hwango | Entries tagged with curmudgeon

Hello, children. Oh, I was just looking at the clouds. Yes, they are pretty, but I'm actually watching them specifically because that one over there looks suspicious, and I don't trust it. You can never be too careful when it comes to giant things floating overhead, such as zeppelins, or the moon, or especially clouds. Actually, that reminds me of a story.

There once lived a reclusive faerie called Sludgewick Myrmisnoot. One reason Sludgewick was reclusive is that he didn't particularly enjoy the company of other faeries. Sludgewick was one of those rare faeries who might be slightly mischievous now and then, but who was rarely malicious. Although, it would have been difficult to engage in much malice even if he wanted to, since he preferred to avoid others as much as he possibly could, an inclination to which I'm sure we can all relate. Well, I can, anyway.

The other reason Sludgewick was reclusive is that he spent most of his time crafting artisanal clouds, and you need a lot of open space for that sort of activity.

Now, not all clouds are raised and managed by faeries - there are plenty of wild or feral clouds out there. Wild clouds form when accumulations of like-minded water vapor coalesce together around some airborne object, usually a particularly charismatic bit of water vapor. However, it is not unheard of for clouds to form instead around things such as unwary birds, stray kites, restless ghosts, and so on. Sludgewick preferred to build his clouds around the little fluffy things that carry the seeds of milkweed, thistles, and dandelions, but he would sometimes depart from this preference when struck by other inspiration.

Sludgewick would sometimes create bespoke rainclouds for farmers who wanted to water their crops, or for malicious faeries who wanted to ruin birthday parties or murder individuals for whom water is inimical, such as salt golems, origami foxes, and certain witches. Mostly, he made clouds simply for the satisfaction of making them. I believe he found stacking water molecules on top of each other very relaxing.

One day, Sludgewick espied a pretty red leaf dancing along in the wind, and thought it would make an interesting heart for a cloud.

Alas, Sludgewick did not realize that this particular leaf was filled with rage. It had fallen from the branch of a very ill-tempered tree, and it was the very first leaf shed that autumn. The leaf, once separated from the hive-mind and granted terrible self-awareness, was outraged that it had been deemed so superfluous, and just callously thrown away. The tree had cast the leaf into a strong breeze that would carry it far, far away, almost as if the tree couldn't even bear to be near it. The leaf had spent months converting sunlight into chemical energy for that ungrateful tree, and this was the thanks that it got? The leaf hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye to its favorite squirrel.

And so even though Sludgewick was only trying to make a whimsical little cumulus cloud that would flitter about in the wind, he instead got a raging cumulonimbus that spat lightning everywhere and made a terrible racket.

A typical faerie probably would have torn the cloud to pieces and salvaged it for scrap, or sent it to exterminate an entire family reunion of water-soluble witches, but Sludgewick knew that part of being an artist is realizing that not everything you make is going to be a masterpiece. So Sludgewick released the cloud to wander off on its own and live out its existence as it wished. The cloud responded by drenching Sludgewick with a great deal of very cold rain. Sludgewick certainly couldn't spend as much time as he did making clouds if he was bothered by getting a bit wet, but such insolence could not be left unanswered, and so he placed a terrible curse upon the cloud and then summoned a sharp gust of wind to blow it away.

The cloud, disoriented by the wind, meandered aimlessly across the sky for some time. Eventually, the cloud found itself floating high above the tree that had shed the leaf that had come to be used as the cloud's heart. Lightning crackled like diabolical laughter as the cloud realized that it was poised perfectly to seek revenge.

First, the cloud threw hail and rain at the tree, attempting to knock off all of the other apparently more important and valuable leaves. The tree was quite hardy, however, and so the cloud managed to dislodge only a tiny fraction of the leaves. Driven to madness by frustration and thoughts of revenge, the cloud turned instead to a merciless barrage of lightning, which ultimately blasted the tree apart in a shower of splintered wood. Only after the cloud looked down in satisfaction upon the devastation did it remember that its favorite squirrel had still lived in that tree.

Overcome with remorse, the cloud attempted to hurl itself into the sun, which had always seemed so close by in its memories of being a leaf. Alas, it turned out that the sun was rather further away than the cloud thought, and the cloud froze into a ball of ice in the empty blackness of space.

Now trapped in the form of a tiny comet, the former cloud drifts through the solar system desperately trying to return to earth so it can melt and end its tormented existence. Every few decades, it passes quite close by, and Sludgewick waves to it.

The lesson to be learned here is that just about anything could be hiding inside a cloud, and so you should always fear and distrust them. Also, it is unwise to antagonize even relatively benign faeries, because deep in their hearts always lies the capacity for unspeakably disproportionate revenge.

Now, all of you should really be getting home. That cloud I was worried about is getting closer.

Current Mood: cloudy
Current Location: hiding under an umbrella
Current Music: thunder and lightning relaxation tape

Hello, children. Alas, now isn't really the best time for you to visit, as I'm afraid I'm preparing for guests this evening. Friends? What makes you think - ahem, that is to say, no, they are not friends. Unfortunately, not all guests are welcome guests, which, now that I come to think about it, is obviously a truth you have yet to grasp. Oh well, I suppose I can spare you a few minutes for a story.

There was once a feud between three faeries that was so poisonous and all-consuming that it practically monopolized the time of those ensnared in it. All other concerns were secondary, or perhaps even tertiary. Nothing was more important than the seething contempt and fiery malice that they felt for one another. Did they fight? No, though I can see why you would think so. You are no doubt thinking of the many faerie stories you have heard involving impulsive, violent persons who would not hesitate to murder anyone who wronged them in the slightest. I am ever so pleased that you have been paying attention.

Indeed, under other circumstances, any of the three faeries under discussion would probably have resorted to quick, efficient violence, or possibly elaborate and inventive violence, thereby avoiding a lengthy confrontation and letting them return to their other pursuits, such as exploring volcanoes into which they could throw people, or surveying bogs in which to drown people, or going out to socialize and meet new people to despise. Alas, the particular disagreement at the core of their relationship regarded a matter of etiquette, which lead to an extensive argument over which of them was the most courtly and refined. Before they realized what was happening, they all found themselves trapped in a position where violently eliminating one another would only serve to prove that they were not as civilized as they had claimed, and would make one of the others the winner of the argument. An intolerable outcome!

Thus, all of the interactions between any of the involved parties in the feud were conducted with absolutely impeccable courtesy, while inwardly they hated each other with such intensity that nearby crops failed and local volcanoes roared and spit and shook and wondered why no one was being thrown into them.

Eventually, this situation resulted in one of the fairies, Magnari Doomkettle, hosting a dinner party for the other two, who were called Perfidious Floop and Glaur Pavo.

Magnari planned a meal of exquisite decadence. Dinner would open with razor thin slices of gelatinized anticipation intricately folded into origami hummingbirds, each hovering over individual carnations constructed from rose petals. Following that would be fried kraken dipped in bioluminescent algae. For the salad course, Magnari and his guests would dine on spiced pumpkin grown by Selasko Timmertamblin himself, who the oldest of you children might remember cultivated pumpkins of such majestic size that they would be quite difficult for ordinary mortals to carry, if in fact ordinary mortals could get close enough to one to lift it without having their souls annihilated by their overwhelming pumpkinity, which of course they couldn't.

