Miss Threenus Oughkeepsie, a true hermit woman with a devoted pet wyvern, never leaves her yard of one big meadow of field grass. She comes to want a boyfriend -in-the-Lord to share Christ with in her Christian life. And her Wyvern, named ‘League,’ tells her that she won’t find a manfriend if she stays home all the time and never dares to leave her yard. Threenus is afraid to go on a journey. But she wants to find companionship with a guy out there somewhere. And she, for her first time, dares to step across the countryside road ‘North Drive.’ Along comes Flanders Nickels, riding his white unicorn. And the prayer-answering God works in her life from there.
THE WYVERN-KEEPER
By Mr. Morgan P. McCarthy
The Wyvern-Keeper lived in an isolated and vast countryside yard alone with her pet wyvern. It was a plot of meadow of tall field grass that measured one mile by one mile. Along its four perimeters of one big square were four dusty gravel roads scarcely ever with any traffic—one called “North Drive,” one called “East Drive,” one called “South Drive,” and one called “West Drive.” Herein, safe and sequestered in her square mile, lived a young woman too timid even to just step one foot into any of these most rural roads just outside her yard. Her pet resembled a dragon in that he was reptilian and had two wings and could shoot fire out of his mouth, and was mighty in battle. But her pet was different from a dragon in that he was smaller than a dragon and had only two legs and had a tail with an arrowhead-type point that could sting and poison with venom a foe. This was a classic wyvern. And he loved his keeper, and his keeper loved him.
In another of their spontaneous little skits, the Wyvern-Keeper spoke and said, “My name is Threenus. Threenus Oughkeepsie at your service, my good wyvern.”
Continuing their joke, the wyvern said, “Glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Poughkeepsie.
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I am League, at your debt, kind lady.”
“That’s ‘Oughkeepsie,’” said Threenus.
And Wyvern-Keeper and wyvern laughed at their little joke. League then said, “My mistress, your name is a whole sentence.”
“It is a most long name at that,” confessed Threenus.
“But you like it, and I like it, Mistress,” said League.
“I may like my name, and I like your name, but I do not know if I really like my face much,” said Miss Oughkeepsie.
“My keeper,” said League, “someday a man will come along who likes you just as you are.”
“What a hope that you tantalize me with, O League,” said Threenus.
“He will find you a stunning girl,” said League.
“Yes. Yes. Tell me more,” said Threenus.
“And he will want you to become his girlfriend,” said League.
“This is not one of our spontaneous jokes this time. Is it, League?” asked Miss Oughkeepsie.
“It is not, O mistress,” said the wyvern.
“I’d like to have a boyfriend lots,” said the lonely Wyvern-Keeper.
“You know, O keeper, that you will not likely find a boyfriend the way you stay here at home and in your yard all the time away from everybody else,” said League.
“What do you think that I should do?” she asked.
“The logical thing, my mistress,” said the wyvern.
“Which is what?” she asked.
“Why, to go out and look for a boyfriend,” he told her.
“Oh, I can’t do that!” she said.
“Why not?” he asked her.
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“You know perfectly well how I have not once left this yard,” she objected.
“What could happen to you, my mistress, were you to go on a trek?” he asked her.
“That I would not want to find out. Why, I could be caught up in a veritable tornado! You know how Wisconsin has tornadoes sometimes, O League,’ said Threenus.
“My mistress, you are a born-again believer. If a tornado swept you up out of this life, you would immediately be in Heaven,” said the wyvern.
“Yeah, I am going to Heaven, because I am a Christian. But I do not want to have to die first to get There,” said Miss Oughkeepsie. “I woman like myself prefers to get raptured in order to get to Heaven. The rapture will not hurt.”
Then the wyvern’s stomach growled, and he said, “Mistress, I am hungry.”
“Allow your esteemed Wyvern-Keeper to feed you, O good and wise League,” said Threenus.
And she took a sickle in her hand, and she reaped a pile of tall field grass with it, and she said, “There, my good friend. Eat.” And the wyvern began to eat up the pile of tall grass all cut just right for him.
Then, with a pile of grass filling his mouth, the wyvern spoke something that his mistress could not understand.
“League, I can’t hear you with your mouth full,” said Threenus.
He then swallowed it all down and repeated himself, with a grin, saying, “Besides, Mistress, if a tornado doesn’t get you, a hurricane will.”
“We don’t get hurricanes here in Wisconsin, League,” said Threenus with a laugh.
