I meant to work on some of my Whine-O-Nine entries. Then I read a post on Kimagure's LJ about 'not thanking the brownie'. So my own, personal brownie/muse said "browniesshiny!'.
In case you don't know, a Brownie is not a baked chocolate confection. Well, it is, but not in this instance. A Brownie is a specific type of faery, one that does housework in return for nothing. If you want to attract a brownie, try placing a cupcake and glass of milk on your porch. Thanking a brownie will seriously offend them, and they will cease coming to your house.
I did, in fact, write this story. Plagerism is against the law. So write your own stories about gay wizards and dragons named after construction tools.
And remember, darling readers, that I wrote this at three in the morning under the influence of cough medicine and a lingering cold. Unreliable narration, ahoy!
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Three Magic Hods
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Imagine this as the opening of a movie. The sunlight falls on a cottage in a picturesque little glen. The stone cottage is a quaint thing, small but serviceable, with matching teal-painted door and shutters. A fair sized well sits not far from the edge of the forest. All is quiet, save for the birds' chirping and the squirrels chattering from the branches of the surrounding trees. The rabbits and deer graze placidly on the enchanted grass that covers the entire clearing. A donkey lies at the base of a huge oak at the edge of the clearing. Not one of these creatures takes into account the hulking form of the great dragon, sleeping soundly behind the house.
Or did I forget to mention that?
I suppose I did.
Well, here there be dragons. A dragon. A big green one, larger than the house it was sleeping next to. And not a single deer seems nervous about having such a large predator so close. Why, you may ask?
Because of the wizard, of course.
The quaint little cottage in the enchanted-grass-covered glen belongs to Blednock the Enchanter. You may have heard of him – rumor has it he's the one responsible for the invention of zebras. You don't recognize him? Then you'll have to take my word for it.
If you haven't heard of him, perhaps I'd better explain our situation. Pippin – that's his real name, Pippin of Glasgow. Changed it after a nasty problem with a village of trolls in Siberia. And then he switched again some years later upon returning home from Japan, and I believe there was also an altercation with the British Wizards' Counsel, which is probably where he acquired that dragon.
Ah, but we are getting off track. As I was saying, Pippin is currently employed by His Most Gracious Majesty, the King of Goblins. It seems the king is having trouble compromising on his treatise with the Brownies, something about the Brownie Prince refusing to wed the king's daughter to seal the deal, and so the king decided to hire a powerful, well-known wizard as a show of strength. Sadly, Merlin, Agrippa, and Willy Wonka were all busy, so the king settled for an obscenely powerful, not-so-well-known wizard.
It's not a bad job. Pippin goes to the Goblin palace every day to hold court with the king, attends all the royal balls and the like, and gets paid a ridiculous sum of money for his trouble. The only downside is that in the case of an emergency, he would be required to sacrifice himself to save the king, but that was easily overlooked when Pippin learned that the king would let him practice new spells on wrongdoers.
The Goblin kingdom has never had such low crime rates.
Today is the day the treatise is to be finalized, and Pippin was instructed to come to the palace early, so that he and the king may discuss the terms with the king's advisors one final time. This tete a tete was to take place around high noon.
It is now approximately three hours past noon, and Pippin, last I checked, is still asleep. Let us hope he rescheduled his meeting with the Goblins. Wait, there he is now.
"Good morning, Hod!" Well, he looks cheerful and well-rested, at least.
Hod the Dragon cracked open an eye. "It isssn't morning, wizard. It isss sseveral hourssss passst what you could call morning." He muttered sibilantly. The eye shut again.
Hod, for your edification, dear reader, is more than just the name of a dragon. A hod is, in fact, a Brick-Carrying Thingy.
Pippin looked less cheerful and more dismayed. "Dragon dung! You don't mean it's afternoon already?!"
"Yesss. You are late." The dragon stood and stretched, dwarfing the cottage even more at his full thirty-two-foot length.
Pippin made a sound that was somewhere between a squeak and a groan, leaping from the ground onto Hod's shoulder, which was quite a feat since Hod's shoulder is a good twelve feet off the ground.
"High ho, Silver! Or the king will serve me at the wedding reception with a side of cheese fondue!"
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"For the last time, Father, I will not marry her!"
That's an interesting phrase to walk in on. Less interesting and more worrisome, if you note the look on the Goblin delegation's faces. The Goblins look ready to tear apart the man slighting their Princess so, even if that man was the Prince of their peaceful neighbors, the Brownies. Bloodshed is bad, kiddies.
"I know you prefer human females, my son, but this is a very important alliance and it would be very helpful if you'd-"
"No, Father, you misunderstand what I'm saying. I simply can't marry her. I like men!"