After salad, dinner would progress to the main course of roasted mushrooms imported from the moon itself, drizzled with honey made from verdigris harvested from copper flowers by clockwork bees. Dessert would consist of flawless strawberries chilled to the very precipice of freezing with ice from the far shores of Hell. For mignardise, six drops of poached sunlight on a caramelized wisp of cloud. Mignardise? It's dessert's pretentious cousin.

Anyway, that was the plan at least, and things started off well enough. Magnari's guests both arrived exactly on time, Perfidious Floop looking very stylish sporting a new set of antlers he had grown especially for the occasion, and Glaur Pavo looking quite dashing in a long coat dyed a new color he had invented also for this specific dinner. The three of them exchanged pleasantries and sat down for their meal. Everyone carefully unfolded their hummingbirds to read the dire prophecies written in squid ink on the insides, and Glaur and Perfidious laughed and decided to swap theirs. Perfidious complimented Magnari on the rubberiness of the fried kraken, and Glaur said that the bioluminescent algae were the brightest he'd ever tasted. They were about to move on the salad course when all of a sudden there was a knock at the door of Magnari's castle.

Everyone froze while Magnari's hobgoblin servant, Fusarium, scuttled to see who was at the door. Fusarium returned shortly, accompanied by a faerie unfamiliar to all of those present. The stranger introduced himself as Litharge Viscera, and he apologized most sincerely for the intrusion, but he had been ambushed by brigands on the road, and in the ensuing melee his carriage had been turned back into an eggplant and then trodden upon, and the two wolverines that had been pulling it had run off. He had spotted this fine castle and wondered if he might impose upon its master for the loan of some replacement beasts and perhaps a large vegetable he might transmute into a new carriage. Having now discovered that he had interrupted a formal dinner, he was exceedingly embarrassed, and expressed his most sincere regrets for the intrusion.

Well, there was nothing for it but for Magnari to insist that Litharge join them for their meal. One couldn't simply turn away a traveler in such obvious distress, and one couldn't very well have even an unexpected guest just sit there while one ate without sharing one's meal. At least, not with Perfidious and Glaur there. If Magnari had been alone he would have thrown Litharge right back out the door and turned his boots into snakes without a second thought.

The problem was that the meal had been so carefully arranged for exactly three diners. There was not enough of each dish for them to be re-apportioned for four without making each course too small to be presentable. Furthermore, many of the ingredients were rather exotic, which is a nicer way of saying that they were deadly poison, and the meal had been precisely calibrated for certain courses to be the antidotes for others. Split four ways, there would not be enough verdigris honey to counteract the fried kraken that Magnari, Perfidious, and Glaur had already eaten.

Magnari excused himself for a moment to speak with Fusarium in the kitchen, and he insisted that Litharge take his seat at the table while he was away. The table! The table was triangular, with only room to accommodate three. Magnari would need to replace the table as well as modify the meal being served upon it. This was a disaster.

After some frantic discussion with Fusarium, Magnari ordered him to add a soup course to the dinner that would fill out the meal and compensate for the adjusted portions, and into which whatever necessary supplemental antidotes could be incorporated. Fusarium argued that it was too late in the meal for a soup course, and should they not consider a cheese course instead? Magnari was so appalled at the idea of having both a cheese course and a mignardise that he felt quite faint for a moment, but then rallied, and ordered Fusarium to get to work on the soup. Fusarium countered that he could make a soup, but with the ingredients on hand and the antidote requirements it would probably look and taste revolting. Magnari threatened to add him to the pot if he didn't work gastronomical miracles, but they both knew it was an empty threat, as Fusarium would both taste abominable and serve only to make the meal even more poisonous. With a final glare, Magnari left to attend to his guests before his lack of attention became inexcusable.

Well, you can imagine what a relief it was to return to the dining room and discover that Litharge had actually been a ghoul in a clever disguise, and that he had already killed and eaten Perfidious and Glaur while Magnari had been distracted in the kitchen. This solved so many of Magnari's problems! Furthermore, the ghoul had helped himself to the entire salad course, and thus he had inadvertently consumed lethal amounts of eldritch pumpkin. The ghoul keeled over and then died an excruciating death while Magnari inspected the damage to his dining room and the stains on the carpets and walls and determined that it was all a fair price to pay to be rid of Perfidious and Glaur.

Magnari sat down in the most intact of the chairs to finish his dinner in blissful solitude, and with the proper portion sizes. Everything was delicious. It would have been a perfect day all around, and Magnari probably would have gone on to lead a full, rich, and happy life, except that he remembered too late that he had missed the salad course. With no eldritch pumpkin in his system, the poached sunlight would kill him in minutes. His only hope at that point would be an emergency serving of cheese, but that would require admitting that Fusarium was right all along, and so he died an agonizing death sprawled over the remains of the dinner table.

The lesson to be learned here is never to eat mignardise - if your dessert isn't a satisfying conclusion to your meal, then it's not doing its job properly. That, and anyone knocking on your door unexpectedly is probably a bloodthirsty ghoul.

Now, you all really do need to run along so I can get back to preparing for my guests. I haven't even folded the origami hummingbirds yet.

Current Mood: submerged
Current Location: a hydrothermal vent
Current Music: whalesong

Oh, hello children. As you can see, I'm a little busy repairing this intricately crafted clockwork toucan, and can't really talk at the moment. What do you mean, "why?" Obviously I'm fixing it because it's broken, and unless I fix it I won't have a functional clockwork toucan. Buy a new one? Where would you suggest I - no, that's beside the point. Honestly, children these days. I'll bet your clockwork toucans don't even have time to break down before you've replaced them with fancy new clockwork toucans in a slightly different color that know two additional songs. You know what, now I'm far too agitated for delicate work like this, and I'd best set it aside before I ruin it completely. I guess that means you can have a story after all.

There once lived a dreadful faerie who was known by the dreadfully unwieldy name Internecine Alstroemeria. Like many faeries, Internecine Alstroemeria was easily enraged and prone to overreacting, and he would frequently challenge people to a duel to the death over such perceived insults as mispronouncing Internecine Alstroemeria, shortening Internecine Alstroemeria to something less unweildy, or using circumlocutory techniques to avoid having to say Internecine Alstroemeria at all. Internecine Alstroemeria felt that if he had to carry the burden being called Internecine Alstroemeria, then other people should at the very least have to say it, and to say it properly. That, and fighting duels gave him a way to channel the boiling rage he felt at having to bear the name Internecine Alstroemeria. He fought a lot of duels. He also won a lot of duels, which should go without saying, since people rarely develop a habit of losing duels to the death.

One fateful day, Internecine Alstroemeria was dueling another faerie who had committed the unforgivable offense of referring to him as "my esteemed and learned colleague." To be fair, the other faerie had said this with enough sarcasm to stun an elk, so this challenge was rather more justified than many that had come before it.

