Vignette 16 - Three-On-Three-Headed
*And now, a tale of the Whitewing sisters...*
On one mild day, three Pegasus knights rode ahead of the squad of Heroes they were a part of to do some reconnaissance for the mission they were on. These Pegasus knights were the trio from Realm-I collectively known as the Whitewings, three sisters considered some of the best fliers of the kingdom of Macedon, acting as the chief vassals for one of its crown princesses, the 'Red Dragoon' herself, Minerva. The eldest of the trio was verdant-haired, mild-mannered, down-to-earth [so many hyphens!] Palla, who for much of their lives raised her sisters following their mother's passing; despite her maturity, she occasionally displayed a stubborn side. The middle of the sisters was Catria, she of the head of blue, cool and serious disposition, and acting as the general arbiter between her two sisters, oftentimes keeping to herself on the assumption that either sister would get the word in before she could. Lastly, there was the pink-headed youngest Whitewing, Est [Est (looking our way briefly): "Short for Esther!"], with many an adjective that fittingly described her: pure, innocent, cheerful, chatty, and straightforward. Presently, Est was doing a rather odd thing as she rode her Pegasus, its legs miming a trotting motion while she provided the sound with a pair of-
"Est, will you PLEASE give it a rest with the coconut halves already?!" Catria mildly shouted behind herself. "I'm starting to get a headache!"
Est, startled by her sister's words, nearly dropped the coconut halves in question before swiftly catching them. "*Whew!* Sorry, sis-I wanted to get some practice in for the stage play some of us are putting on in Castle Askr's central courtyard next week."
"I've been meaning to ask," Palla started to say, "but where did you get the coconut in the first place? I mean, those are tropical."
"What do you mean?" Est asked.
"We're in a temperate zone, so what's a coconut doing here in the first place?" Palla asked in turn.
"Simple," Est began to explain, "a bird-say, a swallow-flies south with the sun, seeking warmer climates."
"And how do the coconuts come in?" Catria posed.
"The birds wind up carrying seedlings through various means, and they eventually drop while in mid-flight," Est's expression grew more confident as she continued. "Which bypasses any questions one might have about weight ratios or air velocity, since they're not actually carrying a grown coconut!"
A beat passed between the sisters, before Est sheepishly confessed, "*Sigh* Norne brought back one for me from that beach trip some of the others took last month."
"On a different note, I've noticed you and Abel talking with a number of other Heroes lately," Palla said, shifting topics. Of the three, Est was the first to get married, having wed the Altean knight Abel following the end of the War of Shadows, with the two planning to open a shop after retiring from active duty.
"Oh yeah, we've been consulting some of the others for advice on the shop," Est elaborated. "They've all been pretty insightful, too! Merlinus helped us outline a business plan, Gray's working with us on dealing with traders and suppliers..."
Eventually, the three of them landed and walked their mounts through a small wooded area to a creek where they could get a drink of water. While the sisters took a drink from their own water skins, Catria noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a signpost a short distance away next to a path running through the trees.
"Not exactly inviting, is it?" she sardonically mused while pointing to the signpost. Palla and Est looked up and soon saw it as well, surprised by what it said. While the three wooden plaques on the left side all said "Camelot - 43 miles", the three on the right side all said "Certain Death - 1 mile". "And it gets only better from there," Catria further pointed out with a mild hint of sarcasm at another signpost a few feet further from the first one, whose three plaques all said the same thing: "Beware!". There were at least a few more like that with various warnings the more the sisters looked towards the path.
"Y-You think there's dirty work afoot?" Est asked, a worried tone in her voice.
Before either of her older sisters could answer, the two heard a couple of people walk by, and saw Dennis and his mother [from all the way back in Vignette 6] carrying sacks full of whatever it was they were collecting.
"Anarcho-syndicalism is a way of preserving freedom!" Dennis claimed.
"Oh, Dennis, forget about freedom," his mother chided. "Don't drop that mud..."
The sisters, doing a mild double-take from the two peasants to each other, shrugged. Suddenly, movement caught Palla's eye from the direction of the foreboding path, and she got up and grabbed her lance, her sisters doing the same as they followed her lead. The three of them moved towards the middle of the path, past the "Beware!" signpost. The trio flinched a little on seeing a trio of armor-and-tunic-clad skeletons pinned to a tree with an enormous jousting lance, the music in the background growing more suspenseful by the second, until finally...
