The Eye Motif Vase from an Unmentionable Place

Terskun sat on the Green Sofa, flipping through books that he had already read. Occasionally, the Skunk Draik would gaze up at the grandfather clock briefly, shake his head, and then go back to reading. The rest of the house was quiet, for his owner and older sister had left.

     "Pishicu had better gotten something good," he mumbled to himself as he threw Purple aside and picked up A Tale of Two Lupes.

     Suddenly the door burst open and a Strawberry Poogle with black, round glasses and a brown-haired girl hurried inside the brick room. It was raining buckets outside, and both them and the bags they were holding were wet.

     "Was it like that all the way home?" Terskun inquired, commenting on the weather.

     "No. The Lost Desert was dry, as always. A little rain over there might've been refreshing," Pishicu, the Poogle, muttered as she shook herself off.

     "It started to get real bad as soon as we passed the bank, but before then it was just sprinkling. Funny how the weather can be, huh? Oh, and here's your scroll," the girl said as she handed the piece of papyrus over to the Draik.

     "Thanks Chipster," he said as he opened it up. "Oh, and this is a good one. How to Curse Your Sister, I'm going to enjoy it!"

     "HEY!" Pishicu screamed as she yanked the scroll from Terskun's grasp. "Liar, it's only talking about magical artifacts!"

     The Draik smiled, "Made you nervous, didn't I?"

     Pishicu gave her little brother a firm thwack on the head, and then hopped on top of him on the sofa.

     "Oh, you lard wad! Get off of me!"

     "Terskun, don't call your sister a 'lard wad' and Pishicu, don't sit on Terskun, because you are awful heavy," Chipster said as she picked up the other bags which contained the other purchases that she had made.

     The Draik gave a triumphant smile to his sister, and she grudgingly got off.

     "I'm going to go put the food in the kitchen, so don't kill each other until I come back," the girl said as left to go to the Jelly Room next door.

     As soon as Chipster had left, Terskun sat up.

     "So Pishicu, what did you get for Chipster's birthday?" he inquired excitedly.

     "Quiet down, you don't want her to hear you!" the Poogle snapped. They both were silent for a moment, and then heard Chipster cheerfully singing in a very off-key way in the kitchen.

     "Okay, so what'd you get?" Terskun asked again, this time a bit more quietly.

     Pishicu smiled, and then dug into the bag that she was carrying. She threw out a few other trinkets that she had purchased, and finally pulled out a box.

     "Please don't tell me that's it," the Draik hissed as he looked at it with dissatisfaction.

     "No, don't be foolish!" Pishicu replied. Then the Poogle pulled the lid off of the box, and lifted out a beautiful piece of pottery. "It's an Eye Motif Vase."

     "Wow, that's lovely," Terskun muttered as he stared at it in awe. "Did you buy it from Osiri?"

     "Naw," his sister said as she scooted up her glasses, which had slipped down her nose. "Osiri is so expensive, and her stuff isn't even that great. No, I bought this from a weird looking Kau in a white robe. He gave me a great deal on it, too. I didn't even spend all of our neopoints!"

     "Really? So can I have some of my half back?" the Draik asked.

     The Poogle laughed at him and he gave her a sour look.

     "Has anyone died yet?"

     The two pets turned their heads and saw Chipster standing in the doorway.

     "N-no!" Terskun almost screamed as he quickly stuffed the vase into Pishicu's bag. "We're getting along just fine. Actually, we were going to go up to Pishicu's room so we could..."

     "Play dress up!" Pishicu screamed, trying to cover up her brother's falter.

     The Draik looked at her disbelievingly for a second, but then quickly nodded to keep their story going.

     Chipster looked at Terskun skeptically, but said nothing.

     "Err, well, we have to go now! Seeya later!" Pishicu cried as she grabbed Terskun's hand and pulled him up the stairs.

     The Draik followed, and in a few seconds, after Pishicu had locked the door, they were safe to look at the vase again.

     "We ought to go ahead and wrap it now. We're going to celebrate Chipster's birthday at 5 NST, and we only have about three hours until then," Terskun said as he lifted the vase from the box and very carefully placed it on Pishicu's pink vanity.

