Pickles and Ponies: A Fairy-Tale by Laura

Author:Laura
Language: eng
Format: mobi

Act 2: You Should Always Listen to your Horse

10 Under da Sea

It’s a peculiarity that in Raduga, two separate species evolved to be as similar as humans and selkies. But, while selkies minus their seal skin appear as humans, they are a different species. They evolved more-or-less in tandem, and roamed the seventy seas of Raduga in the time before the waters started misbehaving as badly as they do now. Back then, there was no restriction on where you could go: if you wanted to go south, and you swam south, you would end up actually going south. It was all frightfully convenient.

When the seas started insolently refusing passage, the selkies were affected as well. As a result of their reduced travelling capacity, a large population started to develop fairly close to the main landmass of Raduga, and over time this population started to come into contact with land-based peoples.

Raduga’s regal system was already in place even in those days, and when word got back to the Queen of Seals that there were actually seal-people living in the waters, she asserted her reign over all of them. Naturally the selkies, who were a largely anarchist tribe at that point, weren’t particularly impressed with this. Nor were they inclined to do what the Queen said. They maintained that if anybody had reign over seals, it was them; and anyway, they weren’t seals, they were selkies—and she wasn’t the queen of them, was she?

The Queen of Seals was not at all happy with the revolt of those she perceived as her subjects. She started a propaganda campaign, aiming to convince the other people of Raduga that selkies were within her domain after all. It’s not totally sure what she was trying to achieve past this point: were people supposed to peer-pressure the selkies into bowing down? Isn’t bowing a little silly underwater, anyway? It was all very muddled. What the Queen didn’t take into account was her unfortunate name—Patrice—and the absolute commitment of the selkies to doing whatever they liked at all times. They were also somewhat capricious, and decided to respond to the Queen’s propaganda with a slur campaign. They started casting out messages in bottles, leaving seaweed in the shape of letters on shore, carving things into ships’ hulls (not a popular move with seamen) and composing limericks which they would recite in sea-side pubs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.