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LJIdol 3 Strikes - Week 3 - Morgenmuffel
Mar. 6th, 2022 02:26 amWhat the - ? Do you have any idea what time it is? Normally you children wouldn't have found me awake so early, but as it happens I woke up from a horrible nightmare about missing breakfast because I was being pestered by annoying children who wanted me to tell them a story, and then I was unable to get back to sleep. Thank goodness that nightmare didn't turn out to be prophetic - I finished breakfast several minutes ago. Oh well, at least I get to see this lovely sunrise. That reminds me of a story.
Long ago, there lived a cruel, vengeful faerie called Pifflegloss Bloodsnort who hated the sun.
There are, of course, many creatures who have a complicated or adversarial relationship with the sun - for example, it turns trolls into stone, vampires into ash, and werewolves into humans - but Pifflegloss's hatred of the sun was of a more personal nature. His vendetta against the sun dated back to an incident that occurred while he was hunting pheasants, phoenixes, and flammulated bamboo tyrants. While aiming at one of the birds in flight, Pifflegloss accidentally looked directly at the sun and momentarily blinded himself, causing his arrow to fly wildly off target and strike his horse, killing it instantly. This was a great inconvenience for Pifflegloss until he was able to venture into the human world and find another lazy, indolent child who neglected his chores whom he could transform into a replacement.
Pifflegloss blamed the sun for this misfortune, and cursed at it for a considerable length of time until, from his point of view, it eventually fled over the horizon, presumably to hide from his wrath. Pifflegloss's wrath was, however, not so easily exhausted.
Every morning from then on, Pifflegloss would rise before dawn and stand at the parapets of the tallest tower of his castle and wait for the sun to emerge over the horizon so he could shake his fist at it and scream obscenities. He would do this for hours until eventually his voice gave out, or his arm grew tired, or he remembered some vile errand that required his attention, and then he would wander off and become distracted and forget about how much he hated the sun until the next morning.
The sun was, of course, far too high in the sky to be able to distinguish between a fist shaken in anger and a hand waved in greeting, and much too far away to hear anything the faerie was screaming, and so misinterpreted all of this activity. So many trees and birds and other creatures seemed so happy to see the sun each morning that the sun assumed this faerie must also be happy to see it, and was waving enthusiastically at it. The sun made an effort to shine extra bright as a way of returning this friendly greeting. Pifflegloss interpreted this extra luminance as further hostility, and it only served to stoke his rage.
Eventually Pifflegloss became so enraged and so tired of missing breakfast because he was too busy screaming and shaking his fist that he decided to kill the sun.
First, Pifflegloss harvested some pure darkness from his own heart and chipped it into four arrowheads. Or maybe knapped is the correct technical term, as it would be for flint and obsidian and such. I'm sorry, most of my knowledge pertaining to weapons of supernatural evil is of a practical nature rather than being culled from approved technical manuals, and I'm not sure of the official terminology.
Anyway, Pifflegloss took his arrowheads and affixed them to arrows carved from the scrap wood of a decommissioned gallows, fletched the arrows with feathers from a flammulated bamboo tyrant because he happened to have some handy, and then grabbed his bow and headed up to the topmost tower of his castle. The bow? I don't know, it was probably made from unicorn parts or something.
Then Pifflegloss waited until half past breakfast, when the sun was at the most favorable angle for him to shoot at it, and then loosed an arrow at the sun. His first shot missed and instead struck a nearby mountain, which instantly crumbled into sand. His second shot also missed and landed in a river, which immediately ceased flowing. For someone with such a dramatic temper, Pifflegloss took these failures with remarkable aplomb, and carefully took aim with his third arrow. This time he managed to hit the sun.
I know, it would have been more dramatic if he'd missed with his penultimate arrow as well, but that's not how it happened, and I don’t hold with lying to children.
Anyway, the sun was mortally wounded, and also emotionally wounded, since it had never understood that Pifflegloss was angry at it prior to that moment, and had assumed that the the other arrows had been aimed at things too small for it to see, like flammulated bamboo tyrants...they really are very small birds.
The sun tumbled out of the sky and crashed directly into the castle, killing Pifflegloss and every other living thing for thousands of miles in every direction and significantly altering the local geography. Even the local phoenixes had a tricky time being reborn from their ashes. Eventually, the clouds constructed a replacement sun at great expense, which they installed much higher in the sky this time in the hope of avoiding a repeat of this sort of situation in the future, and now there’s almost no chance that the sun can see you at all, let alone tell whether or not you might be waving at it.
