"Bet you didn't know badgers were arboreal!" Werebrock crowed. He was up in a hemlock tree, spraying soapy water on the aul-shaped needles. If he didn't, these tea-leaved shade trees would be adelidged out of their lives.

"Wane you fal, aim gonnna laif." Bjorn Bloodhand wasn't serious, and that's not the way he always talks. (And that's not what he's usually called, but in private he recently anti-Christened himself that.) Growing up around a hilly Southern drawl but not hearing it at home gives you the option of speaking two ways. Bidialectual, you might say.

Bjorn Bloodhand was promptly doused with the solution. "Hey!" He picked up and opened a large umbrella. "Say, what are you gonna do if you get the desparate diahreas when you're all the way up there?" "I'm gonna say "Hey, Jeffrey, come 'ere! I've got something to tell you.'" Bjorn proceeded to tell him how 'orribly he would die should his head be showered with feces. Considering they had recently schemed to kill and cook an annoying visitor's cat and feed it to him, perhaps it didn't seem far-fetched. But it was, and when Werebrock came down, they merrily went to the neighbors field to hunt grasshoppers, to put in the evening's Hoppin' Juan (blackeyed peas and brown rice with peppers). The heavilly mulched field was a dissapointment. O well.