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Old 02-08-2005, 07:01 AM   #238
Rimbaud
The Perilous Poet
 
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Heart of the matter
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Rimbaud has just left Hobbiton.
“I’ll show you constructive,” exclaimed Hal, unexpectedly, and with a grandiose flourish, produced a very small black leather case.

Oh no, thought Merisuwyniel, another ‘his guitar is very small’ type running joke. How tiresome.

Fortuitously, this was not the case, for with fingers defter than those of the be-pickled-peppered Peter Piper, Hal opened the case, and swiftly constructed from the items therein an ornate but serviceable guitar. He strummed the instrument, introduced as Wailur, as if experimentally, as Manuel watched sceptically, and although the sound was not the soaring joy his host’s fretwork, it was not unpleasant.

“Dude,” said Manuel appreciatively. “Let’s, like, jam.”

“I already do,” said Hal, suspiciously.

“Just play, and maybe we’ll get what we need,” hissed Pimpi, in what she had hoped would be an inaudible whisper to their hosts.

Prada smiled fashionably. “Get on with it.”
And so the quarter-elf and the legend played their instruments together, and the music of Wailur and TicTac rose to the ceiling in a minty-fresh cacophony.
Then the voice of the Wailur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, but all played by incontinent weasels, and like unto countless choirs of 80s hair-band singers singing with ‘words’, began to fashion the theme of Hal and Manuel to a great bloody din; and a sound arose of endless interchanging discords woven in some sort of musical purgatory that passed beyond hearing (oh hell, yes) into the depths and rarely troubling the heights, and the places of the ears of the so afflicted were filled to overflowing, and the ghastliness and the echo of the aural mayhem went out into the Void, and it was not void.

The valorous Velour were dolorous.

“Alan McGee’s on the phone,” said Polli-Esther fibrously, as she pocked her plastic-enhanced features around the door.

“Seriously, no one will get that,” said Hal, ceasing and desisting, “but I’m guessing you’re going to leave it in anyway.”

Damn right.

In the sickening silence that followed the last shocking twang of the Wailur, Merisuwyniel adjusted her superbly crafted hair, and asked Prada what she used on her hair, to make it so sleek, soft and shiny.

“In fact,” said Merisuwyniel, “I could even say it was three times as shiny as hair with other products.”

“How on earth could you quantify that?” butted in Orogarn Two. The Gateskeeper whipped out an odd pocket instrument, with many buttons and runes scribed upon it.

“It’s a P’Ann-Tene,” said Prada, softly.

“Pound ten?” screamed Manuel querulously. “And you so totally like, complain, about my board wax?”

“Your board wanes, dude-dear,” replied Prada airily.

“Oooh, good one,” said Pimpi.

At this point a particularly well-built fellow entered, without knocking and looked slowly at each person in the room. The room was far from empty and this took some considerable time and there was much shuffling of feet. Still, the imposing bulk of the man, allied to one glowing red eye and a Mr Valleyum belt, quietened any potential rebellions, like an SUV through a pack of baby seals.

“The Reunitership?” he asked in a deep Teutonic voice.

“What the Muddled-Mirth is a Teuton?” asked Vogonwe quietly.

“Um, yes,” answered Merisuwyniel firmly, turning to face the dramatic entrance.

“I am the Governator,” said her interlocutor equally firmly, with the same rich accent. “My word is law here.”

“Um,” said Manuel tentatively. “Du-ude…”

“Do not dude me,” ordered the Governator, terminating Manuel’s sentence callously. “I am the law. Democratically.”

“Sweet,” subsided Santana.

“Now,” said the Governator turning his baleful red-eyed glare back to the fair Elven princess. “You wish the power to reunite the mighty bow? Such unions are not possible throughout the rest of Muddled-Mirth, but here in Valleyum anything can be reunited.”

“Good,” said Merisuwyniel. “I’m all for things being, er, reunited.” She felt like she had only the most tenuous grasp of the conversation by this point.

Hal had completed the repackaging of Wailur, and now addressed himself to their formidable challenger.
“So you’re the boss? Or they are? And who has the power? And will you be able to fix it, and moreover, will you actually do so? And will any of us die? And what’s the fastest land mammal?”

“Yes, no, me, yes, possibly, probably and the cheetah,” answered the Governator reasonably, before turning sharply on his heel.

“Come and see me up in Cleverly Bills, my mansion,” he said over his shoulder. “Ignore these cretins, we only use them for tourism. Their lies are true lies, and I feel like some sort of nursery policeman…”

“Kindergarten…” began Hal.

“Yes, yes,” interrupted Merisuwyniel, before the Governator spoke over her.

“…and basically until the end of days I am stuck here, unable to terminate their contracts.”

“Du-ude…”, said Manuel, looking irate. “We only accept you here on sufferance. This goes too far.” And he lifted Tictac and struck such a chord that lightning flew from the head of the guitar, blue and wild, and struck the Governator who crumpled twitching to the floor, acrid smoke seeping from his huge frame. The red-eye fixed on the great wound on his back, in a highly improbable manoeuvre. Liquid bubbled from the cut, which was small but producing a considerable amount of steam.

“Oozing nine millimetres,” said the Governator. “But, I’ll be back.”

“Never thought he’d say that,” said Hal, turning away from the corpse. “Now can we get on with the reuniting stuff?”

“Come, sit,” beckoned Prada, and they fashioned themselves in a semi-circle facing their fairest hosts.

Manuel had remained standing, and now he spoke again. “Few have ever come hither through greater tenuousness or on an errand more absurd. We must discuss this at length.”

Thus was the Council of Valleyum Entertaining New Travellers Requesting Insight (COVENTRI) begun, and shortly thereafter they all felt like they had been sent there. They were interrupted only by a small flat-faced dog, which waddled in and spoke to them. “Wot, no puns?” he said, pugnaciously.

Last edited by Rimbaud; 02-09-2005 at 10:23 AM. Reason: Filling in save
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