A/N: Another random little vig I pulled up out of my fanfic archive. This was originally written in June 2006 in response to a humour challenge on the Jedi Council boards called The Last Shred of Sanity. Which is rather appropriate, I think. :-p
Challenge Requirements:
Tell a story from the point of view of any normal inanimate object, be it the holovid display, the couch or the table. Display its horror at watching the Solo kids going on a rampage
Things that must be used:
Creds
Boogers
A vibro-blade
Carving
Paint
Something Collapsing
Phrases needed:
Ah frell…
I didn't do anything!
What happened to the snake?
Didn't you put that over there?
Let the insanity begin!
A Day in the Life of the Solo Children's Pink Comb
The Comb sat sulkily on the table next to the other monotonous inanimate junk where Leia Organa Solo had left it earlier that morning after unsuccessfully trying to pull it through her son Anakin's hair. The Comb itself didn't mind – it was old, tired and it didn't particularly like Anakin's hair. In fact, it simply detested Anakin's hair, which was much worse than Jaina's or even Jacen's.
Anakin's hair had a habit of getting into small, untidy knots that irritated Anakin's mother more than anything. Whenever Leia Organa Solo became irritated with her son's hair, the Comb became a victim of Pullage (a term used by Combs galaxy-wide for the action of being pulled through knotty children's hair and causing many of its teeth to fall out). The Comb did not like loosing it's teeth (it had already lost four!) anymore than a normal, animate person would like loosing their teeth. It was a painful, bleak business, loosing one's teeth to the hair of a child and left one feeling positively detestable. It was almost as bad as the time when Anakin had attempted to break the Comb by bending it, reasoning that it deserved to be broken – not because it had offended the boy -- but because it was pink.
However, the fact that the Comb had been unsuccessfully used by Leia Organa Solo to be pulled through Anakin's hair was not the reason why it was sitting so sulkily on the table. The reason for that was simple: it was pining for the fjords. It had seen the lovely things one time on some lost planet when the Solo family had taken a vacation and had gone hiking in the woods. The Comb had been brought along for no reason whatsoever, but it had seen the lovely fjords and it longed to go back to them.
And now, instead of spending the rest of its long, combing life happily on the ridge looking out at the fjords, the Comb was doomed to sit on the table all day until it was to be used again to attempt to comb out all the tangles in Anakin's hair. It would probably loose another tooth when that happened.
Then something happened that the Comb did not expect.
Just as the Comb was sitting sulkily on the table, pining for the fjords and contemplating the Meaning of Life for Combs Galaxy-Wide, the protocol droid (which the Comb hated – it was flashy and annoying, but at least it didn't have any hair) stumbled by, placing a Carving on the table next to the Comb.
The Comb examined it with interest. It had never met a Carving before. It had heard of such things from a Toothbrush who had a heard it from a Wrist-Chrono that had been speaking to several paintings in an art museum, once upon a time. The Comb wished, not for the first time, that it had legs (even the protocol droid's flashy legs would do well enough) to support it so it could walk over and look more carefully at the Carving. It was a pretty little thing – dark wood, elegantly crafted.
The Comb wondered whether a Carving had an easier life than a Comb or not. At least it wouldn't be dragged across people's scalps ten million times a day, but on the other hand, the Comb wasn't gawked at in museums ten million times a day.
Perhaps, the Comb thought, it could make friends with the Carving. Perhaps then life would be more exciting than the one it lived right now.
THUDD!
The Comb nearly jumped as its thoughts were jolted rather rudely.
THUDD!
The Comb wished that it could turn around and see where the noise was combing… uh, coming from. It did not have long to wait.
The Comb saw Jaina run by the table, a handful of creds grasped in her closed fist. Then, stampeding after her, came Jacen, who promptly tackled his sister and the two of them rammed into the table.
