Another Fairable.

 This is night #2 of the Fairy Tale-themed camp week: "Who Am I?"

I'm prefacing each vespers message with a piece of a longer story that addresses each night's theme. Night #2 is "There's more going on than we knew." The emphasis is the spiritual realities behind what goes on around us. This is a continuation of THIS story. And, it leaves a sort of cliff hanger for the following night.
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The morning was cool and misty. Fog rolled through the lowlands from nearby lakes. Harold and Catherine followed Samuel, their squirrel guide, deeper into the forest on a barely-discernible pathway that practically vanished to the eyes of the adventurers—but still the little gray creature led on.

“Forward! Onward!” he squeaked. “We have not many furlongs to go before we can break for repast!” Harold wished he’d paid better attention to his father when he’d explained just how long a furlong was. It wasn’t a measurement he used fixing shoes. And “repast”?! What did that mean?! He wasn’t about to ask Catherine about it. He didn’t want to appear foolish.
 

Catherine, having toiled for years in a kitchen, knew that “repast” meant you got to  eat something. However, she didn’t know what a “furlong” was, either.  She thought it might have something to do with the length of a squirrel’s furry tail. “Fur” “long.” It made sense. But was it different for every squirrel? And what if a deer said it? Catherine had never met a talking deer, and wasn’t sure if they even existed.
 

“Harold,” she whispered, “are there any talking deer?”
 

“Well… I never met any, myself…”
 

“Maybe Samuel knows.” Come to think of it, she’d never met any talking squirrels, either, until yesterday.
 

"So... are you going to ask him?"
 

"Umm... Maybe later."
 

"And now," said Samuel, "we may take a break for a while and refresh ourselves."
 

The branches over their heads contained small, but sweet-smelling apples.
 

"And yonder is a spring of good, cold water," Samuel continued. "We should replenish our water supply."
 

Harold began to climb up into the branches to harvest some of the apples. He reached for one that looked good, but before his fingers could close around it, the apple flew out of the tree and into a denser, more shadowy portion of the forest.  He thought this was odd, but rather than dwelling on it, he reached for a different apple.  Again, just before he could lay his hand on it, that apple, too, went sailing off the branch with a little "whoosh!" and into the thick undergrowth. Harold wasn't sure, but he thought he'd seen something like a bird carry the apple away this time!
 

"Ho-ho!" shouted a little voice from the other side of the forest pathway. "Stop! Thou vile knave!"
 

Out of the shadows hopped a tiny frog with bright yellow patches, carrying an even tinier bow and arrow in his little froggy toes!  
 

"Those are the king's apples! And _I_ am the king's archer! Ma name is Poisson Erro! Ho-ho-ho!"

With lightning speed, Poisson loosed three more arrows, and picked three more apples off the tree. "Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"
 

"And I keep telling you," said Samuel, returning with a squirrel-sized armload of arrow-pierced apples, 

"That your name means 'Wrong Fish!'"
 

"Samuel, my friend!"
 

"Archer. The young lad in the tree is Harold.  Harold, this is Poisson Erro."

"You are amazing!" said Harold, "Can you teach me to shoot like that?"
 

"And the young lass carrying the waterskins is Catherine.  Catherine, Poisson Erro."
 

She curtsied as best as she could. "Nice to meet you, Fishie!"
 

"We are on business for His Majesty King Olam.  You're a long way from home, Archer.  What brings you back to this territory?"
 

"Ah, what else? Le guerre."
 

"The war?!" said Samuel, "There's always a battle someplace, of course, but--"
 

"No, no. This is THE War.  contre Le Dragon."
 

Harold was on the ground again. "Dragon?! Did you say 'dragon'?"
 

"Oui. Le Dragon."
 

"So, Ol' Red and Scaly is on the move again, eh?"
 

"Do not underestimate him.  It is true, he is injured badly, but he still commands a great and willing army."
 

Samuel replied, "Yes... well... Let's partake of some repast, shall we? We have apples, thanks to our froggy friend!"
 

"And I have some cheese that I brought with me!" said Catherine.
 

"And cold, fresh water," added Samuel.
 

"And I have--" began Harold.  "Well, _I_ have an appetite!"
 

