Gideon Gorgonzolla, the famous detective who solved such perplexing cases as “The Mystery of Dame Zelda’s Misplaced Toenail”, and “The Spate of The Forged Greeting Cards”, which plagued the nation in the ’70s, has begun work (or possibly finished? We can’t be sure…) on his new home in Akawir, Central Klah – a somewhat ambitious project as the house is to be completely invisible. Sources close to Gideon and his wife Mabel say the detective has become increasingly security conscious and the pair are rarely seen without fake beards. Now it seems they will be rarely seen at all.
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To some, this may just look like a rock, or a good place to hang a towel. The more discerning viewer however, will notice the gaping open mouth and horrified look in its eye, and recognise this as an Embarrastone: a beast that turns to stone when embarrassed, for anywhere between 3 weeks and 300 years depending on the depth of the embarrassment. This particular beast is thought to have been in rock form since 1903 after a terrible incident involving an innocent swim at a crowded river and a pair of swimming trunks that got snagged on a stick.
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A Tree of Exploding Potential in the mountains of Klah. ToEPs (scientific name: Explodus Potentialus) spontaneously combust when they feel, through their roots and the messages whispered through the soil, that someone in the world is not fulfilling their potential. The Person of Failing Potential all of a sudden feels this explosion as a tiny prick on the sole of their left foot, which develops into an itch, and before long they know without a shadow of doubt that they must go out and find the tree. This journey may take many months / pairs of shoes / flasks of guzzlejuice, and by the time the Person of Failing Potential reaches their tree most of the job will already be done, but it is not until a branch is taken, danced around, thrown thrice in the air and eventually nibbled on that the person suddenly finds they have everything they need: the will, the plan and the means to become a Person of Happening Potential.
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The Royal Master Artist amongst potential friends, potential enemies
Sometimes, when one wanders alone in a forest, and the light is dim and the shadows strange, and you begin to wonder if indeed a wrong turn was taken, or if perhaps that conga line of jiving bears would have been best joined rather than avoided - because safety in numbers might be a real thing - sometimes, at these moments The Eyes appear.
Not suddenly, like an
exploding crab, or with warning like an undergrowth crashing, squealing
Sealhog, but silent as a cloud of secrecy, mysterious as the cry of a distant beast in the night, and more ominous than a vanished sock from the wash.
Or are they ominous? Speculation has been rife recently, for no one really knows just what they are up to, for they do not speak or keep diaries, just hover, and stare, and blink, and thus they have earned the name The Eyes of Unknown Intent (TEOUIs).
Some groups such as the Over Protective Society have called for them to be arrested, or taxed, or made to wear dark glasses. Recently Klah's Royal Master Artist, fed up with such uninformed judgement, publicly declared "innocent until proven guilty!" and strode out into the forest alone to determine if the blinks are really some kind of morse code, and to discover just what motivates these mysterious beings. After spending a number of weeks with a colony of Eyes, she believes she may have begun to decode their language.
"So far I have translated this:
Y-O-U - H-A-V-E - V-E-R-Y - F-I-N-E - E-Y-E-S
How lovely. Or is it sleazy? Or just an unusual cultural greeting? Or ...are they about to steal my eyes? I'm very torn between staying to find out, and needing my eyes for my hobbies such as albino stick collecting and truck driving".
Nobody knows where The Eyes appear from, or how they come to be at all, but the Klah Gazette would like to note the disproportionately high number of blind corners in forests known to contain The Eyes Of Unknown Intent (TEOUIs).
While the Royal Master Artist is deliberating on making a retreat, hopeful Royal Master Artist candidates may wish to ready their CVs.
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The (disguised) house of disguises, which sells disguises for all occasions. It caters for those needing to look rich, roguish or reptilian, handsome, hag-like or happy (very popular). Sometimes the disguises themselves are disguised, as in the case of the unfortunate Mr Leonard Perkins who went to a fancy dress ball disguised as a Dashing Duke, only to find himself suddenly dressed as a lemon. This incident is actually the origin of the saying "turned out to be a lemon".
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