This is a serial, first part HERE

Chapter 43: The Rocks Pull their Weight

Doctor Bones had his hands on the controls. From the outside, had one had good enough sight one might have seen what looked like a black coffin doing all kinds of tricks such as loop the loops and so on in the air. It didn’t look like it was going anywhere in particular.

“Doctor! Don’t just press things wildly!” Miss Fern screamed, dodging a rock that was itself screaming.

-I’m not, its just that about everything does the opposite to what I think it does!-

He protested this, and continued to try and control the spinning coffin.

-Oh, I think I’m beginning to get the hang of…-

“Watch out doctor!”

There was a loud crack as one of the purple rocks slammed into Doctor Bones’ skull. Naturally he went flying off the control throne. The light in his eyes went out.

“Doctoooorrrrr!” Miss Fern cried out.

Doctor Bones lay prone, still. A monument that even undead skeletons can be knocked out cold by a well placed rock to the skull. If it was any comfort, he wasn’t really getting better at controlling the coffin.

-Oh, sorry about that- the rock apologised.

-He could have ducked-

-That’s an awfully big mountain we’re heading towards-

On the mirrorscreen a mountain of orange rock, blanketed with snow and afflicted with spots of trees, loomed threateningly. With a great deal of panicking, Miss Fern jumped into the control throne. She touched the controls of the coffin.

From this action, a greater speed was demonstrated by the coffin.

“Oh bother! how about this!”

Miss Fern was a bit clumsy with her hooves, but she managed to repeat a series of complicated inputs that she saw Doctor Bones begin before he was knocked out.

From this action, an even greater speed was demonstrated by the coffin.

<Warning, collision imminent>

-Well, that sound bad-

“If I could just figure out how to pull up we’d be fine!”

One of the rocks faced the mirrorscreen and then the controls.

-Isn’t that just like this?-

Before Miss Fern could stop the small rock, it rolled over the controls. There was jerk and Miss Fern tumbled from the seat as the coffin abruptly ascended.

-Oooh, this is pretty neat, but I need a little help here-

More of the rocks crowded about the controls and the coffin began to stabilize.

“How, how did you all do that?”

-Eh? Its fairly intuitive though?-

-Watch, we just went like this-

-This-

-And this-

Miss Fern watched them insert a number of inputs that seemed to have nothing to do with movement. It didn’t even seem like they were using the keyboard and tracking-orb in a sensible manner at all. In particular they just seemed to lightly bump against the tracking-orb to produce amazing effects.

-This is right neat-

-We can go anywhere!-

-I’ve always wanted to check out the Hot Thing-

-You’ve only been around for minutes though-

-Its what Papa would have wanted-

-A moment of silence for Papa-

The rocks grew still and silent for once, alas, it really was only a moment.

-Right, let’s check out the Hot Thing!-

-Wait, couldn’t we see the Giant Snowman’s carrot nose with this?-

“Ahhh ahh! If you guys want to live here, you gotta pull your weight! If you want to stay, you’ve got to work the controls for me and the Doctor! Got it?” Miss Fern said, obvious to the fact that a) Doctor Bones probably didn’t want the rocks sticking around and b) unless you thought of her as an ornamental potted plant, she really wasn’t pulling her own weight.

In fact, if you qualified her as an ornamental potted plant, she was doing a bad job there.

-Seems fair-

-I’m still not convinced they didn’t steal this thing-

-Yeah, they don’t even know how to control it-

-Well, whatever. You wanted to go somewhere right?-

-Where was it?-

-Oh the spooky place from Papa’s memories-

While this had been going on, Doctor Bones had not been experiencing mere unconsciousness.