The Dink And Donk Short Story & Audiobook Series: Episode 10 - Acting Out

Acting Out

*POP!*

The BubbleBus delivered Dink to her favourite place in the universe. She loved coming to the snowy land on planet Earth where her best friend Donk lived. But when Dink arrived today, Donk the moose wasn’t there to greet her.

“Where could he be?” Dink wondered.

She then heard strange noises in the distance. Across the field, she saw her moose friend behaving curiously. Donk shuffled a few steps, then put his hands on his hips and shook his hoof at someone. Except...no one else was there! 

Dink could hear Donk speaking in a deep, brave voice.

Then, suddenly, he started speaking in a growling, sinister voice. Then he pounced on the ground as if he were wrestling with someone invisible. Concerned for her friend, Dink hurried over to him.

“Donk! Is everything okay?”

Donk stopped rolling on the ground and looked at her.

“Dink! I’m doing something no one’s ever done before! First, I made up a story. Now I’m working out how the characters in the story talk to each other. Then I’m going to have my friends pretend to be the characters and act out the story in front of an audience!”

Dink thought for a moment, then said, “You mean...you’re creating a play?”

“Oh,” said Donk, sounding a bit disappointed. “You’ve seen one before?”

Dink nodded. “But I’m sure your play will be better. On Husharoon, we’re not allowed to make loud plays. So the actors whisper and walk on tiptoes.”

“Well,” said Donk, “I promise my play’s going to be extra loud!”

“Brilliant!” Dink said, clapping her hands together. She couldn’t wait to learn her lines. “What part do I get to play?” she asked.

“I’m sorry Dink, but you can’t be in it.”

“Why not?” asked Dink, feeling a bit hurt.

Donk hemmed and hawed before finally blurting, “Because...it’s about you!”

Dink was thrilled. “Really?! Is it about how you and I met and became friends?”

“Yes,” said Donk. “And also how you were captured by a space pirate from another planet and how I travelled in my amazing moose-mobile to save you, despite it being very dangerous.”

Dink didn’t remember any of that happening. But she said she thought it sounded very exciting.

“What else happens in the play?” she asked.

“It’s a secret,” said Donk with a smile. “So you should go back to Husharoon and come back tomorrow for the big show!”

Dink promised she would. Before getting back into her BubbleBus, she gave Donk lots of Hearrings. This would help Donk talk to his actors of different animal species. She also loaned Donk her Instaclothes wand to help him make the costumes.

But Dink remembered an unfortunate incident with the Instaclothes wand from a few weeks ago. She warned Donk, “Just don’t let a narwhal swim off with it again, okay?”

Donk promised he wouldn’t and added excitedly, “Oh, you’re gonna see such a great play!”

Dink was sure she was.

But when Dink returned the next day, she wasn’t so sure. She had arrived as Donk and three other actors were rehearsing. But they didn’t seem to be getting along. Donk (who was wearing a sparkly space suit) was trying to get an arctic hare (who was dressed in a suit of purple feathers) to hop like a space bird.

“But how does a space bird hop?” asked the hare.

“Like this!” said Donk. He stood up on his two back hooves and made tiny jumps.

“Isn’t that what I’m doing?!” asked the hare.

“No,” said Donk. “You’re hopping like a hare.”

“But I am a hare!” said the hare.

While Donk and the hare argued with each other, Dink turned her attention to Tom the musk ox. Tom looked bored. He was sitting on the ground dressed in a pink outfit. In fact, Tom’s outfit looked exactly like the clothes Dink was wearing.

“Tom,” whispered Dink, “are you playing me?”

Tom nodded, then sighed. “But I spend most of my time just sitting here pretending I’ve been captured by him.”

Tom pointed to Lars the Norwegian walrus, who was dressed in a shiny silver outfit.

“It’s true,” Lars said. “I’m the space pirate. But Donk won’t let me do the very evil laugh I came up with. This is the laugh I want to do!” 

Lars scowled and did a fiendish laugh. “Ha ha ha ha!”

“Oh my!” said Dink. “That’s a good laugh.”

