A/N: sorry this chapter was so long in coming… more of an apology at the end…
Disclaimer: of course I don't own anything. Who do you take me for? A millionaire? I don't think so. Just read the story, will ya?
Continued from the LAST two episodes, this is Chicken-Kel and the Beanstalk, part THREE
(I swear I'll get a new fairytale up there sometime…just not now…)
Dom and Chicken-Kel bounced from cloud to cloud along the path. In the distance, they could just barely make out the faint outline of a grand castle far, far away.
They bounced along for hours and hours, chatting of innocent things…(insert random comments here) … until they finally reached the castle. (I seem to remember saying something similar just a little while ago). They knocked on the immense wooden door and it swung open to reveal (cue suspenseful music…) somebody's kneecap (duh duh duh!!!!). Dom and Chicken-Kel craned their necks up so they could see their face.
"Ooooooh! Visitors!" boomed Buri the Giantess. "Come on in, I was just making dinner. Just…don't make much noise. My husband is paranoid about strangers—he's afraid they'll steal his collection of shiny stuff," she snorted. "Like that would ever happen. It's a stupid collection anyway." Dom and Chicken-Kel nodded their agreement as the Giantess stirred something in her pot.
Dom and Chicken-Kel ducked down and started whispering to each other.
"Buri's acting like she doesn't know us," commented Dom softly.
"Yeah. I wonder why this change made her do that—all the other people who have been affected didn't lose their memories," Chicken-Kel muttered back.
"That is strange. … Hey—I wonder who the Giant is—if its anybody we know."
**************************************************************************************
Meanwhile…in one of the tower rooms…Raoul the Giant smiled happily, looking at his walls covered in shiny borrowed jousting trophies, and the sacks f prize money from tournaments. Raoul was a magpie at heart - he loved shiny things. He didn't care where they came from or how he got them, as long as he was always surrounded by things that glimmered, glittered, shined or were otherwise sparkly. Suddenly he sniffed and his eyes narrowed. Striding down the corridor, he bellowed:
"Fe, fi, fo … er … FUD!!
I smell icky, nasty…
BLOOD!!!!"
"Buri!!!!! Why are you cooking MEAT?!" he turned green as the smell hit him again.
The trio in the kitchen heard the ponderous, heavy footsteps as they pounded down the tower stairs. Buri turned to her two guests, "Quick, jump in the pantry. He never looks in there – all the shiny stuff was removed years ago." She grinned.
Dom and Chicken-Kel leapt into the dark, dusty closet. Dom perched on a shelf even with the huge keyhole and peered out. As he saw who tumbled down the last of the steps he chuckled quietly. "Hey Kel, get up here—you've got to see this!" Chicken-Kel hopped up and Dom leaned back so she could get a better view out of the keyhole. He had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from giving their position away with her laughter. Chicken-Kel couldn't help it, though. Raoul was shorter that Buri!!! 'It seems whoever is behind all of this has a sense of humor,' Kel mused.
(A/N: evil laughter from the direction of the author—*Erm waves her flippers around madly as she sits at the computer and cackles* bwahahahahaha … ahem … anyway, back in the Giant's castle … )
Buri was consoling her husband. "Don't worry, Raoul—I know you're a vegetarian. My meatballs aren't going to be anywhere near your spaghetti."
Raoul smiled in relief and sat down to eat. After sniggering a bit over Raoul's previously unknown eating habits…and then some more over his present height, they peered out of the keyhole at the giants. Seeing that this promised to be a long meal, Chicken-Kel and Dom relaxed against a colossal bag of flour and took a nap. Several hours later, the pantry door opened and the sudden increase of light and fresh air woke them up.
"I saved some food for you," Buri announced, leading them across the table to a plate the size of a bathtub. "I just hope it'll be enough." There before them was a single meatball that reached half way up Dom's leg, and a dozen strands of spaghetti, each five feet long. Dom and Chicken-Kel's eyes bugged out as they stared at the massive food.
"Wow," said Kel. "That is one BIG meatball."
They both tackled the meatball with the extremely large and heavy knife that Buri left them. Kel grumbled that she could have done it alone if she had only had fingers. Dom only laughed. Try as they might, though, they couldn't finish all of the food. Kel was only able to eat three pieces of pasta and almost a quarter of the meatball. Dom managed to finish the rest of the half of the meatball and almost four entire pieces of spaghetti.
(A/N: sorry if I didn't get the proportions right…I was having a hard time visualizing how big everything should be. The meatball was particularly troublesome. *glares at half eaten remnant of the giant meatball*)
Anyway…
So after they finished eating, since neither of the giants was in sight, they decided to go exploring. However, because both were only as tall as the owner of the castle's knees, they found climbing stairs to be extremely tiring.
