Unidentified Funny Objects 2 Read Online Free PDF

feet in a panic, upsetting the table in her haste. “Don’t you know a harpy when you see one? They don’t  talk to communicate, they—”
    A stench of operatic grandeur engulfed the premises. The harpy flicked her tail feathers and fluttered to an unpolluted perch atop the thatched roof of the tavern. M’sieu Bertrand regarded the malodorous mound smothering on the abandoned chair, then turned to Naphtheena.
    “Was that a oui or a  non ?”
    She ate him.
    It was at that very moment that a man clad in the robe of a wandering wizard chanced upon the small tavern where M’sieu Bertrand had once been employed. He observed the azure dragon with deep disfavor. “Hail, vile beast!” he called out. “Be thou apprised that by devouring yon mortal you stand in violation of the Basilisk Accords, as laid down by the Council of Wizards, Sorcerers, and Demon-masters and ratified in committee by the Ancient Union of Wyverns, Salamanders, and Dracos.”
    “Apprise this,” said Naphtheena placidly, displaying one claw in a rude gesture. As she was a dragon of the four-clawed variety, the gesture in question did not look precisely the same as if it had been utilized by a human being, but the intent behind it got through. “I know that I violated  nothing and I defy you to cite chapter and verse showing otherwise. I am painfully aware of all laws, statutes, governances, and plain old down-home rules that refer to dragons. You stinkin’ wizards managed to kill off enough of my relatives with your miserable rules to make the rest of us pay attention.”
    The wizard got huffy. Folding plump arms across an equally plump chest, he beetled furiously at the dragon. “You make it sound as if the Basilisk Accords were laid down solely for the purpose of dragon-slaying.”
    “Weren’t they?” Naphtheena’s lipless mouth turned up at one corner. (You have not been truly mocked by a smile until you have been mocked by a dragon’s smile.)
    “No, they were  not .” The wizard snorted at the very idea. “They were compiled by the highest of the high mages, in cooperation with the most revered of the monstrous reptilian elders, as a viable alternative to engaging in a war between mortals and all drake-kind, a devastating, all-out, take-no-prisoners slaughter that—”
    “—that nobody really wanted and that nobody could ever hope to win, blah, blah, blah,” Naphtheena finished the wizard’s bombast for him, moving her claws so that it looked like she was manipulating a garrulous sock puppet. “I  know all that, Pookie.  I’m a revered elder; I was there. Which is something  you’d know if you hadn’t napped your way through whatever passes for a history class at whichever miserable excuse for a toad-kissing wizards’ academy you attended. Or don’t they make you bunch of wand-wagging whelps view Moorbeevil’s masterpiece,  The Accords Are Ratified , any more? That gorgeous blue dragon in the foreground? The one lolling on a pile of skulls? That’s me.”
    The wizard’s eyes narrowed. “I know the painting. My grandfather was one of the skulls in question.”
    “Isn’t it a treat to have a familial link to history?” Naphtheena said, lightly. “I know  I’ve got one. I have lost five uncles, a brace of aunts, one sister-in-law, Grandma Gridelin, and two score of my innocent hatchlings to your people for violating those accursed Accords.”
    The wizard looked down his nose at the dragon—no mean feat given the fact that she was twice his height and there were bulldogs with more protuberant snouts than his stubby sniffer. “They broke the rules and paid the price, which is as it should be.”
    “The rules are a big pile of nitpick stew with a side order of clause slaw!” the dragon roared. This time fire spouted from her nostrils, mouth,  and ears. The overwhelming power of her emotions turned her flanks from the delicate blue of a summer sky to the sinister, empurpled hue of thunderheads. The wizard