Donk, however, didn’t think so. He interrupted his argument with the arctic hare to correct the laugh.

“No, Lars. I told you it’s like this. Ho ho ho ho!”

Lars disagreed. “I say it’s ha ha ha ha!”

“Lars, I insist it’s ho ho ho ho!”

Dink backed away slowly. She didn’t want to get in the middle of the argument. Then she felt a tug on her clothes.

“Pssst. Dink...” It was the arctic hare.

“My name is Ooka. I play the space pirate’s assistant. It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ooka,” said Dink. Then she asked, “Is the play going to begin soon?”

Ooka sighed. “It might take a bit longer because everyone’s arguing with each other. No one wants to cooperate.”

“Then what should I do in the meantime?” asked Dink. “It’s getting rather cold out here.”

Ooka’s fake feathers rustled with excitement and she said she had a great idea. There was a thermal spring nearby that Dink should visit.

“What’s a thermal spring?” asked Dink.

Ooka explained that it’s a tiny pool with water bubbling up from deep in the earth. The water was as warm as a bath.

Dink liked the sound of that! Ooka explained to Dink how to get there and told her to come back again when the sun had lowered halfway in the sky.

So Dink trudged off on her own towards the thermal spring.

“I’m glad to be away from that rehearsal,” she thought to herself. “Too much arguing!”

But soon after Dink had left the arguing actors, something very unexpected occurred. The snow that Dink thought was solid beneath her was not so solid. It was a snow bridge connecting the two sides of a deep crevasse. 

Dink had never heard of a crevasse before. But after the snow bridge collapsed and she fell in, Dink had a pretty good idea what a crevasse was. It was a hole! She tried to climb up the side of it, but she slid back down again. Dink was stuck!

Meanwhile, the rehearsal wasn’t going well at all. 

Donk said, “If no one can agree on anything, then I’ll just have to play all the parts! Don’t you think I should, Dink?”

That’s when Donk turned around and noticed that his friend was gone.

“Where’s Dink?”

Ooka said Dink went to the thermal spring, but that she should have been back by now. Donk became worried. He got everyone to agree to head out together to find her. It was the first thing they had all agreed on!

“Tom and I will try to pick up her scent,” said Lars. “Musk oxen and walruses have a good sense of smell.”

“Excellent,” said Donk.

“I’ll listen for her!” said Ooka. “Hares have great hearing.”

“And I’ll call out for her,” said Donk. “Because I can be pretty loud.”

So the four actors went off in search of Dink. Tom put his nose in the air. Soon after, he smelled three patches of moss and one Husharoonian. 

Lars sniffed and proclaimed, “Ja! Tom is right. Dink is straight ahead!”

Donk called out for his friend in a booming voice. 

A minute later, Ooka said, “I hear her! She’s this way. C’mon!”

Everyone was overjoyed when they found Dink in the hole. 

“Hurrah!” Dink shouted.

“Woohoo!” Donk shouted back. All the animals patted each other on the back. But the celebration didn’t last very long.

“Um,” asked Tom, “how are we going to get Dink out of the hole?”

It was a good question. The hole was several metres deep. Even when the actors got down on their bellies and stretched out, the hole was too deep to grab Dink. The sun was beginning to set.

“Don’t worry, Dink,” said Donk. “We’ll keep you company until we think of something. We could even perform the play. We’re still wearing our costumes!”

Dink gasped. “Donk! That’s it! Tie all the costumes together and make a rope to lower into the hole!”

 The actors lost no time doing just that. 

“Are you holding onto the rope, Dink?” Donk shouted down. Dink gave him a thumbs-up.

“OK, then,” Donk said to his actors. “Pull!”

The moose, walrus, hare and musk ox all pulled and pulled on the rope until...

“Dink! We got you out!” said Donk, hugging his friend at the edge of the crevasse.

 Instead of putting on the play, they all decided to head over to the thermal spring and have a nice, warm soak. 

And while they soaked, they told the story of how they worked together to rescue Dink. They all agreed it was a great story...even without space pirates.

The End