By means that are none of your goddman business, I have come into the possession of one hundred forty-four perfect cookies. Utterly perfect. They were baked by none other than the greatest of the Noldor, even Galadriel, based on the recipe for lembas but modified, purified, and perfected. Not even she can ever make their like again.
These cookies taste different to each person who eats them. If your favorite sort of cookie is the ginger snap, that’s what you’ll perceive; if you’re the sort who prefers oatmeal raisin or Oreos or S’mores, you’ll taste that; and so forth. But what does not vary is their effect on the mortal mind and body. Eating just one can sustain a full-grown man for an entire week, and the merest nibble can restore courage and hope to a heart grown chill.
Tell me why I should give you one of these cookies. No more than one to a customer.
O Glorious Skald, who art in Heavenly Kitchen, hallowed be thy oven. Give me this day thy Divine Cookie. And I shall travel the land preaching the Glories of the Divine Cookies. I shall slay the blasphemous cookies sold in supermarkets (by scarfing them) that are pale imitations of the Divine Cookies.
Because if you give me the cookie, I promise not to grind it up and use it to spike the water at my political rallies in order to condition my supporters to the very heights of fanaticism. Consider the horrors that would ensue if I were forced to … procure … a cookie though means not of your choosing, and used it to ensure that my followers genuinely felt stronger, more powerful, more competent at my speeches. Imagine the dedication they would show as they went forth, secure in the knowledge that whatever they did in my cause was surely right - else, why would they feel as they did?
Best not to chance it. Why not avoid all that unpleasantness by simply giving me the cookie?
Because there is no one cuter, more fun or more attractive than I. You give me this cookie to pay homage to my beauty, wit and compassion. I am the Ultimate Woman; the Ideal to which all other women can merely aspire. The cookie can go to no one else; its destiny lies with me.
That one in the bottom row, third from the right, is actually slightly imperfect. I’d be happy to dispose of it, so as not to dim the perfection of the other one hundred forty-three.
I just realized that there’s a sure-fire way of getting a cookie:
puppy eyes
(But if Skald does not like dogs, then I return to worshipping the ground touched by the shadows of Skald’s baking pan.)
(That’s weird. Isn’t “worshipping” spelled with two P’s? I ask because as I’m typing, the red line indicating a misspelled word appears under “worshipping” but disappears if I type “worshiping”.)
