Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2019 10:44:48 GMT
The green-skinned elfin girl pushed aside the hanging leaves dramatically, then posed with hands on hips.
"Hello, peasants!"
The few other creatures scattered around the glade, playing games, playing music, all stopped to look at the newcomer. Then as one they rushed towards her.
"Cwyn, we missed you!" "Where have you been?" "Play tag with us!" "Sing us a song!" "Tell us a story!" "Where have you been?"
She held out her hands to silence them. "I have been..." she said, pausing for effect, "on an adventure!"
"An inventor?" "An adventure you dolt! Listen to her!" "What did you do?" "Who did you meet? Did you meet heroes?"
"I met all sorts of people. I met Shirly who was a giant pixie, and Abacus who was a pixie giant. There was a beast-man called Cheese, and a lizard-man called Tasty, and..." She thinks for a moment. "And a human-man called Ergin."
"What strange names!" said Tumbly the satyr. "Seriously," said Pipple the sprite. "Stop, you're interrupting her story!" said a badger, who had no name that anyone knew.
"Thank you badger," said Cwyn, with exaggerated grace and patience. "Anyway, I was in their city Daring Heights, and I saw them gathering, so I went up and said 'Hello, are you adventurers?' and they said 'Yes', so I followed them to this meeting they were going to. We ended up meeting this lady called, uh, Cora, and her boss Noria, who were looking for some people who had killed some important people back where they came from in Teth... Tethys. Tethyr. The boss lady was pretty scary, but I could tell she was OK because she told me what she'd had for lunch."
"What was it?" "What did she have?"
"A bacon sandwich! It smelled really good on her breath, it made me hungry. Then she gave us a map of where one of them was hiding, I think maybe she got the map from him in the first place? It didn't make much sense to me, but it all sounded like fun, and I wanted to see more of the Material Plane so I was like 'Let's do it! Let's adventure!' and the others were like 'You're so cool Cwyn!' And then we got some horses to pull a cart, which took aaaaaages. What's wrong with walking I thought, I walk everywhere, but maybe people don't walk so much in the Material. Shirly drove the cart and was really good at it! Cheese had bought this really sick horse though, and when it caught up with us when we stopped for the night... it died!"
There were gasps of horror from the group of listeners. "It died?!" "Poor horse." "Did you eat it?"
"I played a song for it on my horn," said Cwyn, very seriously. "A slow dirge. And you'll never guess what... It woke up! I didn't even mean to, I guess I'm just that good," she said proudly.
"That's amazing!" "You're so cool Cwyn!" "Then did you eat it?"
"After that Cheese and Ergin went off to make sure the area was safe, which it clearly wasn't! Because next thing we hear is eeeeerr skreee rarrarr bccchhhh." Cwyn waves her hands as she makes the sounds of various animals and explosions. "And of course I had to save them, so I JUMPED UP," she says jumping up, startling the listeners, "and when I got there Ergin was holding this wolf guy, and Cheese was waving a knife at it, so I tried to make everyone just chill out, you know? But it only worked on Cheese and Ergin, and if they chilled out too much the wolf guy would just eat them, so I let it drop. Then Ergin said something to it and it ran off, and Abacus hit it with some eldritch energy right up its bum!" Cwyn laughs, and the listeners laugh, and keep laughing until Cwyn shouts "Stop! I'm trying to tell a story here."
"Sorry Cwyn." "Yeah, we're sorry." "Please tell your story."
"Anyway, then we went to sleep, and in the morning we went into the mountains where the map told us go, it had a picture of a bat on it so we thought 'Oh cool, a bat cave to explore! Maybe there'll be a whole village in there, with bat-men and bat-women', but it was just a hole in the wall pretty high up. Cheese climbed up the wall and I wanted to follow so I made Friends with Abacus who's really tall, and he let me climb up onto his head. But when I got up there, the hole was so small Cheese couldn't get all the way through and I was stuck looking at his bum! Then Abacus stopped being Friends with me and took me off his head and growled at me, but other people I've made Friends with have gotten so angry they've chased me away so I think he likes me really. Then a whole load of bats flew out of the cave past Cheese, and when he came out he was covered in bat poop!"
This garnered mixed reactions within the group. Most laughed so hard they rolled on the floor, but Tumbly and the badger pulled faces. "That's disgusting, yuck!"
"It's OK, he did some magic and cleaned it all up. Then he showed us he'd found another map up in the hole! This one pointed into a forest nearby, and when we got there we found this tiny old house, like a hut. Tasty threw a rock, I guess to see if anything came out, but he hit a bird, awk it went. Then Cheese went up to the window, and his eyes went BIG, like this, and he waved us all over to the house, and when we looked in there was a human guy dead on the floor!" A gasp from the listeners. "And he was being eaten!" Another, louder gasp. "By a ghoul!" A few screams, and a shudder ran through the group, and another eladrin with golden skin and red hair feathered like autumn leaves ran behind a tree, from where came the spattering sounds of someone being very unwell.
"What did you do?" "Did you kill it?"
"I did kill it! With some help from my friends, but I insulted it so bad it pulled its own tongue out! Look, I've got it here." At which she pulled from a bag a long, pink and grey rope of flesh, and dumps it onto the ground in front of the listeners, who all scuttle back a number of feet, except for the autumn eladrin who had just returned, whose face pales and runs back behind the tree.
Cwyn laughed. "You're all such wimps, it's just a tongue. Anyway, while I was picking that up some of the others poked around the room. I saw Ergin had found something, so I peered over his shoulder, and he had a big silver medallion! It was really pretty, but I didn't get to keep it. And then... more ghouls jumped in! Like ten of them! Obviously we beat them, because I inspired everyone with my great beauty. Some of the ghouls tried to attack me but I just Stepped away and made fun of them. Like this..." at which she picked up the tongue laying in the grass, and waggled it in front of her face. "Blebbleebbleeppllpbbbt!" A little spittle flew off the tip of the tongue, and landed on the face of the autumn eladrin who was returning a second time, and who promptly fainted. "And one of them thought it was so funny he fell over laughing and barely got up again the rest of the fight! And when there was one left I made it think it was standing in fire, so it tried to run away, but it ran right past Ergin who chopped its head off, and that's how I beat the ghouls."
There was a round of applause. "You're so brave Cwyn." "You're amazing." "Did you eat them?"
Cwyn bowed low, and again, and again. "Thank you, thank you, you're too kind."
The badger piped up, being unable to clap and feeling a bit left out. "Then what happened?"
Cwyn stopped bowing half way down, saying "Then we went back of course. The boss lady didn't know why the dead guy was in the house, and she didn't know why the ghouls were there, but she said the medallion was from her country so that proved it was the murderer they were looking for, or one of them at least. And then she gave us a bunch of pieces of gold, look." The green eladrin upends a pouch onto the ground, where a small pile of coins glitter at the onlookers.
"What are they for?" "I guess it's what they use to get stuff instead of actually trading," Cwyn says, uninterested. "I guess I'll keep them? But you can all have one each, even Aoife," she said, nodding at the unconscious autumn eladrin, "because I'm so generous. Now, I have a great idea for a game. Let's play tag - I'll be the chaser, and I have to hit you with the ghoul tongue. Who wants to play?"
