bangs fist on table again. someone meets a sphynx and it's not at all how they expected it to be.
send me prompts about fantasy creatures!
GOLDEN TREASURES
“Uh, okay,” the professor says, adjusting her wire-framed glasses, “I think I know what the problem is.”
“You think?”
Straightening up, the professor nods firmly. “I know what the problem is. You were expecting an Egyptian sphinx, but what you got was a Greek one. Very different.”
“But I was in Egypt!”
The professor, a fifty-something with small, beady eyes, fixed him with an unimpressed look. “It’s 2018,” she said, dismissively. “People move.”
“A sphinx isn’t a person, exactly,” he argued weakly.
The professor had passed by a laughing dragons burn victim, a young gorgon with chicken pox, a mermaid who was recently granted legs attempting to walk, and two separate cases of Plys Disease on her way to visit her adventurer. Thankfully, the Siren Saint Hospital’s Non-Human Ailments Ward maintained a pleasant atmosphere; their primary concern with healing, and their secondary concern with lighthearted fun.
Her adventurer was not joining in on that latter.
Which was a shame, because she was pretty sure she’d seen someone leaving out a tray of milk, and if there were Brownies here, then there was sure to be some incredible food soon.
“Egyptian sphinges are considered benevolent,” the professor says, and the adventurer scoffs. “Whereas Greek sphinges are a bit… trickier.”
“A bit?” the adventurer demanded. “A bit?”
The professor sighed through her nose. At least this time, the adventurer was coherent. Not like that run-in with the dragon last year. The professor has to suppress a shudder. “Fine, a fair bit trickier. Out of curiosity, what riddle did it give you?”
The adventurer groaned, bringing his hands up to cover his face. He mumbled something that the professor couldn’t hear.
“What was that?”
The adventurer shook his head.
Scoffing, the professor shifted in her bedside chair, crossing one leg over the other. “Your love interest should be here soon,” she said, deciding to switch gears.
“I wish you would stop calling him that.”
Ah-ha! He speaks. The professor smiled, shaking her head fondly.
“We are a bit like those old movies. The adventurer, the professor, and the love interest,” she said it teasingly, poking playfully at the adventurer’s leg.
He rolled his eyes. “We’re not just archetypes.”
“Then I’m sure you managed to prove you were more than brute strength, and answer the riddle.” The professor smiled, serene looking.
The adventurer groaned again. “It wouldn’t have–”
“She,” the professor corrected. “She wouldn’t have.”
“She,” the adventurer allowed, “wouldn’t have attacked me if I’d gotten it right.”
“So you didn’t.”
“No.” He let out another pitiful groan, covering his face in his hands again. “You know the worst part? I googled it when I got back and it’s from that classic film, you know, The Lord of the Rings? It’s one of the riddles from that.”
“Oh,” the professor said dumbly.
“The famous riddles,” he dragged his hands down his face. “Everyone knows those riddles.”
“Except for you,” the professor points out, not unkindly.
“Except for me,” the adventurer agrees.
It’s quiet for a moment between them, listening to the background noises of the hospital. There’s food appearing on bedsides, tiny footprints appearing in scatted flour. She’d been right about the Brownies.
“Which one was it?”
The adventurer mumbled something, and the professor flicked his leg to get him to repeat it. “The egg one.”
“The egg one?” she repeated, incredulous. “You didn’t get the egg one?”
The adventurer groaned longer and louder than ever before. “Why is a sphinx using riddles from old movies anyway? Why doesn’t the sphinx use her own damn riddles?”
“Why don’t you know the answer to the most famous riddles in history?”
“I bet that Tolken guy–”
“Tolkien.”
“–didn’t even write the riddles himself. I bet he stole them and wrote a cool story, and now that the riddles are the only part left that people really care about, he just gets all the credit.”
“People care about more than just the riddles,” the professor said. “It’s just that his depiction of elves was kind of insensitive once it was realised that elves are real. And the ents! But he’s still–”
“Still a brilliant writer, I know,” the adventurer said in a resigned tone. Then, in a mocking tone, “A box without hinges, key or lid–”
“–yet golden treasure inside is hid.” said a third voice, and the two looked up to see, as predicted, the love interest’s arrival. He was smiling at the adventurer. “An egg!”
The adventurer closed his eyes and let out a long, long, long sigh.
“What happened?” the love interest asked, taking the seat next to the professor.
“He ran into a Greek sphinx in Egypt.” After a moment, she added, in a stage whisper: “and he couldn’t answer her riddle.”
Also - I'm not pretty, and I'm a little bit overweight, and I'm afraid that people will think I'm claiming asexuality just because I'm not conventionally attractive. Does that happen, or am I looking for excuses?
It happens. Because people are jerks.
People will come up with tons of reasons for why we're "really not asexual" though and weight is just one of them. That's why coming out can be so difficult, you know? But if you still wanna come out, just- screw the haters! But not actually. ;)
So I’m about half way through a bowl in my dad’s car when all of sudden he’s dropped off in front of my house so I’m like wtf and then I realize WTF HE’S GONNA TAKE MY CAR. So I like run out of my car, go inside and then my dad told us he lost his job. But I’m just like that sucks and run outside with house perfume and open the windows, turn the fucking air on as high as it would go then made the inside of that car smell like the damn bath and bodyworks.
