A Tale of Gnomes

Hello my fluffy friends! As you might already tell, today I've decided to write my story for Dueparole3 in English. I didn't do it cause I wanna show off how cool and awesome and sunshiny I am: I did it cause this time it was Mattes (also known as Meepdude) to choose the words and I thought it'd be nice if he'd be able to read my story as well. 

NOW YOU NEED TO, BY THE WAY!!!  C:
The story was inspired by something I've read, about legends from the Indigenous Australians. Their gods created all the world by singing names, I guess. Well, I find this pretty damn IMAGINATIVE!

I'd just like to make one more thing clear: Brad and Fefe, YOU DON'T NEED TO WRITE IN ENGLISH! DON'T DO IT, YOU FOOLS! Fuggite, sciocchi :D

I did it for my pressssssciooussssss.

Ok, one last note: in English my dictionary and language-skills shrink down to the size of a strawberry. Just sayin' :)

                                                                      A TALE OF GNOMES

Mr. Sausage was very annoyed by now, as he slammed the door closed behind him to enter the reassuring shadows of his dwelling.

“Furf furf…cretin…furf furf”, (“furf”, far from having any meaning at all, is simply a multipurpose Gnomish word, useful to replace any other one or to gain time when ignoring an answer. “Cretin”, on the other hand, is an insult which later became part of the Human language as well).

The many fanciful insults the annoyed Gnome was now muttering between one “furf” and the other were meant for his neighbor, Mr. Slimy. Owing his name to his runny nose*, Mr. Slimy loved sitting for hours on the doormat in front of his mushroom-home, hoping in the transit of some neighbor he could reproach for anything he could think of.

“Furf…furf! What kind of idiot could ever live in a mushroom, anyway?”, Mr. Sausage kept going as he moved to his laboratory, casually grabbing and shaking different odd-shaped tools. 

A few minutes earlier that morning, Mr. Slimy had intercepted him on his way back from the hunt for magic metals and rocks to use in the lab and had sprung up from the doormat, sprinting to be fast enough and get on Mr. Sausage’s path before he could carry on and flee.

“Mr. Sausage? Got a minute, Mr. Sausage?”,  he had called, sniffing repeatedly and staring ostentatiously at our Gnome’s big round belly.

The owner of said belly had sighed and, as always, painfully decided not to run the neighbor over with his wheelbarrow. Instead, he stopped and answered Slimy’s impolite stare with a red face (just like a sausage’s, if only sausages would have faces!) and frowning eyebrows.

“What is it you want today…furf?”. In this case, “furf” had clearly taken the place of something much worse**.

“Why, nothing much, of course!”, cried the neighbor, sniffing louder than ever. “Just a little remark on last night, my friend, a little remark…that laboratory of yours, you know. I could swear I’ve heard odd sounds coming from it around two in the morning, my dear Sausage.  And, rabbits eat my house if I lie, a thin, wriggly something fell on my roof around sunrise, for I have clearly heard it going ‘wab wab-wab wab’ as it bounced and disappeared somewhere behind my mushroom”.

“’Wab wab’!”, laughed Mr. Sausage, his face ‘sausage-er’ than ever. “That stuff you’ve got in your nose must’ve gotten to your brain after the last two hundred years of sniffing, must be. Now if you excuse me, I gotta bring these metal scraps up to my house”.

That said, he had outflanked an outraged and sniffing Mr. Slimy and walked the few more gnomecentimeters left to his tree house. Then, after hoisting up the wheelbarrow through a complicated mechanism of ropes, he had climbed the little ladder leading to the wood-carved door in the tree-trunk, in which he had disappeared.

This is where we had begun our story, with Mr. Sausage being very annoyed and walking in the house and slamming the door and picking up tools at random, and doing all that stuff old Gnomes do when they’re very angry, especially if they’re quite grumpy-natured, too.

But as he felt calm again a few seconds later, he started reasoning quickly, for quick were his wits. He knew he had no time to be restless in his own tree-house: what his neighbor had said was, for once, true. Mr.Sausage had understood exactly what the ‘wab-wabbing’ thing was, he had been looking for it that morning after losing it and he needed it back.

Quickly, he opened the backdoor (which was also some kind of secret door: no other Gnomes knew of it, at least not that nosy old Slimy; and that alone was enough),slid down the tree-trunk using an old rope and ran behind his neighbor’s mushroom-home, as sneaky as a round, red-faced Gnome could be. It didn’t take long until he sighted the shining of metal among the tall grass.

