Don Quirana

#ds106 Daily Create for June 26, 2017: “Let your imagination go wild with the dialogue or plot laid out by these images. Don’t go all literal on us! This is the Daily Create, after all.”

A series of four images of a frog and a beetle.
From this tweet by @grahamslexa

 

The strange tale of Don Quirana

Chapter 4

When he woke up the next morning, Don Quirana found that his horse, Rocinescarabajo, had stolen his staff and was wearing it on his head.

“Rocinescarabajo!” Don Quirana shouted, “Get that thing off your head this instant! How can I perform my knightly duties when I can’t wield my staff because you are sporting it as a new hat?”

Rocinescarabajo just put his head down and started munching on the lichen on the branch.

Don Quirana grabbed his staff and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge from Rocinescarabajo’s head. Rocinescarabajoe was unfazed as he continued to nibble. “Well, fine. Keep it. I will simply take another one from a villain I will surely vanquish later today,” Don Quirana sighed.

Don Quirana found that Rocinescarabajo’s new hat was actually a boon to mounting and dismounting, and he swung himself up onto the horse’s back and shouted with this empty, staff-less hand in the air, “Onward!” and, as he spotted a group of ferocious giants off in the distance, he spurred his horse towards them and they ambled off, slowly, towards the windmills.


Note:

It’s probably pretty clear what this short story is based on! I changed Quixote to Quirana, given that the protagonist here is a frog (rana in Spanish). Don Quixote’s horse in the original story is called Rocinante, and I mixed that with the Spanish word for beetle, escarabajo, to make that rather long-winded and unwieldly name for his horse.

An engraving of Don Quixote on a horse with a long staff and Sancho Panza on a donkey looking up at Don Quixote.
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza by Gustave Doré (1863), public domain on Wikimedia Commons

 

 

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