“Every word I utter puts me through incredible pain. Why don’t you just come back here and I’ll say it it a normal speaking voice.”

“I would like to be sure you said what I think you just said before I even think about taking another step in any direction thank you very much kind sirrah!”

“Fine. You’re in the Wayword Woods! You won’t last five seconds—”

Before the wizard could even finish his sentence, Sir Broderick stood beside him, trembling with fear and alcoholism.

“Fine. I’ll help you.”

“Excellent. If you would kindly—”

“Wait, wait, wait a second there, misirrah wizard. Clutch your mules. Do you know who I am?”

The wizard sighed sardonically, then layered on a thicc cream of sarcasm in his inflection. “Yes.”

“You do? Truly, I’m impressed. You must be a great wizard indeed.”

“Did you not hear the thicc cream of sarcasm I put forth into that ‘Yes’? How the hen would I know who you are? Do I look like I’ve cast a bunch of clairvoyance spells?”

Wizards, witches and warlocks that casted clairvoyance spells would slowly gain more and more acne and body hair, and their muscles eventually would start wasting in atrophy. There was legend of a great clairvoyant wizard that had lived for centuries, but of course the trade off was that that wizard was literally a blob of skin, hair and pimples that fed directly through food spells. Most people found the idea of that quite repulsive, so clairvoyance spells were very unpopular.

The sole exception was in those wizards, witches and warlocks that found themselves having a lot of trouble getting dates. Usually it was teenage wizards, witches and warlocks save for a couple of older folks that had created a significant other out of magic and had grown tired of casting spells to make said significant other continue to function as if it were a normal person and not esssentially a jumble of knotted magic. Ironically the more those wizards, witches and warlocks that used clairvoyance spells to hopefully win them a significant other used those clairvoyance spells the more they ended up hurting their chances, as the acne and muscle wasting and body hair did eventually compound into a quite unattractive state. And what hood is a clairvoyance spell when everyone is simply thinking ‘Wow, what’s wrong with them that they can’t get a date without a clairvoyance spell?’ and ‘If that person was a little smarter they could just use clairvoyance spells less and just look like they’re going through puberty but no they just kept going and now they look awful. How could I ever date someone so full of hubris?’ Of course the real victims here were the wizards, witches and warlocks who just happened to get acne and body hair and not be super muscular during and after puberty, because they were often mistaken for idiots who used clairvoyance spells.

“I am Sir Broderick the Shitfaced.”

The wizard observed the shit on Sir Broderick’s face. “I see that.”

“Oh. That’s actually unrelated to my title. But henceforth and wherefore I’ve told you my title, sirrah, and might I say it is high time I request yours?”

“What an outrageous overuse of words to in the end say very little,” tut tutted the wizard with a mischevious glint in his eyes that he had gained from casting a spell, “I am the esteemed wizard Dr. Krumbunculus.”

“Pleased to make a vague social association with you, esteemed wizard Dr. Krumbunculus.”

“Same to you, Sir Broderick the Shitfaced.”

“Once again, I am honored to enscribe your moniker in my mental lexicon, esteemed wizard Dr. Krumbunculus.”

“And I to you am esteemed in a similar fashion to chisel your cognomen on the limestone tablet in my brain palace, Sir Broderick the Shitfaced.”

On they continued for about ten minutes, saying essentially the same thing with progressively absurder language.

It was a contemporary convention enacted in The Year of Our Gourd three quintillion and eighty seven. When referred to in writing it was often abbreviated to the shape of a phallus with a plus sign and the number eighty seven to its right, unless one was in a fantasy eastern country in which case it would be represented with the shape of labia with a plus sign and the number eighty seven to its left. The numbers were shaped the same way on all sides of the world because it made it easier of everyone who wanted to sell anything to foreigners to know how to write ‘twenty chickensfeed’ without hiring some wraithy bastard of a wizard to cast an overpriced translation spell all the while giving you the thiccest bit of attitude possible.

