Hear me now, those of you who do not believe in the gods of old. I have met them, once, in a far away place. Farther than the mind can imagine I traveled to see them, and twice as far they sent me to fulfill their desires. These gods of old set upon me a quest that would test my resolve, patience, and sense of humour. I was to steal something which could not be stolen. This is my telling of the theft of the wind and stone, in B minor.
(Abridged)
***
I was there. Where I was was there. Where exactly is hard to say as I have no actual notion where there is. Nor did I have any idea when I was. I could only assume I was in the present because nothing around me had the courage to contradict this. A stone and a pillar where all I had to go by, and sadly stones and pillars are quite common sights in several different ages. The only thing I could find odd in the landscape was the fact that there was a landscape. And a horizon. Now that was a rare sight.
So I decided that I must be on a mountain somewhere. That would certainly explain being able to see farther than the next couple of streets. The air was cleaner too. The air I was used to had character; you could almost feel the gruff facial hair of said character going down your throat and nestling into your lungs. The air up here was thin and pure. Almost holy. Now for the when.
Something coughed behind me. I say thing because I never really could see it. It almost radiated light, and all my efforts of trying to discern what it was resulted only in my temporary blindness.
"Dude," the thing said. "How art thou?"
"Um... Good, I guess. Where and when am I?"
"Everywhere and nowhere. All of time in one place and a place where there is no time."
"Oh."
"Nah, I'm kidding. Mount Olympus, circa the fifties."
"Which fifties?"
"The first one."
Well, that answered my questions. But then a third one came to me, almost out of breath and apologizing for its lateness.
"Why am I here?" The being nodded sagely at this, and stroked what could possibly have been its chin or possibly its chest.
"You are here, my little person, to fulfill a quest for me." The being then shrunk in size, its head now level with mine. "You must steal for me the strength of a stone, and the speed of the wind."
This thing was insane. How could stone have strength, or wind have speed? Iron and cars I understood, not these relics of nature. But the words came to my mouth before I could stop them. "What must I do?" I could feel its smile through the lights.
(And so my quest began. I was to soon learn that this being was Poseidon, and that this quest would take me years of searching and hardship. I would endure the terrors of the Wal, exploring the hidden reaches of the plastic shelves. I found myself stranded in a strange place full of brown polls with odd green wires surrounding their tops. In that strange maze I first heard a bird sing, and it told me of a very special date. And in these two places I was able to discern the locations of the keepers of stone and wind. The keeper of wind was Helios, lord of high noon and jerkery.)
I was stranded in a desert. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and the bitter wind blew sand into places I never knew sand could reach. I was going to die.
But suddenly a man appeared before me. He looked like one of those cowboys you used to see in the old movies. An old, battered hat cast his face in shadow, and his coat touched down to the ground. He even had two guns strapped to his hip.
He offered me water, which I knew not to take. For I could tell this was Helios, and everything he did had a string attached. Usually in the form of a bullet through your skull.
"So, what brings you here?" The god asked of me.
"I am to duel you for the speed of the wind, and bring it back to Poseidon." The god was mildly confused by this answer.
"What for?" I could only shrug in response. Partially because I didn't know, but mostly because my it felt like my tongue had shriveled up and died. Helios nodded, and began to back away. After twenty paces, he stopped. I backed away twenty paces as well, and when I stopped, so did time.
On my face were the sunglasses I had found at the Wal. On my hip, a plastic squirt gun. I had brushed up on my Helios lore, and knew that he used the glare coming off of his guns mid-draw to stun his opponents. Like I said, lord of jerkery. My pulse pounded in my ears and I tensed, waiting for the draw.
He was fast. Faster than anything I've ever seen. But still not fast enough. The water from my gun hit him square in the eyes, and his shot fired wide to the right. I charged him, stole the pistol right from his hands. I shot him with it in his hand, and let the blood fill up my now empty squirt gun. The first part of my quest was complete.
(And that was the easy part. To find the strength of stone, I had to challenge the coolness of Tom Dan, the coolest boulder to ever live. After five nights of sustaining the levels of pure swag he radiated, amounts which would have killed a lesser man, Tom gave in. He showed to me his true form, and with the knowledge of the inner strength he possessed, I returned to Poseidon.)
"Yo dawg, how art thou?" The god was still just a mass of lights.
"I have completed your task. I posses the strength of stone and speed of wind." The god raised a triumphant fist at this, and I tiredly bumped it. This guy was starting to get on my nerves.
"Thank you, my little person. Now behold the fruits of your labor!" He took the gun from me, and drew upon my memories to discern the strength of stone. The lights surrounding him grew brighter and brighter, until all at once they faded away.
Once I could see again, I wished that I couldn't. Poseidon was rather chubby, with a stubby beard and a rainbow colored T-shirt. And before him, as far as I could see, where horses. Regular horses, winged horses, horses with horns on their heads. All of them the same uniform color of cyan with rainbow mullets as manes. Only two stood out. A pair of winged unicorns, one white the other black, standing the closest to Poseidon.
"What is this?"
"My pony army!" the god cried. And then he was gone, along with his army. I was in a room, and across from me sat a dark man in a trench coat, wearing one of the coolest pair of shades I have ever seen.
"What if I were to tell you, that you just created a television show?"
And I woke up.
***
And that is the story of the theft of the wind and stone. I knew that it was more than just a dream. Horses soon populated the land, destroying all who stood in their path. The white one especially, with her evil glinting eyes...
"Flicker, what is that?" I quickly blot out the last line I have written down.
"It is the story you requested that I write for the dinner tonight. You wished for the epic of a hero. So I penned one." The voice behind me grabs the pages I have written on. The only audible sound is the occasional shuffling of the pages against each other as she reads my creation. Then a silence. A long silence.
"It has no moral."
"What?"
"It has no moral. And everypony is human. Redo it."
I had just wasted five days on this thing. I couldn't take that. Not even from her. "The moral is not to blindly put your faith in twisted gods." The words escape my mouth before I can stop them. My heart hammers against my chest. Why did I have to say that? The presence behind me leans down, close enough to whisper.
"I would watch how you refer to gods in the future. Now redo it, or I will kill you, and your little friend. Slowly." Then she is gone. I breath out a sigh of relief. She wants a story with a moral? How about the one when a god messed with the wrong mortal, and found herself on the wrong end of a very sharp feather? I grin wickedly, grabbing the quill on the desk before me. That one sounds appropriate.
