“Illustrious…sardonic…tumultuous.” Ishtar brought a hand to her head and scratched, somewhat perplexed. Unfortunately the piled high curls of her hair had somehow hardened under the influence of some kind of hair product, and Ishtar was unable to attend to the itch on her head.

Ishtar needed to improve her vocabulary before the Scrabble game that would take place that evening, between Ishtar herself and the Demon Lord, Xavier who had gotten it into his head that his sole goal in life, besides ruling the demon realm, was to defeat Ishtar at Scrabble. So far, he hadn’t succeeded - but Ishtar took note that with every game, Xavier did come closer to winning.  She needed to prepare herself.

Before she could continue her work, however, Ishtar’s great Scrabble concentration was disturbed by the knock on her door. “Yes?” She called out absentmindedly, scribbling on the back of a take-out menu the word ‘expenditure’, a dictionary floating just above her head cheerily.

A young boy pushed open the door – he looked to be about thirteen, although it was hard to tell these days with the excess of growth hormone in the food. “Mistress Ishtar, you have an audience with, um…” the boy glanced at the small slip of paper in his hand and read out in great concentration, “Sir Gerard Pumpernickel Abernathy the 7th and,” he squinted, “Lucifer’s youngest son, Louis.”

Ah yes, Louis Ishtar thought darkly. Louis, the youngest son of Lucifer was hard to turn away because 1) he was the son of Lucifer, and 2) he was an insistent prat, and no matter how gently or harshly Ishtar was in rejecting the man, he simply would not leave her alone.

Ishtar had never heard of ‘Sir Gerard Pumpernickel Abernathy’ and didn’t really care to find out more.  How many suitors had she rejected in her time? And the most frustrating thing was, none of these would-be paramours actually cared about Ishtar herself. It was sad being the welder of power, the one everyone wanted a piece of simply because she was royalty. Not that Ishtar was unattractive or anything – far from it. With her heart-shaped face, large dark eyes and lustrous black hair, Ishtar was by far a physically unattractive person. She even had a personality, if that counted for anything.

Oh, she had quite a wicked sense of humor, the ability to do calculus and chemistry simultaneously, dance all of the Moulin Rouge numbers and was even educated in youth popular culture!

However, none of her suitors seemed to like the fact that she was better at calculus than they could ever be, and thus only wanted to marry her for the title of ‘King of the Underworld’. There was a snazzy ring to the title, Ishtar agreed, but she was not all that sympathetic to those suitors who wanted to be ‘K.U.’ and therefore had no patience toward the ridiculous, courting men.

She pulled the serpent-headed cane from her bedside – just incase she became particularly irritated by Louis or ‘Sir Gerard Pumpernickel Abernathy’.  

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Something I basically came up (barfed up) with in the middle of the night. In truth, it is to please my own selfish ends in venting forms of satire and humor (and possibly, of others?).

Anything goes - except for sludge monsters.

updated Dec 25 '09 by RomancingtheTurkey