Brie and the Orphan's King


I wrote this fairy tale-esque story for Kater to try to make up for being online so little, and for signing off so much while I was talking to her. She deserves to laugh, so I tried to help her be at least vaguely amused throughout. I liked the story too and made minor changes to it for this edition.


Once upon a time in a far away cottage lived a little girl named Brie. She was named after the cheese. Her parents thought this was very funny that she was a cottage cheese girl, but they were eaten by hippos anyway so who cares what they thought.

Anyway, Brie's parents were eaten by hippos. This put her in a quandary: she could live at home in a parent-less house and eat berries and watch a lot of cable tv, or she could go live in the palace of the great king of the land, who had allowed the north wing for usage by orphans. She tried out the staying at home deal for a while, but soon grew tired of the purplish stains left on her teeth by all the berries, and was sick of USA Up All Night movie marathons, and so packed up some necessary items and headed for the palace.

Upon reaching the palace she met a boy about her age playing in the yard. "Which way to the orphans' quarters?" she asked him.

He said, "Follow me," and took her by the hand and led her up lots and lots of steps to the top of the castle's tallest tower.

"This is where I'm going to live?" asked Brie.

"Yes," said the boy. "My name is Jack. I live at the bottom of this tower."

"Hi Jack, my name is Brie," said our heroine. She explained the cheesy name and the situation which led her to be an orphan.

"That's quite a tale," said Jack. "I was climbing this beanstalk and a giant threw a big frying pan at me. It missed me but it landed on my house and everyone inside was burned to death by the grease from the pan."

Brie wrinkled her nose and said "That's awful! Imagine the smell!"

Jack said, "Actually I'm kidding, I'm the crown prince."

Brie said, "You shouldn't be such a dirty liar," and stepped on his foot. Jack howled and jumped up and down on his other foot. In a minute they were wrestling and fighting on the ground. Jack managed to win the fight, but he went away with a black eye.

Brie liked to drop marbles from the tower. Sometimes the children below were playing marbles, and she enjoyed either messing up their games or winning from her window. Whenever she saw Jack wandering around the grounds she shot rubber bands at him and stuck out her tongue. He tried to egg her room but couldn't throw the eggs high enough. The side of the tower below her window was a mess of broken eggshells, various fungi, and sticky-looking dirtiness. Brie locked the door to her room every night and felt very safe at the top of the tower, and generally had a lot of fun in the next few weeks.

One day the trumpets blared, and all the children formed in two lines; the king himself was coming along to inspect the children. He picked out three or four of the older boys and two of the girls, and led them into the palace.

"You know, once the kids are picked by the king, you never see them again," whispered one of the children.

"I heard they make pies out of them for the king and guests at strange parties," someone else opined.

"I bet they go to parents who lost their kids," said a third. A lively argument continued for a long time after the event. Brie just looked around and shrugged.

"What makes you get chosen by the king anyway?" she asked another child.

"I dunno," he said.

"Well what good are you?" she asked and pushed him into the dirt. They fought each other, but Brie had underestimated his strength and was in real trouble until Jack came along and pulled the other boy off.

"Nobody beats Brie up except me, and then only if she thinks she can beat me up better!" Jack sang.

After a few months the king came through the rows of children again. This time he picked out Jack and Brie only. They walked behind the king into the palace.

"What's going on?" asked Brie.

"You'll see in a few minutes," said Jack.

The king sat her down with Jack and said, "Do you know how to read or write?"

Brie hadn't seen too many books around when she was little and her parents had, of course, been eaten by hippos and named her after a cheese after all (evidently not people of good sense), and didn't teach her to read, so she shook her head and said "Not too well."

"How would you like to go to a school in another country?" asked the king.

"Uhhh... am I being deported?" asked Brie uneasily.

"No," the king continued, "it's just that we've got a lot of orphans and no official tutor to teach them to read or write, and all you kids are just running wild in the yard. I even noticed eggshells on the side of one tower."

"Oh, Jack did that," Brie said.

"Shhhh!!!" said Jack quietly.

"Well, is that what happened to the other kids?" asked Brie.

"Well, some of them went to school, some of them went to live with new families, and we made a pie out of one kid," the king said.

"What???" exclaimed Brie.

"I was just kidding," said the king.

"You shouldn't be such a dirty liar!" she said, and stepped on his foot.

Jack said, "Don't do that to my dad!" and jumped on her.

They wrestled for a few minutes. The king pulled them apart and said, "You're both going to sit in the corner for a few minutes and calm down! Then we're going to talk about where to send you. I hear you two are pretty good friends."

"We know each other pretty well, I guess," said Jack; "she argues a lot and likes to mess up the games of marbles the other kids playing."

"Well you fight like a girl," said Brie.

The king continued, "Maybe by the time you're old enough to be adults you can get all that trouble out of your systems if you're together for the next few years--out of the palace, I might add."

"I doubt it," said Brie. "Jack is a sissy! Jack is a sissy!" she yelled. He chased her around a table. The king called for a cold compress and a puppy.

The two returned to the orphan's area. "Why do you live over here?" asked Brie of Jack.

"Because there are more people to play with and I don't have to worry about getting dirty," he replied.

Just then the other children saw them. "Wow, you came back! How did you escape?"

"We had to fight a dragon with the aid of only a cocker spaniel and a charcoal pencil," said Jack, who poked Brie in the ribs with his elbow.

"Yeah, while the dog barked at him we threw the pencil and hit him in the nose, and he started crying, and his tears washed down his throat and put out the fire, and he was so sad his fire was out that he died," added Brie.

"So the other kids were eaten by the dragon?" asked another child.

"No, they were in a dungeon under the dragon; they took all the loose scales, which were made of gold, and went off rich as princes and princesses to other countries. All that was left was his tongue, which was made of silver," said Jack.

"Why did you come back?" was the next question.

"Because I like my tower so much," said Brie.

The next day the king asked to see Brie and Jack again. "I wonder what we'll have to do this time," Jack wondered loudly as the two children entered the door of the palace.

"You really are a dirty liar," whispered Brie as they walked down a great corridor, "but those suckers sure did believe us."

The king sat them down together, but not close enough together that they could punch one another in the arm. "Would you like to go to school with Jack?" he asked Brie. "I think you'd have a lot of fun together, and you'd learn to read and write better."

"I don't know, all those kids around, and all that work we have to do... And I kinda like living in my tower here," she replied. "Why don't you get us a tutor? For everybody?"

The king said, "I want him to get a good education and individual attention, and I'm afraid he won't get the proper schooling for a future king if he has to raise his hand and be just like everybody else."

"You're full of crap," said Brie, who stuck her fingers in her ears and started singing "La la la la" over and over. The she said, "I think I'm going home."

"Why are you leaving?" asked Jack.

"I don't want to go to school, I want to goof off. My parents' house is still sitting around somewhere, and I think I can find enough toothpaste to keep the berry stains off my teeth." She went home, and a few days later, Jack--and his new tutor/guardian--followed; apparently Jack couldn't live without Brie, and the king couldn't live with Jack. The children lived together in Brie's old house with their teacher and were well educated and ate berries and broke a lot of dishes, and they grew up to marry and have lots of argumentative children of their own who broke even more dishes and hated cheese and the USA network.

And nobody was ever eaten by hippos again.

The end.


Issue 22:
White Shiny Paper
out of the mouth of the air
Quotes
I'm not that Romantic
justify my
international break-up
Brie and the Orphan's King
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