The Great Mighty Tessa
by Casey Jespon
© 2000

Once apon a time
In the ancient magical town of
Transgruesalostemeyer
There lived a quaint little gnome
A gnome with class
A gnome with vision
A gnome that owned the only construction company
In the whole town
His name was Glossamy
He designed every home and office in the village
And was also responsible for the building of
Famous landmarks such as
The Monotonous Curvy Monolith
And the Popsicle Stick Arboretum
He even started the tradition of
The annual Trikkledum Award
Which he himself won every year
Until one day
One dreary day in late spring
During a lightning storm
A lightning bolt had struck a tree
Severing a large branch
Which fell on Glossamy
Hitting him right on the cranium
The injury was not life-threatening
However
When he got out of the hospital
He vowed not to design a single house
Or office building more
His followers ask him why
To which Glossamy replied
That he must do something better
And then he retreated into his cottage
With a year's supply of paper and pencils
He would draw and measure and draw
Letting no one see his plans
Occasionally he would summon one of his associates
Giving them each specific orders
While letting not one of them
Know what any of the others had been told
And finally as the sun rose
On one August morning
He stepped out of his cottage
And let out a mighty call
"I'm Ready!" he screamed
So that all his neighbors could hear
And he ran to the top of the hill
In center of town
And staked off the remaining lot
Of unimproved property that he owned
Within an hour one of his fellow gnomes
Showed up in his truck
That pulled two enormous slabs
Of pure shiny silver
Which were placed side-by-side
On the crest of the hill
Then his other helper-gnomes arrived
One in pickup truck full of solid cast-iron beams
The other in a crane
For three days they welded and rivetted
Beam to beam
Until the villagers could make out a stick figure
That stood fifty meters high
They asked what it was
And Glossamy said "It's just the skeleton"
The next day his workers shipped in
Ton after ton of wood pulp from the ancient redwood forests
Which was melted in the tears of a sleeping dragon
And molded around the iron form
As flesh to a man
Or in this case a woman, as the villagers could now decipher
As the webbing made from a forty foot tall spider
Was needed to hold the front in place
Next Glossamy asked for sheet after sheet
Of the finest silk
From every enchanted silkworm in the forest around Transgruesalostemeyer
To be draped over the ominous form
A lovely dress perhaps
Then he imbedded at the very top of this sculpture
The immensely long tails of two thousand skyward chimeras
Where he found two thousand chimeras no one knew
The other gnomes could now tell for sure it was a woman
But who was she?
Some forgotten goddess?
The emperess of a kingdom across the sea?
One of Glossamy's high school crushes?
Word of this mighty statue was spreading across the land
Gifts were brought from ambassadors to the far reaches
Of Mossflower, Endor and El Dorado
One seafaring traveller was kind enough to donate
The hides of a dozen crimson mermaids
And five barrels of scales off the back of a leviathan
These were used for the lips and fingernails
Almost done
While the worker-gnomes mined the purple mountains
For massive supplies of platinum
A great king of Middle Earth
Gave Glossamy the gift of two ginormous pearls
The likes of which no gnome had ever seen
The eyes, naturally
Only one thing remained
Over a ton of platinum had been mined from the nearby mountains
And a whole week was spent melting it
And painting it over the wood pulp
Where it hardened to a shiny finish
The glare from which could be seen miles away
And now she stood
A fortune has been spent
A forest had been stripped
And chimeras had almost gone extinct
And with the metal left after melting down his Trikkledum trophies
Glossamy forged a plaque
Which read
"The Great Mighty Tessa
born October 6th 1982
Above all"
And before the sun set that evening
Glossamy stood beneath his creation
In front of an audience of
Kings, miners, elves, captains, children and friends
And spoke
"This is the Great Mighty Tessa
She was constructed against all odds
With the finest materials from every corner of the earth
She is finer than the finest tower
And purer than the purest diamond
And her story will be told in every classroom
From Fairhaven to Lawrence to Oxford
And here she will stand for all time
Higher than the trees, more majestic than the mountains
So that our children's children's children
Can gaze up at her wonder
And know that she cannot be stopped
Cannot be silenced
And will never fear a soul
That walks, crawls, swims, or flies
For she is great
She is mighty
And she will forever be."