How Thintar Became King

Gather around; I have a story that the gods love to tell, for it amuses them even more than we do. It is the story of Thintar the Trickster and how they accidentally found themselves crowned king of men. And begins as all good stories do with our little hero taking a bath;

Thintar waded into the shallows of the universe and found they hated mud. It was a wretched edition to the cosmos, truly some of Asoi’s worst work. Not just the literal stuff -though that was terrible, but the metaphorical mud as well.

The universe was saturated with metaphorical mud. Black and sticky and oozing from every corner of the world the little wind up men had made for themselves atop the back of the great sleeper. Old rich men were bloated with it, streaking black fingers on little green papers and doing nothing for their starving counterparts. Thintar didn’t understand why the starving ones did not just strike down the bloated, muddy men. There were more of them. Perhaps they were kept too hungry to do anything but trail at the bloated men’s heels, cleaning up the mud that dripped from their tail coats. 

Thintar found they hated this most of all. And so they did what they did best and devised a plan. They were quite good at planning, as you and I well know. And this one was inspired. They snuck away from their post in the heavens, and crept deeper into the pool of the Universe. This was tricky as they had to first distract Tomus who guards the gateways between the worlds and will allow none to pass through the water. 

But Thintar was very tricky themselves. So after a moment of puzzling they turned into a fish and swam to Tomus, brushing against his thousand legs with rough scales until the great god had ducked his massive head beneath the water, great yellow eyes glowing like lanterns in the water. 

“WHAT IS THIS?” Tomus roared, his fangs green and slimy and perfectly sized to eat a fish as small as Thintar. 

“Please,” Thintar the fish pleaded, their voice small. For this was a great god, and they were truly only a little thing. “Please Great Tomus, I am only a fish who has gotten lost in the sea. I only ask for you to open the gate between the heavens and man’s world so I may go back to my ocean.” 

Great Tomus regarded the fish, for they really were about eating sized. But they were also polite, and Tomus did value politeness a great deal.

(Thintar knew this of course)

Still, there was a horrible moment where Tomus’s fangs gnashed and little Thintar was certain there would be no more god of tricks and toys. But then the Great One laughed, causing great ripples in the waters of the universe. His laughter caused stars to die and planets to shake. He laughed and said;

“Go on then little fishie. Go home to your own waters.”

One of Tomus’s thousand legs lifted and a gateway was revealed. Thintar swam past Tomus the Guardian, and laughed at their own good fortune. 

When Thintar reached the shore of men they donned the appearance of a meek servant in a dining hall. Their uniform was streaked with the grease of the food they sold mud-caked politicians and their shoulders bowed inward from the humiliations their task master would hurl at them daily. Out the window of the grime streaked shop they could see the palace where the bloated ones lived. Shining white marble and glowing orange lights on a hill high above the starving town. Thintar thought it was polished so well that it might shine silver in Riesi’s moonlight. 

But it was stained with that horrible black mud all the same. Thintar sat contemplating this and all the wonderful tricks they might pull on the people inside (thoughts of fleas, and transformations into bizarre creatures had come to mind) -when a mortal man walked up to them. A female of the species, she was young by man standards, a little out of childhood with silver rings in her ears and on her fingers. She wore the same greasy uniform Thintar pretended to and had very dark circles under her eyes. Thintar had forgotten this was a feature of humanity. 

“Pretty in’t it?” Said the woman who was young, and pointed at the white building. She didn’t seem to see the black mud. 

Thintar didn’t say anything, but smiled a little too wide for their face to show that they were human and that they too thought that the palace was pretty. Even though they did neither of those things. 

The woman who was young did not say anything about their smile. “I’m gonna work there. Startin’ next week. Finally getting out of this hellhole. Got myself an internship there.” 

Thintar did not know what an internship was but the woman who was young sounded excited about it. She had mud on her fingertips and the corners of her mouth but nowhere else. The mud in her was just beginning. A slow rot. That settled some debate in Thintar’s mind, the palace was the place where the mud began. So it was the place Thintar would have to go. 

“Me too,” they said. “I have an internship.”

“No shit?” The woman who was young stuck out her hand. “Well then I’ll see you there. I’m Jamie by the way.”

