Hey now, hold on a minute, wait up, give a friend a break, eh? Just help me, help me out here – I’ve got a story hard on my heels and my head and I’ve been trying to outrun the blowback day and night for a long time. Wait up a moment, let me empty it out from my lungs and into your ears so I can catch a breath for the sake of all that’s me.
It’s Lalie. It’s about the only time she ever lost a fight.
So one day Lalie woke up in the worst mood in the worst place. A grey, broken sky. Ground a mix of mud, blood, and rocks. Not a tree left standing. The only animals were bones, and the only bones were the ones too little to bother splitting for marrow.
“Just as I left it,” she said with satisfaction. And she sat up and scratched herself real good because she was proud, but as she scratched she shivered and got cranky because she could feel the gurgles starting up in her stomach again.
Those gurgles! Time and time again she thought she’d shut them up for good, but they were never gone for long. Lalie was a growing girl of eight years old and eight feet tall, and no matter what she did she kept growing, growing, growing all out of proportion and sense. If she’d had her druthers she’d have quit long ago. It was getting harder and harder to find things big enough to feel worth punching. Or eating.
“Boooo—ring,” she sang out over the land. Then she stomped off. That was a nice part about being bigger, really. You got a better stomp.
Now Lalie came to the banks of a stream, and as she was draining it dry for breakfast – and using her teeth as a weir to pick out fish – she spied across its bank the most amazing sort of place she’d seen since the last castle she’d kicked over. A glorious great green park, with trees the size of mountains, mountains the size of trees, and hills the size of hills. More importantly, it was crawling with animals of all shapes and sizes that she barely understood.
“Now THERE’S a place to get a punch and lunch,” she said to herself with satisfaction. But herself shook her head at this, for Lalie was a child of hag-giants, and theirselves speak when spoken to.
“Don’t go there!” she said. “That’s the marvelous land of the great sky-dragon Cymm, last and largest of her kind (and by far the worst-tempered). If you go there, you’ll end up in such a state even I won’t be able to help you.”
“Says you, me,” said Lalie good-naturedly, for she was never one to abide caution from anyone or anyher. And she strode over the streambed at a stride and rolled up the tanned carcasses and bones that made up her sleeves.
The animals stared at her.
“Come on,” she said. “Winner eats the loser.”
Man, that was a real mess. A real mess. It was the biggest brawl Lalie’d been in for a year and a day and about an hour and a little under four and a half minutes. A hundred wolves jumped on her right arm and a hundred lions jumped on her left arm and a herd of elephants stormed her legs while a thousand eagles clawed at each of her three eyeballs. I can’t hardly describe the violence, I don’t really know what to say of the carnage, but I can sum most of it up in as short a word as possible so we don’t have to dwell on it:
Chewing.
When Lalie was done chewing she looked around and saw that the marvelous land of the great sky-dragon Cymm, last and largest of her kind (and by far the worst-tempered) looked pretty much identical to where she’d woken up that morning. The mountains were mud, the trees were toppled, and there weren’t even many bones left this time. She’d been hungry.
“Time for sleep,” she said to herself with a yawn.
“Don’t sleep here!” said herself. “The great sky-dragon Cymm, queen and king of the clouddom, thunderer of renown, and last and largest of her kind (and by far the worst-tempered) has her personal lair not far from here at all! You’d better be long gone before she arrives – and anyways, it’s far too earlier in the day for sleep, lazybones! See how high the sun rests in the sky?”
“Ah, who cares,” said Lalie. “I’m tired enough to snooze through an a-bomb. I’ll lie under this tree and put my hair over my eyes and that’ll set me right as rain.” And she ambled over to the tree and did just that, snoring like a brigade of soldiers with megaphones.
But the sun was strong that day, and the sky was still clear enough. And the beams of light snuck down the long blue air and stole through Lalie’s wire-thick hair, twitch and toss and turn in her sleep as she might, until all she could do was wake up snarling, time after time.
“Shut off your nonsense!” she shouted at the sun.
“Turn off your nightlight!” she snarled again.
“GO. AWAY.” she requested politely.
And at last she just tilted back her head and screamed loud enough to blow all the dirt out from under her nails and the lashes from her eyes. Then she picked up the dirt and lashes, rolled them right ‘round her palm lickety-split, and hurled them at the sun in a hard ball, WHAM.
