Elara's Amusement

Elara watched from the shadowed alcove, a silken handkerchief daintily pressed to her lips, a barely suppressed giggle threatening to escape. From her vantage point, perched precariously on a stack of velvet cushions she’d inexplicably brought with her to this decidedly un-velvet-cushion-worthy location, the scene unfolding below was pure, unadulterated theatre. And she, Elara, was the esteemed playwright, director, and sole audience member.

Below, Barnaby and Silas, those two magnificent specimens of retired, albeit slightly rusty, warriorhood, were engaged in what could only be described as a highly sophisticated debate. Sophisticated, of course, in the way a badger debating the merits of a particularly shiny pebble with a bewildered squirrel is sophisticated. Their current argument, a tempest in a teapot brewed from stale ale and wounded pride, revolved around the precise moment Silas had, in Barnaby’s esteemed opinion, “flung that sheep with all the grace of a sack of particularly lumpy potatoes.”

“Fling it?” Silas sputtered, his face a shade of puce that rivaled the stain on his tunic. “I was *launching* it, you curmudgeonly old goat! A precision aerial maneuver intended to clear the path of that woolly menace!”