[Diamond18]

Vogonwë strode up to the Salad Bowl and struck a pose before it. He gazed in at the now tossed salad and his reflection reflecting up at him from the dressing. He saw himself, naturally, and adjusted his hairbow. “Yes…well…quite…” he said.

Then the bowl went dark, as if the salad was rotting before his very eyes, and the green leaves blackened and moldered and began to stink, the odor rising toward him in wisps of yellowish air. Then the bowl cleared, and he saw his father, frolicking under the verdant bows of the Forest Formerly Known As Greenwood the Untreated Lumber Yard. This was odd enough, as his father normally did not frolic, but what was even more remarkable was that Geppettuil was frolicking with what appeared to be a mortal woman. “She is not an Elf, anyway,” he thought, “for we are wondrous fair to look upon.”

“Meaning I’m not, I take you?” the woman stopped frolicking and spoke to him. “Thank you kindly! And when you’ve finished ogling me, perhaps you’ll say who you are, and why you can’t let the shadows of the past rest?”

But as he was trying to wrap his mind around the fact that a woman in a salad was frolicking with his father and speaking to him, the scene changed to a very ugly baby crying in a bassinet. In its tiny wisps of hair was a fixed a bow far too large for the little head. A woman picked the baby up and said, “There, there, little Vogonwë, your head will get bigger in time.”

The bowl went dark yet again, and suddenly a face took up the whole circular area, the face of that same dratted woman! Only her face was now green, and she had the mysterious runes, “Ghost Prince of Cardolan” stamped across her forehead.

“Who are you?” Vogonwë asked.

“Ask me not who I am, but rather, who I was,” the woman replied.

“Yeah, yeah. Who were you, then?”

“In life, I was called Darthana of Chippendale, and I was a woman of the Lake-men of Chippendale, naturally.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.”

She sighed. “Geppettuil never told you what happened to your mother, Vogonwë.”

“He told me that you killed her!”

“Huh?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me. Do proceed.”

“I am your mother, Vogonwë.”

“Yeah, and I’m a Dwarf,” Vogonwë snorted.

“No, really.”

Vogonwë grew serious. “But…but my father told me that I was transformed from a carved doll (which was carved from a rotting log inhabited by potato bugs) by the magick markers of the Blue Faerie.”

“And you believed that load of horse swill?” said the green lady.

“Well…I was only 20-years-old!” Vogonwë said.

She rolled her eyes. “Wonderful. My son is an idiot.”

“I am not!”

She cast an appraising eye over him and arched her brows. “Look at you…slouching… Is that how I raised you? To slouch?”

“Duh! I have to lean over the bowl to see you, Mother!” Vogonwë replied with annoyance, but then clapped his hand over his mouth.

“Aha! See? The long dormant embers of your memory are stirred! You were only a little elfling when I died, but a son never forgets his mother,” she said, nodding with satisfaction. “Don’t you remember the nursery rhymes that I used to sing you to sleep with?”

Vogonwë paused, then to his own surprise, recited,

“Hush little elf-child, don’t you cry,
And don’t be afraid of the Lidless Eye,
But if you’re naughty then, you see,
Daddy’s gonna sing you some poetry.
And if that poetry doth stink,
Mommy’s gonna drown in the kitchen sink.”

“Good, good!” Darthana cried. “You do remember. Now, listen up, my time with you grows short. Already the others are grumbling amongst themselves about what a bowl hog you are. So I’m not going to chew my cabbage twice, do you hear?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All right. I have a message for you:

Vogonwë Brownbark, long under spell,
Go now to your father and give him hell.
And then you must choose a fate for yourself,
To Die as a man, or Fade as an Elf.”

Vogonwë found this little poem so moving that he whimpered, “Mommy,” and began to cry great tears that splashed into the bowl in giant drops. The surface of the salad went black, and he stumbled back from the bowl, wiping his face and blowing his nose on his sleeve.

He looked around at the puzzled group, and said, “Well, that’s an eye-opener and no mistake!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vogonwë would not say what he had seen, so it was with slight trepidation that Pimpiowyn advanced upon the Salad Bowl. But, at the same time, Pimpi felt curiously attracted to the Bowl. She crept up onto Kuruharan’s chair and peered over. A chill air seemed to strike her face, rising from invisible depths below the lettuce. Moved be a sudden impulse she grouped for a loose carrot, and put it in her mouth. She felt her heart beat many times before there was any sound. Then came a crunch, magnified and repeated in the hollow space of her mouth as she chewed.

At first there was nothing to do but purloin a couple more carrots and an odd chunk of yellow pepper here and there, but then she too saw a curious sight appear in the dressing.

