Everard

My New Year's Resolution this year has been to keep up a 100% track record on birthday cards and thank you notes, which I have never remotely done before. The year is halfway done, and although there were some belated ones, none have been totally missed yet. High five, me!

Part of my success was buying a bulky box of cards back in January and pre-stuffing and pre-addressing all the envelopes, ready for greetings and signings to be added when the time came. But the problem with box-sets of cards is that they have some weird things in them. When my closest brother's birthday rolled around (the one I do Runewood Abbey with), the card I had on hand for him was kind of.... Embarrassing?

...for BIG TIME fun!

The more I looked at it, the weirder everything about it seemed to me. Why is there a pig in this circus? Why is he wearing overalls? Why did I choose this card for a 31-year-old man?

Luckily, there was a fold-over page inside, presumably for grandmothers to write long happy letters to the small children for whom the card was obviously intended. So after being egged on by my Shoulder Andy, I charged ahead with the following (which has been somewhat edited for flow and consistency, but not for total and complete ridiculousness).

Special thanks to Dan for making me aware of the name and its meaning. Seriously, though, this is so silly. I'm putting it behind a cut. XD

EVERARD

This is a story about a juggling pig named Everard. Everard was the youngest son of the great boar-god HREEEEKsnort, who ruled with one iron and one golden tusk over the long arm of the Sus galaxy. He had always been small and pink beside his great brown sisters and brothers, but what he lacked in might, Everard made up in trouble.

"Remember and never forget," Queen Porcelain would grunt gently every evening as he nestled down in his cloud of solar murk, "that you are a prince, and you must act like one. Even if you are a runt."

But Everard always forgot, and he was always in trouble. Tearing through solar systems, scattering globular clusters, spilling nebulae and eating the neighbors' dwarf stars, he quickly established himself as a menace to the cosmos.

"You've got to control him!" sniffed the Grand Pachyderm.

"You've got to punish him!" roared the Catriarchs of Felicia.

"You've got to teach him," cooed the Great Horned One, "which takes patience and forbearance."

"But we've tried all those things!" his parents harrumphed, their backs rigid with indignation. "Nothing works. He's too young to understand."

The celestial owl chuckled, fluffling up its starry feathers. "Nonsense. It's just a matter of redirecting his energy. I'll show you--where is the little piglet?"

But when they found Everard, he was in the Great Horned One's own back garden, gleefully tossing whole worlds around his head and squealing as he caught them again. A great hooting and flapping rose up on the instant, with a storm of feathers and supernovae the likes of which had never before been seen in that region.

It cost HREEEEKsnort a great many precious yellow giants and Porcelain one of her most prized quasars to calm their neighbor. Even so, the great bird kept its furious, burning glare fixed on the family all the way back to Sus.

Tossing their heads and snorting with despair, they tried to roll up their scattered dignity.

"It's what comes of being the runt, I suppose," muttered the king. "All curly tail and no brains."

"If only he had some real responsibility, he'd have more confidence," sighed the queen. "We could build up his strength with feasts and hunts..."

"The problem is, he's just too small," they agreed sadly.

"No," Everard piped up. "The problem is, I'm just too big." His parents stared at him. "Far too big," he repeated sadly, rubbing his pink stub of a snout. "I just want space to run and play. I want to roll over in the mud or play with toys without creating and destroying ecosystems all the time."

"You want more space?" they asked in astonishment.

"If I didn't take up so much of it..." he squeaked.

They just looked at him again, blinking great ponderous blinks. Then they put their massive heads together.

"We do have other shoats," Queen Porcelain murmured, "with more of a nose for the family business..."

"Hmph. And there are always those, shall we say...humble relatives of yours," King HREEEEKsnort allowed.

And so it was that the great boar and the great sow placed their youngest little oinker on Earth with his cousins. It took a lot of heat, a lot of pressure, and a lot of old-fashioned pig magic to get him down to size, but pretty soon he was dashing about in his new sty with the best of them--wallowing, eating slop, and generally having a wonderful time.

"You're still bigger than most things," his father pointed out before taking his leave. "Bugs and acorns, bacteria, sand..." But Everard wasn't listening. He had just spotted some nice fat apples. He thought he might practice his juggling.

"He doesn't have it in him to be all the way small," said his mother fondly. Snorting, they withdrew.

And, indeed, it wasn't long before Everard was being hailed on posters and television commercials as "The Biggest Little Pig in Show Business." People came from miles around to see him, and the other animals in the circus became his lifelong friends. When his fat, magnificent brothers and sisters peeked down at him, they were satisfied (and maybe even a little envious) to see that he had everything he could possibly want to eat, juggle, or roll in. Everard never did return to the skies, but he was more than happy to spend the rest of his days his own way: hamming it up, bringing home the bacon, and -- of course -- hogging the spotlight.

At last, he was a star.

THE END.

© Rachel Spitler
February 27, 2011