Quill Solo

“I will seek these lost gems,” Quill said.

“Even if it’s just a children’s story?”

Quill mentally chewed on the sentence, tasting and digesting the words one by one. “Especially if it is just a tale. I will collect all the shades, all the variations I can locate.” He spun around quickly, his purple cape spiraling around his leather boots. “And I will put the into a compendium.”

“A collection for children?”

He stroked his blond beard, pulling out a deep silence in the conversation. To deepen it, he plodded quietly up and down the polished oak floor. “For all. Stories for children and adults. Stories for peasants and royalty. Stories for all.”

“All I have ever heard is an old fable about an old crazy queen lost her mind, then her crown, and finally her life. Her people dig a hole and threw her in it - crown and all. Scared, I heard, scared of some magic in the stones of the thing that drove her mad. Then a hundred years later, when some wizard from some silly distant unpronounceable place went to dig her up, the crown and the three stones were gone.”

Quill walked up close. “Three stones?”

“Yeah, three.”

Quill turned around again, whirling the cloak slightly wider this time. “And the colors? Does your story tell of the colors?”

“I barely remember. It was boring then and I barely remember.”

He walked out of the oak floored room, down the spiral staircase with the banister carved in the shape of a giant snake, and out the door with the huge gargoyle knocker on the front.

Percy stood on top of a bush that had been ornately carved into the shape of a elephant. The light of the half moon, refracting off the thin clouds, caused his white feathers to glow. “Anything useful?”

Quill shrugged and transformed from a purple cape wearing human into a green eyed house cat. “A corrupt version of the mad queen variant. I suspect that someone in this town will have a fuller version - perhaps with a twist we have not yet heard.” He leapt up onto the bush. “Shall we continue? I believe I saw more lights and perhaps a party of sorts down the street.”

Percy dug his claws into the bush. “As one night predator to another, after you, my feline friend.”

Quill flicked his fluffy tail. “I rather enjoy being a cat.”