Ah, Wales... It's an apple for the Roman Union's picking. And they WILL pick it. All the poor Welsh have got to do is wait...
Uphill in a Welsh wood, a cottage sits alone. Near it, a brook empties into a river. There, trout swim.
In the cottage, a piece of bread sits. A dollop of cheese sits atop it. Both have been toasted. It's a Welsh rabbit...or so the Welsh seem to think.
At the table that the plate rests on, a boy sits. With a knife and fork, he digs into the rabbit...uh, toast. He spears each bite with the fork, and man-handles each bite with his mouth, as he chucks it down.
Welsh whiskey is a big thing, here. Merin's got some of it, himself. He...thinks he might've gone and had too much of it last night...
Last night near Cardiff, he met a girl. She got him drunk enough to where she could deviously slip out the back way, and leave him to flag a centurion for his way back home. Or rather, Merin THINKS it was a centurion. It was probably just a Welsh sheriff...
He leaves the cottage. He surrounds himself with the wood. He leans against a tree. Out here, the air smells fresh...and wild. It won't for much longer.
Merin closes his eyes, undoes the front of his kilt, and lets it all loose; the remnants of last night's booze. His liver outdid itself, as it often does. His bladder's about to pop. Thankfully, though, this memory will soon be past him...and he can resume the rest of his day as if he didn't have a bladder to manage.
His urine slows to a trickle. About now, he gets the feeling he's being watched. Three seconds after the last of the trickle ceases, he cracks his eyes.
It's a bunch of she-bear cubs. They've seen him piss. They seem curious. Merin would hate to think one of them would like to give him a BJ...especially since the girl from last night must've forgot to do so after getting him drunk on all that Welsh kerosene.
In a flash, Merin re-does the front of his kilt. Facing the bear cubs, he creeps back to the front door of his cottage. Once there, he turns around, lets himself in, and slams the door.
Inside, he leans against the inside of the door, and rests. As much as he often loves this cottage life...it can be a bit too intense for him, at times.
Confused, the she-bears move on. They make noise as they go along. But then, of course, that's a bear cub for you.
Vicky Robinson, from the Parent Trap, would know a lot about that...whether she wants to or not. Shame; all Meredith Blake got was a turaco pecking at her chest when she woke up on a floating mattress in the middle of a lake...
Turacos don't migrate to Wales...unlike the swallow. And they CERTAINLY aren't laden with coconuts, wherever they do migrate...if they migrate... Although, they do stand a bigger chance of pulling that off. Turacos are bigger than swallows, after all...the African AND the European...
In a cliff, there's a cave. Don't let its primitive looks fool you. It's a lair of sorts.
The she-bear cubs return. They lumber down into the cave...and slide down several floors, on which the incline makes it practical for them to do so.
Inside, a witch is hard at work. She's a Goth amazon of sorts. One of her wands is a sword. Another is a spear.
A bearskin rug covers her floor. She's magically enlarged it to cover the entire floor of the main room of her lair.
The bear cubs return. Ursula feeds her daughters, by presenting them with cauldrons full of cub chow. She's put some magical herbs in it. These herbs do miracle works, once they enter the cubs' systems...
She crouches down, and does some telepathic work on her loved ones. She reviews everywhere they've been today...
And then, she sees Merin. She sees him pissing, while leaning against a tree.
With her eyes still closed, she grins, and laughs. "And I thought that poor boy never left his house."
Ursula waits for nightfall. In a flash, the teleports to the summit of the rock that her lair is in. She raises her wand, and casts sparks into the sky. A ball of them ascend high into the sky, and explode, sending fragments of themselves everywhere.
From a deeper and bigger cave, a thunderous noise rumbles. Something's coming. And it's coming for poor Merin...
Tonight in his cottage, Merin tries to sleep. Outside, he hears the river run. It sounds nice. Many nights, it helps him sleep. Alas, there must've been more in that Welsh rabbit than just bread and cheese. Whatever it is, it must be keeping him up. HE sure isn't...
In the night, he gets a hunch. Mindlessly, he acts on it.
In little else but a kilt, he creeps out his back door. He creeps down the steps...and out into the wild wood.
Something's out there. He can sense it. It's calling him. He MUST answer the call.
He's got no idea how far out he is now. All around, trees and shadow surround him. He's not even sure if he remembers the way home. He can barely hear the river. This is bad...
A great rock lies before him. Funny; as uphill as this spot is, it seems quite a distance away from the caves...
And, of course, that's when Merin discovers the rock's little secret. It sneezes, lumbers to a stand, faces him, and bares its fangs.
It's Rahne. She's a maledictus; a witch with a blood malediction. Once, she was a witch. Uncontrollably, she became a bear every now and then. There'd come a day, when he was young, when she'd turn into a bear and never go back to being a woman. That day has passed. And the bear has claimed much of her, now...including most of her soul...as little of that as she had as a woman.
Crap; Merin's got to do combat with a bear. And he left his staff back at the cottage.