WWJ VIII ~ Things That Go "Quack" In The Night

[Diamond18]

Late one April night Diamond Took, the Halfling Poet, sat in her cellar scratching out poorly rhyming phrases onto parchment with a quill pen. She lived in the cellar of the local Saggar Maker, for she was a singular hobbit in that she preferred her home to be dank and smelly. She was hard pressed to find any really good nasty, wet, dark holes to live in that were not already taken up by those bothersome reformed Orcs, and the rent for the cellar was cheap. The nice smell of decay often helped inspire her poetry.

On this night, however, even the smell of earthworms waking up was not enough to fuel her creativity. “Oh bother,” she cried, crumpling up the paper and tossing it into the wastebasket. “This will never come out right! I wish I were an Elf! Poetry comes so naturally to them, blast those poncy fools!”

“Quack.”

“What? What was that?” she looked up, but in the long ensuing silence heard nothing more. She gave a shrug and set to scratching out her poetry again, and for a time the rasping of the feather tip was the only sound.

“Quack.”

Diamond looked up, and eyed the door dubiously. “Some kid,” she muttered, “playing a prank.”

That gave her an idea, so she crumpled up the sheet again and started over. “Yes, yes,” she smiled to herself as curling lines of ink poured themselves over the paper, “this is more like it.”

“Quack.”

“All right, young prankster, that’s enough,” the hobbit planted her hairy feet on the earthen floor and stomped over to the cellar door. “It’s hard enough writing poetry without constant interruption.” She flung open the door to let in the night, but something far worse awaited her. “No,” she stumbled backwards, eyes widening in fear at the terrifying sight, “it can’t be...!”

Quoth the Wereducks, “Quack. Quack. Quack.”


~ Day One ~


The villagers found her the next morning, draped over her writing desk, covered in blood and welts. All over the floor were bloody, webbed footprints. Beside her body lay the beginnings of a poem:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many an ill and awkward line of my rhyming chore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, presently there came a quacking,
Someone there was gently quacking, quacking at my cellar door.
“ ’Tis some prankster,” I muttered, “quacking at my cellar door;
Only this, and nothing more.”

“It can’t be,” said the hobbits among them. “It’s just a legend!”

“Look,” said one astute human, “there are three sets of footprints. There are three of them!”

“We shall chop off their heads,” growled the dwarven folk.

“We snapums neuckums!” declared the Orcs, helpfully.

“Oh, will our village ever be the same again?” wondered the Ent.

Quoth the Elven, “Nevermore!”

~~~~~~~~~

~ The Dead ~

Diamond Took, the Halfling Poet ~ Villager ~ Pecked to death on Night 1

~ The Living ~

Anguirel the Baritone Bird Catcher
Mithalwen the Elven Saggar Maker's Bottom Knocker
Saucepan Man the Orcish Scarecrow
Mormegil the Elven Idleman
Valier the Dwarven Millet Spray Picker
Nogrod the Dwarven Personal Fitness Instructor
Kath the Rainbow Catcher
Cailín the Bird-portraitist
Roa Aoife the Batwoman
Nilpaurion Felagund the Elven Pigeon-Summoning Ninja
Glirdan the Entish Tree Herder
Lote22 the Elven Igloo Maker
Lalaith the Halfling Chubb Fuddler
JennyHallu the Halfling Mountaintop Guru
Elu Ancalime the Didgeridoo Dwarf
Sleepy Ranger the Exiled Jedi Master
Dancing Spawn of Ungoliant the Spider Loving Orcish Astronaut

Day 1 starts now.