Just For FunA Tale from the Clouds
by
Dwimrodel


Their houses had to be spotless. The Minn people were very funny that way. Each 
day they would have to have a cleaner from the cleaning company come over and 
wipe every dust mote, every speck of dirt from the wisps of icy moisture they 
called their homes. In fact, the Minn houses could be stacked one on top of 
another by the hundreds and still transmit light. Clean indeed!
The Lillver Cleaning Company outlets were never far away from their customers. 
With so many, how could they be? Why, in one square mile of sky there might be a 
hundred thousand Lillver offices. With that many offices the Lillver Company 
never had any trouble sending a Lillverman to each Minn house. Every morning 
they would clean, by electronic processes (how else), the dust from their abodes 
with a sine machine (called "sine" because of the noise it made as it cleaned. 
Sine, siine, siiiiiiiine.)
This particular morning, in the enormous house owned by the king of the Minn 
people (it took twenty Lillvers and their sine machines to clean it), the little 
prince and princess both barely seven years old were having their breakfast. "I 
hope the Lillvers don't wake daddy" the little princess squeaked. "Those sine 
machines make a horrible racket and you know how he gets when he's wakened from 
a sound sleep."
"Hmmph" said the little prince as he munched an ice crystal.
"Oh, I realize how we must keep our houses clean," continued the little 
princess, "so that the creatures on the ground don't get a bad impression of us. 
Someday, we'll have to reveal our presence here in the clouds and when we do 
we'll show them that... ummm, uhhhh." Small talk was not the princess' strong 
point.
The prince, tired of the princess' babbling, left the table (if we could call it 
that) for the playroom. The prince had a new game and he wanted to get back to 
it, now that he could hear the Lillvers had gone. He called it "Balance the 
Royal Orb on the End of your Nose". It was an easy game, really, considering the 
shape of the Minn peoples' noses. 
Just then a yell came from the playroom. "Did you take the Royal Orb" called the 
prince.
"No" said the princess, coming into the room. 
"I left it in here last night after I was done playing but it isn't here now" 
said the prince in a worried tone. "What?!" cried the princess. "You left it in 
here! You know the Royal Orb has to be returned to it's special room each night. 
Otherwise the sine machines will pick it up. They pick up anything round because 
the only things that are round this high in the clouds are dust particles... and 
the Royal Orb."
"Oh no!" wailed the prince. "When dad finds out, you know what he's going to do 
to me. What am I going to do?" 
"Why not go to the other houses and ask the Lillvermen if they could check the 
bags on their sine machines" suggested the princess, level headed as ever. "I'm 
sure they're never too busy sineing to look for the Royal Orb"
"Are you kidding!" screamed the prince. "You know what they say, 'EVERY cloud 
has a Lillver sineing!"


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