The Shady Adventures of Fabian

Chapter 52

Fabian managed to sleep soundly, although he must have been laying on some sort of insect mound because he was covered all over with itchy red bites the next day, including on his face.

"Oh ho ho!" Sir Mikael chuckled when he saw him. "You have the complexion of an elderberry pie! The females will not wish to breed with you now! How was that? Am I getting better at cracking jokes?"

"No, you still suck," Fabian said. "Where's breakfast?"

"I have managed to capture a duckling that was swimming in the pond. It is on the cookfire as we speak."

"Ah, roast duckling. That's one of my favorites. I don't care what they say about you, Mikey. You're okay in my book. May I call you Mikey?"

"I would prefer Sir Mikael. And the only one who has ever spoken ill of me is you."

"Mikey it is then," Fabian said as he sat down on a log and patted his rumbling tummy. "Is that duckling almost ready?"

"Just about," Brandon said as he poked it with a stick.

"Don't burn it, Scrote," Fabian said as he grabbed the stick out of Brandon's hand. "Let the pros handle this." He proceeded to poke it a few times with the stick. "Looks done to me. Let's dig in. I'm hungry enough to eat a horse."

Rothchild let out a little whinney behind them.

"That's right," Fabian said as he looked the horse in the eye. "I'm not above eating a little horse meat if I get hungry enough. Hopefully it won't come to that."

Fabian sliced off the largest and most choice portion of the duckling for himself and then passed the rest of the bird around to the others.

"I don't think it was quite done yet," Brandon said as he gnawed around the beak.

"Indeed, it appears to still be raw in the center," Sir Mikael said.

"Shut up and stop complaining," Fabian said. "I have deemed the meat to be properly cooked and I am never wrong about these things. Now eat your breakfast and then let's get on the road. You said we should be able to reach our destination by around mid-day, right Mikey?"

"That would be a good estimation," Sir Mikael said. "As long as we do not, as they, say dilly-dally."

They ended up reaching Wingwang, the capital city of Wooglebury, around nightfall due to multiple stops for each of them to deal with explosive diarrhea caused by consuming undercooked duck meat.

Wooglebury was a mountainous kingdom and the city of Wingwang lay spread over an expanse of foothills. The king's castle sat at the peak of the tallest foothill in the city. Unfortunately the castle guards would not let them enter as it was well past the king's bedtime and he would receive no further visitors that day. All of the inns in town were completely filled up as there was apparently a big tapestry knitting convention going on and artisans had traveled from miles around to participate.

Fabian argued that they should intimidate somebody into giving up their room since artisans by nature were a bunch of wimps, but Sir Mikael wouldn't hear of it and insisted they bed down in an alleyway that reeked of urine and other unidentifiable but wholly unpleasant odors. Fabian awoke the next morning with a fresh batch of flea bites to accompany the insect bites he had received the previous day. There also appeared to be an unwashed, unshaven homeless man sleeping with his arm wrapped around Fabian while drooling on his shoulder. Fabian wriggled free of the man and then rifled through his pockets in the hopes of finding some loose shillings, but all he found was a used handkerchief. Fabian threw it aside in disgust and walked away. He attempted to straighten out his clothes and pat down his hair, whereupon he discovered he had apparently been sleeping on an old rotten banana, which had become a smashed gooshy mess that was stuck in his hair. That bath at Madge's Inn was starting to seem like it had been a very long time ago.

"All right," Sir Mikael said cheerfully. "Are you ready to meet the king?" Sir Mikael somehow looked impossibly clean and well groomed. It even appeared as if his clothes had been washed and freshly pressed. Even Scrote didn't look half bad, for being a weird looking kid.

"Sure," Fabian said. "Couldn't think of a more perfect time to meet a king."

"Great, me neither," Sir Mikael said. "Brandon, what say you?"

"I'm ready," Brandon said with a nod.

"Excellent," Sir Mikael said. "I have a great feeling about this. Our quest will now be blessed and we will succeed gloriously and rescue the princess. I can't possibly see any issues arising. Can you?"

"No," Fabian said. "As we all know things always work out perfectly as planned. There's never any hiccups anywhere along the way and a fabulous time is had by everyone."

"It delights me that you share my optimism," Sir Mikael said as he patted Fabian warmly on the back. "Now let us be off to meet with the king!"