C abbages …

»I am not a demon sheep, good lady. I am not a demon nore a sheep. I am a faun. Call me Mr Tumbleweed«, the black sheep who wants to be called a faun and Mr Tumbleweed, says.

»Why is she a good lady and I am only a female human?«

Kylie is not amused.

»She makes the world's finest apple-pies, you know.«

»So you are the one who is stealing my pies from the window sill where I put them for cooling. So you are a thieving, stealing demon sheep.«

»What is a faun?« asks the llama.

»I think, a faun is some kind of bird«, Gilbert, the butler says.

»Sorry, father«, says Claude Sideburns, the man who is not called Burnside and not a professor for archaelogy, »I think you are mistaking the word faun with the old Klingon word Pfau. A Pfau is one of those impressive and most colourful birds we call peafowl or peacock in our language. I might not be much of a scholar, but I think a faun - or Latin Faunus - is a half-human and half-goat mythological creature appearing in Greek and Roman mythology. Originally fauns of Roman mythology were ghosts - or genii - of rustic places, lesser versions of their chief, the god Faunus. Before their conflation with Greek satyrs, they and Faunus were represented as naked men. Later fauns became copies of the satyrs of Greek mythology, who themselves were originally shown as part-horse rather than part-deer.«

»No naked man here«, Hildegard the housekeeper says - in a somewhat disappointed way. »All I see is still a walking and talking demon sheep. And what did you do to the fabulous laurel hedge labyrinth? Look at the leaves. They are all withering. We could have taken entrance fees. We could of made millions of billions of money. Thank goodness, we still have this circle of stones to turn into a tourists' attraction.«

»You have nothing, old lady«, the black sheep says. »You have nothing without my magic. I made the labyrinth grow within only a few minutes. And within only a few minutes I made it disappear. And the stone circle is not yours to turn into an attraction. The stone circle is my way back home.«

The llama is frowning and growling at the black sheep.

»There is space for only one walking and talking animal in this story, you know.«

The sheep is rolling its' eyes.

»Then help me to get out of your story«, it says. »Please.«

A pan flute is echoing from a distance.

Bored of the life in the City of Gold
He'd left and let nobody know.
Gone were the towers he had known from a child,
Alone with the dream of a life
He travelled the wide open road,
The blinkered arcade,
In search of another to share in his life.
Nowhere.
Everyone looked so strange to him.

They've got no horns and they've got no tail
They don't even know of our existence.
Am I wrong to believe in a City of Gold
That lies in the deep distance, he cried

And wept as they led him away to a cage
Beast that can talk, read the sign.
The creatures they pushed and they prodded his frame
And questioned his story again.
But soon they grew bored of their prey
Beast that can talk?
More like a freak or publicity stunt.
Oh
No.

They've got no horns and they've got no tail
They don't even know of our existence.
Am I wrong to believe in a City of Gold
That lies in the deep distance, he cried

And broke down the door of the cage and marched on out.
He grabbed a creature by the scruff of his neck, pointing out:
There, beyond the bounds of you weak imagination
Lie the noble towers of my city, bright and gold.
Let me take you there, show you a living story
Let me show you others such as me
Why did I ever leave?

They've got no horns and they've got no tail
They don't even know of our existence
Am I wrong to believe in a City of Gold
That lies in the deep distance, he cried
And wept.

➰

Today is Wednesday, the 1st of November 2023.

Withering Labyrinths