And down it went, out like the light.
Now, at first Lalie was okay with this. She’d been trying to get some shut-eye after all, right? And she did, and she did. Snored bigger than ever, too.
But when she woke up in the middle of the ever-night with icicles on her toes and under her armpits and in her big mouth, well, even she thought this was too much of a good thing.
“This is LOUSY,” Lalie complained. “I just wanted the sun to shut up for a minute and stop glowing at me, but now it’s gone and made me all chilly. This wouldn’t happen if people listened to me. I’ll have to replace it.”
So Lalie walked around in the dark sunless world with arms outstretched – tripping over the odd tree-trunk or smashed mountain as she went – until she found something new and smooth and strong; the body of a great tall fruit-tree that had withstood all her bluster and violence so far. She shook it gently and heard the soft, full rustle of ripe, swaying fruit above her.
“Huh,” she said to herself. “I bet I could use this.”
“Don’t you do it!” herself warned. “This will be the final straw. The great sky-dragon Cymm, devourer of all flowers, cousin of the far stars, queen and king of the clouddom, thunderer of renown, and last and largest of her kind (and by far the worst-tempered) lives in that very tree, sleeping at this very moment! If you disturb it, she will emerge ready to kick ass and take names and you don’t want to be on that list!”
“I worry too much,” she told herself. And with that she kicked the tree hard enough to split it in half, caught the biggest and ripest fruit as it fell, swore at it so hard it burst into full flame, and lobbed it into the sky, where it stuck like a fly in a web.
“There!” said Lalie proudly, shaking her right hand free of flames (it was charred bone-deep). “Better than ever!”
But as she stood there, admiring her handiwork, a roar filled the air. The new sun shook and shimmered in its place, and its skin bulged as a sinister form erupted from its surface, coiling down to the earth as fast as lightning and three times as fierce. It was the great sky-dragon Cymm, ender of evil, smiter of the timid, devourer of all flowers, cousin of the far stars, queen and king of the clouddom, thunderer of renown, and last and largest of her kind (and by far the worst-tempered)! Her eyes were fiery red and her scales were blinding blue and her crest was a rainbow, and she was just a little tiny bit longer than your thumb, most of her body being her beautifully plumed tail.
“Is this the lout that has defiled my marvelous land?!” she asked indignantly, body swollen to half-again her normal breadth with the force of her peevishness. “The chump that has knocked down my forests, stamped in my mountains, hummocked my hills, and consumed all of my animal pets and companions in the most indecent and voracious fashion?!”
“Yup!” said Lalie, grinning all the way around her head four and a half times. “Look at you! How are you so tiny? You’re not even the size of my snots! If I hold my fingernail to my eye, you don’t exist! Are you a dragon or a dragonfly? Hah! Hah! Hah!”
And as Lalie rolled back her head in pure, endless delight, the great sky-dragon Cymm, ender of evil, smiter of the timid, devourer of all flowers, cousin of the far stars, queen and king of the clouddom, thunderer of renown, and last and largest of her kind (and by FAR the worst-tempered, let me tell you) shot down her britches like a speeding bullet. And before Lalie knew what was happening, she fixed her teeth around the largest boil on Lalie’s buttock, and she bit down, hard.
The great sky-dragon Cymm did not have big teeth, but they WERE very sharp.
“YOW!” yelled Lalie, and before she’d even finished that one she’d moved on to “OWW!” because Cymm had found the second-largest boil on Lalie’s buttock. And so on to “AWP!” and “EEP!” and “YAH!” and “AIE!” and “HOI!” and “AGH!” all on through every combination of every damned syllable, because the moment Lalie tried to swat Cymm she just moved on to another boil and another bite, faster than a greased pig and a little more than a hundred times as angry. By the time the great sky-dragon found the smallest boil on Lalie’s buttock all she could do was moan, and when her teeth sunk home there well… she shouted pure nonsense, butted her head on the moon, shook herself every which way all at once and just before, and ran back across the river she’d emptied so fast she filled it up again behind her, along with a lot of very surprised fish.
The great sky-dragon Cymm, for whom titles hold no import, was still very cross about the desecration of her home. But she’d retained her intruder’s pants, which gave her both some satisfaction and the makings of a new home until her tree’s saplings grew fresh fruit.
So that’s the story of the only fight Lalie ever lost.
Just don’t tell her I told you, eh?