Once upon a time
a daft old woman
took a chance
and stole a magic box
and ran away.
Only this magic box
wasn't like most magic boxes
It was bigger on the inside
and it could travel anywhere in time and space
and it could change its appearance to anything imaginable
any shape
any size
except that it was always
Yellow.
The old woman didn't now why
It was probably defective
But some things remain forever a mystery.
So the old woman
went traveling around the Universe
in her ever-yellow magic box
in search of knowledge
But she soon found out
then even more than she loved
knowledge
she loved to impart it to others
And that's just what she did.
So she spent forever learning new things
and then spent forever and a day
teaching those new things to other people
and so they called her
The Teacher.
But then one day
inside the yellow box
she got a curious energy reading
from a certain backwater portion of the Galaxy
and so she decided
to go
and learn
what it was
But it turned out
she had made a mistake
Because when she got there
she learned
that this one little planet
had an absolutely impossibly huge amount of huon particle trails
all around it
(for no reason she could divine)
and the magic yellow box
who was even older than she was
couldn't handle it
and so
they
crashed.
The Teacher survived
(although she burned through another regeneration in the process)
but the poor box
was smashed
to pieces
So she decided
to put her knowledge to some practical use
and get messy.
She spent an awfully long time
in her salvage operation
(not forever and a day
but it seemed like it
as she walked the slow path)
but as fate would have it
she was considerably aided
by a selective-mute native of Herpetoeia
who was also present
on this planet Earth
(Everyone knows that Herpetoeians are possibly the Universe's finest mechanics).
The two of them had to basically
rebuild it from scratch
keeping only the most vital parts from the old body
so that eventually
it resembled nothing more
than an mundane road vehicle
as most of their material came
from auto junk yards.
And how great was the joy
on the Teacher's face
when the magic box became operational once more
It could no longer be bigger on the inside
It was constrained in its ability to travel in time and space
It could only change its appearance in a limited fashion
But it was still that same old yellow color
and for some reason that gave her the most comfort.
So the old woman decided
perhaps just
for a while
to settle down in one place
with her Herpetoeian companion
and get a job
imparting knowledge
teaching children
with the help of
her magic school bus.