Happily Ever After

Our story begins on a cold and dreary Tuesday morning. The sun had just begun to rise, its orange rays licking the horizon as it journeyed upwards. Birds sang their greetings and the foxes bid their adieu. All was as it should in the land of East Meadow.

Clitter-Clack! Bang! Cathack!

The clatter of rusted steel jostled the forest into a disturbed frenzy. Each and every creature and critter scurried and scampered, darted and dashed, flittered and fluttered in every which direction as our hero clambered over the hill. 

He rode atop his steed, swaying back and forth with each step the beast took. His stomach grumbled and his face had ripened to a sickly green; but he pushed his mount forward, his mess of armor clattering behind him.

And why was this man so sick to his stomach, you ask? Could it be that his meal had soured? Possibly. Maybe he had come down with a dreadful case of the flu? Not likely. The truth of the matter is our young hero was drunk as a skunk and sick from the bumpy ride he had embarked on. 

But drunk on a Tuesday? How can a man be drunk on a Tuesday? Isn’t it too early in the week to drink?

And to that, I must say, you ask too many questions. It’s a fairy tale. What did you expect? But I will oblige, dear reader, and answer this final question.

There are many reasons why a man, such as our hero, would be so plastered in the middle of the week. He could have turned to the pint to calm his nerves; for heroing is quite the stressful career. He might have tipped the bottle back as a means for celebration; for finding a job, questing or not, is fairly difficult in such a trying economy. Or, quite possibly, he glugged away to forget the horrors of Monday; and that, my friend, sounds like a very fine reason to me. But it was for neither of these reasons, I’m afraid. Our hero was drunk as a skunk in the morn of a Tuesday simply because he was burnt out.

Our young hero, as I’m sure you have come to expect, was a knight. But his armor wasn’t shiny and he was far from your idea of what a hero should be. He was four foot eleven. Too tall for a dwarf and too short for a man. He was as stout as a teapot with curves that would bring a blush to most women’s faces. His arms were pudgy in the middle and stringy on the ends. To make matters worse, he even had the strength of a schoolgirl; if said girl had broken both of her arms and was forced to bear a crutch. No, dear reader, this man was far from what you’d expect a typical knight to be. 

And as you can expect, he was terrible at being one. Most knights are fairly successful in their career; having saved at least one princess in their time. And if they failed, they typically had the honor of being killed off in the process. But what makes our hero so different is that he miserably fails at both of these tasks. Not once has he saved a princess and not once has he perished in the attempt.

So our hero drank. And he drank. And he drank some more. And before he knew it, Monday had passed and Tuesday began. So he mounted his steed and began his assignment. 

With his arm held firm against his aching belly, he led his mount over the hill and through the forest. They journeyed Eastward, trotting along the narrow path, making much more racket than any small man should make. It wasn’t long before our unlikely hero cleared the dense foliage and clambered onto the cobbled bridge marking the entrance to Belmouth.