Anyway, the duel was a dramatic spectacle of flashing swords and fiendishly insightful improvisational allegory, with spectators intermittently applauding when one combatant or the other executed a particularly impressive maneuver in either aspect of the conflict. Finally, Internecine Alstroemeria presented some eloquent commentary regarding the dichotomy of reason and emotion and then stabbed his opponent through the heart with his sword. Though this did achieve victory for Internecine Alstroemeria, it had the unfortunate consequence of breaking the blade of his sword into several pieces. That's what you get for stabbing something as hard as a faerie's heart. Remember, children, if you ever get into a swordfight with a faerie, go for the throat. That's not the lesson of today's story, it's just good advice in general.

Well, Internecine Alstroemeria was understandably distraught about his broken sword. Without it, he couldn't very well continue to challenge other faeries to duels, which was essentially his defining characteristic. And no, it's not as if he could simply get another one. Nor, in fact, could he just get another sword, either. Faeries don't typically discard and replace things like swords just because they break - they only do that with people. People are easy enough to replace, but it takes skill and power to make something like a faerie's sword. Simply tossing one aside to replace it would lead people to doubt the value of that skill and power, and since value is entirely subjective the skill and power would in fact become less valuable, and because perception and opinion can affect faeries more effectively than something as mundane as the truth, they would consequently become less powerful, which would be completely unacceptable. Besides, while a new sword might be full of youthful enthusiasm, Internecine Alstroemeria preferred a weapon that had slain a hundred foes and already had a taste for blood and an aptitude for shedding it.

This is all a very roundabout way of explaining why Internecine Alstroemeria needed desperately to fix his sword. He had tried to gather up all of the pieces, but some had gone missing. They had probably been stolen by magpies or vaporized by the caustic obscenities the other faerie had managed to utter with his dying breaths. This was terribly inconvenient, and it was going to make repairs more complicated.

The next best thing to having all of the original pieces would have been to patch the gaps with more of the same substance that was used to create the blade in the first place, but Internecine Alstroemeria's sword had been made from a moonbeam reflected in a pool of tears, and Internecine Alstromeria didn't think he could afford to wait for the next full moon to make repairs, and the moonbeams of any moon short of full would be too weak to serve his purposes.

Eventually, Internecine Alstroemeria decided to fill the gaps with lies. They were just as solid as moonbeams, were excellent for inflicting injury, and, like any faerie, Internecine Alstroemeria had a ready supply of them.

The end result was pleasantly unsettling to look at, with the pieces seemingly held in place by nothing and swishing through the air with their neighbors in tight formation and apparently in complete defiance of gravity. This would hardly be the first time a faerie had disregarded gravity, though, and it was long past giving them the satisfaction of seeing how much its feelings were hurt. But then other faeries found the aesthetic so delightful that they started breaking things on purpose just so they could put them back together with lies, and the whole thing quickly go out of hand.

Internecine Alstroemeria was a skilled and savvy craftsman, and had been careful to use convincing lies in his work, binding the pieces of moonlight together with plausible fictions not easily disproven and unlikely to be carefully scrutinized in the first place. Other faeries did not exercise the same restraint, and used lies so outrageous and deceptions so clumsy that it wasn't long before it became commonplace for objects reconstructed with the technique to fall apart again under the weight of inspection as light as an admiring second glance. That is to say, incredible things became literally incredible.

And so it was quite a short-lived fashion, and soon everyone thought that Internecine Alstroemeria was an uncultured buffoon completely out of touch with modern trends, and he was the target of almost constant ridicule. Naturally, this prompted him to challenge even more people to duels, and eventually he had killed so many people with his sword that it developed sentience and demanded autonomy and he had to go on an epic quest to hurl it into a volcano and then make a new one after all.

The lesson to be learned here is that you should make an effort to learn how to pronounce people's names correctly, and you shouldn't give people nicknames without their permission. That, and we should be careful how much we let our weapons learn if we want them to remain ours.

Now, you should all run along home so I can I can get back to working on this clockwork toucan. If I don't finish it before tomorrow morning I'll have to wait almost a whole month to get more parts.

Current Mood: incredulous
Current Location: the far edge of town
Current Music: clockwork

Hello, children. Why yes, this _is_ a silly-looking hat. But the sun is very bright today, and this silly-looking hat is keeping the worst of the sun out of my eyes and helping me avoid a terrible sunburn, so I will happily accept your ridicule in exchange for its benefits. Well, not _happily_, but I'll accept it. Hmm, actually, that reminds me of a story.

Our tale begins with a mysterious old enchanter who was desperate to acquire some meat to feed to the nightmarish horror that lived in his basement. As many of you children who live in a house with a basement already know, they are often home to terrible, bloodthirsty monsters. The enchanter's monster was especially horrific - whoops, that is to say, the enchanter's horror was especially monstrous - and he feared what would happen if it grew so hungry that it went mad and broke loose and rampaged across the countryside. He grew so desperate, in fact, that ultimately he traded three magic beans to a young man for an elderly cow.

You are no doubt aware of the unfortunate consequences of this transaction. A giant? Well, yes, the greedy human used the beans to create a magical beanstalk and climb into the clouds, whereupon he then invaded a giant's home, stole his magical possessions, and then murdered him. Obviously that happened, and it was terrible. But I was referring to the devastating effects on the local economy.

The exchange of a single cow for three magic beans set a ridiculous precedent that encouraged poor families all over the region to bring their cows to town in the hope of trading them for magic beans. The surplus of poor-quality cattle meant that not only were those families unable to acquire magic beans in exchange for their cows, but that when they were forced to settle for ordinary currency instead they also ended up with less compensation than they would have before the market was disrupted such as it was. Also, all of these attempts to take advantage of the opportunity to obtain magic beans meant that there was a shortage of cows in the outlying countryside where they would have been more useful, and the entire delicate system of infrastructure on which the region had previously operated all came tumbling down.

It is into this chaotic economic apocalypse that there now arrives a young man by the name of Sven, who had been instructed by his mother, whose name was Grethe, to bring their cow into town and accept no fewer than five magic beans for it, because she was operating on information so tragically out of date that it brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it.

Well, Sven quickly learned that he wouldn't be bringing home any magic beans, might not be able to find a buyer for his cow at all, and even if he did his mother was sure to be furious at him for how little money he brought back. And so when a mysterious stranger approached him and offered him a magical potato and a grubby old miner's cap in exchange for his cow, Sven leapt at the opportunity.

Sven's mother was, in fact, still angry with him. However, she planted the potato all the same, and they both hoped desperately that they might end up with a potato plant large enough to enable some epic burglary of their own.

Well, what they actually discovered the next morning was the opening to a tunnel right where they’d planted the potato. This at least retroactively explained the old miner's cap that the mysterious stranger had included along with the potato. Grethe secured the cap to Sven’s head, armed him with nothing but a large sack, and sent him off into the depths in search of valuables. She was not going to win any prizes for responsible parenting.

