Bonus 26: Aussie Santa

Hi everybody!

Sorry, I have been working on a few big things, but also collating Cielo ideas, that will come your way soon, like the busting of a dam! Meantime… Merry Christmas, season’s greetings! Nothing but love and good wishes to you all!
   This story, as with all, is dedicate to Cielo, our little crazy monkey!

And you and yours…

Matt x

Aussie Santa

One day Luna was walking through the long grass, playing a harmonica, gong, and ukulele and humming all at once, “La, la, la-dee-da, hum-de-hum…” when she saw Aussie Santa taking a nose-dive.
   His eight koalas were heading straight for a gum tree!
   “I knew I should have used wombats!” he grumbled.
   “Last time you did that, you ended up stuck in a burrow,” the bunyip in the passenger seat said.
   “He’s right, mate,” the frill necked lizard on his shoulder agreed. “Flying kangaroos are all the go.”
   “Bah, hitchhikers!” Aussie Santa grumbled.
   Luna was flabbergasted! Speechless! Dumbstruck!
   “Whu…!?” she said, then…
CRASH!
   “Hey, mate, can you give us a hand?” the bunyip moaned, as they dangled from the tree.
   “Who… What… Santa… Of course!” Luna gushed, holding up a ladder. “Wowee! No-one will believe this!”
   “Thanks, real bonza of you,” Santa forced his wince into a smile, as she helped him down.

Santa was most pleased to have both feet safely on the grass! He pulled up his shorts, rubbed his sore bum, gave a grin, and said;
   “Yeah, nah, you ripper! I suppose you’d like a toy.”
   Luna was shy. But a gift from Santa? Face-to-face?
   “Sort of…” she mumbled, poking out from behind a tree.
   “Woo-HOO!” the bunyip swished at air. “The girl gets to choose! This is rare, mate!”
   “Too right!” agreed the frill neck lizard. “Take what you’re given, I say!”
   Everybody waited on the little girl. It was time for her, for the first time in her life, to be brave.
   “This IS special,” she said, nervously. “Toys are nice, but you outgrow them, Um… I’d like an adventure, please.”
   “Oh, wow!” said the bunyip. “That’s new.”
   “A tricky one,” agreed the lizard.
   “Easy, peasy…” Aussie Santa smiled, reaching into his swag and pulling out the most beautifully wrapped box Luna had ever seen.
   Then they were gone. Back up in the sky, always running late.

Luna stared at the box in front of her.
   “An adventure…” she mused. “What could be inside?”
   Excited beyond words, she reached to open it, and…
   BOING!
   There was a spring, with an old boot attached to its underside. It bounced away from her, up into the air!
   “No… Wha…? Wait…” Luna protested, fumbling and tripping as she ran after it.

The box bounced through a flock of seagulls… with Luna running fast behind!
   Peck, peck, peck, squawk, squawk, peck, flap, flap, went the gulls.
   “Here, take my scooter!” Dougie from kinder cried.
   Boing, boing, boing… Scoot, scoot, scoot!
   The chase was on!

Luna got closer and closer… and closer! An adventure, from Santa! It must be top notch! she thought. I have to go faster! Faster!
   Then – Dloomp. It stopped on the very edge of a jetty.
   “At last!” Luna called, and leapt, catching it in a hug… and knocking them both off the side.
   “Oh-ho…”

SPLASH! Luna fell into the water.
   Blomp, blomp, blomp, she and her present sank!
   Skitter, skitter, skitter, she saw a long legged crab scurrying away with her box.
   “No!” Wait! She cried, but being underwater, it sounded like; “Glug, glug, glug!”
   Hey, I’m in trouble here, Luna thought.
   Fortunately, a mermaid happened to be passing, and thought the colours on the box looked beautiful.
   It put a big seashell with oxygen in it to Luna’s mouth, held her arm and swam, swam, swam!

