One glorious morning, Lord Haven arrived at the shed where Alexandra was kept to prep her for running. "Good morning!" he said. "I have some exciting news regarding your running in!"
"Oh?" Alexandra asked, looking at him with some surprise. "What is it?"
"We are going to be transporting some very important people, or VIPs for short. We will be working up to Truro to collect them later today, then run back down to Falmouth and wait whilst they put on a special show." He had, by this point, climbed into her cab and had lit her fire. Alexandra was, effectively, a vertical boiler locomotive, so it didn't take her very long to get up to steam.
"Oh! This is most exciting!" Alexandra said, and with a blast of steam moved off to the station, passing by Charles waiting for his driver to arrive. "Hello Charles!"
"Ah, morning," Charles said, still a bit tired. "Anything interesting happening?"
"Why, yes!" Alexandra replied. "Myself and Lord Haven are to commence a great perigrination! An association of thesbians is to navigate to our humble town to entertain the masses! And we shall transport them to this great villa."
As Alexandra steamed past, Charles blinked. "I can only assume she brought a thesaurus with her."
As Alexandra rolled to a stop in the platform, she saw Salty and Porter, both of whom were awaiting their drivers. "Hello boys!" she called. "Falmouth is about to go up market!"
"I thought Cornwall already was quite up market, based on the house prices," Porter said.
"That's because Englishmen live in our houses, often buying them as holiday homes," Salty explained.
"I was wondering why we heard so few Cornish accents around here."
"Anyway," Alexandra said, "Today, I am to collect a troupe of travelling players, who are arriving to stage a son et lumiere, as they call it du continent."
Porter's face scrunched up in confusion at what he was being told, and Salty looked equally baffled.
"It shall be a special treat for everybody who lives here, not to mention the tourists!" Alexandra then set off up the line to the coaling stage.
"Very nice!" Salty said. He then glanced to Porter. "I have absolutely no idea what she was talking about."
"Me neither," Porter said. "It seems to be a trait amongst certain people to use lots of big words to sound clever, when in reality it makes them incomprehensible."
"I'll ask Sunny about it when she arrives," Salty said. "Speaking of whom, have you seen her anywhere?"
"No," Porter replied. "And on that note, where's Izzy?"
Meanwhile, Izzy had succesfully shifted an incredible amount of junk to the pathway outside the lighthouse. She seemed to be sticking it into a pile of sorts, all whilst singing a song.
"Where are we gonna play today? Sunny's Lighthouse!
Come on Along, we're on our Way! Sunny's Lighthouse!
All of our Friends are there, Hooray! Sunny's Lighthouse!
Shining a light to guide the way! Sunny's Lighthouse!"
At last, her adjustments seemed to be done, and she hopped on the top. "Perfect! The balance is ideal!"
Just then, Hitch and Zipp arrived, and looked up in confusion. "Uhh, Zipp?" Hitch asked. "Do you have any clue why Izzy's sitting on top of a huge mountain of trash?"
"No," Zipp replied. "It does look structurally unstable, though."
Izzy, however, paid them no heed. "This is so exciting because this is the best birthday present I ever made because I finally had a friend and it's her birthday!" She paused. "That was a long sentence."
Unfortunately, Zipp's prediction proved to be correct, and the structure began to wobble. With a crash and a crumble, the tower started to tumble, and the writer began to question why he was referencing the rhyming era of Thomas and Friends.
Izzy, of course, fell off, but Hitch, happening to be in the right place at the right time, caught her. "Boy are you heavy," Hitch said.
"Well, yeah! Human beings do weigh a fair bit!" Izzy replied.
Zipp had taken out a notebook in the meantime and was taking notes. "Tower lacked basic structural integrity. Probably needs a redesign to make more stable."
Hitch sighed. "You're safe now. Sorry your tower got trashed."
"It's not the tower I'm so much concerned about as my glasses," Izzy replied. "I need those for reading or crafting, unless I particularly want to read funny squiggles. I'm a bit long sighted."
Seconds later, they landed back over her eyes. "Hooray! Though I do need to remove them before travelling." The glasses were joined by a bracelet she had made a few seconds later. "Whoo!"
The door to the lighthouse opened, and a very tired looking Sunny stepped out, with some caffeineated beverage in her hand. "Is everybody OK? It sounded like an earthquake just went off nearby. I could feel it from where I was."
Izzy leaped forward. "Happy birthday, Sunny!" she cheered. "Feels good saying that for the first ever time. I made you a present!" She handed her the bracelet, which Sunny clipped onto her wrist just above her watch.
"Thank you, Izzy!" Sunny replied. "I've got some things that need doing today, but how about we go into town first? It's market day, and I imagine there'll be something there that will fire your imagination!"
They watched as Hitch tried to clear the path of rubble. "Hey! Zipp! Can you lend me a hand?"
Zipp rolled her eyes. "Fine. Why do we always end up cleaning up other people's mess?"
Sunny and Izzy wandered along the path that led from the lighthouse to the engine sheds that had been built nearby. "Thanks for the gift, Izzy," Sunny smiled. "You have no idea how great it is to have friends to share my daily life with."
"Hey, no problem!" Izzy smiled. "And that one came together all by accident. Weird, huh?"
"I'd call it Izzytastic!" Sunny joked.
As the two laughed, neither of them noticed Misty watching from the treeline. "I have a direct visual on them, Opaline. They're heading into town. No signs of magic from them yet, but all the talking steam engines suggests otherwise."
"That's excellent," Opaline said. "Rendnezvous with Boomer in the towns square and proceed to Phase 2 of the plan. Funny, though. I could have sworn the image I was given by an operative of Sunny's appearance looked different."
"Yes," Misty said, "but Izzy says that portraits nowadays are produced to a romanticised ideal rather than the idiosyncratic features of the subject in question."
