily painted tunnel: the right side of the tunnel was bright red, the left side a vibrant indigo, the floor a brilliant shade of jade, and the ceiling was purple. Not royal purple mind you, but the fluffy purple that looks like the colour a cloud would be in your dreams. And much to the relief of Perla, there was electric lights.



Every now and then, Perla would notice a clear glass cube fused into the wall so that the wall was still smooth. Looking through the clear cube, each time he would notice a bookshelf full of books. This was quite confusing to poor Perla, because he could see no way to go and read the books, even if one was on the other side of the wall.

After several long hours of walking, Perla finally reached the end of the hallway. There were three different doors. The one in the center had a symbol like a chicken's foot with a circle centered at the middle prong. The door on the left had the words “Cesium Gurnard “, and it did not have a symbol. The door on the right had no symbol or words, but it had an ominous feeling to it. Perla chose the door in the middle for absolutely no reason, except maybe that he seemed to be drawn to it by an unseen force...



Inside there room, there was nothing but a giant lever. Perla wasn't the most sensible toy in the world, but even he knew that the lever was bad news. Still, he couldn't help but pull it once, just to see what it did. The metal lever screeched in distress at it went down, followed by an awful rumbling. The stone in the room shook and shook, but eventually all was still. In the center of the room, right behind the lever, water that seemed to be suspended in the air seemed to go through a hole in the ceiling. The water, oddly enough, happened to be block shape, and there would be plenty of room for Perla to be completely surrounded by the liquid,



Perla had seen enough strange things in the last day to last him a lifetime, so he ran back to the door he had entered from. Locked. Gulping nervously (if that is even possible due to the fact that he doesn't have a throat), he stepped into the suspended water. For some reason or other, Perla began to rise. And rise he did, faster and faster, until he was almost as sick as he had been when he was on the slide, near the start of his adventure.



Then, pop! He was on the top of dry brown soil. He was back on the surface! But the surface that he had left was a different one than the one he saw right now. Red, hot flames seemed to engulf everything around him. Trees, houses, towns, cities, nations, continents, they were all doomed. He was safe where he was, but anyone seeing the horrific sight would think that it was the end of the world (which it so happened to be). Ragnarök was here. Despite his earlier fear of fire, a malevolent smile crept onto Perla's face. "Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all, he though...".

The End

To be continued in "Perla Vardo: The Ragnarok Chronicles"