Crabbit Faery Tales and Folk Tales of Forumshire

{{{Poor Gingerlocks! But I'm glad you're able to write even while on the lam, Petty.}}}

LMAO As usual, well written, well paced & a fooking good laugh ! Now, wer'e getting to the juicy bit.......the Mc Tyrants ! Hee hee

Me....shopping for spell ingredients



And me at home brewing them

{{Eldo it is tricky, what with having to nick bog roll out of the Muck n Duck bogs to write on and all, but oddly enough I find I am writing a road movie whilst on the run!

Azriel- now this tale concerns a great-great ancestor fo yours who just happens to have the same name, it being such an old tale as needs be when talking of Figg's youth, I am sure you are much less inclined to turning people into frogs, most of the time...

I think my favourite line so far is in this part - 'The verdict is given, the judgements are in, the jelly is set.' purely because I can conceive of no other circumstances in which I would ever have written such a line, save in a Forumshire Tale. It's what makes them so fun to write. }}}}

Love your writing ! As for ancestors ? we do share a 6th sense, 3rd eye, big baby toe,hairy moustache so, its not unusual for us to feel as one & that whatever happens to one happens to us all throughout time hence the distinguishing birth mark of 2 rampant celery sticks of the Order of the sabre toothed Natterjack toad

{{{ or was that a mistake on a club 95, booze night tattoo dare ? I really cant remember ? }}}

{{{{ }}}

Elsewhere in Forumshire there was a room.

The room was dark. This was not strictly because there was an absence of light. There was not. There was an old oil lamp which burned a flickering tallow yellow light. But it fell only onto a bare wall and the surface of the table upon which it sat and little else. And there was also a thin line of light which fell through the crack where the curtains over the sole window were drawn, dust and smoke swirled in its beam, but like the lamp it did not so much elevate the darkness as accentuate it.

And this itself was not by accident. For the person whose room this was had taken great pains and over half an hour carefully setting the room up to be this way. Where a normal minded person may use lamps to create tasteful and useful pools of light, this person had the sort of mind that used light to create deep pools of darkness. And he had a purpose in this.

There was to be a meeting here, a meeting of business men, a meeting of respectable folks who knew the worth of everything and were prepared to put a price upon it. And positioned as the person was, in the deepest of the deep pools of darkness the room afforded, he knew that no matter where else in the room anyone else was, his face would never be more than a tall black silhouette. The time for them to know who he was had not yet come, but it was getting closer.

That fool Offo had offered him the perfect opportunity he had been waiting for and this Gingerlocks the perfect means.

There was a soft knock at the rooms door.

He reached up and carefully adjusted the spectacles perched precariously on his small nose and hiding a half smile in a down turned mouth called, “Enter.”

Nice setup!

Elsewhere in Forumshire there was a room.

The room was softly lit, no, more than that it was seductively lit. Which fitted the elegant and comfortable furnishings of it. There was a large plush double bed over which a soft golden light fell from an ornate lamp which sat on nearby table. The light shimmered through the gauze like drapes which surrounded the bed creating within the space of the bed a chamber of golden light, and this was not an accident. The air of the room was heady with scents and aromas chosen with care to relax, arouse, and mildly intoxicate. And this was not an accident either. Where a normal minded person might have sufficed with a scented candle or two, this person was the sort of person who  considered all the possibilities, and then how to use them best in combination for her advantage. The room did not so much have the feel of a boudoir, it had the feel of the template of boudoirs everywhere, it could have been the original boudoir from which all others take their lead but fade in comparison in achieving this rooms utter bourdoirness.

And this was no accident. For the person whose room this was had spent over an hour preparing it to be just right. She was the sort of person who paid very close attention to the details because working for who she did, either of them, she had to be. And it was her skill in this area which had led everything to this room and this moment. This was the place, and soon would be the moment, the moment when she could satisfy both her masters with one act.

She checked one last time the thing she had checked four times already. It lay beneath the pillow, it glinted and it was sharp. Sometimes the old ways and the simple ways were also the best ways. All her subtle planning, like so many times before, came to a literal point in such brutal and bloody simplicity.

She took up an empty wine glass in each hand, positioned herself next to a delicate table and turned her back to her door, she spun gently on the spot, smiling invitingly then checked to make sure this was just the right spot - where the light would fall in just such a way behind her that her negligee would become just the shade of transparency required to outline her envious curves in inviting silhouette, but without actually giving anything away but promises.

Satisfied she had the perfect spot she set the glasses back down upon a delicate table and awaited the knock at her door that would be her special guest.

Her guest simply could not be allowed to discover the truth. But the bungling Offo and the unexpected but welcome interference of this Gingerlocks had gifted her the perfect means to resolve everything to her satisfaction.

