For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-389-5-minute-freewrite-tuesday-prompt-excuses
Some parts of this particular entry are funny, and so I'll submit it to #comedyopenmic and nominate @chibera, @ecoinstant, and @eaglespirit to also write funny things.

Chapter 7

Swellvben was a middling musician. He was an adequate writer. He made no excuses for being either. No one clamored to hear him play, but when he was finished, the folk would drop coppers in his purse. If they had had a good year, they would drop silvers in his hat. Once, a young man eager to prove his good nature to the lady of the inn had carefully and obviously, so everyone could see, but as seemingly unprepossessingly as possible, place a single gold in Swellvben's pelf.

What Swellvben lacked in creative expertise, he made up for with the hard work of learning by rote. He had, therefore, learned the entirety of the Epic of Last Elms.

---

Beat.
Beat.
She'll beat.
OH
Away from the yonder beech folks and afar from the nearest birch. Travelled on a spine and a spool of thread
The tale of the last of the elms and how it wound up dead.
A grove that spent its days suffering, holes bored through their every bark.
Rough like the palms of a splinter-man, afraid like the hides of a fairly found yammer

Dwell in a world that's new, folks, and cheer to the deepest roots. Follow the thread of a tale and let break the spine again.
In-between where the dusk oak grows and the darling scwag.
Grovel for another day, born away from the buzz of wings on your every hide.
Hurt in the center of loving, callous above the wound of a tapped unrooted sapling

Beat.
Beat.
He'll beat.
Oh

A thousand trees among us. A thousand fell like rain. The day the warbler sung dusk and never sung again.

The first Elm Lord, no name for this old legend, the people called it Lord
They walked, like all the tree lords did, in the times of old.
His roots were strong as trunks, and her branches thick with leaves
Where she settled roots for days, when gone he left plains seas.
The last of her great powers, his soul was terrible and vast,
and most of all the tree lord felt, he grieves and then she seethes.
His life she roams for the ones he lost to fire and disease
Until at dawning of this age, it finds that it is among the last
The last to grow and walk.

This age, it dawns with snake and toad, and little itchy bug.
No people in this land that you might want to hug
(except for you little peppers, though even you might find it tricky
to hug the spider, snail, slug, and all else they might think icky.)
One people comes, and then another, to tell the story from.
Soft skin, two legs, scraping up the smallest crumb.

The great Elm Lord saddened now seething
He sees these folks and quickly does their reaving
Mighty boughs and windswept switch
They fell before her might.

No more people in this land, the Elm Lord called it Gold
No more people in this land, the Elm Lord no one told

Beat.
Beat.
He'll beat.
Oh
Beat.
Beat.
She'll beat.
Oh

And then from seas and over rock, crawling that they came.
The sunborne beetle thick a-wing, to Gold it came
And deep below and deep above, the world shook with shame

The shard-borne beetle with its drowsy hums
The shard-borne beetle with its rousing comes
It comes and comes again. A thousand beetles from beyond
That gnaw and chew the root.
A thousand beetles come to feast.
The people dance and flute.

No more of tree lords, the beetles came
and came and came and came

The trees now in soil stand. They wait to walk again. And Elm is gone and Sigillar
Elves now are and dwarven men, women human and
All people are and can will be for we are free at last.
From the mighty tree lords which are firmly in our past.

Beat. -le
Beat. -le
He'll beetle.
Oh
Beetle.
Beetle.
She'll beetle.
Oh
BEETLE
BEETLE
We'll beetle them!
Beetle!
Beetle!
Thrum-ba-bup!

---

Swellven knew the epic poem that followed the thread of that first great fire when trees began walking and ended finally with the beetles attacking their roots and forcing them to bury their roots always under the ground to keep them safe. He'd never found it to be very popular among the elves. In this town, he'd arrived with high hopes, though, for this was a very human town. He was hoping, in fact, that the people he'd heard were the richest in town, the Gem clan, would especially like it and perhaps reward him handsomely for offering some artistic support to what everybody already knew they wanted, namely to conquer the forest with these monstrosities he'd heard whispered about in Gold, where he was from, and where he had learned the song. He was kind of thinking that perhaps he should change the name of the town that lies at the center of the world in the story to Kittrosk, but that was surely too obvious and attempt to pander... but perhaps naming it Morraw wouldn't be. After all, it's a big town nearby... but no, for all he knew they felt a real rivalry with their - and besides, rhyming Morraw didn't seem easy.

Swellven was already counting the Gems gems he was sure he'd soon be holding in his hand when his stumbled, distracted, over a sheep. A sheep in the middle of town. This was a bumble-nowhere place. A whole flock of sheep milled about before him and didn't seem the least bit interested in moving out of his way. Inn was just before him, and he figured that would be the best place to get his named bandied about enough that he'd get an invite to the Gems, where they would invite him to sleep on beds and feed him suckled pig. He just had to navigate through these sheep, and he'd be on the path to-

Something sounded wrong. The sheep. The sheep were silent. Not entirely. They still made sounds as their coats brushed against him and each other, but there was no bleating. Swellven, goodness help him, knew sheep. He didn't want to talk about it, but he knew sheep. He knew that every second, some one of them at least were bleating in a flock this big. Not a single sheep vocalized.

