LJIdol 3 Strikes - Week 1 - Black Rainbow
Oh, it's you children again. And what excuse do you have for being all the way out here darkening my door on this rainy, miserable day? Lost dog, eh? It's probably been eaten by something. I'm afraid that's just how life is - it's all about trying not to get eaten by something, or trying to find something to eat, or maybe just trying to stop something from eating the somethings you plan to eat later on. Actually, that reminds me of a story.
There once lived a wicked faerie named Blomquist Cacklespite. He lived in an enchanted castle made from flower petals and empty promises. It was a fascinating place, but regrettably nothing of consequence relating to our story happens there, so it's not worth discussing further. This story is about Blomquist venturing forth from his castle to hunt a rainbow.
No, not to eat it - why on earth would a faerie want to eat a rainbow? The rainbow's only natural predator is the unicorn. Under certain atmospheric conditions the normally invisible rainbow becomes highly visible and brightly multicolored, at which point they are easily spotted by unicorns. Devoid of its natural camouflage and ability to strike from ambush, the otherwise deadly rainbow is no match for a unicorn's shining horn, powerful hooves, and unearthly screaming. In the other direction on the food chain, rainbows mostly eat dragons. The gold you can find at the end of a rainbow is bait that the rainbow sets out for a dragon. The dragon is lured in by the whispers of the gold, and when it tries to collect the gold to add to its hoard, the invisible rainbow pounces onto the dragon and strangles it with its venomous tentacles.
However, all of this is quite irrelevant to our story, because the specific rainbow Blomquist was hunting was a rare subspecies of rainbow that is totally black when visible. Black rainbows feed almost entirely on dragons that prefer to construct custom wooden furniture for their lairs rather than simply lounge about on piles of gold. To lure in such dragons, the rainbow forgoes the usual gold in favor of silicon carbide, which the dragons grind up to make sandpaper that can be used to add a smooth finish to their handiwork. Dragon-made furniture can be quite lovely. In fact, this coffee table was made by a dragon. No, I'm joking of course - this is a Japanese tea table called a chabudai, and not a coffee table at all. Anyway, the black rainbow's only natural predator is the feral newspaper.
At this point I feel as if we're addressing matters that are at best tangential to the story, but since you ask: As people abandoned newspapers in favor of other ways of learning about current events, such as reading antique tea leaves or listening to birds, more and more newspapers were forced to fend for themselves and turned feral. Needing ink to reproduce, feral newspapers began hunting black rainbows, since the only other abundant source of ink in nature would be the giant squid, and you can imagine how impractical it would be for something made of paper to venture into the ocean to hunt for its prey. That's why there are no more origami penguins left in the wild, after all.
Now as I was saying, Blomquist was hunting a black rainbow, and we've now established that he wasn't doing so because he wanted to eat it. To feed his pet newspaper? That is a very clever but unfortunately incorrect guess. Boredom? Malice? Those are also excellent guesses, but in fact he just needed an enormous quantity of silicon carbide. I don't know why, it's not like I knew him personally. Probably something malicious, though, what with him being a wicked faerie.
Anyway, on a dreary, rainy day much like this one, Blomquist armed himself with his sharpest rapier, his loudest arquebus, and his most vile insults, saddled his finest tracking megatherium, and set forth on his quest. Then he quickly became infuriated by the slow pace of his finest tracking megatherium, turned around, went back to his castle, and saddled his finest tracking toad. He quickly became annoyed by the discomfort of riding a giant toad, turned around yet again, and after some hasty enchantments set forth on his finest (and only) tracking sofa. Actually it was more of a chaise longue than a sofa.
The chaise longue was a swift and comfortable steed, but rather lacking in tracking abilities, and so Blomquist sought out the lair of a woodworking dragon that he could follow to the black rainbow instead. Alas, Blomquist had wasted so much time swapping out steeds that by the time he reached the dragon's lair the weather was starting to clear, and when the dragon finally found the black rainbow the sun came out and made the black rainbow visible, and Blomquist found himself in the center of an enormous melee. The dragon was furious to see that it had been exploited by some faerie riding around on a chaise longue that had been stolen from it years ago, and outraged that it had also been duped by a rainbow. The black rainbow panicked when it became visible and suddenly found itself facing an enraged dragon as well as both a feral newspaper whose headline boldly claimed that "The End Times Are Upon Us" and a unicorn with color deficient vision that had tracked it to its lair and planned to eat it. Also there was a faerie hurling vile insults from the back of a walking chaise longue.
What followed was a scene of such appalling violence that the sun turned away in horror and the rainbow was able to invisibly slip away, and even now it lurks in wait to feast upon people who want to make sandpaper or semiconductors or who just think that silicon carbide is pretty. Everyone else? Oh, they're probably dead.
The lesson to be learned here is that there's no substitute for a good tracking megatherium. That, and silicon carbide has a multitude of uses.