     "Three hours, oh boy, we are cutting it short," Pishicu teased.

     "Well what else can we do with it--"

     "CLASS!" someone screamed.

     The two pets froze, and looked at each other in an odd way.

     "Who was that?" Pishicu finally asked after a moment of silence.

     "I don't know," the Draik muttered. "It didn't sound like Chipster, and it didn't come from outside..."

     "CLASS!"

     Terskun, bewildered, looked behind him.

     "P-Pishicu, this sounds crazy, but I think I know where it came from," Terskun whispered, his eyes wide with horror.

     "Where? Do we have ghosts?"

     "No... It came from the vase!" The Draik pointed over to the Eye Motif Vase, which was sitting innocently on the vanity.

     Pishicu looked at him skeptically and placed her pudgy paws on her hips. "Terskun, I think you've lost it..."

     "Shut it, Pishicu!" he snapped.

     Then a knocking came on Pishicu's door, and Chipster asked, "What are you guys doing in there? What's that screaming? Some people are trying to read, you know!"

     Pishicu reacted quickly, "Err, sorry Chipster! I was just plucking Terskun's eyebrows--"

     Terskun gave her an odd look. "I don't even have eyebrows!" he hissed.

     "--and he was over-reacting. Sorry to have disturbed you, we'll try to keep quiet from now on!"

     Chipster must have apparently taken an excuse, for soon they heard her footsteps as she went down the stairs.

     Suddenly, it happened again. "CLASS!" The siblings had been looking at the vase this time, and they saw the black lid lift up as the noise was emitted into the air.

     "I-it is the vase!" Pishicu, in awe, stuttered.

     Slowly, the Draik inched over to it to look at it a bit more carefully, and then picked it up as if a curse had been put on it.

     "It seems normal," he mumbled, "But wait... what's this?"

     Terskun lifted a little tag that was attached to one of the vase's handles, and read, "'This piece just screams class, you will be the envy of all your friends with this in your neohome.'"

     "'This piece just screams class,' they weren't kidding, were they?" Pishicu joked.

     "This isn't funny Pishicu! This pot is obviously cursed or something... We need to return it!" the Draik snapped.

     "What? I payed good money for that!" the Poogle snapped. "We're not returning it! Besides, we don't have time, unless you know how to get to the Lost Desert and back in a few hours."

     "Well, we have to stop it from saying--"

     "CLASS!" the vase shouted.

     "--that somehow, or else we won't have a gift for Chipster! I mean, honestly, who wants a vase that screams?" Terskun, distressed, cried.

     Pishicu leaned against her cloud walls in thought, wiping her glasses against her stomach absentmindedly.

     "Terskun," she said in a quiet voice. "That scroll that Chipster gave you earlier..."

     "Yeah, what about it?" Terskun muttered while he tried to look inside the vase and was shocked when it screamed "CLASS" at him.

     "It was about enchanted artifacts, wasn't it?"

     Terskun's ears poked up as he looked at her. "Yeah... it was... Pishicu, do you think this Eye Motif Vase could be listed on that scroll?"

     "Well, it's worth a look, isn't it?" Pishicu shrugged.

     The Draik nodded in agreement, and said, "Hold on, I'll go get it. I'll be back in a little bit, but in the meantime, find some way to muffle the Eye Motif Vase's screams." Then he hurried out of the room and down the stairs.

     In a minute he was back again, this time the scroll in hand.

     "Did Chipster ask you about the screaming?" Pishicu, a tad worried, inquired.

     "No, but she did tell you to go easy on my eyebrows from now on; she said it looked like you had plucked them all," Terskun said with a smirk. "What'd you do with the vase?"

     The Poogle pointed over to a lump of pillows in the corner, which emitted a very low, muffled, "Class!"

     The Draik nodded his head in approval, then spread the scroll over Pishicu's bed. The tan paper was very long, at least twice as tall as Pishicu and it had a large assortment of pictures on it.

     The siblings immediately started looking for the vase, Pishicu starting at the bottom of the scroll, Terskun at the top.

     "Veil of Enchantments, Headdress of Flight, Pendant of Flatulence... Pendant of Flatulence? What in Fyora?" Pishicu muttered.

