YOU CAN'T WAIT TILL YOU HEAR ABOUT THAT!

All that's fit. In print.

Hello, my dear QUIBBLERers and QUIBBLERettes! Oh. My. God! You will not believe what happened to me in the time I’ve been absent! Or you will, because you know I would never lie to you, my dear QUIBBLERfolk. So, as I said in my last article, I embarked on a journey. A journey of the utmost importance. A crucial mission asked of me by the whole team of the QUIBBLER, for only I had what it took to go on such an important journey, perform such a crucial mission. Which is to investigate the origin, the beginning, the originating point, the initiation, of THE QUIBBLER. And so I went; on I walked, up I hiked, across I swam, and when I was almost reaching a mountain slope that seemed a bit too suspicious, I knew straight away I had to investigate. I was sure to find some answers, but it started to rain. And because there was still a river to cross before reaching the slope, I made the mistake of deciding to rest a bit in a cave that I found nearby. I knew that cave would put me up to no good, it was full of nonsense. At the very entrance there was a sign reading a weird message. The inscriptions were:

Lasciate ogni cavillo, voi ch’intrate, perché per me ha attraversato una volta e dentro viene ancora arrestato il primo cavillatore.

I knew that it was Italian because it came from a very boring and deceitful poem by some long dead poet, which I happen to know by heart word by word– I would recognize those verses anywhere. I also happened to find some italian dictionaries thrown onto the floor

at the entrance to the cave, probably by other people who were walking around these areas when it began to rain. So I used the dictionaries to translate the verses and came to:

Leave all quibbles, you who enter, For through me went once And inside lies stuck still The first quibbler

So immediately I was like “Wow, what a fun coincidence!” And went to take a nap. But as it turns out, it’s very uncomfortable to nap at the entrance to a cave, so I looked for someplace more comfortable deeper in. That’s when I fell into a hole! Can you believe that? Someone was irresponsible enough to dig up a hole and just leave it there! But I found out that the hole was actually a tunnel that took me to a weird chamber, where I saw some light and heard a voice, like a ghost talking to me. The voice told me I had been trapped and that for me to leave I would have to complete a task. It was no good trying to explain that I was already onto a task –a very important one!!– , the ghost simply wouldn’t listen! Such impertinence!

So there I was, stuck with a thick creature who insisted on babbling about this mission and I figured I’d better do the task if I wanted to leave that place. “We are the guardians of the Quibble,” the creature told me. “And here we stay, to protect the Quibble from being accessed by those unworthy.” The voice was being a bit dramatic, I reckoned. “Every time a traveler wanders into this cave in search of the Quibble, they must face the Trial and prove their worth of soul. Now it is thy time” Totally dramatic. I was starting to get quite bored with all this lengthy speech no one really asked for. There was a pause before the voice asked me, “Art thou not going to ask what is the Trial?” “As I’ve tried to tell you, I’m not really interested, thank you,” I tried explaining. “Usually that’s the part when the lost traveler asks about the Trials.” “Well, you see, I’m not everyone, dear. I’m sure you’ve never had a Geraldine Julienne in here. If you did, the decoration wouldn’t be so terrible, if you’ll excuse my saying so.” “What is a Geraldine?” the voice asked. “Never you mind that, dear. C’mon now, on you go with the story, I don’t have all the time in the world.” That seemed to work, because the voice resumed the boring speech. Some people really try you, don’t they? “The Trial will judge thy worth of soul…” “You already mentioned that part.” “And so you need to conquer the Thesis. A foe of thine has been imprisoned also, and thy efforts shall free you both. And so we shall see, wilt thou find kindness in thy heart to try and free a foe alongside thyself?” And at this moment, with a bright shimmer of light I saw a man appearing in a cell in a corner of the chamber. I had never seen that person in my life. “Who’s that?” I asked. “So you don’t recognize me?” The man asked. Turns out his name is Iguana. I do have an enemy who is an iguana who works here in the QUIBBLER by the way, so maybe the voice’s magic is not so strong and it mistakenly grabbed a person called Iguana instead of an iguana. “I’m used to saving people’s lives, this shouldn’t be difficult.” And so I went into that so-called Trial. It was nothing exciting, really. I had to conquer a Thesis and for that I needed to collect some small creature in the wilderness called a Corpus. After collecting enough of them, I needed to somehow learn to communicate with them so they could lead me to the Thesis. I did that and got to the Thesis, we had a sword fight, yada yada yada, I won of course, the Corpi all cheered and begged me to stay there forever and be their queen. I had to refuse and explain to them that I was already the queen of many other places and needed to get back to them, so I couldn’t stay. After that I dragged the dead corpse and the shattered sword of the Thesis back to the cave to show the voice. The corpse and shattered sword disappeared because apparently they weren’t actually real, they were just meant to scare me. Lame. The voice said “Very well,” sounding very impressed. After having collected the Corpus and conquered the Thesis, I had proven my worth of soul. And sword fight I would say. And also my charisma with creatures of the wilderness. “Thou hast won thy freedom and thy foe’s as well,” the voice said and the man I had never seen before vanished. In the back of the chamber a tunnel opened itself and the voice said I could move on. The tunnel passed beneath the river towards the mountain slope. I knew there was something suspicious about that slope! That’s how I got to the most important point of the journey to find out the origin, the starting point, the beginning, of THE QUIBBLER. What I discovered on the other side of the tunnel is still confusing in my mind and will require further research. Stay tuned, my dear QUIBBLERers and QUIBBLERettes! I’ll be coming with more updates soon.

–Your dear Geraldine Julienne

P.S.: I heard that that iguana who loves to spread lies and taint the reputation of our dear QUIBBLER has been absent lately. At least some good news while I was away. Let’s hope that despicable being has gone forever from our lives!