The lesson to be learned here is never to look directly at the sun. That, and pointless vendettas tend to accumulate a lot of collateral damage.
Now, away with all of you. It’s nearly half past breakfast, and I feel like knapping.
Long ago, there lived a cruel, vengeful faerie called Pifflegloss Bloodsnort who hated the sun.
There are, of course, many creatures who have a complicated or adversarial relationship with the sun - for example, it turns trolls into stone, vampires into ash, and werewolves into humans - but Pifflegloss's hatred of the sun was of a more personal nature. His vendetta against the sun dated back to an incident that occurred while he was hunting pheasants, phoenixes, and flammulated bamboo tyrants. While aiming at one of the birds in flight, Pifflegloss accidentally looked directly at the sun and momentarily blinded himself, causing his arrow to fly wildly off target and strike his horse, killing it instantly. This was a great inconvenience for Pifflegloss until he was able to venture into the human world and find another lazy, indolent child who neglected his chores whom he could transform into a replacement.
Pifflegloss blamed the sun for this misfortune, and cursed at it for a considerable length of time until, from his point of view, it eventually fled over the horizon, presumably to hide from his wrath. Pifflegloss's wrath was, however, not so easily exhausted.
Every morning from then on, Pifflegloss would rise before dawn and stand at the parapets of the tallest tower of his castle and wait for the sun to emerge over the horizon so he could shake his fist at it and scream obscenities. He would do this for hours until eventually his voice gave out, or his arm grew tired, or he remembered some vile errand that required his attention, and then he would wander off and become distracted and forget about how much he hated the sun until the next morning.
The sun was, of course, far too high in the sky to be able to distinguish between a fist shaken in anger and a hand waved in greeting, and much too far away to hear anything the faerie was screaming, and so misinterpreted all of this activity. So many trees and birds and other creatures seemed so happy to see the sun each morning that the sun assumed this faerie must also be happy to see it, and was waving enthusiastically at it. The sun made an effort to shine extra bright as a way of returning this friendly greeting. Pifflegloss interpreted this extra luminance as further hostility, and it only served to stoke his rage.
Eventually Pifflegloss became so enraged and so tired of missing breakfast because he was too busy screaming and shaking his fist that he decided to kill the sun.
First, Pifflegloss harvested some pure darkness from his own heart and chipped it into four arrowheads. Or maybe knapped is the correct technical term, as it would be for flint and obsidian and such. I'm sorry, most of my knowledge pertaining to weapons of supernatural evil is of a practical nature rather than being culled from approved technical manuals, and I'm not sure of the official terminology.
Anyway, Pifflegloss took his arrowheads and affixed them to arrows carved from the scrap wood of a decommissioned gallows, fletched the arrows with feathers from a flammulated bamboo tyrant because he happened to have some handy, and then grabbed his bow and headed up to the topmost tower of his castle. The bow? I don't know, it was probably made from unicorn parts or something.
Then Pifflegloss waited until half past breakfast, when the sun was at the most favorable angle for him to shoot at it, and then loosed an arrow at the sun. His first shot missed and instead struck a nearby mountain, which instantly crumbled into sand. His second shot also missed and landed in a river, which immediately ceased flowing. For someone with such a dramatic temper, Pifflegloss took these failures with remarkable aplomb, and carefully took aim with his third arrow. This time he managed to hit the sun.
I know, it would have been more dramatic if he'd missed with his penultimate arrow as well, but that's not how it happened, and I don’t hold with lying to children.
Anyway, the sun was mortally wounded, and also emotionally wounded, since it had never understood that Pifflegloss was angry at it prior to that moment, and had assumed that the the other arrows had been aimed at things too small for it to see, like flammulated bamboo tyrants...they really are very small birds.
The sun tumbled out of the sky and crashed directly into the castle, killing Pifflegloss and every other living thing for thousands of miles in every direction and significantly altering the local geography. Even the local phoenixes had a tricky time being reborn from their ashes. Eventually, the clouds constructed a replacement sun at great expense, which they installed much higher in the sky this time in the hope of avoiding a repeat of this sort of situation in the future, and now there’s almost no chance that the sun can see you at all, let alone tell whether or not you might be waving at it.
The lesson to be learned here is never to look directly at the sun. That, and pointless vendettas tend to accumulate a lot of collateral damage.
Now, away with all of you. It’s nearly half past breakfast, and I feel like knapping.
