Droll Troll

Somewhere on Earth, in a dark forest shrouded in mist, hidden inside an acorn that had always been there, a committee of faerie lords convened around a table of polished obsidian to discuss the urgencies of the day.

Lord Snoot banged his gavel and yelled, "Order please, lords and ladies, thank you very much!"

"But I still haven't made my point!" a very important high elf said. He'd been in an animated discussion with the council's blue-skinned woggim over whether or not fish smelled fishy to other fish.

"Oh really," Lord Snoot said to the elf. "Well, we certainly wouldn't want to interrupt your pressing discussion, now would we? Whatever could it be this time? How heavy is sunlight? Why does celery matter? Why would an elephant ever be in a room? If you gave a shivering street urchin an entire loaf of bread, would he only eat the crust? Or maybe—"

Whatever he was about to say was immediately drowned out by the fairies, who were loudly rushing to tackle these timeless mysteries. Anything to put off "getting to the point" or "arriving at a consensus" or perhaps achieving "relevancy." Each of which, they collectively agreed, was just a little too much like work, and thus more befitting lesser beings.

The discussion raged back and forth at a furious pace while Lord Snoot, the only elf in attendance with any sense of responsibility, banged his gavel repeatedly on his woggim assistant's head to re-establish order. There was something terribly important they needed to discuss today, or so the woggim had told him, and it had nothing to do with heavy sunlight or theoretically stinky fish.

Suddenly, just when all looked to be lost, just when Lord Snoot thought they'd run out of time and the world would suffer a terrible fate because nobody was listening to him, out of nowhere, at that exact moment ... well, actually, nothing happened. However, about two minutes after that, a heavy gong sounded from somewhere in the great hall, reverberating around the magically reinforced acorn walls again and again and again (and again and again (and then again just one more time)).

Some of the more delicate faeries clamped their pointy ears and squeezed their eyes shut. One beautiful celestial elf fainted and fell to the floor, twitching and sputtering things like "celery" and "urrgle," while less aristocratorious beings pointed and snickered and poked each other in the ribs/wings/antennas.

Lord Snoot banged his gavel harder on his poor assistant's head. And the high elf from way back at the beginning of all this stated firmly and loudly, "I have forgotten what I wanted to say," and sat down in a huff.

When everyone had calmed down enough to look up, they saw their number had grown by exactly two trolls, who were standing near the entrance to the hall.

"Ahem," one of the newcomers said. He was a bark-skinned wood troll with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.

The other one, a shorter, somewhat cute troll with a shock of fiery red hair, smirked and cocked his head toward his partner.

"What he said."

Silence descended upon the room so suddenly that all in attendance could now hear the meaty clunks of Lord Snoot's gavel whacking the poor woggim's head for order. But nobody much liked the woggim, so that was fine.

"And just who the keebler are you supposed to be?!" Lord Snoot shouted down at the trollish intruders.

"I'm the guy," the wood troll said, "with the solution to your little problem."

"And together," the shorter, cuter one said, "we shall solve your problem—"

"—shortly!" the wood troll shouted, pointing at his companion and grinning madly.