Fanfic - Tridig
Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:26 pm
Felt like sharing a short story... 
More to come, gotta translate them from Russian.
Just in case you don't know, I often make my own names for the Glade's unknown flora and fauna - e.g., "schmaples" mean sugar maples, "oakpine" = oak + pine, "tripines" - pine trees with triple top (like in Summit Beyond the Clouds), etc. So if in some of my stories you found a word without explanation what does it mean, let me know.
(Side note - if you don't like that I call Razoff "a swamp teensie", don't pay attention please - or take it like you take the term "guinea-pig", which is neither from Guinea, nor a pig.
)
___________________________________________________________________
A large shadow fell onto the small glade near Globox’s house.
“That’s Razoff!”, shouted someone of the baby globoxes. The rest of the 649 kids stopped chasing the ball, stared into the sky and exclaimed one after another:
“Hooray, Razoff flew!”
“On Tridig!”
“He’s carrying raspberries!”
“I’ll bet it’s blackberries!”
“Let’s see!”
And in a few minutes, onto the middle of their playground landed Count Razoff the Hunter, sitting on the back of a large, seal-like, greyish- green beast. It had a long neck and a four-fingered hand with two eyes on the “wrist” for a head.
That was Tridig, the Count’s pet Paluchard.
Razoff took off Tridig’s back two large baskets of blackberries (“I lost”, sighed a baby globox who shouted about raspberries most of all an hour ago), turned to the house and called:
“Anybody home? Help me with this gift!”
“Huh? Who’s here?”, responded someone from the kitchen window. Then Uglette Glewt, Globox’s wife, came out and exclaimed:
“Polokus Gracious, Razzy!.. Just in time… Right when I thought of making some jam for my kiddies… Thank you so much!”
“Don’t mention, Uglette”, blushed the hunter. “That’s merely payback. You both saved my life that time first.”
“That time” - three years ago - Globox and his wife in fact managed to cure Razoff from a strong attack of swamp fever. So he, like any well-mannered nobleman should, often brought them gifts from the Bog of Murk.
Both baskets Uglette carried somewhere into the house – most likely for prepairing the jam this evening. And the baby globoxes - now along with grey teensie kids from the nearby houses, with Murfy (who was just flying by) and Tilly (who was on a break from her magic lessons) – surrounded Tridig and his master: after all, not every day you can see such guests! They petted the Paluchard, and he answered them with a muffled whistle and rubbed his hand-head against everyone he could reach.
“Unca Razoff, tell us how did you tame him”, asked Tilly. “They say, the Paluchards usually aren’t that friendly…”
“I thought the same before”, admired Razoff. “I had one before Tridig, and that one was a real devil, I swear!... Ask Rayman, he knows.”
“And what happened to that one?”, asked a teensie kid. “And how did you get Tridig? Tell us, please!”
“M-maybe not today?”, responded the hunter. “I’ve got to count the schmaples, the schmaple syrup season is coming…”
“Please, Unca Razoff!”, begged Tilly. “I’ll find you the biggest jar of cream you can only imagine, I promise!..”
“All right, all right, I surrender!”, laughed the Count. “Okay. Now listen …”
* * *
…It happened ages ago, before Razoff turned from a grumpy hermit to the one the Glade folk knew and liked now.
Razoff inherited not only the mansion itself, but also countless diaries of his relatives - the noble swamp teensies, the world-known hunters. And one day, reading a diary of his great-great-great-grandfather Orion, our hunter accidentally found several notes about a pet Paluchard.
“…These creatures aren’t easy to tame for everyone”, Orion wrote. “But if you were lucky enough to deserve the trust of a Paluchard, you can’t find a more faithful friend and a better helper in hunting, as both the water and the air are like home to them... Whenever I look at my Ayho, I see that these words are pure truth.”
Of course, the great-great-great-grandpa couldn’t lie. Razoff remembered the way he usually hunted himself – trying to shoot from the boat, when a fog is so thick you can’t see your own nose; sitting in the tall reeds for hours and hours; lurking around the bog, where you have to watch every single step… - and finally decided, “Am I worse?”
There was lot of Paluchards on the swamp indeed, but no one of them flew close to the manor. The Count surely could take one down with a harpoon, but then a beast, even slightly wounded, would be already impossible to tame, as it could remember who hurt it.
So, Razoff found a better plan. There was plenty of piranhas around the bog to catch and then leave on every single hillock as a bait. The most of the bait he put near a secret trap – a pit to the catacombs under the mansion, easy to fall in, but hard to get out.
It lasted for about a month. Now the Count didn’t sleep at night, watching and waiting for at least one Paluchard to get closer to the trap at least for an inch.
In one of such nights he fell asleep in the chair, and woke up from a terrible noise, whistle and screams, coming from the underground dungeon.