There were thousands of social conditions that everyone ignored and made fun of all the time, but this one stuck regardless of ridicule because it was a great excuse to help you remember someone’s name. There were no ‘I only remember faces, not names’ people. And if there were, they didn’t last long, because everyone knew they were full of shit and just not paying attention and parroting a person’s name to them for ten whole minutes. Give or take.

***

“Give it or take it,” grunted the ogrelike blob of a man.

The statue-of-david-of-a-woman who was overseeing the somewhat-aloof-normal-sized-yet-still-moderately-imposing-woman who had earlier attempted to accost Sir Broderick the Shitfaced for being what she ascertained to be a skulduggerous skyrate shrugged. Then she turned to the omewhat-aloof-normal-sized-yet-still-moderately-imposing-woman who had earlier attempted to accost Sir Broderick the Shitfaced for being what she ascertained to be a skulduggerous skyrate.

“I think we’ll take it. What do you say, Pamela?” grunted the gargantuan Dorma. Yes, her name was Dorma, the humongous-Adams-fir-of-a-woman’s name was Dorma. It was a family name, in fact, one that went back many centuries.

Dorma’s deep yet startlingly feminine voice echoed through Pamela’s earmarimbas. Pamela thought to herself that Dorma might as well have been three women stacked on top of eachother covered in muscles and other people’s fear.

Pamela’s full title, at least the one said often behind her back, was Pamela the Not Quite Entirely Aware of Anything Really, though she likened to call herself ‘Pamela the Queer. That was, until for many Caldonians ‘the Queer’ morphed into having a significantly different meaning and Pamela, not wanting to lead any woman on with what she considered to be her rather noncommital, oft described as waterbread view of sexuality, decided to go by simply ‘Pamela.’

It was an odd choice, Dorma had to admit. But when your title is Dorma the Incredibly Intimidating and Surprisingly Mammothlike and you have a personality that harmonizes well with that the idea idea of ever shortening or throwing out your title altogether for simply one plain name would always seem odd.

Pamela was not inclined to ‘take it.’ Or ‘give it.’ Or anything in between or tangentially related. She held the Gourd’s word in high regard. All skyrates, suspected or otherwise, were subject to immediate accosting and, after a legally biased trial, often sent to the chambers of Glabbisham the Disembowler.

“Pamela, I know you hold the Gourd’s word in high regard, but even I know when to give up. You were the only one that saw this skyrate man. How can we possibly justify spending other people’s money on investigating the matter when we can just as easily go get right sozzled til our pores reek all week? What evidence do we have to believe you, or even care that you maybe had a run in with a particularly absent minded skyrate? Might I remind you of last summer, when we spent many a week chasing the wild goose people?”

Pamela looked down shamefully.

“And that they ended up being a couple of crustacian punks from fantasty Ontario on a vacation?”

Pamela in this moment hated Dorma. Where did she get off, acting like such a female four legged human companion animal, also sometimes called a vitch? Asserting that she had just dreamed up her meeting with that thiccly mustached, awkwardly large bellied, skeletaly wraithlike, saucepan wearing figure of Sir Broderick the Shitfaced Skyrate. Hadn’t Dorma ever heard that the truth was stranger than fiction? Pamela would’ve smacked Dorma around like a boxing dummy if Dorma wasn’t twice her size and her immediate superior and stinky and generally the scariest entity Pamela had ever encountered.

“I guess I’ll give up, if that’s what you would like, Dorma,” sighed Pamela, attempting to lie like a teenager that had no ability to lie convincingly while sketching another rough estimate of Sir Broderick the Shitfaced Skyrate’s naked body with a little less body hair than last time.

Dorma caught visible wind of this sketch and balked.

“What the muddy hen is this?” she bellowed, snatching Pamela’s notepad and gaping in meniacal awe. “Is this how you spend your time?”

Pamela stared at fantasy bugs crawling across the ground and cannabalizing eachother bashfully with an exhasperated sigh. “It helped me remember the events of the encounter. I do that all the time. You know this about me, Dorma.”

“I can scarcely see how! Looks to me like you’re drawing obscene images of someone you might fancy, if that someone existed!” chuckled Dorma, showing the shrekesque male in front of them Pamela’s drawings. “I mean look at this shit, Carl!”