Swellven stood stock still and turned. He turned slowly, attempting to appear nonchalant, as if surveying his surroundings were merely a disinterested sort of task. Oh, there's a barrel. Hm, cobblestones. Look at that unexpected shutter. When he had turned his body most of the way around in this way, he leapt and spun. There was no 'aha' for him. Nothing out of the ordinary except a silent flock of sheep in the middle of town.

Well, no mage would bother stalking him, and if it had been something else, he could either handle it or he couldn't. "Baa!" Swellven shouted as he pushed aside ewes, "Baa!" Shoving and nudging, he cleared a path to the door of the inn. "If I'd wanted a good opportunity to put what I learned as a kid to good use, I would've become a cart-pusher. At least those have wheels!"

Swellven tried to swing the door open with a flourish, but it caught briefly on the warped wood of the frame and barely managed a squeak. Inside, it was so much dimmer than outside that it took Swellven longer than he would have liked to realize that a swarm of wasps hovered just a few feet in front of the door. It took him just long enough that he was in the midst of the swarm and had already opened his mouth and proclaimed, "A carafe of your sweetest mead! I am Swellven the -urk" Lucky for Swellven, he had not swallowed a wasp, but unlucky for him, a wasp had warned him of the imminent danger of so doing by the most efficient means available. The considerate wasp had stung him at the top of the throat before finding its way back out his gaping, aghast maw.

Chanbun, huddled in conversation with her new elf friend and her old human friend, having taken hold of the opportunity to make amends with libations, called out, "No sweet mead here! Nothing but the bitterest of meads, and you'll love it!" When Swellven didn't respond immediately, Chanbun followed with, "I know you young folk think taste is important, but after you feel the feelings my bitter mead offers you, you'll come around. Feeling lonesome, bitter mead will take the sting out of whatever he, she, it, or they said. You'll want to marry bitter mead instead. You can't. Bitter mead won't be tied down." Chanbun chuckled to herself, poured a mugful of bitter mead, and passed it to Lavender to bring to the young man.

"I don't know you, Swellven. Oh. Jani, I think he's swollen."

"Swollen!?" called Chanbun, "Pour the bitter mead down his gullet. It'll fix anything."

Jani, preoccupied with buzzing at the traumatized wasp who'd flown out of that gullet, ignored them.

Lavender poured the mead into his mouth. It was not miraculous that this worked. It was science. Chanbun knew it worked because her mead had always worked.

Swellven let his mouth overflow with the bitter mead until at last the swelling subsided, and then he gulped. He stood, not the heroic figure he'd intended to be, drenched with sticky bitter mead, amidst a thousand humming wasps.

"I haven't finished telling my new friend the story of my life," said Chanbun, "and you come swaggering in here with all the bravado of a butcher's apprentice at his first slaughter, no offense, dear Lavender, I'm sure your mother was never so cocky,"
"No, I expect she was," Lavender interjected.
"Now, I love an opportunity to share my room with a traveller as much as the next innkeeper, but I won't abide rudeness or malarkey. Set yourself by the fire. I'll bring you a loaf of bread, Lavender's mother's rump," at this, Chanbun winked vigorously at all assembled, "and a few different jams. Goodness knows I've nearly too many jams, if there can be such a thing. You'll eat, sit considerately, and then tell me what you have to offer for the hospitality. I warn you. I have too many jams. Ha. There's no such thing."

Swellven let himself be guided by the elbow, Lavender on one side, while Chanbun bustled to the pantry to prepare what she'd promised. He sat at a sturdy cherry table. The fire wasn't lit, but he was near where it would be if it had been lit. After setting cold roast hind rump, cherry and blackberry jams, and a brick of what he assumed must be the promised bread, Chanbun bustled (for she was in a bustling mode mood) over to the cold fireplace, laid wood in, and started a roaring fire in moments with just two deft strokes of her firestarter.

The dim inn became abruptly a cheery room. The shadowy corners danced with life, and every part of Jani knew this was the kind of place that made people settle among other people instead of living wild and free in the forest.

Chanbun continued as if she'd never lost hold of the thread that was the conversation she'd been having ten minutes earlier, "That was when Kalben had been pushing the lordlets too far, we knew. I was not a hero then, and I'm no hero now, so Slugmuth and I made ourselves scarce. I think a few months later the whole place collapsed, not in a great fiery battle or anything, but in a puffle. Sometimes things right themselves. By then, of course, Slugmuth had made his way to Chorebraw, and though I think he wanted to marry me, I knew I had to push off. This was really the first place where I felt like I was early to the trough. I don't know what the end point looks like, but I've been here long enough I can't imagine having another place feel like anything less than a step back. It's been... too long. Ah, I'm distracted by our guest. And don't you worry, Jani, we'll get you in. And your Waspy team."

When Chanbun stopped talking, all eyes turned to Swellven, whose cheeks puffed with cold roast rump and who was tearing tufts of the soft bread from within the dark husk of crust. He looked back, but, helpless to do anything else, merely continued chewing.