It was only two weeks before Lambnas Day. It was a Thursday. Spring was in the air. Jacket weather. It was not too windy so I wore my hair back in a loose neat ponytail. Across the copper name plate on my jacket read 'Finnegan: Bard Wrangler Crowd Management.'

  Monty had started his set, a scheduled gig at The Blue Lady. Only one of many of the “chain dives” that you could find scattered across the Round Realm. A Temple and sanctuary to the poor, drunk, and the poorly drunk. It's blue neon-bright sign shining like a silver trimmed beacon with a flagon of ale and a piece of non-distinguishable pie. A veritable flytrap guaranteed to attract a certain quality of clientele; those folk being fond of Karaoke, and the Bawdy Pun.

  Monty had found himself in the obligation of a friend-of-a-friend who had to cut his tour short. The exact reason for absence was unspecified, but among the artistically inclined could be as simple as avoiding a court summons, to the wrath of a misunderstood lover. Take your pick and you could not be too far from the truth. The fact was this: the spot was left wanting, and coincidentally his pocket also wanting of coin. A match made if not in heaven, then in other realms. It was a deal not without it's attraction.

  An old ship mate once told me that if you were sober enough, that pie would tell you your future at the bottom of your next drink. He always was a drinker and a lout. Had a strange habit of smelling lick pickled olives and calling me Flip. No future was waiting undiscovered in a ale tankard for him! Pie was after all just pie. It was the adventurers that had found themselves in possession of too much wild herbs that believed that kind of garbage; or people who were at the bottom of a three wicked candle. Luckily I had not been either. It was the usual idle talk made to fill the time between his song and magic sets. The latter had promised a troupe of singing Proto- Harpies. Having not seen one since they live primarily in the brackish hag swamp, I had a reason to sick around the bar.

  Master Ray always said life happens in a bar. 'You can find a quest, bag a bounty, meet a cute girl, and then in the morning you'll wake up in the same bar. If you are really lucky you'll find yourself at the next bar.' I found my self muttering under my breath tea cup in hand. It was some bit of his worldly wisdom. Although I never was too fond of drink. Coyote Silverleaf tea from the Dark Lands had always been my poison of choice. Although, I have also been told it was an actual poison. For some of the weaker in constitution, perhaps. I have never experienced that difficulty for myself. It had an ability to keep one regular and alert.

  That man had a ton of off-hand sage wisdom, gleaned thru travels if not physically done, then metaphorically experienced. At times I really wondered what he was doing hanging out with a few run away kids looking for mayhem and adventure. The old coot probably saw himself in the eager eyes looking up to him. But that was almost fifteen years ago and we hadn't seen him in the past five. Time flies when you start to experience the world on your own two feet.

  Maybe that wife he was always talking about finally caught up with him and forced him to be a decent man again? It was alleged he was some kind of hedge lord. The nation that flew under The Blue Shield was filled with those. Men in name, with a land title who protected farmers from extremely lost or wandering monster-tourists. They had a common printed language, that was one of the things that held the world together. Except for the dragon isles... THEY were....different.

  My mind started to wander thinking of rescuing damsels chased far afield by do-nothing ruffians that needed a certain red haired Half-elf to go and rescue them from their 'harrowing plight'. Then something caught my eye moving across the bar. Was it a bit of gray? No. Green?

  Half tarnished wings still flashed in the lamp's light. It was not too often that fairy dragons were seen in bars, at least during open hours. Most bars had a few on retainer for end of night clean up, usually with the understanding that they could keep anything that they found. This lead to the opening of various road side goblin stalls that only sold left hand shoes, various undergarments, and novelty gnome-made marital aids that could brew coffee and light your pipe. The less that was said about that the better.

  There she was, dragging a muddy and smudged dirty gold coin across the bar with her shoulders drooping and looking crest fallen, her slumped eyes darkened around the edges. She was obviously your typical Maiden in Distress! Hair messy, attitude down trodden, in a seedy bar, and worse..... out in broad daylight hours. Disaster had most certainly befallen her.

