Preface 2 - the original story

I told this story in a very exaggerated Irish brogue. Lots of pitch changes and rolled R's. My son was soon laughing and giggling. Not so effective for putting him in the mood for sleep, but very flattering to my ego. There were lots of dramatic pauses, often in the middle of sentences, while I thought of something to say (or waited for the giggling and hiccupping to stop).

Somewhere, on a 3.5 inch disk, I have copies of the original stories. I don't remember many of the details, so this recreation will only superficially resemble the original. If that doesn't seem to work out, I may go back and dig up the original stories and see if that is a better place to start.

My initial story was just basically about Rikki sneaking out in the night to visit the forbidden surface. There, he was captured by a big farmboy, who mistook him for a Leprechaun. Rikki tricked the farm boy into letting him go. For the first week or so, I just kept repeating this formula as a series of short, stories. After that, I started developing much longer and more complicated plots and back stories, taking place both above and below the surface.

I've considered trying to use a similar methodology as before. Record a spontaneous story as I speak it, then use that as a first draft.

I remember seeing the Goose Bumps books a few years after that, and thinking that the author probably just made up one book a day pretty much the way I did the Rikki stories. He had a pretty consistent formula. You could tell he didn't do a lot of editing and re-writes, either. It must have been a real cash cow for him. Great idea. More power to him.

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Once upon a time, deep beneath an Ireland far across the sea, lived a simple, but uncomplicated, band of creatures known as the "Wee Little People".

Very few humans knew of their existence, and even then they were often mistaken for the native Leprechauns who had once inhabited the area, but the Wee Little People (or WLP) were a shy and secretive race not like any other.

This story is about a particular member of this tiny group, whose name was Rikki.

Rikki was no taller than a man's hand at that time, little more than half grown. He lived alone with his mother, his father having gone exploring shortly after he was born and never coming back.

Rikki was getting to be that age where boys, whether human or wee people, grow curious about the greater world. They want to see things and go places. Places they've never been. Better still, places no one has ever been. And - perhaps best of all - places they've been forbidden to go.

For the wee little people like Rikki, the most forbidden place to go would be the surface, a mysterious place which was rumored to be far above their heads. Rikki knew there were service tunnels that brought in fresh air from above. The tunnels were carefully concealed in the rocky crags.

Having spent his young live in the tunnels and caverns of (name the place?), Rikki couldn't really imagine what it would be like to be able to see stars and other objects that were billions of miles away. He studied such things in school, but with no expectation of ever actually seeing them. It was considered too dangerous for anyone but a few trusted adults to venture up there.

So, of course, Rikki was determined to do just that.

He waited until his mother was asleep, then sipped out of his room through a window that opened into the street.

(describe his journey to finally reach the last access doors, then up a tunnel barely wide enough for him to squeeze out of.)

At first, his eyes would not focus. Even with the dark glasses, there seemed to be blinding lights in every direction. His eyes slowly adjusted and he was transfixed - frozen in place staring for the first time at the starry majesty of a cloudless, moonless night.

He lay back on the lush grass, his hands beneath his head and his legs folded. He was looking up at the most beautiful, awe-inspiring thing he had ever seen. He was looking up at...

Boom!
... the inside of a potato sack!

It was suddenly dark and dusty and he felt himself being tossed about inside the rough sack.

He heard a deep voice gleefully repeating "I done caught myself a Leppry-con! I done caught myself a Leppry-con!"

The voice belonged to Dulbert, a poor strapping farm boy who mistakenly thought that if he ever caught a Leprechaun, he would be given a fortune in gold.

Like all the wee little people, Rikki spoke a number of languages, and he quickly realized not only what Dulbert was saying, but also how Dulbert was mistaken. However, not having been introduced, he did not think it best time to bring it up.

He could tell that the big farm boy was hurrying down the hill as fast - or faster - as was prudent in such darkness. There was little time to come up with a fool-proof escape plan. He wished he had brought something to cut through the sack.

The sack stopped moving and Dulbert held it in front of his face. "Mr. Leppry-con, sir" he said. "Are you still in there".

In a high squeaky voice, Rikki replied "There's no one in here but me... and I'm just a poor lost chicken." Having never heard a chicken speak, Dulbert was skeptical at first.

"How do I know you is a chicken and not just a lying so's I'll let you go without you paying me my gold?"

"I am a chicken, but I know wheere the Leprechaun hid his gold. I'll help you get it if you'll let me go."

After some further high level negotiations, Dulbert agreed to give the "chicken" the benefit of the doubt and take him back the spot where Rikki had been caught.

(to be continued)