“There! There it is! Furf furf furf…” Furfing in excitement went the old Gnome, and picked up a long string of the shiniest metal: very thin it was, and flexible, and at a closer look it was possible to notice it was made of different tinier strings, braided together to form one.

Mr. Sausage rolled up the string (which made ‘wab-wabbing’ sounds as it wobbled threateningly through the air), put it in his pocket and climbed up the rope once more. As he closed the backdoor behind him, he looked around to make sure nobody was observing him: there was no one to be seen. The time was right to ultimate his invention!

First of all, he fed the Caterpillar*** (“why, thank you!”). Then, hasty as ever he headed once more to the laboratory where, especially in the last year, he used to spend most of his time. The hands shaking in expectation, he reached under the desk and picked up a strange object, whose equals had yet never been seen in the whole World; at least, not as far as Gnomes knew. This object had pretty much the curvy shape of a hourglass, but it was made of metal and its sides were quite flat. Something like a long, flat wooden stick started from the center of the curves and went straight out of the metal shape, culminating with a larger rectangular tip. Five strings ran from this tip to the other end of the fine wooden stick. Some of these strings were made of a strange, transparent material; but two of them looked shiny and braided and metal-like, just like the one Mr. Sausage had just picked up from the field.

Sweat dropped down his red face as he tied the last string close to the two metal ones. With those sausage-like fingers he had, for some minutes it seemed highly unlikely that he would succeed in this task. But then, with a cry of victory, the Gnome jumped up from his stool and shook the complete object in the air. In that moment a brave sunray, which had found his way through the only tiny window, fell upon the instrument: and the Guitar shone gloriously in the morning light. For this is how Mr. Sausage had secretly decided to name his invention: Guitar.

And this Guitar, mind you, was a very magical instrument. It was made of the legendary metals found in the Lizard Cave, a nearby site well known by all Gnomes in which no one dared venture, for many were the legends told about it. Often, in stormy nights, when the children were asleep, the inhabitants of the Gnome village would whisper of bloody battles, dead Gnome heroes and terrible fire-spitting lizards with wings.

“Furf furf…tales for idiots!”, is what Mr. Sausage had always said about it. “Nothing exists if I can’t imagine it”. And maybe he was right, cause being a very imaginative Gnome as he was, he had never been able to picture those fire-spitting lizards in his head. For this reason, the whole story was furf. And for this same reason, many a time he had entered the cave and extracted the precious minerals and metals.

Mr. Sausage already had an idea of the magic this Guitar of his could produce. He amorously caressed the strings with the right hand. Then suddenly, after grabbing the wooden handle quite tight with his left hand and spreading his fingers all over it in a random fashion, he hit all the strings very fast with his right. At the same time he sang ‘Hairy-footed brush!’ in ancient Gnomish.  And, sure enough,  a beard-brush with hairy wooden feet appeared out of thin hair and sat, wooden, on the floor. The Caterpillar was now cautiously looking at the Gnome as if thinking he was a total furf.

But little did Mr. Sausage care. “YIPPEEEE!”, he shouted and, strapping the Guitar to his back with strings made of braided grass, he ran out of the backdoor again and down into the field. As soon as he disappeared into the wild nature that surrounded his tree, he grabbed the magical invention again and drew more music from it.

“Mucus with a home!”, he called in ancient Gnomish, inventing a new creature. One second later, a huge odd animal with a shell on its back**** was laying on top of his neighbor’s mushroom-house. Slowly, showing evident satisfaction, it bit a piece of the roof off. Of course, Mr. Slimy’s slimy nose immediately appeared  at the window:

“Curses!!! This is gonna take weeks to fix! Mrs. Slimy!!!”, he sniffed and sniffed, while Mr. Sausage laughed behind the grass. But he was not an evil Gnome and in ancient Gnomish he kindly whispered to the snail that it’d better have a nice stroll somewhere else in the forest. So, still chewing on the juicy piece of mushroom, the snail left, leaving a shiny trail of slime in Mr. Slimy’s garden.

Mr. Sausage merrily followed the animal, dancing and playing, still getting obvious pleasure from his neighbor’s complaints echoing behind him. Every time he stroked the magical strings with his fingers, new inebriating sounds filled the air; every time he sang the name of an inexistent thing, it mysteriously appeared.

