"Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls!" Pipp called from her stand, the microphone carrying her voice far and wide. "Thank you for attending our all new, all special product launch! I am proud to showcase my all new, all natural scent." She picked up a bottle and quickly blasted some. "It is natural! It activates your roots! It-"
"Stinks!" said somebody in the front row. "Keep it off your shoes, folks! It eats right through them!"
The crowd soon caught wind of the smell, and began holding their noses. "Aroma of nature?" said one attendee. "Aroma of a bathroom more like. That is seriously smelly!"
The crowd rapidly dispersed, and Sunny took a look at one of the bottles. "That's funny," she said. "I'm pretty certain it's not supposed to smell like diesel fuel. Is it?"
"No!" Pipp said. "It's supposed to smell of the pretty bits of nature like flowers!"
Misty shrugged her shoulders. "Technically, diesel fuel is natural because it comes from crude oil, which is in the ground."
"Not helping," Zipp said, as she tipped some of the liquid into a bowl and scanned it. "Hmm. Traces of diesel fuel, alongside some coal impurities as well. How weird." She looked up. "Who was in the viscinity of the production process?"
Pipp glanced over. "I briefly stepped away from it to answer the door, then Izzy came to drop off some flo-" She stopped. "Izzy, you have a lot of explaining to do."
"I only took a look in the bowl!" Izzy replied. "I'd been working on Porter earlier that day and maybe that's how it got in."
Zipp blinked. "What bit of don't touch things that don't belong to you don't you understand?"
"I didn't do it on purpose!" Izzy said. "A friend is a person you can rely on!"
Pipp rolled her eyes. "And you're the type of friend that I can rely on to wreck everything!" She stormed off towards her home.
Izzy's face fell. "I need to make this up to her."
The Falmouth Branch is, amongst other things, heavily wooded. This means that many trees grow by the lineside, and they are always a delight to see when in their full glory.
Rebecca rolled amongst the trees by the lineside, smiling. "These trees by the line and the steep gradients bring back happy memories!" she said.
"How so?" Hitch asked.
"I used to be allocated to Bath Green Park in Somerset. From there I regularly ran over the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, a steeply graded line from Bath to Bournemouth. Many pine trees grew alongside the line, and the main train that ran over it was the Pines Express." Her face fell. "Sadly it doesn't exist anymore, as that Dr. Beeching closed it. But at least we have the memories!"
Hitch looked around. "They're currently working on reforesting the place," he said. "With so many trees being cut down, new ones need to be planted to replace them. If we're lucky we'll be working one of the delivery trains of the new trees." He glanced down the line. "It's a shame we can't stop."
"We'd be breaking Rule 55 if we did!" Rebecca said. "Whatever would the railway think?"
"Still, there's something about being in nature that makes me feel better," Hitch admitted. "The railways did allow more people to see the world, after all."
"Whatever it is you've found had better be good," Pipp said. "We've been walking through trees for hours!"
"We've only been walking for 59 minutes and 57 seconds, actually," Izzy replied, then saw Pipp's thoroughly nonplussed face. "Err, yeah, I'll focus on getting us there."
As they climbed through the trees, suddenly there was a booming noise overhead. Pipp looked up. "Just our luck!" she said. "Rain!"
Izzy looked at the ground. "If this path becomes boggy we won't be able to make it. We'll try again in the morning."
Pipp groaned. "Well, that was a waste of an hour."
It was more than just rain that came that night. The Cornish coastline was absolutely battered by a storm. Most people, quite sensibly, sought refuge at home as the rain thundered down. The winds howled, and there was even some thunderbolts and lightning. It was very, very frightening.
In the shed, the engines listened closely. "That's a loud gale!" Porter said.
"Aye!" Salty agreed. "One such wind was the warning that came before the Big Barracuda of Brixham! He was longer than two buses, he was!"
"That," Ray said, "depends on the length of the bus in question."
"It was figurative language," Sophie said.
"And all that rain!" Charles said. "The fields will be waterlogged!"
Rebecca said very little. She was worried about the trees. "I hope the trees are fine," she said to nobody but herself.
Sadly, the trees weren't fine. In fact, they were the exact opposite of fine. Rebecca was put into service to bring some flatbeds up to the scene, and what she saw was a scene of destruction. The storm had pulled many trees from the hillside and scattered them over the line like toys. There were huge scars in the landscape caused by the storm, and the lumber lay everywhere.
Rebecca looked on sadly as the trees were sliced into more managable logs with chainsaws and similar tools. Once the crane was done loading them onto the flatbeds, she took them up to Truro for processing to be taken to a sawmill further up the line.
Izzy and Pipp were helping out when suddenly they spotted something glowing. "Over there!" Izzy called. "I'll take a look!"
Pipp followed her. "Watch your step! It's not as if we'll find some undiscovered flowers in this storm ridden landscape!"
Izzy pointed to them. "Or we might." And sure enough, huge numbers of glowing crystal coloured flowers were sat in a grove. "These must have been hidden when the trees were here!"
Pipp bent down and smelled one. "These smell amazing!" she said. "These would work perfectly for my perfume line!" She pulled one out of the ground with the soil, placed it in a plant pot, watered the plant, and popped it in a box.
"You can't do that!" Izzy said. "It hurts nature!"
"By the same logic you can't eat fruit," Pipp pointed out. "Besides, taking one doesn't hurt nature. I'm going to take it to Figgy and she can figure out how to grow them en masse. She's a retired botanist, remember?"
Just then, both of them saw Rebecca puff by. "She looks so sad!" Izzy said.
"Clearly this place meant a lot to her," Pipp said. "We can't fix broken trees... but we can plant new ones! Perfect!"
A few days later, Pipp stood outside Mane Melody once more. "Hello everybody! As many of you know, the forest up the line was decimated in a storm. In order to support the efforts to replant it, I am selling this all new, all natural scent made using a flower we found in the forest. It smells good and furthermore does good- for every one sold, we shall plant a tree along the line!"
The trick worked. Before long they were flying off the shelves, and Pipp was ticking off boxes. "Well, we sold about 125," she said. "So we need to plant 125 trees! And then more!"
"This was a great idea!" Sunny said. "Not only did you use nature to make something people want, you're giving back to the planet too."
"Charity work benefits us all," Pipp smiled.
A few days later, the first shipment of trees arrived, hauled into place by Janet. "Here are some trees for you!" she called. "Hope they help you!"
Soon, every available machine and set of hands got to work. Rocky and Harvey helped unload the trucks, and the workforce got to work planting the trees into the ground.
During proceedings, Misty spotted the fellow who owned the diesel, a man with a white beard, kept looking at her. She hadn't really considered him before, but then she recalled she had seen him somewhere before- at the Ball, nontheless! What had he been doing there?
As she puzzled it over in her mind, something must have unlocked something else, as suddenly memories began rushing into her mind like a wave. This was the Alphabittle who had been mentioned previously.
She stopped what she was doing and walked over to him. He seemed surprised too. "Misty?" he said. "After all these years... can it be?"
It was the fact he knew her name that confirmed everything in her mind. "Hey dad."
They embraced shortly afterwards, as there was now no force on the planet that would keep them apart. Alphabittle held her gently. "I'm so sorry I failed you," he said. "But I'm going to put this right. I'm not taking you away from your friends. I'm moving to Falmouth so you can stay with them."
Misty smiled. "Thanks dad," she whispered.
And so, all came to a happy end. Rebecca got her forest back, a family was reunited, and a whole community came together to help one another. After all, what is a town but one big extended family?