"And," he thought to himself, "I now know what 'repast' means!"
 

"Ho-ho! AND you have a sense of humor!" said Poisson Erro.
 

The apples were as delicious as they had smelled. The cheese was a little hard, but its tanginess complemented the apples' sweetness.
 

"Would YOU like some cheese, Mr Erro?" asked Catherine.
 

"Merci, but no. Ah prefer french flies with my apples! Ho-ho-ho! You would like some, no?"
 

"That's right," Samuel kidded. "We would like some--NO!"
 

"Well then, more for me! Ho-ho!"
 

They all shared a good laugh.
 

In the quiet moment that followed, Catherine asked, "So, our enemy--He is REALLY a dragon?"
 

"Oui!  But he cannot fly.  One wing was broken long ago in a battle with King Olam.  He is lame in one leg, and he cannot breathe fire."
 

"Doesn't sound like much of a threat," said Harold.
 

"Ah! The power of Le Dragon is in deception.  He is very skilled at telling lies. Those that believe his lies follow him and do his bidding.  Instead of being children of the King, they become--something else."
 

Harold nodded thoughtfully, his mouth full of apple.  Suddenly, he noticed the apple didn't taste right!  

He spat it out. "Ugh! This apple tastes like--rotten eggs!"
 

"It's not the apples!" Catherine noted, sniffing. "It's the air! It stinks."
 

"Dragon's breath!" said Samuel, "Everybody off the road!"
 

Just as they had hidden themselves, two figures came walking down the path. One of them had a snout like a pig but floppy ears like a basset hound.  It was not cute.  She was saying, "...And THAT'S when I decided that NO ONE was gonna tell me how to live my life--not even that stuffy old King Olam! Ya know what I mean?"
 

Her companion on the road was something like an oversized monkey, but with the beak of a flamingo where the mouth should be, and one leg ending in a pink webbed foot! Catherine shuddered in the bushes.
 

"I totally understand that!" said the fla-monkey. "You KNOW King Olam just has all those rules--those so-called 'Qualities and Virtues,' so he can control us!  In fact, I heard that HE didn't even write them! They were just made up by some of his subjects to give themselves more authority!"
 

"That's right!" agreed Pig-Nose, "And that was SO long ago!  I mean, what did they know about life nowadays?  And besides, do we REALLY want to follow the rules of somebody who'd pick on a poor, defenseless, crippled dragon?"
 

"We'll show them!" said the flamonkey, or was it the monk-mingo? "Let's set fire to all the houses in the next village we come to!  They're probably all control freaks who follow King Olam, anyway--and want to prevent us from being our beautiful, wonderful true selves!"
 

Their laughter faded as they passed around the next bend in the road.
 

"Well," said Samuel, "Let's get going. We have plenty of ground to cover before nightfall."
 

The smell of sulfur grew stronger as the small band emerged into a clearing. A yellowish fog hung in the air, dimming the afternoon sun.  A make shift camp was being set up by hordes of nasty looking soldiers, some human, some animal, some horrible corruptions of the two. Limping slowly toward them up the road on three legs was a mountain of sharp red gravel, with a long snaky neck and head, dragging one useless scaly wing through the dust like the tattered crimson sail of a ship with a broken mast.
 

Samuel skittered up Catherine's skirt and plucked forth her paring knife. He hopped back to the ground and held it out like a sword.
 

"Your Diabolical Majesty! I bring you the two prisoners!"
 

"Prisoners?!" shouted Harold! "What are you doing, you shaggy gray lunatic?!" He raised his club to swing in attack, but it was snatched roughly from his hand by something like a muscular warthog standing on its hind legs!
 

The eyes of Catherine and Harold sought their bright yellow archer friend, but he seemed to have vanished from the path!
 

The serpentine head swung toward Samuel. "You have done well, Squirrel." He wheezed out a trailing cloud of sulphurous breath. "You are as wise and brave as I was led to believe. (cough) Here is your reward. An acorn from the western woods!"
 

The squirrel clutched the acorn to his heart. "King Olam never pays his loyal subjects so richly!"
Armored things bound Harold and Catherine and began shoving them toward the dragon's encampment. 

The sun was setting.  It was very dark.