The Queasy
By: Timothy Law

This is a very weird tail, I mean tale. It is about a creature called a Queasy. This Queasy had long brown ears and a pair of wings. It also had a fiery temper. This was literally speaking. The Queasy would often lose its temper with local farmers in the area it lived. These farmers didn't feed it and so it burnt their crops. It would then leave eatable foods for the families to live on while the new crops grew. It is here that our story begins
We find ourselves in a town where the people have all had enough of burnt crops and fruit which makes your stomach feel all awful (hence the word queasy). It is late at night in a room of a draughty castle. The curtains try to absorb the echo.
"Hey!" (hay ai ai) the king shouts. "Silence people, silence I say." (I say ay ay).
"We have gathered here for what?" the king asks.
One village peasant stands and shouts.
"We are here, your 'ighness to discuss that confounded nuisance of a thing which burns ya crop if ya don't feed it."
"What menace is this that you speak of?" The king asks.
"It's a Queasy!" The whole angry mob shouts in unison.
The walls cannot take it and the name of the menace bounces off of the stone surfaces for hours after. This is much to the annoyance of everybody at the meeting. Thus, the meeting is closed early, and the king then retires to his study to ponder upon this unusual problem. Just as the king sits in a plush chair at a regal desk a little creature flies in through one of the castle's many tiny windows.
This creature has long brown ears and a pair of golden wings (if it didn't it couldn't fly through the window).
"You look very grumpy," the thing says.
"Who said that?" the king asks looking wildly around the room.
"Don't worry it was only me, the Queasy." the Queasy says.
"You're awfully small." the king whispers as his eyes go up and down the Queasy's body.
"I can grow bigger," the Queasy then mumbles with its thumb in its mouth. It then begins to blow, and its wings began to grow. They grow bigger and wider and so does the creature's small body. It isn't as if the Queasy is becoming fatter like a balloon but instead the creature looks like it is getting older and growing more muscular.
"If I came in as my true age I'd have scared everyone half to death!" the Queasy booms in the direction of the figure that is now shivering under the four poster bed.
"W W W would yyyyou mind just growing a little bit smaller, please?" the voice of the king whimpers from under the bed.
"I am smaller, my feet always stay that big," the Queasy laughs, its voice is a smaller boom then before.
The king is happier now that the huge monster is again at its entrance size. The king believes that he needs to capture this menace. So, the king summons his most loyal guards and the king's guards come running at his summons. "Catch that creature!" the king orders, but the guards cannot see the Queasy for it has turned invisible.
The guards now believed that their king was mad. None of them are willing to say anything though. All that the guards can do is just feel around in front of them for a small monster. The guards are sent away though as soon as a small body is felt leaving through the window. The King was very disturbed by the visit of the strange creature and what it was doing to his kingdom and people. That very night the king had a dream. It was filled with Queasy-shaped creatures of all forms, colors, and sizes. They pulled faces at him, and he had visions of his kingdom being burned to the ground as so many of the little monsters watched on, laughing. It was a very weird dream because the Queasy-shaped creatures were not breathing fire but squirting water and the water was what burst into flames. The king awoke from this dream with a jolt. The smell of smoke had reached his nose. The Queasy was back and was burning down the kingdom. The king rushed down from his sleeping turret, a hansom sight in royal red pajamas. As soon as he reached the last step he saw it.
A huge Queasy that was stomping in the kitchen and the kitchen area was going up in smoke.
"Right, that's the last straw!" the King shouted, and he ran towards the huge Queasy (in royal red pajamas, the king that is not the Queasy as the pajamas would not have fit the creature). The Queasy took one quick look at the ferocious looking thing running towards it and then opened its wings and flew off, shrinking as it went. By the time it reached the window it was the size of a magician's white rabbit (starved). Before it left the king it extinguished the last flame with a small jet of saliva, then it was gone. Not flew off gone, but more like shrank to the size of a mosquito gone.
"Good riddance to you, you rascal!" the king shouted, most pleased with himself.
"Why are you so happy, sire?" the Head Chef asked.
"I scared off a fire bug," announced the king indignantly. "I have the right to be happy."
Sometimes the king was furious by all the stupid questions that his Head Chef would ask.
"No sir, I still here," the Head Chef answered.
"What do you mean?" asked the king, concerned. "Are you saying that it was you who started the fire?"
The king went red with anger.
"Yes sir," the Head Chef said. "So, you no scare off firebug, you scare off water bug instead."
"I don't understand?" the king stated looking absolutely bemusedly confused.
"Well..." Emanuel (the Head Chef) began. "The chicken he go all sloppy and floppy like eel, so I go and give him a fix. Next thing you know the oven he go VA-BOOM and then there be the fire all around and then..."
"Yeesh," the king was really enthralled by this story.
"Then your highness, the monster it come in and it continue to grow bigger and bigger. He gets as big as the room and then he goes to the moat, he drinks with a huge tongue. Then he spray with the waters of the moat, and it goes all over the fire and fire it goes all bye bye away."
The king was very sorry for he knew he had taken the Queasy the wrong way. That night the king sat up late hoping that the Queasy would visit again. The Queasy didn't visit that night or the night after that or the week after that. The town's people thought that the king had scared the Queasy away and because of that they celebrated. It was in the absence of the Queasy that the Cockatrice flourished (a cockatrice turns things to stone, it is also the most favored food of the Queasy). With the Cockatrice having over run the crops they turned many of the peasantry to stone. Because of this the people of the kingdom turned to the king once again for help.
"We must do something about this menace!" some of the citizenry urged, as they announced this they began pointing to a Cockatrice which had climbed in through the window. The Cockatrice flicked its forked tongue then looked up at the speaker. The speaker spoke no more.
"I see what you mean," the king replied, shocked.
"What will you do about it?" the people wanted to know.
"I will try and get the Queasy to return to the kingdom and rid us of the Cockatrice."
It was then that the Queasy suddenly appeared from under the king's chair. It had been hiding under there all along, listening and it had chosen that very moment to reappear.
"Your highness," the Queasy said in fluent English. "I wish to make a deal with you."
"Right now, I would willingly agree to anything you suggested," the king says eagerly.
"In exchange for me ridding this land of the fowl beast, the Cockatrice, you must make me next in the line for the kingdom."
The king was absolutely stunned. How could he possibly make a magical creature next in line to rule his kingdom? Of course, if he didn't agree to the Queasy's proposal then the Cockatrice would end up turning every single citizen to stone and there wouldn't be a kingdom. The king didn't know what to do.
"I can change stone back to flesh," the Queasy added, reading the king's mind. "Unless it is a garden gnome or statue that has always been stone and therefore always will be stone."
"O.K. you have yourself a deal," the king said.
To the shock of the entire kingdom the contract was officially drawn up and then signed by the king (X) and the Queasy (giant paw print) to finalize the agreement.
But the king out lived the Queasy by only one day (it was the shock of him losing such a wonderful friend that killed the king) and so the Queasy didn't rule the country but the Queasy did marry the king's daughter and the son of the Queasy ruled after the king died and the kingdom had no sightings of the dreaded Cockatrice for forever and a day. There was plenty of rain in the rainy seasons and plenty of sun in the sunny seasons and everything flourished with Queasy kings and queens for generation after generation for the rest of time (until eventually the people voted for the kingdom to become a republic instead at which point a Queasy ran for President and was successful. It was re-elected and after it had served two terms it wrote a story about its experiences which became a best seller. After this it married its high school sweetheart and they both lived together a very long and joyous life together until their final days.
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