It has been observed that clothes do not make the man, and it must be further stated that a hat alone certainly doesn't. Sven's hat did not make him an experienced miner, spelunker, or monster-hunting adventurer, and he was still just a somewhat befuddled young person who had never been underground before and was now wandering down a magical tunnel because his mother told him to. It was very dark and claustrophobic and soon Sven was bitterly envious of a certain someone who got to climb a beanstalk out in the sunlight and the fresh air.

Sven was supposed to be searching for riches, but all he found were some dribbly rock formations, eerily-glowing fungi, and some rather amateurish cave paintings, none of which qualified as riches as far as Sven was concerned. Sven wasn’t sure what sorts of animals usually lived in caves, but he was fairly certain he shouldn’t expect to find a goose that laid golden eggs down there.

And Sven was absolutely correct in this, and in fact the only animal he did see was some sort of albino cave platypus, which should have been just as surprising if he’d had any kind of decent education at all. It did appear to lay golden eggs, but on closer inspection they turned out to be only fool’s gold. Sven was just deciding that this magical cave was a serious disappointment if not an actual fraud, and hardly worth an elderly cow at all, when he suddenly fell victim to the the cave’s other inhabitant, which you have probably already guessed was a dragon, but was actually a bear wearing a dragon costume because it really was a rather disappointing magical cave after all.

Meanwhile, up on the surface, Grethe was busily planning how to spend all of the untold riches she was hoping Sven would bring back with him when she too was suddenly devoured, though in her case it was by the nightmarish horror that had finally escaped from the enchanter’s basement and which had come looking for the missing pieces of its stolen collection of magical produce, and also some people to eat.

The lesson to be learned here is that everyone suddenly deciding to invest in some stupid alternative currency like magic beans can ruin many lives. That, and don’t keep feeding the horrific thing in your basement, because eventually you will run out of magical produce to trade for meat, and then it will break loose and consume your entire community.

Now, away with all of you. I’m not wearing this hat just for show, and I need to get back to planting if I expect to harvest any platypuses this year. I mean potatoes. Yes. Potatoes.

Current Mood: hatted
Current Location: a dark and mysterious cave
Current Music: dripping water

Oh, hello children. No, I'm not working today - I'm taking the day off, and I'm just going to sit here and read because I'm old and tired and falling apart. A story? Did you not hear what I just said? You know what, never mind. I’ve just thought of the perfect story for you today.

There once lived a loathsome hobgoblin called Fuligo. Fuligo was not a particularly happy hobgoblin. Indeed, Fuligo felt that life mostly consisted of suffering, disappointment, and despair. Accordingly, he took perverse delight in bringing things to life so that they might share in this suffering, disappointment, and despair.

Hobgoblins with less ambition or artistic flair might have brought simple objects like doormats or salad tongs to life so that they would be doomed to live out nightmarish existences of being trodden on by muddy feet or being forever thrust into bowls full of lettuce drenched in thousand island dressing, but Fuligo constructed golems. No, golems aren't just magic robots. That would be like saying that humans are just magic corpses. Although, okay, I guess that's a better metaphor than I had originally thought.

But just to be pedantic about it, a robot is a machine designed to perform work, but a golem is a person or creature crafted from inanimate materials and then brought to life. Most traditional golems are made of clay or stone, but they can be made of less likely materials such as glass, or salt, or paper, or the stitched together discarded pieces of people, although at that point things start to become very ethically questionable, and you also get into philosophical arguments about whether you're really building a golem or just quilting a zombie. But I digress.

Fuligo made golems out of garbage.

Right now you might be picturing Fuligo (a mistake on your part I assure you, as he was exceedingly grotesque) just taking any old random pile of garbage, waving a magic wand over it, and then "zing!," it was a golem. Well, you would be wrong. Fuligo was an artist, carefully choosing his materials and precisely shaping them to his designs. In fact, like many artists, Fuligo would sometimes work tirelessly on a project for weeks only to grow dissatisfied with what he had wrought and then throw it all away, or spend days at a time procrastinating and accomplishing nothing, or lose entire afternoons to reading books about color theory.

Also, no magic wands were involved. Furthermore, at no point in the process of awakening a golem does anything go "zing!"

So, Fuligo could sometimes spend weeks upon weeks crafting a single golem, but even at that slow a pace you might think that the countryside would soon be crawling with his creations. However, partly due to the materials he used and partly because Fuligo felt that art should be be fleeting and ephemeral if it was to be truly appreciated, Fuligo's golems seldom lasted more than a few weeks before they fell apart and died. Now, if it seems horrifying to live a life of uncertain duration and then gradually wear out until you eventually die, then all I can say to you as an old person is that I am way ahead of you.

But wait, I can practically hear you thinking, why did he go through all of this trouble and effort just to make something that would only suffer and be miserable and then fall apart and die? But the truth is that many things in this world pretty much only exist to make more versions of things like themselves. In fact, this is true of most animals, plants, educational institutions, and organized religions.

The process was not always so time-consuming, though. One particular afternoon, Fuligo was seized by so much inspiration and enthusiasm that he crafted a golem in just a few hours. The materials he used were not even the higher-tier trash that might have been interesting to scavengers, but the true garbage that no one could possibly want.

Golems can have varying levels of sophistication and autonomy, and if you plan to have a golem perform labor for you like some sort of mere magical robot, then you probably build it with specific capabilities and not a lot of autonomy. Fuligo had no particular purpose in mind for this golem, except as an instantiation of the concepts of ephemera, waste, and the nihilistic dread that can only come from meeting your creator and knowing for a fact that they care nothing for you and that your existence has no meaning. Accordingly, he created it with no particlar skills, a high level of awareness, and loads of autonomy.

“Awaken, my creation!” Fuligo cackled as he held aloft his magical orb, and with a dramatic “twang!” the golem awakened to life. See, you were nearly right after all.

The golem opened its eyes, gazed upon its creator, and experienced several emotions. It did not look happy.

Fuligo was delighted, insofar as he was capable of feeling so admist all of his suffering, disappointment, and despair. Then his stomach growled insistently, and he instructed the golem to wait there while he fetched himself some lunch. Fuligo scuttled off to his kitchen and assembled something vaguely edible in a large bowl, armed himself with his finest spoon, and then sat down with the spoon in one hand and a book about color theory in the other. Fortunately, he did not mix up which of these to put in his mouth...mostly.

While Fuligo ate and read a particularly venomous essay about whether incarnadine could beat vermillion in a fight, and occasionally paused to extract pages from between his teeth, the golem decided that it would rather not wait for Fuligo to return after all, and it exercised its abundance of autonomy by getting up and wandering out of Fuligo's workshop. By the time Fuligo had finished learning about the latest research into whether metapurple was real or not, the golem was long gone.

Oh, the magical adventures the golem had! In no time at all, it had experienced the full panoply of emotion! Despair! Apathy! Other kinds of despair! And also...true love?

Could it be? Was this truly what it was to love? But, oh no - its love was fading! How could this be? Was love a lie? Are we all truly alone? Probably, but in this particular case it was simply that an opossum had crawled up the golem's leg and eaten the overripe banana that formed part of the garbage golem's rotting heart. It's easy to confuse an overripe banana for love - they both start off sweet but eventually turn into blackened filth, and both can make you fall head over heels.

