Diary of Pip Rippon

Where are we Pip?

You know where I am Van, I'm working on the final draft.

This is going to put Hellsborough on the map, Pip! This place has been too maligned for far too long!

The only thing that can stop this now is mine, or maybe your, untimely death!

The peewhits were calling out down the Loxley valley when I came over the common. My mind had been in the off-world all day, even if my body wasn't, so even though I had been down the Dun, I was thinking about things other than the things happening around me; it is what it is and that is the way it is. Out back of the city, the wooltards have birthed, it is the same time every year and the smalltards were galloping -- no, they don't gallop -- they frolic. The smalltards frolicked in the meadows, which last week were full of snow, but are now green and lush and ready for the smalltard grazing onslaught.

I was up early and travelling in the off-world today, but luckily managed to get back to Hellsborough to take Shad out for a wander. I've never seen it before, but there was a Skewerwing stood hunting in Hellsborough hole; it stood there majestically eyeing the fast running Loxley for slippers. We stood and watched for a few moments, but it didn't move a muscle in all that time, and we were ready for a beer, so left it to its thing.

A convention of milting -- is that the collective noun? Maybe an ageing of milting, or possibly an eon of milting. Collective nouns are strange things -- a parliament of flatfacedwoos, a murder or corvids. I've always been fascinated by collective nouns. A murmuration of starlings, a pack of ripperthroats, a stampede of demonspawn.

Had a long walk with a milting, virtually the length of the Loxley from Damflask back to Malin bridge. He told me many things about his long life, how he had been in and out of Hellsborough many times over the years, and how he found accents in different towns and cities a remarkable thing -- his stories weren't dissimilar to my own travels and I enjoyed his company very much. He did repeat himself a lot though, which made me wonder whether the mind of a milting deteriorates over time in the same way that a human mind does.

Today, I located a place that I had been expecting to find, I've named it Ripperthroat gorge. Did I spot a ripperthroat, no -- but then I had Shad with me, so his scent, and mine, would have forced them into hiding had they been about anyway, and it was daytime, so if they were about, they would have been deep in hiding, and I wasn't about to start poking about and trying to wake a rippertrhoat from its slumber, that would seem to be a somewhat silly thing to do. But I expect that I have walked in their lair, there were signs, smelting, a wooltard jaw bone (I'm not an expert on wooltard anatomy, but that's what it looked like to me), a lot of wool strewn about, and a scent that had Shad on edge, and was unusual -- not something I smell in Hellsborough, or have smelt anywhere else to be honest. I'm thinking that maybe I should go back at night without Shad, I am feeling an affiliation with the ripperthroat, I know they'll not harm me, I feel at one with them, I feel I am part of the pack, that I am ripperthroat.