There was a firm knock at the rooms door.

She poured a bubbling wine into the two glasses and said 'Enter' turning as she had practised as her guest entered and seeing on his face the desired reaction. She delicately adjusted the rather fetching, and in the negligee and the lighting and the aromas, sexy librarians glasses she wore perched on her button nose and over her slightly leaf shaped ears, and sighed a smile that had on her guest a similar effect to dragon fire on an ice-cube.

“Lance!” she purred in inviting greeting and the door closed behind him.

Halfy, you look surprised  Surprised me! There really is a lot going on in your fertile mind Petty isnt there ? once the Buckie has drained away

There really is a lot going on in your fertile mind Petty isnt there ? once the Buckie has drained away - Azriel

{{{Nah, there is nothing in there once the buckie drains away - but with it! }}}

fooooookadillydoodah!

Color me intrigued.

Curiouser and curiouser...

The spoon hovered momentarily over the three bowls of steaming porridge and then suddenly dove into the largest bowl with intent.

What the hell Figg figured, she was probably hungry enough to eat all three anyway may as well start on the biggest first.

Her mouth salivating in anticipation she shovelled a heaped spoonful into her gaping mouth and closed her lips down upon the stem of the spoon.

She paused, her face began to redden from the top down, beads of sweat broke out on her forehead and suddenly she began a mad dash about the room. Finally in a fit of panic and waving one hand about in front of her mouth she spotted a large plant pot by the wall, a large plant pot which appeared to contain a spiky plant with jagged green leaves, topped with a drum shaped purple flower. The entire plant was also apparently made out of very small knives it was so prickly. Nevertheless she braved it and emptied the contents of her mouth into the soil at the pots base.

She lent back against the curving wall, panting.

“Buckie!” she finally managed in a hoarse whisper.

The large bowl of porridge was laced with extraordinary levels of buckie.

Nevertheless her stomach still growled at her and eventually she was drawn, stomach first, back to the table. This time she tried the middle bowl, it was not as bad as the first but it too was laced with far too much buckie and though Figg choked it down, she immediately knew as the room swam around her that she would not last long enough eating this before passing out, she would be unconscious before she would sate her appetite.

With a worried perseverance she plunged the spoon into the smallest of the bowls. It had a faint whiff of buckie about it, but she found that it was tolerable.

Or at least to her hungry stomach it was tolerable, and she devoured every last drop.

She finally set the spoon down with a satisfied sigh and felt a warm glow inside her that she mistook entirely for a filled stomach and not half for the buckie glow which it was.

And it was this buckie glow which quickly led from satisfied hunger to weary drowsiness.

Her trek through the woods and the excitement of the trial had all but exhausted her and half in a trance she wandered through the barrel until she found a room with a bed in it about her size. The walls of the room were draped in tartan. A set of bagpipes hung there. She barely noticed her surrounds now, she simply slumped over face first onto the bed and almost immediately began to snore.



Amarie lent back against the soft satin sheets of the bed, feeling both the coolness of the sheets against her naked back and the firmness of the blade beneath them. All she had to do now was entice Lance close enough. And with the heady calculated aromas and perfumes of the room reaching their intermingled crescendo he stood little chance.

She smiled teasingly up at him over the brim of her goblet and watched as he began to strip off his tuxedo in what was, as her trained eye detected, a studied performance of beguilement, as studied as her own, and she had to admit, effective.
She also could not help but notice alongside the ripple of muscle, the coarse manliness of his chest hair a series of white scar lines that traced his torso.

Soon he stood before her in nothing but a gold medallion with the head of Queen Tinuviel on it, her perfect nose in a perfect profile for displaying a nose, which he wore about his neck and which hung on his chest.

“Always a good moment when two nations first form diplomatic relations,” Lance smiled as he slid onto the bed beside her, “time to raise the Forumshire flag on foreign soil for Queen and Country what ho!”

Amarie placed her goblet delicately down on the bedside table, stretching just enough to give an eyeful of inviting cleavage before turning back towards him smiling seductively and putting a languorous arm about his neck.

She gently stroked his cheek feeling the roughness of a days growth upon it, and he in response and just as she had intended, turned his head instinctively towards her gentle caressing and in so doing turned his gaze from her other hand which reached beneath the sheets, grasped the blade, and swung it for the plunge.

Lance sensed the sudden movement, turned towards the peril and froze as the blade arced towards him knowing he was unable to stop it.

Fortunately for him the knife shot from Amarie's grasp and there was a clanking noise.

It was followed by the sort of thoughtful yet embarrassed silence you get when two people are trying to work out what just happened.

Lance looked down at his chest, the knife was stuck sideways to the medallion.

