Abstract: That is all you need to know
Scribed by Erik Baker
Since the dawn of lunarical magic, sages and wizards have sparred over philosophical differences. The Harkener Age saw the Color Convention last a century before debate on the greatest color was settled [green]. The Gaseous Decade derives its name from the competing delegations who, in championing right versus left as deserving of “preferred” directional status [right], unleashed the curse which led to an outbreak of the rainbow fart plague. And one need look no further than the Chronicles of Recentcy to learn that the riots over the designation of the proper pointer finger [the longest remaining] led to our present-day work shortage for the Ringmakers Guild.
So, one should take heed; nah, one should be cast the full motley fool should one choose to ignore a Wisdomal Edict that these two warring pinnacles of thought issued in consensus:
Never, never f@ck with a pixie.
This scroll humbly sets forth the cautionary tale of Barry of Elderberry, the First of His Name and why he is also the last of his name.
~~~
Maximal Bloom, “Maxi” to her friends, was set to stun at the pixies’ most cherished dazzle: The Feast of the Autumnal. She had spent the last four hours shaving dewdrop patterns into the brown-green moss that covered her lithe body. It had taken the entire previous day to braid her long hair of rosemary into a fresh crown of acorn-adorned curls. Her low-cut, curve-accentuating black sesame dress hinted—within the bounds of decency—to the promise of vigorous youth in the peeking gaps exploiting her midriff. Mack MidgeFly would be there. Maxi’s smirk of confidence was justified: his heather heart didn’t stand a chance.
One can say the night’s events might never have transpired had Barry chosen any other midnight to hand-mow his lawn. Or had he not challenged Guggling Gompher to a battle of ale pong, his teetering path may have steered clear of the phosphorescently-enhanced pixie.
Had Maxi not caught the glint of her own glow reflecting off the spinning bladed-barrel in time to roll-into and fly-out the other end, the night’s termination would have ended in the vice of versa. Though Maxi’s fae dexterity saved her life, it left her scathed: an ankle was nicked; a strawberry sandal in ruins.
Of all the studied languages, Pixiespeak is known for the richness of its vulgarity. Its colloquialisms alone have been known to make the ogres blush. And the expletive conjugations, invested with phrases about one’s parentage, once caused an egg-hatched troll to shed tears—a wholly unnatural occurrence. So when she fluttered to nose level to vent her indignation, Maxi laid into Barry with an expletive-laced rant that would have shaken a demigod to red-blushed shame.
Expletives from a pixie serve as a “do not approach” warning system similar to the rattlesnake’s rattle. Had Barry not so thoroughly enjoyed his favoréd pumpkin ale that eve, he may have recognized the danger he was in. Instead, as Maxi scowled at the inconvenience of having to search out Gwendolyn Garish to borrow an inferior set of sandals, Barry—swatted.
In pixie society, swatting is high offense. And like her coiled compadre, Maxi struck with venomous lightning; the blow left Barry a ripening right eye. Had Maxi not feared further delay would cause her to miss the opening maidens’ dance, more would have followed. But negotiating time, she satisfied the offense by calling upon grapevines to wrap themselves around the human and spit a phrase that must be chastefully translated to: “You’re lucky I don’t wish to chip a nail, else you’d find your head peeking out near a minotaur’s posterior beard.” Arms crossed, Maxi’s head nod—and verification in a nearby puddle that her makeup remained intact—meant she considered the matter settled and set off.
Had Barry not already been sporting a black eye of the left due to an exchange that grew heated during a round of colosseum trivia, he may have simply slept it off under the stars. But Maxi’s blow brought to mind the indignation visited upon him earlier that eve, when Margo Yakdweller spurned his belch-laden courtship with a slap. Barry wormed free of his plant entanglement and followed Maxi’s glittering trail, determined to pour his spirit into the pixie imbroglio.
Fortune favored Maxi and she arrived just as the feast began. Queen FlingFlora had not yet selected her herbal appetizer from among the bouquets of every-color roses. But as Maxi ducked beneath the tulip arch entrance casting a dappled smile to a Mack MidgeFly whose jaw had gone slack upon her bedazzled entrance, a muddy boot sailed overhead. Its trajectory smashed through the festival buffet, rebounded off the tree trunk stage and flipped over to encage Maxi in a foot-odorous prison.