Losing your first great love can be very upsetting, particularly when you lose it because of an opossum, and the golem felt all of its despair turn into rage as the opossum also helped itself to some shriveled pieces of onion. The golem knew very well who was responsible for its tormented existence, and it ran all the way back to Fuligo's workshop, smashed through the door, and...

Well, suffice to say that afterwards Fuligo was a good candidate for being included in a zombie quilt.

The lesson to be learned here is that emotions are the result of complex chemical processes, even if sometimes those processes are happening in a decomposing banana. That, and inevitably death comes for us all, possibly hastened by the appearance of an opossum.

Now, go away all of you so I can get back to my book. Apprarently, there's exciting new evidence that heliotrope evolved from ultraviolet.

Current Mood: despair
Current Location: lost in the woods
Current Music: mysterious chittering noises

Oh, hello children. I have an awful lot to do today, so I'm not sure I have time to tell you a story right now. So much to do. Busy, busy, busy. Although, that actually reminds me of a story.

There once lived a particularly malicious faerie called Caramel Antithesis Mangletusk. Faeries are wicked and cruel almost without exception, but Caramel's zeal for dispensing wickedness and cruelty made other faeries feel tired just watching him. Caramel, on the other hand, put off feeling tired until he was done with his day of evil and depravity. One Tuesday night after a particularly exhausting day of poisoning wells, replacing children with enchanted puppets, and overturning tortoises, Caramel yawned theatrically, climbed into his bed, and dreamed.

Or at least that had been the plan. But once asleep, Caramel found that his dreams were missing. He spent several hours searching for them, but they didn't appear to be anywhere in his sleeping mind. All he found was one shabby little nightmare, and it squeaked and ran away when it saw him coming because it could tell when it was clearly outmatched.

Some time later, Caramel awoke to a beautiful sunrise and the musical chirping of birds. Outraged by this shocking disregard for his personal distress, he immediately stole the birds' voices and shoved some dark clouds in the sun's face. That done, he took stock of the situation. Had someone stolen his dreams? No, there was no one who would dare. But what else could have happened to them? Caramel checked around his bed for clues, and quickly discovered some tracks leading away from his bed and out the window. Caramel's dreams had run away.

This was unacceptable. Caramel couldn't have his dreams out wandering about where anyone might see them. Some of them were incriminating, or embarrassing, or would give his enemies forewarning of the terrible things that he planned to do to them. And so, deciding to follow in the footsteps of many idealistic youths, spiritually enlightened visionaries, and megalomaniacal supervillains, Caramel set out to follow his dreams. He didn't literally follow in the footsteps of those people, though, since he had these other footsteps to follow.

Like many people attempting to follow their dreams, Caramel encountered setbacks - in fact, an entire pack of setbacks. The alpha setback of the pack was a particularly intimidating specimen with massive brass antlers and several pairs of luminous crimson eyes. It drooled molten glass as it snarled a command for its packmates to attack. Caramel wasn't about to let a few setbacks stop him from chasing his dreams, though. He had tenacity! Resolve! And, most importantly, he had Hubris, which was the name he had given to the knife he had forged from the heart of a dead star.

The fight that ensued was extremely violent and not at all appropriate for children your age to hear about in detail, so I'll just tell you that Caramel eventually prevailed. After Caramel finished wiping off a great deal of blood, viscera, and rapidly cooling molten glass, he resumed his chase. Cutting his way out of a setback's stomach had cost him valuable time though, and he needed to hurry.

The trail he followed led him into Adversity, which is an ugly, disreputable little town with poorly maintained streets, a public garden filled with nothing but poison ivy, and only one decent tea house. I don't recommend visiting. Anyway, Caramel knew the then current mayor of Adversity quite well, and through the simple expediency of a large bribe was able to continue on with little delay. He did not even stop for tea, since he did not know which tea house was the good one.

And so Caramel's pursuit of his dreams continued, including an arduous, steep uphill walk through Hardship, and a most unfortunate and time-consuming detour through the maze-like streets of Distraction. He did at least manage to take a shortcut past Doubt due to his enormous ego. And of course, like anyone following their dreams, he had to fight a hydra.

At last, though, he caught up to his dreams just outside of Success, and was very grateful that they didn't make it into the city proper, since the place was filled with insufferably smug jerks. Also, he was getting tired of walking.

Alas, Caramel was uncertain what to do next. Many people will encourage you to follow your dreams, but significantly fewer of them will have any good advice about what to do when you catch them. Caramel's dreams looked a bit bedraggled from their lengthy adventure outside of his head, but he was still fairly certain he wanted them back. After all, not dreaming enough can lead to madness, hallucinations, or becoming a menial drone toiling away in aid of some else's success.

And so Caramel reclaimed his dreams through an arcane and complicated process that certainly didn't involve simply jamming them back into his head through one of his ears. That would be ridiculous.

The lesson to be learned here is that if you allow yourself to be distracted you can waste a lot of valuable time telling a story to children who will misinterpret your entirely factual historical anecdote as an extended metaphor and subsequently make poor life choices, end up fighting a hydra, and eventually turn into a bunch of artists, astronauts, and marine biologists instead of valuable menial drones. Also, there's an excellent chance that at least one of you is actually an enchanted puppet.

Now, all of you should get home. I have a lot of menial tasks left to do today.

Current Mood: Hasty
Current Location: Acceptance
Current Music: Outraged Birds

Oh, it’s you children again. I assure you, this is perfectly innocent gardening, and I am not burying a body. I would hope you would give me more credit than to think that if I murdered someone I would be foolish enough to dispose of their body by burying it on my own property. It would be even nicer if didn't suspect me of murder in the first place, but alas.

All this talk of murder reminds me of a story.

No, this time it's not a faerie story, it's a myth. The difference? The faerie stories are highly educational, absolutely true, and hopefully serve as a constant reminder of how much danger you're in of being abducted by a malevolent entity from another world and transformed into a stoat or something. This myth is more metaphorical, far less educational, and not especially relevant to your daily lives - it's just about a lousy human trying to hoodwink some gods and get away with murder. Nevertheless, I ask you please to try to remain awake and attentive.

Long ago, there lived a wicked man who for the purposes of this story we shall call Gerald. It is exceedingly unlikely that his name actually was Gerald, but what with one thing or another this person's actual name has been forgotten, and yet we must call him something. I happen to know someone named Gerald who I do not remember fondly, and so I shall happily engage in this minor revenge of using his name for this otherwise nameless wicked man.

Gerald was a murderer. Not professionally or anything, but committing murder is the sort of thing that can come to define you even if you only do it once.

Who he killed and why are facts not especially relevant to the story, but we can be certain that it wasn't a good reason. After all, if he’d had a good reason for killing whoever it was, then it wouldn’t have been murder at all, but justice, which is the term we use for killing people when popular opinion says that the person deserved it.

Like many people who have done terrible things, Gerald suddenly became keenly interested in religious matters. Such individuals are unable to obtain forgiveness from their fellow humans, and so must try to obtain it from allegedly superior beings instead. Sometimes this is to assuage a personal sense of guilt and achieve some measure of inner peace, but mostly it’s to avoid some sort of unpleasant afterlife. In Gerald's case, it was emphatically the latter.

