Thanks to cookiemunster for her lovely review, even if it did have to be PM'd to me!

This chapter was mostly written in bits in the middle of the night, which is why it is a bit segmented.

At five to five the next morning, Naboo stumbled sleepily in to the kitchen and set about making some coffee. Although he tried to be quiet, he still woke up Tara, who was of course sleeping on the sofa.

'….llamas.' She opened her bleary eyes and centralised her thoughts into a constructive and intellectually challenging mode of conversation.

'Hey Naboo.' Well, perhaps not intellectually challenging. She had just woken up, after all.

'Morning.'

'Morning?' Tara looked around to the window. 'It's dark. Mornings aren't dark, as a rule.'

'They are at five am.'

'Its five am? Oh God.' She moaned, sitting up so that Naboo could join her on the sofa. He put the telly on.

'What are we watching?'

'Oh, nothing' said Naboo, reluctant to reply.

'You got up at five in the morning to watch nothing?'

'Well…' he began, as some oh-so-familiar music started up.

Tara's head flicked towards the TV and her eyes widened. 'The Moomins? We're watching the Moomins? Brilliant, I love the Moomins!'

Oddly enough, after spending a day in Tara's company, Naboo wasn't surprised to hear this.

'When I was young I always liked the little one, whats-her-name, Little My. And Stinky.' She looked back at Naboo. 'I'm drawn to obscure characters. What about you?'

'I like Snufkin.'

They talked for a little while longer, but by the time the programme had finished Tara had fallen back to sleep, head lolling back uncomfortably onto the back of the sofa. Naboo carefully manoeuvred her back into a comfortable position and returned to bed himself.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

'Oi, ya lazy bum, get up!' Vince nudged her shoulder.

'Muh?' Tara opened her eyes to see Vince, Howard and Naboo all standing over her, while Bollo bustled about in the kitchen. Remembering what had happened earlier, she said simply 'Moomins.'

Naboo's eyes widened and he shook his head, not wanting the others to know of his fandom. Vince's face, on the other hand, screwed up in confusion.

'What are you on about?'

Taking her cue from Naboo, Tara changed course to say 'Oh, I dreamt about the Moomins. They were organising the apocalypse.'

'Well come on, you're coming back to the zoo today yeah? We've gotta get going.'

'Get going? I must have at least two hours yet, you're still in your pyjamas.'

'These aren't pyjamas. This,' he said, indicating his silky ensemble, 'is the… comfort.. travelstar.. oh, sod it.' He finished, wandering off to get changed.

Tara shook her head an laughed, and got up too.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

They got to the zoo a little later than planned, as Howard and Vince thought they would be driven by Tara again, (Naboo and Bollo of course took the carpet), but as she hated driving in London ('hate it hate it hate it') they had to take the tram. When they finally arrived, they were ambushed by Bob Fossil.

'Where the hell have you been? The gorillas got out and they're going ape!'

'How did they get out?' asked Howard.

'Uh, well, they, uh..' Fossil hesitated, trying to hide the gorilla enclosure keys and a tutu behind his back. 'That's not important ok? What do you know about the forbidden love between a man and a gorilla! And then the other gorillas get jealous and come at you like a shark on catnip! You know nothing!' Vince, Howard and Tara were giving him strange looks. 'Shut up ok! Get those gorillas back in the cage now!'

After luring the gorillas back into the cages with The Cure's 'Friday I'm in Love' playing on loudspeakers, they retired to the hut for a cup of tea.

'Have you got Kerrang on this thing?' asked Tara, indicating the TV.

'Sorry, just terrestrial.' Said Vince, sitting down and accepting a cuppa from Howard. 'We'll have to listen to Howard's daft jazz records.'

'There's nothing daft about jazz! Jazz was a major musical step forward, ok?' Howard said, putting on a record just to prove a point.

'I quite like jazz.' Said Tara.

'Thank you. I told you, its not just old men in cardigans that listen to jazz, Vince.'

Vince muttered something along the lines of 'musically retarded' as Tara rubbed her head.

'Is it the jazz? Asked Vince. 'I know how you feel – once Howard put his jazz on, I fell into a coma, woke up a week later in Milan, turns out a passing tourist had mistaken me for an oversized toy doll, and packed me into his suitcase for his daughter. I came to and it turns out no-one there was wearing green, it was right out of style, I had to go on a major internet shopping spree, I was to ashamed to go outside, it was a nightmare!'

'No, I just, uh, its nothing.' Said Tara, rubbing her head whilst trying to look like she was very much not rubbing her head and actually scratching a spot on her eyebrow.

'You haven't got a headache have you?' asked Vince, suspicious.

'Um, not, I mean, I'm probably just dehydrated.' She said, getting up for a glass of water. She then realised that it was silly to get up for a glass of water, I mean, it could just as well sit on the table, what did it want with and armchair? She sat back down and drank the water as a punishment for dislodging her.

'Dehydrated?' said Vince, disbelievingly. 'you don't get dehydrated – you're like a cactus!'

'A cactus?' Tara replied with contempt. 'the desert prickler?'

'Yeah, that's who you are, Calvin Cactus and his Hydrated Hoodlums.'

'Calv-' Tara began, but was interrupted by Howard.

'Why is it such a bad thing that you've got a headache? Why can't you just take a paracetamol?'

'Nah, Howard, you don't understand, when Tara gets a headache it means something bad is going to happen.' Vince explained. 'Last time she got one, we were almost eaten alive by this group of cannibals in the jungle, they only let us go when they found out we could both paint, they made us do a load of family portraits on this rock.'

'Howard Moon get your ass into my office pronto!' came Fossils voice over the tannoy.

'You'd better get going, you know how he gets if you do as you're told.' Said Vince

'Do as I'm-? I'm Howard Moon, ok, I move for no man, they call me the statue. I move when I feel ready, I'm like a buzzard, biding my time on a thermal, I-'

'Just go, will ya?'

'Alright' he replied, and left.

'I'd better go see Naboo, he'll know what to do.'

'Lets go then.'

'No way, you're not leaving the safety of this hut! I'm going to see Naboo, I'll be back in a minute, lock the door behind me alright?'

'Lock the door? It's probably nothing, I expect I'm just picking up the weather forecast or something.' She held her hands up to her head as if making a prediction. 'Stormy with a chance of sunshine tomorrow.'

'Thanks Mystic Meg, but I wanna be sure ok?' Vince replied, embracing his role as protective older brother and disappearing through the door, only to reappear at the window. 'lock the door.'

Vince hurried over to Naboo's hut, from which incense smoke was drifting. Upon entering, he found Bollo wearing a frilly pink apron and dusting, while Naboo led on the sofa flicking through some magic supplies catalogues.

'Naboo, ya gotta come quick, its an emergency.'

'Miracle wax is on the top shelf' he replied, without looking up.

'Nah, its Tara, something's wrong'

'What is it?'

'Well I dunno yet, but something will be.'

'What?' Vince explained, and once Naboo was convinced that Tara's headaches always meant something bad they hurried back to the hut. On the way, they were joined by Howard, who informed them that Fossil had wanted him so that they could discuss wallpaper colour schemed.

As they reached the hut door, Bollo said 'I got a bad feeling about this.'

Oooh, dum-dum-dum! I'm a cliffhanging feind, dangling you on a rod over the chasm of possibility...

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