Fortunately for them, by the time they made it up to Raoul's Room of Shiny Stuff, it was many hours past dinner and the little giant was soundly sleeping on sacks of silver. (A/N: siiiiiiiigh. Doncha just love alliteration?)
Dom and Kel were momentarily blinded by the sight of so many glittery things reflecting the torchlight. When they could see again, they began to search for the Goddess's hen-that-lays-the-strangely-yellow-and-shiny-eggs (which will be henceforth known as "that HEN" because the other way is just too long to write out every time). As they were hunting the elusive HEN, Kel just happened to glance at one of the many (shiny) trophies that adorned the walls .
"Aiiiiiiieeee!!" she shrieked. "That's mine!!!" Dom hurried over to her to try and keep her from waking the giant. She stopped screeching and pointed angrily at the offending trophy. "I won that last year. I haven't been able to find it for months—just figured I'd misplaced it or something. Now this is personal." Dom winced and hoped that Raoul would live through this so he could be turned back to…normal…
"Well there's no way I'm lugging that thing all over the place while we search, but as soon as we find that stupid hen, we're coming back here…and…and…and…liberating my trophy!!" Kel stalked off in a direction that hadn't been looked in before.
Sitting in a corner, tucked away behind various bags of gold was an unobtrusive little harp. Kel stumbled upon it purely by accident. She stood there in awe of the exquisite thing. Reaching out hesitantly, she plucked a string.
Rather than the liquid tone she'd been expecting to hear, the offended instrument let out a yell. "Oy! What do you think you're doing??"
Shocked by the outburst, Kel jumped back and gasped, "It speaks!"
(A/N: Its ALIVE!!!)
Even more affronted, the harp hmphed, "Yeah I can speak. I sing too" It launched into song:
There was a farmer had a dog E I E I OOOOOO ….
"Ummmm…" started Kel, "isn't the song supposed to go, 'and Bingo was its name-o'?"
If a harp could glare, this one would have done it. "I'll sing it any darn way I want to!!"
Dom ran up behind her. "what's going on here? Can you keep it down a little—we don't want Raoul to wake up until we find that idiotic bird…"
…but the harp had started to sing again, louder than ever—
Blaaaaaack socks! They never get dirty, the longer you wear them the blacker they get…
"Kel, we have to find a way to shut this thing up—it'll wake the giant," Dom muttered.
… sooooooometimes I think I should wash them but something inside me keeps saying not yet, not yet, not yet…
Kel thought for a moment, and started to grin. "Excuse me," she said to the harp politely, "would you like to learn a new song?"
The little instrument was overjoyed. "Yes, yes, yes!" it exclaimed.
In a semi-loud voice, Kel sang: noooo matter how young a prune may be, its always full of wrinkles…a baby prune is like his dad, but he's not wrinkled quite so bad!
The harp launched into song again, repeating what Kel had sung.
"Now," Kel said quietly, "the best part about this song is that it's a game."
"Oooooooh!" squealed the harp. "I like games!"
"You sing the song again and again, and each time you get quieter and quieter."
"Sounds like fun to meeee!" yelled the harp.
"Sing with me now," said Kel, almost whispering. Second verse, same as the first, a little bit softer and a little bit worse… nooooo matter how young a prune may be… Kel mouthed the words and the harp kept singing. It sang and sang, each time getting a little bit softer. By the time it reached it seventeenth verse, it was so quiet it was no longer audible.
"It'll keep singing that soundlessly forever," Kel smiled.
Dom jumped on her and gave her a huge hug. "Kel that was incredible!"
She grinned back, "Its amazing what having lots of little nieces and nephews can teach a person!"
… to be continued…. (God knows when, but it will be continued…I promise…)
A/N: sorry I took so long to get that part out…I was trying to see if I could finish it this chapter, but that obviously isn't happening…I'm going to try and wrap up all my stories over Christmas…since I haven't been able to update for SO long… The only reason I updated today was because I just re-did the entire thing for "I'm not fickle, am I?" because it had an author's note in it as an entire chapter, and that is no longer allowed (bad me)… so I realized I had this chapter partially typed and felt like I ought to put it up even if it ISN'T written all the way to the end yet… Anyway, I hope you liked the latest installment, and please do me a favor and REVIEW! (that's the best Christmas present I could get…so…)
Argh. Too Much Stress. Hope your lives have been easier…
Toodles!
~ Erm ~
PS: If you noticed, I stopped calling Kel "Chicken-Kel" about half way through this chapter…My reasoning was, if you didn't get it already that she's a chicken then you aren't going to, no matter how many times I refer to her as such. Also, it's a major pain in the butt to type over and over and over, if you catch my drift… If you have a problem with this, go ahead and tell me about it, but don't expect me to do anything to change it.
Happy Holidays!!!