A Fool, a Princess, and a Dragon

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

And there once was a kraken in the Sea.

Somehow, I outsmarted both.

What follows is my epic odyssey.

It transpired many long years ago.

I dwelled in a quaint medieval town.

It sat in a meadow, overlooked by hills.

In a castle, ruled a king with a golden crown.

We grew abundant fruits and vegetables.

We raised livestock in fields of green.

We hunted in the nearby forest.

We fished in waters, crisp and clean.

But I lived a lonely, sad existence.

For the town’s people were so unkind.

I wasn’t very smart or handy.

And they would whisper about me from behind.

I could not be a doctor.

I had not the brains for such a thing.

I could not be a jester in the royal court.

Oh, how terribly I did sing.

Farming was not the life for me.

I killed everything I tried to grow.

I couldn’t bake. I couldn’t build.

How to weave, I did not know.

I could not be a gallant knight.

There would be no shining armor, you see.

I was an awful, dreadful klutz.

The king definitely did not want me.

I did not have an education.

I never went to school.

So, I settled for the only thing I could.

I became the hopeless town fool.

But I was a kind and gentle soul.

I was a true and honest man.

And so I puttered at odd little jobs.

I lived without any real plan.

The king, he loved a long-haired maiden.

In marriage, he offered her his hand.

But an evil sorcerer came to town one day.

He stole that pretty girl from the land.

So the king rallied all his men.

“The princess you must go and save!

Be brave in your noble quest.

Put her captor in his grave!”

“Sacks of gold will thee I give.

Forever grateful will I be.

You will have duchies in my kingdom.

Now bring her home to me.”

Off the knights did ride.

Their steeds were big and strong.

Then a thought crossed my feeble mind.

I would follow right along.

Upon my old fat mule, I mounted.

I gazed out into the wild.

I was going to save the princess too.

I set off with a smile.

We traveled by day and by night.

We traversed lands vast and wide.

All the while, I rode and pondered.

“Perhaps the princess would be my bride.”

We came upon a fortress.

It was surrounded by a moat.

We attempted to cross the water.

But we did not have a boat.

The knights sought to scale the drawbridge.

But a dragon burned it down.

The knights, they fell into the water.

And with their heavy armor, they drowned.

I hopped onto a piece of wood.

It was a floating in the trench.

I drifted across to the castle door.

And I opened it with a forceful wrench.

I found the princess in the highest tower.

It was guarded by a fearsome dragon.

I was so frightened at this sight.

I took a swing from my trusty flagon.

The beast began to eye me up.

“I have a hungry family,” it said.

“The sorcerer gives us no food to eat.

He makes us find it for ourselves instead.”

“Oh, how I would love to eat you.

You look like a scrumptious lad.”

“But, I have no fat upon by bones,” I cried.

“That, and my feet smell horrifically bad.”

“But, I know where you can get a meal.”

“Where?” The dragon inquired in a flash.

“We have heaps of food back in the Valley.

In fact, the king has quite a stash.”

The dragon gave me a little wink.

“I will bring my family there today.

Just climb upon my back.

And you show us the way.”

So the princess and I scrambled on.

Off to the Valley the dragons flew.

They ate the king and many people.

It was terrible and sadly true.

The princess and I quickly fled.

We escaped the fiery commotion.

But the evil sorcerer had followed us.

We headed to the great blue ocean.

We commandeered a treasure ship.

In the harbor, it was docked.

All the pirates were in the tavern.

And they had left their schooner unlocked.

We sailed out onto the endless water.

We made it quite a ways from shore.

But the sorcerer was behind us.

He was going to settle up the score.

He called the kraken from its lair.

It emerged out of the deep.

He yelled, “The girl is mine; the man is yours.

Eat him, then go back to sleep.”

So the kraken rose up to sink the ship.

It aimed to swallow it whole.

But something in its throat got stuck.

It was a bag of buccaneer's gold.

The sorcerer struggled to save the monster.

Into its mouth, he cautiously crept.

He tugged on the bag of coins.

To dislodge it, was his intent.

But the sorcerer too was swallowed.

The poor beast choked to death.

The two sunk to their watery graves.

Bubbles surfaced in their final breath.

Away the princess and I did sail.

A tropical paradise we found.

There we landed and took our rest.

We made our future on that ground.

Now the Valley is full of dragons.

The kraken is dead, I’m sorry to say.

Do you want to hear the rest of my story?

Well, that’s a tale for another day!