She saw a picnic laid out on a grassy knoll. Heaps and heaps of food were piled atop a red checkered blanket. It all looked much tastier than the dry and well-tossed salad fixings she was crunching on, and she licked her lips hungrily. But the scene changed and she saw a multitude of Orcs rushing about, growling and roaring and shaking various sharp and unpleasant looking implements of war. They trampled over the picnic and Pimpiowyn saw that they were chasing a man, a hobbit, and a toddler. What she saw next cannot be described in detail, due to the PG-13 rating of these documents.

Horror filled her very being as she re-witnessed the band of marauding Orcs marauding her parents. The Salad Bowl became very bloody. Rivers of blood, pools of blood, cascading waterfalls of blood, gurgling drinking fountains of blood, filled the image before her, and yet through the terrifying red sheen she saw one hideous face over and over again. Slaying her father, killing her mother, lopping the head off of her father’s horse, chasing her with murder in his bloodshot eyes, was one Orc that stood out from all the rest.

Oh, she knew that face well. Years she had seen it in her darkest dreams, and even the really light ones, too. As the blood swirled and twirled and pirouetted before her, his ugly mug leered at her through the murk. She saw again the moment when all seemed lost, and he loomed above her, crying, “I’m gonna put a maggot hole in your belly!” Then an Elf came up from behind, wielding a shovel, ready to strike. He tripped on his shoes and came down upon the Orc’s foot. Foot and Orc separated, and then the image went bloody and dark, as that had been the moment when little Pimpi fainted.

Pimpiowyn wondered why she was being shown this horrific scene again, and also thought obliquely that she didn’t remember it being that bloody. Perhaps it was the Salad Bowl’s idea of a good special effect, but it seemed rather cheesy and B-movie horror schticky to her.

All the same, she couldn’t help but shed a tear as she viewed the remains of her mother, the fairest flower of the Shire, who never hurt anybody or wanted to hurt anybody or anything. Gentle, loving, jolly little Pipsissewa Took. Sweet, caring, delightful little hobbit lass. Pretty little, sweet little, cute little halfling. What kind of debased, depraved, perverted, dissolute, immoral, iniquitous, sinful, vicious, wicked, vile, nefarious, pernicious, damnable, execrable, offensive, atrocious, foul, hideous, loathsome, obscene, repugnant, repulsive, revolting, distasteful, repellent, fetid, putrid, stinking, malicious, malevolent, rancorous, spiteful, vicious, wicked, disagreeable, ugly, wrathful, hurtful, injurious, destructive and generally vapid creature would ever take it in his mind to harm such a beautiful and innocent hobbit? But there the vision loomed before Pimpi’s eyes: Pipsissewa, lying upon the picnic blanket, bleeding into the potato salad and baked beans.

It is a little known fact that it was Dead Mothers Month, which explains why Pimpi heard her mother’s voice speaking to her mind, and it said, “Pimpi! The time is near! Sooner or later you will finally be faced with your mortal enemy, and then you will either succeed or fail in your Quest for revenge.”

“Is there a third option?” Pimpi asked in puzzlement.

“No! Whatever happens, know that you father and I are looking down on you, up here in the Eternal Mushroom Patch. Do not let the blood of your parents be spilt in vain!”

“But even if I revenge you, that won’t make your deaths worthwhile,” Pimpi reasoned, her practicality challenged.

“Just do it!”

With a swoosh, the vision of the picnic faded, and Pimpi again found herself staring at a simple salad. She shrugged and plucked a tomato from the roughage. Then, all of a sudden, she heard the sound of whinnying.

“Drat,” she muttered, hopping down from the chair, “Lopitoff is at it again.”

“Come again?” Saladriel asked in a low and melodious voice.

“My pendent has an annoying habit of whinnying from time to time,” Pimpi explained. “The sound fills my mind until I think that I should go crazy.”

“Try to ignore it, darling,” Vogonwë advised.

“That’s easy for you to say, I’m the only one who can hear it,” said Pimpi. “I do so hate it when he malfunctions! It’s only supposed to do that when Orcs are near.”

“There are no Orcs in Topfloorien,” Celery said gravely from where he lay in an undignified lump on the ground.

“Right,” Pimpi lifted the chain from around her neck and held the pendant away from herself. “Try telling Lopitoff that.”

Celery, missing the sarcasm, faced the dangling horse head and intoned, “Listen to me, little shrunken gold horse-head thingy, there are no Orcs in Topfloorien, and that's final.”

[ February 12, 2003: Message edited by: Diamond18 ]