The mermaid and Luna swam past a deep-sea diver, and a yellow submarine , and a sunken pirate ship and all sorts of stuff. Just as they were about to reach the present, a fisherman’s hook caught on its ribbon, and yanked it up, out of the sea, into the air.
   “Oh, no!”

The mermaid sung to Poseidon, God of the Sea, who owed her a favour. Poseidon bundled Luna into a ball and threw her after the box!
   “Must… catch… gift…!” Luna gritted her teeth.

Luna broke through the water into the sky! She saw her present boing off the fisherman, then from one sea eagle to another.
   Boing, boing, boing! Up, up, up!
   “Gah…!”
   And up some more! Bouncing off a plane, then a cloud, then a rainbow, until it was… gone!
   “No way!” Luna moaned. “Poo!”

Luna swam to shore, where Mackenzie from kinder was flying a kite!
   “Help! I need to catch my present, that box has my adventure in it!” she gasped.
   “Quick, take this…” Mackenzie said, handing her the string, just as a big gust of wind came along, lifting her higher, higher, higher…!
   “Whoah…!”
   Luna was scared, but had to admit the view was pretty ace!

Up, up, UP…! Suddenly, the clouds parted. Luna was landing in a magic place, with a pink sun, and purple grass, and strange, puffy trees of all colours. There were funny looking people, and a big robot called Nothing, and bouncy creatures that went Ka-da-boing! And distant dragons who, when they laughed, breathed fire, making clouds glow orange and red.
   Finally, she spotted her present, being taken away by an old fluffy bird with long pompom tails and eight wings!
   “Whu…? Double poo!” she said.

“Where am I?” Luna asked.
   “Calabonya,” said a funny looking blue man passing by.
   “Calabonya is small, Calabonya is fun, but Calabonya is not for everyone,” rhymed a happy frog in a top hat.
   “It’s a pretty special, secret place,” agreed a policeman on a pogo stick, with a silly face.
   Luna’s cheeks turned red, she poked at he ground with her toes, too shy to look anyone in the eye.
“Oh, okay. Will one of you help me get my Christmas present, please?” she asked.
   But everybody just ran around bumping into each other, they were too hopeless.
   Luna slumped to the ground as her present was flown away.

Then, Luna heard, off in the distance, the smallest…
   Pop, pop, fart…
   And saw a chubby, furry monster with four red eyes, long blue-and-white snout, huge hands and the biggest, hairiest feet she had ever seen fall from a tree with a SPLAT!
   It’s feet were so big and flat that when it stepped forward, it went… Floop! Then, the next foot, – a-loop!
   Soon, it was rolling.
   Floop… a-loop. Floop-a-loop… Floopaloopaloopaloop!
   It rolled over the grass, hills and through a blackberry bush, until, finally, it went SPLAT against a tree next to Luna!
   “Floop-a-loop!” it bellowed with a dopey smile.
   “Hello, Floop-a-loop!” everybody cheered.
“Oh, you poor monster,” Luna said, plucking blackberry thorns out of it’s hair.
Gradually, she realised she was helping an actual monster. “Um… DO you mind?” Luna nervously asked.
   Floop-a-loop wasn’t used to people being that nice. It poked out its tongue, mumbled: “Floop-a-loop…” and gave a happy, wobbly sigh. 

Suddenly, Luna was shaken by a thoom!
   Then another… Thoom!
   They got louder, thoom, thoom, THOOM!
   The whole place was shaking, everybody running away, fear in their eyes.
   THOOM, THOOM!
   “Giant Bob…!” everybody cried.
   “OH… HOW NICE, A SNACK BEFORE I EAT YOU ALL!” a voice thundered all over the place.
   Luna looked up… and up and up and UP! There was the biggest, meanest-looking, dopiest giant there ever was… and it had the bird with her present dangling over its wide-open mouth.

