Upon Prestidigitation Mountain

“You!”

“What? Who’s that? I can’t see who’s talking…!”

“I’m down here, by your feet!” Pierce  called out, shouting up to the giant. “Careful where you step  with your gigantically reeking feet you great enormous lummox!”

“So!” cried the God of Daily Irritations. The giant towered over the human who dared to challenge him in the castle carved out of the upper quarter of Mount Prestidigitation. “I see you now: a little shred, a worm, a mort of a man! How came you here?”

“The clouds parted in the spring wind–and thereupon I beheld your ugly hulking goat-faced person, flinging persistent irritations, minor mishaps, and annoying bad luck upon the people of Oblivious Valley!”

 “But I am invisible to mortals! How could a vile monkey-dropping such as yourself see me at work?”

“Ha! Were you not such a thick, dim, blockheaded nitwit you might have logically deduced I have used Revelation Spectacles! I inherited them from Uncle Mortimer who was too cowardly to put them on! Now, you discourteous lout! Explain yourself!”

“Tiny pink fleck of snot, you see but you do not see! I was tasked by the Dark Gods to spread small woes so that you would be too busy to guess the Great Woe, and do something about it!”

“And what is the Great Woe, you unspeakably tremendous waste of space!”

“Why–it is letting small things distract you from the Grace of Living! But you shall never report this to your kind, for now I shall crush you under my feet, and make you the blot you have always been destined to be!”

But as the giant lifted his gigantic foot, Pierce drew his sword, braced its pommel in a crack of the stone floor, and leapt to one side. The foot came slamming down and impaled upon the sword. The giant leapt about, clutching at its foot, and howling, “Aiee! Fuck you, you little shit!”

“No fuck you!” cried Pierce. “For I am away to inform my people of your perfidy–fare-unwell, you pestilence!” And with that, Pierce sprinted under a stone table and out the drainage pipe he’d used to enter the carven castle. . .