Uhhhh... It's pretty self-explanatory I think. FILP flashfic

Thumbnail is stolen from here (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/57171221/) with Retro's approval.

Original art by Sneeth.
It got RetroInferno's star of approval, so it is clearly the canon ending and definitely happened.

1200 words


Pot of Greed





Farishta climbed up the whirling path leading to her monastery, carrying her staff in one hand and a bunch of mauled griffons in the other. She liked griffons – loud, easy to spot, and always living in convenient, dinner-sized packs. Most importantly though – always absolutely convinced that they can fight off anything… Just scare’em, bonk’em and take’em.

This many would suffice for the last meal before they leave for…

„Help! Help me, please!” a faint, weak voice broke her train of thought.

“Hello? Who is it? Where are you?” she asked, glancing around nervously.

“Help! Please!” the voice repeated, this time barely audibly.

She dropped everything and ran. Ran as fast as she could in the rough direction the pleas and whimpers were coming from, her ears constantly twitching and adjusting, guiding her with ever increasing accuracy.

Farishta ran past the main building of the monastery, following the voice to an old rainwater collecting apparatus.

“Help! Someone help me!” a familiar voice echoed from inside.

“K… Kazem? Is that you?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh thank God! I thought I was gonna die here.” the man replied shakily.

Farishta got on her knees and put her ear against the wall of the huge clay container. Shallow, panicked breathing was heard from the inside.

“Don’t worry little guy! I will get you out!”

The question was just… how exactly? The water container was huge, had thick walls and was held in place by steel rings, preventing it from tipping over. Kazem surely was too big to fit through the faucet at the bottom… She glanced around for anything useful, but there was nothing – just some old cup saucer, a short stick, a few buttons and shreds of string scattered around the extremely damp ground. Nothing useful.

Farishta briefly considered breaking the pot, but then a quite vivid image of ceramic shards falling on top of the tiny man dissuaded her from that. There was only one option left.

“Hold on Kazen! I’m coming!”

She climbed the huge container with her usual grace somewhat spoiled by the heart-wrenching anxiety. She removed the filter on top, tossed it to the ground and finally saw him.

He lied there, at the very bottom, his clothes so dark that she could hardly see him, were it not for his glistering green eyes.

“Oh God… Thank you so much…” he whimpered.

The whimper made her forget all reservations and she jumped head-first into the pot… but didn’t reach the bottom. Her head, shoulders, chest and even her waist passed through the opening with varying degrees of difficulty… But her hips did not.

She wriggled. Struggled. Tried to claw at the walls just to get a tiny bit further… a little closer to the suffering man…

Finally, she reached a point where nothing was happening – no jolt nor twist was getting any more distance. In both directions. Farishta looked at the two emerald dots, almost crying out from frustration. They were about… half an arm length too far to reach.

She hanged there – just as limply as her necklace - for a good few seconds, before she could gather herself and look for a solution. Stretched herself once again with the exact same result.

“Kazem… could try climbing the wall? I can’t reach you.” she said anxiously.

“I… I can’t feel my legs…” he whispered, his voice betraying the sheer horror he was fighting off.

Her heart sank and nearly stopped. No... No no no no, it couldn’t be… No!

And then, another idea, brought to her by the jewelry dangling in front of her snout. She took it off and examined the golden chain. It could JUST about reach him.

Very slowly and methodically as not to crush the man, she lowered the pendant, her padded hands maneuvering the delicate gold with care so it would not break.

“Almost! Almost…” he exclaimed with desperate hope.

“Yes, just a few more seconds…” she whispered tenderly “Just a few more…” she took a deep breath and during that time, her brain produced a question “How did you even end up here?”

“I…” he hesitated “I wanted to get a better look from the top… But I tripped and fell in here…”

“And you just couldn’t find a better place, than this old water storage?!” she scoffed.

“It seemed like the best spot…”

She rolled her eyes, but… something struck her. She wasn’t using this specific container. It should have been filled to the brim… Yet it was empty. And another question…

“How… How could you fall inside, if I had JUST removed the grate at the top?” she asked.

The emerald dots at the bottom blinked.

“Good question.” he answered stoically.

A flash of discharge followed.





***





Kazem shot his pistol at the golden chain point-blank, damaging it enough for it to fall apart. The large donut of snakes he was after crashed on the ground, forcing him to jump away as to not get crushed.

“HEY! What are you doing?!” the cat woman yelled, her voice betraying confusion.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he kicked the meticulously sculpted dirt pretending to be clay. He broke through almost instantly and quickly extracted the entire hole he had spent half the day making. After that, he approached his prize.

“What? What are you doing? Kazem, I don’t understand!” Farishta mumbled from above.

“Well, you will have quite a lot of time to figure it out.” he shrugged, rubbed his hands and got to moving the enormous talisman.

“No! Don’t touch that! This is mine! My dad gave it to me!” Farishta yelled and started struggling again.

He ignored her screams and slowly, little by little, dragged out the idol out of the monstrous pot.

“GET BACK HERE!” she screamed as he left her field of vision.

Kazem looked up and witnessed a pair of legs and a ruffled tail furiously wriggling and struggling in a vain attempt to pull her out of the pot. Exactly what he wanted to see.

Following the plan from here was easy – he used ropes to fasten a button at the center of the talisman, making the contraption rigid with sheer tension. Next, he attached a log to the center of the button, flipped the thing over with leverage and attached the saucer to the other end of the stick. His contraption was less than glorious but seemed at least somewhat functional – a pair of huge wheels basically.

“I can hear that you are still there! Get back here… please!” the woman whined.

His heart stung a little, but not nearly enough to consider actually humoring her. He knew what would happen otherwise…

With a small sigh, he braced himself against the axis and pushed the wheels with difficulty.

“So long. And thanks for the tea.” he shouted.

“No… Please, wait… Please!” she whimpered.

“Consider this a life lesson, dear. Do not trust strangers. It will do you good on the road.” he threw nonchalantly as he pushed his prize further and further away.

“No… Don’t leave me like this! I’m stuck!”

“Yeah, that was the point.” he nodded, mostly to himself.

He looked back to witness the enormous butt flanked by two furious legs again. She was not giving up… Kind of admirable. Her butt was kind of nice too… If things were different, he could spend some time admiring it… Maybe even…

Eh, no matter. You couldn’t have everything in life. Freedom and riches would have to suffice.





***