Tae Kwon Do Tale 2

Exciting new work from the winner of the prestigious Best Bonkers Ghost Story TAGB Summer Camp 2010!

How Kwon Recovered From Death, Which Is Usually Quite Fatal

Kwon was not just not like other ducks.

He was not like other mortal creatures.

He stood out in his family, as his parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters, and everyone but him, were in the normal range of duck forms and sizes.

He stood out in the world, being 18 feet tall with steel kneecaps, sharp teeth and a fist on the end of each wing.

This is not enough to explain how, after dying in terrible agony from a spattering of partially digested exceptionally poisonous smelly troll food, he managed to get better. To understand this, the story must go back to before he was born, to the time that Kwon’s parents, Mr and Mrs Noodle, were excitedly expecting their first batch of eggs.

Mrs Noodle was anxious about the safety of her babies, so she asked Mr Noodle to find a mountain peak to build a nest on, to be up out of the way of any roaming Cowboy Werewolves or similar perilous creatures that were partial to slurping up duck eggs. Mr Noodle was also worried that duck egg babies would be a tempting tasty treat for scavenging nasty things, so he found the highest mountain peak looking over a stunning river valley and built a perfect feather lined nest. It had a calming view for the nervous Mum-to-be, it was warm and soft and safe from danger, and as long as the eggs stayed in the nest, they could not possibly come to any kind of harm. It was quite a long walk from the Duck Island in the lake in the park where they lived, but Mrs Noodle was happy to waddle her way up the mountain path.

‘What a lovely calming view,’ she said, settling into the snugly nest just in time, for the eggs were about to pop out!

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine eggs!!

Alas, the nest was not quite perfect, as it was not quite big enough! Egg number nine, unseen by its Mum or Dad, teetered on the edge and tumbled out of the nest, onto the pointy rocks. The frail egg was in dreadful peril; the odds were stacked against it, the situation seemed hopeless.

The shell dented as it struck the sharp rock.

It rolled again, and a fracture line appeared, and it would have fallen into a jagged crevasse had it not been suddenly swallowed whole by a snake.

The chuckling snake, with an egg shape in its middle, wriggled off down through the forest, and the fragile egg would have been digested if the snake had not been suddenly frightened by a forest fire and passed the egg straight out of its bottom.

The fragile fractured egg rolled through the burning trees and would have been cooked if it had not suddenly rolled into a fast babbling brook and bobbed along downstream to the wide river and out to the stormy sea.

The fragile fractured off-course egg was getting waterlogged and would have sunk in the heavy waves if it had not suddenly been hit by the oar of a passing warship and thrown into a tornado. The fragile fractured off-course confused egg twisted round and round in the cyclone and would have been hideously curdled if it had not suddenly swung free from the grip of the wind and plummeted back onto the mountain top and been caught in the wings of a very shocked Mr Noodle.

He put the fragile fractured back-on-course still-confused found-again egg gently into the nest.

Mr and Mrs Noodle did not know how many adventures this ninth egg had experienced, but they saw the cracks and the dents and they cried. They were afraid that the chick would be damaged, maybe even beyond repair.

But when the fragile fractured back-on-course still-confused found-again egg hatched they realised a sort of terrible wonderful miracle had happened. Instead of getting broken, the little chick had developed bravery and steel kneecaps, and he had teeth, and adorable little fists at the end of each fluffy wing. They looked at the chick, and looked at each other and looked at the chick some more.

‘Let’s call him Kwon,’ Mrs Noodle suggested.

‘That’s both appropriate and acceptable,’ Mr Noodle smiled and watched the newly hatched Kwon try out his little wing-fists by punching a boulder into pieces. ‘It does rather demonstrate that sometimes tough times can make you tough.’

‘Ah yes,’ replied proud Mrs Noodle, watching newly hatched Kwon bite a passing snake, ‘and ridiculous adventures can make you both ridiculous and brave.’

So that does explain how Kwon became so improbably indomitably different that he could prove impervious even to death by contents of troll stomach. His adventures in the fragile fractured back-on-course still-confused found-again egg had magically made him super strong and slightly immortal. Nobody is quite sure why he became 18 feet tall though. This was too big to live comfortably on Duck Island, so after trying various beds and squashing too many flowers, Kwon eventually got his own specially adapted apartment in the pleasant tower block next to the park.

He still visits his parents everyday and they sit by the Lake, eating home made pond weed pancakes with lots of chilli and drinking spicy tea. He likes a quiet life, but given how his life started and finished and started again, the adventure trend may not be ended…