Who is in the Garden???

As Ffion watched the strange creature in her special garden (well, it wasn't really 'just hers' - but she was in it the most so in her mind it was 'hers'), she knew she needed to go home and tell her father so he could do something about it.  "After all," she thought, "it wasn't like she invited the creature in the first place."  Seeing her father sitting in his chair, she started to tell him what was happening "Father, father, there is..." but before she could finish, Hunter, the Shadows' King, stopped her. 

"Ffion, that is no way for a faery princess to enter a room." ​

​"But Father, there is a stranger in the garden!" Ffion wailed.  "It came out of the water and is walking over my flowers!"

​"Are you sure it isn't just Scarlet gathering moonflowers for the Nytemares?" he asked.  "Or maybe even Sneefle as he showed up to deliver a message from the Dowager and might be picking a few flowers?"

"I know what Scarlet and Sneefle look like father!" Ffion said as she stamped her foot.  "I have never seen this stranger before."

Now the Shadows' King knew that it couldn't be Druzzy, the Troll King, or Hir'aeth, the Gooblin King, or even one of their minions as Meen had just updated him of their whereabouts after telling him what happened at the weekly COGS meeting.

​"Could it be the Baron and Dowager?" he wondered, as his observers lost them after they entered the forest of the Sleeping Sisters.  He thought that only for a second as he knew that they had been walking when they entered the forest and it would be very difficult for them to have reached the garden from where they were last seen.  "Besides," he thought, "they are probably still wandering in the forest trying to find the Sisters".

He also knew that Hewy, Efem, Parsley and Cornelia were busy helping Hungry, the young Wish Dragon, to learn his lessons.   "So it wouldn't be one of them," he reasoned.

​"What are you going to do about it?" he heard his daughter ask while he was mulling over who it could be.  Vaguely he heard her saying something about the stranger looked like it had a tail... 

If it had a tail then it didn't sound like Dewin's Spite either.  "I need to remember to call her Sprigg'n from now on," he reminded himself, "besides she is never very far from the wizard, Dewin, or The CAT and Hunter knew that Ffion would have mentioned The CAT if it was in the garden.

"It's dressed up funny too," said Ffion.  "It's wearing a jacket with lots of pockets on it and has a funny looking hood that looked like it has two pointy ears".

​Jumping to his feet he started towards the garden while his startled daughter followed him close behind.  "What is it?  What was the going on?" Ffion asked.

"Show me this stranger," was all that the King would tell her as she tried to keep up with him.  As they started to leave the throne room, the King told one of his retainers to summon Dulbbe and send him to the garden as soon as possible.  "And tell him to bring his special looking glass too."