Writing Prompt — Legal Leprechauns
Back with another Writing Prompt here, as I meant this to be a shorter warm up but ended up going a bit longer on it then intended as I was having fun. Do expect to see another Good Eats blog post soon, but for now this is a bit of a ridiculous, first contact, and light comedy. I’ll include some thoughts at the end as before.
Here’s the prompt:
While watering the garden one day, you angle the hose so that a small rainbow appears over your rose bushes. Suddenly a small man in a green suit appears. “Excuse me Sir, but do you have a permit to be making that?” He asks, pointing at the rainbow.
“Here you are my beauties,” Jordan said as he pointed the hose at the orchids in his garden. Looking at the water lightly hit the soil beneath, he smiled and turned to hit more of the flowers with some water, before turning to the rose bush around back. In a fit of whimsy, he angled the hose up, so that the water would pass in such a way to create a small rainbow over the rose bush, bringing a smile to the young man’s face, until he feels a tug on the back of his pants prompting him to turn around.
“Excuse me Sir, but do you have a permit to be making that?” a voice asks, that Jordan can’t see until he looks down and sees the extremely small person standing there pointing at the rainbow.
“A permit? For a rainbow? Or the roses?” Jordan asks befuddled
“Yes, a permit for the rainbow. In particular, I cite the Leprechaun and Human licensing agreement on rainbows has expired, thus all rainbow creation requires explicit permits from the Leprechaun office of Rainbows, as well as with the staging.” The alleged leprechaun looks at Jordan confused that he didn’t understand it, and holds his small hand out with fingers raising as he brings up points, “If you don’t have a permit this would be a violation of statute 96.3 Section B of the Human Interactions Agreement, along with violations of Section C, and a copyright violation under various other laws both human and inhuman. You do have a permit right?”
“What are you talking about? Leprechaun’s don’t exist.” Jordan says animatedly, turning around, along with the hose doing so, and creates more rainbows as he moves it… and gets the alleged leprechaun wet, who jumps out of the way of where the water was falling on him.
“That’s another Statute 96.3 Section B violation and after warning makes it a Section 96.14Section F violation as well! As for real, I’m standing right here just as real as you are! We knew you humans were bigoted but how dare you attempt to pretend we don’t exist!” The alleged leprechaun crosses his arms and harrumphs “I am Culkin O’Dwyer and I’m in charge of licensing for this region. And don’t start with any jokes about gold or four-leaf cloves, those are explicitly banned in the Human Interactions Agreement without having obtained permission and license to make them, and I do not so give you permission.” Culkin says with an angry look, matching his red hair, that is set against his green suit.
Jordan just looks at him aghast “I… don’t understand what you are talking about. I don’t know any Human Interactions Agreement, and rainbows are a natural byprod…”
“Rainbows are not natural creations. There are hardworking leprechauns who put in hours working on each and every rainbow which are subject to strict scrutiny. Now stop that rainbow you have with the water there!” The Leprechaun cuts him off and waves at the hose which had in the meantime pooled water up in the grass, drenching it in water.
Jordan hurriedly turns off the tap on the hose reaching up before looking down at him, “Look kid I …”
“I am NOT a kid!” Culkin shouts and punches Jordan in the shin “Nor am I a dwarf, a human, or anything else. I am a leprechaun, and my name is Culkin O’Dwyer and I am acting as agent on behalf of the Rainbow Creators Guild.”
Jordan struggles to keep his balance from the hit in the shin, and manages to avoid falling, especially into the drenched grass that would have been embarrassing to do so. “There’s no such things as…” he repeats.
“There is and you’d better get used to it if you don’t want to end up in prison for violating the agreement. For almost 500 years we’ve let the terms go unenforced but the Rainbow Creators are tired of it. You humans make too many rainbows, and the agreement for it only licensed rainbow use to humans for 1500 years.”
“Wait… who did you license the terms to?” Jordan asks looking more and more befuddled
“Emperor Hadrian of the Roman Empire speaking on behalf of the Human Species reached an agreement with the Leprechaun people as part of his withdrawal and building of that horrendous wall. He negotiated the general agreement and separately the license for things like rainbows, and a few clovers.”
Jordan looked at the being he was starting to ponder if it was possible that was actually an Irish Leprechaun and inquired, “You do realize that he died almost two thousand years ago, and the empire fell hundreds if not over a thousand years ago right?”
“He spoke on behalf of all of you as leader of the largest Human nation-state, and the one that interacted with us. My dad was there as a wee youngster himself, so don’t be giving me any of that guff about time. An agreement is an agreement!”
Jordan shook his head “Look, how do I know you are a leprechaun and not someone making this up?”
“The word of Culkin O’Dwyer isn’t good enough for you?” the leprechaun huffed, and then disappeared, appearing behind Jordan in a puff of smoke and with exaggerated effort lifted the man over his head, doing a small dance as he did so, before tossing him spinning in the air higher up. Then with a light motion from Culkin, a giant pile of aged leafs appeared where Jordan would land, where he fell into them, crinkling loudly as they broke under the weight.