“G-got it!..”, flashed through the Count’s head.
But in a second, he heard a loud “Raaaaymaaaaaaaaaan!... Heeeeeeelp!!!!....”
“A talking one?!” – Razoff, hardly believing his own ears, grabbed his rifle and ran down into the dungeon.
…Yes, there was a huge Paluchard in the trap indeed. Maybe, even the king of the pack.
But the one who screamed was a large fat blue toad, and Razoff had absolutely no idea where did it come from.
Of course, how would he know that the toad was Globox. And that he and Rayman got onto the Bog only by an accident – because they fell out of the portal and lost each other. And that now the scared Globox was calling his friend to help him.
The Count hardly had the time to see his both captives, as the door upstairs slammed shut. So, certain Rayman managed to enter Razoff’s domain… Okay, he’ll teach him a lesson!..
…He’s still ashamed to remember what happened next. Neither chasing Rayman around the entire house, nor a try to scare him out with a wreclking ball helped. Razoff ended up falling into the dungeon, where he, still in rage, nearly shot Globox and nearly got caught by a witch… but, luckily, managed to knock her out.
And when Rayman and Globox finally disappeared in the magic mirror, the Count barely shoved now unconscious witch into it and walked up to the Paluchard.
The beast was so weak that it couldn’t move its head, even when Razoff pulled a cauldron of water to it.
…Soon Razoff understood that it was impossible to tame the Paluchard King. The grey and green giant beat himself against the bars of the tall fence, didn’t let the hunter get close, whistled and moaned in horror. Maybe an image of Razoff holding the rifle still scared him.
And three days later, the Count let the Paluchard go. He didn’t feel a wish to tame another one anymore. Until one day…
…Until one day he got under the terrible rain, being far from the manor.
That morning the Count decided to swim to the islets and shoot some snipes. He didn’t pay any attention to the light drizzle on the half of his way, but as he pulled the boat onto the bank, it started to rain cats and dogs.
Luckily, a small cave was near – small and empty one, dry and comfortable enough for a swamp teensie to wait for the end of the rain.
And, like that very night, Razoff started to nod off, holding his rifle.
Suddenly, a lighting flashed, a big tree near the cave fell onto the ground with a loud creak, and then the hunter heard a weak, plaintive whistle.
“No way!”, he thought angrily. “I'm fed up with that crazy one …”
But the less it rained, the weaker and more sorrowful was the whistle.
Razoff couldn’t listen to it any more. He get out of the shelter, looked around and saw a Paluchard beneath a broken oakpine tree. The creature wasn’t so huge, and was rather green than grey – maybe, a young one.
“B-but how in the world did you get…“
The Paluchard stretched out its neck towards the Count and whistled again, as if begging for help.
“Wait, wait a second!..” – Razoff quickly nodded, found a suitable stone and a stick, and made a brake.
He put the stick on the stone, with its shorter end under the tree, and pushed the another end with all his strength.
“There we go…oooh!...”
The oakpine slowly started to lift. The Paluchard finally crawled from under the tree, and put his head onto the Count’s shoulder, as a sign of gratitude.
“Come on”, Razoff grumbled. “Well, now fly home, your pack must be worrying.”
The Paluchard sighed.
“What? You can’t?”
Only now the swamp teensie saw that one of the fingers on the creature’s head is broken. Of course, it must hurt to fly like that, no matter what’s a reason, a fight with some bullies or your own stupidity. Maybe because of it the wind brought this poor guy here.
“Let me look…” – Razoff held out his hand to check the Paluchard’s broken finger, but the creature twitched in fear.
“Don’t be afraid, silly, calm down.”
And despite all groans and moans of his “patient”, the Count skillfully bandaged the finger with his handskerchief.
“Well, it’s over… Feel better now, eeerrr… Tridig?”
Razoff laughed at his own sudden thought. Tridig! Isn’t it a perfect name for a Paluchard with three fingers - three digits?
“Tridig?..”, the hunter repeated.
The Paluchard turned his head and looked at him with curiousity.
“Splendid!”, Razoff smiled. “If you’ve got a name, you must get a home. Mind if I take you to my place?”
Tridig nodded and rubbed his head against the Count’s shoulder once again.
Next morning, Razoff took the young Paluchard to his mansion, and made him a shelter where the old King of the pack lived before. Almost nothing changed in the dungeons - except for the empty broken cages, which Razoff threw away, and the boulder on the chain, which wasn’t needed any more.
Soon afterwards, Tridig finally got well. And Razoff got more things to take care of: it was time to learn the new pet to fly with a saddle. That’s when Orion’s diaries came in handy again.
* * *
“…And I’m still thinking”, told Razoff. “What if my Tridig is some great-great-great-great-grandchild of my great-great-great-grandfather’s Ayho?.. Or why else he found exactly me? But the diaries say nothing of it. That’s all.”
