Matlock The Hare

A Rather Lid-Splashy time in Winchett Dale...Part the Second...

The griffles so far....

Late one even'up Matlock has been warned by the Gulyptolin of Thinking Lake that Winchett Dale is about to experience and peffa-ganticus and glopped-up flood. Ignored by the clottabussed creatures of the dale who simply want to niffferduggle in their beds, Matlock returns to the lake on his boat to notice a twizzly, eerie glow from the deep...

Crivens! What will happen next...?

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The more I peered over the side of my boat, good reader of these glopped and woeful griffles, the more I found myself getting all twizzly; my softulous shaking and a voice in my Sisteraculous griffling me to row straight back to the shore...

However, the nearer the glow got to the boat, the more I could begin to make out what it was...my briftest and most peffa-clottabussed friend Proftulous, surfacing from the lake, with a freggle of twisting, glowing quiller fish on his yechus wet head.

"Proftulous!" I griffled. "What in Oramus' name are you doing swimming around in the lake? You nearly gave me a glopped case of the whurffs!"

"Sorry, Matlock," he replied as the quiller fish swam away, leaving just his head and furry shoulders bobbing in the moonlight. "I just be looking for tweazles to make meself a slurpilicious treazle-pie."

"In the lake?" I griffled, trying not to get too russiculoffed. "Proftulous, this is a lake. Tweazles are, to everyone's knowledge, land-based creatures."

"What also make for the most briftest pie-filling," he vilishly agreed, nodding enthusiastically, and sending a snutch of murpworms shooting from his ganticus ears. "Let's not be forgetting that, Matlock."

I sighed. "But," I gently tried, "it seems to me that there's only the oidiest chance of all the oidiest chances in Oramus' great dales that you'll ever find a tweazle in the lake."

"Still a chance, though, isn't it?" he griffled, trying not to look too hurt. "And even you've always griffled that even the oidiest chances can sometimes be saztaculous."

"Hmm," I agreed. "But I'm not sure I was griffling about lake-dwelling tweazles at the time. Perhaps you should try looking for them in Wand Wood, like you normally do?"

But my briftest, most peffa-clottabussed friend shook his ganticus, yechus head. "Already tried that. Been lump-thrumping all over the woods all sun-turn, Matlock, with my stomach grimpling and getting far too empty. And there not be a slurpilicious tweazle in sight. `Tis like they all be gone, just upped and left the dale."

I pondered this for a while, as Proftulous gently pushed the boat back to shore, and we sat together for a while on the side of the lake. "Are you sure you haven't eaten them all?" I asked him.

He shifted slightly, taking slight offence. "I may be yechus and ganticus," he griffled, "but `tis simply because I be big-boned in me softulous, Matlock. 'Tisn't because I have been eating too many tweazle-pies, like you be trying to be implying. That be a glubbstooled thing to griffle to your briftest friend."

"I'm sorry, " I griffled.

"After all," he went on, "I's not be griffling to you how glopped-up your ears look, do I? Or how clottabussed you look in your shoes? Or how most of your wandy-vrooshers go all gobflopped? I don't ever be griffling anything of those things to you, do I?"

"Well," I griffled, "to be peffa-honest, you do, Proftulous, and most of the time."

"Do I?"

"Most each and every sun-turn, Proftulous."

"Then I be peffa-sorry about that, too," he griffled. "I tries not to be griffling those things from now on, and we can be all briftest friends again, then you can majick and vroosh me grillions of slurpilicious tweazles for me to be pastry-ing into ganticus pies again."

The wind had begun to pick up, and overhead thick dark clouds swept in to cover the moon. "I'll try," I promised Proftulous. "But right now, methinks we should take cover, for it looks like that there's a ganticus cracksplody storm on the way. If I'm right, then the tweazles have already sensed this and probably pid-padded to higher ground. It's what we've all got to do now, before the dale floods."

"Floods?" P:roftulous griffled, beginning to get twizzly. For, despite his size and yechus appearance, it doesn't take a lot to get him twizzly. He's always been that way, and is most probably the reason why other creatures in the dale sometimes like to play tricks on him and chickle when he gets in a peffa-twizzle. "You not be joking me to make me look all clottabussed, Matlock?"

"No," I assured him, as a ganticus garrumbloom echoed over the Winchett dale, and the first heavy sploinks of lid-splashy dropped all around, angrily drumming on the surface of the lake. "Head to Twinkling Lid Heights, peffa-vilish! I'll meet you there later!"

Another garrumbloom cracksploded above our heads, shaking the ground as the lake began to churn and turn, rapidly rising to become a russiculoffed swelling sea, the wind howling and peffablasting all around.

Watching proftulous lump-thump safely away, I took out my wand and pointed it high into the lid above, hoping with all my majickal-hare's heart that I could somehow conjure a lid-splashy vroosher that might end the peffa-ganticus storm and save my beloved dale...