another adventure

Here lies another tale of Esther - the young girl blessed and cursed with wittiness and awkwardness (respectively).

One day, Esther had the opportunity to obtain a key that would help her battle the curse of low self esteem, awkwardness and tactlessness. That key happened to be a special dragon - one with the power to battle the curse through laughter and sarcasm. The trick, however, was to win the dragon over. In order to unleash the dragon's power, one had to get into the dragon's cave, and in order to get into the dragon's cave, one had to be invited. So, ironically, our hero had to battle her curse for the key to help her battle her curse.

Knowing that the dragon's power would be invaluable, Esther decided to try.

"Who disturbs my slumber?" mumbled the dragon as Esther approached.

"I'm sorry for waking you," said Esther, apologetically. However, Esther quickly remembered that the dragon did not care for apologies. That was one thing she had been specifically instructed to do - never apologize. So, thinking quickly, she changed her tactics. "I had no idea that you'd still be asleep at one o'clock in the afternoon. What are you, a grad student?"

The dragon looked offended as Esther looked past him to see his many drafts of meaningless theses sitting on his desk. Esther smiled, hoping that she had made a relevent and tactful joke. The dragon began to cough. Esther ducked, expecting spurts of offended fire, but was then surprised by a very different sound - the dragon was laughing. Surprisingly, the Sarcasm Dragon appreciated sarcasm.

Understand that this was no mean task, for though her blessing gave her a quick wit to come up with quips, her curse took away the common sense of when it was appropriate.

The dragon gave Esther an appraising look and said, "Why don't you sit down?"

"No, thanks," Esther said. "I look skinnier standing up." The dragon gave a silent, questioning look. "I know! How is it even possible that I could look fatter than this? It's like if I sat down, I would break anyone's theoretical idea of the fattest person ever."

"No, that's not true," the dragon said out of politeness.

"Really? Because that's what my ex-boyfriend used to say." Once the dragon realized that Esther was joking (he was very polite), the dragon started howling.

Yes, Esther thought. I can use the curse of low self esteem to win over the dragon! Perhaps, this won't be so hard!

The whole situation looked very promising at this point, and Esther was looking forward to entering the dragon's cave, and unleashing the full power of the dragon's sarcasm to fight the curse. Esther and the dragon exchanged some more insulting comments, and the dragon asked Esther to return the next day.

Unfortunately, Esther was very unpatient. She thought that she should try and speed up the process by upping the intensity of her sarcasm. So, when Esther came in the next day, she said the most sarcastic, mean things she could think of, thinking that it would only make the dragon let her enter his cave faster. He laughed, many times incredulously, but Esther, because of the curse, did not notice. She only noticed that he was laughing.

Sadly, she had forgotten that all this time she had always been toeing the line between outrageous and tactless. And now, with the more intense sarcasm, she had begun to push the limit.

Now, Esther and the dragon had been joking around, and the dragon made an especially biting comment, which Esther didn't mind. Esther never minded any insults, usually, because the curse gave her such low self esteem that she usually agreed with them. However, Esther believed that she should act very offended to continue the bite of the comment.

"Shut up," Esther said, playfully, and she reached into her bag and threw the first thing she could find to throw, which was her snack, artificially cheese flavoured rice cakes. The dragon was, as many dragons are, very big and very strong, so Esther was sure that throwing something at him would be no big deal - no more than a playful expression of offendedness.

She was wrong.

As the powdered cheese hit the dragon's face, he began to freeze.

"What's happening?" asked Esther.

"Powdered cheese?! Don't you know that dragons and powdered cheese creates an endothermic reaction?"

Upon a tiny bit of reflection, Esther remembered the very first lesson in high school chemistry - dragons and artificial cheese flavouring causes freezing. Instantly, the dragon began to freeze, starting with the shoulders.

"I'm so sorry!" pleaded Esther.

"It's okay," said the dragon shortly.

"No, I'm really sorry. Oh no, I'm such a jerk. I am SO SORRY." Of course, Esther had forgotten the first rule of dragons - never apologize - and had now, broken the rule three times, on top of creating extreme discomfort for the dragon by freezing him.

The dragon's shoulders were now completely frozen. Esther was very flustered, and tried sarcasm again, which didn't work because the dragon's sarcasm powers were now gone as the powdered cheese did its work, and then tried apologizing again and again. This upset the dragon's internal chemistry so as to speed up the freezing. The dragon, being very polite, excused himself and rolled the very heavy stone that blocks the door to his cave.

The next day, Esther came by to see if the freezing had worn off. However, the dragon was very busy with his thesis, and though the freezing had worn off mostly, frost still remained on his shoulders. It would seem that this meant all was lost because this frost made the dragon immune to Esther's sarcasm. She no longer had something to win the dragon over so she could unleash his powers against the curse.

It is unknown whether the frost is permafrost, but Esther had lost hope. She would have to find another way to battle the curse of low self esteem, tactlessness, and awkwardness.