“Noooo!” Luna cried.
   She looked around, but all she could see was everybody hiding, their bums up in the air.
   Only Floop-a-loop hadn’t run. It narrowed all four of its red eyes, looked determined, said;
   “Floop. A. Loop…”
   put Luna on its soft, furry belly, and began to roll.
   Floop, one hairy foot. A-loop, the other hairy foot. Floop… a-loop… floop… a-loop. Floopaloopaloopaloopaloop, it rolled along the purple grass, over the orange water, up Giant Bob’s leg, past his belly.
   Luna was getting very, very dizzy! She was scared! What could this little monster do against such a big, beastly giant!?
   They rolled until they were right over Giant Bob’s open mouth.
   “Oh no! We’re going to be eaten!” Luna gasped.
   Giant Bob went “RAWR!” as he started to bite down.
   Then Floop-a-loop went – pop, pop, fart!
   “RA…Sniff, sniff…? Sniff, sniff, sniff…” the giant went. “PEWWWW!”
   The smell was so strong its eyes rolled into the back of its head and it fell backwards into the red ocean with white spots!
   S-P-L-A-S-H!

“Floop-a-loop!” everybody cheered.
   “Thank you!” Luna shouted, as she sailed through the air, clasping her present from Aussie Santa.
   Finally!
   Then realised she was falling!

Luna fell down, down, down, through the clouds, past the rainbow with its unicorns… Down, down, her beautifully wrapped present falling beside her.
   The painfully shy little girl was determined! If she was going to go SPLAT, she would at least get to open her present! She reached out, further, further… almost… fingertips, tickly scratchy… just about…. And grabbed it!
   Then, as they fell, the boot went
   boing!
   and bounced up, off a plane! Then, as they fell again…
   Boing!
   Up off a sea eagle.
   And, as they fell again, boing! Up off a weather blimp.
   They were slowing down.

Luna and her present got tangled in a kite-flying contest, and finally landed in a bundle of clown’s balloons, on the beach!
   That had been put there just for them.
   PLOP!
   “Hey, they took forever to blow up!” protested the bunyip.
   Luna looked around, to see Aussie Santa, kicking back, relaxing on the porch of his little beach shack, sipping on a ginger ale.
   “Right on time,” said the frill necked lizard, flipping sausages on the barbeque.
  “So, how’d you go, mate?” Aussie Santa asked.
   Luna pushed her hair back.
   “I haven’t even opened it yet…” she grumbled, dusting herself off.

Luna stood on the toe of the old boot, so it couldn’t boing away, and gently took off the wrapping. She was so excited! This was it, in that little box, her adventure! At last!
   And opened the lid…
   “EMPTY?” she gasped.
   There was nothing inside.

Yes, Luna was a nice girl, a quiet girl, a shy girl… but she had had enough!
   “Santa, you ripped me off!” she shouted.
   Aussie Santa raised his lazy eyebrows.
   “How so?”
   “I asked for an adventure, nicely and everything. Yet there’s nothing in the box.”
   “Oh…?” Aussie Santa said.
   “Yeah! And I had to chase it through seagulls, and everything! And be rescued by a mermaid, and thrown in the air by a Sea God…!”
   “Mmm. Then what…?” Santa said, having another sip.
   “I borrowed a kite and went to a special magic place and become friends with a cute monster…”
   “You don’t say…” Santa raised a casual eyebrow.
   “Then we had to beat a giant and fall back to earth…! Only to find the box was empty!” Luna raged.
   Aussie Santa just ate his snag with sauce.
   “Sounds like a mighty adventure to me…” the lizard said, feeding the koalas more gum leaves.
   “Oh…”
   Luna thought hard, looked at Aussie Santa kicking back, grinning, sipping his ginger ale.
   “Santa,” she said.
   “Yes?” he replied.
   “Does anyone ever use their wish to give you a present?”
  “Not very often,” he said.
   “Then I’m going to give you this…” Luna said. “The biggest ever smile from the happiest kid the world!”
   And the little girl smiled, and smiled… and smiled.