It's so simple Boober!" Mokey said cheerfully helping him up. "All I need is a cause, something real. But what?"
"What about being a minstrel?" Wembley said, his voice wavering a bit at the weight of the whole group looking at him. "Don't they have all those things? At least, maybe they do?"
"Oh, no no, I couldn't.. you remember what Cantus said last time.."
Mokey spoke at a near whisper, casually glancing to where the minstrels were already starting to gather a crowd of nearly all the fraggles in the lower rock.
"…I'm not good enough…"
Her friends did not seem to notice when her own gaze caught the edge of the minstrel leaders' own and she looked downward quickly.
"Well… we're real, you know." Gobo added, gently patting her arm.
"And since we're real," Red began halfway dragging Mokey by the hand back toward the group, where she quickly jumped on the tabletop .
"…I've got something really real as a birthday gift. I know your annual poetry reading isn't until tonight but: I wrote a poem!"
"Oh, how nice of you Red!" Mokey said in surprise.
"You wrote a poem?" Gobo asked with a grin.
"You can write?" Boober added in complete shock.
"Of course I can write, I'm not stupid you know." Red retorted, sifting her weight and scratching the back of her ankle with a toe. "Ah hem, it's called" My friend Mokey"
Mokey, Gobo, and Wembley leaded in intently to listen as Boober sneaked around the other side, reading over Red's shoulder.
"Every day a half past three, It's my friend Mokey and me.
Though she's not that good with sports, she can grow flowers, tall and shorts.
And at lunchtime when the sun is high, she likes to paint pictures of the sky…"
"You can't use shorts that way you know…" Boober butted in, jabbing a finger at the paper.
"Quiet you…" Red whispered, whipping the paper the other direction only to find Boober there to, this time armed with a bottle of ink and a quill pen he had produced from under his hat.
"…and you misspelled three..and though…and this and this and a comma splice here…"
Boober continued, his writing hand moving steadily over the span of the scroll Red was holding.
In the end of this onslaught Red stood in shock, holding her poem which was now dripping with red ink.
"You..you killed..it…"
She whimpered softly her voice ending with a high crack as she hid her suddenly wet looking eyes from view, jumping of the table and running off into the living caves like a shot.
"Boober!" His three remaining friends chorused with a glare.
"What?" Boober asked, shirking from view. "I was just giving some constructive criticism.."
He sighed, the glares showing no sign of getting weaker.
"All right, all right, I'll say I'm sorry…" Boober grumbled, kicking a stone as he followed Red's taken path.