After the meta, the colorbears noticed some interesting developments.
- They smelled better. Thousands of years did not do much for the cleanliness of colorbear fur (after a colorbear dies, a new one uses the body, because the entire land of colorbears only has about twenty colorbear bodies, which must continually be reused. Since there are more than twenty colorbears, many of them share one body, but never in the same family because that would be too weird.) (1)
- Their trademark monument, which was made out of something like paper but even thinner, disintegrated. They tried to make a new one out of wood, but for some reason it kept coming out upside down. (Uffy, the painter, had held the model upside down.) So they made it out of paper and hoped it wouldn't meta again any time soon.
- The meta washed a lot of honey out of the trees, so that notearth became the land of meta and honey (which again, didn't do much for their cleanliness.)
Meteorology update: Fluffy and Muffy are the two meteorologists in Colorbearland. (According to episode #1, Fluffy and Muffy never knew each other before they met at the honey tree, which is true (colorbears, in case you hadn't noticed by now, are not extremely bright.) They worked in the same meteorology rock cliff for several years, but they never realized when they met that they knew each other.) Since the weather on Notearth is relatively unchanging, the job of meteorology is not difficult, which is good, because if Muffy and Fluffy had to carry out any kind of difficult calculations, they would have had to resign their posts as meteorologists. However, they are lucky. Some ancestor with an unnatural intellectual capacity determined that the relative humidity is always 25.36%, the temperature is always between 54 and 76 deg. F, and there are always exactly three clouds and five wisps in the sky (over noncolorbear territory.) In all of colorbear meteorological history, only two other cases of meta have been documented. Since reading is an even more difficult accomplishment than counting, Mufiy and Fluffy could not know anything about them, and they did not know what to do about it. They decided to ignore it and hope no one noticed. (No one did, except for the meta and honey stuff, which fell under the category of nutrition, not meteorology, so Fluffy and Muffy were safe.
About the name "meta": It had occurred twice before in colorbear
history and had been documented. Unfortunately, since the
majority of colorbears can't read, they didn't know about the
references. Amazingly enough, Muffy and Fluffy picked the same
word to describe it as the weather forecasters the two previous
tinies. (Actually, it's not that big a coincidence because the.
colorbears only have two words in their language ("meta" and
"bica") so the probability of all three choosing "meta" is only
(1/2)3 = 1/8, instead of a much lower probability for earth
languages.) With only two words in their language, the colorbears
use various inflections and facial expressions with the two
words, so all the colorbears pretty much understand each other.
(Actually, most of the time they do not understand each other
that well, but it really doesn't matter since the colorbears
really do not have anything important to say to each other.)
Most colorbear conversations sound like this:
Fortunately (or unfortunately) I am able to understand and
translate the meta-bica babble. (I have not translated it here
because the conversation was so inane and boring that I fell
asleep for 16302.295 hours. I did not attempt to translate it
again because I had had enough sleep.)
The colorbears' grammar system:
note: the little blue and pink flag thing on the trunk of the
Meta meta is a scoop through which the Meta runs into the baskets
of the meta (see how confusing this language is?) The little
scoop is part of the tree, which is lucky for the colorbears,because they wouldn't have figured out how to get the Meta from the meta without it.
Fluffy: meta bicaaaa, meta MEEEETA, meeeeeetaaaaa bica,
BIIIIIIIIca, bica Bica, meta meta meta bica atem [meta
backwards].
Muffy: bica boo [I couldn't resist], meta acib [bica backwards]
bica meta, bica bica metaa.
Duffy: meta bbbbiiiiccccaaaa acib atem meta bica [I love
palindromes.]
(A few examples, not intended to be a comprehensive course in
colorbear language.)
Other than nouns and verbs, the colorbears really have no
other grammar rules (at least none that they have ever been
able to figure out) so they just stick nouns and verbs together
in any way they feel like.
Meet Juffy (with head bow) and Thuffy (without). They
live in the log next to the original one where Muffy and Fluffy
live. They're quality control inspectors at the honeytree orchard
(actually the job only consists of making sure the honey doesn't
stop flowing through the little scoop in the side of the tree,
and it never actually does stop, but that's good because Thuffy
and Juffy wouldn't know what to do if it did.) But they also
have the slightly more useful task of making sure the honey
baskets don't overflow (except that a normal basket of the size
that all colorbears use (because the basket makers can't figure
out how to make the pattern any larger or smaller) fills up
with honey in exactly one day or one night, so if it's left
out under the scoop at dawn it's full at dusk and if left at
dusk is full at dawn. And since even the colorbears can figure
out when it's getting dark (or light) they come to pick up their
own baskets and Thuffy and Juffy don't have much to do.)
Anyway, Juffy and Thuffy were as confused as anybody else by the metafall, and went to take shelter in their log. When they were sure that the meta was done, Juffy left the log and went back to work. Thuffy followed, less enthusiastically until he heard Juffy scream like a noncolorbear was attacking her. He ran to see what was happening and perhaps help Juffy, not even noticing how sticky the ground was from the meta & honey that covered it. Juffy seemed to be all right when he got to her, but she turned to him and cried, "Will you look at what's happened?!" Thuffy saw that all the baskets were overturned, some swept away by the meta/honey flood, and one basket had a particularly fast-growing flower growing through the side.
"We just have to pick up the baskets and put them back, and
tell everyone who comes by that they'll have to leave them here
overnight. It's no big deal." Thuffy reassured her. He walked
toward the nearest basket and suddenly fell into a deep puddle,
deep enough to be over his head. He floundered around while
Juffy laughed at him (colorbears have very simple senses of
humor.) She lent him a paw to get out and when he was out she
laughed harder than ever. Apparently some redfruits had been
blown out of their trees and into the puddle, because Thuffy
was red from head to toe.
He picked up his Official Honeyworker
Hat off the surface of the puddle, nearly falling in again,
and sat down on the nearest log. He began to lick himself (not
that he cared about having sticky fur or looking silly, but
the honey/meta/redfruit mixture tasted good) and Juffy joined
him. So they were too busy with licking, and what that led to,
to bother picking up the baskets until the first bear, which
happened to be Duffy, sent by Muffy (but Thuffy and Juffy didn't
realize this was their next-log neighbor) came by. So they
explained to everyone about the baskets, and they all went to
watch the big public TV some enterprising noncolorbear had sold
them. The TV picked up the all-commercial channel from the
noncolorbear city of Bearovia. The colorbears think the
commercials are all very funny (and their attention spans
wouldn't last through anything longer anyway) so they like this
best.
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