FLATORTE GOT HER ACT TOGETHER
Sandra used her dirt from the Thursa Thursa Kingdom right away, and when Falfa and Shalsha got their snow, they immediately used it to build something called a snowdwarf.
“Dwarves aren’t supposed to be this round, are they?” I asked. It was basically just a snowman.
“Mommy, you’re supposed to make them from big snowballs.”
“This is an ancient folk tradition of those who live in the north. They are said to represent guardians who keep evil spirits away.”
“Is that so? Well, I’m perfectly happy so long as you’re enjoying yourselves.”
Meanwhile, Laika used the snow and ice to make a crystalline bird. “Hmm, I suppose that should do for now.”
“This is like a whole winter festival!”
She really went overboard for everything she did! I didn’t know Laika had artistic sensibilities, too…
And Rosalie and Halkara were having a “snowball fight.” At least, that’s what Rosalie was calling it.
“You are such a coward, Miss Rosalie! You know it’s practically impossible for me to win this! You can score points against me, but not vice versa! Oh, you can’t make and throw five snowballs at once! This is so unfair! Even if I could score against you, this would still not be fair!”
“But, Big Sis Halkara, I’ve always dreamed of having a snowball fight! Please!”
“I know you’re asking nicely, but I cannot see how this is—Bwaaaah!” Halkara took all the snowballs at once.
Sorry. It’s just for a little while, Halkara…
“Miss Rosalie, please do this with Miss Flatorte instead. She can withstand the cold better…,” said Halkara.
Ah, good point. Flatorte would probably match Rosalie evenly in that case.
“But Flatorte’s cleaning right now,” Rosalie said, tilting her head. “She’s so different, like something’s possessed her… It’s super weird…”
Rosalie had also caught on to Flatorte’s…abnormality. But note that she only said it was like she was possessed; if she was really possessed, Rosalie would know.
The point is—something was wrong with Flatorte.
Maybe Flatorte had been more than satisfied with her work in the kingdom of the dead, because when we came back to the house in the highlands, there was a bit of a problem.
She was polite now.
For example, on the day it was Flatorte’s turn to clean—
“She’s really going at it…”
She was cleaning so thoroughly that I almost commented that even Laika wouldn’t go this far.
Flatorte moved the shelves and tables when she was mopping. That’s more than what you do for moving and spring cleaning, right?
“One, two. One, two. One, two. I suppose that’s it for the dining room, then. Mistress, shall I clean your room, too?” Flatorte asked me with a bright smile. She wasn’t wearing a suit, but I was getting dapper-butler vibes from her. The clothes she wore seemed more crisp than usual, too, so fresh and sprightly.
“Uh, no, it’s okay… I can do that on my own…”
The new Flatorte was even throwing things away she would never have considered trash before, so I was a little worried about the herbs I was drying.
“Please do not hesitate to tell me if you need anything. I am here to serve you, after all, Mistress.”
She was even talking like a butler!
“Uh, sure… I’ll let you know if I come up with anything…”
And on the day it was her turn to make food, she was simmering stew in a pot for five hours.
“Hey… Why not stick to something simple…? You’re getting ready for dinner before we’ve even finished lunch, aren’t you…?”
“Oh, no, it’s all right. I wouldn’t be able to do this every day, but it’s only for my cooking days,” she replied with a cheerful smile.
“Also, you’re a blue dragon—doesn’t it tire you out being so close to the fire for a long time?”
“Oh, this is quite tolerable. Please, relax as long as you need, Mistress.”
Grin!
Her smile was so bright it almost made its own sound effect.
I, on the other hand, was so not used to whatever this was. My smile was anxious and tense.
Sometimes, when you’re confronted with something beyond your comprehension, all you can do is smile. Some of these changes I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy, even if they were technically good ones…
“This is bizarre… Flatorte’s so well behaved now… Everything she does is so…brisk.”
Watching Flatorte cook gave me the shivers, so I went outside. That’s where I found Laika, taking down the laundry.
Flatorte had clearly undergone a change in her personality after all that icy breath.
Laika was nonplussed by Flatorte’s sudden change, too.
“Hmm… She is not her usual self. I cannot see a single sign of her typical laziness and sloppiness at all.”
“It’s weird for you, too, huh?”
“Yes. To be blunt, it frightens me.”
I thought that was a kind of mean thing to say, but it scared me a bit, too.