"Hold iiitttt..."
"Hold iiitttt..."
"Hold iiitttt..."
"HALT! Who goes there?"
The sisters were startled as they came face-to-face with the one-er, ones-who said those words, their saying it simultaneously giving it an added echo. Palla, Catria, and Est's eyes widened on finding themselves confronting a giant of a man wearing chainmail and a white-and-goldenrod, diagonally-striped tunic. On the upper chest of the tunic, within one of the white stripes, were three black identical emblems shaped like a hand, with one open flat, one holding up two fingers, and one curled into a fist. A large brown belt was around the man's waist, and held in his left hand was a sword. What stood out to the sisters though was the fact that this man who towered over them greatly...had three heads. The head on the left was balding with unkempt curly red hair, the one in the middle had a black bowl-cut, and the one on the right was completely bald.
Regaining the courage to reply, Palla answered the three-headed warrior. "Um...just three girls taking a break from riding."
"Whaddya want?" the three heads asked.
The sisters looked to each other briefly, before Palla again answered the warrior. "N-nothing, really, as soon as we collect our mounts, we'll just be on our way, if you don't mind us passing through..."
"Don't bet on it!" the three-headed warrior said in turn.
Est attempted to show some courage in the face of this unexpected obstacle. "P-p-please let us pass! We're members of the Order of Heroes, we won't be stopped by the likes of you!"
The middle head with the bowl-cut took note of Est's words. "You're with the Order of Heroes?" he asked. Est nervously nodded 'yes'. "In that case, we've gotta take you in. There's a reward out for any Hero we manage to get."
"Oh, boy!" the left head with the curly red hair said eagerly. "And three means three times the reward! Let's bag 'em!"
"Hey!" the right head shouted. "I wanna bag 'em!"
"Knock it off, ya chowderhead!" the middle head scolded as he slapped the right head with their right hand. "I'm the brains of this outfit, if anyone's gonna bag 'em, it's me!"
"*Oof!* Oh, a wiseguy, eh?" the right head said before he held their left hand flat in front of the middle head's eyes. Said eyes then followed the hand as the right head moved it back-and-forth and up-and-down, before holding it up for a minute and then bringing it down to whack the middle head's nose with a *HONK!* "Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!"
"Hahahaha!" the left head laughed mirthfully.
"What're you laughin' at, porkypine?" the middle head said before using their right hand to tear some of the left head's hair off.
"Owowowowwowow!" the left head yelped in pain.
What followed in front of the dumbfounded and confused Whitewings' eyes were a series of further slaps, eye pokes, and head-poundings-a one-man show of utter slapstick. The trio looked to one another, contemplating their next move.
"What do we do?" Est asked in whisper, briefly eyeing the three-headed giant squabbling with himself (themselves?).
Catria, at that point, decided to take charge for once. "We're the Whitewings. We're the best to come out of Macedon," she stoically said. "There's only one thing we can do." She then motioned in the direction back the way they came. "Turn around, carefully walk away, mount our Pegasi, and fly the hell away from here." Palla and Est nodded in agreement, and soon the three of them carefully took a few steps back, turned around, walked in long strides away from the three-headed giant, and in no time at all, made it back to their Pegasi.
While this was happening, the three-headed giant finally stopped fooling around for the middle head to get some order back. "All right, all right, clam up, both o' youse!" He then looked at the right head. "You, get the sword out!"
"But they had lances," the left head said.
"Fine then," the middle head said before facing the left head. "You get the axe out!"
Right as the left head removed the axe from the loop on their belt, the right head noticed something. "Hey, they're gone!"
The middle head became grumpier than before on hearing and seeing this. "Now look what you did! Why I oughta..."
Meanwhile, the Whitewings were airborne and heading back towards the rest of their party, still trying to make sense of the strange encounter they all just came from.
"All in favor of not mentioning this to anyone at all?" Catria posed flatly.
"Aye", both Palla and Est immediately answered.
**Author's Note(s)**
The recipe for today's vignette:
-1 'Tale of Sir Robin'
-3 Whitewing sisters
-1 teaspoon of the comedy stylings of Misters Moses and Jerome Horwitz and Louis Feinberg
-1 joke from season four, episode eleven of The Big Bang Theory, "The Justice League Recombination"
Stir until even, pour into a pan, bake for 12-15 minutes, then remove and serve while hot.