Stigandr's Travels: Book III and a half

The Yeti · December 23, 2013

This will be the last from me for a while, don't want to flood things with too many words. I'll put up a better lighted view of death on my flickr later today.

Links to Part I and Part II and Part III

Editor’s Note: The following letter is considered apocryphal by the followers of Stigandr, for reasons you will soon know yourself.

Three skeletons found themselves suddenly exposed in the harsh cold. They were confused, or rather would have been confused if skeletons could think. Two wore the visage of a yeti, while one had a braided ponytail unceremoniously frozen to the ground beside it. The latter had been speared rather extravagantly with a golden sword, and might have found this a bit itchy had it nerves to feel with. The day passed uneventfully, until night fell and the spirit of death appeared to reap what had fallen.

Hmm…. Said He of the black face, cape, and scythe.

Hmm? Said the skeletons, having suddenly, and rather grudgingly regained their capacity for thinking on the subject, but also on other subjects like rotten fish and how many drow one could pack into a standard elven packing crate.

Hmm…., said He of the many black things again, and swished his scythe, picking up the nearest yeti in a single clean swoop and plucking the soul from his body as you might pluck a petal from a delicate flower, if that flower was seven feet tall and encased in fur and muscle.

What has befallen me? Inquired the soul previously embodied as a yeti.

You have died, responded He of the black and pointy things, in a tone obviously meant to be helpful.

Yes but how, inquired the soul.

You have been stabbed, answered He of the pointy bits.

I can see that part, the soul added in exasperation, but by whom?

Ahhh… by those men over there, answered Death, and he shared with the three souls a vision of men, outfitted in shades of green and carrying many garishly bright things and even more flags. Actually, it was hard to tell whether there were more men or flags in the lot.

I see, said the soul, and it would have slumped its shoulders if it had them; there are some things that one simply needs a good old fashioned body for.

Death moved likewise to the second soul, who had by now quite learned his lesson and asked only where they were going.

I do not handle that part, answered Death, I only take you there.

Yes but you must know, the soul chided.

I believe to know you must be, alive, said death after a pause.

The soul sighed in exasperation.

Death turned now to the final soul, but seeing that it was the remnants of a female he turned, pulling from his robe a great tome of names.

I am sorry, but it appears I am already over my quota, I cannot take you.

Editor’s Note: In those days the great corporation that shan’t be named had saw fit to produce only one woman for every ten of our kind. This being thought fit to please the great holiness of the target demographic. Death, likewise, had instituted a similar quota in his realm. He was rather bad at picking out women, however, having never had any experience at being alive, let alone at having a gender, and so assumed that anything with long hair must be female. This is why the elves of the realm live such long lives, and also why the most barbaric barbarians, their long manes streaming in the breeze, seem able to engage in such a great many feats of brave stupidity before finally succumbing to fate.

Okay…… Said the soul formerly known as hvitr, but before she could question him death was gone.

He was replaced by a pillar of multicolored light in the snow, which had at its top a man, or something like it, of pure brilliant white. He held in his hands two tubes of a brilliant blue persuasion, and spake in such a deep and powerful voice that Hvitr would have mistaken him for an infocaravanmercial salesman from her youth in Kaliphlin, selling snake oils by the stables.

You, lady of the formerly purple robes, said the figure.

I guess…. I don’t actually remember what I was wearing. Say who are you and what are you selling, queried Hvitr.

I am the Spirit of the Plastic, the figure answered, keeper of the holy ABS.

What’s ABS, Hvitr asked.

It does not matter, the Spirit said, and overturned the test tubes, pouring out yellow and purple streams of plastic goo in twin rivulets that played about her frozen body. As he did so, great pillars of multifaceted light leaped out of the snow, dancing in the spectacular display.

Thus Hvitr was remade, and retained nothing of her grand and blasphemous experience save for the knowledge that her joints worked a whole lot better than usual, that she had apparently found a really great hairstylist, and that she really, really loved purple now. Looking down at her feet, however, she saw the golden sword that had been stuck through her, and gained a spark of otherworldy insight that compelled her to seek out these garish, opulent men and cut them down. She thus set out on her trusty cow, whose name translated in the old tongue means “he who rubs his head upon rocks rather than eat grass” and began the journey east.