  She'd wave her hand over her tiny head waiting for the barkeep to notice her from the thicket of soused regulars in before noon. It was an act of futility, standing a little taller than most of the draft cups littered about her. It was excruciating to watch her wander back and fourth after the bar keeper just out of eyesight the color of gray blending into the pewter cups until she raised the gold coin up over her head in an act of shear desperation. The hawk eyed less than reputable patrons perked at the sudden glint of something golden.

  I shot out my hand over the edge of the coin, blocking it from further view. “Hey you don't need to be doing that!” I murmured under my breath in caution. “Waving around a whole gold shield in this kind of bar is certainly not the safest thing to do.”

  She turned around, as her tiny brows furrowed deeply, eyes which broke out in minuscule glistening tears running freely down her face, “I have been here for simply hours and everyone has been over looking me!” she began sobbing hysterically, her tiny cries piercing the regular din in the bar as she leaned against the back of my fist sobbing pitifully.

  From the other end of the common room Monty shot me the 'Who's dog just got kicked glare' as he awkwardly put down his lyre and pick up a fiddle in a huff, masking her cries and completely ruining the planned lay out of his set.

  Staring off at his big green ugly mug, I gestured to the diminutive hand still holding up the coin, the sobbing fairy dragon using my jacket as a hankie. No further explanation was needed. It was only meet with an over exaggerated eye-roll as he began into a soft melodic set to take attention away from the crying of the small Maiden in Distress. I softened my grip turning my now empty tea cup upside down and offered her a bar napkin to sit upon draping it across the flattened surface.

  “Well why don't you have a seat, take a breath” I urged. She sat in a tearful frump, crossing her arms over her chest holding her coin tightly to torso. “I'll order you something so keep your coin....” She tearfully rested her head on her coin and slouched . “Why don't you tell me all about what's wrong?”

  “The worst of it started just after the earth quakes...” she began looking off into the distance with the same longing disparity of a war veteran or Sir Raymond after he had too many cups. I ordered a mulberry brandy. “The Dragon Glen Faeries have always supplied the Queen's Harvest Feast with Glen Berry Wine for the Annual Harvest Feast. Glen Berries are very special they only grow here. Temperate climate, which is year round. Just enough shade and cool breezes in the summer makes those berries grow large and fat with very little work. The hardest we ever had to work was during harvest. But the melt water we get from the mountains in Spring has been torrential this year. The water ripped thru the Glen leaving great swampy marshes in their wake! After that came the bugs and then bog marsh rats. They have chased out our prairie cats and keep our mounted riders busy at all times. The raiding of their gangs has been both day and night. It has been an endless cycle of disaster and destruction, one on the heels of another. Then came the earthquakes. The rumbling land cracking open the bed rock and our storage barn was absolutely flattened. The trees were crushed and bent by these great monsters that blacked out our sky and rain down boulders.” Her pitiful voice squeaked, eyes filled with even more tears, her lip trembling as she hoisted up the filled shot glass to her knees. She took a long and hard swallow from the tiny cup. “And then farmer Percy,..” Her voice cut short as she looked into the reflection of herself at the rim of the black purple drink, “Well, I can tell you he's never going to be the same.” She shotgunned the rest of the glass with a cough, returning to the vacant dead eyed stare as the fiddle played on, punctuating her plight.

  Two more shot glasses of brandy turned into the long drawn out conversations about crop rotations and the horrors of beaver weevils and demonic badger weasels, Some things that just happen with drunken wizards who came and went in turn with the other disasters. She litany trailed on for some time drinking herself into a one hour stupor. Monty, who had finished this set and had quite a few hours between the morning set and the evening set, had sneaked up behind us just far enough for me not to see his green pointy tail.

  “So. What's the story with the little miss hugging the gold piece?” Monty asked resting his needle-point chin on my shoulder, pulling a bit of my hair over his top lip stroking it as if it were a long mustache spinning my ponytail with one hand.

  “Her name is Lira. She came in to drink her horde's worth of coin because the Glen Berry crop is inexplicably failing due to some kind of traveling monster parade.” I murmured stacking up the tiny shot glasses on the bar mat cautiously.

  “Oh quite the pickle. Quite the pickle. Well she is what I would call on the other side of sober. It is only the responsible thing to bring her back to her Glen, or do you think that this would be a good time to see if the story about eating apple pie is true? I mean I have always wanted to know if The Blue Lady's Apple Pie was the answer to all of my life's questions....” He smirked blowing my hair off his upper lip.

