hen the constellations danced in the
Southern sky, and the Moon was still considering being made of green
cheese, a lad of eight summers greeted the gatekeeper of the
Keeper of
Enigmas with a pun of his own devising, and slipped past to see the
Lord of Laughter while His gatekeeper was rolling on the floor in
agony, thereby becoming the youngest hero on record save only for
Skylark (who was born to Willow while she was awaiting an answer from
the Mother of Roses
at Her Throne). The boy's name was Cheldunthread,
and he had journied from Neffik
Dern to ask of He Who Doesn't Care
to Count that He cause it to be that none other than the child himself
be able to drink from his favorite cup (which was large and wooden and
had two handles, and which his younger sister would frequently swipe,
because it annoyed him). Cheldunthread offered as his Sacrifice to
eat thereafter only off of his least favorite plate (which was of
white china, and painted with tiny flowers in an unappetizing shade of
yellow). The Lord of Indecision asked Cheldunthread to wait while He thought about this request, so he sat down in a nearby overstuffed chair and kicked his feet for a while before he decided he was hungry. He then took from his satchel a dozen of his mother's finest whisperbrush cookies, and arranged them on the yellow-flowered plate. But just as he was about to take a bite, the Bringer of Sudden Insight said, "Of course!" and picked up Cheldunthread, plate, cup, cookies and all, tossed him down His throat, and then belched as He turned back to deciding which rule to change next in His latest game of seven-handed thresh with the King Under the Sea.
Cheldunthread wandered for days in the innards of the Master of Labyrinths, until he turned left fourteen times in a row and all but tripped over his plate and cup, which he had lost hold of when he had landed. He collected them and cheerily continued on until he emerged from a small and unfamiliar alley into Wishing Heptangle in Neffik Dern, at which point he began to run, intent on getting home to tease his sister that she could no longer annoy him by drinking from his cup. Alas, in his hurry he tripped over a paving stone that jutted out at an odd angle and fell, smashing his plate to bits and cutting his left pinky. For the better part of a week he sat by the well and cried. Eventually, he thought better of it, dried his tears, found a small tube of glue in his pocket, and set to collecting the scattered bits of broken porcelain. When he had assembled a two hundred and thirty-five piece china service for twenty-two, complete with serving platters, and all in different patterns of yellow flowers (but none quite like the one he had broken), he carefully carried his dishes home, glared at his sister (as it was clearly her fault), and asked his mother to teach him to cook.
After many years and innumerable unsuccessful experiments, including a lemming kidney pate that made the house reek for several weeks, Cheldunthread became a fine and inventive cook. In his later years, he moved to Tzalmir, and opened the Lost Lemming Inn, which was soon well known for its excellent food and dreadful dishes. As the Inn grew in popularity, he found himself having to turn away customers with some regularity (as he could only serve twenty-one, plus himself), which distressed him no end. So to reduce the number of customers, Cheldunthread enlisted the aid of his neighbors in building the first parts of the Maze, which he based on his days of wandering in the innards of He Who Loves Garlic, and directions to the Inn were thereafter given as, "Wander for three days in the Maze, then take the next fourteen lefts and enter under the sign of the yellow flower."
To this day, bits of white china with painted with flowers of a dismaying shade of yellow are still found from time to time in the streets of Neffik Dern, and wherever such a fragment is found is considered to be the Temple of the Broken Plate, sacred to the Lord of Shattered Minds, for as long as the finder wishes to stay there. It is said that the Breaker of Oaths has never refused anyone who has taken vows as His priest immediately on finding one of these shards.
The cup? Cheldunthread used to claim that it had fallen down the well in Wishing Heptangle. The china is still in use at the Lost Lemming Inn, or was when last I visited.