Conjugate Wombativitude, Vol. 3
...where Doris gets her oats.
The wind, that zephyrine expatiation of the cosmos’s sigh, rustled through the hyperuranian foliage of the Singing Acacia. A wisp of smoke, fragrant with elemi and mendacity, curled from the grotto where the Grand Exegete of Ephemeral Verities, a wizard named Bartholomew Buttercup (though universally, and ironically, known as “Bartholomew the Blisteringly Bland”), was locked in an agonistic orthography contest with a regal frilled lizard named Xerxes Xantus, scion of the Xantusian Dynasty and Grand Potentate of the Scaled Sublime.
Bartholomew, sporting a cravat of questionable provenance and eyebrows that resembled startled caterpillars, brandished a quill fashioned from a phoenix feather (reputedly molted after a particularly humiliating karaoke performance). “Your turn, Xerxes!” he boomed, his voice a reedy instrument perpetually threatened by harmonic disruption. “Prepare to be pulverized by my perspicacious pronouncements! Your puny poiesis is pitiful!”
Xerxes, radiating an air of ennui so potent it could curdle milk at fifty paces, flicked his forked tongue. “Oh, spare me the bomphiologia, Bartholomew. Your verbose vacuity is as captivating as a committee meeting conducted entirely in Klingon. I proffer, for your consideration: Sesquipedalianisticantinomianism.” He drawled the word with such reptilian gravitas it caused Bartholomew's cravat to spontaneously unravel.
Bartholomew sputtered, clutching his heart as if suffering a sudden attack of semantic indigestion. “Antinomianism? Preposterous! An attempt at intellectual charientismus disguised as profundity! I riposte with… with supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”
A wave of giggling erupted from the grotto’s stalactites, which, unbeknownst to either contestant, were actually a colony of miniature, sentient marmosets addicted to competitive lexicography. One particularly boisterous marmoset, named Professor Quibble, lost his grip and plummeted, landing squarely on Xerxes's head. The Potentate remained unfazed, merely raising an eyebrow (an action usually reserved for existential crises).
“A textbook example of asteismus, Bartholomew,” Xerxes remarked dryly, brushing off the marmoset. “To feign ignorance or misunderstand something in order to score a point. Clever, but ultimately… tedious. My turn. Pneumoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.”
Bartholomew, now sweating profusely, resorted to catachresis. “You… you lizardly libertine of linguistic larceny! You are abusing the very essence of epistemology! I… I declare your word… unconstitutional!” He then promptly fainted, sprawling onto a bed of psychedelic toadstools, which, in a delightful act of magical realism, began to sing a Gregorian chant in perfect harmony.
Xerxes sighed, a sound like sand whispering secrets in a forgotten dune. He surveyed the scene – the unconscious wizard, the chanting mushrooms, the giggling marmosets, the unraveling cravat. He saw, in the inherent chaos, the profound Taoist truth: The ultimate wisdom lies not in the accumulation of knowledge, but in the acceptance of its inherent impermanence. The battle of wits is a dance, and the dance is all.
He unfurled a scroll containing the entire Tao Te Ching written in invisible ink activated by lizard saliva. He placed it gently on Bartholomew’s chest. Then, with a final flick of his tail, he vanished into the hyperuranian foliage, leaving behind only the faint scent of elemi, mendacity, and the quiet rustling of the wind, forever whispering the futility of intellectual pomposity and the supreme serenity of simply being. The wizards and lizards are what they are, their contest, an exercise in futility, yet somehow, sublimely beautiful.