Mary the Mayor's Magnificent Metropolis
It's funny how facts return to you; often not quite as quickly or in the right order as you might like. Sitting in the back of Bernard's now mobile cart as it trundled along the desert road towards the next town, I was finding it a little difficult to free my hand from the goblin snot it had accumulated in the previous chapter.
It was at that point that a fact returned to me from my childhood; as a young lad one of my greatest memories was receiving The Medium-Sized Book Of Goblins for my eighth birthday from my father. (That itself wasn't the fact, but it was a pleasant memory all the same.) I spent hours poring over the pictures, reading the little info-boxes, and thoroughly annoying my mother staying up well past my bedtime, totally lost in the pages. (It was fairly easy to find my way out again though as the book was only Medium-Sized.) Which actually makes me wonder, what is the point of bedtimes anyway? If a kid isn't tired, why send them to bed at 7.00? Surely it is only to... oh, now I see.
Anyway.
In The Medium-Sized Book Of Goblins, one of the info-boxes contained this interesting factoid; "Goblin Snot dries like a rock-hard glue."
In the back of Bernard's cart, that fact suddenly returned to the frontal lobes of my brain, like Axl returning to Guns 'n' Roses only to find out no-one else wants to be in the band any more.
"Crap!" I cried, realising my hand was cemented and I had the sum total of zero ingredients for Resolves A Sticky Situation, and none either for Replaces Sliced Off Hand, Foot, Or Kidney.
With one hand now out of action I sat glumly in the back of the cart as the monotonous orange of the desert landscape passed me by.
Occasionally Bernard stopped to pick up passengers (now that his cart went a more regular speed people were actually prepared to pay to use it) but I had no time or mood to talk to anyone else.
Stupid gluey goblin snot. I remembered also at that moment that their wee was acidic and the pus from their pimples was bouncy, not that it was really any help knowing that now.
Eventually we reached the outskirts of a small town, and one of the passengers took the opportunity to rudely nudge me in the ribs and stir me from my moody state.
"Say, magician, are you stopping here at Outflank?" Another useless fact, this time about the reason behind the name 'Outflank' flashed across my lobes - some battle had been won by one army outflanking the other and the winning troop had been so delighted at the result that the entire regiment all immediately sought honourable discharges from the army and set up a town at the site of the aforementioned battle in celebration. Soldiers. Always soooo creative.
"Um, I guess." I answered glumly.
"Well, what's your business in this fair town?" My annoying new acquaintance asked. I mumbled something about ingredients.
"Ingredients, you say! Fascinating! Me, I'm a Goblin Pee trader, here in town to make me some money! Don't suppose you need to buy any of that now do you?"
All of a sudden my new friend become a lot more interesting.
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It was at that point that a fact returned to me from my childhood; as a young lad one of my greatest memories was receiving The Medium-Sized Book Of Goblins for my eighth birthday from my father. (That itself wasn't the fact, but it was a pleasant memory all the same.) I spent hours poring over the pictures, reading the little info-boxes, and thoroughly annoying my mother staying up well past my bedtime, totally lost in the pages. (It was fairly easy to find my way out again though as the book was only Medium-Sized.) Which actually makes me wonder, what is the point of bedtimes anyway? If a kid isn't tired, why send them to bed at 7.00? Surely it is only to... oh, now I see.
Anyway.
In The Medium-Sized Book Of Goblins, one of the info-boxes contained this interesting factoid; "Goblin Snot dries like a rock-hard glue."
In the back of Bernard's cart, that fact suddenly returned to the frontal lobes of my brain, like Axl returning to Guns 'n' Roses only to find out no-one else wants to be in the band any more.
"Crap!" I cried, realising my hand was cemented and I had the sum total of zero ingredients for Resolves A Sticky Situation, and none either for Replaces Sliced Off Hand, Foot, Or Kidney.
With one hand now out of action I sat glumly in the back of the cart as the monotonous orange of the desert landscape passed me by.
Occasionally Bernard stopped to pick up passengers (now that his cart went a more regular speed people were actually prepared to pay to use it) but I had no time or mood to talk to anyone else.
Stupid gluey goblin snot. I remembered also at that moment that their wee was acidic and the pus from their pimples was bouncy, not that it was really any help knowing that now.
Eventually we reached the outskirts of a small town, and one of the passengers took the opportunity to rudely nudge me in the ribs and stir me from my moody state.
"Say, magician, are you stopping here at Outflank?" Another useless fact, this time about the reason behind the name 'Outflank' flashed across my lobes - some battle had been won by one army outflanking the other and the winning troop had been so delighted at the result that the entire regiment all immediately sought honourable discharges from the army and set up a town at the site of the aforementioned battle in celebration. Soldiers. Always soooo creative.
"Um, I guess." I answered glumly.
"Well, what's your business in this fair town?" My annoying new acquaintance asked. I mumbled something about ingredients.
"Ingredients, you say! Fascinating! Me, I'm a Goblin Pee trader, here in town to make me some money! Don't suppose you need to buy any of that now do you?"
All of a sudden my new friend become a lot more interesting.
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posted by Musings | 6:52 PM
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