Or - A tale of Two Princes, A Princess, A Frog, A Toad,
One or Two Medium Sized Dragons and a Terrible Truth...
Chapter 4 - The Prophet Speaketh
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"Hmm." Said Zotzbrue disappointedly, surveying the twilighty
environment as the two dragons marched on through it. "Haven't gotten
any less gloomy, this place have."
"Yeah, well, blame the designers." shrugged Byxebyte nonchalantly.
"I can't do that." Zotzbrue abruptly stopped and said in a shocked
tone, looking at Byxebyte as if he were a small Bynarian hedgehog "They
designed us too."
Here is what "The Guide of Interstellar Fauna, How to Survive It, And Why Should You Even Care" has to say about Bynarian hedgehogs.
Bynarian hedgehogs, it says, native to the world of Bynaria which orbits the twin suns of On and Off, are perhaps the strangest creatures the galaxy has ever created - due to the strange phenomenon known, for a bizarre reason, as 'social norms'. For example: unlike most creatures, who consider the mating habits of other members of their species to be strictly their own business, the Bynarian hedgehogs seem to believe that it's wrong for hedgehogs over the age of 11110 Bynarian years (The average Bynarian year is made up of 101101101 Bynarian days, which are made of 11000 Bynarian hours. The Bynarians have heard of simpler and easier ways to divide time, but they wanted no truck with anything beyond zero and one) not to be paired with another hedgehog, and would often pressure them heavily in an attempt to"help" them meet the hedgehog of their dreams, until they eventually decide to commit suicide, dividing themselves by zero, or in some other cases, try and divide everyone *else* by zero. Hence the phrase "To look at one as if he were a Bynarian hedgehog" would mean "To look at someone as if he was a serial killer wielding an unsolvable mathematical problem as a weapon."
Theoretically, these creatures should have never survived. What the Bynarian hedgehogs didn't know and nature did though, was that when the Bynarian hedgehog decides to turn into a serial killer, it eventually goes entirely nuts, and these nuts eventually plant themselves in the ground and sprout into new hedgehogs - which would have completely nullified the effect of the threats from various other hedgehogs that "You aren't young anymore, and if you keep on going like that without being paired, you'll never have any offspring! Do you not feel your biological clock ticking?" and so on, If it weren't for those three reasons: A. The Bynarian Hedgehogs do not know that. B. Bynarian Hedgehogs do not, in all actuality, have a biological clock. And C. Even if they did know it, they wouldn't care, because their social norms are too deeply rooted to ignore.
The Bynarians, sentient natives of Bynaria, firmly believe that the hedgehogs of their world were created by 'the irony gods' to reflect something highly profound which only they would understand. The natives of Earth One would have called it strange, but fail to get the irony anyway. The natives of Earth Two would simply say "Quack."
Byxebyte failed to get the irony in the look as well, but he realized that Zotzbrue indeed had a point, and decided to change the subject.
"So, where's his Prophetness?" he said, raising an scaly eye-ridge.
"Good question." replied Zotzbrue, still surveying the twilighty
environment. He was quite certain he's seen that particular rock formation
before.
"Are we lost again?"
"Yes, we are."
"Oh, terrific."
Elsewhere, The Prophet from the Stars sensed a presence on his
planet. He closed his eyes, which were black as night, and if you looked
hard enough into them you could see a whole universe inside (he always
loved that pair of contacts) and using his inner sight, he located the
two forms of the dragons, and seemed very amused.
"It's those two loonies back again." he said in a deep, soulful
voice, which had a light echo to it.
A largish blue frog croaked.
"Yes, them."
*ribbit?*
"No, you're not the frog in the title."
*ribbit!*
"And you're not the toad either."
*ribbit*, *ribbit!*
"What do you mean by 'this entire part was written because the author
was too lazy to think up the dialogue?'"
*ribbit...*
"... You have a point. Very well. Begone."
The frog evaporated, because it wasn't there in the first place. It was
there even though it wasn't there, because when you accidentally think
of largish blue frogs and your mind isn't focused, and you happen to have
lived on Been-There-Done-That-Prime after the mental swap of time, The
Blue Frogs would have been there even if they weren't, because they've
been created even though they haven't been.
Looking to the distance again, he saw an enormous eye. At first, he ignored
it, dismissing it as a refrence to "Lord of the Rings" (The
Prophet has read the books because he thought that a book with that name
would sound cool, and wondered what it would be about), but when he noticed
that the eye was looking at him quite irately, and was blinking, he pulled
his sight back to himself, to see Zotzbrue and Byxebyte, looking somewhat
aggravated, and a single, passed-out humanoid on the floor before them.
"Oh, it's you two. Who's he?" Said the Prophet, surveying the
fainted humanoid and scratching his long white beard (the strands of which
were floating about in the air, twirling slightly ever so often. He thought
that was a standard issue thing for mystic persons.)
"Prince Yorik of Eureka, of the house of Blablahad." said Zotzbrue
irately. "The knight."
"Or future knight." said Byxebyte, even more irately.
"You come and talk to me about KNIGHTS at three o'clock in the MORNING?"
said the Prophet, more irately than both. Sparks danced between the curls
of his beard as his voice echoed. "And next, you will expect me to
talk about dusk at dawn, or about ducks at the chicken coop!"
A passing duck quacked irately.
"No offense." said the Prophet apologetically, who understood
that meant. It was a rather foul obscenity in the ancient language of
the ducks - which made it a fowl obscenity, in the end.
The two dragons simply rolled their eyes in exhasperation.
"So, why have you brought this.. Blablahad guy here?" asked
the Prophet in the tone of one who already knows the answer.
"We wished to see if he was the one. Besides, he needs to be trained..."
replied Zotzbrue.
"... And with you being the best and worst teacher and knight of
this planet, we believed that you may be of use..." added Byxebyte
helpfully.
"And besides, we're dying for a cup of tea." finished Zotzbrue.
Byxebyte nodded in agreement.
"Dragons..." mumbled the Prophet, as he nodded and walked inside,
motioning the two archosaurs to follow.
"The Encyclopedia of Boneheaded Things" refers to "Pointless Filler Episodes" as "One of the stupidest, most annoying things invented since the Universe has been created. Often containing little to no interesting content, they are usually created just because the Author was in a severe state of having a lack of ideas." And is itself full of them. The Encyclopedia has been written by people who practice what they preach, because certain marketing divisions think that practicing what you preach is a thing which shouldn't be done - and that people only exist to give other people advice about what to do with their lives. It is said that high in the nethermost depths of the infinite reaches of space, the Irony Gods were roaring with laughter, since that is the sort of thing they enjoyed pointing out the most, with their own obscure little refrences. However, the rest of the universe understood nothing of it.
Meanwhile, the Pointless Filler Episodes, such as this one, have made themselves a name, and soon enough were cropping up everywhere, whether you need them or not, sometimes mistaken for classics by those who wrote them and unfortunately, by some of those who read them, as well.
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