Insane Raymond Flincher for Grand Vizier

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Raymond lived in this Mistilian town to the very left of it-- Lewistone. It was his little connection town in the corner of the valley, just below the line in the mud between two mediocrely powerful regimes. He could trek fifty-five minutes North-West to be in Waltonby, and fifteen minutes South-West to be in Oron.

It was geographical bliss.

Lewistone was the closest he could be to Oron while still being conveniently close to Waltonby. Oron was his favorite for its trees and their shade that he loved, but living there was too expensive, and even if he could afford it, the coniferous perfection would drive him mad. Oron’s trees sent very specific chills though his veins and turned his mind as decrepit and green as they. A very peculiar dark green that tasted good only in moderation. The overgrown yellow deadness of old Lewistone, Mistilia was tolerable for now.

He would do his bartering in Oron if he was able to because there was no sales tax. Likewise, he worked in Waltonby because there was no income tax. He’d been working at an alchemy shop for two years because late in his monastic study, it was rumored that all the distant maidens were becoming interested in the divine feminine... Raymond was something like an opportunist.

His job was a 7 hour donkey expedition into Waltonby. This progressively made him hate going to work. The commute made him hate it I mean, and of course the dragons.

Every day that he went to work he covered such a significant amount of dragon-regulated road that he usually saw at least one stabbing and dodged three. By the time he got where he was going, he was emotionally exhausted and ready to go home. Not everybody's mind was fit to withstand the imminent consequences tied to the dragons' riddles and their convoluted crusade.

Attending his lyre lessons was no relief from this trek either, as they were only one mile’s distance from the alchemy shop, which, remember, was still a 7 hour donkey trek from Lewistone.

Everyone always questioned why all of his dealings were so far away. He used to have a good answer but as time wore on, that answer lost all posterity. They would accuse him of being some sort of double agent for the dragons every day. But deep down they knew that that was just impossible, for the dragons had no sense of empathetic reasoning for the humans. The dragons only riddled, prognosticated, and stabbed.

At his parents’ almshouse, where Raymond lived, the side of the yard had recently been remodeled a tad. Dirt and grass outside his window had now been paved over into a big patch of cobble which reflected the summer sun up into his room. The big Sycamore that supplied a generous amount of shade and nostalgia had also been cut down in the process. This made him sad because it had been dubbed his birthday tree for some reason, and because he didn’t know why that meant something. It was only a tree, but the vague memory of all those years spent under it now had no real place to loiter.

During the summer, heat and brash light coagulated in this domain and stirred the room into a molten hell. To prevent this greenhouse toxicity he leaned wood scraps-- from a broken water barrel that he once lugged home from work-- against the outside of his window, and balanced his parent's excess china vertically along the interior windowsill.

A smell grew in the bog of his room due to the lack of sunlight. As long as he lit the vanilla lard candle before visitors arrived, the makeshift sun barriers made for a worthwhile tradeoff. Raymond had many candles, but the vanilla lard one was the only aroma simple enough for safe & normal brain function-- this worked the same as his avoidance for Oron's greenery. The other candles put the essence of a whole world into his mind.

Little beknownst to him, the pinnacle of the dragons' religious system was a deity who happened to reek of vanilla, which might be the reason why he's still alive.

His favorite was the Huckleberry candle because it smelled like the town in Oron that he would live in if he could handle it. The huckleberry candle was only set on fire one and a half times ever. Raymond kept it wrapped up in the back of the candle drawer.

-IN A RECENT STUDY, OUR SCIENTISTS HAVE DISCOVERED A SIGNIFICANT LINK BETWEEN HOW MUCH TIME YOU SPEND AWAY FROM YOUR GOATS AND DEPRESSION. IF YO- Outside, a town cryer who thought himself to be something of an important trailblazer was briefly cut off by an annoyed drunkard clocking him square in the jaw. Everyone was grateful. Some muffled roaring and stabbing sounds then came through the wall; everyone was less grateful.

Raymond had nothing to say about this. Why would he even consider saying anything? He was sitting alone-- on the half of the family zitkist that wasn’t tucked into the storage basement-- looking across the room at his goat. He was busy.

This was an old goat from the early 1200’s, but he had it hooked up to an advanced circuit routing box so he could watch Hulu Premium on it. The goat was placed on the third shelf from the ground in a birch bookcase. Right now the show Angry Barrels Jousting Known Fellows was on. He began to consume, a whole box of dry penne down the hatch.

One of the dragon's riddles had earlier hinted at pasta being a cure for sunburns, and he had accrued quite the blister this week from the commuting. So he was committing a little penne experimentation. The region's peoples' general understanding was that the dragons had a tendency to make up extravagant lies for further confused riddles. Raymond was gullible. And his sunburn looked stupid on his head.

“Clarice, I know you like the commercials, but you've got to moderate your humanity! You’re already very intimidating to our guests!” Raymond was now talking to the painted woodcarving of a head nailed to a shelf, and the guests that he was referring to were his strange coworkers. They frequented semi-often as Raymond typically hosted the company beanfeasts.

She was known as Clarice the Beholder of Hats because she was wearing ten hats stacked atop each other. This was how Raymond stored his hats. Raymond emptied the remains of the penne into his mouth and put one leg over the zitkist's back so he could reach Clarice and cover her eyes from what the goat was doing.

Soon this wooden head would not be so inanimate, because new legislation from parliament had been signed and passed-- the alchemy shop was now hiring dragons.

If the dragons knew about Clarice, they would tear him to shreds with their riddles. He would become driven into madness, or worse.

He watched his goat and thought about how boredom was his worst enemy and his primary weakness. On this afternoon, he thought wrong.