Four White Horses
The time was 5:47, and while Buttercup was contemplating suicide in the Royal Wedding Suite, Westley was lying on the bed of the same, watching Buttercup enter the room, and Inigo was paying Count Rugen back for the scars of twenty years ago, Fezzik was wandering the grounds.
Now that he no longer had the Holocaust Cloak, nor was he on fire, he found that people were paying less attention to him. All the running around and screaming (dreaming) may have had something to do with it.
Oh, yes. He was still rhyming (timing). He was also lost (frost).
Panic was all around, and Fezzik couldn't deny he was starting to feel a bit less than easy about the whole situation himself. His brain fidgeted and gave up the thinking to his legs and arms, which had worked many a time and oft in the past. And, as always, he trusted his nose.
Fezzik followed his nose, and it led him to a peculiar place: the stables. This calmed him at once. The stables smelled like stables, but that was the same smell that used to permeate the circus, where he'd lived for six months. And he remembered sitting in the circus stables, with the lions, who had enough survival instincts to stay on his good side, though like all cats they did so reluctantly, and with the horses, who saw in him a constant source of pets and sugar cubes, and the elephants, who were his special friends.
And it occurred to Fezzik, Hey, if the three of us get to meet again, we might want some horses (of courses). And then Fezzik did a little quick thinking, for him: but we want the pretty lady, too, so we will need one extra horse, just in case (saving face). So that makes four horses. I can do that. I can find those. (Follow your nose).
He crept into the stables, with far more quietude that one would expect from a man of his size.
He thought to himself, Huh, I'd have thought there would be more stable boys (toys).
And he was right. The place would have had more hands, except that each and every one of the stable boys had been struck by a peculiar and irresistible urge to get drunk earlier in the night than expected. They were off in Florin Square, and the only stablehand left was fast asleep in a pile of straw.
(This stablehand peeked out from under his eyelids at Fezzik, gentling and petting the four giant white horses, whispering to them in Turkish until they were his fast friends. Crowley smiled to himself, shifting in the straw. Well, theft was a sin, right there in the Big Ten. If the theft turned out to work out in the favor of the Other Side… oh well. Inspiring debauchery and thievery, no one could say it hadn't been a bad night. On the other hand, he had prevented an assassination plot. Shame Crowley didn't think of the long term – and he could always blame the miracles on Aziraphale.)
A/N: And here we come to the end of this little series of anecdotes. It's been a fun little crossover, just linking up two of my favorite books that I thought practically inhabit the same universe. Thank you very much for reading – and if you leave a review, you get to call in one minor Miracle of Miracle Max, free of charge (chocolate ganache not included).