Then her wyvern said pensively, “You always tell me that you serve a prayer-answering God.”
“Yes. I do say that,” she said.
“Does God answer prayers?” asked League.
“Oh, of course,” she said.
“Well, then, maybe you should come around and pray to God that He give you a cute
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boyfriend, O Mistress,” counseled her wyvern pet.
“Why, I never prayed for that before, League,” said Threenus.
“You would really like it if a handsome fellow came into your life and said that you are the most stunning girl he had ever seen,” said League.
“A guy could say that about me?” she asked.
“Of course, Mistress,” said League.
“If a boyfriend said that about me, I would start to believe that,” said Miss Oughkeepsie.
“God may call upon you to travel,” warned League. “God might not send this new boyfriend here. You may have to go to this new boyfriend there.”
“I could try,” she said.
“It is written, ‘…, Be not afraid, only believe.’ Mark 5:36,” recited her wyvern good words of Scripture. His stomach then growled again. Threenus took up her sickle, reaped another pile of field grass for him, and watched him eat. And as he ate, the Wyvern-Keeper had a first word of prayer that God bless her with her first boyfriend.
The next evening, Threenus and her League were out back behind her house sitting in front of a fire in her fire pit. The woman was reading once again from her Bible. And the wyvern pet was reflecting on God’s glory of creation. Threenus came upon I Peter 1:12, and the latter part of this verse caused her curiosity. “What do you think that this might mean?” she asked League. And she read this mystery Scripture to him of this ending of this verse, “…by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.” For specificity, she asked, “What does that mean–’which things the angels desire to look into?’”
“I have the answer to that, my good mistress,” said the wyvern. “The answer is ‘salvation.’”
“Salvation is that which angels desire to look into?” asked the Wyvern-Keeper.
“Being angels, they do not understand salvation,” said League.
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“I understand all about salvation, League,” said Threenus. “And myself, being a woman, I am
nowhere near as smart as angels.”
“Just as saved people like you understand salvation and unsaved people do not, so you, a child of God, understand salvation and angels of God do not,” said League.
After some rumination, the Wyvern-Keeper asked, “Is the reason why angels do not comprehend what all of us Christians comprehend because God never died for angels?”
“Right, my keeper,” said League. “Christ did not die for angels; He died for fallen man and fallen woman.”
“”Michael does understand the cross of Calvary as I do. Does he?” asked Miss Oughkeepsie about God’s mighty angel mentioned in the Bible.
“He does not, my mistress,” taught League.
“And Gabriel does not understand the Gospel as I do. Does he?” asked Threenus about the other good angel of the Scriptures.
“He does not,” said her wyvern.
“What about the other angel written about in the Holy Bible?” asked the wyvern mistress, “the real bad one.”
“You mean Lucifer. Don’t you?” asked League.
“Yeah. Him,” said Threenus. “Does he know about Heaven and Hell as people do?”
“He has fallen from Heaven. And in time to come He will fall into Hell,” said the wyvern learned in the Scriptures.
“Like all of the fallen angels,” she said. “And right now they are all in the skies above the ground, flying around and doing bad things that the Devil tells them to do in his war against the Good Lord Almighty.”
“Angels, good and bad: you cannot see them, but they are definitely there,” said the sagacious
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wyvern.
“Is Michael higher in angelic hierarchy than Gabriel? Or is Gabriel higher in angelic hierarchy than Michael?” asked the Wyvern-Keeper.
“I do not believe that the Word of God answers that per se,” said League. “But what I do know is that there are four main types of angels that the Word of God does talk about per se. They are the guardian angels and the transporting angels and the communicating angels and the evil angels.”
“Do preach to me, O so learned wyvern,” said Threenus Oughkeepsie ever-delighted to learn from her wyvern pet’s teachings.
