“You say what now? A chicken? In the flesh?”

Pamela and Green Garey stood outside the deflated balloon of the Ostrich Racetrack, speaking to a short, stocky woman wearing a tall, fuzzy bearskin hat. It bobbed up and down as she talked. Pamela had included the hat in her brief naked sketch of the woman.

“Yes misirrah, bright white and fluffy as a bleached whale.”

“I wasn’t aware bleached whales were fluffy.”

“Aye, Parrrmela, aye can vouch fer that. ‘ave seen marrgny a bleach-ed whale in me tayeme.”

“Thanks, Green Garey. Hopefully you seeing these fluffy white whales covered in bleach is not comparable to you seeing drunken gamblers named after colors with vanishing business cards.”

This was an obvious jab. It was well known among educated folk that the Caldonia skies were subject to whale bleached nine months of the year due to the winged suicidal coral reefs, which love killing themselves so much they developed over decades of evolution large sacks of bleach that when it just gets to be too much they can spew all over themselves. Sky whales would often get caught in the crossfire for some reason presently unknown to magic or science. One theory was that the whales that got bleached were just the daredevils, thrill seeking adrenaline junkies ready to chase death for their next fix. Another was that the whales were attempting to use the bleach as a sort of aphrodisiac. Regardless, there were a lot of bleached whales floating around the skies of Caldonia and many of its surrounding territories.

“Hello? Misirrah, hello?” nagged the half pint woman.

Pamela gasped, realizing she had almost lost her grip on her notebook and flashed her newest naked sketch at its subject. “Do excrete me. What were you saying?”

“I asked if you were talking about Bleu Louie!”

Pamela side eyed Green Garey. “Okay, how much did you pay this lady?”

“Paaaargmela that’s preparrrsterous! Aye would nevaaarrrrg! AYE swear on me grave!”

“Bleu Louie is all too real,” nodded the lady’s fuzzy hat, “suspected of rigging races, paying people off, sabotaging ostriches…he’s a real piece of twerk.”

“AHOY! AYE told ye, Parrmela, did AYE not? And yet ye did not believe me, yer own paaargtner!:”

“Then how have I not heard of him? This is far from my first day at the track!” Pamela looked over to the deflated ashes before them. “Or…what remains of the track.”

“The track will bounce back,” retorted the lady, her hat bobbing indignantly, “It always does.”

“Okay,” Pamela started on another naked sketch of the woman, this one emphasizing how her boobs shifted around when she was irritated and how it in turn afected the shape of her thighs and ass, “but might I remind you we’re not here to talk about Bleu Louie. We’re here to talk about skyrates.”

“Yaaarg! More likely witches, methinketh.”

“…skyrates and witches.”

“Well I haven’t seen much of any skyrates! Witches, however…there has been talk of witches.”

“AHOY! Once arrgain! AYE know not why ye have doubted me, Parrrmela!”

Pamela sighed, rolled her eyes, and sketched the woman’s obviously hard nipples.

“I’ve seen them myself. A ragtag, misshappen bunch, all in black cloaks. Not at all like the sheer, sensual cloaks of the witches at the local coven. These cloaks are…pure evil.”

KKKSKCKCKKK

A large bolt of lightning crackled from a storm cloud a couple shmeters behind the short woman’s hat.

“Sorry, did you hear me over that? I said these cloaks are…pure evil.”

KKKSKCKCKCKCKCKCKKSSSSSSKKKKKKK

Another large bolt of lightning struck the same spot. As the saying went, lightning always struck twice.

Pamela was losing focus in the conversation, so she began a third explicit sketch, this time imagining with detail the short woman’s body hair and how it compared to that of her tall fuzzy hat.

“Yes, pure evil were these…cloaks.”

She held out for a third lightning strike to no avail. That would have just been superfluous.

“How can a cloak be pure evil? Don’t answer that Green Garey I want to hear what she has to say.”

“Well they’re just ugly first of all. Like black bedsheets with crusty stains all over them.”

“You paint a horrifying picture. Continue.”

“Second of all, I’m pretty sure some of them weren’t entirely human. One looked like some sort of disturbing hulking mass, yet had the voice of a vaudeville chipmunk.”

“That sounds dreadful.”

“Indeed. Another lumbered around with thick, mismatched legs. And the woman in charge of them…at least, I think it was a woman…a- humongous-Adams-fir-of-a-woman…was most terrifying at all.”

Pamela felt the hair on the back of her neck palpitate. To distract herself, she began to sketch the woman naked once again, this time focusing on her blemishes and wrinkles and how Pamela imagined those carried over to the covered parts of her flesh.

“What did she do?”

“It was strange. I heard her voice…if it could be called a voice as much as it could be called an earthquake…I heard her quake voice resonate violently through the block about revenge, over and over like some ogery record skipping on a warped section.”

“We’re not on stage, woman, quit the embellishment. What were they doing? Where did they go?”

“I honestly can’t say for certain what it was they were doing. They seemed to be some sort of organization henbent on some nebulously defined concept of vengeance and spite. As for where they went, they picked up some of the nearest rent-a-brooms and headed northsouthward.”

Pamela grumbled under her breath about cock hamned rent-a-brooms. Ever since witches worldwide had banded together and established an LLC under the name Witches Worldwide they had been littering their poorly made, perpetually half-magically charged rent-a-brooms all over the lands. Witches would come in and dump cratefulls of the things on the side of the road, and anyone who rented the brooms would discard them anywhere, including in the middle roads and on top of roofs. Only a scarce few had at this point not been subjected to the terrors of a littered rent-a-broom clogging their gutters. It only got worse when competiting witch companies tried to outdo eachother with bigger, shinier brooms. There was even a group of warlocks that tried their own transportation offering, rent-a-pogo-sticks, but they never really took off.

“Sorry, where did you say they went on the rent-a-brooms?”

“Northsouthward. Same direction the chicken went.”

“The chicken?” Pamela puzzled, then flipped back to her first naked sketch of the woman before her. “Ah yes I see, the giant chicken.”

“Parrrrmela,” Green Garey turned to his partner with obvious excitement, “AYE’m starrrting to think AYE mAYEght be rAYEght about the witches yet! They’re on brooms, wearing cloaks…must be some crazy offshoot that ‘as been causin’ all this trouble. WhAYE, AYE wouldn’t be surprised ‘f they and yer skyrates is one ’n the same!”

“These are rent-a-brooms though Green Garey.”

Green Garey did his best to mimick what Pamela had just said in a high pitched whine.

“Green Garey if you do that again I’ll slap you. Just a warning.”