Challenge #01912-E088: Just a Wee Dram Ye Ken

internutter (69)in #fiction • 6 years ago

It's St Patrick's Day, Irish Pub - Feegles. (AKA the Wee Free Men, of Sir Terry's Discworld.) -- Anon Guest

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men; -- William Allingham, The Fairies

Britain has an Agency for everything. National Health, Child Welfare, Disability Assistance, you name it, they have it. They're also the home headquarters of UNIT and WHO, the United Nations International Taskforce and the Weird Happenings Organisation, respectively. And a good thing, too, since the British Isles seem to be ground zero for all kinds of strangeness. Up to and including a slightly crazed individual in a blue box.

Today, it's an otherwise normal pub somewhere in Ireland, and a problem that can't be solved with Five Rounds Rapid. A high-class phantasmal incursion from another realm. The beings from a different reality were Nac Mac Feegle, or 'Feegles' for short. All because the British Isles were a nexus of psychic energies. And a very popular fantasy author was causing a mental focus on his works and all the strange creatures within them.

Or they had come here on their own, because figments like the Nac Mac Feegle just can't be stopped.

Some say that all we can imagine can be real somewhere else. Creatures like the Nac Mac Feegle are so real that imagining them is not strictly necessary. Some may even argue that the Nac Mac Feegle existed to that that author could imagine them.

And now they were in the King's Arms. Getting worse than completely shickered. The King's Arms, like many pubs all over Ireland, was ready for its greatest holiday, St Patrick's. The booziest day of the year. Especially for American tourists, who always miss the point.

The bar was as loaded as the clientele, who were singing seventeen different filthy songs at once.

"...nobody knew they were there..."

"...but the hedgehog..."

"...it's big and it's round and goes..."

"...which thank the gods I'm not sir..."

The Brigadier arrived, "Sitrep?"

"They're drunk, m'm. Estimated alcohol-blood content is ninety-to-ten."

"Don't you mean blood-alcohol content?"

"These are Nac Mac Feegle we're talking about, m'm."

"Ah," said the Brigadier. "Right. Yes. Since you're familiar, Blakethorpe, what's the best method for getting Feegles out of a bar?"

"Special Sheep's Liniment or Tiffany Aching, m'm."

"And failing that?"