![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
lawnnun.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
indeedsir_backupAuthor: lawnnun
Rating: R for some weirdness, some gore, and some frottage.
Summary: The Firebird is another story where a wise servant continually has to get a lovable doofus in and out of trouble.
Author's note: Some nasty bits, due to Russian-ness of source material. This was written ages ago, but "The Twelve Dancing Drones" reminded me that I had it.
Touching on the subject of the Firebird, I can only say that I never would have brought the thing off if not for Wolf. He’s lying by the fire right now, all curled into a ball. He says that certain old habits will never leave him more, and I say that he’s the best servant and best friend anybody has ever had, so dash his oddities, I’m keeping him. Rather more than ever now, but I’ll get to that. The whole thing started with my Aunt Dahlia (Queen Dahlia the Fearless to you, in all likelihood) as such things often do. My uncle, King Tom has an orchard. The trees are the last of their kind, and they bear silver apples. I’m not much on trees or horticulture in general, but it’s a beautiful place and I’ve always liked it. So naturally, when my beloved old blood relation came gusting in bellowing about how the orchard had been robbed, I was all ears.
Aunt Dahlia has a long history of bolting in out of nowhere and demanding that her beloved nephew carry out quests and whatnot that her own son is too young to support. This is all over now, as Bonzo is quite grown up and has to slay his own monsters and rescue his own damsels, but before his majority it seemed like every other week I had to slog out and flail at something. Mostly I hired people to do the actual slaying, since years of fencing instruction has left me just as likely to stab my own foot as anything else, but there was still a lot of traveling and all-night vigils, and I was once nearly eaten by an Ettin, which I feel no one has taken seriously enough. This expedition at least didn’t seem particularly hard. I just had to sit out in the orchard with coffee and a packet of sandwiches and report back at dawn. To her credit, she had already tried one of Uncle Tom’s vassals, but staying up all night is a young man’s game, and Spode wasn’t quite up to it.
So, because I balk at disappointing the only aunt I actually like (those of you living on the western border under Queen Agatha the Terrible have my deepest sympathies), I camped out in the orchard that night, sipping my coffee and trying to stay awake. Of course, along about two in the morning, I really did drop off. Not that it mattered, because I don’t think I could have slept through the arrival of the Firebird if I had been awake for a week. It wasn’t that it was loud or anything. It just ghosted over the wall, its feathers the pure white of the hottest flame, with blue at the tips. It shone as bright as the moon, but that wasn’t what woke me, either. To this day, I don’t know what it was. I just couldn’t sleep in the presence of the Firebird. I’m not one of those sensitive, artistic types, but it was so beautiful that I felt like crying, somehow. In fact, I just stood there like a fool as it plucked one silver apple and flew away, only snapping out of it in time to make an ungainly leap and catch one glowing tail feather before it vanished into the night.
Aunt Dahlia rightly reproached me for a colossal fathead for failing to catch the bird, but did own that I had done much better than Spode. For his part, Uncle Tom was fascinated by that bally feather, and sent Spode out to find the bird. When weeks went by and he failed to return, Aunt Dahlia told me to saddle up and ride forth. I was none too pleased, but when Bertram’s dear old blood relation calls, he must answer. I headed out with my usual light traveling kit, on the back of a fiend in equine form. The nasty brute had been a gift from a neighboring nation, and so I had to ride it, despite its obvious ill intentions re: Bertram.
It didn’t take me as long to find Spode as you might think. I followed all recent sightings of the man to a three-way fork in the road, at the edge of a vast forest. A sign indicated that the traveller on the far right path would know hunger and thirst, that the one on the center path would die, though his horse would live, and that whoever took the left path would live, though his horse would die. Spode had given this all up as a bad business and had set up shop selling ladies’ underthings to a collection of odd little men who kept jawing on about the motherland and other such beastliness. Shuddering, I decided that he certainly wasn’t going to come back and would probably want to do away with the witness, and elected to go on. I was going to take the far right path, and now shudder to think what might have happened if I had. As it was, I paused and thought of what a dreadful way to go starvation would be, and that the sign certainly offered no guarantee of survival. With a guilty sigh, I took the left, telling my horse as we went that it certainly hadn’t been nice knowing it, but that I was still most awfully sorry.
