Elf Life: Revenge of the Elfbride

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My abduction at the hands of the mad faerie Glynhial almost ended with me smashed to bits on sharp rocks under a cold, craggy cliff. It might have been the most pleasant thing that happened to me on that horrible journey, because at least it would have brought a quick end to my never-ending troubles, and for a moment while tumbling down that vast height my sinuses cleared.

However welcome that fatal impact, it was not to be. The faerie, after playfully shoving me off the side of the cliff in the first place, soared down alongside my plummeting form and snatched me up again at the last possible moment, just as the seafoam collided upwards and sloshed into my face. I’m not certain if it’s possible, but the baby dragon flying alongside her seemed to be laughing.

How my glasses remained intact and fixed upon my nose the whole time, I can’t say. I once asked Baughb (the so-called legendary hero) how he managed to keep his floppy hat from flying off while riding horses and battling with his sword and whatnot. He shrugged and said that your hat likes you or it doesn’t, and if your hat likes you it sticks with you. If the hat doesn’t like you, you will have already lost it before you get too far, because it will abandon you the first chance it gets—the slightest breeze or bounce will do as an excuse for a rogue hat to make its escape, and you’ll watch it forlornly as it sails across some unexpected gorge or chasm which will appear just in time to aid its flight. Baughb is an idiot, and much of what he says is complete nonsense, but as far as the behavior of personal accoutrements he may have a point: my glasses seem to stick with me because they are attached to me.

My glasses remained fixed throughout our journey, all the many terrors and tribulations we scraped through. In a land called China, the emperor celebrated our “lucky” arrival by having his men set off a series of wild explosions in the air, and I’m surprised he didn’t succeed in tearing the sky to shreds. In Rome, I drank too much wine and got in a fist fight with a philosopher almost my size. Just because I’m an elf, he kept calling me one of the “little people”. You should know, so I don’t give you the wrong impression about my own prowess, philosophers are awful at fighting. He kept trying to work out his next logical move, so I was compelled to smash a Grecian urn on his pate, dislodging the laurel wreath on his head to a more jaunty angle. Last I remember, I was nearly trampled by a herd of beefy centaurs.

In the frozen north, I was introduced to a terrible band of Vikings. The worst. Listening to the braying horn section was particularly painful. The bandleader, a big curly-headed moron named Wongasson, grew up near Gothenburg and was particularly fond of singing a song about his home called “Det är vad jag gillar med södra”—roughly translated, “That’s what I like about the South”. They tell me his blonde and buxom wife used to be a Valkyrie; that may be true, as almost every man who saw her fell hopelessly in love, and swore that you hadn’t lived until you heard her belt out a tune, hence the old Viking proverb it ain’t over til the fat lady sings.

My glasses even survived our trip through the underwater mer-kingdom, where I had the misfortune of becoming an object of desire of its ravenous queen, Leukothea, which at least saved me from being that night’s side dish. Although it turned out we had a surprising number of things in common, any possible romance was cut short by the faerie, who deposed her, took away her powers, and dropped her on a nearby island. I figured that would be the last I’d see of her.

Though making love to a mermaid may be a bit of a novelty, I have to admit that I still held out some hope for myself and Filis, my childhood crush. Though the best of friends, she had always remained oblivious to my deeper feelings towards her. I suppose I have always been too reserved, too much the introvert, even with my best friend. Worse, the morning of my abduction she confessed to me that she had struck up some sort of unhealthy romantic attachment to Baughb, the so-called hero, despite her previous hostility towards him. At one point, she had even tried selling him down the river to the maniacal Cesspool elfs. But now, sadly, her affections seem to have completely reversed course.