In Gerald’s culture, the souls of the deserving dead were said to pass on to a river which eventually carried them back into new lives, and the more time they spent in the river the greater the differences would be between their previous life and the next. Souls deemed unfit for this process were instead hurled into an icy pit to suffer in frozen stagnation for some large percentage of eternity. This process was managed by She Who Watches, He Who Listens, and It That Remembers.

Yes, as if dying were not already inconvenient enough on its own, these people then found their souls judged by a giant eagle and a giant bat who both had theoretically been surveilling them for their entire lives, but who in practice had a lot of people to monitor and thus would often check in with a giant tree that contained all of history to make sure they hadn't missed anything important before deciding whether a soul got tossed in the river or condemned to the pit.

Gerald had committed his murder at night, which meant that it was mostly He Who Listens that he needed to worry about. However, it had been a new moon, and this was a time when supposedly the bat was not out and about listening to your evil deeds. Even if this turned out to be true, however, Gerald still had to worry about the tree.

You will not be surprised to hear that It That Remembers was not generally accessible to living humans, but Gerald was able to learn the location from She Who Speaks, learn how he might damage the tree from He Who Betrays, forge the described magical axe amid the pyroclastic fury of It That Consumes - oh, come on, that's an easy one. Don't you children know what "pyroclastic" means?

Anyway, it was a veritable who's who and what's that of gods, spirits, and monsters Gerald interacted with until he finally found himself before It That Remembers. All the years it had taken him to reach this point he spent again and again once more searching for the correct branch where he could see his wicked deeds depicted on the leaves, and he found that he was now so feeble with age that he barely had the strength left to hack off said limb.

As the branch fell away and the moment was erased from history, it was also erased from Gerald's memory, and he found he had no idea what had prompted him to go on his epic quest in the first place, and he mourned the years he had lost doing so much for a reason he could no longer recall. Soon after, Gerald finally succumbed to old age, and his soul found itself before the edge of the river of souls guarded by She Who Watches and He Who Listens.

She Who Watches recounted to Gerald that She had seen him craft a magical axe in It That Consumes.

He Who Listens recounted to Gerald that He had heard him trick She Who Speaks into revealing the location of the tree.

It That Remembers recounted to Gerald that It remembered him cutting off one of its branches with a magical axe.

All three agreed that defiling the tree in this manner was an unspeakable crime, and so Gerald was hurled into the frozen pit for deviant souls anyway, even though he had wasted most of his life trying desperately to avoid that very fate.

In theory, myths are less about lessons and more about explaining some aspect of nature or society, and I think we can all agree that what this myth explains is why deciduous trees shed their leaves - to protect their secrets. Also, I think it explains why, for the most part, gods and spirits don't talk to humans anymore.

Now, I have things to do, and all of you should really be getting home before the sun sets and it becomes too dark to see. It's a new moon tonight.

Current Mood: mythic

What 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.

Current Mood: sunny

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Current Mood: drizzling

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Oh, hello children. I see that once again you're out and about, having fun with nary a care in the world. I can only assume that means that you've already finished all of your chores and have permission to be roaming around town engaging in unsupervised frivolity. Hmm, that reminds me of a story.

Once upon a time there was a lazy, disrespectful child named Bertold. Bertold never did his chores, ignored his studies, was rude to his elders, didn't return his library books on time, and so on. Yes, it's safe to say that he was exactly the sort of child you would expect to be abducted by a faerie, whisked back to faerieland, transformed into...I don't know, maybe a donkey, and forced into a lifetime of menial servitude. Certainly this is what a faerie named Calistophan Eldergnarl was counting on, at least.

Many faeries enjoy visiting the human world to cause mischief, to dispense nightmares, and of course to abduct and enslave misbehaving children. Calistophan particularly enjoyed spreading mischief, and he spent quite an extraordinary amount of time in the human world curdling milk, enchanting livestock, stealing shoes, and persuading the weather to cause ecological catastrophes that cost thousands of lives. Faeries file an extremely wide range of behavior under the category of "mischief."

Anyway, Calistophan spent so much time causing mischief in the human world that he accidentally became stranded there. It's like if you were to visit a library and became so caught up in the book that you were reading in the special collections section in the basement that you were still there when they locked the doors, turned out the lights, and awakened the security ghosts.

There are a lot of places that are pleasant or exciting to visit, but where you would not wish to become trapped, such as the top of a mountain, or the ruins of a sunken ship, or a library infested with the tormented souls of the unquiet dead. Or, as was the case for Calistophan, the human world in general.

Calistophan decided that his best chance of getting back to faerieland was to "hitch a ride" with another faerie. This was an excellent idea except for a few significant obstacles - most notably, finding another faerie.

Calistophan visited some fresh milk, some unenchanted livestock, some unstolen shoes, and some surly-looking but unmotivated clouds, but did not find any other faeries. Then he visited some blissfully sleeping children who had not gone to bed when they were supposed to, but did not find any other faeries pouring nightmares into their ears. Then he enchanted some goats, because he was getting bored. And then he set out to find the most wicked, ill-tempered child he could, in the hope that some other faerie would try to steal the child away to faerieland.

And that is how Calistophan found himself lurking in the shadows watching over young Bertold.

Now, hundreds of children are abducted by faeries every year, but the world is a big place filled with millions of children. You might think that Calistophan would spend years waiting and waiting for a faerie to come for Bertold without success, until eventually Calistophan simply sublimated into the air under the crushing banality of the ordinary human world. Ah, such is the tender innocence of youth. You do not yet realize just how powerful the crushing banality of the ordinary human world truly is. It only took about a week for Calistophan to start to sublimate.

But then, one night, just when Calistophan had nearly lost hope completely, a faerie appeared! This other faerie crept in through the window of Bertold's bedroom, silently padded across the floor to Bertold's bed, and...reached for Bertold's shoes. Calistophan could not believe his eyes. Bertold was the most dreadful child he'd ever encountered, and all this other faerie wanted was his shoes?

Calistophan shouted in outrage as he burst out of the closet where he'd been lurking, quite forgetting that he should be ingratiating himself to this other faerie rather than criticizing his choices regarding the fates of disagreeable children. The other faerie was so startled that he dropped the shoes, and between the shouting and the clunking of falling footwear, Berthold woke up. The other faerie panicked, turned Berthold into a squirrel, the shoes into butterflies, and Calistophan into a crocodile. Ordinarily it would not have been so easy for some other faerie to transform Calistophan into an animal against his will, but nearly all of his power had been stamped out of him by the unrelenting mundanity of everyday human existence.

The other faerie looked at the mess he had made, decided to call it a night, and vanished back to faerieland.

The crocodile formerly known as Calistophan was so enraged that it devoured the squirrel formerly known as Bertold, Bertold's entire family, and an enchanted goat that it found in the back yard. Then it made its way to the nearest river, swam away, and forgot that it had ever been a faerie at all. Although, somewhere in the back of its reptilian brain, it still feels a simmering hatred of misbehaving human children and seeks to devour them whenever possible. So that's another good reason to do your chores.

