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Post by Princess Katie on Feb 19, 2008 2:46:36 GMT -5
Nellie frowned, pressing the discolored skin around her eye, wincing at the dull pain that resulted. Her mother hadn’t been too happy that Nellie had, for the second time in recent days, shirked her chores and went ‘gallivanting about, doin’ God-knows-what with God-knows-who’. So, she punched Nellie in the face, a punishment that Nellie didn’t even consider inappropriate. She had, after all, neglected to take the sheep out grazing, milk the cows, sheer numbers Fourteen through Twenty-Six, and churn the butter.
So, today she had been working extra-hard. So hard, her striped yellow-and-lavender gown showed some grass stains and some clinging pastel wool. Nellie had already accomplished most of the tasks on her to-do list, except for to take the sheep to the pasture on the opposite side of the creek. And everyone knows Odd-Numbered Counting Sheep hate crossing running water.
“Come ON y’ stupid beastie! It’s just a li’le creek!” Nellie pushed on the rump of the seafoam green Eleven, but the ewe did not budge. “Let’s gooooooooooooooooooo!”
“Bahhhhhhhh,” said the sheep, in a shocking instance of direct insubordination.
Now quite irate, Nellie reared back to get better momentum, and shoved the sheep over the creek. Well, she would have, of course, except the sheep sidestepped her brilliant attack and the forces of gravity sent her rolling down the tiny, rocky embankment, right into the drink.
This was too much for the tired, black-eyed shepherdess to take. She pulled off her bonnet and tossed it down next to her in the water. Then, she cried. Big, pathetic, damsel-y tears.
*D.I.D. = Damsel In Distress. Go watch Hercules.
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Post by Marguerite on Feb 19, 2008 2:58:22 GMT -5
By dint of considerable effort hiding in bushes, Gavin had made it through another day without having to help anyone at all. Helmet under his arm, he very cheerily led his horse back through Dreamland, looking forward to a nice shower, possibly a nap, Chinese take-out, and the luxury of ignoring every single person who wanted him to do something.
It was nice to get a chance to be lazy and just hide away the embarassing heroic-
Someone started crying.
Oh crap.
Gavin wearily walked over to the Dream sobbing in the middle of a creek. "Hello-my-name-is-Sir-Gwalchgwyn- the- Greene- Knighte- Maedenie’s- Knighte-Defeandere- of- Wertue-please- call- me- Gavin- because- I- hate- my- name- do- you- need- help- no- good- okay- bye."
And he would have made a clean get away (would have! He could smell the Chinese take-out!) if he hadn't noticed she had a black eye. Chivalry rising to the fore, Gavin clanked over, looping the horse's reigns over a tree-branch. "Hey, are you okay? Do you need someone to take a look at that eye for you? Who did it?"
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Post by Princess Katie on Feb 19, 2008 3:22:22 GMT -5
“No,” sob, “I’m,” sob, “not,” sob, “okay!” Shuddering breath.
“Thesheeppushedmeintothecreekcauseshedidn’twannagoacrossbutIhavetotakeheroverthehill. AndI’mjusttryingtodoallmychoressoIcannotgetinmoretroubleand,” she paused to breathe, then sniffle, “hopefullygotobedwiffsuppertonight.” Nellie withdrew her handkerchief from the pocket on her apron, and started to cry again when she realized that was wet too.
Her crying stopped suddenly when the rest of his question hit her. “Me eye? Whassamatter wiff me eye?” The ever-slow Nellie clasped her right eye with her soggy hand, trying to diagnose it by touch. Of course, she was feeling the non-bruised eye, so she was getting nowhere, and fast. Then she remembered, oh yeah! The hideous shiner on her left eye.
“Oooh, thiiiiiisss! It’s not that bad, ac’chlly. I mean. Unless you touch it. Or blink real hard like this,” Nellie demonstrated by squinting her eye shut as hard as she could, which was surprisingly not the most adorable thing ever. “Ouch! Yeah, see, that hurts something fierce, it does. But jus’ normal like this,” she said, pointing at it, “it’s fine. Nuffin’ t’ worry about.”
