The Chicken Hero saga 13: Marias Curse Part 1

   It was a sweltering day in the chicken harvest as the sun beat down endlessly, it was so hot that our hero thought he could actually fry an egg on pavement, if pavement had actually existed.
  "Note to self" he thought while writing an idea down "Invent pavement."
   It was a slow time of year at the harvest, the good weather combined with business being divided between the villages of Kelsius and Pearl Mountain was taking it's toll on the amount of villagers who came in to dine, sure they were still prosperous but the extended downtime led to some interesting ways to keep busy. Games were created to kill the boredom, though some often backfired such as when a rousing game of throw the dwarf went wrong after Robbias, who had the strength of ten men launched Byronus some two towns over and he was not heard from again.
   The hero feared boredom sometimes, because he did not trust it, he knew if the times were uneventful now that something would happen later to make up for it. The Chicken king was still out there though he had defeated him and his kickin chickens once, and something in his stomach told him he had not yet seen the last of the Deboner, for he knew he was not that easy to eliminate, no he was quite hard indeed. With the sun keeping all the villagers outside and a shortage of little people around to throw the hero needed something to keep himself occupied, he liked stories, he considered himself a man of literature, he had read that book that time, so he decided to go around and ask his fellow harvesters for a story he could listen to. As the hero set out find out more about his harvesters he was stopped in his tracks, frozen by the horror that was in front of him. The hero stood straight, unmoving, he had never known fear before, he had fought many battles but never had evil come this close to home, for there in front of him stood the co-harvest manager Bogias, man of numbers and books, clad in tiny panatlooms made of denim, a shirt with the sleeves removed and socks darned from the wool of what appeared to be two sheep. His pasty legs and torso showed an uncanny ability to avoid the sun's rays, and his hairless body, the stuff of legend, looking like a guinea pig that just escaped the womb of it's mother.
    For the first time in his brave life the hero knew he must flee, with a quick hello he went off in the other direction in search of anything he could do to cut the image out of his brain, for it would haunt him for the rest of his days. On the way to find something to scrub his brain clean, he ran past Marias who made sure to say hello to him, he was moving so fast he almost never said hello back but then he thought of the story he had heard, it was known that Marias was cursed in the long long ago, that she had to stop and say hello to everyone, and if the greetings were not returned, the curse would be passed on to that person. Looking for anything to take his mind off the horrors he had witnessed previously he went up to her with an offering of food, for she had a hearty appetite even over the age of a thousand.
    "Hello Marias" the hero called to her "I was wondering if you ever get frustrated having to say hello to every single person you meet?"
    "Well you know dear-she called everybody dear- it was rough for the first hundred years, I lived in the mountains for a long time because if you scream hello, it echoes for days and that saves a lot of time, there is always a loophole, remember that dear."
    "Do you mind if I ask you the story of how it happened?"
    "Not at all dear, I've told this story many times. It was back in the long long ago when the earth was orbited by nine planets, and you can bet Uranus that Pluto was one of them, it was said that when these nine planets aligned darkness would take over the earth and it only happens every thousand years or so. I was just a girl then, I remember I was in the yard playing with my pet Mastodon.....Fuzzy was his name."
    "Oh Fuzzy was he?
    "No, not really dear, Fuzzy had no hair"
    "Oh so Fuzzy wasn't Fuzzy, was he?"
    "That's not the point dear, anyway where was I? Oh yes I was playing with Fuzzy when the skies darkened, I had never seen such darkness, even the so called Dark Ages were brighter than you would think. I ran into to tell my father, but I could not talk well at the time for I was so young and I said daddy daddy the darks is coming, and at first he taught the slaves had gotten free and was going to defend our home. Then he looked outside and he saw how dark it was and he said we had to run, and there was little time. So I grabbed what things I could and Fuzzy and we made a run for it, I wasn't sure what was happening but I knew things weren't right."
   Marias stopped and looked in the sky and she shivered as if remembering something horrifying. The hero stopped and saw the image of Bogias, and he shivered at the memory of something horrifying.
   "In our rush to flee our village I bumped into an older woman, I did not see her face because of the cloak she had on, let this be a lesson dear, never trust anyone in a cloak. I was so scared that I did not say hello to this woman, I just wanted to catch up with my parents and Fuzzy, as I went to move she grabbed my arm with her bony fingers and told me I was a mean little child for not saying hello, and she begin to chant this weird spell, when she was done she told me that I was now cursed, that I would live for thousands of years and have to say hello to everyone, and if they didn't say it back, they too would be cursed, apparently while evil she still believed in being polite. For the first hundred years it was rough, I do not want to say hello to everyone, not everyone deserves it, but I do not want anyone else to suffer this fate so I go out of my way to make sure they say hello back, hoping someday I will find that woman and the curse will be lifted."
   The hero hugged Marias and thanked her for telling him, but something else stopped in him in his tracks, no it wasn't just the horrible image of Bogias this time, it was another thought
   "Marias, did you say the darkness only comes every thousand years?"
   "Yes dear, why?"
   "Because look at how dark it is over on the horizon"
   "Oh no dear, it's time again"
   The hero looked off in the distance, he knew trouble was coming and that in fact the slow times were over, and he thought maybe the darkness might bring back the cloaked woman, and he could lift Marias curse, this story was far from over, it would definitely be continued.