“How she opens and closes doors, for example, is so gentle and quiet. At first, I could not tell who it was that was wandering around. It left me so uneasy…”
“Oh yeah, you can usually tell who’s up and about by how they use the doors…”
As Laika and I chatted, Flatorte herself came outside. The way she walked, even outside, was dainty and tranquil. She wouldn’t be kicking up any dust like that.
“Oh, Laika. Should I take Halkara to and from work today for you?”
“There is no need for you to be so considerate! Are you really Flatorte?! You are like someone else entirely! Are you sure you’ve not been possessed by an evil spirit?”
Laika’s evil spirit hypothesis was reasonable, but Rosalie did say that there was nothing possessing her…
“Ah-ha-ha. I, the great Flatorte, am not so weak as to be possessed. I am how I always am. Today I am making a stew so delicious it will shock you, Laika, so I hope you’re ready.”
“No, every boorish part of you has vanished… You would never have cooked such an intensive dish before. You always stuck to simple dishes—pan-fry the meat, and you’re done!”
Meat with a sprinkling of salt was good for what it was, and Flatorte was far from a bad cook, but all her dishes had as few steps as possible.
“Ah. It must be because I got everything out of my system with the ghosts. Maybe that’s why my heart feels so still.”
I guess that meant she’d relieved all her stress.
I leaned over to Laika and whispered, “Hey, maybe when Flatorte goes on a rampage that actually leaves her satisfied, she turns into, like, a really good kid?”
Laika nodded emphatically. “That is very possible… After all those years among the sloppy and rowdy blue dragons, I didn’t believe she was capable of being so calm. This might be her real self…”
“But do you want her to stay this way?” I asked. The ultimate question.
Laika immediately shook her head. “This side of her bewilders me. I must decline.”
“Yeah. This is way too big of a difference.”
“However, she hasn’t been brainwashed, so we cannot refuse her if she has decided to live an earnest and dependable lifestyle. We have no choice but to leave it to her.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
We couldn’t totally deny the possibility that she’d just reexamined her way of life. We had no right to tell her not to live this way because she used to be a mess.
“But…the old Flatorte gave me more peace of mind…” Laika sadly watched on as Flatorte returned to the kitchen.
The stew that night had chunks of meat that melted in the mouth the second they touched your tongue. It was a hit with the whole family.
—And that was how Flatorte came to act so gracious.
“Hey, Rosalie, do you think people’s personalities change when they accomplish major goals?” I asked her as she hovered next to me. I’d never set really big goals for myself before, so I wasn’t sure.
“I’m a ghost, so I don’t know much about people.”
Oh, I asked the wrong person.
“But I doubt it’d have this much of an impact. I can guarantee that,” Rosalie said with a smile. “My eighth sense says so.”
“Humans only have up to six!”
But what Rosalie said was right.
Flatorte’s transformation lasted for a week.
“Ahhh, I forgot to take a bath. Well, I didn’t sweat at all, so I’ll take one tomorrow.”
“Didn’t you say the same thing yesterday, Flatorte? Go bathe.”
“But no one’s told me I stink yet, Mistress.”
“If people can smell you, it’s already too late.”
“Fine. If I have to take a bath, then I want to work up a sweat. I’ll do a thousand push-ups.”
“You don’t need to do that!”
But Flatorte’s reaction oddly soothed me. Maybe her lust for battle had returned her to her old self.
“Man, I wish I could freeze over a whole lake,” Flatorte said as she did her thousand push-ups.
And so, Flatorte returned to the delinquent dragon we knew.
During dinner, she tried to eat her soup with her hands, so I told her to either use a spoon or dunk some bread into it.
“Yeah, but we have less to clean if I don’t use a spoon.”
What is she, a college bachelor…?
She blew a small stream of cold breath into her soup bowl, and a little of it drifted my way.
“Down the hatch!”
She put the bowl to her lips and gulped the soup down. Afterward, she loaded up a whole platter filled with meat for herself and wolfed that down, too. She was like a garbage disposal…
“Yes, eating like this makes everything taste way better!”
“You are so unbelievably crude. You are setting a terrible example for Falfa and Shalsha,” Laika warned her. She could never let bad manners slide without comment. For my part, I thought Flatorte was worse than ever now.
“We won’t eat like that,” Falfa replied.
“A meal must begin and end with proper etiquette,” Shalsha added.
