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Flying Fumigator Lizard Gets Revenge on Childhood Bullies
Stinkscale Slough, Borderlands - Often, war is reduced to sweeping descriptions of troop movements and staggering casualty statistics. Lost in such portrayals are the intensely personal stories of each soldier. This week, The Once Upon A Times presents the tale of one such soldier fighting for the Odorous Realms. What motivated him to sign up? How did his life lead him here?
Smellomander is a flying fumigator lizard--an aerial ally of the goblins. He stretches fifteen feet from snout to tail, his scales glowing rusty red. Unlike their colossal dragonosaurus cousins, fumigators do not breathe fire, but acrid smoke plumes from Smellomander's nostrils.
"I was born in the Borderlands," he tells me during a break in his patrols. "But I wasn't raised by my parents. Somehow, my egg ended up mixed in with duck eggs on a farm. When I hatched, my brothers and sisters teased me mercilessly. Ugly Duckling, they called me. Stinky Duckling. They thought I was a turkey hatchling. A turkey! And they made me swim everyday in Prettiripple Pond. Well, you can imagine how I hated that! Splashing around in cool water isn't exactly ideal for the growth of a smoking hot lizard."
As soon as he was old enough, Smellomander escaped the farm near Prettiripple Pond. He headed east, to the Pleasant Kingdoms. "I thought I would be accepted there. I heard everyone was friendly, but wherever I went, it was always the same. Ugly duckling. Stinky duckling. I stayed with a cat and a hen for a while, but they threw me out. I was caught by some hunting dogs but I stank so much they wouldn't eat me. That was one good thing about reeking, but it was a lonely time."
What kept the little lizard going through those dark days? "I guess I just kept feeling like the world was wider than what I'd seen. I knew there would be some place where I'd be accepted."
He found that place when he went west, into the Most Dreaded and Odorous Realms. "I remember it so clearly. I had landed beside a stream and these three great big winged lizards were on the far bank. They were sticking their smoking snouts in the water and when they did, the stream would turn green and foul and all the fish would bubble up, dead, for them to eat. I wished I could do it, even though I was a duck. I waddled up to talk to them and that's when I saw my reflection in the water. I looked just like them. Smelled like them too. That's when I realized I was actually a fumigator. They were on their way to sign up for the fight against the Pleasant Kingdoms, so I went with them. It's gone well so far."
Indeed, last weekend the forces of the Odorous Realms carried out a series of successful attacks. With the full might of the mysterious Count Ruthless behind them, the goblins and their allies are on the offensive, pushing into Borderland territory and the fringes of the Pleasant Kingdoms. The fumigators captured wide swathes of agricultural land in a single day, poisoning water supplies and trapping pleasant soldiers in clouds of their signature smoke.
"I led the assault on Prettiripple Pond," Smellomander explains, his eyes burning even brighter than usual. "It's not Prettiripple Pond anymore. We're calling it Stinkscale Slough now. I'm not going to lie, it felt good to confront my old bullies and even better to eat most of them. I do feel a little bad about it... I feel worse for the ducks that got away, actually. They have to keep living with all that pressure to be the most beautiful, the most stylish. I hear it's like that for humans in the Pleasant Kingdoms too. What an exhausting way to live."
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Are you literate? If you're reading this, you probably are! Give the original fairy tale that inspired this article a read: The Ugly Duckling, by Hans Christian Andersen (1843).
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Stay tuned next Tuesday for another Special Edition of The Once Upon A Times...
