Bazaar Betrayment

2000 Mythsteries and Other Pithy Shorts #19
        
        Once upon a long time ago, a group of crones appointed by a well-wishing king gathered fortnightly to share story tales and merriment. Timid souls, without sharp spines, they gave willingly to youngs and olds and left their fire open to those of all missions.

And it came to pass, a strangeress from a foreign kingdom journeyed to those crones for advice about upgrading her wares to sell and begged their word-of-mouth helping. She ingratiated before departing for her kingdom and nothing more was heard for some long span of time and some found this to be bizarre.

Lo! An agoura of the weightiest size was occurring near the ides of September and was rightly called Festember. Great excitement preceded the affair and the crones were lit by enthusiasm. Invitings smoked from mountaintops well behead of this autumnal bazaar.

The crones spent many hours laboring at scalding cauldrons to prepare feastings for the fair comers. Games were planned with prizes to be awarded the winners. Crone-sent couriers rode deep into the kingdom to give word of the event.

At last the big day dawned as a downer for the crones who arrived with the sun at the bazaar grounds and were turned away by soldiers, even some they knew, but some not. Keening with loss and fury the crones crouched near the grounds and pleaded with passersby to share the new tale with them but found only firm rebukes by those under perukes.

Puzzling, the crones pieced together in one moon that the stealthy strangeress who came for advice was up to usury and had penetrated the castle by deceiting. One recalled how the strangeress pretenced to be young and well-known in the other kingdom but the sharp-eyed crone saw witch doctor sewings befront of the foreigner's ears which had snugged her faceskin and shriveled her heart. Now they knew the bizarreness of the whole fable was that they had been fleeced by a greedy clone who legended herself in her own mind.
   
For some time beyond the bizarre bazaar the crones, weary of dishonest doings rested and pondered the weirdness of socials

It came to pass, the wise crones couraged up and realized they didn't need a king who was rolled over for strangeresses and once again went to their storytale-ing.
    
And that's how it was when wise crones didn't play with clones because the crones would get dirty and the clones were already.