"Does that word really mean you can't run and play at all?"
Wembley asked with a sad downward turn of his nose.
"Wembley, don't you know anything? That's rude!"
Red spat, her frowning face an inch from his now cowering own where they had sat down at the bedside.
"But we always run and play when a new fraggle comes…"He piped up with a meek cheerfulness.
"It sounds like a very fun tradition…" Bimsy said with a small smile.
"Fun? You are Boober's sister right? " Red said, looking the fraggles long fuzzy fur over again from top to bottom with a suspicious glance.
"But I'm afraid I will have to pass." Bimsy finished, slipping off the earmuffs and top of the blanket, even though most of her hosts were starting to shiver.
"I thought so..." Red whispered mostly to herself as her boredom lead her toward Boober's hiding spot silently.
"Still, we wish we could give you a nicer welcome."
Mokey said, coming over to the bedside with Lanford's pot in tow.
The giant flytrap like plant sniffed the newcomer and growled softly, but allowed himself to be petted.
"Don't worry. You can be sure this is the warmest welcome I have received in years."
"Really? Were the others cold?" Wembley asked.
"Were the others…" Bimsy lifted her hand just as Lanford had a change of heart and tried to bite it, ending up chewing on thin air. "Oh, what a sweetheart you are, no not quite…"
Her gaze fell on the distant Boober, where Red now stood beside him, whispering unheard encouragement into his ear, his head still facing the opposite wall.
"He's sulking..Oh, look at his tail!.." Bimsy's tone turned upward in a fond melody close to a laugh. "Boomer always did have the most expressive tail."
At that same moment Boober reached backward, pulling the end of his swaying tail toward his lap and out of the cave light's view.
"Really? Well you're welcome to have back all of little 'Boomer"' back if you want,"
Red said, grunting as she lifted the whole form of Boober up in the air few inches and turned him, captured tail and all, against his will toward the open space of the cave, sitting him down again.
"We've had more than enough."
"Red!" Gobo gasped in shock.
"Well..we do love him, but sometimes he can just be so…"
Red searched for words as Boober for the first time met his sisters unseen gaze with his own, let out a loud sound somewhere between a sniff and a yelp, and turned quickly toward the wall again.
"So…that!" Red finished, biting the edge of her muzzle.
"No, that's alright. I just came to keep a promise I made a long time ago…"
Bimsy began with a overblown dramatic heaviness to her voice.
"But if Boober doesn't want to talk to me I suppose there is nothing I can do but simply go back home."