"Daggerfjord, poor, poor Daggerfjord". It would seem that this wizard of a man would come to say this all too often as he gazed into the crystal tubes that formed a portion of the brain of his Elniak 5000 super-computer.
It was state of the art in the 1950's, but today had become somewhat an antique. But it still served Edsel Menlo quite well. Edsel was considered somewhat of an eccentric man with his trademark, white linen suit complimented by an art noveau necktie emblazoned with camoflauge print reminiscent to him of time spent in the jungle fighting the whaat-tzoopies.
A fierce tribe, they were. It was in one of these battles, after taking a 50 caliber shot to his brain bucket that Edsel began with the visions.
At first, they were simply of bowls of vanilla ice cream that looked so delicious all covered in chocolate syrup, but he would always be awakened from his trance upon tasting the delicacy only to find that it was in fact fifty-weight motor oil rather than chocolate - and not ice cream, but whipped rhudabegas. This as a matter of course would explain his absolute love of all things related to Molasses.
Not long into his indulgence of Molasses confectionary (ju ju molasses, molasses dollips, peanut brittle molasses, molasses n grits), his visions began to get darker. They always would involve this fellow who he could only see in profile. With long, red locks covering most of his face, all Edsel could make out were these massive, protruding lips jutting from the frizzed and straggling locks.
In due course, Edsel was working on replacing some tubes in his Elniak 5000 when one of the visions appeard to him inside one of the solid-state tubes that banked the back portion of the processor like soldiers in rank and file.
The vision was of a young man and woman. The man had a strange resemblance to someone he had seen before. A dapper young fellow, he had close cropped red hair and muttonchop sideburns. He wore a kilt, and shoes with shiney buckles where the laces should be.
A lass looking to be all of seventeen or eighteen years of age was dressed in some strange sort of Malaysian mini-skirt of umbre linen - her tresses twisted and shimmering with strands of gold dust she had collected from the jungle floor. You could see that there was great love in her eyes for her young suitor.
Edsel figured she was of a mixed descent as she had the most remarkable green eyes - like emerald, or jade. Her pupils were fixed and dialated not unlike a shit-house rat, but they were locked on the lanky lad, and like her heart, would never leave him (somewhat like the rat in the shit-house who would be perfectly happy there in the stench as long as the stench remained).
But this love definitely smelled of roses and red wine, and a bit of earthy peat both from the jungle beauty and the lad who it appeared probably slept in peat bogs.
Little did Edsel know that this was not a typical love story he was watching unfold. Soon he would step into a role that he'd never imagined in his years of tinkering with computers. Now he would become a wizard-like god-father - able to communicate with the world of a man named Daggerfjord.
He first noted that the couple had become aware of his presence when he was typing in an e-mail into his Elniak. It was as if with each completed word and sentence, the couple were hearing voices from beyond. He began to play around a little by using emphatic, bold fonts and noticed that they would obey his "commands"; he thought of the implications.
"Clothe thyselves in white" he told them. But it seemed, only the girl would listen, which Edsel really didn't mind anyway as it was she that he enjoyed dressing up like his sister's barbie doll on the typical Friday night. He preferred the white to the umbre linen as it would cling to her in the warm jungle mist and would prove a bit like one of those t-shirt contests he'd seen on Spring Break, which he also found was also a real plus in his role as the sage "from beyond". Made it all worthwhile.
And thus began a new chapter in the lives of Edsel Menlo, Daggerfjord and his dame, Elsa - it is a chapter that would be full of tribesmen, our old friend, Platu from the Amazon and a mounted Marine and his side-kick elfin, Jezebelle, who so loved to ride in his pant's pocket.
A chapter of intrigue, magic and lust, defined by a torrid affair between Platu and Jezebelle played out in her pocket hideaway and much to the delight of the Mountie, Monty who was always so happy when his dear, dear Jezebelle was in sheer delight.
You might wonder, gentle reader, how a full-grown philosopher of Platu's stature would be equipped for a trist with a tiny elfin. Owe it to the concoction that Platu would sometimes add to his pipe. You see, Platu loved his time in the jungle, wearing his toga and stroking his soul patch while pondering some great philosophical paradigm involving the hill people. It was in this state that he'd often try a variety of dried jungle plants in his meershem pipe shaped like the bust of a hoola girl.
The stem of the pipe formed the rest of her body, and she was perched on her elbows, chin in hand. The crown of her head formed the bowl of the pipe, and her ample bosom the grip. He would always be greatful to that fellow who piloted the paddle boat up the peepsqwana, a puny tributary to the great Amazon. He left the pipe with Platu in exchange for Platu's sister who the "cappie" of the ferry desired as a first mate (probably due her Schwarzenegger-esk arms and legs...yes. yes.).
He so loved the different flavors and the aroma that the wide variety of jungle plant would bring to his time of transcendental meditations and his long musings on the implications that the hillbilly tunes would one day have on the state of world affairs (for the hill people always sang songs with far-reaching implications involving great nation-states, like France and Lichstenstein).
Once, on "taking the leaf" as he called it, he discovered that he could control his physical size by either pinching his nostrils and blowing into his hands to inflate himself, or by ratcheting his chin to reduce his size.
He once was carried away with the ratchets at which point he met Jezebelle whilst standing on a pebble on the bank of the river(this while she was vacating from Monty in an intsy-bitsy pootu boat cruise down the Mighty Amazon) - well after this, he was forever playing with his chin, of course.
Unfortunately the concoction would prove to be both a pain and a pleasure as he was not certain exactly from which plant he had gotten the dried leaves, and to be honest, when not under the influence of the leaf, he wasn't even sure that Jezabelle was anything more than a figment of his imagination.
No matter - he would still be on constant quest for the herb for he had only a finite amount in his ditty bag, yet somehow, he never seemed to run out. Most curious, indeed!
It was while upon a quest for the leaf that he first came into contact with the voice of Menlo, which strangely he found emanating from the beak of a Toucan. Somehow, Platu understood where Menlo was coming from and did not fear him. He had always liked Toucans. However, he thought Menlo rather boring at times, and would tell him so, but Platu needed to maintain the contact in order to explore the "world on the other side of the beak", or, Menlo's world.
The connection between the two, Menlo and Platu would surely one day have great implications for our hero of the Dagger's Fjord (Hansel).
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