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Post by Marguerite on Feb 19, 2008 16:48:16 GMT -5
"Oh there, there," Gavin said helplessly. He had a handkerchief that morning. Where did he put it? And it was... oh. In his pants pocket. The pants underneath his blasted armor.
'Er, maybe you shouldn't do that?" Gavin suggested. "You might want to put that handkerchief on your eye. Er... do you... need me to help with your chores?"
Psh. Some job for a knight-in-not-quite-shining-armor. Slay a dragon? Rescue a maiden from the top of the tallest tower in a castle? Tilt against an evil knight? Pull a sword out of stone?
Nope. Sheep-herding all the way.
Gavin glumly grabbed his (blunt- he really ought to sharpen it) lance and used it to prod at a sheep. "Move."
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Post by Miss Jack on Feb 19, 2008 20:11:24 GMT -5
This was Gavin's fault. She'd stopped by his work, but he was already gone. She really hadn't intended to look for him this far, it wasn't terribly important, after all. But try telling that to an overly-busy-and-stressed fairy godmother. Samantha had, politely and simply, asked if she knew where Gavin was and one hasty, impatient tap of the wand later, and she had landed in these god-forsaken fields.
Where was an errant knight when you needed one? If nothing else, she would definitely be needing a ride home.
She stomped over, hiking up her skirts, until she reached the creek bed. Relief hit her face when she saw Gavin. "Oh, Gavin, I...." she trailed off, finally catching sight of Nellie. "Oh my, are you alright? You do realize you're sitting in a steam of water, don't you?" The smell of farm animals hit her and she daintily covered her now-wrinkled nose with a gloved hand. How quaint.
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Post by Marguerite on Feb 19, 2008 20:21:32 GMT -5
Gavin winced. Someone had found him? Craaaaaaaap.
"Yeah? Can I...."
Craaaaaaaaap, Samantha. Did he even have a fairy godmother? What was the good of having one if his life still sucked this much and he had the luck of a double-amputee rabbit?
He blushed furiously and tried to pretend to be doing something much cooler than herding sheep. There really wasn't anything else that he could be doing whle dressed in armor and poking a sheep with an unsharpened lance. "Er, hi. Can I help you?"
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Post by Miss Jack on Feb 19, 2008 20:28:36 GMT -5
She watched him with some amount of amused interest, before slowly saying, "Nooo... Well. I had hoped to ask you to tea since we hadn't spoken for awhile, and that delightful fairy godmother of yours.... transported me here." She wasn't her usual amount of angry, as she was still sort of bewildered by the whole occurence. She glanced at him, then his lance, then the sheep. "And now I'm afraid I need a ride home."
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Post by Princess Katie on Feb 19, 2008 20:48:00 GMT -5
Nellie, as instructed, clamped her damp handkerchief over her (correct, this time) eye and stood. The mud that had splattered over her little pastel gown seemed to slide off as if it were constructed of plastic wrap. Apparently, since Samantha was on her right side, Nellie didn’t see her. She vaguely wondered where that other voice was coming from, but Nellie certainly didn’t have time to search after phantom voices. She knelt to examine the scrapes she acquired on her knee and elbow during her little tumble down the hill, and when she deemed them non-fatal, she rolled up her sleeves started back up the rocky embankment.
“Ay, Mr. Sir Whatsyerface. Yer never gonna get her to move like tha’. She’s gonna ‘ave to be carried across,” Nellie declared, very matter-of-factly. The soggy shepherdess whistled, and a few even-numbered ewes took a graceful, nearly gravity-defying arch, over the creek. The odd-numbered ones pretended not to hear her. Nellie frowned and grabbed up a little lamb, marked with a 7, it was all she could manage with one arm, (the other was still covering her eye. She hadn’t been instructed to move it yet, and free-thought wasn’t exactly her thing.) and clambered back down the hill, crossed the creek using a half-submerged bridge of rocks, and tossed it onto the other side of the hill.
It was then she saw Samantha. “Ohh. ‘Ey there. Where’jyou come from?”