The end
More to come, gotta translate them from Russian.Just in case you don't know, I often make my own names for the Glade's unknown flora and fauna - e.g., "schmaples" mean sugar maples, "oakpine" = oak + pine, "tripines" - pine trees with triple top (like in Summit Beyond the Clouds), etc. So if in some of my stories you found a word without explanation what does it mean, let me know.
(Side note - if you don't like that I call Razoff "a swamp teensie", don't pay attention please - or take it like you take the term "guinea-pig", which is neither from Guinea, nor a pig.
) ___________________________________________________________________
A large shadow fell onto the small glade near Globox’s house.
“That’s Razoff!”, shouted someone of the baby globoxes. The rest of the 649 kids stopped chasing the ball, stared into the sky and exclaimed one after another:
“Hooray, Razoff flew!”
“On Tridig!”
“He’s carrying raspberries!”
“I’ll bet it’s blackberries!”
“Let’s see!”
And in a few minutes, onto the middle of their playground landed Count Razoff the Hunter, sitting on the back of a large, seal-like, greyish- green beast. It had a long neck and a four-fingered hand with two eyes on the “wrist” for a head.
That was Tridig, the Count’s pet Paluchard.
Razoff took off Tridig’s back two large baskets of blackberries (“I lost”, sighed a baby globox who shouted about raspberries most of all an hour ago), turned to the house and called:
“Anybody home? Help me with this gift!”
“Huh? Who’s here?”, responded someone from the kitchen window. Then Uglette Glewt, Globox’s wife, came out and exclaimed:
“Polokus Gracious, Razzy!.. Just in time… Right when I thought of making some jam for my kiddies… Thank you so much!”
“Don’t mention, Uglette”, blushed the hunter. “That’s merely payback. You both saved my life that time first.”
“That time” - three years ago - Globox and his wife in fact managed to cure Razoff from a strong attack of swamp fever. So he, like any well-mannered nobleman should, often brought them gifts from the Bog of Murk.
Both baskets Uglette carried somewhere into the house – most likely for prepairing the jam this evening. And the baby globoxes - now along with grey teensie kids from the nearby houses, with Murfy (who was just flying by) and Tilly (who was on a break from her magic lessons) – surrounded Tridig and his master: after all, not every day you can see such guests! They petted the Paluchard, and he answered them with a muffled whistle and rubbed his hand-head against everyone he could reach.
“Unca Razoff, tell us how did you tame him”, asked Tilly. “They say, the Paluchards usually aren’t that friendly…”
“I thought the same before”, admired Razoff. “I had one before Tridig, and that one was a real devil, I swear!... Ask Rayman, he knows.”
“And what happened to that one?”, asked a teensie kid. “And how did you get Tridig? Tell us, please!”
“M-maybe not today?”, responded the hunter. “I’ve got to count the schmaples, the schmaple syrup season is coming…”
“Please, Unca Razoff!”, begged Tilly. “I’ll find you the biggest jar of cream you can only imagine, I promise!..”
“All right, all right, I surrender!”, laughed the Count. “Okay. Now listen …”
* * *
…It happened ages ago, before Razoff turned from a grumpy hermit to the one the Glade folk knew and liked now.
Razoff inherited not only the mansion itself, but also countless diaries of his relatives - the noble swamp teensies, the world-known hunters. And one day, reading a diary of his great-great-great-grandfather Orion, our hunter accidentally found several notes about a pet Paluchard.
“…These creatures aren’t easy to tame for everyone”, Orion wrote. “But if you were lucky enough to deserve the trust of a Paluchard, you can’t find a more faithful friend and a better helper in hunting, as both the water and the air are like home to them... Whenever I look at my Ayho, I see that these words are pure truth.”
Of course, the great-great-great-grandpa couldn’t lie. Razoff remembered the way he usually hunted himself – trying to shoot from the boat, when a fog is so thick you can’t see your own nose; sitting in the tall reeds for hours and hours; lurking around the bog, where you have to watch every single step… - and finally decided, “Am I worse?”
There was lot of Paluchards on the swamp indeed, but no one of them flew close to the manor. The Count surely could take one down with a harpoon, but then a beast, even slightly wounded, would be already impossible to tame, as it could remember who hurt it.
So, Razoff found a better plan. There was plenty of piranhas around the bog to catch and then leave on every single hillock as a bait. The most of the bait he put near a secret trap – a pit to the catacombs under the mansion, easy to fall in, but hard to get out.
It lasted for about a month. Now the Count didn’t sleep at night, watching and waiting for at least one Paluchard to get closer to the trap at least for an inch.
In one of such nights he fell asleep in the chair, and woke up from a terrible noise, whistle and screams, coming from the underground dungeon.
“G-got it!..”, flashed through the Count’s head.