“That proof enough for you?” Culkin asked his voice dripping poison
Jordan shook his head, feeling sore from landing in the leaves… that shouldn’t have been there. That should have been all impossible. It couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be a leprechaun, but… how did he teleport, and make things appear if he wasn’t?
Standing up, and shaking off some dirt Jordan looked again at Culkin with a new appreciation, saying “My apologies Mister O’Dwyer. I have uhh never met one of your people, and I am… unfamiliar with the Human… what did you call it?”
“The Human Interactions Agreement.”
“Yes, I am unfamiliar with the Human Interactions Agreement. Nor… do I think anyone else knows it among my people.”
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but one of the provisions does require I provide you a copy of it here.” Holding out his hand, Culkin moved his hands in a series of complex gestures, with green light appearing around them, before it disappeared and suddenly long pages of parchment began stacking up. First one page. Then another, then 20… and they kept coming. The pile quickly was taller than the short leprechaun and was starting to tilt, when another pile began, with pages arriving faster and faster suddenly.
“This will be your copy of the Human Interactions Agreement, provided as per Section 189 subsection 32, provision E, having been hand-copied by myself as required on matching parchment to the original and independently verified by no less than 5 other agents of the court, as you can see on the top page there. As per provision T it also includes a translation charm, so that language is not a barrier.”
Pages kept appearing, and soon the second pile towered over the leprechaun, and a third was shoulder height and still growing when Jordan looked at the top page, which said ‘Human Interactions Agreement, a treaty between Humans and Leprechaun’ at the top, followed by a note underneath saying copy by Culkin O’Dwyer with translation and teleportation charms. On the bottom right it says Attestations, and there were five names signed, and printed. Jordan noticed they were Ginger Magee, Ciara Casy, Nora Maher, Fergus Byrne, and Quinn O’Shea.
“How long is this agreement?” Jordan asks, fearing the answer
“A complete copy, with footnotes, notations, and amendments of the Human Interactions Agreement, such as you have is 12 leprechauns tall in parchment with a fair hand like mine.” Culkin noted as the papers continued to appear, with a fifth pile now beginning, as the first four were slightly taller then the leprechaun.
“That’s rather big,”Jordan taps his foot as he speaks, “What restitution is required for a breach of section… what was it?”
“Section 96.3 Section B, Section C, and Section 96.17. Two cases of the first two, with double penalties for repeat offenses. That would be three grams of gold for the Section B violations, six grams for the Section C violations, and…” He pauses for a moment thinking, “Given conditions, the penalty for forty-five grams seems appropriate. So twenty-nine grams of gold.”
“Over two ounces of gold?” Jordan blurts out in shock
“Indeed and not in grains! Service of anything in grains is cause for treble damages! It also must be pure. Alternatively service at a rate of five years per ounce is acceptable, or an agreeable blood punishment in its place, which in a case like this would be quite high.”
“Umm.” Jordan stops, trying to think of how to explain fiat currency to a being that might be hundreds of years old and dealt in gold only “We don’t use gold as a primary trade mechanism anymore.” He says slowly
Culkin harrumphs “So, you can get some! I’ve seen it on sale all around, and you carry bits of it all around you.”
Jordan looks down and takes a deep breath, “I need a moment to call someone here to inquire about obtaining the… gold you want.” Culkin nods, and Jordan walks inside, pulling out his cell phone, dialing his brother Jeffrey.
“Jeffrey, we’ve got a problem. That stuff dad said? It’s all true and if they are squeezing me over making a rainbow in my yard with the hose, I can’t imagine what they’ll do to you over Lucky Charms.”
So I was leaning a bit more to comedy here but I’m not sure if I didn’t go quite far enough. I debated what to have Jordan land in, and I also thought about having him slip and fall into the water when Culkin tipped him some with his kick, for more of a slapstick feel. If I was doing visuals, and I could get the feeling of turning and twisting and landing, I might have — or if I had gone with first person narration.
Some of the humour here is meant to come from the idea of someone owning rainbows, and I’m not sure if I undercut that with the idea of Leprechauns making rainbows but never following further on that. It might have been better to say they owned the idea of the rainbow for it — as more of a on-the nose poke fun at trademarks. Doing that way, I would probably have had it go a bit more to outsmarting Culkin, and renaming the rainbow to something like ColorStripe or Sunbow.
As for who Jeffrey is, that’s the current CEO of General Mills that I tossed in as one last joke for the piece, and also I think shows that Jordan can probably pay his few thousand dollar bill here.
I feel better about Culkin’s character than I do Jordan’s here. I don’t really have a feel for Jordan but Culkin’s as an overaggressive attorney, and using silly amounts of obscure laws — and while laws going to Roman Empire are a bit much, there are a lot of old laws on the books out there that are ridiculousness.
As mentioned, comedy writing is a bit outside my normal wheelhouse so feedback is doubly welcomed here.
