Kittens and Trolls

A set of four kittens, all from the same litter, were playing Follow the Leader. Tom was in the front, and let the troupe out of the back porch, down the steps, and across the yard. They passed a lawn chair where a Troll was sleeping. The Troll was invisible to humans during the day, and in fact a human could sit in the same lawn chair and occupy the same space without noticing, but the kittens could see him. Not that they were paying attention.

Tom was now stalking through the grass, and the other kittens were stalking behind him. There was something large, heavy and cylindrical sitting in the lawn, and the grass was taller right up against it since the mower couldn't get in that close. Tom thought this taller grass would make for better stalking, and moved into it, then continued stalking in a circular path hugging the wall, with his siblings stalking right behind him.

Sarah, the fifth kitten, was watching all this from the roof of the porch, and she saw what Tom didn't: there was a hole in the lawn, and if he kept following the curve of the taller grass, he was going to walk right into it without noticing until he fell. She quickly jumped from the porch roof onto a tree branch and ran over to the other side of the tree. There wasn't time to climb down, so she jumped all the way to the ground, spraining one ankle when she landed. She called out to Tom, who paid no attention to her as usual. She looked around for someone else to help. There was One Eye, an old grizzly cat, who was napping. If she woke him up, he'd scratch her half to death before she could explain the situation. The only other option was the Troll.

Limping over to the lawn chair, Sarah meowed loudly and woke the Troll. He sat up and watched with a bemused expression as the kitten limped over to the tall grass and started meowing. He walked over to see what she was looking at, realized the other kitten was just about to stalk into a hole, and pulled him out.

* * *

That evening, the Trolls and the humans feasted together, as was customary. There were about fifty Trolls, and a family of only five humans; the Trolls couldn't understand why humans had such small families. The human family had been shocked at first to learn that there were large numbers of Trolls living in their back yard who became visible at twilight, but after a while they had become used to them. The Trolls had a huge feast every night, and loved company, so after a while the humans started eating with them every night. The human mother helped with some of the cooking, and she could get certain ingredients from the grocery store that the Trolls found hard to come by.

These Trolls actually looked like large humans; Vikings, maybe, or since they had a mythological aspect, residents of Valhalla. Their king wore a hat with a huge set of antlers on it. They dined at a long table, which really shouldn't have been able to fit in the back yard. The humans sat at the end closest to the house. The opposite end was not visible, because the table was so long, and because when the Trolls were there, there was a mist obscuring everything more than a few feet away.

Dinner that night included a roast goose. The Troll hunters had shot a lot of geese, and offered the humans some, since they had plenty to spare.

Battering Camel

I was following behind a guy who was riding down the sidewalk on his camel. He had a sidekick who was riding on the camel with him. The driver looked like he was drunk, and the camel was swerving a bit.

They got to a house and he started running the camel into the door at full speed. The door was showing no signs of breaking down. Finally the camel got knocked out from repeated impact, so he picked up his sidekick and started ramming his head into the door. I was getting concerned, and pulled out my cell phone to dial 911. He looked over and saw me, dropped the sidekick, pulled out a gun and came after me.

I started running away down the sidewalk, running backwards so I could see him. He started shooting at me, so stretched my hand out and tried to use the Force to generate a Star Trek-style shield in front of me to deflect the bullets, just in case I could do that and didn't know it. I was surprised to discover that it worked. I finally managed to dial 911 on my phone and got an operator error message.