The Story of The Zebra Norns
Never being able to keep
himself amused for very long, the Lone Shee needed something to bring a bit of excitement
back into his life. He'd got a bit tired of randomly Warping around from world to world -
and he'd had too many bad experiences that the thrill of it all seemed more of a chore
than a game. He needed to find fun, and fast.
Desperately searching through his Gene Library, he suddenly realised that he had a load of
genetic material which he had never done anything with. Sure he'd stolen Treehugger eggs,
scanned the genomes of sunbathing Bondis, taken skin samples from Toxic Norns and fought
with Hardman Norns for just a simple tuft of hair - but he also had a whole load of other
genes lying around from other Warp adventures.
Throwing caution to the wind he randomly picked a few appealing genes from out of his
collection. He'd always liked the stripes of the Bengal Norn, but despaired at its
striking orange colouration - not one of his favourite colours! So he decided to do some
mixing and matching with stripe and spot genes.
In the Gene Library he found the genes for the stripes of the Grazers, the Clown fish and
the Wasp - all critters from onboard the Shee Ark. He took these genes and spliced them
with the Bengal stripes, and for a bit of variety he threw in some Civet Norn spots too!
He had no idea what would be the outcome, but it was that uncertainty which was what made
it so fun!
Finally he thought he'd got the combination right. The genes looked a bit odd as he
studied them under his microscope, but he was pretty confident that it would all turn out
right in the end. Now all he needed was a female Norn to bring the egg to maturity - he
chose a friendly Chi Chi Norn that had been following him around recently.
After only a few minutes she squatted down on the ground, and laid a tiny little egg. It
was so small and intricate - it looked like porcelain. He picked it up and placed it on
the heat-pan incubator. Moments later it hatched and out popped the cutest stripey Norn
baby he had ever seen!
This baby Norn looked like a Civet, but not. It was like a Bengal, but not. Okay, so it
certainly wasn't much like a Grazer, Clown fish or Wasp either. He wasn't really sure
quite what it was, but for some reason he couldn't understand, the word Zebra seemed to
come to mind. He had no idea who or what a Zebra was, but it just seemed to feel right. As
he reached down to pick up the baby Norn, he realised that after all this time he was
finally smiling again. |