"Wraithvine, Wraithvine, where art thou?"
"I'm over here, playing the clown!"
"Wraithvine, Wraithvine, why be a fool?"
"Because laughter is another healing tool!"
A children's skipping game of how Wraithvine saved a nation, by teaching the leaders of the warring factions how to have fun together and laugh. -- Anon Guest
Evidently, Bucky had been to the library. Asking questions and finding out things. Kro could throttle the librarian's prentice/acolyte[1] for teaching him how to read.
"I learned fun stuff," he said. "Did ya know that nurs'ry rhymes are history?"
Kro attempted to focus on hir fiddly gearwork. Something was stuck in the middle of it... "Uh. Maybe? I think a few of them are political from... a Dragon's age ago."
"I learned that one's about our town," announced Bucky. "It goes, Wraithvine, Wraithvine, where art thou?"
Kro let hir kid recite the whole thing. Sort of nodding along with the rhythm as ze tried to unriddle the clog in the gears without taking the mechanism even more apart.
"There was a big war and Wraithvine was sent by both sides to do something to each king, but ze talked to each of them and figured out nobody was real evil. They just blamed each other for a bad bug that was going around. Ze got them to talk to each other and that's why one leader can challenge the other b'fore they get the armies fighting? But for this one the armies were sick to and-- are you gonna eat that?"
Kro automatically put hir hand over hir sandwich. "This is my lunch. Didn't I feed you yours?"
"But that was forever ago," Bucky whined.
"It was two hours," corrected Kor, putting hir work down and defending hir lunch by eating it. "Gonna have to get you checked for worms." Grumbling around hir lunch, Kor left hir work to arrange something to fill his kid's perpetually empty belly. "Go on. Tell me the rest of it."
"Didja know the sickness was called on-wee and melon-collar?" Bucky laughed at the words.
"I think it caused ennui and melancholy," corrected Kro. "I think I remember some of this. The clouds blotted the sky and the fields were full of blight," the lines of the old epic poem came back. "No relief from wail or woe did ever come in sight... And so on." A quick sandwich to keep hir son going while ze cooked something a little more substantial. "Where did the tomfoolery kick in?"
"I know, I know," Bucky waved a hand high in the air. Clinging to his sandwich with the other. "There were necks. Necks of sorrow!"
"A nexus of sorrow. Yes. Old magic from the Age of Elves caused the sickness to spread all over the lands of an old kingdom. Which happened to be where those two kings had their realms. Years and years of sorrow had grown until it all popped like a bubble."
Bucky spoke around the sandwich he'd crammed into his cheeks. "Ve only way ta kill shadnush ish wif laftuh."
"That's right. It began with a game that couldn't be won, with the miserable soldiers watching. Wraithvine summoned things that made sounds nobody expected, made the kings cavort."
"And one laugh made the sun come out," said Bucky.
"More or less," agreed Kro. The meal was ready. "Now fill that empty pit you call your stomach. And if I can get that gear work unriddled, I can get you checked at the Druid's tomorrow."
"I'm a jiggy bouncy squirmy li'l fella," Bucky echoed the Druids' earlier diagnosis.
"Yeah, but I'm still checking you for worms."
[1] Libraries are temples of Wothyn, the god of knowledge and learning. Of course they're going to teach random kids to read and use the Dewey Decimal system.
(AN: Huge enormous thanks to MisterCrowbar for sending me some walking-around money via Ko-Fi. You and your void-cat Bucky are a part of my world. Check out their amazing art.)
[Photo by Rodrigo Rodriguez on Unsplash]
If you like my stories, please Check out my blog and Follow me. Or share them with your friends! Or visit my hub site to see what else I'm up to.
Send me a prompt [14 remaining prompts!]