     "Pishicu-- Aah! Here it is!" Terskun cried as he pointed his scaly finger at an Eye Motif Vase that looked exactly like theirs.

     "What does it say?" the Poogle asked, tearing her eyes away from the flatulent pendant.

     Terskun read, "Vase of Annoyance, created in 17 BN by two separate people. The founder of Osiri's Pottery, Fusku Osiri made the pottery itself, but the curse was placed on it by Wenckit the Enchanter. Wenckit, still angry about being fired by the third Lost Desert King, Reyarmu the Easily Pestered, after his many long years of service, cast the spell on an Eye Motif Vase and sent it to the Kyrii King anonymously. At first the King thought it was a lovely gift, but after a few minutes in the palace the vase started to scream the only word it knows, 'class,' as loud as the Snowager roars. Though the Wocky was very entertained by this, it started to drive King Reyarmu insane and three days later he was found unfit to be King because of sanity reasons and locked up in a nice padded room while his son, Keyarmu the Not-so Easily Pestered, took charge. Keyarmu deemed the vase to be buried in the sands far from the palace, and so it was done. No one knows whether this is just a rumor or true, for the Eye Motif Vase in question has yet to be discovered.

     "'Yet to be discovered'? That's a bunch of balonga."

     "Does it say how to stop it?" Pishicu asked.

     "Hold on! I haven't finished yet!" Terskun snapped. "Okay, here's the last bit,

     On Wenckit's death bed he admitted that if anyone were to find the vase they should open its lid and pull its tongue. 'This, and only this,' Wenckit said, 'Will expel my curse from the vase.' Right before he died, he added, 'It's a shame if anyone ever does it though-- it would make such a nice gag gift.'"

     The two pets stood silent for a moment, ignoring the smothered scream of "CLASS!" in the background.

     "Wockies are weird," Pishicu finally muttered.

     "Indeed," Terskun agreed.

     The silence pursued for a moment longer, but then the Poogle broke in with a question.

     "Terskun, what did Wenckit mean by 'open its lid and pull its tongue'? Does that mean that it has something like a mouth under there?"

     The Draik shrugged. "I tried to open it a while back, but it just screamed at me. I suppose the Vase knows that that's its weakness. Anyway, if we decide to try this, I think we need to go somewhere where Chipster won't hear us, or more precisely the Eye Motif Vase."

     Pishicu nodded. "How about the Spyder Lair?" she asked. The Spyder Lair was a nickname for the family's garden shed, which was a haven for spyders and other unsightly creatures. "No one ever goes in there!"

     "Good idea. C'mon, I'll take the vase and fly down there will quick so Chipster won't see, and you find your Usuki chopsticks and meet me there." He then walked over to the place where he had buried the vase in pillows, waited for it to scream "class," then when it had he quickly grabbed it, tossing the pillows aside, and flew out of Pishicu's window to the shed below.

     Terskun had left so quickly that the Poogle hadn't been able to ask him what the chopsticks were for, and now she was slightly concerned. She didn't doubt her brother, though, since he was always good at coming up with plans.

     Pishicu dug through her toy chest and pulled out her pair of very rare Usuki Chopsticks. She had saved up her neopoints for ages to buy the pink sticks with purple flowers so she could eat just like her Geisha Girl Usuki. Unfortunately, the sticks had been very hard to manage with her pudgy paws, and the Poogle had sadly retired them in her toy box.

     "Terskun better not mess these up," she hissed as she held them tightly in her paw.

     Then, after adjusting her glasses firmly on her face, she left her room and ran down the stairs.

     Pishicu arrived at the Spyder's Lair a minute later, though somewhat hesitantly.

     "Terskun," she called quietly as she pushed the squeaky door open. "Terskun, I'm here! I brought the chopsticks, too."

     Suddenly, the lights in the shed sprang on, and the Poogle could plainly see a Skunk Draik in the doorway and a Eye Motiff Vase sitting on top of a crate. She had not been in the Spyder's Lair in ages, and was surprised to see that there were actually gardening tools, potting soil, and gravel among the cobwebs.

     "Good, I was wondering where you were--"

     "CLASS!" the vase hollered, but both of the pets ignored it.

     "--Hurry up and get inside, then close the door," Terskun ordered.

