King Russel and Queen Elia of an unnamed land set off to tour the entirety of their kingdom, a journey held every three years to remind lords and peasants alike whom they served. Both royals sat a horse rather than take a palanquin. Honestly, the king would have preferred sitting in some shade and reviewing reports, but the queen refused to dismount. He could not concede his discomfort. Eventually they made camp beside a watch tower. The royals and their personal guards claimed the tower itself. A wild cat wandered in amidst the tents and soon had half the guards swearing fealty to His Fluffiness.
Meanwhile, a green hued child in little more than rags slipped through the shadows towards the tower. Her dirt crusted fingers and toes wormed into cracks in the wall, hoisting her upwards. In seconds, she'd clambered through a narrow window. Below her lay the king and queen's sleeping forms, each on opposite sides of the chamber. She crept towards the king. Crouching beside him, she unwound the bandage about her right foot revealing a cracked and oozing ulcer. The urchin squeezed a drop of pus onto the king. She then crept once more into the shadows.
Russel awoke to the buzzing of manure fatted flies. Shia had already left their pallet to patch the leaks their cottage roof had sprung the night before. He hauled himself up, grabbed a chunk of bread just soft enough to chew, and hobbled to his flock. By noon, Shia arrived with victuals.
"The king comes today," she announced. He drank from the flask she handed him. "His men will take our sheep, feast upon them, and praise our generosity while we starve."
"Would you rather they kill us for denying them their due?"
"I would rather you had made them ill as I suggested. No knight would eat a diseased lamb. We would loose fewer to illness and only the poorest rather than the best of them."
"I will not sicken my flock.."
"An yet you continue to sicken me." She grabbed the flask from his hands and marched off.
"Some things never change," said a voice to Russel's right. Turning, he saw a man wrapped in white cloth and leaning against a boulder.
"Who are you?"
"I am the angel Q, and I have come to save your from your pitiful existence."
"How can I know you speak the truth? Where are your wings?" Russel readied his staff.
"Oh fine, if you need a demonstration..." Q pointed to the nearest sheep and pointed upwards. The animal floated off the ground, squirming and baaing in protest. Russel's eyes widened. He then dropped to his knees before the celestial being.
"What does the lord require of me?"
"Oh, only that you fix the timeline, restoring yourself to the throne so that I can get out of this hellhole of a pocket reality. Just follow me and this should be simple." Before Russel could respond, Q had wrapped an arm around him and sent them flying through the air. "Now, where were you born?"
"Um...my mother bore me near the watch tower." No sooner had he spoken than Q altered course. They landed before the structure in seconds.
"Now then," Q muttered as he circled the tower base, "if future me in the past does as present me intends to do in the future, then the key to saving past us from our present predicament should present itself here."
"I...am not a learned man."
"Of course not, you're mortal. Hello!" he crouched before a stone marked with a strange symbol. Russel leaned forward as the angel shimmied the block loose. "What did I say? Here, I'll read it out to you."
The jynxiot will come with the new king. Don't look at the cat. He's a trap.
"What means this? Timelines? Cat traps? What do I have to do with any of this?"
"Oh, you're more boring than Picard. It's simple. You were king. A jyn...a witch cast a spell on you that made a new world where you were a poor shepherd. In the old world, you ceased to have ever existed. I happened to be traveling through time when it happened and got stuck in this new, fake, tiny world. You know it will only exist as long as you're alive? A mere 48 years! Lucky for us, the witch will show up when this world's king does. We just have to force her to break the spell and we'll be free to go our separate ways."
Russel knew more questions would yield no clearer answers. Instead, he agreed to meet the angel at this same place when the king had made camp. That evening, he set off while strangers slaughtered his sheep. He girded himself against their wails with thoughts of kingship. Entering the camp proved surprisingly easy. Most of its inhabitants had gathered in a ring to marvel at some spectacle or another. Shouts of "His Fluffiness" punctuated the air. When he reached the tower base, Q appeared beside him. The silence stretched into minutes, then to an hour when Q pointed a finger and dashed into the darkness. Following behind, Russel soon made out a shape in the shadows hovering a foot off the ground. The shape resolved into a green-skinned girl.
Q hissed in a language entirely foreign to Russel. The child hissed and spat back. After a few more retorts, the angel took hold of Russel and pushed him beside the floating figure. She unbound her left foot midair, exposing a white-pussed sore on one toe. Before Russel could resist, she flicked the pus upon his face. The world swam before his eyes. When the dizziness passed, he found himself within the tower and dressed in a fine cotton nightshirt. Q crouched beside him while the green girl skittered up a wall and vanished.
"If I were you," God's messenger snorted, "I'd work on my marriage. Wives with jynxiot friends can really ruin your day. If you'll excuse me, I have a message to carve into some stone some couple decades ago."
