A fairytale for the season
Dec. 21st, 2006 01:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseA long time ago, many, many years before young Tuesday ever went on his travels, much, much before the time of the wicked Fürsten or the devious twins there was a shoggoth who was of a travelling bent. He had a name but it was awfully long and comprised of five pieces, the shapes of which no human mouth could make, and to be entirely honest, he wasn’t really a shoggoth at all but liked to think that he aspired to be and was old enough that he could get away with claiming it.
The shoggoth enjoyed travelling though the seasons. Though mostly he followed the snows. He was very fond of snow and winter celebration because they gave him an excuse to wear his warmest cloak with its lovely fur lining and strut around in his warm leather boots with a scarf pulled up over his nose as he hummed old tunes.
You see, he was a well-read shoggoth and had in his youth been a rather accidental sort of explorer. Which was how, long ago he had come upon the then young enchanter. The enchanter hadn’t travelled so far west then and wasn’t quite so tall. He hadn’t yet set sail for his western island, nor had he collected quite so many old books or gathered quite so many odds and ends. He was still very young back then and called himself another sort of name and wore entirely different coloured gloves. And though the shoggoth was well-travelled and always told himself that he dreamed of travelling on and on, he stopped somehow to stay in the company of the enchanter and they spent many an hour talking of old wisdom and appreciating the snows.
Eventually of course the enchanter continued his journey west on a magical ship that carried him across space and time, with a thousand corridors and rooms but always clean carpet where it was needed. And the shoggoth went too because to travel so far into the west was an unimaginable adventure and who knew what they might find.
Now the shoggoth has been with the enchanter for a very long time, so long that worlds are beginning and ending and he has watched the enchanter’s collection of fine things and elegant wisdom continue to grow. And though sometimes the enchanter, who isn’t quite so young as before and now wears different coloured gloves, fears secretly that one day the shoggoth will pack up his things and go away; it will never be so. Because in the enchanter’s ever-changing castle on his island in the great sea of the west, there will never be an end to the new things that the shoggoth might learn. So he will stay, for as long as the enchanter will keep him, which, he hopes secretly will be beyond time and time’s end.
And while the shoggoth will, he expects, nip out to see in the Yule, he will be back before the enchanter can miss him and, because he is a contentious sort, he will leave a long list of things that must be taken care of by the other inhabitants of the castle, since he shan’t be able to see to them while he’s gone. He would perhaps return on the stroke of midnight but the wicked Fürsten will arrive then, with her charming Markgraf in toe. Then will follow the devious twins who really aren’t twins at all and a procession of white marble goddesses, their hair dramatic against the snows. They will be followed by bickering wizards and an elder Fürsten or two. And somewhere in the jumble there will be a recently acquired collection of vampires; one who reads too many newspapers and one who buys too many clothes, one who sets fire to things and one who perhaps, just perhaps, in another lifetime might have been a wicked Fürsten too. There will be a noble king’s champion with an odd sort of modern lance and a prince with terribly messy hair, a goddess of all things who will likely have baked a cake and a travelling gentleman resting from the snows. There will be those and many others, enough that the music and celebrations will burn bright behind closed castle doors.
Then finally, once the jumbling procession of guests has settled, once the grand doorway of the castle is empty, the shoggoth will sneak back in, last of all, just before the dawn’s light. He will pull off his boots and knock them quietly against the wall to rid himself of the snow and will chuckle to himself at his having returned unnoticed. All until he realises that the soft glow from the top of the stairs comes from a single lamp held by the enchanter, who has been waiting, patiently, to welcome him back home.
Of course the three marble goddesses and the collection of vampires have their own story, as do all the others wanderers who find themselves in the enchanter’s castle, but that, my friends, would be another tale...
And because it is the season: Merry Winterish and fine mince pies to all. Shoggoth.
The shoggoth enjoyed travelling though the seasons. Though mostly he followed the snows. He was very fond of snow and winter celebration because they gave him an excuse to wear his warmest cloak with its lovely fur lining and strut around in his warm leather boots with a scarf pulled up over his nose as he hummed old tunes.
You see, he was a well-read shoggoth and had in his youth been a rather accidental sort of explorer. Which was how, long ago he had come upon the then young enchanter. The enchanter hadn’t travelled so far west then and wasn’t quite so tall. He hadn’t yet set sail for his western island, nor had he collected quite so many old books or gathered quite so many odds and ends. He was still very young back then and called himself another sort of name and wore entirely different coloured gloves. And though the shoggoth was well-travelled and always told himself that he dreamed of travelling on and on, he stopped somehow to stay in the company of the enchanter and they spent many an hour talking of old wisdom and appreciating the snows.
Eventually of course the enchanter continued his journey west on a magical ship that carried him across space and time, with a thousand corridors and rooms but always clean carpet where it was needed. And the shoggoth went too because to travel so far into the west was an unimaginable adventure and who knew what they might find.
Now the shoggoth has been with the enchanter for a very long time, so long that worlds are beginning and ending and he has watched the enchanter’s collection of fine things and elegant wisdom continue to grow. And though sometimes the enchanter, who isn’t quite so young as before and now wears different coloured gloves, fears secretly that one day the shoggoth will pack up his things and go away; it will never be so. Because in the enchanter’s ever-changing castle on his island in the great sea of the west, there will never be an end to the new things that the shoggoth might learn. So he will stay, for as long as the enchanter will keep him, which, he hopes secretly will be beyond time and time’s end.
And while the shoggoth will, he expects, nip out to see in the Yule, he will be back before the enchanter can miss him and, because he is a contentious sort, he will leave a long list of things that must be taken care of by the other inhabitants of the castle, since he shan’t be able to see to them while he’s gone. He would perhaps return on the stroke of midnight but the wicked Fürsten will arrive then, with her charming Markgraf in toe. Then will follow the devious twins who really aren’t twins at all and a procession of white marble goddesses, their hair dramatic against the snows. They will be followed by bickering wizards and an elder Fürsten or two. And somewhere in the jumble there will be a recently acquired collection of vampires; one who reads too many newspapers and one who buys too many clothes, one who sets fire to things and one who perhaps, just perhaps, in another lifetime might have been a wicked Fürsten too. There will be a noble king’s champion with an odd sort of modern lance and a prince with terribly messy hair, a goddess of all things who will likely have baked a cake and a travelling gentleman resting from the snows. There will be those and many others, enough that the music and celebrations will burn bright behind closed castle doors.
Then finally, once the jumbling procession of guests has settled, once the grand doorway of the castle is empty, the shoggoth will sneak back in, last of all, just before the dawn’s light. He will pull off his boots and knock them quietly against the wall to rid himself of the snow and will chuckle to himself at his having returned unnoticed. All until he realises that the soft glow from the top of the stairs comes from a single lamp held by the enchanter, who has been waiting, patiently, to welcome him back home.
Of course the three marble goddesses and the collection of vampires have their own story, as do all the others wanderers who find themselves in the enchanter’s castle, but that, my friends, would be another tale...
And because it is the season: Merry Winterish and fine mince pies to all. Shoggoth.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-21 03:35 am (UTC)and maybe, just maybe, a small orange cat shall come to call on the enchanter, too. ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-22 08:26 pm (UTC)