Patriotism and rowdiness, the king and queen of clubs, as well as name-giving, and a menagerie of cats, makes a full house of fools, I thought.
Cuffs, manacles, on earth a bane, a bane to my hands, which I employ most cleverly when they aren't broken. I supposed I would find stocks in some part of this dungeon where they kept the prisoners of a more pretty sort. The large artists cloak in which I keep my tools intact around me, I reached for my file, and whistling a country song, began filling. That's when the big cat caught my eye just outside the bars of the cell keeping guard.
"Hello Righteous Brother!" I purred. The cat preened a little and I thought, ought I reach for the brush?
"Feline friend, does your highness enjoy the flattery of fools and gods?" The big cat starred at me, ruffling not a virtue.
My options turning and revolving in my head, I supposed the more intuitive faculties would be best used, that is, speech, sight, sounds. My eye was yet untrained to the new surrounding, this ever updating portraiture was playing tricks with me anyways. Cannons, smoke? Why bother? What terrible regression was this using jewels as jewelry and not in some invention of optic light and furry? What had happened to the mind of man, that they desired a scummy bar to a shining palace? Well, not that I hadn't seen the palace in the distance. Damn my fiending need for smoke and drink! I ought to have explored.
"Now, now, my library ought to be dukedom enough!" Reaching for my harmonica, I play a blues bar or two, I play a protest song with a folksy american twang in it, I feel almost untrained but the cloud of unkowing in my mind parts easily to bestow on me renewed knowledge of the reed. The cat roared with insipid and brutish ingratitude, and bolted down the corridor, I know not where. I would have been nervous but, quick as a fiddle my trick was accomplished, and in through the barred window of the cell came delivered my usual paper in these regions, "The Moral Immortal" vol.21, issue 2. I sort of became catatonic, reading the paper was work, learning the brush again would be work, living again would be work.
But now a new conundrum came about my mind: chains! How would I wear my chains, from the left or from the right hand? Left for chains, right for the brush, I supposed. And with that, I took out my file and began edging away at the link connecting the right manacle and the rest of the links. The cat, obviously bound to some duty in the dungeon, or perhaps a little too enthusiastically house trained by the dungeon master, came back to haunt the halls once more. Useless to try to get outside, unless I would like teethmarks before tattoos. So I filed down that right hand manacle until the chain was free, and then grabbing the chain in both hands, I imagined my next fight. The length was good, long enough to use a a choke, short enough not to trip over, funny I thought, that things always work out in these pleasant and more civilized regions. And with that thought I took the paper and sat down to get my bearings. If only I had got my own pipe instead of borrowing some fellows, I thought regretfully. Oh well.
Reply With Quote