But in a second, he heard a loud “Raaaaymaaaaaaaaaan!... Heeeeeeelp!!!!....”
“A talking one?!” – Razoff, hardly believing his own ears, grabbed his rifle and ran down into the dungeon.
…Yes, there was a huge Paluchard in the trap indeed. Maybe, even the king of the pack.
But the one who screamed was a large fat blue toad, and Razoff had absolutely no idea where did it come from.
Of course, how would he know that the toad was Globox. And that he and Rayman got onto the Bog only by an accident – because they fell out of the portal and lost each other. And that now the scared Globox was calling his friend to help him.
The Count hardly had the time to see his both captives, as the door upstairs slammed shut. So, certain Rayman managed to enter Razoff’s domain… Okay, he’ll teach him a lesson!..
…He’s still ashamed to remember what happened next. Neither chasing Rayman around the entire house, nor a try to scare him out with a wreclking ball helped. Razoff ended up falling into the dungeon, where he, still in rage, nearly shot Globox and nearly got caught by a witch… but, luckily, managed to knock her out.
And when Rayman and Globox finally disappeared in the magic mirror, the Count barely shoved now unconscious witch into it and walked up to the Paluchard.
The beast was so weak that it couldn’t move its head, even when Razoff pulled a cauldron of water to it.
…Soon Razoff understood that it was impossible to tame the Paluchard King. The grey and green giant beat himself against the bars of the tall fence, didn’t let the hunter get close, whistled and moaned in horror. Maybe an image of Razoff holding the rifle still scared him.
And three days later, the Count let the Paluchard go. He didn’t feel a wish to tame another one anymore. Until one day…
…Until one day he got under the terrible rain, being far from the manor.
That morning the Count decided to swim to the islets and shoot some snipes. He didn’t pay any attention to the light drizzle on the half of his way, but as he pulled the boat onto the bank, it started to rain cats and dogs.
Luckily, a small cave was near – small and empty one, dry and comfortable enough for a swamp teensie to wait for the end of the rain.
And, like that very night, Razoff started to nod off, holding his rifle.
Suddenly, a lighting flashed, a big tree near the cave fell onto the ground with a loud creak, and then the hunter heard a weak, plaintive whistle.
“No way!”, he thought angrily. “I'm fed up with that crazy one …”
But the less it rained, the weaker and more sorrowful was the whistle.
Razoff couldn’t listen to it any more. He get out of the shelter, looked around and saw a Paluchard beneath a broken oakpine tree. The creature wasn’t so huge, and was rather green than grey – maybe, a young one.
“B-but how in the world did you get…“
The Paluchard stretched out its neck towards the Count and whistled again, as if begging for help.
“Wait, wait a second!..” – Razoff quickly nodded, found a suitable stone and a stick, and made a brake.
He put the stick on the stone, with its shorter end under the tree, and pushed the another end with all his strength.
“There we go…oooh!...”
The oakpine slowly started to lift. The Paluchard finally crawled from under the tree, and put his head onto the Count’s shoulder, as a sign of gratitude.
“Come on”, Razoff grumbled. “Well, now fly home, your pack must be worrying.”
The Paluchard sighed.
“What? You can’t?”
Only now the swamp teensie saw that one of the fingers on the creature’s head is broken. Of course, it must hurt to fly like that, no matter what’s a reason, a fight with some bullies or your own stupidity. Maybe because of it the wind brought this poor guy here.
“Let me look…” – Razoff held out his hand to check the Paluchard’s broken finger, but the creature twitched in fear.
“Don’t be afraid, silly, calm down.”
And despite all groans and moans of his “patient”, the Count skillfully bandaged the finger with his handskerchief.
“Well, it’s over… Feel better now, eeerrr… Tridig?”
Razoff laughed at his own sudden thought. Tridig! Isn’t it a perfect name for a Paluchard with three fingers - three digits?
“Tridig?..”, the hunter repeated.
The Paluchard turned his head and looked at him with curiousity.
“Splendid!”, Razoff smiled. “If you’ve got a name, you must get a home. Mind if I take you to my place?”
Tridig nodded and rubbed his head against the Count’s shoulder once again.
Next morning, Razoff took the young Paluchard to his mansion, and made him a shelter where the old King of the pack lived before. Almost nothing changed in the dungeons - except for the empty broken cages, which Razoff threw away, and the boulder on the chain, which wasn’t needed any more.
Soon afterwards, Tridig finally got well. And Razoff got more things to take care of: it was time to learn the new pet to fly with a saddle. That’s when Orion’s diaries came in handy again.
* * *
“…And I’m still thinking”, told Razoff. “What if my Tridig is some great-great-great-great-grandchild of my great-great-great-grandfather’s Ayho?.. Or why else he found exactly me? But the diaries say nothing of it. That’s all.”
The end