Now, it looks like that weather is finally clearing up and the sun is coming out, so you'd best be on your way before any rainbows show up and you get trampled by a ravenous unicorn or have unflattering things printed about you in a feral newspaper or something. As for me, I think it's about time I spent some time in my workshop. I have a broken old chaise longue that it's about time I got around to fixing.
There once lived a wicked faerie named Blomquist Cacklespite. He lived in an enchanted castle made from flower petals and empty promises. It was a fascinating place, but regrettably nothing of consequence relating to our story happens there, so it's not worth discussing further. This story is about Blomquist venturing forth from his castle to hunt a rainbow.
No, not to eat it - why on earth would a faerie want to eat a rainbow? The rainbow's only natural predator is the unicorn. Under certain atmospheric conditions the normally invisible rainbow becomes highly visible and brightly multicolored, at which point they are easily spotted by unicorns. Devoid of its natural camouflage and ability to strike from ambush, the otherwise deadly rainbow is no match for a unicorn's shining horn, powerful hooves, and unearthly screaming. In the other direction on the food chain, rainbows mostly eat dragons. The gold you can find at the end of a rainbow is bait that the rainbow sets out for a dragon. The dragon is lured in by the whispers of the gold, and when it tries to collect the gold to add to its hoard, the invisible rainbow pounces onto the dragon and strangles it with its venomous tentacles.
However, all of this is quite irrelevant to our story, because the specific rainbow Blomquist was hunting was a rare subspecies of rainbow that is totally black when visible. Black rainbows feed almost entirely on dragons that prefer to construct custom wooden furniture for their lairs rather than simply lounge about on piles of gold. To lure in such dragons, the rainbow forgoes the usual gold in favor of silicon carbide, which the dragons grind up to make sandpaper that can be used to add a smooth finish to their handiwork. Dragon-made furniture can be quite lovely. In fact, this coffee table was made by a dragon. No, I'm joking of course - this is a Japanese tea table called a chabudai, and not a coffee table at all. Anyway, the black rainbow's only natural predator is the feral newspaper.
At this point I feel as if we're addressing matters that are at best tangential to the story, but since you ask: As people abandoned newspapers in favor of other ways of learning about current events, such as reading antique tea leaves or listening to birds, more and more newspapers were forced to fend for themselves and turned feral. Needing ink to reproduce, feral newspapers began hunting black rainbows, since the only other abundant source of ink in nature would be the giant squid, and you can imagine how impractical it would be for something made of paper to venture into the ocean to hunt for its prey. That's why there are no more origami penguins left in the wild, after all.
Now as I was saying, Blomquist was hunting a black rainbow, and we've now established that he wasn't doing so because he wanted to eat it. To feed his pet newspaper? That is a very clever but unfortunately incorrect guess. Boredom? Malice? Those are also excellent guesses, but in fact he just needed an enormous quantity of silicon carbide. I don't know why, it's not like I knew him personally. Probably something malicious, though, what with him being a wicked faerie.
Anyway, on a dreary, rainy day much like this one, Blomquist armed himself with his sharpest rapier, his loudest arquebus, and his most vile insults, saddled his finest tracking megatherium, and set forth on his quest. Then he quickly became infuriated by the slow pace of his finest tracking megatherium, turned around, went back to his castle, and saddled his finest tracking toad. He quickly became annoyed by the discomfort of riding a giant toad, turned around yet again, and after some hasty enchantments set forth on his finest (and only) tracking sofa. Actually it was more of a chaise longue than a sofa.
The chaise longue was a swift and comfortable steed, but rather lacking in tracking abilities, and so Blomquist sought out the lair of a woodworking dragon that he could follow to the black rainbow instead. Alas, Blomquist had wasted so much time swapping out steeds that by the time he reached the dragon's lair the weather was starting to clear, and when the dragon finally found the black rainbow the sun came out and made the black rainbow visible, and Blomquist found himself in the center of an enormous melee. The dragon was furious to see that it had been exploited by some faerie riding around on a chaise longue that had been stolen from it years ago, and outraged that it had also been duped by a rainbow. The black rainbow panicked when it became visible and suddenly found itself facing an enraged dragon as well as both a feral newspaper whose headline boldly claimed that "The End Times Are Upon Us" and a unicorn with color deficient vision that had tracked it to its lair and planned to eat it. Also there was a faerie hurling vile insults from the back of a walking chaise longue.
What followed was a scene of such appalling violence that the sun turned away in horror and the rainbow was able to invisibly slip away, and even now it lurks in wait to feast upon people who want to make sandpaper or semiconductors or who just think that silicon carbide is pretty. Everyone else? Oh, they're probably dead.
The lesson to be learned here is that there's no substitute for a good tracking megatherium. That, and silicon carbide has a multitude of uses.
Now, it looks like that weather is finally clearing up and the sun is coming out, so you'd best be on your way before any rainbows show up and you get trampled by a ravenous unicorn or have unflattering things printed about you in a feral newspaper or something. As for me, I think it's about time I spent some time in my workshop. I have a broken old chaise longue that it's about time I got around to fixing.