batmonkfish80

[batmonkfish80]

I watched Bad Boys For Life in which the wise-cracking cops have to confront something from their past, though not anything actually from any of the films. This is the third film and thanks to my disorganisation completes my watch of the quadrilogy.

[batmonkfish80]

My Gladiator story The Fruits Of Victory is online. A couple of fights, imitation, flattery and doubts about the future.

[batmonkfish80]

I watched the comedy French 2024 Zorro TV show, not the serious Spanish 2024 Zorro TV show.

[batmonkfish80]

Monster Of The Week 281 is Typesetter, communicates by letter, I don't know how to spell this out, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, morbi dignissim velit vitae ex

Monster Of The Week is supported by my Patreon, where many stories, monsters and more is all exquisitely typeset.

[batmonkfish80]

I saw a sign at a nearby village advertising a "veillée", a storytelling evening, which sounded intriguing, so I went out of curiosity—it turned out to be an old lady who had arranged a circle of chairs in her garden and prepared drinks, and who wanted to tell folk tales and stories from her youth. Apparently she was telling someone at the market the other day that she missed the ritual of the "veillée" from pre-television days, when people would gather in the evening and tell stories, and the people she was talking to were like, well let's do a veillée! And then she put up the sign.

About 15 people came, and she sat down and started telling us stories—I loved the way she made everything sound like it had happened just yesterday and she was there, even tales she'd got from her grandmother, and the way she continually assumed we knew all the people she mentioned, and everyone spontaneously played along; she'd be like "And Martin, the bonesetter—you know Martin," (everyone nods—of course, Martin) "We never liked him much" and everyone nodded harder, our collective distaste for Martin now a shared cultural heritage of our tiny microcosm. She started with telling us the story of the communal bread oven in the village. The original oven was destroyed during the Revolution; people used to pay to use the local aristocrat's oven, but of course around 1789 both the aristocrat and his oven were disposed of in a glorious blaze of liberty, equality, and complete lack of foresight.

Then the villagers felt really daft for having destroyed a perfectly serviceable oven that they could have now started using for free. "But you know what things were like during the revolution." (Everyone nodded sagely—who among us hasn't demolished our one and only source of bread-baking equipment in a fit of revolutionary zeal?)

The village didn't have a bread oven for decades, people travelled to another village to make bread; and then in the 19th century the village council finally voted to build a new oven. It was a communal endeavour, everyone pitched in with some stones or tools or labour, and the oven was built—but it collapsed immediately after the construction was finished. Consternation. Not to be deterred, people re-built the oven, with even more effort and care—and the second one also collapsed.

People realised that something was amiss, and the village council convened. After a lot of serious discussion, during which no one so much as mentioned the possibility of a structural flaw, people reached the only logical conclusion: the drac had sabotaged their oven. Twice. (The drac, in these parts, is the son of the devil.) The logic here, I suppose, was that no one but the devil's own child would dare to stand between French people and their bread.

The next step was even more obvious: they passed around a hat to raise money, assuming the devil’s son was after a cash donation. But (and I'm skipping a few twists and turns of the story here) the son of the devil did not want money, he wanted half of every batch of bread, for as long as the village oven stood. Consternation.

People simply could not afford to give away half of their bread, and were about to abandon the idea of having their own oven altogether—but then Saint Peter came to the rescue. (In case you didn't know, Saint Peter happens to regularly visit this one tiny village in the French countryside to check that its inhabitants are doing okay and are not encountering oven issues.) Saint Peter reminded them of one precious piece of information they had overlooked: holy water burns the devil.

People re-built the oven, for the third time. The son of the devil returned, to destroy it and/or claim his half of the first batch—but on that day, the villagers had organised a grand communal spring cleaning, dousing every street and alley in the village with copious amounts of holy water. The poor drac simply could not access the oven; every possible path scorched his feet for reasons he couldn't quite explain. So he was standing there, smouldering gently and wondering what was going on, when some passing tramp seemed to take pity on him, pointed at his satchel and told him to turn himself into a rat and jump in there, and the tramp would carry him where he wished to go. The devil's son, probably a bit frazzled at this point, agreed without much thought, became a rat and jumped in the satchel, and of course that's the point when everyone in the village sprang from the shadows, wielding sticks, shovels, pans, and started beating the devil's son senseless. (Old lady, calmly: "You could hear his bones crack.") So the son of Satan slithered back to Hell and never returned to destroy the village oven again—and the spring cleaning tradition endured; the streets were washed with holy water once a year after that, both to commemorate this glorious day of civic resistance when the village absolutely bodied the devil's offspring and to maintain basic oven safety standards. (Old lady: "But we don't bother anymore… That's too bad.")

She told us five stories, most of them artfully blending actual local events or anecdotes from her youth with folk tale elements, it was so delightful. She thanked us for coming and said she'd love to do this again sometime. I went home reflecting that listening to an old lady happily tell stories of dubious historical veracity involving the Revolution, property damage, demonic mischief and baffling municipal decision-making is literally my ideal Saturday night activity.

[batmonkfish80]

I watched Horizon: An American Saga: Chapter One, a three hour Western that stops just as it's getting interesting.

[batmonkfish80]

new trope just dropped

[batmonkfish80]

It's been 12 months since the story of the mix up was revealed to subscribers to my Patreon. Now however, it is time to crack open the truth for everyone.

****

Scrambled Eggs

The stone ship steamed as it sank, the distance too great to hear any sound from the crew. Cries for help, cries of pain no doubt. Instead all they could hear was the wind, the waves and the gulls screaming outrage, circling the great tower by the sea. Portmaster Miranda looked away. “Tell me, in detail, exactly what happened.”

The Courier Officer kept staring, feet shuffling on the dock. Miranda prompted her again. “It was, it was the usual delivery. A sensitive one for sure. Time was of the essence.”

She tipped back her hat. Down below the lifeboat crew were reluctantly pulling their boat back up the slip. There was nothing they could do. They would risk their lives against wave, wind and tide. But not this.

“We arrived at the Royal Bestiary, to discover another wagon there. Like ours, softly sprung, filled with straw and padding. A military one. The new wizard was there overseeing everything. Making sure we knew our jobs. Of course we did! I have never lost a transportee, never broken a potential.”

A gull screamed, plummeted from the sky, crashing down into the water. Miranda looked up, then down again, then up. The aperture was narrow by design, only facing the sea, which had saved the port. But not the ships out there.

“They brought out the crates, the egg boxes. We sealed the wagons, you saw. They were locked, and unopened until you brought out the duplicate key. We took the box up to the top room, opened it up. You saw the bright white egg. Then we closed it in until… it hatched.”

Miranda peered upwards. “This was not the Phoenix Egg, hatching to light the everlasting flame for the great lighthouse. Some other creature’s egg was substituted. But how?”

As they stared out to sea, there was a moment where something seemed to sweep across the waves, weighing on them. A clatter of feet arrived, another Courier. “Portmaster, portmaster! Grave news. Greathaven fort, the new Basilisk Tower. It has exploded!”

[batmonkfish80]

Monster Of The Week 280 is Vogern, lurks at the dark heart of the sky, it knows you, knows what you fear, knows how and when to use that knowledge, not much into sports.

Monster Of The Week is supported by my Patreon which knows much, though not so much about you and your fears, more about monsters, stories and more.