“Wh-what the cluck just happened?” Krumbunculus cried, nearly hacking up a lung as he choaked on his own saliva, “W-where are we?”

Emerging from the canvas of the tent was a shadowy figure wearing a shimmering black mask with feathers glued over it.

“Hello there,” exhaled a breathy, mysterious voice.

“Um, yes, hi,” Krumbunculus nodded slowly, “If, uh, if you don’t mind me asking, what the cluck was all that about? Why’d you run into me?”

“I didn’t run into you. You ran into me.”

“…Okay, whatever. Why were you running, exactly?”

“Why were you pacing around, staring at the ground, ramming into people aimlessly, exactly?”

“I’m sensing some hostility here.”

“You’re sensing correctly.”

“Look, what do you want from me?”

“Literally nothing. Then again,” the masked figured looked off, far in the distance. They pulled out a shimmering silver spyglass, extended it, and peeked through it, looking up, up the cliffside towards Jeweler’s Way. “Ah, yes. It appears, for better or worse, that your running into me seems to have helped me escape the authorities.”

“The authorities?” Dr. Krumbunculus hacked again, though this time it was more from shock and less from saliva.

“Yes, the Royal Gourd. They’ve been after me for some time, specifically that abhorrent Dorma woman. If you could call her a woman. Should’ve known it was too far risky a day for another stint on Jeweler’s Way, but you know, we all make mistakes. Even,” the figure took a deep breath. Then, they threw a slip of paper into the air, quickly drew a long rapier from a sheath in their side that Dr. Krumbunculus had before the moment not noticed was there, and cut the slip of paper into a mess of confetti, “Even I.”

Dr. Krumbunculus blinked slowly. “Was, um, was that supposed to do something for me, or?”

“What do you mean? Did it not make sense? Did I mess it up?”

“…Did you mess what up?”

“Ugh. One second,” the figure whipped out another slip of paper, sheathed and then unsheathed their rapier and then cut up the slip whilst it was still in the air once again. “There we go.”

“Um. I’m still kind of missing what exactly is going on here,” Krumbunculus admitted, with a slight tinge of shame.

And so the figure ran thorugh the whole routine once more.

“Look, look, I’m obviously not picking up what you’re putting down, so can we skip the routine and just go with names? What’s your name?”

“Bah! I should’ve known! You’re trying to expose my secret identity to the world!” the figure drew their rapier for a (fourth?) time and pointed it at Dr. Krumbunculus’ neck, “Hood luck, chuppy.”

“Expose it? Cluck’s sake, I don’t even know who you are!”

The figure did a double take. “Y-you what now?”

“You heard me! I don’t know who you are!”

“You don’t recognize my mask?”

“No! Feathery cluck, I’ve never met a person who wore a mask in my whole clucking life!”

“Do you read the newsscrolls at all?!”

“Only absentmindedly…” Dr. Krumbunculus looked off to the side in shame.

“They call me…” the figure did what amounted to a ballet twirl, lifting what was apparently as much of a skirt as it was a cloak in the air and showing to Dr. Krumbunculus intricate fishnets, “Eherm. They call me The Purple Puma.”

“The Purple Puma?” Dr. Krumbunculus sneered.

“Yes, the Purple Puma,” replied the Purple Puma, obviously irked by Krumbunculus’ jovial tone.

“Really? The Purple Puma?”

“Yes! What’s so funny about the Purple Puma? I’m the Purple Puma, cockhamnit!”

“Yea, yea, big deal” interjected a raggedly old voice in the distance from an old hag bathing by the riverside with a tattered bucket, “And they called me the Randy Rhinocerous back in the day.”

Both Dr. Krumbunculus and the Purple Puma shuddered at the thought.

“I’ve got it tattooed on my crotch. Wanna see?”

They shuddered again.

“Eh. Kids these days are such prudes,” the lady tsked, standing up to reveal her large, bare bottom as she waddled off into the distance, her bucket clambering against her blotchy calves.