Thintar clasped hands with Jamie, laughing as Jamie winced at the sandpaper texture of their skin. “Thintar.”

“Good to meet you, Thintar.”

And it was. At least for Jamie. 

Days later Thintar and Jamie stood at the door of the palace. Jamie wore a suit of clothes that Thintar thought was meant to imitate the coats and ruffles of the bloated men inside. Thintar wore the grease covered uniform of the dining hall, for besides their godly armor they had no other clothes and did not know they needed any. 

“Are you really wearing that?” Jamie asked, the corners of her mud-stained lips turned downwards. “Interns are supposed to-”

“They will let me pass.” Thintar would make sure of it, then they could have their fun. 

The guards and the starving servants that wandered the palace grounds did in fact let Thintar pass once they conjured a little mist to obscure their way. How such mist got into the palace on a hot, clear day was a mystery that was talked about for weeks afterwards. It filled the halls, billowing behind Thintar like a cloak as they walked, trailing between their fingers as they poked at paintings of muddy men and ripped them from their frames. The servants trampled on them without even knowing. The bloated men saw and howled their outrage onto ears that could not hear them over the mist. 

Thintar laughed. 

Days passed like this, days of little Thintar the Quick-Fingered pulling mud soaked bills out of bloated men’s wallets and passing them to starving children on the streets. Days of turning important documents into toy trains that would rattle along some muddied desk and blow foul smelling smoke into the air. Days where little Thintar would transform coats into wriggling masses of caterpillars and watch the bloated men scream. And yet the mud on Jamie’s skin never lessened, and the horrible, thick ooze around the palace never ceased. 

Thintar would have to think of something else. 

The answer came days later while they were watching Jamie eat a sandwich. They were not eating one themselves, nor had they ever consumed any sort of mortal food. They just watched and occasionally turned it into a pigeon and back again to see if Jamie would notice. She never seemed to.

The answer came in the form of a conversation, which started as Jamie swallowed the last bite of her sandwich, it had, at that moment, not been a pigeon. 

“D’you ever think ‘bout ruling the world?”

Thintar hadn’t. Ruling the universe was Asoi’s job, and they were only a little thing. What would they do with an entire world? 

“No, I do not.” They answered. “Do you?” Thintar thought she might’ve had more mud caked on her if she had. 

“Sometimes,” Jamie answered, surprising them. “I mean, it’s why we work here right?” She gestured to the white walls of the palace. “Helpin’ rule the world. Or find it’s next ruler at least.” 

“Next ruler?” Now this might be something Thintar could use. Get the right person on the throne and finally start scrubbing out that black mud. 

“Well...yeah, this one’s term is up?” Jamie frowned at them, she frowned at them a lot.

“And what will the next one be?” Thintar asked, stretching their arms behind their head. They did have so many of them, far more than Jamie or any mortal creature could see. 

“I dunno,” Jamie shrugged. “Better, I hope.” 

Thintar hadn’t been planning to be better themselves. No. They’d been planning to pull their mist over some muddied man’s eyes and make him better, for what is a man but another puppet for the gods? But when Thintar coated themselves in mist and mud and stepped into the room where the bloated and the muddy conduct their business every man there fell to their knees in awe. For Thintar had done their job too well and where the little trickster god stood seemed to be a radiant man, golden as the sun, mud and rot oozing from every pore of him. 

The bloated men swarmed around Thintar, offering praises and worship. The little god had hardly needed to say a word as the men swept them onto the throne. And the ones they did manage to stutter out were hardly worth repeating, fragmented things about fish and pools and mud. 

The throne was meant for a much bigger person than Thintar could ever hope to be, even in their godly form, but they sat upon it all the same. They passed messages to the bloated men through Jamie, and wrote human laws down with ink and watched in satisfaction as the starving men grew fatter and the bloated grew thinner. The mud was never completely washed away, it never is. But it faded from Jamie’s lips and fingers, and it was harder to find on the white marble of the palace. Sometimes a coat would still need to be turned into a swarm of caterpillars for a message to get across, but that was alright. It made Thintar laugh.

And when the time came for Thintar to abdicate their throne they did so gratefully. But careful dear listeners, for they lurk in the shadows of that throne room ready to scrub out any mud they find creeping in.