  “Nope I'm more of a blueberry pie kind of person. Hey, why not check out to see if this whole wandering monster thing is a real thing? I mean there has to be something more to this part of the Round Realm than just majestic rolling hills and the rural handicraft of 'quaffing ale'.”

He crossed his thin arms over his chest leaning up against the bar with a shake of his head. “See now, you've done it.” he said inhaling deeply and puffing his chest. “I know as a fact, that Quaffing Ale is in fact The Noble Sport of Lords, those who can afford to get more alcohol on them then in them. As you know I absolutely despise anything that would be considered “lordly”. So lets go see about the truth to this monster issue.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  And with that, we were five miles down the road having the good sense to ask a soldier, then an uproarious drunk, where to get directions to the Dragon Fairy Glen. The instructions were definitely the thing of nightmares. It involved a negotiation with a bull frog, going thru a free standing gate in the middle of a farmers field, spinning continuously around an elm tree until staggering, then after turning ourselves to true north, singing the tune 'The Colors of the Knickers of the King of Death Island.' A song only known to the most cultured of drunkards.

  All things said, the song was the hardest thing that we had to figure out. This was due to the fact that it had so many verses. Monty had taken it upon himself as a true Thespian and Bard Of The People to sing as loudly and as bawdily as he could to the appreciative crowd of no one, he himself providing the cheers and hoots of an imaginary audience. This came especially helpful in echo location once we got past the Elm business, and a fog came rolling in.

  “Are they green or are they brown? I don't know because he ran with out them from our Town!” His strong voice a thing of wonder in the short, rolling hills. “Urbamurf!”And that was the moment that all three of us ran into the side of a barn. Jostling fully awake with a start and spray of wood chips.

  “Waaaaaait a minit! We're in the Glen?! How did we get here?” Shouted Lira, now fully awake, as she flew around nervously as I started to pull Monty's face out of a partially collapsed barn. The haze of a humid day was upon us.

  “Well, you are small and easy to carry. As our master always used to say, 'Only people that have too many pairs of shoes and fools sleep openly in bars.” I paused with a thought “How did you know all eighteen verses of that song off of the top of your head?” With a stiff yank Monty was freed from his splintery prison.

  “Yeesh, Fin!” He scowled “Mind the horns for the love of Hope. You could have nicked my good eyebrow.” He said rubbing his face tentatively. ”I learned it from my half brother. He said he lived the experience a few times.” he pouted with a frown running his finger over the gap in his eyebrow. Then he glared daggers at me for the better part of a half-a-second. After all, a bard was mostly charisma and wit by equal volumes.

  The glen was eerily still, a stagnant brackish water flooded ruined fields, with sad looking water logged vines desperately wanting to reach for the sun through the thick humid haze. A dilapidated barn, barely holding together through multiple paintings of it's splintered planks, was on the far side of the farm. The other side had a bent over tree with it's boughs scraping the mud, a line of once cozy bird houses caked in the muck and mire glowed faintly. The last of the fairy houses that had remained above the mud looked sad in this carnage..

  “Wow... “ I stammered pursing my lips “It could be much worse. I mean we could dig, provide drainage and hope for the best for the next seasons to come?....” I trailed off feeling the futility of this seasons work.

  “We can't” Said a tearful Lira. “The stored reserves we had in the barn got smashed after the farmer's accident. We have to make something work. We have to present SOMETHING by the end of the season or we will have nothing to give at the Fairy Ball!” she blew her nose loudly with a hick-up still having the effect of the alcohol. “Then.... we would loose the Glen! We will be evicted for non-production.”

  Monty took a step back from the crushed barn, observing the dented-in curve of the roof, tilting his head at a forty degree angle as he stroked his beard pondering it's uniquely disastrous geometry. He then tilted his head to the other side with a coy smile. “You know what guys? THIS shape looks really familiar. I just can't put my finger on it.” He promptly did a hand stand trying to look at the barn from a much different angle. “Oh this is really going to mess with me.”