Dr. Krumbunculus remembered when he was that open and shameless about his own disgustingly elderly naked body. Now, with his young, youthful physique, he felt awfully ashamed, and he figured he would even if he was wearing a full-body tent. He painfully pined to walk around sans clothing, or at all, with such a flippant attitude, and Krumbunculus made a mental note that he’d have to be sure to do it more often once he’d removed this curse and restored his proper form.

“So, um,” Dr. Krumbunculus nodded slowly to the Purple Puma, shuddering still at his distrubingly youthful reaction of shock at the old lady’s putrid bodice, “You’re a lady. A lady whom calls herself the Purple Puma.”

“I don’t call myself the Purple Puma, you twat! Ugh! Men!” The Purple Puma kicked Dr. Krumbunculus in the shin with force that surely would’ve shattered it, had he been his hood old self. Instead, though, it just barely hurt.

“Ow,” Dr. Krumbunculus responded in a patronizing tone, suddenly recoiling at this slight bursh of youthful misogyny.

“You know, it wasn’t fair of me to kick you,” the Purple Puma sighed, artfully unfurling a silken blanket and kneeling upon it dejectedly, so as to rest without further sullying her apparently intricately designed cloakwear, “I’ve just had a shitty month. My wife cheated on me.”

“Woof,” Dr. Krumbunculus nodded slowly.

“Woof? What the cluck does that mean? Are you a clucking dog?”

“Um—”

“Sorry, sorry—deep breaths—one, two, three—deeeep breaths—one, two, three—ah, that’s better. Look, really, I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot of emotions that I don’t always have control over. Sometimes I lash out. You didn’t deserve that reaction. My themolester is twerking with me on this. I just…have trouble…controlling…my emotions…I need…to channel them…productively…”

“Hey,” Dr. Krumbunculus frowned as he rifled through a satchel that the Purple Puma had dropped earlier, “All of this stuff is stolen, isn’t it?”

“So what if it is? That’s why I’m famous! That’s why they call me…The Purple Puma!” she suddenly launched into the same rapier twirling, confetti-spraying routine she’d reenacted multiple times earlier.

“That doesn’t really explain the name.”

“Well,” she cleared her throat, “It was my old stage name.”

“Stage name? You were an actress?”

“In a way, yes,” the Purple Puma leapt to her feet, trampzed over to Dr. Krumbuncukus and snatched the satchel away from him, “But let’s not get into that. Now. Unwittingly or not—”

“Eh?”

“—Scratch that, definitely unwittingly—um, look, mister, uh, mister…”

“Krumbunculus,” Krumbunculus responded with a smile, “Dr. Krumbunculus.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“I don’t think that’s any less surprising than you being an actress.”

“An actress in a way, Krumbunculus, and actress in a way.”

“Well,” Dr. Krumbunculus continued, “Do you wanna do the whole ten minute acquaintance thing, or…?”

“No, no, oh cock no, that’ll just make me mad. More fuel for my themolester, I guess.”

“You talk about your themolester a lot,” Dr. Krumbunculus started, “I just can’t imagine paying somebody to talk to me!”

“It doesn’t matter!” the Purple Puma got up in his face. She smelled like cherries, “I steal enough clucking shit to pay for my themolesty sessions, many times over! And if I didn’t go to themolesty, I would be too depressed to do anything, much less go out and steal things, so why don’t you clucking zip it?”

“Fair enough,” Dr. Krumbunculus nodded slowly, swallowing air.

“I really don’t mean to be so intense. Hen, you probably kept me from getting arrested just then. I probably clucking owe you, to be honest.”

“You don’t say?”

“Hen yes I say! Don’t say I don’t say something right after I say it! What are you trying to do, grasslight me?”

“Why is everyone always calling me a grasslighter?”

“Maybe because you clucking grasslight people you clucking grasslighter!”

“No, I don’t! I don’t know why everyone tries to grasslight me into thinking I grasslight people, including even minor criminal acquaintances apparently, but I do not and would not be a grasslighter!”

“That’s just what a grasslighter would say!”

Suddenly, before Dr. Krumbunculus knew what was happening, the Purple Puma was half an inch from his face. He could smell her sweet cherry breath a little stronger this time. Their faces drew closer together. Closer. And, closer still.