[piosenniel]

the guy who be short's post


Much as Fléin would have liked to have left Mordor, he simply didn't have enough energy to be enthusiastic. Being woken at four ante meridian by twittering songbirds was hardly the best way to start a day, but when said awakening is accompanied by discovering you have conjunctivitis - well, it's hard to deal with. After discovering that he was not, in fact, blind, but merely lacking in eyelid mobility due to a gooey discharge, Fléin had tried to rush blindly to the well. Unfortunately, fate was smiling down in a particularly twisted manner that day, and before he had taken five paces, Fléin was face down on the ground due to excess phlegm coating the floor.

Life in Mordor was never easy, but people have especially bad days even in the Black Land. So far, this appeared to be one of them. He had been in Mordor for only two years, maybe less, but the longing to leave was like a manic kitten in his heart - painful and stingingly noticable.

So it was that Fléin found himself behind a large crowd at Cair Pairadocks, hoping beyond hope that he would be chosen to leave Mordor.

The noise of flugel horns startled Fléin, causing him to blink, or rather, causing him to perform half of the action that is generally thought sufficient to be considered a blink. His eyes stuck shut.

"Blasted Conjunctivitis!" the Dwarf swore. He had visited a nurse just before coming to the docks, but she was a know nothing and hadn't been any help at all. In a way, it was perhaps nicer having ones eyes sealed shut. One didn't have to take into account the blasted landscape, or the even more blasted aspects of civilisation that had made their way into Mordor.

"Excuse me," Fléin intoned into the air at large. I've just gone temporarily blind. Little help, someone?"

"Blindness? How positively bestial. Do stay away from me, be a good fellow," a snotty upperclassman had replied.

The Dwarf sighed. Sometimes it was better to say nothing at all. He stuck his fists into his eyes and forcibly peeled them apart.

By this time, the Grand Anakronist had already declared the name of Alumìne Umfuìl as the first member of the Offending Party. Though he had freed his eyes (albeit they were streaming pus all over his face and into his beard) Fléin couldn't see her through the press of human bodies around him. From what he heard, he instantly disliked the girl. Here she was, given the chance to leave this curséd land - what a chance! - and all she could do was moan about her name.

Panakeia, the next name to be selected, turned out to be a woman who sounded even more annoying than Alumìne. What a buffoon, he thought. Thank goodness I'm not her, even if my eyes are melting.

Wilhelmia Brochenbach was next. What a disgusting name. And yet another woman? Suspicions about the Grand Anakronist's honour whizzed through Fléin's mind. But then again, why would he choose a whiny child, an idiotic saleswoman and an old bat out of all the women in Mordor?

The possibility that he was being bitter about his bad morning and taking it out, completely unjustifiably, on those running into a bit of luck flittered through Fléin's mind. He tried to make it go away.

"Fléin son of Fréin of the Ironfoots" the Grand Anakronist cried, his voice rolling through the courtyard.

"Ironfeet!" injected an annoying English teacher.

Fléin couldn't believe it. What a piece of luck! How wonderfully harmonious the universe seemed, that he should be given the chance to leave with those three fine women! "That's me! That's me!" he screamed. "Out of my way!"

The crowd parted around him, and he made his way up to the ATM and the Grand Anakronist himself. The latter eyed him with disdain. "It is, is it?" he intoned, looking down the length of his nose at the Dwarf.

"Er, yes, sir," Fléin meekly replied, but the Grand Anakronist had already turned to read the next card the machine had just excreted, so he stood there, smiling jovially at the whiner, the nutter and the old bat.