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"Good day Mr. Crieff. I hear you're wearing your ornaments today. Is it christmas already?" Douglas drawled haughtily from the co-pilot's seat as Martin pranced into the flight deck.
"Haha, very funny Douglas. I'm actually meeting Theresa today as soon as we touch down." Martin's smile sparkled almost as brightly as the medals coating his chest like armor.
"However will she recognize you if she's blinded by all that glare?"
"She likes seeing me with my medals on." Douglas's taunts rolled off him like water off a warm, fuzzy duck. "Says it makes me look distinguished."
"Well, she did give you more than half of them. She's probably just found a new way to tease you about it." Douglas said with just the slightest amount of bitterness. It was going to take some time for Douglas to get used to the idea of an Outsider teasing Martin on a regular basis. Martin Teasing was a favorite pastime of his. He may be content to share teasing rights with Carolyn, but only because Carolyn gave him rights to tease Arthur in return. And as fun as Martin's reactions are, Arthur's absolute obliviousness was even more so. There had been no exchange between himself and the princess, leaving Douglas feeling slightly cheated.
"She probably has. She's cute when she teases." Martin sighed, already flying high despite having yet to take off. Douglas chuckled to himself, reminiscing about young love and the old days.
"Say, have you figured out what the wobbly stick means yet?" Douglas asked, flicking the gold sliver and causing the rest to jingle.
"No."
"Well, you're in luck. I've been reading up on history an-"
"No, you haven't. You're about to spout off another completely ridiculous bit of 'history' to prove that you're a god of knowledge as well as the sky."
"Ok, you caught me." Douglas sighed, leaning back in his seat and staring up to the sky.
"So what is it?"
"What's what?
"This remarkable piece of 'history' you've got stored up. It's bound to be interesting and a fake history is better than nothing."
"One day, a very long time ago-"
"I didn't miss Storytime with Douglas, did I?" Arthur chirped, hopping wide-eyed and hopeful into the flight deck. He took a seat on the floor between Douglas and Martin, arranging himself into crisscross applesauce postion. "I really love Storytime with Douglas. Especially the one about the otters. That one was Brilliant."
"Thank you Arthur. Alright, everyone situated? Well, one day long ago the king of Lichtenstein got very very bored and just a teeny bit dead drunk. So, as entertainment, he held a contest to see who could eat an entire bowl of soup with a single stick. There were, of course, a few other rules. No lifting the bowl, no lowering your head into the bowl, no stick tampering... you know the basics of a soup eating competition. Nearly all of the villagers entered the competition as the food of the royal house of Lichtenstein was notoriously de-licht-able, even when eaten with a solitary stick. Of course, All who attempted to eat the soup failed miserably and was forced to do the ceremonial 'I'm a loser' ritual. It was a messy, shameful ordeal which involved goat horns, lions teeth, and a heap of goose feathers soaked in honey. But everyone got soup afterwards and a spoon to eat it with, so there were no hard feelings. Turns out Royal Lichtensteinien soup tastes wonderful even when eaten with a mouth full of goose feathers.
"But as the day reached it's peak and the king was sure every last visitor had been feathered, horned and toothed, a crippled old lady stood up to the challenge (as best she could, with her back problems). She took the stick and the bowl of soup and hobbled out to the patio to eat. Slowly, she dipped the stick into the bowl and sucked what liquid she could into her toothless mouth until eventually every last drop of the soup evaporated in the hot summer sun.
"The king, being flat broke and never expecting anyone to succeed, awarded the little old lady with her own eating stick. Ever since then, the wobbly stick of Lichtenstein is awarded to all those who achieve useless goals through means that are absolutely out of their control. Because why not?"
"Wow. Douglas, that was-
"Brilliant." The crew all chorused together.
"So I suppose we can lift off, now that all's well with you magnificent men and our flying machine?" Carolyn called out from the doorway.
And they all lived happily ever after. The end.