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Dennis watched the so-called “King” flee with his entourage. That’s right, flee in shame, monarchist pigs. He brushed off any fascist dust they might have left on his clothing and reassured his comrades that he was fine. The people united could not be defeated merely by the brutish tactics of a self-deluding autocracy.
Denise made soothing noises of comfort at him while he harvested some filth with her—it really was a very lovely patch—and even let him argue with her for a good ten minutes about the inevitability of violent revolt as the only manifestable solution to the problem of syndicated corruption. Usually she cut him off after the first five minutes, but she knew a good argument cheered him up when he was down. (Sometimes it was mere contradiction, but he took what he could get).
And by rights it should have ended there.
The next day, it was Dennis’s turn to fetch water during the morning rotation. This was an arduous task on the best of days, so it was an unpleasant surprise to discover that there was a rather moistened maiden barring his way. More precisely, she was floating within the well. Her arms were fair and white, clearly never having been used for any work more difficult than some light oppression of the masses. Her soft, unmarred hands were holding a sword, superb in its beauty, whose wide, gleaming blade shone in the morning mist like moonlight illuminating the darkness of the night.
“I’m not taking that,” Dennis said.
“Divine Providence has chosen you, Dennis, son of Dave, to wield this righteous sword of justice and authority, in order to rule and bring order to the country.”
“Right, well, I’m not doing that. The state is an oppressive tool for subjugating the people, and authority should never be wielded by one man alone.”
“It is your destiny, which cannot be escaped,” the lady intoned.
“Watch me,” Dennis said, and escaped.
Denise was not amused when Dennis returned sans water. He tried to tell her about the problems with the well. She, in turn, requested that he gaze upon their fields and observe all the water they did not have.
Defeated, Dennis trudged off to the local lake to try his luck there. He was lulled into a false sense of security by the seeming absence of encroaching females as he approached the water. But unfortunately, the moment he dipped his pail into the water, there it was, an arm clad in silk fabric woven with golden thread, rising gracefully from the water to proffer to Dennis a sword.
“Is this because of what I said to that smarmy git earlier?” Dennis growled, trying to dodge the arm for long enough to fill the second bucket. The sword kept clanking into the bucket and making it spill half its contents.
Finally he resigned himself to just hauling quarter-full buckets multiple times to finish his water quota.
Dennis managed to trade water duty for other tasks for the next week and a half, but there were strict limits set on chore trading to prevent exploitation of weaker negotiators, and so after that he had to do it again.
No hands emerged from the water while he filled his buckets. He sighed with relief, glad that that whole weird chapter of his life was over with, and promptly tripped over the rock that had appeared behind him. The rock had a perfectly serviceable anvil on top of it, rendered useless by the sword stuck directly into it.
The sword had a design of two lions on its golden hilt. From their mouths emerged, in delicate filigree, tongues of divine fire, which flared out to form the crossguard. The pommel was of precious stones, wrought with letters of subtle gold. Dennis could sort of make out “rightwys kynge” if he squinted.
“Right, this isn’t funny anymore,” he said. He yanked the sword out of the rock-anvil contraption and hurled it into the lake. It vanished silently with a ripple. He stood there, still feeling off-balance and on-edge.
“And… And you can suck on it!” he eventually shouted, and turned to leave.
The sword came hurtling back out of the lake. The hilt bonked him hard on the back of his head. He ran yelping up the hill, water from the buckets sloshing everywhere, until the sword finally gave up pursuit.
After that it was war. Dennis couldn’t go anywhere near anything liquidy without swords flinging themselves at him. It didn’t stop at longswords, either. He got assaulted by, variously: scimitars, sabres, claymores, cutlasses, rapiers, falchions, and a spadroon. None of the flying implements of violence and brutality actually managed to leave a lasting mark on him, not even the dagger that emerged, preposterously, from the muddy ditchwater Denise served as tea (the mud gave it character and flavor).
But it was the principle of the thing. The principle of the thing was that he was being harassed by avatars of a ludicrous, farcical theory of predestination and caste, and Dennis wasn’t going to stand for it.
He went back to the well that had started it all. The maiden, her lustrous hair swirling around her in silken locks, her alabaster skin shining with the soft glow of divine light, her raiment sparkling with a thousand precious stones woven carefully in most marvelous patterns upon it, was still there.
“Now listen here,” Dennis said, and embarked upon the speech he had prepared on the topic. Swords, he declared, were themselves the very embodiment of the violence inherent in the system. Why should a sword be the symbol of a right to rule? Why not a sturdy plowshare? Or a posy of flowers? He got rather into it, in fact, building up to a magnificent crescendo if he did say so himself, and then he looked down and discovered the maiden had somehow slipped the sword into his hand while he was speaking.
“AAAARGH!” Dennis yelped, and leaped back.
“What is going on here?” someone said. It was Denise, rounding the hill, huffing and puffing.
“This… this wet wench keeps trying to give me this sword!” Dennis said.
“Ooh-ee that’s a nice sword,” Denise said, approvingly. “Looks like genuine Damascus steel, innit. Oooh, and those look like real emeralds. Very nice, very nice, thank you, miss.”
“We can’t take it!” Dennis said, horrified.
“Well, I don’t see why that should be your choice,” Denise said, offended. “We’re a commune aren’t we? This isn’t your sword, it’s ours, right? You’re not even the executive officer this week. If we’re to decide to do anything with it, it should be by committee.”
“Now see here-” Dennis began.
“Actually, we’ll probably have to appoint a committee to decide what kind of committee is necessary for this sort of thing. We've never been given a sword before,” Denise continued thoughtfully.
“That kind of thing could take years!” Dennis yelped. He was about to argue some more, got as far as opening his mouth to take a deep breath, and then stopped.
“That kind of thing could take years,” he said again, slowly. “Denise, you are a genius! I knew I could count on you!”
He turned to the boggy bint. “It will have to be decided by committee,” he said. “You hear that? These things take time. You have to leave me alone until then!”
“Now don’t be in a hurry to leave,” Denise immediately interjected. “Lovely girl like you, out here in the cold all wet like that, that’s not acceptable work conditions, that isn’t. Are there more like you? What kind of employment protections do you have? Have you considered unionizing?”
The End
But wait, there’s more!
Dennis slept the deep and satisfying sleep of the righteous (and very relieved) that night.
He woke to a strange, very bright glow and blearily wondered who had left the door to his hovel open and why the sun was so close, and then blinked a few times and realized there was a great big golden goblet hovering in front of him, surrounded by the faint echoes of a choir of angels.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I am going back to sleep.”
And so he did.