LJIdol S11 - Week 2 - Living Rent Free in Your Head
Hello, children. As always, I’m delighted by your visit. It does my heart good to know that you treasure my company so much that you visit even if doing so interrupts my meals, sleep, relaxing afternoon walks in the woods, or attempts to hide in my basement. It’s a good thing I like company so much. That reminds me of a story.
Once upon a time, there was a particularly unpleasant hobgoblin named Sparklegut who hated people. In fact, he hated people so much and so well that he did it professionally. Many faeries simply don't have the discipline or attention span to relentlessly despise their enemies with every fiber of their being, and will sometimes abandon what should be a lifelong vendetta just because they’ve grown bored with it. Others might find themselves hating so many people that they just don’t have enough hatred to go around. Faeries facing such predicaments could seek assistance from Sparklegut, who possessed seemingly bottomless reserves of malice.
Ironically, Sparklegut had originally started hating people not out of any inherent misanthropy, but as a defense mechanism. When he was very young, his kindly grandmother had informed him that hate and resentment would turn his heart bitter. Since Sparklegut lived in a magical land filled with wonder and inhabited by fantastical creatures, he believed there was a very real possibility that something or someone would come along one day and try to eat his heart to absorb his powers. Sparkegut decided that rendering his heart too bitter to be palatable was the sensible thing to do.
And so Sparklgut had started hating with an intensity that could curdle milk, sour wine, and decaffeinate coffee. Consequently, his family drank a lot of orange juice. As he grew older, his hatred grew deeper and more powerful, until eventually, as I stated before, other faeries would come to him and ask him to hate for them. It was profitable work that he enjoyed, even though he hated many of the individuals for whom he worked. But hating your employer is depressingly commonplace, as you children will no doubt someday see for yourselves.
Everything was going well (except for the people Sparklegut hated, of course), until a new neighbor moved into the enchanted tree just down the street. She visited him to introduce herself, bringing with her a huge stack of fluffy warm waffles. Her name was Fiffleglop, and Sparklegut was immediately smitten. I don’t want to bore you with the cloying, saccharine details, but suffice to say that he found her charming and delightful to be around, and the more time they spent together, the less room there was in his heart for hatred.
Consequently, his performance at his job began to suffer, and eventually one of his customers was so enraged that he stabbed Sparklegut thirty-seven times and then burned down his cottage. As a result of this, Fiffleglop never did get to devour his heart, and all her efforts to make it less bitter were for nothing.
The lesson to be learned is that you should be wary of any advice given to you by your grandmother. That, and if you plan to consume someone’s heart to gain their powers, just plan to add some seasoning or something to make it edible and devour it right away, because a longer, more complicated plan is going to require you to make a whole bunch of waffles and could easily be thwarted by irate faeries.
Now, off with all of you. All that talking has left me feeling rather parched. I think I’ll have a nice glass of orange juice.
Once upon a time, there was a particularly unpleasant hobgoblin named Sparklegut who hated people. In fact, he hated people so much and so well that he did it professionally. Many faeries simply don't have the discipline or attention span to relentlessly despise their enemies with every fiber of their being, and will sometimes abandon what should be a lifelong vendetta just because they’ve grown bored with it. Others might find themselves hating so many people that they just don’t have enough hatred to go around. Faeries facing such predicaments could seek assistance from Sparklegut, who possessed seemingly bottomless reserves of malice.
Ironically, Sparklegut had originally started hating people not out of any inherent misanthropy, but as a defense mechanism. When he was very young, his kindly grandmother had informed him that hate and resentment would turn his heart bitter. Since Sparklegut lived in a magical land filled with wonder and inhabited by fantastical creatures, he believed there was a very real possibility that something or someone would come along one day and try to eat his heart to absorb his powers. Sparkegut decided that rendering his heart too bitter to be palatable was the sensible thing to do.
And so Sparklgut had started hating with an intensity that could curdle milk, sour wine, and decaffeinate coffee. Consequently, his family drank a lot of orange juice. As he grew older, his hatred grew deeper and more powerful, until eventually, as I stated before, other faeries would come to him and ask him to hate for them. It was profitable work that he enjoyed, even though he hated many of the individuals for whom he worked. But hating your employer is depressingly commonplace, as you children will no doubt someday see for yourselves.
Everything was going well (except for the people Sparklegut hated, of course), until a new neighbor moved into the enchanted tree just down the street. She visited him to introduce herself, bringing with her a huge stack of fluffy warm waffles. Her name was Fiffleglop, and Sparklegut was immediately smitten. I don’t want to bore you with the cloying, saccharine details, but suffice to say that he found her charming and delightful to be around, and the more time they spent together, the less room there was in his heart for hatred.
Consequently, his performance at his job began to suffer, and eventually one of his customers was so enraged that he stabbed Sparklegut thirty-seven times and then burned down his cottage. As a result of this, Fiffleglop never did get to devour his heart, and all her efforts to make it less bitter were for nothing.
The lesson to be learned is that you should be wary of any advice given to you by your grandmother. That, and if you plan to consume someone’s heart to gain their powers, just plan to add some seasoning or something to make it edible and devour it right away, because a longer, more complicated plan is going to require you to make a whole bunch of waffles and could easily be thwarted by irate faeries.
Now, off with all of you. All that talking has left me feeling rather parched. I think I’ll have a nice glass of orange juice.