Anyway, the lesson to be learned here is to always make sure to leave the library well before it closes, or you could find yourself trapped in a labyrinthine basement being hounded by revenants. That, and if you let the ordinary world drain you of wonder, someone will probably turn you into a crocodile.

Now, be off, all of you. I need to return some books before the library closes.

What the -? What are you children doing here? I thought you only came to visit me when you were bored and desperate, or just didn't want to do your chores, but there's a festival in town right now. Surely that should be a suitable distraction for all of you. No, I don't go to such things. All that awful dancing and loud music. That reminds me of a story, actually.

Once upon a time there was a faerie named Paraselene Whisperkith who loved music. Or, more accurately, he loved crafting musical instruments. Or, even more accurately, he loved crafting enchanted musical instruments that did terrible things. Many of them could even kill people, and I don't mean in the conventional way that you can simply bludgeon someone to death with a tuba.

Among the most awful and famous of his creations were a special set of instruments that were each a different color of the rainbow. The Ochre Barrage was a drum made from the heart of a thundercloud that could shake your bones into dust. The Verdigris Cacophony was a bell made from the copper heart of a fallen star that could melt your...you know, I don't like to coddle you children, but it really was quite dreadful, and I don't think you need that image running around in your fragile young minds. Let us just skip to the Ultraviolet Xylophone, which...actually, upon further consideration, let us not dwell on any of these any longer. Except for the Vermilion Cascade, since that's integral to our story.

The Vermilion Cascade was a harp made out of blood, and it could stop your heart.

Now, when you have a passion for making things, you can sometimes end up making more of those things than you have space in which to keep them, and then you need to come up with a way to get rid of them. Paraselene was not the sort of faerie who would sully himself with something so beneath his station as an occupation, and so he did not wish to do something so crass as to sell his creations. This was fortunate, as there was not a large customer base for evil musical instruments in the first place. Now and then he did manage to trade one to another faerie, often for something equally terrible, and a few he managed to give away, in spite of the fact that everyone with any sense knows that one should never, ever accept a gift from a faerie. In this way, Paraselene's creations slowly trickled out into the world, sometimes changing hands many times. Due to the nature of his creations, they most frequently changed hands via inheritance laws or the collection of evidence at a crime scene. The suffering that resulted from all of this delighted Paraselene, but it also vexed him when one of his creations would end up in the possession of someone who he felt was not worthy to possess it.

The Vermilion Cascade had blazed a trail of suffering and misfortune through several powerful faeries, then through several less significant persons, all the way down to a drunken pixie who lost it in a card game to an ordinary human woodcutter named Hoskuld. Hoskuld, for his part, was not terribly pleased to have won such an obviously evil thing. It as clearly too valuable to throw away, but he found himself unable to find anyone interested in purchasing it, as the market for such things was, as we have already established, very small. And so Hoskuld kept the Vermilion Cascade locked in a box in a shed several feet away from his cottage.

For Paraselene, this was intolerable, and when he learned of the situation he used a tuba made from a piece of the sky to bludgeon to death the bearer of such foul news, then immediately set forth to retrieve his harp.

At about the same time, the whereabouts of the Vermilion Cascade became known to another interested party. I've told you plenty of stories about wicked, evil, loathsome faeries, but I don't want you to get the wrong impression - there are plenty of horrible people in the world who are not faeries. Among those horrible people was a king by the name of Ulfufroth. Many kings are horrible. I think there's just something about having the authority to cut off someone's head if they displease you that turns people a bit funny. Ulfrufroth thought that the best thing about being a king was being able to kill people when they displeased him. He was not a nice man.

Ulfufroth also loved music. Or, more accurately, he loved collecting rare and valuable musical instruments. Or, even more accurately, he loved collecting rare and valuable evil musical instruments so he could have people killed with them when they displeased him, because turning someone inside out by playing a banjo at them was so much flashier and more impressive than just hacking off their head. At this point in our story, Ulfufroth already possessed the Banjo of Inversion, the Devouring Harmonium, the Dire Accordion, the Infernal Glockenspiel, and the Hyperdimensional Theramin, which was not actually evil, but when it was about to be played improperly the people who were about to hear it would often go insane, so it was in his collection as a sort of honorable mention.

When Ulfufroth learned that there was some lowly woodcutter living in his kingdom who possessed a magical faerie harp made out of blood he immediately sent for his carriage. Ordinarily, a king would send minions out on this sort of errand, but recently a large number of Ulfufroth's minions had displeased him, and as a result his Infernal Glockenspiel had been played so much that he found himself a bit low on minions. Also, the entire castle now stank of brimstone, and he could do with the fresh air.

As you've probably guessed, Paraselene and King Ulfufroth both arrived at Hoskuld's cottage at the same time.

To a faerie like Paraselene, all humans looked pretty much alike, and even the most splendidly accoutered human was still a shabby, grubby thing compared to his own magnificence. Similarly, to King Ulfufroth, pretty much everyone who wasn't wearing a crown tended to get lumped together in a category of "lesser people." Paraselene didn't know that woodcutters seldom ride about in carriages attended by footmen and armed guards. You might think that Ulfufroth would realize that woodcutters seldom ride perfectly white deer with antlers made of glass, but the truth was that this was his first time out of the castle in several years, and he had very little idea what ordinary people did other than turn inside when you played your special banjo at them.

All of which is to say that both of them assumed that the other was the woodcutter. They immediately started making demands of each other and getting outraged at the temerity of the other, and things escalated quickly, and by the time Hoskuld got back to his cottage carrying an armload of firewood several people had been turned into toads and pigs and there was substantial and widespread evidence that a certain banjo had been played. There was a notable absence of survivors who could explain what had happened.

Hoskuld was so badly unhinged by the grotesque sight that confronted him that he immediately abandoned his job as a woodcutter and taught himself to play the harp. The Vermilion Cascade stopped his heart and left him a cold, unfeeling man who played music not for the joy of music, but simply as a way to earn a meal. He rode away on the fey deer and for the rest of his days roamed the land as a rather ghoulish and otherworldly wandering minstrel.

The lesson to be learned here is that for faeries the rainbow extends all the way into ultraviolet. That, and many musicians have dark and troubling pasts, and a career in the music industry can wither your heart and drain you of your humanity if you aren't careful.

Now, I really think you children should be going. It sounds like there's still time for you to catch some of the festival. I can hear a drum that sounds like thunder and...I can't quite place that one. Something with strings, I think.

What the -? You children are back to see me again already, eh? It feels like we saw each other only yesterday. Another story? Alas, I don't know any more stories.

No, you're right, that's a lie. Hmm, in fact, that reminds me of a story.

Long ago and far from here, there lived a kindhearted faerie named Glimmerpetal Sparklefang who grew the most beautiful flowers. Ah, you are right to be skeptical - I'm glad you children have been paying attention during all of our time together. In fact, almost none of what I just said was true - there is no such thing as a kindhearted faerie, this particular faerie's name was Waldorf, and the flowers were fake.