My daughters’ objections only made things more complicated.
“Laika,” said Flatorte, “what’s important isn’t how you eat; it’s how good it tastes. People like you get so wrapped up in your manners and stuffy etiquette that you lose sight of the goal. Do manners ever make food taste better?”
“This is not a conversation about manners. There is a spoon beside your bowl. Use it.”
“Honestly, putting things into separate bowls is just a cultural difference. Blue dragons’ll eat directly from the pot instead.”
“How awful… My head has started to hurt…” Laika started rubbing her temples. Blue-dragon culture was even more different than she thought.
“Should I cool your head down with a little cold breath?”
“No, thank you. That will only make it worse.” Laika flatly refused, but I could tell that part of her was relieved.
Bickering dragons was a much more familiar sight at the dinner table in our house.
Then, there came a steady knock at the door—but it opened before I could get over to it.
There stood Beelzebub.
“Did you lot go to the Thursa Thursa Kingdom?”
Uh-oh, she looked tired and annoyed. Did something bad happen?
“We did. What about it? Are we not allowed to make drastic environmental changes?”
Now that I thought about it, we might’ve killed some animals and bugs around the ruins along with the plants… But it was just in the area around those ruins, so the problem was probably isolated.
“This book has been published with great haste in the human lands. Fortunately, no one believes such tall tales; however…” Beelzebub placed a book on the table.
The flimsy cover and simple bindings indicated that it had been published on extremely short notice.
The title read Ruins of the Ancient Rulers.
“Oh, did someone find out about the Thursa Thursa Kingdom?”
“You would be correct. You should start reading from here.”
Beelzebub pointed out a passage, and I started reading.
—As I proceeded, there came a change I could not attribute to either natural phenomena or magic.
The temperature in the deep forest steadily fell, and then in the blink of an eye, a frigid wind was whipping around me.
This land is in the warm southern part of the kingdom, and though many warn of terrible plagues in the area, not even winter invites such a chill. But this cold seeped into my bones, into my very soul, and it only grew stronger as I made my way deeper into the wood.
I felt as though an unfathomable great and powerful being was blocking my way. Even the effects of a mage’s wintry spell would not linger for ten, twenty minutes afterward.
Then was it the work of a spirit? But spirits of ice and snow must live in the severest of mountaintops; I would never expect to find them in a land where not a single snowflake falls on even the coldest day of the year.
As my consciousness grew dim, I used the heat from one of my torches, which I had brought for treks in the night, to keep myself awake as I continued forth. Strangely, my curiosity was greater than the fear that I might pass a point of no return.
Then, as I parted grasses tall and thick as trees, I was eventually met with an even more unbelievable sight.
Standing at the edge of the forest was a towering wall of ice!
Oh, crap!
That was the day we were there!
I should keep reading. Sure hope he didn’t find us out…
—I tried to scream, but the sound caught in my throat. Whatever was here could defy the laws of weather. I was uncertain who was attempting such a feat, but I could not deny the ice before my eyes.
The mountain was essentially vertical; I could not hope to climb it with my utmost efforts, so I decided to round the perimeter.
The wall seemed to continue on forever, but when one section collapsed in an avalanche, I was allowed a glimpse of what lay within it.
There I found no ice nor any snow but something I can describe only as a white, glimmering wall of light!
That was the ancient magic!
I read on.
—That wall of light was doubtlessly man-made. My torch was only enough to keep the insects away and the heat nearby, but I held it up to the light. Nothing happened. I struck it, but it made no sound, nor did it injure my hand. It made no reaction at all. Perhaps it was warning me that the only thing beyond here was a void of nothingness.
In my mind, I heard a voice whispering to me—a command to turn back now. I had been confronted with an unknown civilization. If I learned of what lay beyond here, then I would surely go mad.
But my rational judgment lost the battle to my curiosity.
This barrier was from a human civilization that existed long before the birth of any human still alive today. I knew this to be true, and my desire to learn more of this mystery kept me there. And I no longer had the physical strength to pull myself away.
Blood-freezing air descended upon the area around the wall, almost as though it was trying to snuff out every flame of life in this land.
A single step forward brought with it the exhaustion of a thousand-pace journey, and how I longed to stop. But even a child would know that if I were to halt, then I would surely perish then and there. I had no other choice but to walk along the mountain of ice and the veil of light beyond it.
A moment later, I wondered at the source of this boreal tempest. There must be something above me, in the sky.