I hadn’t even gotten too far before there was a suspicious rustling in the undergrowth. I went on, watching it all the time out of the corner of my eye, but still didn’t have time to react when a huge, black wolf burst onto the path. The horse screamed and threw me, and as I lay there trying to get my breath back, the wolf tore it to pieces and devoured it. I’m no coward, and certainly not sentimental, but I burst into tears. I had hated the poor brute, but I hadn’t thought he would go so violently. As I sat there making a perfect spectacle of myself, the wolf licked his chops and his ruff clean, and padded over to me. I wasn’t as frightened as I might have been, because the sign had said I would live, and I couldn’t imagine that he was the least bit hungry after all that horse. His yellow eyes gleamed with intelligence, and he licked my cheek as gently as my mother’s little spaniel had when I was a boy.
“Please do not weep, little prince.” Talking animals were something that happened out in these wild woods, and he had already looked so very clever that I was hardly surprised. “Having taken your steed, I will serve in his stead. Whither does your Highness wish to go?”
“I’m looking for the Firebird. I took this road because it was the only one that I was sure wouldn’t kill me.”
“Ah.” Said the wolf. “I believe I know the way, my prince.” He bowed down to the ground, I climbed onto his gleaming back, and he took off. He ran faster that any twenty Thoroughbreds put together, and I was badly jounced until I found a comfortable seat, wrapped my legs around the barrel of his chest, and took two great fistfuls of his ruff, burying my face in it to keep the wind off. I don’t know how long it was before we stopped and I could raise my head, but it had been a long time, and I was covered in the wild scent of the wolf. “Your Highness, we are just outside the garden of the White King. It is he who keeps the Firebird in his mews.”
“That’s all well and good, Wolf, but how am I to get the bally thing?” I asked, swinging my legs and lightly thumping his sides with my heels, already comfortable on his back.
“You must climb the wall, secret yourself into the mews, and take the bird. It will come quietly, but do not touch the golden cage you will find beside it, or all will be lost. I shall await you here, your Highness.”
“Righto, Wolf.” I sighed, hopping off of his back and heading for the wall. I detest having to pinch things, and yet it seems that I get Shanghaied into that as fast as the more traditional slaying wheezes. Still, getting into the mews wasn’t as hard as it could have been. The Firebird even seemed happy to see me, walking onto my arm as easy as anything. I even remembered what Wolf told me, no matter what anyone says, but on the way out I tripped over some pestilential bucket left out by some miserable excuse for a falconer, and threw my hand out to catch myself. I did, but I had grabbed one of the bars of the massive golden cage, and was resigned rather than surprised when the place erupted in guards. They pounced on me and dragged me up before the White King.
I came empty-handed out of the gates the next morning, to meet Wolf as he appeared out of the woods like a living shadow, dew beaded like crystals on his coat. “Good morning, sir.” He said. “I see that we have met with a setback.”
I nodded, and flopped down into the wet grass beside him. “I did what you told me to, Wolf, but I tripped and touched the blasted cage anyway and now I’ve got to pinch some bloody magic horse before I can get the bird back, and apparently the White King and Uncle Tom are chums, and I could’ve had it for the asking.” I groaned and buried my face in my hands.
“Was he referring to the Star of Illuria, sir?”
“Lovely white mare, some of the original fey blood? Fast as the wind and smart as the proverbial whip?”
“That would form a fairly accurate description, your Highness.”
I leaned against him and buried my face in his ruff. “Oh, Wolf. I’ve got to find a way to steal her! I don’t think I’d be capable of stealing a normal horse, let alone a magical one.”
“I may be able to lend some assistance, your Highness.” He murmured.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-09 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 01:58 am (UTC)AND NO, TO THOSE ASKING THE ORRIGIONAL MYTH DOESN'T END IN WOLF SEX. THAR IS THE POSSIBILITY OF PEOPLE-SEX. :3
-doesn't want to spoil the myth for anyone-
Gosh, all that time spent with old worn-out forgotten books in the library is really helping me out in the Jooster fandom! xD
And the fact you had him trip instead of having an attack of avarice is LOVE. IC LOVE I TELL YOU! 83
Also, the everything is just perfect in re tone and witty lines. Juuuust thought you should know. n_n
no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 04:36 am (UTC)Thanks.
Everyone: there is no wolf sex, but Bertie sort of wants there to be.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-10 06:36 am (UTC)Quite deserved, I assure you.
Teehee, sort of. :oP
no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 02:46 am (UTC)It's good at keeping it in the right tone, despite the different setting.
I also was a big fan of Spodes fate...
And Berties attempts at burglary never turn out, do they?
I shall be off to read part two
no subject
Date: 2012-02-11 04:39 am (UTC)