He leapt back off the bed in all his nakedness and cried, “Aha! Well done Blue old chap!””

Amarie stared at him and then at her empty hand, “Blue?” was all she could manage still trying to puzzle out what had just happened.

“My boffin, earned his warm beer today I can tell you,” Lance explained prising the knife from the medallion, “him and his chaps, always coming up with new gadgets,” he reached up a hand to his face and pulled two white cylindrical objects from his nostrils and then walking to the window, without taking his eyes from Amarie or lowering the knife, he threw  it open and tossed the objects out breathing in a lung full of fresh air as he did so and dispersing the rooms intoxicating fumes, “those nose filters were his invention too.”

“So what now?” Amarie asked without moving from the bed.

“We talk,” Lance smiled amicably pulling up a chair and a placing a cushion over his private parts as he sat down, “Who are you working for?”

“I am an Ambassador of the Dark Planet, as you know full well.”

“That's just who sent you, its not necessarily who you work for, is it Offo McBanks?”

Amarie burst into laughter, “Seriously? You think I would work for Offo? Do you think he could afford me?”

“No? But there is someone, isn't there?”

“What if there were?”

“Then”, said Lance cocking his head on one side, “I would either have to kill you, or make you an offer.”

“An offer?”

“Well if you will work for two masters, why not three?”

“Why would I want to work for Queen Tinuviel and Forumshire?”

Lance smiled, “What do you know about the McTyrant coal scuttle.”

Amarie smiled in return, “Ah, in that case, why don't you tell me what you know first, partner.”



Paw, after a mere twenty six attempts managed to get his key in the front door of the barrel, to an accompanying sarcastic applause from Maw and Petty, only to discover that it was not locked.

“Did yi noo lock the door whin we left Petty?” he demanded slapping Petty across the back of the head.

“Bit yi left the hoose last Paw, yi went back fir yir bigger sporran,” Petty protested.

Paw whacked him harder on the back of the head, “Dinnae contradict me lad,” he warned and pushed the door open, “or there will be nae porridge fir yi the night.”

Petty, who upon entry had immediately rushed to the table cried ,”there's no goeing tae be oany porridge fur me Paw, some bastards goan an' eaten it.”

“Hey!” Maw said coming to look, “they've gone an' hud a bite oot  aw mine tae.”

Paw who had gone to put his sporran in the safe in the wall turned to see what all the fuss was and his eye caught his prize wining thistle, “an' who's bin gobbin' porridge in my fucking thistle?” he fumed,”Petty!” he cried stalking menacingly forwards.

“Ah wis wi' yi Paw!” Petty protested.

Paw paused, “Oh aye, sae yi wir son.”

“Yi couple aw daft buggers,” Maw said scornfully, “clearly samwan broke in and dooned oor porridge, well Petty's porridge.”

“A'm no geing him mine,” Paw said raising his hands.

“Bit whit if thur still here!” Petty cried and grabbed a short thin walking stick that stood near the  front door.

“Then wull find thum,” Paw said firmly.



Figg was in a warm fuzzy dream state into which there was an intrusion, a repeated slightly painful intrusion into her warm, full bellied, buckie induced sleep.

Slowly she began to come too.

Something was jabbing at her. Slowly she became aware that there were figures huddled over the bed and peering down at her, three figures, two large, one small.

And the small one had a stick with which he was prodding at her bustle.

“Whit's wrang wi her arse Paw?” the small one said, jabbing at her again.

“It's noo her arse yi daft wee shite Petty,” a female voice replied, “its wan aw they bustle things, aw the posh lassie wear.”

More prodding then Petty said, “A dinnae like the looks o' it, whit shud we dae wi it Paw?”

The largest of the three figures hunched over her, and reeking of buckie pondered this a moment whilst Figg pretended to still be asleep and finally said, “Well, it's a lassie, so wull lee it tae yer maw.”

Figg tried to unravel all of this, but it had taken her a few seconds to realise she could decipher it all, and even then she could only catch occasional words and phrases.

“Aw bit Maw willnae let me take it oot back and tie it tae a stake an see how lang it taekes fir the haggis tae cum an eat her,” Petty whined.

Figg snorted involuntary, she had understood the last part, she tried to turn her protest into a snore and continued to pretend to be asleep..

“Yi'll dae as yer mihther tells yi lad,” Paw retorted and Figg heard a slapping sound followed by a yelp from Petty.

“She's just a wee lassie,” Maw observed, “nae hurm tae oanobody A shudnae think. Sae naebodies feeding her tae oanabody.”

Petty poked at Figg again with the stick, she had taken enough of this she thought and no longer able to lie there and listen to her fate, or at least attempt to decipher her fate, she sat up and the three McTyrants backed away from the bed.

