Hi Guys, it’s me, Cheeky Monkey HD.com, here and you join me, Daft Dog 4KUHD and Cheeky Cat 1080 as we are standing in front of CC1080p’s food bowl, which has, rather, incredibly, sprouted a mystical portal to another world.  

If you’re reading this story sequentially on my web-site, or collected into a book, then all these facts should be ‘top of mind’ for you and you’ll be wondering why it is that I’m spending valuable verbal real estate in recapping them.  Please bear in mind the dictum of Jim Shooter during his tenure as Editor-in-Chief at Marvel Comics that “every comic is somebody’s first.” Likewise, every chapter of a serialised web-based light novel, that may or may not be later collected into book form, might be somebody’s first too.  If you happen to be one of those people then I hope that the recap at the start of this paragraph was useful to you.

That said, I seriously recommend going back and starting from Chapter 1 as you’re really missing a lot of the essential flavour of the story.  I just feel like it would be more satisfying all around.  Sure, a plate of chips is delicious, but to add salt and vinegar? Well, guys, we’ve just departed on a train journey called “culinary genius”.

WARNING: For those of you who have already read the previous 5 chapters then I suggest that you don’t skip back to chapter 1 at this point.  You’re liable to get stuck in some kind of time loop and end up killing your own grandfather or something.

I’ve completely lost my train of thought.  I’m going to re-read it all.

Right, OK.

So, we’re standing there in front of the food bowl portal and it’s shimmering and sparkling like the frock a woman might wear on a cruise if they’re dining at the captain’s table and they want to prove to him that they’ve still got it.  In addition to being shimmery/sparkly¹, the spatial anomaly is a vibrant, rich purple in colour.  Which, incidentally, is the sort of colour that the dress might be.  Could this similarity to such a specific garment be a clue as to the true nature of the trans-dimensional gateway? It was hard to tell at this point. 

“You said that you were going to jump through the portal and yet you’re still standing there,” said DD4KUHD.

“Hmmmm, yes,” I pondered incisively. “But remember that I said ‘let’s go jump in the portal’ where ‘let’s’ is short for ‘let us’ and so the jumping into the portal very much included you in the jumping action and yet you also are still standing here.”

“Yes, but you said it,” retorted the pup, indignantly. “And surely, it is inherent within such an exclamation that the one to make such a remark would also be the instigator of any actions contained within such a statement.”

“You raise a fascinating philosophical conundrum, old chum. But it simply isn’t a question as to whether or not…”

“Mow,” said CC1080p disdainfully as she jumped through the portal.  She landed on the other side and we waited for her to turn around and give the thumbs up², but she immediately clocked a nearby bird and started stalking it.  We waited for a couple of minutes in case she remembered that we were there, but she didn’t and so we just assumed that it would all be fine anyway.

“Right, pal, let’s go!” I proclaimed.

“Yeah, let’s jump now.”

And so I jumped head first³ into the shimmering light; immediately overwhelmed by a warm, tingling sensation like when you wee yourself, but it was all over and not wet or smelly. The next thing I knew I landed face first in the grassiest smelling grass that I’d ever smelled. 

“We did it,” I said to DD4KUHD who I quickly realised wasn’t on the ground next to me.  I turned to see him still in the kitchen, laughing.  After four or five minutes of me harrumphing at his incessant giggling, he calmed down enough to say something. Although I couldn’t hear him (what with the whole ‘being in different dimensions’ thing) I could just about lip read him saying “OK, I’ll come now.”

Finally, I thought, maybe we can start Chapter 7 with some actual adventure.

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Footnotes:

1.  I almost went with ‘shimkery’, but it doesn’t quite work.
2. Paws up.
3. On reflection, I could have just walked through.