“As for guardian angels, I come to think first of all of Michael, whom we have been discussing,” began League. “Michael is the guardian angel of the nation of Israel. He is called ‘the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people,’ in Daniel 12:1. When Daniel, ‘the man greatly beloved of God,’ was cast into the den of lions, God used a guardian angel to shut the lions’ mouths and to protect his great prophet from being devoured. When the Apostles were put in jail for telling everyone about Jesus, a guardian angel opened the doors of the jail, let them out, and told them, ‘Go out and tell everybody about Jesus once again.’ And when Peter the Apostle was imprisoned and put on death row, a guardian angel woke him up, broke the chains from his hands, unlocked the iron gate, and delivered him from prison, leading him to the very house full of prayer-warriors who had been praying for him that very night.” Next the teacher-wyvern said, “As for transporting angels, the classic parable that is not a parable talks about one. This is the ‘parable’ of the rich man and the beggar, which is a true Biblical account, meant to be taken literally. A born-again beggar named ‘Lazarus’ died and went to Heaven. And when he died, it was a transporting angel that carried him up to Heaven. It is written about that in Luke 16:22: ‘And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom:…’” Then League the wyvern went on to say, “And then there are communicating angels. The communicating angel that we already know about, of course, is
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Gabriel. He is the official spokesman of the angels. It is said that he ‘stands in the presence of God’ in Luke 1:19. It was he who came unto Joseph the husband of Mary and warned him to flee into Egypt with his family to protect the Christ child. Communicating angels did bring messages from God unto key individuals in the Bible.” League then went on to preach, “And then there are the evil angels—the angels who had joined Lucifer in his prideful rebellion against God Himself. These are the fallen angels, who account for one-third of all angels. These are also called ‘demons.’ ‘devils,’ ‘unclean spirits.’ Lucifer has demons in charge of casinos and of murders and of abortions and of pornography and of rock music and of adultery and of fornication and of rap music and of false denominations. They all serve the Devil, and there are many of them. That is why they can do so very much evil and why there is so very much evil in the world.”
“So much wisdom in so few words of preaching,” the Wyvern-Keeper praised her wyvern.
“I live to edify my mistress,” said benevolent League.
The next day, Threenus Oughkeepsie was reaping field grass with her sickle again in her great big meadow for her pet. He would come home soon after his work for Jesus was done for the day, and he would be hungry from his hard work. When Miss Oughkeepsie looked up from her own hard work for her pet, behold, North Drive. She was now upon the northernmost point of her great big yard. North Drive was dusty and hot and stony and dry and remote. And nobody traveled down North Road.
At least hardly anyone, that is. She remembered how League had basically said to her the other day, “Mistress, you don’t have a boyfriend, because you never get out.” Well, right now, she would go for it. And she stepped out onto the gravel stones on this edge of the road, quickly ran across the road to the other side, stepped onto the gravel stones on this other edge of the road, paused, prayed for a boyfriend, then quickly ran back to her side of this road. And she quickly stepped off of North Drive and went back to the safety of her yard. “I got out, League!” she exclaimed to a wyvern that was not here right now. “Where’s my boyfriend, Lord?” she asked a God Who was always here. She looked
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long and hard down North Road in its great span into farther countryside off to her left, and she saw no one. She then looked long and hard down North Road into its most isolated rural span off to her right, and she saw no one. But she did not give up. She did not get discouraged. She did not lose hope.
Instead she got back to reaping grass with her sickle for League.
Hearken, the sound of hooves upon the gravel road off to the east. Behold, a cloud of dust coming toward her on this brave new North Drive. Why, this was the first traveler that she had seen on this very lone road. And she could see a guy on a galloping unicorn just about to come up to her where she stood. He was slowing down now, and she smiled at him, and he smiled at her. She dared to step her feet up upon the ditch of this road. He was so cute for a fellow! He did not stop for her, but he said in passing, “Maranatha, O fair young woman. We shall meet again.” And she was speechless. And he continued on in his riding westward. Miss Oughkeepsie put her hand to her heart, enraptured. Whether this were love or just a crush, she could not tell right now. She looked upon him riding off until she could see him no more. Threenus then spread her arms straight outward to both sides, spun around in giddiness, and laughed in happiness. This exciting new man had promised that he would come back for her. God was good, and God was great.
“Thank You, gracious and kind Jesus,” she prayed. Then she said, “Maranatha, my prince and my lord.”
Then her beloved wyvern pet came flying back from his day’s work for Jesus. As soon as he lighted upon the meadow, she told him, “Chow time, O League.”
And he dug into the pile ravenously. And she waited to tell him the news until he was filled up again with food. And then when he finished, she said, “League, I think that God found me my boyfriend.”
“Where is he?” asked the wyvern. “I don’t see him here.”
“He’s coming back for me later,” she said.
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“What did this man say?” asked League.
“He told me that I am pretty,” said Threenus.
“See? I told you, Mistress,” said League. “You went on a walk. Didn’t you?”
“Only across the road and back. Then he came along, riding a unicorn, and I was already back in my yard when he came,” said Threenus.