I nervously lifted my head.
Hovering far above me was a noble, terrifying, mammoth dragon-like creature with wings spread out wide.
Wait, she is a dragon! She’s not some weird, unknowable monster!
—Near the leviathan’s maw was a gaping void, though I cannot be sure it was truly a mouth, and from it poured an endless stream of frigid air. Nothing about it was like any creature I knew.
It had exhaled so much snow and ice for such an unusually long time that I began to worry that it was no natural being at all, but a device whose only purpose was exuding this cold forever at a constant rate. But I could see the scales armoring its body, much like any creature of our world.
It did not look as though it was flying but as if it had been placed deliberately in the sky. It was infinitely more primal, more divine than any dragon.
No, no, hold on—she is a dragon! She’s just a blue dragon, not a horror you shouldn’t look at or whatever!
—Then, I knew—I could feel the truth in my very bones.
What if it was this unnamed creature that had created many of the icy mounds of unknowable age that can be found elsewhere in our world?
Had this creature reduced those forests lush with green into pure-white masses, just like this one?
Was this scaly, winged creature pushing our world to the brink of death for some grudge unknowable to humankind?
The moment I saw the sight, my strength left me, and I sank to my knees. I did not know if this was because I had exposed my face to the cold for too long, or because I had seen something that should not exist in this world.
This guy was totally taking Flatorte for some ancient cosmic horror…
His narration made it sound like he was freezing to death, but if he published this book, that meant he made it back safe and sound. Time to keep reading.
—It was then, however, that I heard a strange voice coming from above me.
“Eyha w’wasda, ayethagre tflatortem sa tisfyy’d, ayehav n’t bynna bltuk utlu scomply tli’n f’rev’r.”
These sounds belonged to no ancient language that I knew of, but it was not the cry of a beast.
Suddenly, the cold air came to a halt, and soon after, the veil of light vanished as well.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! That mysterious language was actually Flatorte saying, “Hey, how was that? I, the great Flatorte, am satisfied! I haven’t been able to cut loose completely in forever!”
—Another, thinner mound of ice crumbled to the ground, no longer supported by the luminous veil, and I could now see the world beyond.
Again, I doubted my own eyes. There were several buildings of the queerest modality, unlike that of any world or era known to man.
Nearby were rows of box-shaped buildings that rose high into the heavens. They seemed to be made of stone, but the walls were so smooth that I could not imagine what technology they used to quarry it.
I guess the author was talking about the ghost residential area.
To be honest, those buildings were in rough shape. So this guy was either too excited, or his memory was fuzzy… But he was right about the style being completely unknown to most people.
—There were several openings that I surmised were entrances, but they were in both high and low places, and too small to accommodate humans by my reckoning.
It was then that my mind’s eye showed me an exceptionally eerie sight.
These buildings were much too uncomfortable for normal bipedal creatures to live in—were they perhaps relics left by long, thin creatures? Did they swim through the air as fish do through the ocean, and these narrow holes were passageways for them?
In my absentminded stupor I dropped my torch. I know not when the flame had been extinguished.
I shambled forward among the buildings, these structures totally unfit for human use, like the mindless living dead.
Well, sure, ghost houses didn’t need entrances fit for humans…
People who didn’t know anything would probably imagine an ancient civilization created by strange beings. Well, they were ancient ruins, so this would be a heck of a discovery no matter what…
I turned to the next page.
—Far beyond the box buildings, I found rows of buildings of an entirely different style.
These had been fashioned in a triangular shape on all sides, again constructed according to a theory unlike any I knew.
The air was too cold for this to be a forest in a warm climate; all of my exposed skin was going numb from the cold; I could hardly feel anything at all anymore. It was difficult to imagine this place being habitable for humans—indeed, I sensed not a hint of conscious life. It was almost like a kingdom of the dead, where all had long ago met their end.
Hey, he got that part right!
It was a kingdom of the dead, which meant we could cool it down beyond livable human conditions.
—Various pleas for divine salvation came to mind, but no heavenly power would heed me now.
I stumbled forward, ever forward, though I know not what drove me.
Then, I heard a voice.
“Frutsk, frutsk, putste horar yani.”
This was not any language I knew, nor was it the language of the scaly creature in the sky.
And the sound itself was eerie, as if produced not by the throat but by an entirely different organ. The moment I heard that soul-rending sound, every hair on my body stood on end.