  I glanced around. “For being a Fairy Glen, one would think that this place would be absolutely lousy with faeries buzzing around here and there. I mean I can understand how abysmal it can be with this mess here, but they all have to be around here somewhere?” I lifted up an obviously fake rock to find a tunnel guarded by a miniature lynd worm snapping the rock shut after blowing a very loud raspberry . “Oh well excuse me. I'm sorry, I'm sure.” Was my startled reply. Then came the ominous silence as the birds as one fled from the sky.

  Lira snapped, all attention for a moment, “What time is it?” There was a long pause as Monty put himself on his head directly into the mush, crossing his arms in deep thought, still fascinated with the concave shape of the failed barn. “Oh no ...it's ..Oh: NOT MORE BOULDERS!!” peeped her little voice in terror. A loud pounding rumble came down from the hillside. The pounding growing ever closer, louder.

  “Oh …. I get what it is. It looks so like, like....Oh, Lord. It's exactly like-” It was at that moment that a tremendously large blue and white stripped croquette ball smashed down the hill, snatching up Monty, body and soul, down the hill with the force of a run away carriage to a peculiar looking springy willow tree now bent into the shape of a horse shoe buried in the swampy turf..

  A thunderous laugh echoed down from the mountains as a gargantuan white haired woman in a tea gown appeared, gracefully mincing/bounding into sight accompanied by a second taller giant man with a quite mortified woolly mammoth under one arm, yet dyed a delightful spring shade of green with an audacious grosgrain pink polka dotted bow tied around it's tail.

  “Oh I do say Margret! That was a jolly good whack! “ He said in a thunderous tone. “Almost all the way to the pin in one shot my darling vision!” He took a flattering tone, scooping the giantess's hand gallantly, placing a massive kiss on her ring finger. On it seemed to be a buckler of some long forgotten Orkish army soldier, strapped to her gloved tree sized digit.

  “Bartholomew, you do flatter me so!” She said with a wilting hurricane force sigh, fluttering her eyelashes like windmill sails. She swept enough pleated hemline to cover a small mountain side in Dryder silk. She gigantically, but demurely, looked away as he be-smooched up her elbow length gloves as she giggled in girlish joy, mass of cloudy hair flowed around her face in swept curls.

  “Margret my love! You are more beautiful than these rolling hills and meadows. Your Lips Shine like the morning dew upon the tree tops of my soul.” The dropped mammoth started to scramble away. A frantic harbinger of the doom that was about to come. Bashing thru the muddy meadow, it charged off into the distant, and relative safety of a large monolith grouping of boulders. As if knowing what was about to occur, and wishing avoidance at all cost!.

  The giantess threw her self into the familiar bend in the barn, too much overcome by passion to heed the odd shrieking of a cloud of terrified chickens' in dismay. “Oh Bart! You Cad!” She Trilled throwing her mallet down field, smashing an elm on the far side of the mire in care-free abandon. At that The Giant cast abroad his large brimmed hat, floating it onto the quagmire of a field, discarding in a whipping motion his leather belt, which at least 15 oxen had given their tiny lives to produce, and amorously had at the giantess's prone body.

  “Margret! You Provoke Me Ever So!” He shouted before diving head first under her hemline.

  Finnegan taken aback by the sights and sounds he could not purge from his mind steadied himself. This was not any kind of wandering monster. It was Cloud Giants~! In love~! Any village, field, or country would be plunged into immediate ruin by the romantic tendencies of the largest of the Disc's inhabitants. Standing in awe of the vision, of such an unavoidable terror to befall some of the most smallest, fairest of creatures, he was utterly gobsmacked.

  As almost to shake him from the ecological nightmare “It's ..Irian Jaya's back side. It was bent and it looks much smaller but that's the same exact curvature of her backside too.” He paused looking up at the writing mass of clothing “Lucky Man... “ Monty said with the shake of his head, willow leaves cleaving to his mussed hair like some kind of leafy haired forest creature.

  Then epiphany struck as Monty gave a knowing wink, he scrambled to the top of the twisted tree his torso seeming to appear from the depths of the bent green. Monty cupped his hands with a booming voice that only bards and practiced drill sergeants could muster, “My good Lord .” He commanded his voice, resonating from the folds in the valley. The giants paused, as a head appeared from under her hem.

