The Bird-Talkers...

oming to terms with the interesting story of these lands, but forgetting almost everything by the morning due to the after effects of the elixirs and all-so-sweet meads. Oh the glass, she is a formidable foe. But at least she gave me the opportunity to create some friends in this interesting piece of earth, blood and history. Apparently I have not only landed on a different land mass, this landmass was nowhere. It was Neverland. It had never been found before and no one from the land had ever seen someone as, as they said, " outlandishly bizzare". The fact that I was wearing a T-shirt with faded writing was a reason for the guards to consider me at a first glance for a galere, which was apparently something like a snake-charmer. My charm worked rarely on people, let alone snakes, but I went with it as some of the things that my pocket computer or wristwatch did had to be explained as wizardry.

A loud, ogreish yell and a kick to the small wood-prompted mattress, was what woke me up. Their hospitality had ran out apparently as fast as the mead and firewater. Thus with my bags all packed up I had the opportunity to both enjoy a lovely sunrise and despise myself for my death-defying headache. Walking around with these two companions I was a bit too distracted to see a little gathering that had formed at the side of the small park-side road. A gathering is a bit generous, as it was comprised of two elderly men and a pigeon. Believe it or not, neither of the two men could out-talk their little feathered friend. And the voice that came out of the hollow-boned foul. He sounded like a radio-host with a talent for opera singing. It was like my headache was as stunned as me, because I stopped noticing it. My jaw dropped and my browes jumped, and yet it was true.

It probably was not the hardest thing to notice a flabbergasted stranger, especially when he is standing no more than 30 centimeters from your face. We started talking. After no more than 10 minutes I found out why the bird was the most talkative of the three. The things it had seen, the stories it told and that voice.... Ah! Much better than aspirin. And he told me all about the wide and flat Land of the Nether, its rulers and its dramas... But this story is for the next little chapter...