The Revenge of the Entish Bow - RPG

[Diamond18]

The poker game ended with Kuruharan the winner (which was hardly surprising, being what and who he was—a card shark of the Khazad). This led to an awkward pause, followed by an awkward fast-forward, rewind, play, and finally an awkward stop.

“Aren’t they finished yet?” Pimpi wondered. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what was going on, no sir. As soon as they’re done, I’m going to…I’m going to…do something.” She then became distracted by a donut she found in her pocket.

Vogonwë, meanwhile, was bored. Not simply bordering on bored, but bored to pieces. Bored to bits. Bored to infinitesimal little shreds of indefinable something-or-other which all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could never put back together again. He was dying of a boredom so lethal that if he didn’t do something and do it quick, he would shrivel up like a Wet-Ones towelette that someone had removed from its package and didn’t throw away, from the misguided assumption that it was still clean enough to reuse.

So, what to do. Not just anything would suffice to overcome a boredom so palpable and pulpy, like orange-juice that hasn’t been strained, and so whatever he was going to do had to be good. Really good. And not just “fun” good, but crazy, spontaneous, unpredictable good. Uncharacteristic, devil-may-care, thought up on the fly and in a fey mood good. Yes, it had to be sufficiently entertaining, in a shocking and wordy sort of way. And it had to be good for a poem or two, at least.

He sat back and twiddled his thumbs, contemplating his options. He could either sit by himself and work on Fit the Fifth, join Orogarn Two in writing down all the “-ly” words in the tongues of Men and Elves, supervise Kuruharan and Chrysophylax as they divvied up the winnings, or do something with Pimpiowyn. Gee, what a dilemma—a quandary, to be sure.

He sidled up to Pimpi. “I’m bored,” he announced as if it was worthy of a front-page headline.

She turned her gorgeous, glorious, splendid, sublime, superb, exophthalmically excellent eyes toward him, in all their dreamy azure splendor. She licked some frosting off her bottom lip and replied, “Eat something, then.”

“Well yes, I could do that,” he paused. “But, I had a better idea. All this hedonism going on around us made me think—”

“Is that some sort of Workmudian dish?” she interrupted him, tilting her head to the side quizzically. The sun chose that moment to shine down on her long cascade of fiery red-gold curls that fell around her sumptuously voluptuous figure, the Similaresque light creating a glow around her head that was nothing less than angelic, like some sort of painting in which the subject is a maiden glowing with luscious beauty, holding a piece of fruit.

“What?”

“Hedonism.”

“Er…no. But I was saying…um…what was I saying? I dunno…gosh you look pretty right now.” His mouth felt dry, and he spoke like a tongue-tied idiot, instead of his normal status as a loquacious idiot.

“Hm. Thank you, you don’t look so bad yourself,” she said politely.

“Look here, Pimpi,” he said impatiently, “can we get back to the idea I had?”

“Were we going to go eat something?”

“No, but you look good enough to eat.”

“How am I supposed to react to that statement?”

Suddenly he dropped to one knee. “Oooh, ow! Leg cramp!” he grimaced. “Just a minute.”

She smiled absently while waiting for him to stretch his legs, and her mind wandered. It traveled far and wide, roaming across the expanse of Middle-earth and back and forth through the twenty-five years of her life, pausing now and then to smell the roses but not occupied with anything in particular for any length of time.

“All right, where was I?” Vogonwë resumed. “Oh yes, my idea.” He then broke out into a spontaneous, poetic song, and it went thusly:

My dear Pimpiowyn,
Why should others have all the fun?
You’re pretty, you’re young,
I’ve got to get me some.

Let’s dispense with dull customs,
Like mushy moldy mushrooms.
I’ve never been under your skirts,
But for that there’s always a first.

Don’t worry, my sweet thing,
This will be binding.
So don’t think I’m a swinger,
You’re my one true humdinger.

So let’s forget about this mortality business,
It can certainly wait till we’re finished.
I’ve got plenty of time,
And you’re in your prime.

We’re lucky we’re half-breeds,
For were I full elf, and were you full hobbit,
I’d be too tall, and you’d be too short,
Dagnabbit.

But as is we’re just right,
For each other tonight,
My half-halflng delight.
Let’s slip away quick-like.

There was an awkward silence. This pause was most certainly not pregnant, it was actually rather devoid of any cohesive thought whatsoever. Then Pimpi started to whimper.

“What? Is that a ‘no’?” Vogonwë asked.

“Oh! If…if only…”

“If only…” Vogonwë prompted, his patience with the length of this post wearing thin.

“If only you were O Lando!” she finally blurted, breaking out into a torrent of tears, which spurted from her eyes like a sprinkler system that decides to come on right when one is walking past it, bearing paper items to mail at the post office down the block.

To say Vogonwë was stricken would be an understatement. He clasped his hands over his heart and fell back, gasping like a fish swimming in an inch of water at the bottom of a bait bucket. His mouth flapped open and shut for a few moments as he tried to say something dramatic. His pupils shrank, dilated, shrank, and then dilated again, in his shock and horrified confusion.

Pimpiowyn covered her torturously beautiful face with her dainty, well-formed hands, and continued to cry. It had not been a good day for her. In fact, it had been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Vogonwë still lay gasping on the ground, both legs cramping simultaneously. Finally, filled with consternation to the overflowing point, he dragged himself away behind a tree and retched up hairballs till his inner organs threatened to turn themselves inside out and drip from his ear canal onto the ground. After such a violent purging I’d be surprised if he ever hacked up another hairball in his life.

But then, he rose up with a shameless conjunction and a feeling of grim, gritty, resolve. A fey look was upon him as his soliloquized, “I’ll do something to make her forget he ever existed…I’ll do something so stupendous and heroic and manful that she’ll fall upon me in a fit of nymphomania…I’ll…I’ll…I’ll have to try to kill Gravlox. Or commit suicide. Or maybe that’s the same thing. Hm.”