Sigrunn's Saga II

She moves quickly back behind the ridge line and off the trail to avoid further confrontation. Sigrunn moves with deliberate speed across the rough sloping ground until dusk. She stops to rest at a creek, not knowing the source she chances a drink then scouts out a hide where she can rest for the night. She makes a fire and prays for guidance and with her belly empty she drifts off to sleep beside smoldering embers under a starlit sky.

She dreams of a great wooden castle full of riches and dwarfs and a horrible fat witch with arms that reach four fathoms, ending in heavy square hands with fingers thick and hard as ram ’s horns. The witch chases her about the castle and Sigrunn struggled to escape with a companion whose face she could not see, a man she did not know.

Chains would appear from the darkness at the witches command and snake toward Sigrunn and her friend trying to ensnare them. The witch spat curses at Sigrunn and threatened to "devour her living guts as she watched her die". She could not deter the witch with any brave call or command, and desperate from fatigue she invoked the gods’ names and the witch though bothered continued to hound her. Sigrunn felt a thick chain catch her by her neck and awoke abruptly.

Cricket song filled the warm summer night’s air. Bats soared above silhouetted by the moons soft glow. She sat up and noticed she was bleeding again; the wound, just under her jaw was bleeding scratched open again in her disturbed sleep. She stood thinking it near enough to dawn to get moving again. She lit a torch and put her hand against the wound to staunch the flow. She hung her shield over opposite shoulder which caused her right arm to tire as she trudged on.

Sigrunn's Saga

Okay so enough pontificating on celebretards, philosophy or the Navy and Gov't, those guys all get beat up a lot it's hard working in government and the celebretards don't care about negative press. Today I start a new thread, a short story that cuts across a collaborative fiction piece about a barbarian settler and her experiences in this strange land ruled by creatures abhorrent to her, not the least of which is a wizard she is related to by marriage.

Almost sounds like a really bad sitcom. It's something I've been playing with putting together with Alvie there in Pottsville he's busy with soccer coaching or something now so I haven't heard much from him lately but he chimes in when he sees a piece of the Sigrunn story to say how much he's enjoying it. To be fair he is very much to blame for Sigrunn. She cuts across his greyhawk campaign which occurs in the patriots of Ulek time frame CY 570 plus I believe. When we begin Sigrunn has abandoned the settlement at Norn Redding Kragg after a falling out with her uncle the Jarl Har Vor.

***

Sigrunn stained her blond braids red and black with gore as she pulled them away from her face. She let out a triumphant grunt as she freed her axe, one-handed, from the dead priest’s spine. She raised it chest high, just enough so its weight would carry it through his neck. Satisfied she knelt beside the headless corpse and claimed her trophy, wiping her iron blade clean on his frock before returning it to its sheath. She drew a long knife from its hiding place and cut the young man’s scalp away and shook his brain loose into the fine dust of the ancient road. She tied the trophy to a string of others thinking that it will make a fine bowl and she looked forward to drinking her favorite wine from it. She put the knife away and stood, picking up the priests book thinking the leaves would come in handy for cleaning herself and her kit on the way to her destination.

She stopped to kick the dead fool's brain away then strode across the road to recover her helmet. She stepped over the other cleaved men lying motionless face down in the dirt. She didn’t bother to take their unworthy scalps. They had run when she launched herself upon them - only the youngest had the courage to stand against her. When she bent over to recover her helmet she noticed the ox hide strap had been cut away in the fighting. She tugged her gauntlet off and checked her throat and chin, finding her own blood she checked again. “It’s not serious” she thought tying the helmet to her belt and continued down the road to the next village.

Cresting a hill she spotted the first village beneath a dead and ruined castle atop a hillock on the far side of the settlement. “Dwamud” she hatefully spat. She despised the greedy filthy dwarfs who lived under the mountains, especially the weak and soft lot that inhabited this new shore. She spotted a pair making their way up the road toward her singing gaily and she thought briefly of challenging them but then decided to try to speak to them first.

She did her best to look friendly, raising a hand to hail them and they returned her greeting warmly. A few frustrating moments later Sigrunn was finding it impossible to be understood by the little sods and she was beginning to become angry at their rude leering and gesturing. She pushed them aside and bid them farewell. The dwarfs followed her and became louder and more animated so she pulled her axe from its sheath and cut them low leaving them writhing in agony, bleeding to death on the hill road. She decided to bypass the dwarf settlement and continued on her way north towards the mountains that called to her since coming to this shore a season ago.

***

Sigrunn is an angry creature out for blood maybe we should do a kids story...

Well there's your problem...

Dear Greece,

First, thank you for the whole cradle of democracy and such that's pretty awesome, also I've enjoyed molon labe and your amusing mythology. I especially loved touring the ruins on Rhodos / Rhodes and dodging young tuffs out to make a name for themselves by beating up US Sailors visiting the redlight district. Thanks to those poor boys for the night in the brig too, I learned a lot in there like the fact that spiders somehow do find their way onto ships. Imagine that!