“I made it! I made it! Legless lizard!”,  he shouted and sang in excitement, so that a legless lizard***** appeared and immediately slithered away, a look of evident outrage on its face. 

All day until dusk the Gnome ran like this in the forest, screaming new names, his guitar proudly singing its existence to the world. This was the time when countless objects, plants and creatures were born; some of them were destined to exist for hundreds, thousands of years, others just made a short appearance in the constant flowing of time.

Until at one point, as the sky turned red and the sun almost disappeared behind the enormous trees, Mr. Sausage sat thoughtfully on a stone. He was panting after all that running, but little did he care: all he could think of now was one more thing, something he had always desired. He was wondering if it’d be fair to ask it to the magical instrument he had put into existence.

“The hell!”, he said out loud in the end. “What could go wrong? What a bunch of furf!”

One last time he stood up, and struck the strings with his right hand. As a low pitched note vibrated from the Guitar, he sang: “Me being tall, and thin, and fair skinned! And a beautiful lady of the same size by my side!”.

He understood this was not what the Guitar was made for when something that felt like an earthquake unleashed somewhere behind him. Painfully conscious of still being short, red and fat as always, Mr. Sausage turned and thus witnessed the event that would change Earth forever: there were two huge creatures, standing among the trees. Their shapes had something to do with those of Gnomes, yet they were different. First of all, those creatures were tall. Very tall. ‘Almost two meters’, Mr. Sausage thought to himself. Secondly, they were not round. Actually, they were much taller than wide, which alone is something too wonderful and unimaginable even in a Gnome’s wildest dreams. Last but not least, their skin was fair and they had no beard. This one feature at least was something in which, Mr. Sausage was sure, he resulted much prettier than them.

As the huge creatures moved staggering in the forest, our Gnome wisely decided it was time to get back home. In fact, he fled with as much dignity as possible, for a round little creature wearing a red pointy hat. 

By now, the readers might have understood that the two beings, born by mistake, were the first woman and the first man. Now, since that ancient time when a Gnome sang them to existence, their number has grown and their habits have changed, but still these creatures are nothing but women and men. For thousands of years they’ve thought of stories that would explain their own creation; all of them were great, all the Creators glorious. How fun it will be, when the kin of Humans will finally look down and see the Gnomes for the first time! How hilarious, when they’ll hear the ancient Gnome tales, and learn the truth about their origin! For Humans are like they are, and little would they fancy to hear that the one to whom they owe their very existence is no one else but our short, fat, red-faced Mr. Sausage!

                                                                     THE END

                                                                           …

It might also be that our readers have more interest in knowing what became of our Gnome, than what became of Humans.
Well, it will make everybody’s heart lighter to know that Mr. Sausage got to be very famous in the village, because of his marvelous invention. With his Guitar he created a yellow, light form of alcohol that would make everybody agree on subjects they wouldn’t normally agree on (‘beer’, I guess, was the name of this magical liquid), he made flowers grow tall in the gardens of kind-hearted Gnomes. In other words, from grumpy and furfy as he was, he turned into a friendly Gnome, and the sun shone upon his hairy smile. It didn’t take long before pretty Ms. Braids fell in love with him; and it took even less for Mr. Sausage to love her back!

 Today the two Gnomes and their Guitar live together in the old tree house. And now the house has two floors and no backdoor, and many windows bring the daylight into its former darkness, and three hairy Caterpillars can dwell and dine in its sun-lit rooms.

*Among Gnomes, the final name evokes some characteristic of the subject and is given with the coming of age, around the seventy-sixth birthday. Before, children and youngsters are just called with provisory names, or simply Furf.  

**It is therefore undeniable, how this word could be put into good use in the language of Humans as well.

***The Caterpillar is a green, worm-shaped insect with a thousand legs. The reason why he isn’t called just “worm” originates from his relationship with the Gnomes: it’s not uncommon for Gnome households to host, depending on the size of the house, one or more Caterpillars. These Caterpillars are treated like members of the family, they’re offered food and a home. All they need to do, in exchange, is to serve nine hours a day as pillars for the fragile buildings, which could otherwise collapse on themselves. Having a very small house, Mr. Sausage hosted only one Caterpillar.

****For Humans: snail.

*****Or snake, as it was later called.

Marghe/Elfomiope