The tiny ring of the few doozer hammers of the hard working early morning swift beat along with the raise and fall of the many fraggles still fast asleep in their living tunnels.
Suddenly, a miniature row of doozer stick lampposts topped with crystal stones flashed to life, illuminating the faces of Architect Cotterpin and her specialty selected crew.
A yell of 'Yay, we did it!" and "Go work-team seven!" wield up...
A second later, the thunderous sound of heavy footsteps moving at a breakneck pace drummed around them, shaking the stones off their mountings and draping the group again in morning shadow.
The doozers' exhausted sigh was broken by their leaders energetic voice.
"C'mon everyone! All we have ta do is try again!"
The yellow blur topped with two orange red pigtails that still showed the ragged split ends of a long gruesome two am battle with a hair brush, galloped briskly, leaving a trail of dust in its wake.
Red, with Poppy in tow in a backpack carrier made of heavy sun-aged rope, had been unable to speak in nothing but a worried mumble for the last mile.
Her mind seemed to only get more muddled and confused as she drew nearer to the Guest of Honor cave.
"But what should I say? " Well you see, Gobo, I said something really dumb to Mokey last night. I hope she didn't go off and… ?" Nah, that doesn't sound right…"You know Gobo, I know we all swore never to talk about Cantus but I…" No, no..that's just as bad."
Red sighed and repositioned the carrier on her back, noticing that the little fraggle was now dozing without a care in the world.
"Immature huh?" She sat down slowly on a rock, only a few yards away from her destination.
"Am I really immature? What does that even mean?"
Red reached up to her shoulder and gazed at the pink hand, so much smaller than her own, that clasped its whole width over only two of her fingers.
"Life's so simple when you're little…it's just like that old rhyme…" Red started to sing, as the buzz and hammering of the doozer constructors rose up to meet her words in an blues-ike beat.
Softly, fuzzy daydreams in her mind filled the scene like a waking dream sharing.
When you're five or when you eight, you start to eat off a plate.
A tiny Red, no bigger than Poppy, sat in a crudely fashioned high chair of branches wearing a bib with a radish embroidered upon it. Her father, a tall orange fraggle with a aqua colored beard, was making funny faces. Her mother, a heavy-set, short, blue fraggle with white hair, was trying to spoon feed her daughter peas. Little Red refused them with a turn of her head one way and then the other…
When you're eleven everyone's so proud of you, when you learn to tie your shoe.
..before dumping the whole bowl on her head and licking the goo running down her cheeks, making her parents erupt in laughter.
The vision melted away to present day Red who absentmindedly picked a daisy, staring at it with worried eyes.
All these things Mom and Pop knew for sure, but what's it mean to be immature?
A new vision of a slightly older Red, her hair pulled up in a single ponytail and her cheeks covered in freckles melted into view. She sat, sleeping soundly at a stone desk covered with papers, Around her a crowd of other young fraggles danced, yelled, and threw paper airplanes.
At eighteen you learn to read and write…
The warhoop of a teacher shouting her name made her sit bolt upright, the whole side of her face now covered in the fresh sloppy berry ink printing that had once been on her paper. The whole class rolled in laughter.
And at twenty-three you can stay up and play half of the night!
Red twirled the daisy in-between her palms and threw it upward, catching it again just before it landed on her lap.
All these things I've always known for sure, so what's it mean to be immature?
A vision of the first day Red and Mokey moved in together appeared in fuzzy washed out colors of memory, Red ordering friends around as they found places to put all her many things, while Mokey looked on in horror as other half the room was filled to bursting.
At twenty-seven you're up and grown, big enough to live on your own…
A vision of Red kissing Gobo's cheek blended into the drab grey tones of the cave wall.
True love will come to you, between thirty-three and forty-two.
Red began to pick off the daisies petals one by one as the last vision melted away.
Of all these things a fraggles' sure, but what's it mean…?
She got up and walked toward the doorway of the cave, taking a deep breath to steady herself.
...What's it mean...?
She knocked on the door, her knocks set in time to the last beats of the song, as she knocked with one hand and held a newly awaken Poppy around the waste in a football hold in the other.
To..be..im-ma-ture ?
The cave door opened with a slow sluggish creak to reveal a very sleepy looking Wembley rubbing his eyes with a voice halfway between a yawn and a groan.
"Morning…Red..What are you doin' here?"
"Where's Gobo?" Red snapped, grabbing Wembley's nose with her free hand in a business like fashion and lifting him upward an inch to stare eye to eye with the trembling fraggle. "It's really really important."
"Oh, oh..well, he's n..not here right now." Wembley sputtered. "I think he had to get up extra early to teach the volunteer fire department how to start a outer space fire..or how to put one out. I can never remember…"
Red let the younger fraggles light green nose go, sending him tumbling back to earth with a sigh and a thump.
"Why does he always have to go somewhere when I really…?" She mused to herself, as her gaze fell on Wembley with a glimmer of hope.
"Say Wembley…" Red began, her voice sounding strangely smaller and softer than it ever would normally be, even when she was not shouting orders.
"Yeah Red?" He replied with a yawn.
"Do you think I'm…mature?" She finished, titling her head to the side and curling the end of a bedraggled pigtail around her finger nervously as she glanced at the ground.
"Gosh…" Wembley began. " I…think…"
"You can tell me the truth" Red added with an over-dramatic flare, bracing herself. "I can take it..No, I deserve it even…"
"I think..you're..very mature Red." Wembley blurted out.
"Wha?" Red peeped, taken aback by the normally soft spoken fraggles defeat answer…and his green hand which happened to now be placed more than supportively over her own yellow one.
"No..in fact, I think, I think, you're beautiful Red."
"Oh. My. Gosh. Wembley I please tell me you're not actually…" Red said flatly, rooted with shock to the spot.
"I think you're the most attractive fraggle that ever lived." Wembley added, his voice low as his mouth parted in a cocky smile.
"..You are actually." Red concluded with a nervous attempt to pull away, only to find herself suddenly pulled back, nose to muzzle with Wembley.
"Here!" Red peeped quickly, raising little Poppy up like a living shield between them and passing him off into the green fraggles arms as she skillfully wiggled out of them herself.
"You. Baby. Turn to look after. Bye!" She yelled over her shoulder, and was gone into the distance in a flash.
"Red?!" Wembley yelled, his voice cracking slightly as it regained its nervous edge.
"Red, I didn't mean to…That is..Aw, Red I don't know anything about babies! Where are you goooing?!"
"To the trash heeeap!" Came a faint reply.
"Oh no, oh no..!" Wembley chanted to himself, holding the toddler away from his body as if it were some strange alien life-form that would explode at any moment, and starting to make his way down a back tunnel screaming all the way.
"Gobo, Gobo, help! He's leaking everywhere…!"