“Nobody is feeding me to any bloody haggis,” she cried firmly, “and the first one who tries will have a very bloody nose.”

The three Mctyrants stared unblinking at her before Paw finally said in a hoarse shocked whisper, “She's a sassenach!”

“U'll git a bigger stick Paw,” Petty cried.

“Sounds like she's frum the North son, best get oot the spiky clubs and sum buckie,” Paw said nodding but not moving or taking his eyes of Figg.

“Yise ur a couple aw havering drunken arses!” Maw exclaimed stepping between Figg and Paw and Petty, “she's jist  a wee lassie and youse a couple o' grown men, well wan and a hoff,” she said with a glance at Petty.

“Bit shes a sassenach, Maw,” Petty pointed out peering at Figg from behind Paw's kilt.

“A dinane care if she's frae the moon, nae one is mistreating this lass in ma barrel.”

“Bit there might be mair o them?” Paw protested.

“So whit if there is?” Maw said suddenly turning on them aggressively with a mouth set in a challenging firm line, she folded her broad arms across her expansive chest and Paw and Petty stepped back exchanging anxious glances, “whits the wirst cun happen,” she said slowly and with increasing hostility to each word, “we huve tae open a school?”

“Dinnae look her in the eye son, she's been sarcastic,” Paw whispered to Petty out the corner of his mouth, “jist dae as she tell us.”

Maw turned to Figg and knelt towards towards her, Figg could smell the buckie wafting over her,”whit ye celt hen?”

Figg considered this, looked about the room for a hen, gave up on any hope of discerning what was being asked and opted to start the conversation herself, “Hello, again,” she said smiling weakly, “my name is, Gingerlocks, and I really am terribly sorry I broke in and ate your porridge, and slept in your bed, but I was lost and I hadn't eaten for days and so many terrible things have happened to me, please, what are you going to do with me, you wouldn't really feed me to the haggis would you?” she blurted out in a long breathless stream and gave Maw her best big round eyes treatment which she had practised in the mirror on rainy days when bored.

“Naw love,” Maw smiled at her, “ we are noo going tae feed yi tae the haggis.”

“Awwww” Petty whined disappointedly and got a slap from Paw for it.

“We ur jist going tae keep yi,” Maw added.

“What?” Figg said horrified..

“Whit?” Petty said equally horrified.

“Well yir a sassenach lass, yi've nae rights or status in Scotshobbitland, yer property, oor property noo. By legal right o no letting yi go.”

“Cun we sell her?” Petty asked excitedly.

“Aye at the market on Saturday, whin faither gaes back tae his work,” Maw said with a brisk nod and turning back to Figg said, “till then lass, yi can help me oot roon the barrel. Yi cun huv Pretty's room whilst she's awa' at, school.”

“Bit she's noo in school, she's in the ..OOWWW!” Petty began and stopped when Paws hand firmly intercepted his head.

“And dinnae think o' jist running awa',” Maw said, “yir in the heart aw McTYrant lands, yi'll no fair better for a few days than yi will here, and maist likely worse. Yi'll get room and board and be well treated, nae point in harming the produce.”

“So you are going to keep me here then sell me?” Figg asked incredulously.

“Aye, nuthing personal like hen bit we've nae need o' yi.”

“You could just, you know, let me go,” Figg gently suggested with eyes like plates, if plates could plead.

The Mctyrants stared at each other, “Whit?” Paw said slowly, “an lose the money wid get frae selling yi?” he said as if investigating a foreign concept, which he was.

Figg's heart sank. It seemed, for now at least she was stuck in this barrel, until she could plan a way of escape that was. At least for now she would have food and a bed to sleep in. Which in a terrible way it occurred to her was actually an improvement on recent days.

“A'll take yi tae yer room,” Maw said putting out a hand for Figg, which she reluctantly took.

Figg glanced back at Paw and Petty as she went, Petty peered at her with suspicious hostile eyes from beneath a curling mop of hair. She realised he must be about the same age as she was, and in an odd light, admittedly a very odd light he was not, well he was never going to be handsome, but he was not entirely not handsome either. She wondered suspiciously why she had noticed at all.

And then he stuck his tongue out at her and she felt a flush of red anger rise up her neck to her face as she was led away.

Well this is fun

{{{Thanks Azriel- I think But at least your here! I seem to be short of readers }}}}

No I mean it sincerely I love reading the stories here & yours crack me up

{{{{ }}}}

I think quite a bit of the Petty and Figg history might make more sense now.

{{{Great stuff as always! }}}

finally had time to read this.

{{{{It probably only gets more Figg- to misquote the Doctor, 'I am going to tell you what happens next, I can't wait to find out, I'm nothing without an audience' }}}}