Dances with Trolls

The morning was truly beautiful. The sun laboriously

began its journey across a sky blue to the point of exaggeration, not to mention vomit. The birds, disregarding all prohibitions, sang their mating songs, full of romance as bland as the firmament.

Along a small, inconspicuous path that continually cut into the forest, leading toward unknown lands, walked a young representative of the distinguished bakers' guild. He was appallingly thin, even gangly. Mainly because the servants were not well-fed, beaten and trained with exceptional thoroughness.

The boy, named Kropacz, had recently reached his 17th spring, and to celebrate, he had made the acquaintance of a certain fiery-eyed elf through socializing. However, he woke up broke and robbed. The girl had probably taken his savings to pay for her further education. Kropacz had a terrible headache and was a bit distracted, so it was no wonder that, while walking along the forest path, he ran straight into a huge troll.

The monster was sitting in the middle of the path, furiously building a small castle out of pebbles. Its head was quite small compared to its enormous body, covered in dry skin the color of a rotten green weed pulp. Strange substances dripped from its tomato-colored nose, staining its threadbare jacket and matching trousers. Behind the troll lay a club, which did not portend a pleasant encounter.

At the sight of the creature, Kropacz let out a low cry, like a widow with four children who has been accused of lacking virginity. The troll, absorbed in its construction, let the screech cause its large paw, bent just above the top of the ziggurat, to tremble. As a result, the intricate structure shattered into pieces, leaving the creature in a state of utter despair.

Trolls were known for their stupidity. Truly immeasurable.

Quickly pinpointing the cause of the disaster, the creature looked at Kropacz and roared terrifyingly. A club, plucked from the ground, performed a complex dance above his head.

Piekarczyk was thoroughly frightened, but remembering a childhood fairy tale, he decided to trick the monster. Before the troll could escalate from screaming to murder, the boy lifted a clod of earth and crushed it in his hands.

"Fool... Worthy warrior!" he shouted. "Leave me alone, or I'll crack your skull, just like I did with that stone!"

Kropacz felt like an idiot; he thought the troll possessed even a drop of his ancestral wisdom, and the creature wouldn't be fooled.

Oh, how the little boy had overestimated the monster.

At the sound of these words, his rotten green face filled with utter astonishment, even fear.

"Great sorcerer!" "He roared, falling to his fleshy knees and throwing aside his instrument of aggression and destruction—his club. "Don't hurt me! Instead of getting angry, I invite you to my cottage. We'll chat..."

I'd rather eat and drink, Kropacz thought, thanking the old woman-prukwa for the story about the stupid troll and the clever shoemaker.

The

troll's house was one big junkyard, packed with all sorts of strange and useless objects, from bones to old pickets to many kinds of potted perennials.

The monster moved around his household very gracefully and immediately treated Kropacz to a fine, probably stolen, gray horse and an unattractive-looking soup with a large claw of unknown origin floating in it.

Piekarczyk listened to the troll's incoherent chatter while sipping the refined drink. As the substance warmed his heart, Kropacz thought to himself how pleasant it would be to prowl and rob with the strong troll. Dividing the loot from the stupid creature could yield a considerable amount of money.

"You know, my good friend..." the little piekarczyk began, rocking in his hard armchair, "If we started robbing the highway together, we'd spend our lives in luxury."

Instead of a grunt of agreement, Kropacz heard a velvety feminine laugh.

The troll suddenly began to grow beautiful violet hair, and his figure took on an interesting shape.

Piekarczyk concluded he'd drunk too much, for instead of a drooling creature, he saw a purple-haired woman in a long, simple dress. With a look of horror, he recognized Melianh in her face, the goddess of all creatures, or rather, all manner of filth. On the Emerald Isles, she was known for her moods and changeable moods.

"Oh, Kropacz," she laughed, "I tricked you quite a bit, but I gave myself away with my gray hair. She tastes divine, doesn't she?"

Piekarczyk was too drunk and frightened to respond, much less fall at the goddess's feet, as custom and the Forgotten Manuscripts dictated.

"I'm disappointed in you," she said with feigned anger. "You tried to deceive the troll into which I had temporarily transformed. Any insult to my charges, especially one directed at me directly, is brazen and terrible. I should refer you to Andate, the goddess of justice, to have her mete out a suitable punishment, but I, too, need a distraction. Besides, I spent half a day building this little castle. You know, trolls have rough and clumsy hands." She smiled nastily, clapped her hands, and vanished like a golden dream.

Kropacz, on the other hand, son of Kropidełko, a renowned and talented baker, a temporary distraction and accidental victim of the gods, has been viewing the world with bulging eyes ever since and scratching his dry skin the color of rotten-green weed pulp with a large club.