Chapter Fourteen ~ Until someone came along and harshed my mellow...

"So there I was, being chill." AWC skated neatly across the thin ice. Unfortunately, at that same moment there was an unforseeable gravity surge. She slipped and fell flat on her face.

"Hmm," the dragon lady said with a sagely nod, and knelt down next to AWC to make sure she was still alive. "Well, you and chill. Not friends."

"Well, yeah, warn me now Loretta."

The dragon lady rolled her eyes and waited patiently for the half mad fiction writer to continue her tale of dramatic woe, for the sadness AWC suffered weighed her heart down like unwelcome icicles at the point of one's chin, unbalancing one's zen and causing one to tip ever so slightly forward...

PRODUCER: CUT!
Narrator: That's the line. I can't deliver it any better than that.
Writer: You ruined it! You made it sound a million and ten times worse than I imagined! Try again!
Narrator: The line sucks.
Writer: Well maybe you suck!
PRODUCER: Oooh! I've been waiting for this opportunity my whole life... ok... YOUR MOM sucks...
Narrator AND writer: Dude....

"Woah..." AWC's eyes widened, almost in the same way mine did when I first caught sight of the alien invaders. "Something about the logical break that happened within the last sixty or so seconds made me think of soft ice cream..."

"Subliminal advertising..." Moe the giraffe happily proclaimed as he skated by. "It's how we make the big bucks."

"No way." AWC slapped her wide forehead. "A giraffe can ice skate and I can't. Curse my woeful inadecquacy!"

"Curse your ADD," Loretta corrected.

"Oh yeah. Well, I was just being chill. I'm too uptight, you know?" AWC took that moment to grab her rabbit ears and wring them nervously. "Well. I was trying to stay cool. You know, real cool? And then this happened." She threw her hands dramatically in the air, gesturing towards the snow covered trees all around. "My mind is frozen!"

"Not completely frozen," the dragon lady consoled her. "I've seen some pretty decent ideas wandering around. And it's nice, really, we haven't had snow in ages."

"I don't even dream about my own thoughts anymore," AWC moaned.

Loretta stared. "What do you dream about?"

"Canadian cartoon characters."

"Ooh, that's bad." Loretta put a comforting taloney hand/paw??? on AWC's shoulder. "It will get better. The sun will come out tomorrow and all that..."

"OH NO IT WON'T." Paolo ran over to them, and sat on the ground nearby. "You can't cancel winter! We haven't had winter here in months! It's always Christmas, but never winter! It's just WRONG!"

"Winter will be over anyway," the dragon lady reasoned, "the second AWC has some good curry."

"But there's so much more to winter than snow on your paws or a breeze in your fur," Paolo protested. "It's the happy feeling of knowing that you'll be safe and warm as long as you have friends, blankets, coffee, and Korean cartoon marathons!"

Shadow the Angry Wolf could not bear to keep his nose out of the situation any longer. "Football," he growled. "Football, football, and more football. And snow football. Snow football is good. Although fall, (not winter), is pretty much the ultimate superior in every way."

"Make that Canadian cartoons and you might have a deal," AWC said. Needless to say, she missed the point and everyone was perplexed for about five minutes.

"I heard a rumor that she's been dreaming about the library of learning, too," Shadow said, shaking his head in sympathy for his friend who had obviously gone bonkers.

"Learning..." Paolo's eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he toppled over.

"Hey, who's learning without me? I've got tons of facts for anyone who's interested. Well, none of them are particularly useful facts, but that's quite alright, because I've traveled far and long enough to know that none of YOU are particularly useful people!" The Tome of Superiority chuckled with glee. You would too if you could only be so superior. Superiority.

"Oh no!" AWC ran over to Paolo's lifeless body. "Speak to me, oh friend of snow and spotted leopardosity! It can't end like this! You've got so much to live for!" She shook his shoulders in mad panic.

Shadow stood there feeling awkward. Finally he let out a long sigh. "Well, if I wasn't too wise to converse with normal people, this probably wouldn't have happened. I have only myself to blame."