"Yes, son, but the princess is very pretty in her own way-"
"Oh, for Tinkerbelle's sake!" The prince glanced around the room, gaze finally landing on Pippin, who had slipped quietly, for once, into his place beside the Goblin King. Pippin looked up, and their eyes met for an instant before the Prince was across the room, hands coming up to tilt Pippin's face just so, and the prince all but dragged Pippin into a long, statement-making kiss.
Which lasted much longer than was intended. There was silence for several beats until the prince jerked away, panting slightly. Then the familiar gasps of 'oh, my,' and 'scandalous!' filled the stone chamber. "Now do you understand, Father?"
Both kings were mute, gaping blankly at the prince as their accompanying courts exploded into chaos.
Pippin just blinked.
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Needless to say, the treatise was eventually finalized, without the stipulation of marriage between heirs. Pippin was summarily dismissed, his services no longer required, much to the relief of Goblinkind inside the palace and out.
Two days later, Pippin found another employer, this one with a whole shed of cursed renovation equipment – including a hod - that would take at least a week to un-curse. The day after that, he returned home from his new job to find his entire house spotless, all new cutlery in the kitchen, and his potion ingredients alphabetized and sorted by state of being. He just scratched his head, shrugged, and assumed it was a resident of the Brownie kingdom's way of thanking him personally for helping their prince.
You might wonder why he was not more disturbed that someone had been in his home without his knowledge, but the answer is simple; He's a wizard who lives in an enchanted glen. And his rabbits were of the Monty Python variety.
He came home the next day and his garden had been tamed, flowers were blooming in the window boxes – Did he have window boxes before? – and a vegetable stew bubbling away in a pot over the fire.
The third morning of his new job rolled around, and Pippin thought he should do something to show he appreciated the efforts of his new housekeeper. Thanking the Brownie was out of the question. Even if the rule of disappearance only worked on humans, it was still terribly insulting and the Brownie would probably leave a frog in his bed the next day.
So Pippin got up early the next morning to bake cupcakes.
He'd made cupcakes once or twice when he was very young, he thought. It couldn't be that difficult.
Two hours later, after doing serious battle with the mixing bowl and having to change clothes as a result, Pippin triumphantly set a slightly misshapen cupcake with chocolate icing on a plate, fetching a glass of milk and placing both conspicuously in the center of the kitchen table. He propped his hands on his hips and nodded to himself, satisfied, then ran out the door to wake Hod before he was late to work.
I don't think he noticed the floury hand prints on his robes.
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The first thing Pippin saw, and the last thing he expected to see, that night, as he walked into his living room, was the Prince of the Brownies sitting on his couch, munching on the cupcake gift he'd left that morning.
The Prince smiled brightly at him. "You know the old traditions."
Pippin nodded, overcoming his surprise. "Some. I would have put honey in the milk, but the bees are on strike at the moment. I think they're trying to form a Worker Bees' Union." Actually, the Workers were advocating the males' right to reproduce with the bee of their choosing. Of course, the choice eventually would come down to the Queen, and I've never met a Queen Bee willing to give up her harem of males.
The Prince nodded thoughtfully, brushing the last of the cupcake crumbs from his hands. "I couldn't get that kiss out of my head," He admitted cheerfully, not even trying to be subtle about the subject change. "So I watched you, and realized that you would make a very good King. Or King's Consort. But more than that, you'd make a very good boyfriend. Do you know what it means, that I have waited for you on the eve of the third day of our housekeeping arrangement?"
"Oh! I thought you were just grateful for being saved from an arranged marriage. Alright then, I accept your offer of courtship. I think you'd make a terribly good boyfriend as well." Pippin bounced across the room to pull the Prince off the couch, planting a solid kiss on his lips. "But first, what's your name?"
"Prince Calico Berberis-Ribes of Faerydale, at your service. Your name isn't really Blednock the Enchanter, is it?"
"No, it's Pippin. Pippin of Glasgow. Blednockthe Enchanter sounds more impressive on the resume, though. Keeps things anonymous and professional and such." Only if you haven't seen a zebra or the history behind it.
"But I don't want to be professional," Calico teased, leaning down and stealing a kiss.
"Then we won't be. But I should tell Hod before we start making noise – he gets cranky without lots of sleep."
Calico looked confused. "Hod? You have a sentient Brick-Carrying Thingy?"
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The End
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That's it, lads and lasses! For those of you who are interested;
- Pippin is the diminutive form of the name 'Peregrine'
- about the 'Monty Python rabbits'. In short, Pippin has trained, vicious attack bunnies.
- 'The Brownie of Blednock' is a Scottish folktale, and not at all like this story. I just borrowed the implications in the title.
- Berberis and Ribes are both flowers that grow in Scotland. Ribes is also called 'flowering currant'.
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