The Wizard of Elsewhere

1.1 - Fell Doom and Grand Demise

"Unfortunate events come and go like the errant winds. Some are predictable, some are not. But the masterful hand may sail either to more fortunate endings."

- Quote by Wizard (Grandfather) Albernathy Thomas Barnwinkle

* * *

The fall was long but not so long as to be fatal.

Nevertheless the wizard screamed the entire way down, his hands flapping like he was trying to fly.

Midway down he ran out of breath, drew in some more and continued. An action he realized was unwise a moment before he hit the surface of the surging river, the River Whelming - though he did not know that. Just as his toes touched, he quickly gobbled down air with somewhat mixed results, and then sank like a stone.

He hit the river bottom with a dull thud that reverberated up his spine and what might have been an epithet that escaped his lips, except that all that came out were bubbles. Reflexively, he pushed off from the river bed, and, struggling with the water logged arms of his robe and kicking feebly with his legs, slowly began to rise, mostly aided by all the air that had gotten trapped inside of his robe on the way down.

"Oh golly my aged ancestor the fourth," The Wizard hacked out as he broke the surface. "By my hat!"

He coughed up water and wiped furiously at his eyes.It helped only a little.

Water greeted his eyes, and forest and mountains looking far closer than he felt they should and nothing at all that looked like a life raft or a dock or a passerby who might help.

"Fudge cakes," He whispered. "Where am I?"

His eyes alighted on his hat floating sullenly away from him down the river.

"Hat!" He squawked, and started stroking its direction.

The hat did nothing so helpful as to catch onto an overhanging branch, or rock, and instead seemed to be sneering at him with its brim as it rounded a bend in the river and was gone.

"No! Hat! Come back your sodden fudge muffin. I'll" - He tried to pick up speed with his arms, panting already from the exertion. "I'll - I'll turn you into a laundry basket, you big ol' handkerchief. Don't think I won't. Come back here!"

* * *

The great Wizard Ogden Mumfsworth Follyfurth the sixteenth is credited with observing that Wizards, by and large, were not swimmers, or athletes at all for that matter. Oh, you came across the odd story of Merlin striding into battle next to King Arthur, or Gandalf the Grey, cutting down Orks and fighting ring wraiths with the fellowship, but generally, Wizard Ogden said, Wizards tended to prefer a more peaceful life, ensconced in their Libraries and personal studies and, well... studying. This was useful in cultivating the grand, wizardly facial hair and growing the admirable paunch that many wizards were known for, but far far less useful when swimming for your life after your hat down a river.

Also. The wizard Gandalf the Grey, Wizard Ogden noted in a post script, was purely the work of a Sir J. R. Tolkien, and therefore not really a historic figure despite the frequency with which he was quoted, and therefore should be disqualified from the analysis. It was all a mater of perspective.

Wizard Ogden, This particular drenched wizard noted in passed, was wrong. At least on the subject of swimming. It was not so much the lack of fitness, so much as the overwhelmingly large amount of river water a wizard's robes had the capacity to hold. He did not even have that impressive wizardly paunch to help him float. Instead of having grown to fit his wisdom, his girth had instead shrunk to fit his social network, that unhealthy side effect wearing a Wizards Hat in public sometimes incurred.