League looked upon his most eccentric-looking mistress, and he saw a woman with green skin and wild untamed hair of purple and eyes of black and triangular nose and protruding lips and hidden teeth. He spoke to her now good words, saying, “My keeper, your face seems to have stolen a man’s heart.”
“He will come back for me. Won’t he, League?” asked Threenus.
“Remember Boaz and Ruth in the book of Ruth, my mistress,” said her faithful wyvern.
“What does it say?” asked Threenus.
“Naomi said to Ruth that Boaz would not be in rest, until he have finished the thing this day,” said League. “In other words, this cute guy that you met will not be in rest until he come back for you.”
“He’s really coming back for me,” said the Wyvern-Keeper.
“Wait upon God,” counseled League.
The next day, Miss Oughkeepsie bravely walked right up to North Drive, crossed it, and stood out on its other side. She then sat down in the dandelions on this other side and prayed that God’s will be done between her and this new cute man in her life. Then she saw League coming toward her from the west. She stood up, waved her arms, and called out, “I’m over here, League.”
He lighted beside her and exclaimed, “My brave mistress. You are away from home. How long have you been here?”
“A whole hour,” she said. “How did you serve Jesus in the Lord’s battles today?”
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“I did see two cursing harpies who were taking the Lord’s name in vain,” said League. “I told them to stop, and they came after me. I stung them with my tail, and now they are dead.”
“Well done in Christ, O good League,” praised the Wyvern-Keeper her wyvern.
“And what did you do in your worship today, my mistress?” asked League.
“I was reading the Christmas story in Matthew chapter two, and I came upon verse 11, and I memorized it,” said Threenus Oughkeepsie.
“Let’s hear Matthew 2:11,” said her spiritual pet.
And the wyvern mistress recited it: “And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.”
“Ah, the magi,” said League. “Gold and frankincense and myrrh.”
The Wyvern-Keeper broke into singing the fifth stanza of the Christmas carol, “The First Noel”:
“Then entered in those wise men three,
Full rev’rently upon their knee,
And offered there, in His presence,
Their gold and myrrh and frankincense.
Noel, noel! Noel, noel!
Born is the King of Israel!”
Right after this, the godly wyvern sang stanzas from the Christmas carol, “We Three Kings of
Orient Are”:
“Born a king on Bethlehem’s plain;
Gold I bring to crown Him again,
King for ever, ceasing never
Over us all to reign.
Frankincense to offer have I:
Incense owns a Deity nigh;
Prayer and praising, all men raising,
Worship Him, God on high.
Myrrh is mine: its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom–
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Sorr’wing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.”
“Ah, good wyvern friend,” said Miss Oughkeepsie, “another Christmas carol about the gold and frankincense and myrrh.”
“Those gifts from the wise men served as symbols,” taught League.
“Do preach to your ever-ready mistress,” said Threenus.
He gave a sermon on the gifts from the magi unto Jesus: “The gold served as a symbol that Christ was born to be a king. It represented Jesus’s divine nature, that He was God—both God the Son and the Son of God. As for frankincense, at His time it was a substance used for sacrificial offerings; it was a special incense used for worship and temple sacrifice, This very Jesus would one day be their sacrifice and your sacrifice. Frankincense was a symbol of Christ’s sinless life. And it also represented His humanity, how He knows what we go through in our lives. (That is, you get tired, hungry, and thirsty; Christ also got tired, hungry, and thirsty.) As for the myrrh, that was a pleasant perfume taken from a plant. Myrrh was used as a burying spice. And myrrh as a symbol foretold of Christ’s sufferings on the cross. Remember how Jesus cried out to His Heavenly Father in His crucifixion, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ When you suffer in your life, you get a small glimpse of how Jesus had suffered for you. The magi gave Christ myrrh, because one day He would be resurrected.”
“Yes! Yes!” said Miss Oughkeepsie. “And isn’t it interesting how everybody says that the wise men gave Jesus their gifts when He was a baby? Yet the Bible says that the wise men gave Jesus their gifts when he was already a young child.”
“You’re right, my mistress,” said League.
Then Threenus saw some blood coming out of her wyvern’s side of his neck. “League, you’re
bleeding,” said the Wyvern-Keeper. “You’re wounded.”
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“Just a little battle wound, Mistress,” said League.
“It looks like it is stopping,” said his mistress. “What happened?”
