Stories from the Kingdom of Klah

The Eyes of Unknown Intent

The Royal Master Artist amongst potential friends, potential enemies

Sometimes, when one wanders alone in a forest, and the light is dim and the shadows strange, and you begin to wonder if indeed a wrong turn was taken, or if perhaps that conga line of jiving bears would have been best joined rather than avoided - because safety in numbers might be a real thing - sometimes, at these moments The Eyes appear.

Not suddenly, like an exploding crab, or with warning like an undergrowth crashing, squealing Sealhog, but silent as a cloud of secrecy, mysterious as the cry of a distant beast in the night, and more ominous than a vanished sock from the wash.

Or are they ominous? Speculation has been rife recently, for no one really knows just what they are up to, for they do not speak or keep diaries, just hover, and stare, and blink, and thus they have earned the name The Eyes of Unknown Intent (TEOUIs).

Some groups such as the Over Protective Society have called for them to be arrested, or taxed, or made to wear dark glasses. Recently Klah's Royal Master Artist, fed up with such uninformed judgement, publicly declared "innocent until proven guilty!" and strode out into the forest alone to determine if the blinks are really some kind of morse code, and to discover just what motivates these mysterious beings. After spending a number of weeks with a colony of Eyes, she believes she may have begun to decode their language.

"So far I have translated this:

Y-O-U - H-A-V-E - V-E-R-Y - F-I-N-E - E-Y-E-S

How lovely. Or is it sleazy? Or just an unusual cultural greeting? Or ...are they about to steal my eyes? I'm very torn between staying to find out, and needing my eyes for my hobbies such as albino stick collecting and truck driving".

Nobody knows where The Eyes appear from, or how they come to be at all, but the Klah Gazette would like to note the disproportionately high number of blind corners in forests known to contain The Eyes Of Unknown Intent (TEOUIs).

While the Royal Master Artist is deliberating on making a retreat, hopeful Royal Master Artist candidates may wish to ready their CVs.

The (Disguised) House of Disguises

The (disguised) house of disguises, which sells disguises for all occasions. It caters for those needing to look rich, roguish or reptilian, handsome, hag-like or happy (very popular). Sometimes the disguises themselves are disguised, as in the case of the unfortunate Mr Leonard Perkins who went to a fancy dress ball disguised as a Dashing Duke, only to find himself suddenly dressed as a lemon. This incident is actually the origin of the saying "turned out to be a lemon".

Magnus Magic-Hands wins people’s prize for coolest burglar in Klah

Change is a natural part of human life. Many people change their homes, their jobs, their interests, and sometimes their underwear. A few change into butterflies, or frogs, or wisened old people. Not many are able to change their body parts at will however – in fact Magnus P. Smithson is certainly the only person any of us at the Klah Gazette has heard of, and we even asked the delivery boy, who seems to know many characters both unsavoury and sweet, which are apparently different things.

Ever since he found himself adrift in the strange current of life, Magnus P. Smithson, also known as Magnus Magic-Hands, has always been both the easiest, and most difficult person to buy gloves for. This is not because he has fingers like fat little sausages or has no interest in glove fashion trends, but because he was born with the strange ability to be able to change his hands as one may change their hairstyle, if one were in a magical wig factory of infinite proportions.

Rock of the Clockwork Eagle

Journeyed up a very secluded river today to the famous Rock of the Clockwork Eagle, which every 13 seconds is landed on by a Clockwork Eagle, who screams, sometimes devours a fish, or regurgitates one, and then flies off, only to be followed by another exactly 13 seconds later - for what purpose nobody knows, although people often take their clocks there to be checked for accuracy. Unfortunately this video is only 11 seconds long and I missed the eagles.

Moonshine Pool

Captain Lilith investigating Moonshine Pool today, where irrespective of the time of day or night or phase of the moon it is, you can look in and see the full moon in all its splendour. Visitors to the pool often bring cups on strings and lower them in for a strong mid-forest beverage, but be careful not to slip, for full immersion in the pool is said to turn a person into a pair of glass slippers, visible only in the moonlight, and therefore rated at High Risk of being accidentally broken.