Now, what have you been doing since you gave birth to western civilization? I can't help but notice lately the remnants of the Hellenic League have been having some financial problems. I think I might have found a significant contributing factor here. (thank you la times).

A coca-cola bottling operation is your biggest business? Well it was rather since it's now leaving. What happened Greece? You used to be really cool. Coke was an American company, i don't know if you can call it that now it's a multi-national or international conglomerate or something but how did awesome Greece become so inhospitable to businesses worth a paltry $7.6 billion? You know our military spends that in like what 3.4 days right? That's just for TP, hammers and phylacteries.

I want to help out, I really do so here are some ideas. First - invent a new holiday. Make it a big one like Octoberfest, maybe a week long or a whole fortnight.

Invite EVERYONE (except Albania noone likes them).

Give away lots of goodies like beads and T-shirts, New Orleans probably has a lot of beads they don't need since tourism there probably stil hasn't recovered. Maybe you can get Superbowl loser t-shirts from the NFL and give them away?

Hide the Uzo and the really good drugs too - you gotta keep that stuff under control folks there get a bit outta hand sometimes.

Have a contest, you guys are jam packed with islands suitable for habitation and really small and near the others that you could let someone buy a raffle ticket for - maybe a $1 raffle ticket OR let the guy who comes up with the best idea win the island and have HGTV build a super mansion on it. Surely a few construction jobs couldn't hurt right?

Speaking of construction - you guys need to build something new. I know you're surrounded by ruins and sacred temples to every small towns god you don't dare desecrate but really - just pave over that stuff already no body cares! You guys don't even care, the ruins are in such decrepit conditions - the rubble is burning down.

Keep the hot gates, people still want to visit that strand but improve the spa there host a bit costume party or battle re-enactment. In my town (gettysburg pa) we have industrialized the re-enactment scene our economy more or less thrives and at least hums along on a 150 year old battle. You guys can top that you had a much bigger one more than a millenia ago - get that out there.

You want some more help? I'm here for you just make sure I get one of those raffle tickets and tell HGTV I want a lot of unobstructed vies in that island villa.

Staycation

So I'm getting better at navigating the calendar.

Usually at work I'm out maneuvered by everyone taking or scheduling leave so I'm stuck working over the X-mas to New Years break for example, but not this time. I found what I suspect is a little used weekend prior to the Columbus Day holiday.

I could care less about Columbus, a Portugese navigator who discovered an already inhabited place other Europeans had been visiting for some time, and who didn't prove the earth was round (this was known for sometime prior to him) but a day off is a day off so I'm not complaining either.

Yes I had a three day weekend. Wait there's more - I teleworked on Thursday and burnt one leave day for Friday give me a five day holiday to...well in another day and age I might have spent two or three grand on an adventure but money is tight. And though I wrote in TO&S that we have more than we need, under the current economic pressures facing all of us today (gas $4 a gallon or $500 a month for my commute) we have just enough.

So what to do with no disposable cash and a ton of free time? Play with the kids! They were probably sick of me by the time I went back to work today. I know my wife had to be happy to see me go back to the office. Gramma showed up too so she could offer the kids a change of pace and hopefully recharge sanity in the house crazy meter which goes on the fritz when I'm home for 72 hours or more.

I had a nice Columbus day staycation. Why not? I think I'll celebrate that one every year with some telework/leave schedule design to maximize the cheap fun. I think its fitting in the event someone wants to commemorate the day by discovering my living room or backyard the way Columbus did that of the native people of North America. I'll greet them unintelligbly and tell them to go back from whence they came.

There is a silly monument to Columbus in Philly. I miss trips to that city, though it's a deteriorating murder hole, there are some bright spots I enjoyed with my wife there but a trip with the little critters would be too complex logistically. Panda would also make it impossible with her night time insanity - she likes to play with EVERYTHING in hotel rooms and refuses to sleep until those Wild Kingdom people fly overhead and use the tranq gun on her and tag her for future study. Can't take her overnight anywhere, so we saved the money and managed to go to a consignment store somewhere past 1968 and past the big bad wolf's house. I thought I was driving into a Wrong Turn sequel getting there but we survived and found some good clothes for the littlest one.

We won't be calling him that for long, at 5 months he is moving into the same weight class (diaper wise) as the Panda. He could overtake the other two in a few months. I prefer carrying Panda to him since he's all dead weight and at least the Panda can hang on. Though she fidgets a bunch and the little guy is still and snuggly...so it's a toss up. He's better company for a nap.

Stopped at the Five Guys and indulged in free peanuts, water, small burgers, a hot dog and a grilled cheese sammy. If I made that at home would have been maybe $7. At five guys $22. It's pretty insane, but it was soo good. It works out though since no one was really hungry at dinner and we ate campbells soup for $0.23 a serving. It was cold so soup is good. That was Monday night before catching the 3rd quarter of MNF laying in bed next to her drifting off.

Great staycation.  Didn't want to come back to work today.

I would be just as or more productive teleworking but I don't do that again until next week. I have a stack of stuff I can do then but I'll just do now. Time to go fight traffic. I'll be looking for a bottle of Ethos in the mail from my old favorite place to work. Thanks mom.