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Post by Marguerite on Feb 19, 2008 21:07:25 GMT -5
"Er, sorry about that," Gavin said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. "My fairy godmother is, er... persistant."
Wait, what? Her? Looking for him? To ask him to tea? Like, on a date?
Before Gavin had time to process this information, Nellie began to badger him about the sheep.
... well, and he'd thought the situation couldn't get anymore embarassing.
"I'm not sure you noticed," Gavin said, with the sort of repressed hysteria characteristic of him when confronted with far too many causes for embarassment, "but I'm in armor. I can't step into the stream because I'll rust."
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Post by Miss Jack on Feb 19, 2008 21:20:16 GMT -5
"I, um..." Samantha blinked at Nellie, unsure of how to respond. She couldn't even understand everything she was saying. She gave Gavin a sideways glance, but he was in stressed/embarrassed mode. (Also known as, every second emotion). She laughed before she could stop herself, the mental image of him rusting in the creek passing through her mind. She quickly covered her mouth (it was most unladylike, after all), but another giggle slipped through. She was fairly certain he was only intentionally humorous half of the time, and the other half it was quite by accident, but even so. He was cute.
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Post by Princess Katie on Feb 19, 2008 22:09:09 GMT -5
Nellie stared blankly at Gavin.
“Well, then why’d y’ go an’ volunteer to ‘elp if you ain’t gonna ‘elp?” She asked, not in an accusatory manner, but rather, more of a ‘duhhh’-type thing. “If yer not gonna be any use, y’might as well leave.”
Necessity dictated that Nellie remove the handkerchief from her eye, so she could slip underneath the ever-stubborn Eleven, and hauled her up over her shoulders. “’Scuse me,” she chirped, ignoring the sheep’s frantic bleating, took her across the river, and tossed her to the other side.
Ah, okay. Only like, forty more sheep to go, then? She should be done sometime before sunset.
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Post by Marguerite on Feb 19, 2008 22:42:38 GMT -5
"Because," Gavin said, at the point of muffled hysteria that would cause most people to bludgen their neighbors to death with socket wrenches, "when I offered to help I had no idea you wanted me to wade through a stream in plate metal."
He took a deep breath. Calm, calm. He was in his calm place. He was completely zen.
Actually no, he wasn't and the whole centering thing wasn't working, so Gavin decided it would be much healthier if he externalized his anger. When he was more-or-less sure Samantha and Nellie weren't looking at him, Gavin kicked one of the sheep. It went flying over the creek.
Gavin stared. "Well. Problem solved."
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Post by Miss Jack on Feb 19, 2008 22:50:07 GMT -5
It didn't really matter that they "weren't looking", because the sheep gave a rather loud yell of protest as it flew through the air. Samantha gaped, a hand flying to her collar bone. She was hardly an animal rights protector, and particularly was not worried about smelly sheep, but.... still. She didn't say anything, but graced him with a rather dubious expression.
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Post by Princess Katie on Feb 19, 2008 23:04:49 GMT -5
“I,” Nellie began, kneeling to grab a particularly fluffy robin-egg’s blue sheep, “don’t want chya t’ do anyfin’. Yer the one who came over here like some kind of…” luckily, her need to find an analogy synonymous with “knight in shining armor” (which would have totally ruined her point if she used it) was diminished as she heard the cry of distress from her dear sheep.
She turned to fix Gavin with a rather non-threatening glare, dropping the blue sheep so she could put her hands on her hips. “Did you just toss me sheep from over here? Tha’s not very nice. You could’ve very well broke it’s li’le legs, then wot?”
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Post by Marguerite on Feb 19, 2008 23:59:57 GMT -5
Gavin turned bright red. "Oh, sorry. Er, I... he got across didn't he?"
There really wasn't much he could do in the way of defending his sheep-kicking spat but that wasn't about to stop him from trying anyways. "I mean, no harm done, he's across and has all his limbs intact. And I mean, sure, it's an unusual sort of solution, but I'm chivalrously helping you get your sheep across without turning into the Tin Man, and, y'know, people really shouldn't punish original thought because that leads to stagnation and a lack of sheep on the other side of the creek and, er... yeah. The sheep's fine!"
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