It was almost as if a tentacle had slithered up some nether orifice and into the brain, shaking around to create a dissonant cacophony with the teeth.
“This doesn’t sound like any of our voices—so by process of elimination that must be what he thought of Muu’s voice. Is that what she sounds like?!”
With her broken body, whatever Muu said wouldn’t have been translated into modern speech. This person had heard her speech as pure sounds. Talk about a psychological shock…
—My instincts screamed at me to run, but the muscles in my body had long given up trying to move.
I sensed that a great, unspeakable thing, one I could scarcely call a life-form, was drawing closer to me.
She wasn’t a life-form—she was dead! Ding-ding, correct again.
—All of a sudden, it appeared before me.
Oh, the horror that had come to me! What was this collection of a thousand broken pieces assembled into a parody of humanity?
No creature could move in this way; no creature could survive such a construction. And yet it approached. Whatever it was could not be easily categorized as demon or monster. It was not even alive.
Every portion of its body was similar to that of a human, yet some parts looked like fabric, and some parts were nothing at all.
Was this the divinity worshipped in this ancient civilization? And a mere man such as I had now encountered it face-to-face. That was the last thought to cross my mind.
This horrifying, repugnant, unholy being defied any description, and all of my muscles and nerves seized and convulsed. With an ear-rending scream, I finally fell unconscious.
“Hey, that’s the scream we heard!”
The poor guy saw the gruesome, uncensored Muu and fainted from shock!
“I knew you had something to do with this… Please do not go out of your way to cause trouble…” Beelzebub looked positively exhausted as she exhaled.
“Wait, hold on; Muu asked us to be there, though! This isn’t our fault!”
I decided to keep reading.
—The next I knew, I lay among the trees in the forest.
The skin-splitting cold was now gone, and I found myself more worried about dehydration as I lay in a puddle of my own sweat with the sun’s rays filtering down on me through the trees.
Yet, my whole body was swollen as though it were midwinter. I knew I could never acknowledge the reality of any of it—the mountain of ice deep within the forest, the scaly creature in the sky, the veil of light, the buildings beyond of no recorded culture, the profane and ineffable entity that could not have borne the breath of life.
I staggered through the trees, and just as I was about to lose my entire sense of direction, I came across a small village at the entrance to the forest. There, I was told, I lay motionless in bed for days, absent as though my soul had left me.
But now the whirlwind in my heart has quelled, and so I write this pamphlet—it scarcely can be called a book—so that I may retain my own peace of mind.
Part of me tells me that I should not record any of this.
Perhaps my life would be much happier if I tell no one of the ancient civilization, one that is much older than any we know, or the nameless abomination they must have worshipped.
But I must write down what I saw for the sake of my own sanity. It is all that keeps my mind steady.
Oh, darkness has suddenly fallen, but it is not yet night.
Something is on my window.
What is it?
It’s on my window! My window!
—My storm shutters had fallen closed.
“Your storm shutters were closed?!”
Well, if some crazy thing had actually climbed onto his window and gotten him, he wouldn’t have been able to illustrate that in his note anyway… He wouldn’t have been able to publish this thing, either.
“I also made sure to give a heads-up to the Thursa Thursa Kingdom. I hope they do not attract too much attention.”
“Yeah, we caused a big ruckus. But this isn’t really our fault, okay? We just took on the request and had Flatorte do a little of her cold breath.”
If I knew a risk like this was part of the deal, then I wish the client would’ve said something about it.
“Indeed. I shall trust you; I know you are not a liar,” Beelzebub said. “Also, I’ve had one more thing on my mind since going to the kingdom.” She gave another irritated sigh. “The queen had removed her own head and was playing with it… Any idea why? Was she playing dullahan?”
“Is that seriously what she’s up to?!”
I wondered if Muu discovered some weird, new hobby once her body fell apart… Yeah, hopefully she puts her head back on soon; that’s too much for me…
I then felt someone looking at me from underneath the table.
Rosalie’s face was poking out from the floor. “Aww, you can do that when you have a physical body? I wanna try taking my head off sometime, too,” she whined.
“Wait, you know you can’t usually do that with a physical body, right? You’d die the second you took it off!”
Considering how drastically Flatorte’s personality changed for a short while after breathing too much cold breath, I figured it’d be a good idea to be more careful of the consequences of our “favors.”
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