"Clearly Izzy has a much larger vocabulary than you," Opaline replied. "Get moving."
Misty closed the radio unit and set off into Falmouth- only to immediately trip on a rock. "Ow!"
Meanwhile, Alexandra had arrived at Truro, and I'm sorry to say that the job she had been given had rather gone to her cab roof. "It only seems fitting that a railcar, a magnificent piece of Edwardian engineering such as myself, should transport some of the greatest actors of the age. I wonder who is on the bill for this performance, hmm? David Tennant? Stephen Fry? Maybe even Peter Capaldi?"
"What's the hold up?" shouted a DMU. "You're blocking the points! I need to be in Exeter sharpish!"
Alexandra shuffled forward into the bay platform to let the DMU pass. "Oh! Sorry!" She continued fantasising about what the show might entail as she waited.
At the engine shed, Sunny and Izzy parted ways, as the yards needed some work doing to them. Izzy dashed past the stands like a kid in a candy store, excited to see what could possibly be on offer. She skidded round bends and gawked closely at stands covered in exciting things. "Ooh! Fish!"
"There's certainly a lot of it in Cornwall!" the store owner smiled. "If you want a good, healthy diet, come to Cornwall."
Izzy's eyes were wide, and she continued walking along looking at all the things. Suddenly, she crashed into something and stopped.
"Ouch!" Pipp said. "Izzy, please be careful!"
"You knew about the market?" Izzy asked, amazed, as she helped Pipp up.
"It's the only place to be for inspiration!" Pipp replied, before returning to her phone. "That's right, Pippsqueaks! If you're looking for the best wearables, makeables, craftables, and snackables this side of Penzance, come to the Falmouth market, every Wednesday and Saturday!"
"I'm not convinced most of those are real words," said one store holder.
Suddenly, Salty rattled by on a nearby siding. "Good mornin', me hearties!" he said. "Life is pretty good right now. Sea air, an old market, and plenty of trucks to shunt." He then started singing. "When love just seems so far away!"
"Keep hauling, keep hauling!" the trucks responded.
Izzy laughed. "Now THAT is quite something to behold. One engine calling, and dozens of trucks responding."
"But what is Sunny wearing on her wrist?" Pipp asked.
"A bracelet that I made for her," Izzy replied.
"I'm calling it! New trends!"
Hitch huffed and puffed as he put the last boxes away. "What a mess," he said. "How did Izzy find all this stuff anyway?"
"I can only assume she's been going dumpster diving, again," Zipp sighed. "I've tried explaining to her that diving in bins and looking for rubbish is not what recycling is. You're supposed to reuse it BEFORE you throw it away."
"Still, hopefully this won't happen again," Hitch replied. "All in a day's work!"
"You guys really do use a lot of nautical vocabulary."
"Slightly more importantly, why is all the stuff we just put away all over the pathway again?"
Meanwhile, Izzy had moved to the yard, and was currently trying to flag Salty down. The diesel rattled to a stop before her and smiled. "Hi, matey! What troubles are bothering you?"
"Can I talk to Sunny?"
Sunny poked her head out of the cab. "Is something the problem?"
"Yes!" Izzy replied. "You know the bracelet I made you? It's gone viral, and now everybody wants one! The only problem is I can't remember how I made it!"
"That shouldn't be a problem," Sunny said. "The beauty of arts and crafts is that no two objects are the same. If you just want the exact same thing as somebody else you go to the outlet, rather like that Princess Dress that seems to be all the rage right now." She paused. "Anyway, my point is that you should let your own creativity inspire you. Sure, giving the people what they want is good and all, but at the end of the day creative arts is a personal endeavour."
"Indeed!" Pipp called, who had somehow materialised next to them. "You're overthinking it, Izzy. There's no need to create something totally new every single time. Instead, you take what you've already done and make a variation on it. Rather like the music industry."
"Really?" Izzy asked.
"Yep. Most pop songs are the same beat and chord sequence with some new lyrics on top. Somebody once wrote a song demonstrating this fact, it's seriously funny."
"Ooh."
Pipp then decided to self demonstrate with one of her songs.
"First thing's first, you gotta look for the spark/
That bit of magic way deep down in your heart!
It's the rhythm that connects us, when you find it/
Yeah now that's a great start (start, start, start)
Hey!
"You gotta follow your beat/ (beat, beat)
And then soon you will see! (see, see)
You won't have that far to go/
Until your song starts to grow/
All you need is your beat!" (your beat, your beat)
All you need is your beat/ (beat)
Hey, come on!
To get them stomping their feet! (feet!)
And then the next thing you'll know/
Imagination will flow/
All you need is your beat/
All you need is your beat! (beat)
Woo!
(All you need is your beat)
Ba-da-da, ba-da-da!
All you need is your beat/
Ba-da-da, ba-da-da!"
"Awesome!" Izzy called.
"So, you know what you need to do?" Pipp asked.
"Yes indeedally!" Izzy replied. "But first I will need to collect some supplies. And for that I need to find Porter!" She dashed off into the distance, looking for the tank engine.
"I'll be on the seafront if you need me!" Pipp replied. "I find it helps me with writing songs."
Over at the shunting yards, Porter was digging into the lines of trucks. "Izzy, why are we pulling all of these out?" Porter asked.
"Because there's one super special specific one I'm looking for to allow me to be really creative!" Izzy replied.
Charles rolled his eyes. "You are aware we only finished cleaning that up last night, right? You are making an mess."
"Never mind! What we shall make will be bluer than the blue blob of Blobbington!"
Porter glanced to the side. "Sometimes it's just easier not to ask."
"Porter! Don't break the fourth wall! That's my job!" Izzy called.