"It's a burden to bear, certainly," the Tome of Superiority said. "Wisdom, I mean. Alot of times it's like a lake, cool, and calm, placid and refreshing. But sometimes, the winds of experience can freeze that wise water into a pointy icicle that, by its very nature, just happens to get itself lodged (accidentally or by design) into somebody's eye. It's not the icicle's fault. Under better conditions, it might have been welcome."

The forest ice skaters all paused, some of them falling over, to stare.

"To be understood!" The Tome of Superiority exclaimed in frustration.

"Woah..." Shadow shook his wolfy head. He probably thought he was antistiffening his feathers or something. "You know, I don't even know what to say to that."

PRODUCER: Oh my anticlimax! What the heck is the narrator doing?
Writer (wringing hands anxiously): Well, uh, sir... the narrator is... um... impaling himself with a rusty spoon... I think... It looks kind of like a fork, but if it was a fork he wouldn't be having so much trouble, see, with the whole getting it to go through his flesh, and...
PRODUCER: My good man, that's a spork!
Writer: Well, heh, so it is...
Shadow: I can see why. *Snarl* These lines are crap. I always know what to say.
Jack the Theif: I don't even get any lines! AND THIS IS OUR CHRISTMAS EPISODE!
Maryanne the Maneater: Everyone's supposed to get lines in Christmas episodes.
Lemony: Especially the cute comic relief rabbit!
Florence: And the cute comic relief owl!
Narrator: So... wrong... all... wrong... can't... live... in a world... where...
Raven the raven: Nevermore. Someone needs to stop the narrator from going through with ritual suicide.
AWC: but what deus ex machina could possibly fix this whole mess? Paolo died! And where is the bloody writer!!!
Writer: Well, it's a funny story actually *nervous laugh* I mean, where I got the idea for, well, there was this soft ice cream... and then, well, so there I was being chill...
Narrator: HOW DARE YE
Writer: *choke*
Moe: Was that spork... RuSTy??
Loretta: Alas, poor writer?
Sally: Hey guys, the deus ex machina I ordered off of Amazon came in the mail!

"HEH HEH HEH..." Santa cackled in very sketchy loner laugh.

"What's wrong with his laugh?" AWC paused from leaning over Paolo's corpse to stare at Santa.

"Do you think Mrs. Claus left him or something?" The dragon lady guessed. "He doesn't sound healthy..."

"Stand back friends!" Shadow's fur bristled, and he crouched down, ready to attack. "This one's got the plague."

"Freddie Highmore has sent me to save Christmas and resurrect Paolo the foreigner snow leopard. Oh. And give out weapons." Santa smiled in a jolly way. "There! Plot resolved."

"But why did Freddie Highmore give him the plague first..." Shadow wondered aloud.

Sally shrugged. "It was a limited time offer that I had for the deus ex machina. You see, if you order in time for the Christmas season, you get all sorts of all powerful story resolvers at just a fraction of the original cost! Like remember that foggy christmas story? It was 450 pages and going nowhere fast. Santa orders a light up reindeer off the internet, and voila! Instant classic!"

"I was actually just looking for some discount christmas decorations," Santa admitted embarrassedly. "But Rudolph... he's turned my hobby writing into a lucrative career!"

"Another problem saved by the internet!" Sally grinned. "Ooh, that reminds me. Since it's christmas, oh wonderful AWC, can I please have a... touch screen? All the other muses have them."

AWC shook her head. "Forget it kid."


&&&FROM ALL OF THE CREATURES IN THE HEAVENLY FOREST, MERRY CHRISTMAS. LATE. AND WE FIRED THE EXTRA WRITER, AFTER THE NARRATOR KILLED HIM. AND PAOLO SURVIVED. HE'S STILL REALLY, REALLY JUMPY THOUGH. UM. THIS IS A REALLY AWKWARD NOTE TO END ON SO WE'LL THROW IN SOME MORE HOLIDAY CHEER. JINGLE BELLS. DECK THE HALLS. KIDNAP THE SANDY CLAWS. OH. AND HAPPY NEW YEAR.&&&