     Pishicu did as she was told, and quickly slammed the door too the shed.

     "So Terskun, why did I need to bring the chopsticks?" she asked once they were sure that Chipster could not see them.

     "To pull the tongue of course! You don't actually want to stick your hand in it's mouth, do you? I certainly don't!" the Draik exclaimed.

     Pishicu was very hesitant to risk her chopsticks in such a way, but she didn't want to stick her paw in the vase's mouth either. Slowly the Poogle shook her head.

     "Good," Terskun said promptly. "Now give me the chopsticks, and you lift the lid of the vase up. I'm sure it will scream--"

     "CLASS!"

     "--Exactly, but you must not let it scare you into putting this lid back down! The faster I can pull its tongue with the chopsticks (it has to be me, since I'm the only one with digits), the better, because that means that we'll have less of a chance to be discovered by Chipster. Do you understand?"

     Pishicu, a determined look on her face, nodded.

     Terskun nodded back, and took the Usuki chopsticks from her paw. Then, the Poogle rushed over to the vase and lifted its lid...

     The Vase screamed louder that it had ever screamed before. Both of the pets winced, but Pishicu did not put the lid back on it.

     Terskun inched nearer to the vase, almost frightened, the chopsticks in his hand. He stood over it and looked down into the mouth of the thing, and clearly saw what looked like a piece of flat, wet clay.

     "The tongue," he murmured to himself. However, he could not hear because of the screaming vase.

     He placed the chopsticks properly in his fingers, and dipped them down into the mouth of the vase...

     *SNAP!*

     The Eye Motif Vase from an unmentionable place bit down hard on the chopsticks; the two sides where the handles weren't located closed in like a mouth.

     Pishicu immediately slammed the lid back on again. Her face was pale and frightened at first, but then it changed into angry.

     "YOU DESTROYED MY USUKI CHOPSTICKS!" she yelled at Terskun, approaching on him like a Lupe does a Chia. "I SAVED UP AGES FOR THOSE, AND YOU DESTROYED THEM!"

     Sweat ran down the Draik's brow. "Now, now, Pishicu..." he muttered. "It wasn't me! It was that stupid vase!"

     The Poogle stopped for a second to consider his words.

     "That's right," she whispered to herself. "IT WAS THE VASE!"

     Then she ran over to the corner of Spyder's Lair and grabbed a large sack of gravel and some of Chipster's special sticky, sticky glue that she used to repair broken pots.

     "PISHICU! What are you doing?" Terskun screamed.

     "Punishing the vase!" she screamed back.

     Pishicu then took the lid off again, this time not even wincing at the vase's screams. She lifted the bag of gravel up and poured it into the vase's mouth. The vase grew silent for a second, but then went about trying to spew the pebbles out.

     "Oh, no you don't!" Pishicu yelled.

     She then, quickly now, took the sticky, sticky glue and squeezed it around the edges of the lid. And finally, the Poogle slammed the lid back onto the vase with a triumphant look on her face.

     "There!"

     The Eye Motif Vase did nothing. It just stood there like a regular vase for once, silent.

     "P-Pishicu! You're a genius! You did it! You silenced the vase!" Terskun exclaimed.

     "About time too," the Poogle huffed. "Now let's go inside and get ready for Chipster's party."

     It was 5:31 NST when they finally got to the present. The sun was just now setting, and all of them were very much full from their cake.

     "Surprise Chipster!" they cried as Pishicu came down from her room with a box wrapped in blue and silver.

     "You guys got me a present?" Chipster asked disbelievingly. "When'd you have time to manage that?"

     "We have our ways," Pishicu said vaguely. "Now open it!"

     The girl very excitedly took the box and tore the paper off, tossing it aside in a little ball. Then she lifted up the lid of the box and screamed.

     "An Eye Motif Vase! It's beautiful, guys! Ooh-- it's heavy though, I didn't know they weighed this much! Hmm, the lid seems to be stuck--"

     "You don't really need to open it anyway, those are just for decoration," Terskun informed her.

     "Yeah, you're right," Chipster said with a smile. "It's so lovely guys, and it just screams class--"

     "NO IT DOESN'T!" the Poogle and Draik both hollered together.