Entry for Storycubes Contest 8: The Leprechaun - or: tough luck Michael Strutters!

This is my entry for @jacobtothe's awesome storycubes contest 8. Every week, @jacobtothe rolls 9 storydice, and everybody can participate by making a story, using at least 3 of them in any creative way (writing, drawing, painting, poetry, ...). You can read the rules right here.

These are this week's dice, and I used them in this order: 1-2-9-8-3-5-4-6 (1 being top left, 9 being down right) Where a dice is used, I put the text in bold.

(I really wanted to go 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9, but that was too difficult. I also had to skip 7, the magnet.)

My name's Michael Strutters and I'm now stuck in that dump in the Black Sun Mountains. You won't believe the shit that's happened to me over there.

Just in case you're thinking: "Never heard o' you, Strutters, or what dump you're referring to", you can read up how I discovered my fortune, what spicy recipe it actually was, and how I fled this place to change my life.

Allright, now you're thinking: "'Right, Strutters, get on with it. What friggin' happened?"

Let me tell ya.

After meditating for a week on tobacco and bourbon in my cave in the Black Sun Mountains, I got quite bored. In fact, I got bored six minutes after I ran out of them.

I became restless, annoyed, unable to focus. Something snapped inside of me.
At least that's what I thought – it was in fact a leprechaun that stepped on a twig just outside my cave. I greeted the little fella, but I couldn't understand a word he was saying. His Irish accent was just too thick to understand bugger all.

Fortunately for him, I had a stash of porridge and fortunately for me, he had a flask of rye, so we spent the night drinking, eating, talking gobbledygook and making jokes neither of us could understand anyway. We had fun till the waning crescent moon dropped behind the horizon.

Suddenly, the leprechaun became very serious – I don't know whether it had to do with the fact that night had turned into day, or that we simply had ran out of rye and porridge - but the little oddball muttered something indistinguishably Irish, very slowly and very solemn. He beckoned me to follow him. So I did.

We went for a long walk through the misty forests of the Black Sun Mountains, the leprechaun leading the way. After what seemed like six whole minutes of walking, and just when I was starting to become restless, a bit annoyed and unable to focus, the leprechaun abruptly halted in his little footsy tracks - I nearly fell over the little fuck. He turned around to me and said:

“Stop. Hammer time.”

I was baffled and said: “Whaddayamean, stop - hammer time? This some kind of joke?”

The little weirdo shook his head and repeated what he had said. I didn't understand, so he kept repeating - and I kept repeating - until I finally understood what he wanted to say: “Amber & Thyme”.

He rolled his little googly eyes, turned around and struck a knife (I hadn't noticed before), into a tree (I hadn't noticed before either). Slowly, out came some amber which he caught in a mysterious cup he had dug from beneath the tree. He took the cup with the still liquid amber to a thyme-bush and sprinkled some thyme into it. Then made me drink it.

Wanting to please my little leprechaun-buddy and not offend him, I drank to concoction. It was bloodallmighty sweet and sticky, but the leprechaun smiled and made a little dance and sang a sing-along-song. We shook hands saying goodbye to each other. The funny thing is, when we shook hands, I looked the leprechaun right in the eyes. My guess back then was he had found a way to grow to my size and we would be friends forever.

Somehow, I made it back to my cave – but jeezums, was that a long hike! I checked if I still had some bourbon left, somewhere, anywhere - and I did find a bottle, stacked in the back, and, guess what... It was as big I as was. The bloody leprechaun didn't grow, I had shrank to the bloody size of a whiskey-bottle because of "Amber and Thyme".

I took a sip of the bourbon, though. That and a puff of my tobacco was enough to get me meditating again.

So here I bloody am, Michael Geronimo Strutters, one foot fucking tall. My sister's not gonna believe me when I'll write her.

As a closing though, and while I'm still meditating on my final -huge- bottle of bourbon, and my final pack of -immense- tobacco, I think it was that bloke Einstein that once said: "God doesn't play with dice", but I certainly feel like my life is ruled by some weird dice. Guess I'm going to have to live with it.

Michael Strutters signing off for the bloody week.