This set into motion a night of firsts for Barry. He had never before seen a pixie banquet. And in all his years of boot billiards, he had never scored a ringer off a bank shot. Barry completed his hattrick of initiatives when his pumpkin-ale-pickled brain plucked a relevant lesson from a school field trip to Lord Highland’s Athenaeum:
Pixies taught the piranha how to feed; their voracious carnivorous appetites are well documented.
Next followed Barry’s first step toward bettering himself since taking that lesson on full contact harp playing. His insight, roughly translated from his addled Astovian vernacular, was: “Oh, crap.” Seconds thereafter, his body took this for a command.
Barry’s cascading sobriety then led to his first unfoolish act in several harvests: Barry ran. He ran as fasteth as his doubleted legs and limited wind could carry him.
Mack MidgeFly was first to reach the boot. He led the team that toppled it and was thence first to behold the seethingly mud-sogged Maxi. She cast away his offered bumblebee coat and uttered the pixie legal equivalent of ‘dibs’:
“Vengeance is Mine.”
Now, as their feast had been ruined, anyone at the banquet technically had the right to call vengeance their own, but the queen bowed to case precedent and granted Maxi the Right of First Reprisal.
Though Barry had a head start, he knew his continued existence depended upon a wise parlay in his next move. By the time he reached his abode, he knew what needed doing. Barry had recently invested all his family’s fortune into the latest gnome invention, hoping its magic would help raise his farm’s yield. He would offer his fealty and this—his greatest treasure—to the pixies as tribute for his life. When he saw the mud-caked Maxi flying toward him, his spirits rose. He could make it right. The Elderberry line would continue!
Barry, not one to read instruction manuals or temper a line of reasoning, twisted the nob full on, on his untested Gnomean 7155 Aqua-Delivery System [colloquially known as the “garden hose”] and pointed it at Maxi. To his thrill, the system delivered upon its promise. A strong spray of water blasted the pixie from the air and cleansed the mud from her attire. In Barry’s premature jubilation, he failed to recall from his year at university that the fashion-obsessed pixie society sets one law above all others:
Never muss the hair.
Mack MidgeFly knew Maxi to be a pixie of particular pluck and aplomb, but what she did next to Barry inaugurated a whole new “Holiday Decorations of Legendary Vengeance” wing in the Hall of Esthetic Sciences at the atheneum. (It is also oft cited in pixie fashion compendiums as the inspiration for the braided testicles trend.) When Maxi finished her transactions on Barry, Mack Midgefly was first to break the awe of silence. Kneeling upon the head of a bent dandelion (in lunar shadow, so as not to upstage the guests marveling at Barry’s spectacularly arranged remains), he asked Maxi for her hand in marriage. The queen, so moved by the eloquence in Barry’s spiraling entrails re-decorating their interrupted festival—and not to be denied her annual celebration—offered to marry them on the spot. But the queen’s moment of zealous enthusiasm, though genuine, threatened her legacy. To have proctored an event without first procuring food and drink?! She may as well have abdicated her very reign to the Court of Gossip. Whilst others gasped at the gaffe, in that moment Maxi shined brightest. She whispered an inspired proposal into the queen’s ear: turn their forthcoming nuptials into a bacchanal and present a Barry buffet as her gift to the couple. With this, the queen kicked off the most epic revelry in all of storied pixie history and earned Maxi a place among the queen’s most-trusted advisors.
~~~
To this day, sages and wizards remain at odds to explain the hankering pixies have for human toenails or how it is they work on pixie physiology as an hallucinogenic. But agreement has once again been reached between their embassies upon two points. The first, the feast following the wedding of Maximal (“Maxi”) Bloom to Mack MidgeFly was where pixies switched from turkey to human as the traditional main dish served during their Feast of the Autumnal. The second, this wedding provides the only record where Barry of Elderberry is listed among the invited guests to a royal event.