Week 6: Storytelling--If You Give a Dragon Cheese, or Interruptions and the Tick Tock Travelers

Once upon a time, there was a young dragon named Interruptions.  He resolved to live a solitary life in the forest, but soon wished for a few companions with which to pass the time.  Interruptions tidied up his castle, prepared some food, and opened up the gates to fellow travelers.  Unfortunately, whenever passersby saw the ferocious-looking Interruptions standing inside his gate with meat turning on spits over the fire, they assumed the worst of him--not completely unfairly, as most dragons at this time felt no qualms in killing off all who are not dragonkind.

Interruptions continued to grow lonelier in his isolation and decided that whenever a traveler passed by he would force them inside for a meal.  Within the next couple of days, Interruptions "invited in" a pink and blue one-horned penguin, a tiny but ferocious mouse, a Moschino cash cow, and a knight in dented armor.  But by the time he had wrangled up all of his companions, Interruptions's food was burning, and so he locked the four travelers in his castle while he went out to search for more food.

Let's stop for a moment to take stock of Interruptions's prisoners:  The tiny mouse, named Lancelot, was a warrior in his own right.  In fact, if it wasn't for Interruptions's lightsaber-proof scales he would never have been captured in the first place.  The pink and blue penguin with his single shining purple horn was named Sir Edmund XXIV, and he was both a cowboy and the heir to the penguin throne.  The Moschino cash cow wore a large golden locket and a tiara from Tiffany's, and she had been caught while singing "Tick Tock" while walking through the woods--her name was Ke$ha.  Our last fellow, Hawt Dawg Diggory by name, was a knight who had been on a quest to rescue a lost princess from a dragon when he got captured.  Ah, blessed irony. . .

 

As we turn to the travelers trapped terrified in the tower, we find one perspicacious person pluckily proposing a perilous plot.  Lancelot drew his light saber and rallied the troops, ordering everyone to go in search of long, strong ropes and large blocks of cheese.  The ropes the group wove into a giant ladder; the cheese Lancelot cut with his lightsaber into smaller pieces and placed into a pouch--though he did eat a few pieces here and there.

While Interruptions was still gone, Lancelot had Sir Edmund XXIV use his impressive lassoing skills to throw the rope up over the walls of the castle to facilitate the group's escape.  One by one, Sir Edmund XXIV, Hawt Dawg Diggory, Ke$ha, and Lancelot began to climb up the rope ladder over the castle walls.

Unfortunately, due to his front limbs being flippers without any possible gripping mechanisms, Sir Edmund XXIV was an extremely slow climber--and let's not even mention the effort it took to get cash cow Ke$ha up the ladder.  Thus we find that our group was still executing their escape when poor, lonely, misunderstood Interruptions returned from the forest with more food.

Interruptions was upset and began to climb angrily up the ladder after the travelers.  In order to distract him, our brave Lancelot repeatedly threw blocks of cheese at the ground below, which Interruptions would rush to gather before the 5 second rule could apply.  However, our intrepid travelers were still not yet over the wall, and Lancelot was on his last piece of cheese.  Realizing they were doomed anyways, Lancelot ate the cheese himself and prepared to savor his last moment of life.

Luckily, Ke$ha took this moment to sing one final tune--her beloved "Tick Tock."  Upon hearing what happened to also be Interruptions's favorite song, our misunderstood dragon descended to the ground once more--this time to dance.  Ke$ha continued to sing as the "prisoners" at last made it over the wall and out of the castle, and Interruptions set the ground on fire with his awesome dance moves.  As Ke$ha finished her rendition, the previously underappreciated Hawt Dawg Diggory pulled out of his dented armor the keys to a brand spanking new Starship Enterprise, into which the four escapees gleefully entered.  Shouting phrases like "Beam me up, Scotty," and "You do remember how to fire phasers?" and "I'm giv' 'ner all she got, Cap'n!" the quartet engaged hyperdrive and blasted off into the sky.

Not having seen where his guests had gone, Interruptions looked up at the heavens with a sigh.  Seeing a momentary streak of light left by the Enterprise's departure, Interruptions determined that the travelers he had gathered must in fact have been the sun, moon, and stars, and they had needed to leave in order to light up the sky.  Thus resolving that he had been left out of necessity rather than out of fear, Interruptions gathered up all of the cheese cubes that he had collected off of the ground and headed inside to have a solitary feast, and they all lived happily ever after. . .

The End.

Author's Note.  I apologize for the ridiculousness and randomness of this story, haha.  This entire semester my friends have been trying to get me to tell a tale with Interruptions and mice and lightsabers and knights and horned penguins and starships and cheese and the moon, so tell a story with those elements I did!  I'm so sorry. . . But as for the story this was based off of, "The Moon and the Stars," I tried not to depart too far from the original.  In the original, Anansi and his son are taken by a dragon to a castle where there are other captives.  The dragon went off to find more travelers on which to dine (I altered the personality of the dragon just a little bit, haha) and the prisoners started to escape.  Originally the ladder is actually thrown up to the gods in the heavens and the prisoners escape to the sky where they become the sun, moon and stars, but I decided to take a little creative license with the whole process of getting to the sky, lol.  The dragon came back as they were climbing, and Anansi's son first threw bones and then played music to distract the dragon, then finally cut the rope ladder to send the dragon crashing back to earth.  So I kept a lot of the same elements, just altered them dramatically, haha.  Hope you enjoyed this departure from my normal style!

Bibliography.  "The Moon and Stars," from West African Folktales by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).  UnTextbook.

Image Information.  Personal sketches of Interruptions the dragon, Sir Edmund XXIV the horned penguin, and Lancelot the mouse; drawn Feb. 18, 2015.