inventory enables adventure
Take the hurricane lamp and bamboo pole.
It’s light outside, but you never know.
An adventure crawl can quickly turn dark.
The pole’s for fish or swishing at snarks.
A rose on the bush and trout from the lake,
the inventory grows with so much to take.
Into the satchel, all collectables tossed.
Yet flowers and fish never seem squashed.
There’s surely a tree, a quick easy climb.
Stow the loose branch for some other time.
The limb is a clue, that much is plain.
Look at its shape: like a club or a cane.
East to the drawbridge, of course it is raised;
controlled by a troll, half-starved or crazed.
Hunger, the fish, an easy clue catch.
Given the trout, the troll’s dispatched.
Lower the bridge, then north not far.
Into the castle, at least the courtyard.
A burly guard with shiny chain-mail
is wearing no helmet; not in this tale.
A key on the belt and a door to the tower.
Strike with the rod or offer the flower?
Neither for now, there’s an open stairwell.
Down is the dungeon, you’d guess by smell.
Dark and dank with some awful breeze,
foreshadowing ghosts or a nasty disease.
On cue, a corpse shuffles this way.
A crown on its head. The rest in decay.
Show it whatever you have in your satchel.
That nothing works has you quite baffled.
So up the stairs and back to the guard.
Smack with the branch, but maybe not hard.
Taking the key, unlock the great hall.
It’s a dining room and curiously small.
Richly stocked, narratively neutral,
save for a candle that’s bound to be useful.
Sticky and jaundiced, smelling of sulphur.
You utter an oath, something quite vulgar.
An archway extends to base of the tower.
Saving a princess, but wanting a shower.
She turns from you—your looks or the reek.
No matter the effort, m’lady won’t speak. I
s there nothing here to sweeten her nose?
In asking, you have it: offer the rose.
She takes it. Now chatty, regaling the tale.
The king’s ghost haunts below in the jail.
Whoever takes crown has claim to throne.
Good knight, I wish you’d stronger cologne.
That’s it! The smell, sulphur that burns.
Free the dead king. With that you adjourn.
Down the tower and smallest great hall,
toward the keep that smells like a stall.
The candle pops out in the stairwell breeze.
Re-lit from the lamp just as you see
the corpse with a crown crawling on knees.
‘End it’ you hear, then the word ‘please.’
The sulphur candle grants the king’s wish.
You gather his ashes with crown as a dish.
Back to the princess, ash to the winds.
The crown’s now yours. Your reign begins.
