Possibly too soon for an update, but I wrote more and I want to get it out of my head. There's more, too, and I'm not happy with it. I'm fed up with writing. I want to make a stop-motion film instead.
II.
Max grew older. She day-dreamed often about the free places, which she imagined to be huge expanses of grass, filled with pointy grass houses and singing Mudokons. Scrabs and Paramites – of which she knew from the labels of the pies they sold – stood in the fields, howling tunefully. Everyone had a smile on their face.
She knew that one day she would go there. When she was older she would travel across the desert, and through the forest, and along the fields at the top of the cliff and she would arrive at the free places, and everyone would welcome her and they would sing together.
So she scrubbed the floor, and made pies (which were sold as a special chain, more expensive), and played with the two boy Mudokons, and she plotted and thought up all sorts of ways she might escape from Humbug's factory.
One day she spilled a huge load of pastry mix across the floor. A Slig, who saw her, yelled at her for it, and she cowered. He roared at her more than, spurred on by her terror.
He beat her.
When she returned to the sleeping quarters, her face cut and bleeding, Doofy grabbed her and hugged her, and asked her what the matter was.
“N-nothing,” she said. “Just a stupid Slig. But...” she wiped away a tear. “I think it may be time to get out of here.”
Doofy stared at her, and Crankers looked on; Bonker just hummed and looked at the ceiling.
“I think...” he said, “we should stay here a little longer.”
“I want to g-go!” Max said. “The Sligs are too mean and I just want to leave!”
“No,” said Doofy. “We're safe here-”
“Safe!?”
“Safer than we would be out in the wilds,” he said. “Believe me. Nobody – that is... one day, when you are older, we will leave, but for now...”
Max didn't understand, she just wanted to escape from the pie factory and go to the free places, where she could be carefree and grow vegetables.
“Fine,” she said.
Crankers shook his head and lay back on his bed, and Bonker grinned in a lop-sided way. “Good girl,” he told her.
She aged more. She grew taller, and her pies grew better, and she firmly believed there was something wrong with her.
For a start, the other boys had a sort of appendage with which they did pees. Max did not understand why she didn't have one. She kept it to herself, because she did not want Doofy to worry about her.
The older Mudokons also treated her as though she were special somehow (with the exception of Bonker), and she developed the opinion also that she was mentally disturbed – though not much, otherwise her pies would not be so nice, and she couldn't have thought up such good escape plans.
Every so often, once every few months, an inspection party would arrive. This consisted of a Glukkon, who inspected the pies, a Chronicler, who wrote everything down, and some Sligs, who went around and beat up Mudokons.
However, as soon as anyone heard that the Inspection was coming, they would alert all the others and all the Mudokons there would head back to their quarters as soon as possible.
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