110 posts tagged “silly”
To be determined: whether this superpower should be used for good or evil. Check your local news to find out what my decision will be, true believers!
me: Yay, I have you addicted to Bellen now!
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In honor of Canada Day, show us your favorite Canadian.
Canadian gryphons are also pretty cool, but not as much as unicorns.
Whee!
Here is a rough draft of the beginning of something I'm playing around with.
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The hunter listened gravely to the farmer's tearful story about the creature. It came in the night, eating his crops, terrifying his livestock. It had never been seen, but his pigs were frequently found in the morning bearing the tell-tale mark of its visitation: a circular puncture wound, inevitably fatal, about 3 inches in diameter and a foot-and-a-half deep. The farmer had been willing to live and let live with the creature, erecting higher, sturdier fences, until this last week.
The farmer's voice grew softer and yet more tremulous. He removed his hat and cast his eyes downward. "My oldest," he said to the hunter. "Brevlyn. He sought to…confront the beast. He couldn't abide the ruination of the family farm. He couldn't stand by and just watch it happen, and—" He sobbed once with fathomless grief. "…and he thought less of me for allowing it to continue." He put his face in a hand and wept without self-consciousness.
The hunter, tall, broad-shouldered, nervously played his gloved fingers along the hilt of his broadsword and looked the other way as the farmer wailed and blubbered. "Ahem," he said, not indelicately. In time, the farmer composed himself, during which time the hunter stared resolutely into the distance of the nearby forest.
"He's in the barn," said the farmer, still a bit moist around the edges. "What's left of him."
The hunter nodded, then placed a hand on the farmer's shoulder and squeezed, which was all the comfort he was willing to provide. Without a word, he strode through the mud to the barn, a faded, ramshackle construction which appeared to be held together with nothing more than inertia. The farmer was at his heels.
There was no light in the barn but the soft, dust-filled illumination provided by the overcast late morning sun. The hunter walked to the body in the center of the barn, laid out on a board supported by two stacks of hay bales. The farmer waited at the door. It was a young man of seventeen, fair-haired and ruddy-complexioned. He was dressed in the dirty browns and rough woolens of his profession. His gut was torn by a deep puncture-wound, exactly as the farmer had described, and many of his bones were broken, from being gored and then tossed several feet into the air. Around the wound had peen packed a variety of curative herbs, in a folk-remedy attempt at healing or at least stabilizing the terrible wound, but they were to no avail.
The hunter shifted his gaze from the dead boy to the farmer standing several feet away. "Yep," he said. "This is the work of a unicorn."
The hunter ate lunch with the farmer and his family, graciously accepting the food he knew they could scarcely afford to provide. It was good, simple cooking, filling and savory, nothing as exotic as he had frequently sampled in the curry district of Havenshall, but when on the road he preferred less fiery food than the sort he indulged in when there was a water-closet and city plumbing to be had. The farmer, a stooped man of 48; the farmer's wife; and two sons and one daughter at the meal mostly in silence. The hunter was not an inquisitive man by nature, and neither was he volunteering. The sharing of superfluous information was not his way.
An occasional question was asked by the family. "How was the ride from Havenshall?" asked the plain-faced wife. "How big is your sword?" asked the youngest son. The daughter, apparently smitten with the hunter's confident swagger and laconic demeanor, would only flash him shy smiles. The hunter smiled politely back, but made no effort to encourage her: she was no taller than his belt. The hunter asked only one question over the course of the meal, and it was strictly business: "You said you think the beast lives in the dense woods northward?"
"Y-yes," the farmer responded. "The tracks can be seen coming from and returning to there."
"Hmm," said the hunter, chewing his meat thoughtfully.
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(to be continued?)
1. Incest Dungeon
2. Splintered House
3. Twins Joined at Head
4. Fictional Sex
5. Iran Can't Be Trusted
This is National Headache Awareness Week. Show us what gives you a headache.
The only thing giving me a headache right now is the realization that there is such a thing as a Headache Awareness Week.
I don't know about you, but I'm already pretty aware of headaches, because I get them myself. I think it's safe to say that most other humans are aware of them as well.
Here are some other good ideas for common maladies that people should be made aware of:
- Flatulence.
- Dry elbows.
- Bad breath.
- Tiredness.
I'm not belittling the severity of pain suffered by people afflicted with migraine headaches. I've had some real scorchers myself. I've just never thought, while in the grip of my agony, "If only people could be made aware of this!"