Magic Milk

Once upon this one time, a wizard was trying to help out a farmer with his cow problem.

“She’s only making about a half bucket of milk a day,” explained the farmer “and boy are we thirsty around here.” 

Now the wizard could have just told the farmer to drink more water, which is always good advice, but you don’t get bags of gold for giving good advice. Instead, he offered to enchant the cow with a spell to not only help her produce more milk but to make it come out as chocolate or strawberry. No, the farmer didn’t get to pick what flavor came out. That was random unless he wanted to pay extra. 

The farmer readily agreed, imagining all the money he would make at the market next Sunday morning. He even did the thing where you rub your hands together in that greedy looking way they do in cartoons. 

That Sunday the farmer headed into town with a wagon loaded with half chocolate and half strawberry milk. He kind of wished he had paid the extra gold now as a higher ratio of chocolate would have been preferable, but whatcha gonna do ya know?

It turns out it didn’t matter anyway. The milk was so delicious it sold out before noon and he got to go home early. “I should have done this years ago,” thought the farmer counting his money. 

The only problem was that the milk was a little too magical. The reason it tasted so good was that it tapped into your brain’s subconscious core and made the milk taste like the best strawberry or chocolate bar you’d ever eaten. This was all good and well but your subconscious is kind of like a puppy: cute and fun when controlled, but incredibly dangerous when given the power to create whatever it wants just by wishing for it. 

That night after everyone went to bed they started having the most vivid dreams of their lives, all of which instantly came true. Everywhere you looked there were giraffes with wings, piano’s hatching out of eggs, and, of course, people having sex with their best friends.

Luckily the milk was so tasty that nobody had nightmares. There weren’t any demons running around with kitten heads and stuff like that, but it was a pretty big mess nonetheless.

The next morning the wizard came back to town, thinking there might be some people who needed to have their chickens lay colored eggs for Easter or something. The second he set foot in the village he saw a beautiful naked woman driving a wood stove down the street like a car, and he knew right away what had happened.

“Shit,” he thought “The council of wizards is gonna come down on me hard for this one.” 

A few people had already woken up and had to confront their own dreams face to face. If you want to know just how awkward it is, imagine yourself bowling with your kindergarten teacher only now her head is a grape. Obviously you’d want to ask what happened but you know that would be rude. Also you are feeling peckish and the grape really looks like it would hit the spot. By the way, that’s not an example I made up, that was really happening to a guy, and boy did he look miserable about it. 

The wizard ducked down an alleyway to catch his breath and figure out what to do (plus there was a couch that kept trying to sell him insurance and it wouldn’t shut up no matter how many times he explained he wasn’t worried about his mother catching him masturbating). 

But it turned out there was no escape. As soon as he turned the corner there was a giant red dragon staring him in the face. 

“Look would you mind not eating me right now?” asked the wizard “I kind of have my hands full at the moment.” 

“Yeah you really screwed the pooch on this one.” said the dragon, looking around with her hands on her hips “What’d ya do? Put too much power into a milk spell or something?” 

“How did you know that?” asked the wizard “Also do you somehow know you came from a dream? How is that possible?”

“Firstly,” said the dragon “it was just a lucky guess. This village is known for its excellent milking cows, and you wizards have a tendency to overdo things so I just put two and two together. Secondly, yes obviously I know. Thirdly, it’s possible because whenever a human dreams about a dragon, an actual dragon has to astral project into their mind. It’s a deal we set up with the dreamlord years ago. I can’t get into the details, but needless to say it’s both mutually beneficial and totally rad.”

“Oh,” said the wizard, who felt like he should have known all that already, “Well….um, I don’t suppose you wanna kinda help me out here?”

“Hmm…” said the dragon tapping her snout “I suppose I could. Let’s see the gold some poor farmer undoubtedly gave you for this mess.”

“Hey!” cried the wizard “I earned that gold!” 

“Did you?” said the dragon, gesturing to a tree full of fish as it ran by at full speed.

“Fine,” said the wizard, tossing her the bag of gold, “Enjoy laying on top of this for a hundred years while it could have been earning me 3% interest at some dwarven bank.”

“Those rates are variable and I wouldn’t count on them staying so high in this economy,” rejoined the dragon as she snatched the purse out of the air. “Now what to do?… I mean there is always the quick solution.” So saying, she tapped her smoldering nostrils and gave the wizard a wink.

“No! No!” begged the wizard, “I’m in trouble enough. Can we do something a little less… murdery?”

The dragon looked at the bag of gold in her hand again “If you insist,” she said “Although you’re getting a pretty big bargain.”

With that she shot into the air like a firecracker and addressed the crowd of dreams. 

“Fellow dreams!” she yelled “I know you’re having a lot of fun down there being real for the first time and all, but trust me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. You have to eat and pay taxes and stuff. Not to mention the fact that you’ll have to sleep now and have your own dreams, so it’s not like you’ll even be off work the whole time.”

The dream creatures looked around doubtfully at each other. 

“Look,” added the dragon “Let me make this easy. Either you head back to the dreamworld right now, or I set you all on fire, and with the possible exception of the smoke monster hiding over there, I can promise you won’t enjoy it.”

All the talking lizards and giant toilets and stuff sighed and and slowly evaporated back into the astral plane. A few of the townsfolk looked sad to see them go but for the most part everyone was relieved. 

Afterward, the wizard had to go around and collect all the leftover milk people hadn’t drank yet and pay them back for it, so he ended up losing money on the deal. He even had to buy the cow from the farmer. You might think having a cow that produced milk that was not only delicious, but could literally make your dreams come true, seems like a goldmine, but the truth is it was just too powerful and the wizard knew that. In the end he took it to the town butcher and had it made into hamburger. He was a little worried the meat would have the same effect as the milk but it ended up just making your poops a little weird.