Waldorf had an entire garden of false flowers. He crafted them from silk, paper, moonbeams, and malice. Each one was a work of art, by which I mean both that they were beautiful and that they were lies. After all, all art is deception. If art were true it would actually be the thing it was merely showing you, and then it would no longer be art. Trust me, I knew some artists when I was younger, and every one of them was a deceitful villain.

Now, there's nothing inherently evil about making some pretty fake flowers, though of course using malice to make them is a bit suspicious. But Waldorf didn't make his garden just to have something pretty to look at - it was designed specifically as a trap for the bees.

Bees would visit his garden and see flowers so lifelike that they were fooled into thinking that they were real, and even into thinking that they were harvesting actual nectar. In truth, all that they managed to harvest from the flowers were lies. They would take the lies back to their hive, where the rest of the bees would turn the lies into honey. And then of course the hive would eventually perish because you can't live on empty promises.

Once all of the bees were dead, Waldorf would smash open the hive and steal all of the honey so he could sell it to other faeries. Why did they want it? Who knows - faeries love all kinds of horrible things. Stuff like the terror caused by the nightmares they give to children who don't go to bed when they're supposed to, or the tears of children who don't do their chores and are kidnapped by faeries and transformed into animals, or even the breath of children who - yes, I see you get the idea.

Waldorf also made jam from cursed raspberries and a kind of whispering cheese made from the milk of haunted goats.

But it was the honey that the faeries truly loved, because it was so perfectly aligned with their duplicitous nature. And it tasted as sweet as all of the sweetest lies - things like "everything will work out okay," or "true love conquers all," or "good things come to those who wait."

Eventually, Waldorf's garden was visited by a very special bee. This bee's life had been difficult and unfair. She was always sent out to gather nectar from unpleasant and underperforming areas, and then blamed when she came back short of her quota. She had been promised again and again that the hive would send her somewhere better, but things never seemed to improve. Her life became one of bitterness and cynicism.

So when this bee found Waldorf's garden it literally seemed too good to be true. Her skepticism helped her to penetrate the deception, and with her help the rest of her patrol also managed to see through the ruse. They reported back to their hive, the bee was given a tiny medal for her role in saving the hive from catastrophe, and the bees diverted their attention to other areas.

Waldorf realized none of this, and when he smashed open the hive he discovered to his great surprise that the bees were still alive, and he was stung hundreds of times and died a horrible, agonizing death.

The lesson to be learned here is to always carefully listen to your cheese before you eat it to make sure it wasn't made from the milk of haunted goats. That, and a little skepticism can save you and your entire family from starving to death after being continuously fed nothing but lies.

Now, it's time you all went home. I need to get back to work on my garden.

Well hello, children. I was just enjoying the comfortable shade to be found under this bridge. No, that's not my abandoned fishing pole next to the stream, and of course I'm not hiding under here. What kind of disagreeable monster would I be to try to hide from such delightful and persistent children? Hmm...monsters who hide under bridges...that reminds me of a story.

Once upon a time there was a fearsome troll who lurked under a crumbling stone bridge that passed over an evil river. The troll's name was Floopthorp, the bridge's name was Municipal Project 51C, and the river's name was the Stranglesnare. I think it's safe to say that two of them were envious of the third one's name, but alas, not everyone can have parents who are civil engineers.

Municipal Project 51C was not a particularly pretty bridge when it was new, and it had become even less so as it fell into disrepair. Many trolls would have been scandalized to live under such an ugly and poorly maintained bridge, but not Floopthorp. All Floopthorp cared about was that the Stranglesnare was an incredibly malevolent river and that Municipal Project 51C was the only bridge across it for leagues in either direction. How far is a league? Far enough that people were willing to cross over Municipal Project 51C rather than take a detour to an alternate route.

The Stranglesnare was an awful river. Rivers are a lot like people - they can be good or evil, can be calm or tumultuous, are made mostly of water, and usually contain at least one skeleton. The Stranglesnare was cruel, turbulent, very wet, and contained rather more skeletons than was typical for a river of its size. It took perverse glee in drowning people who were unfortunate enough to end up in its waters, and it applied extra effort to overturning ferries and sinking boats that were set upon its surface. It also screamed a lot in places where it tumbled over rocks - places where a more polite river would have contented itself with a civilized low roar.

As such, a bridge was your surest and safest way across the Stranglesnare, even if that bridge was little more than a collection of loose stones that were too lazy to actually fall apart. And yes, even if that bridge also had a troll lurking under it, which of course this one did, as I mentioned previously.

Lurking under bridges is, of course, one of the more traditional careers for a troll, and Floopthorp had always wanted to carry on that proud tradition. His parents had hoped he'd follow in their footsteps and become a civil engineer like they were, but he had his heart set on bridge lurking and could not be swayed. He was happy to find Municipal Project 51C uninhabited, and had moved right in.

Whenever someone approached his bridge, Floopthorp used a complex matrix of variables to determine how to proceed, factoring in the subject's apparent wealth, threat potential, size, probable deliciousness, and whether or not they were a goat. All goats were immediately devoured, regardless or how wealthy they might appear. Other travelers were charged a toll, or eaten, or thrown into the murderous river as Floopthorp saw fit. However, nothing in this system accounted for the possibility of another troll trying to cross Floopthorp's bridge, and so when another troll tried to cross his bridge he was left uncertain about how to proceed. Floopthorp was trying to figure out if it would be rude to ask another troll to pay his way across or if he should just let the other troll cross for free, when the other troll, whose name was Glyptocroft by the way, explained that he didn't wish to cross - he wanted to lurk under Floopthorp's bridge.

Floopthorp was aghast. Trolls never challenged each other for bridgeship. The very idea was barbaric. Trolls were ordinarily very polite about patiently waiting for another troll to die or move on before even considering taking over a bridge for themselves. Floopthorp was torn between outrage and horror before Glyptocroft hastily explained that he didn't want to replace Floopthorp - he had his own bridge in a nearby county that was currently being minded by an ogre friend of his. No, Glyptocroft just wanted to lurk there for an hour or so as a tourist.

This idea was somehow even more unsettling than fighting for bridgeship of Municipal Project 51C. Trolls are very solitary creatures, and it was unheard of for two of them to lurk under a bridge at once. But Floopthorp had to admit to himself that he wasn't entirely sure why the idea seemed so terribly wrong, and reluctantly agreed to let Glyptocroft lurk with him for a bit.

Well, Municipal Project 51C was so excited by the novelty of being lurked under by not one but two trolls that it quivered in delight. Alas, it really was badly in need of maintenance, and this quivering caused it to collapse. Trolls are very resilient creatures, and Glyptocroft and Floopthorp survived having several large pieces of stone fall on them. However, the Stranglesnare was positively outraged to have so many rocks dropped into it at once, and immediately flooded its banks and swept away the remains of the bridge and both of the trolls, and none of them were ever seen again.

The lesson to be learned here is that tourism is a destructive industry that can lead to deadly ecological catastrophes. That, and if you encounter someone lurking under a bridge you should leave them alone unless you want to risk being drowned.

Now, I should probably be getting home. But you children are welcome to stay here and enjoy the water.