//------------------------------//
// Corncob Learns Some Things at the Expense of a Small Planet 
// Story: The Ongoing Epic of the Alicornatrice Known Simply as Corncob 
// by Pegasus sexacus 
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Chapter Two - Corncob Learns Some Things at the Expense of a Small Planet
by Siegfried Danzinger

Everyone (whether you're a squirrel, a pony, an amorphous blob, or - perhaps especially - a politician) makes mistakes.  Sometimes, they're those kind-of well-meaning mistakes where your heart was in the right place.  But things went catastrophically wrong anyway, and you'll probably be looking for a new apartment.  Sometimes it was a mistake that you thought looked pretty good right up until the point that you realized you were mistaken, and then you were embarrassed and had rocks thrown at you.

Corncob's mistake doesn't necessarily fit into either of those categories.  Corncob, for that matter, no longer fits snugly into any preexisting category.

Space was pretty interesting...  At first.  For, like, roughly four minutes.  The thing about space that's both intriguing and kind of boring is that there IS so much space.  In fact, it's mostly that; the name is rather fitting.  Oh, there's a star; that's quite nice.  And here's a flock (Corncob generally thought in bird terms) of asteroids, just going about their business.

And here's a whole BUNCH of - for lack of a more scientific term - absolutely nothing.

You'd think that transcending to the state of alicornatrice and subsequently blasting off into the cosmos would be the thrill of a lifetime.  But, instead, Corncob found himself just wanting to find a nice, comfortable rock someplace upon which to take a nap.

Fun fact: Space, when it isn't nothing, has a good number of rocks.  We could get into a long and pointless discussion about whether or not any of them make for good pillows, but we won't.  I don't want to.  And Corncob, space-traveling superchicken that he was, didn't seem to mind the bumpy parts.  Or the lack of oxygen.  Or the lack of heat.  Or the abundance of nonsense, apparently.

Corncob dreamed.  He dreamed of the little egg out of which he'd hatched when he was, appropriately, very young.  He dreamed of trying to petrify his first prey with his cockatrice stare, and of how disappointed he was when said prey ended up kicking him in the head.  He dreamed of strange, bipedal creatures that brushed the manes of tiny plastic ponies.  He dreamed an entire season of Cheers.  All of this was relatively harmless.  What wasn't harmless, however, was the snoring.

Odds are you know what snoring is.  They don't really have classes for it, but you inevitably hear it at one point or another.  Usually at an inopportune time; like when you'd like to be the one snoring.  Some might say it's irritating.  Some might go farther and at least entertain the thought of smothering a loud snorer with a pillow (this is generally considered an unlawful act).  But, where a superpowered fowl's snoring is concerned, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Stars quaked.  Whether out of fear or because they, for the first time, suddenly felt kind of chilly, no one can be sure.  Entire planets tried very hard to hide behind their own moons, which - were moons the type to complain or have anything like self-esteem - would have quickly led to a shoving match.  One particularly unfortunate planet that, for the sake of putting the audience at ease, I will call Not-Earth did more than quiver or behave like a coward of astronomical proportions.

It exploded.  Just the once; relax.  Somewhere, doubtless a long ways off in a place that's a pain to get to (especially in traffic), some old man might have mumbled a complaint about voices and them doing unspecified things; this is largely speculation.

A now-grumpy Corncob awoke to the sound of a vaguely hollow boom.  So far as his earholes were convinced, it was nothing more concerning than the sound a lit firecracker might eventually make if you thought to sit on it (the reader is advised not to light firecrackers and then sit on them).  Corncob, though not into the whole villainy thing, began to suspect that he'd done something not-entirely-benevolent when an unusual number of planet-y chunks went drifting past his sleeping-rock.

With great power comes great...  Awkwardness.  When you inevitably realize that you might have just possibly - so far as all visible evidence seemed to suggest - killed a planet.  And not just a part of one; the whole thing.  On the bright side (there's always a bright side): Two major warring civilizations on the planet NEXT to the one Corncob accidentally snored to death thought that maybe someone was trying to tell them something.  They immediately discarded their weapons, embraced their former enemies, and sincerely intended to be better alien octopus-things from that point on.  So it was kind of a lose-win situation, on the whole.

Corncob considered never sleeping again, but that would just leave him cranky.  That, and he reacted badly to caffeinated beverages.  He ran the end of a bat-like wing over his comb, pressing it to his head; it defiantly popped back up with a cartoony sproing.

"Ponies," he thought to himself; though it would have been odd had he thought to someone else.  "Ponies might know."  Tapping into that same instinct that once aided him in finding his way back to his childhood nest, Corncob instinctively "smelled out" the location of the planet from whence he came.

Back on that same planet, in the depths of a trash can and covered in crumpled, sometimes mustard-stained napkins, a small furry creature with an increasingly heavy chip on his shoulder began to stir.