Trip, trop. Trip, trop. Hooves crossing his bridge roused Trolgar from his slumber. Low in his rancid throat a growl curled, begging to be set free. Trip, trop…..the noise grew louder as the owner of the hooves approached the center of the bridge. The growl grew ever more insistent, no longer asking for freedom, but demanding it. The growl rumbled over Trolgar’s black, pock-marked tongue and past his rotten tusks, to burst from a foul mouth as though it had been chased. 

“GROWL!”

The growl hung in the fetid air under the bridge as Trolgar slowly opened the single eye in the center of his forehead. Shaking his black, hairy head, Trolgar snorted and began to rise to his feet. The motion caused green goop to fly from a hairy nostril and land on a wooden girder while a small creature that had been trapped under Trolgar’s thigh scurried to safety. The growl continued its escape, up, up. Higher still it rose. Through the fetid air it snaked upwards to burst forth into the sunlit air.

Trip………. trop, trip…. The footsteps hesitated as the growl pummeled its way into the clean air on top of the bridge. The owner of the hooves, a fine-looking centaur named Baccadus, slowly placed his front hoof back on the bridge, rather than taking another step. Baccadus swished his long, brown, horsey tail slowly, first left, then right and then let it fall back into place. His withers quivered slightly and he flexed his right bicep. His brown eyes quested to his left and seeing only yellow rapeseed flowers, glanced quickly to his right. More rolling fields of rapeseed. Those searching eyes narrowed in concentration as Baccadus lifted his head slightly higher and glanced behind him and then left and right again. Still, nothing out of the ordinary. Baccadus swished his tail again, left, right and then let it fall into place. He cocked his left rear hoof to rest his leg and jutted his hip up as he swung his head around again, searching for the origin of the growl. Under his brown curly beard his lips hardened to a fine line and he breathed in deeply through his nose. There! An odor tickled his nostrils, barely a smell at all so Baccadus inhaled again. Again, a faint whiff of something dark and putrid here and then gone, so quickly.

Meanwhile, in the dank murk under the bridge, Trolgar placed a large, meaty hand on the ground to steady himself as he got to his left knee. The muck under his hand oozed to creep between his fingers and over the top of his hand until it reached his wrist. His right foot came down into the ooze with a sickening splatt, and he pushed himself to his full 8-foot height. Another growl rumbled, low in Trolgar’s throat and he reached his hand up to grip a wooden girder. The green goop from his nostril slid from the girder over the web of his hand and merged with black ooze. A growl escaped again and flung itself into the air in front of Trolgar’s face, “Growl,” as he took a step towards the light beckoning to him from the outside of his lair. Some small thing crunched under his foot, but Trolgar’s calloused, hardened feet felt neither pain nor the coolness of the ooze and he continued to shuffle towards the light.

With every shuffling step, an odor of rotten entrails emanated from Trolgar’s body in waves. The odor pressed its way forward, then shrank back into the dankness only to relentlessly push further into the light, as Trolgar lumbered to the edge of his lair. 

“Flee! Fly! Fow Fun! Take strut sticks offa crossing trestle mine!!!!” Trolgar roared and burst into the light. 

Trolgar’s shadow darkened the bright yellow of the rapeseed and the small creatures hiding between the green rows scuttled away. Away! Anywhere but in the path of the dark shadow.

What is that smell?!?! Baccadus thought to himself. 

He didn’t know. But what he did know is he HAD to get into cleaner air before he took another breath. Trip, trop. Trip, trop. Hooves clattering into a full gallop, Baccadus finished his journey across the bridge at a much quicker pace than he had begun it. Finally, on the other side of the bridge, Baccadus began to stop in a cloud of dust by pushing his rear hooves into the dirt. Stepping on his own long tail, Baccadus snorted and came to a rumbling halt. As the clouds of dust rose and swirled around him, Baccadus turned around fully, to watch as Trolgar lumbered up from the deep ditch which the bridge had been built to span. The growl burst forth from Trolgar’s chest again as he bellowed, “GROWL! What baabeast you? Make clatter, make eye open!! Stop!”

Baccadus watched the lumbering troll move closer to him through the swirl of dust and considered taking a few steps backwards to not encounter Trolgar with his most sensitive nose again. But when Baccadus heard Trolgar refer to him as a ‘baabeast’, he squared his shoulders more proudly, stamped a front hoof and roared back, “BAABEAST! I am no sheep, you nob headed, gugnoum, gobblefiend! I am Baccadus Ironhoof, king of the Anduliscian Centaurs from the High Forest of Evermeet and you will bend a knee or find it shoved down your chitinous windhole!” Baccadus thundered.

Trolgar stumbled to a halt and stared at Baccadus with his mouth slightly ajar. Capable of only one emotion at a time, all anger had left him and was replaced with confusion. Spittle dripped from a rotted tusk as his small mind tried to work out what Baccadus had just stated. He opened and closed his mouth twice, swiped at his nose and flung what was there away from him. There were simply too many words and Trolgar stopped trying to work it all out. Finally, after a long pause, Trolgar asked, 

“No baabeast? You…..moobeast?” 

Realizing belatedly how simple Trolgar was, Baccadus let his shoulders slump slightly, then let out a deep sigh and said, 

“No troll. I am a centaur……a, a, hoofbeast”. 

Immediately, Trolgar brightened. This was a word he knew. The confusion left his grizzled face and he opened his one eye wide. His mouth grimaced into somewhat of a smile, and he let out a loud “hoot”. 

“Oh! HOOF beast!” Trolgar chortled with glee. “Trolgar know hoofbeasties”.

Trolgar, still grimacing, scratched his belly, yawned broadly and sat down in the green grass at the edge of the bridge with a huge thud. The thud knocked something green and slimy from Trolgar’s left nostril. It hung for a moment, like some disturbing nose ring, and then dripped down to disappear into one of the many holes in the front of Trolgar’s brown shirt.

Trolgar sat in the grass with his legs splayed out straight in front of him like an overgrown child. Dead, brown grass, black muck and small insects clung to the hair on his legs. His feet were completely black, encased in muck which had begun to dry slowly in the bright sun. Trolgar’s eye blinked once slowly and then again, even more slowly, to finally close halfway.

“Trolgar…….sleep……” the troll stated and then yawned widely.

In one smooth motion, Trolgar stuck his thumb in his mouth, between the two tusks that jutted from his lower jaw and fell over onto his right side in an overgrown fetal position. The ground shook under Baccadus’ feet, as the troll’s body thundered to the ground. The troll shuddered once and began to snore loudly.

As the snores grew in volume and in number, Baccadus shook his head again, but this time in amazement. The centaur turned around and began to head off down the path that cut through the fields of golden rapeseed. Trip, trap. Trip, trap. Trip, trap. As he walked away, Baccadus glanced over his shoulder once and observed Trolgar still lying in a fetal position at the foot of the wooden bridge. Faintly, he could hear the troll’s snores which seemed to have grown even louder, if that was possible. Baccadus faced forward again, mumbled to himself, “Let sleeping trolls lie.” and picked up the pace to a fast canter.