The moon was high and cold in the deep darkness of the FOREST as Hem Slonnigum SENIOR THE FIRST THE ORIGINAL marched through the underbrush with Farmer Gack and a coupla lanterns lightin’ their way. They had NO CLUE what they were doin’ out here but their motive ought to become clear-like soon enough once a bit o’ dialogue figures it out for us.

“So what the flazzin’ fort are we doin’ out here, eh Hem?” Farmer Gack rumbled from behind the leader who was indeed Hem. Gack grumbled and rumbled like the old, aged farmer that he was. It was fine.

“Aye, Gack, I owe it to ya to admit that I ain’t havin’ the foggiest sorta notion what we’re aimin’ at,” admitted Hem with a yonder and a gonder, “but strange things happen out here in the Fleep Fleep forest, or so my dreams have been tellin’ me of late.” He pushed back a particularly nasty bramble and let it slam back into Gack, who cursed.

“Dreams, eh?” spit Gack. “Got yourself some dreams then?”

“Aye.”

“Well I myself have got some dreams.”

“Aye? That a fact, ol’ cohort?”

“Now I honor that I don’t have the foggiest sorta idea what that word means but I’m takin’ it as a compliment o’ sorts,” Gack said in an unnecessary flourish. “My dreams aren’t takin’ me deep into some sorta black forest without cause, however.”

“Aye and that’s just fine for you, Gack old boy,” Hem answered. “We’ll have the right of it soon enough.”

“The right o’ WHAT, laddie?!” Gack was a man. A man sometimes lacks patience. GACK HAD LOST HIS PATIENCE. “You draggin’ me out here in the middle of the twilit darkness jabberin’ like some sorta JIBBERJAB—“

“NOW NOW, GACK, you forget yourself!” Hem said with the fire of a fiery flamin’ fire in the midst of its fires. “Them Jibberjabs we think we seen the last of ‘em, but I’m here to tell ya we haven’t.”

“Are you tellin’ me…” Gack began.

“Aye I’m tellin’ you more than what I’m tellin’,” said Hem in his Hem way. “When I was in the Island Realm we saw but naught but rumors of naught but what are rumors of what many claim to be naught but rumors spoken of like rumors in the night and the Madman’s Mountains are home to what we claim to be naught but rumors of what rumors speak—“

“Laddie if you don’t get yer mouth fixed I’ll be fixin’ it for ya,” warned Gack with the rage of a man, “fixin’ right up with this here walkin’ stick blastin’ itself in your face without a thought.”

“Aye Blom,” answered Hem.

“Blom ain’t here, laddie, this is ol’ Gacky you’re speakin’ to, ol’ Gacky you shoved outta bed as the Catcher’s Moon shone down, ol’ Gacky you marched out into the cold Wildness without so much as a reason.”

“You’re right about that, Blom is back at the inn. Had meself a slip o’ the mind, I did.”

Hem and Gack were silent because they were losing their minds in the darkness of the forest. Mayhap that was the cause: they had entered some sorta whirlin’ vortex that scrambled their senses into dust.