Welcome to Gaia! ::

Oh great, thought Merroth, a newcomer. Someone who still needed to be broken into the rules of this place as Merroth decreed them. He glared up at the newcomer and then had a sudden thought. His glare turned into a creepily inviting smile. "I'm Merroth. You must be new." This could be fun.

"Suuure," smirked Merroth, about as good at concealing his true motives as Black was. He did offer up a crayon, which surely meant he was a good and sharing person! "I'm drawing pictures." And he was. Someone had wisely chosen to give Merroth some actual paper to express himself and he was drawing stick figures of Black and Edward John and Nerys and scribbling over them with red crayon. Another drawing showed Edward John hanging from a noose with an incongruously smiling face and a banner with the word "pirate" below him. Merroth had even included the buckles on Edward John's shoes.

"Buckles are stupid," said Merroth, not looking up. "You need dress shoes." As Black never bought him shoes with buckles when they went shopping and she insisted on nice dress shoes, Merroth could only conclude that real dress shoes did not have buckles. His own shoes were little brown leather Oxfords with black laces knotted tightly. Merroth scribbled and scribbled at the giant red spiral across his picture and concluded it done. He began to search for the black crayon.

Now the fun started. "No," said Merroth, "you're doin' it wrong. Don't you know an-y-thing? What is THAT?" He jabbed his finger into the flower on Carlisle's paper, denting the sheet. Something in his chest began to beat a little faster, a tiny surge of adrenaline forming at the idea of the upcoming excitement. It was just a little bit of what Black felt when she was toying with Merroth.

Merroth had been planning on snatching the paper and tearing it to pieces in front of Carlisle, but when Carlisle presented the crayon, he got a better idea. He could still tear the drawing up later. "Here," said Merroth, taking the one crayon and handing Carlisle another. "I know a better thing to do with crayons. Did you know that you can smell colors?" He had seen a child get in trouble for this particular thing yesterday.

Merroth took the crayon and carefully held it to his nose, covering it partly with his hand. "The trick is, you gotta get real close 'cause it's hard to smell the color instead of the crayon. I gave you purple, that one smells the best. You gotta take the crayon and put it right here." Merroth put the tip of the crayon in his right nostril. "Then you push up until you smell the color, not the crayon. You'll know 'cause it smells really, really, REALLY good." Merroth proceeded to pretend to put the crayon on his nose, sliding his hand up so it looked to Carlisle like he was pushing the crayon in when in fact he was palming it, a trick he had developed to avoid eating icky peas at the dinner table.

Merroth erupted in cackling laughter, waving his hand to reveal the crayon still in it. This kid was so dumb! This was perfect! He howled and smacked his hand on the floor. "I'ma tell! You put a CRAYON in yur NOSE!" Actually, had there not been a lot of noise from the other children playing at the moment, a daycare worker would have heard Merroth's declaration right then. "Yur in so much TROUBLE."

Merroth suddenly realized that, while truly stupid people were quite gullible, what was the fun if they could not understand they had been tricked? It was hard to find enjoyment when the target was not suffering in any way. (This was the start of a very successful philosophy to counter Black, but it was doubtful Merroth would figure it out any time in the near future at his present level of development.) The laughter faded from Merroth's face. Back to Plan A. He frowned and snatched Carlisle's flower and clouds drawing from the distracted toddler, grabbing it with both hands and ripping it in half.