to court a troll

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Avedina was a dirty, smelly, rotten, no-good troll who lived under a bridge, but she was also incredibly rich.

Why was she rich? Whenever a villager needed to cross the bridge, they had to pay her. They called it theft, she called it entrepreneurial spirit.

Sick of just complaining about her, the villagers then decided to hire a renowned hitgoat to take her out. Billy Goat took his job very seriously.

So when he saw Avedina, with all forty of her undulating fat rolls and all sixty of her ready-to-burst pustules, he faced a conundrum. Should he take her out by a swift kick to the head, or should he take her out to dinner?

Avedina and Billy Goat eyed each other, sizing each other up.

“Pay the bridge toll for the bitch troll,” said Avedina. She heard some variant of that being sung by an odd seer after escaping Avedina’s clutches and quite liked how it rolled off the tongue.

Billy Goat reared one hoof, and Avedina squared up. To her surprise, instead of charging forward, Billy Goat produced a bouquet of the stinkiest, most hideous corpse flowers she had ever seen in her life. Turning his head shyly to the side, but not all the way just in case Avedina decided to get the jump on him, Billy Goat held the flowers out for Avedina.

“Are these flowers’ delicious fumes your pathetic attempt at chemical warfare?” asked Avedina.

“No, I’m only trying to honor a disgusting troll with something worthy of her time,” said Billy Goat.

Avedina took the bouquet with one warty paw and stuffed all twelve flowers into her maw. She chewed on them, mouth wide open. Yellow, stained teeth stained further.

“Lovely,” she said.

“Not as much as you,” said Billy Goat.

The sky was so aghast at this turn of events, it vomited not one, not two, but three double rainbows.

#

The entire village was dismayed, angry, yet tantalized about Billy Goat and Avedina’s new romance.

“What do you see in her?” a leprechaun cried as Billy Goat clomped toward him on the bridge. Avedina was coming down with the River Bile Virus that day, so Billy was filling in for her.

“She’s my whoremate,” Billy Goat said, before shaking the rest of his toll from the leprechaun’s drawers.

Avedina was a strong, confident, self-reliant troll, but she had insecurities like any creature .

“What do you see me in, Billy?” she asked. She didn’t rule out that he was only courting her for her notoriety and money. That was what her last string of boyfriends confessed.

Billy kissed one throbbing boil. Nipped it. It popped and oozed green slime. Billy lapped it up.

“You’re just so hideously disgusting,” he said.

“No need for flattery.”

Billy held Avedina’s lumpy face in two hoofs and stared into her eyes like she was the prize heavyweight carrot at the Market Festival.

“Why do you love me?” he asked.

“Your mossy teeth, your plague-carrying hooves, the way you move on your hooves, and… ” Avedina stopped and turned her head, her face blushing a deep puce.

A toad listening outside their open window leapt away. Their love is as shallow as a dried up well.

“They will never last,” he told his best friend, who was nursing a black eye from an earlier confrontation with Billy Goat.

“Good,” the leprechaun said. “I hope their breakup is miserable, too.” He threw a wishing penny into a sparkling fountain.

#

But Billy Goat and Avedina did last. They lasted longer than the marriage of the kingdom’s princess to the knight who rescued her from a bored dragon with too much time on its hands. They lasted longer than the fairies’ pact with the elves to make a floating ferry so that villagers didn’t have to cross Billy Goat and Avedina’s bridge. They lasted longer than Avedina’s teeth.

No one really knew why. Love, if it can be called that, was funny like that.

“Why do you love me, Billy?” Avedina asked again as Billy was feeding her mashed up corpse flowers on their umpteenth anniversary.

His hoof hovered before her mouth, the next spoonful of mashed flowers dribbling putrid puree onto Avedina’s blanket. He chewed the inside of his cheek. “It’s like falling in love with Topsy Bridge,” he finally said. “When I first saw you, I knew I liked you. I didn’t love you then, but now every day I fall in love with you, again and again. All of you. Even your tendency to love and feed small animals, which frankly is the most repulsive thing about you.”

Avedina kissed her husband. Another pustule popped on Avedina’s chin. It dribbled down into the flower puree, but neither Avedina nor Billy Goat cared. The stars in the night sky twinkled.