Ah, frell…
The table slowly, gracefully even, tipped over and the hundreds of monotonous, inanimate junk the Comb had been set beside earlier slid off the table. A vase smashed on the floor, littering it with broken glass. The Carving smashed down, a crack visible in its front. The Comb could almost hear it shrieking as a vibro-blade followed it and landed, point down, in the wood.
The Comb was lucky to have been placed on the good side of the table. It slid neatly into place on top of a holovid where it saw the Solo twins fighting and scrabbling at each other over the Creds that were still clutched in Jaina's hand.
"Mine! Mine!"
"Mistress Jaina! Master Jacen! Whatever are you do—AHHHHH!"
Much to the Combs horror, someone's bright, shining metal leg slipped on the pile of monotonous, inanimate junk that was now on the floor and flew into the collapsed table. The protocol droid's heel hit the holovid with brute force, sending the Comb flying upwards into the air.
Its bright pink body turned and flipped in the air and came crashing down, none too conveniently, on Jaina Solo's head.
"OW!"
She picked up the Comb, gave her brother a kick and ran off, slipping the Comb into her pocket.
The Comb sat, frozen in horror, in Jaina's pocket, unable to see what as going on. It shuddered every time she banged into something or kicked and scratched at her brother. And then, just to sum everything up, she went tripped and when flying into an old cabinet in the corner.
The Comb thanked the Force that it fell out of the girl's pocket at this time. It landed with what it thought would be a splat! on the floor, just in time to see its carrier fly straight into the cabinet and have it collapse on top of her in a cloud of dust.
"Oh, man, you're SO in trouble!" Jacen's voice called.
Jaina emerged from the cloud of dust coughing, with a bright red lump on her forehead. She sneezed.
"Ewww, boogers!" a little voice (no doubt Anakin's) cried.
Jaina looked ferociously at her brothers and stood up on shaking legs – and was immediately hit in the face by a ball of something covered in wet, red paint.
Screeching in fury, she launched herself at her brothers; the Comb didn't see what was happening (it was turned away), but it did not find it very amusing when a foot connected with it and sent it flying into the window pane, where it bounced off and hit another vase before landing squarely on the floor… again. Then, much to its horror, the vase lost its balance, wobbled for a moment and then fell down, down, down and landed with a great crash on the Comb.
The Comb did not see much after that, but it did hear the Solo kids agreement to clean up before their parents returned.
The Comb wondered how they managed it; but they were hard workers and they quickly set the cabinet back up in its corner, put the table back in its original position, carefully picked up the glass from the broken vases that were scattered everywhere, and then set about returning everything to the table.
The Comb felt itself being picked up by two paint-stained fingers and carried over to the table where it was dropped unceremoniously.
"I think that's everything," Jaina's voice said.
"No, the holovid doesn't go there!" Anakin's voice chirped. "Didn't you put that over there? Earlier, I mean?"
"No," Jaina said crossly, "Dad put it on the table this morning!"
The Comb felt that being the Solo children's Comb was distinctly not worth it as it heard them argue about where all the inanimate objects should go.
"Wait!" Anakin's voice chirped again. "What happened to the snake?"
"What snake?" Jacen asked shortly.
"My snake! The toy snake! It was here on the table!"
Oh, the Comb thought, that snake. It didn't like the snake at all. It was a toy, and toys were all very prissy, very annoying and had high opinions of themselves. The Comb hoped that they didn't find it.
Just then, the front door opened.
"Jaina, Jacen, Anakin!" It was Leia Organa Solo.
The Comb gulped. Pullage was going to be soon, it knew it. She wouldn't be able to resist combing Anakin's hair…
"Jaina, why is this room such a… mess?!"
"I didn't do anything!" Jaina cried. "It was their fault!"
The Comb ignored the rest of the rowdy argument. It was back on the table, like it had been several minutes ago, before the long moment of complete horror as the Solo children wrecked the house. There was nothing else to do besides continue to sit sulkily on the table, pining for those wonderful, wonderful fjords and wait for the ghastly moment when it would be pulled, once more, through Anakin Solo's hair.