Welcome one and all to the Gleeman's Corner

[Azrael]

Welcome once again to the Gleeman's Corner. Have a foaming Ale, or a steaming mulled wine while dragging a comfortable seat near the fire and listening to tales from around the world. If you have any that you wish to add, we would all love to hear them.

 

As before, I will start with a tale from my youth:

 

When G-Prime and I were children, we were the best of friends despite rocks to the head, battling sisters, or even Parents. We did many things that young boys with idle time on their hands are wont to do... but one story in particular holds a great fondness for me...

 

Behind G-Prime's house were several things that held endless possibilities: A small forested area with towering trees, dense shrubs and a prolific patch of Ferns; a sheltered shed, complete with old lawn furniture and an old couch, and my favorite: The Stream! The stream wound behind his property, dividing his parent's land with the park across the way. We would spend hour upon hour watching bugs and fish skitter through the sparkling waters, sailing twigs to parts unknown and making rocks splash gysers! But one day, his parents brought home a rubber raft.

 

One fine summer day, we inflated the raft, gathered the oars and headed into the sluggish waters behind his house. We rowed upstream to challenge the headwaters of the mighty river, and after rowing against the current for hours we arrived not at a pristine mountain stream, but rather a marsh. I was bitterly disappointed, at least until we had explored for a little while. The marsh was a low lake, filled with everything young boys could hope to ever find! Frogs and newts, fish and dragonflies, ducks, geese and songbirds of every colour and size, and of couse cattails!

 

After playing in the deep cool waters of the marsh, we climbed into the raft and just let the small boat carry us where it may while we lay in the sun making sculptures of the clouds. Hours went by as we drifted through the late summer afternoon and the raft slowly found its way back to the stream that had brought us there, and we slowly drifted in lazy circles back the way we had come. At last we passed his house, making sleepy note of it as we drifted by. We continued our talk of Foul Dragons and Burnished Knights and their eternal struggles, until I noticed an unusual noise. It seemed a faint rumble coming from far in the distance, somewhere ahead and to the left, but the thick trees and full ferns blocked my view of it. I sat up in the boat for a better look and realized that we were travelling faster than I had thought, and we were picking up speed!

 

The water had slowly gone from a torpid swirl to a racing torrent while we had simply drifted, and now we were racing along the river's course, and the roar was sprinting towards us at an allarming rate! A waterfall! We had been hearing a waterfall, and now we were right on top of it! G-Prime began to panic, and started clawing at the water trying to drag the rubber dingy to the nearest shore as I unlimbered the oars and tried to fit them into the plastic oarlocks. As I was fumbling with the oars, I noticed a wire cable strung across the river from shore to shore, so I abandoned the oars and chose a slightly different approach.

 

When we crested the waterfall, G-Prime screamed and grabbed around my waist as I leapt at the cable and wrapped my legs around the rubber raft. The rushing water threatened to rip the raft from my clenched legs, but I was holding it fast! When G-Prime opened his eyes to find out why we hadn't hit the water below, he realized that we weren't going to fall... at least not right then. It only took him a second to realize that the cable was our best bet for safety, so he scampered up me like a frenzied squirrel, and snagged the cable with both hands. There we were, dangling from the cable, him facing upstream and I looking out over the gulf below us. G-Prime and I began to slowly inch our way along the cable to the near shore, both of us dragging the raft along by our legs. It seemed to take hours for us to reach the shore, but I'm sure it only took a few minutes. We lay panting in the grass and ferns for a time, and then got up to try and figure out where we had ended up. The cable, as I could now see, was part of a large net designed to catch large peices of debris, like small boys and inflatable rafts. Sitting in the mesh of the net were both yellow oars, patiently waiting for us to retreive them. We did. We also deflated the raft and swore to never EVER go rafting in the river behind his house again.

 

Of course we inevitably did, but that's a tale for another time.

[Canukistani]

heheheheheh

 

frenzied squirrel

[cosmicpanda]

As a variation on that exercise, try buttering the cable first :P

[Guest TheDemigod]

im sure that would make the tale more action filled O_O

[Azrael]

LOL! Only if you count slipping off of the cable.

[Guest TheDemigod]

wheeee

 

 

honselty though, you never cease to amaze me

[Canukistani]

hehe, i say that every friday night :oops:

[Guest TheDemigod]

LOL

 

:lol:

[thehumantrashcan]