  “I AM.” he said in reply while straightening the curl to his mustache around his massive finger with a twist and then pulling the skirts together under his chin.

  Lira looked up eyes wide “Oh my god! Your friend, he's going to die! That monster is so huge! It has two heads!”

  Fin hushed Lira “No no no... He's a bard they cant possibly kill him on the first go. He's an absolutely amazing liar and an even better trickster. I think he must have stolen Coyote's pocket change as a baby.”

  “My good and gentile Lord,” Monty said upholding two very long tree branches in either hand down and out of arms of his shirt. “I am the great spirit of the Glen OOOooooOOOoooo....” He trailed off with his voice while casting a few illusion spells under his breath for good measure.

  Lira was completely mortified with terror and embarrassment. Fin crossed his arms over his barreled chest remembering fondly tricking orcs into giving up their swords to the Spirit of Iron five years back. It was an absolute classic routine for Monty.

  “Your Love and dedication has moved my great wooden heart. So I have prepared for you a wonderful sea side vacation to the rim of the Desert Isles! It is just one days travel as the crow flies to The North East Rim-ward! I bow to the two of you. May your love be ever lasting.....” He trailed his voice off slipping back into the enfolding branches of the slumped tree. Giving an enthusiastic thumbs up to his compatriots from under the curve of a branch.

  Lira's eyes were as big as saucers as she hissed under her breath “What in the Disc am I doing with you two Morons?! Your going to get yourselfs killed! It's Giant Monsters! You can barely get a drunk to believe a line like that. It's not like they are air-heads!” she covered her head with the gold piece . “Lets hope they eat us in one go and don't swallow us whole.” Lira shivered and braced for the worst.

  “Oh I love the seaside! Did you hear we have won a vacation from a tree spirit!” She clasped her hands wringing them together under her chin, her flowing gossamer hair went askew in her bouncing excitement, while she catapulted off her shoes and stockings a giant's kicking distance. The force alone embedding them into a near by stony outcrop.

  “Fortune and luck be praised!” the giant shouted scooping up Margret striding-bounding over hill and dale. Left in their wake were the heavy footprints of the giants, easing the mire out of the fields as they began to slough and drain.

  “Well, that was a sight!” smiled Monty. “There is absolutely muck all that we can do about those bent trees. I'm going to see if I can't tame that mammoth to run a plow. We can probably try to help more. Try something... and I do have an afternoon.” He grinned like a wild man rolling up his sleeves. “I had a dream about this once. You know what they say. “ He smirked sprinting after a frightened mammoth. “Follow Your Dreams!”

  “How did.... he just... and then … “ Lira gestured widely, completely at a loss of words, mouth agape at the ordeal she had witnessed. Further, how to explain it all to her absent brethren, still no doubt hiding from the utmost in catastrophes..

  Finnegan just shrugged, “Well some would call it dumb luck, some would call it the law of averages. I call it stage presence... and just because you have a big head does not mean it's filled with big thoughts. I mean there has to be about a hundred or so barrier islands around the Rim. I mean if they go far enough they will hit the Dragon continent. Then it'll be a Dragon problem and out of mortal hands.” He said with a knowing nods. “I mean what's the worst that could happen from that?”

  “Well what do we do now?” said Lira, flushing with a bit of nervous excitement as brackish water receded from crops, starting to release from the clinging silt. Slowly faeries starting to rouse themselves from the small hiding places they had found.

  “Only the most logical of things: We raid the spoils!” Fin piped up as he cracked his knuckles taking off his white jacket to investigate the enormous discarded giant's belt. “It seemed to have sewn-in pouches....”

  The day wound down, the pair forgot all about continuing the other half of the show at the bar, and the Harpy Show. Surprisingly enough, not one person noticed, or complained. Allegedly the Harpies were that good! They still hadn't noticed after six months had passed, after waking up from the hang overs from the parties given for them at the Fairy Kingdoms.

  Lira went on to be a career minded civil engineer for better management of crops.

And Finnegan didn't realize the giant's flask was an ever-flowing cask of cloud ale, now a fitting tourist attraction at the Glen.

  You should bring coin.....

  Tell them the “Old lady who Lives in the (massive) Shoe” sent ya.