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Tue 4th Apr 2023 08:47

Ginger's tail to tell

by Ginger Pelletsnifer

Ginger was abandoned as a child. Ginger has always known this but as never understood. On the crest of the crescent on the crusty crescent, wrapped in harsh rugged wool, a feigning protection to the dark and cold night that whoever left him there granted. yet, in the cold of night, his parents also gave him one other way to keep him warm. The fire beneath his scales. "Scales?" later in his life this eureka dawns upon him. Hes a young Kobald just about to realize that Hes is not much of a Gnome his adoptive parents tried to install in him. "Scales, and these wings are all they left me?". Ginger was a slave to gravity but the keys to theses shackles was unformed. The betrayal of the people who created him, the people who yet told the world loud and clear on that dreary night, he was created by nothing. Anger struck the match under his scales, and burned, and burned and burned to inferno. He left his true parents to prove to others that he was created, not by the man and woman who did not birth him, but by Ginger. He thought that's what he would say to the world, scream it from the mountain tops of who he is and why you are not, buts it was more a whisper, a soft whisper from a baby abandoned who just wanted to be.
To yell over the cries of that baby, he chose drugs. Fighting and fighting and fighting. And you know what, he was fucking good at it. Slowly but surely, he, out here on these streets of fellow lost ones finding their island, creatures looking to siphon the insurmountable life of just their living. He was slowly but surely becoming more than alive decorating his existence upon the streets of stone with the feel of needles. Though, in the back of his mind, he still knew why he was able to stand tall upon needles, the treads that his real parents gave him. Of course the only “Bastard of Dragon’ in town was going to win. The baby’s screams grew louder and louder. It came to the point his voice grew so strained over the yelling of the child, he turned to “Medicine”. Boy was this medicine working. Numb. Numbing of the pain. He, just as slowly as his rise, came to his fall of numbness. He did unspeakable things for hits, drags, shot ups, any way he could get it in his fiery veins to cool them off, anything he would do. As all of his fellow lost ones, it came to a breaking point, in a most familiar voice, in a most familiar location. This was the most he's done before. He knew his body was on fire and he called departments from the deepest, coldest hells to put it out. In a stupor, with broken legs and broken spirit, he tumbles. He hits his chest hard upon an elevated surface, and begins to compulse. So cold, so very cold. In the haze of vision, his body cramping into a fetilie position, a door opens to a yellowing hugh of candles, and a waft of warm, baked bread his nose. “Ginger!” a voice cries.
Bam! He's awake. His breaths are as a train at full speed, chugging out of him in panic. Darting his vision back and forth trying to find where he lies, the swivel of his neck slows. In his arms, Gorm holds his son. Grelda with a damp rag pats Ginger's forehead, taking the elixir away from his trembling lips. Ginger, his scales get warm. Not the fire of his creator ran through him, nor the icy caretaker of his suppression, but the warmth of his home. “Home? Wait, Home?” Ginger clicking the pieces together. With a foreign wave of love, In his real fathers cradle, he lets the baby cry.
Years go by. Every single Tuesday, he clocks off work from the crescent to meet with others that are attempting to do the hardest fight of all, being one's true creator. Every Tuesday he sits and talks, and they don't really even talk about anything in particular. Maybe it's how their week was, how are mom and dad doing? Do you see the latest game of DnD sportsball? Nothing. He’s happy around the people he loves, and doest even care that there is still a part of him who wonders, Who are they? The ones who gave me these scales, the ones who gave me these, quite frankly, dinky wings. His parents have taught him a lot of things in these years that the noise of his youth couldn't hear, but this stuck with him the most; “Ginger, We eat the bread when it is finished, and it fills us full. That is wonderful. But do you know what I find the most beautiful thing about baking is? When you feel your stomach is empty, you must assemble the ingredients, crack the eggs, sift the flour, add sugar and spices and make the dough. You then place it in the oven, as it looks like a pile of goop that if eaten will almost certainly make you throw up. But in the oven, the meaning of the whole process arises, just watching your creation, Rise”.
As much as the work in The Crescent has helped Ginger, the business is on the decline. The streets have become so riddled with the substance that riddled him, he knew he had to do something to help the haven. Taking the task from the mayor, with help from his new found coworkers, he has to dust off the flour of his apron and takes back upon the saddle, this time not to save himself, but to save his savers. In a mission where he almost died, he and his copatrates come upon a canyon where on the other side lies the treasure to help his family. Gosh, but it's so far, if only this dinky wings could work. Using another of his parents' lessons; “Teamwork makes the dreamwork!”, he entrusts his friends to help him over for their common goal. The barbarian underthrows him twice and he loses his tail.”AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Ginger says calmly as the barbarian spider walks to the other side.
Back at the Mayors Manor, a Manor that fuels Ginger's suspicion as there are people dying in the street, the party turns in the artifact, but not without care. “If we are going to give this to you, you should at least give some compensation for the Kobold that was mangled on your behalf.” Vendar proclaims. “I agree. Ginger, I will have our finest blacksmiths and engineers make you a new tail. It seems like a pontiful retort for your service to the town” he offers to Ginger. “I was thinking maybe we can give you a third hand or something like that”, “No” says Ginger in an almost second handed statement of defiance. Its like hes been thinking of it his entire life, “What did they give me other than these scales and these flightless wings?”. With a shock of solitude within his heart, for the hardest thing that one can do with there life, Be there own creator. “I don't want a hand, I want a…………”

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  1. The Journal Entry’s title
  2. Ginger's tail to tell