“One of those harpies bit me in the neck and would not let go,” said League.
“Do eat first, and then I will take care of that cut,” said Threenus.
“I hunger after my battle, O keeper,” said League. “I thank you.”
And mistress and pet crossed back over the gravel road onto her yard, where she had reaped a pile of field grass for her wyvern for when he would come back. As he ate, she lamented, “He never came back for me, League.”
“He will. He shall. I know,” said her wyvern. And when he was done eating, Miss Oughkeepsie and he went back to the house, and she worked on his neck wound and made it better for him. And he said again, “Thank you, O mistress.”
The next day as she worked and reaped for faithful League, the wyvern mistress made sure to be close to North Drive again. And after a short while, she threw down her sickle, and raced out across the road and stood out in the world beyond now for her third time. She looked off to east to see if he were coming. None was coming. She looked off to the west to see if he were going. None was going.
She thought to herself, What should I say to him? And she replied to herself in more thoughts, just smile at him and cock your head to the side before him.
And she saw him far away. It had to be him. Who else but he would be traveling down this North Drive in the middle of such sticks and isolation? He came riding up to where she was standing, and his unicorn was fast as a racehorse. Threenus flashed an affectionate smile at him and did cock her head beguilingly to the side at him in classic feminine flirt. Like last time he slowed down from his fierce gallop and did smile at her. But unlike last time, this time he stopped his unicorn to talk with her.
Sitting upon his horned equine, he said to her, “Flanders Nickels at your service, O fair miss.”
She curtseyed and said, “Threenus Oughkeepsie indebted at your presence, kind Flanders.”
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“My apologies for having run off last time we met, O Miss Oughkeepsie,” he said. “I had urgent business to tend to for the Lord.”
“Do you serve Jesus?” she asked.
“That I do,” he said. “I am a born-again believer in Christ.”
“So am I!” she said. “We both are Christians.”
“What do you do for the Saviour, Threenus?” he asked.
“I read the Bible. I pray. I feed my beloved wyvern pet League,” she said.
“Ah a stunning woman who loves my Jesus indeed,” said Flanders.
“I’m stunning?” she asked.
“”Both on the inside and on the outside, fair Threenus,” he told her right out from the heart.
“Be still, my heart,” she said, reverie enhancing her feminine features.
“Do you know what I do to serve my Saviour?” he asked.
“Do you fight evil beasts in battle like my wyvern does, Flanders?” she asked.
“No, I am what is sometimes called ‘a messenger-from-Heaven,’” he said.
“Does that mean that you are an angel?” she asked.
“No, milady. I am a sinner saved by grace,” he replied.
“What is the ministry of a messenger-from-heaven?” she asked.
“It is in my unicorn’s saddlebags,” he said, still mounted upon his unicorn, and he pointed to them.
“What’s in there?” she asked.
“I have a horn in one saddlebag, Threenus. And I have the King James Bible in the other saddlebag,” replied Flanders.
“What do you do for the Good Lord as a messenger-from-Heaven with a horn and a Holy Bible?” she asked.
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“Come out on a date with me someday on Far North Drive, and I will tell you, O Threenus,” he promised her.
“Far North Drive?” she asked. “Where is that?”
And Flanders said, “Far North Drive is ten miles north of here.”
“Here on North Drive is the farthest that I have ever traveled, O Flanders,” she said. “I cannot go ten miles away from my house just like that.”
“Be of good comfort, my lady,” said Flanders. “God will take care of you. It was He Who told me to tell you about Far North Drive.”
“Is that where your house is?” she asked.
“It is,” he said.
“I’ll have to think about this,” she said, fear of strange new places around her anywhere farther from her meadow than right here across the North Drive.
“Pray about this, instead, comely Threenus,” he urged her.
“I must,” she said, noncommittal despite her succinct injunction.
“If it makes it easier for you, do come with your wyvern,” exhorted Flanders.
And yet she said, “I don’t know,”
“I promise to wait for you for as long as you wish,” said Flanders in compassion, “And I will pray for Holy Ghost courage for you.”
She dared to look off toward the north from where she stood, and she peered into the horizon ten miles away. And she chickened out. And without another word she turned and fled back to her safe and familiar big meadow back on the other side of this North Drive. And when she dared to look back upon handsome Flanders, he was on his unicorn on a lope of a gait, his back toward her and his face not looking back at her. Quickly she picked back up her good sickle and she began to again reap grass for her best friend in life League. He was soon to come back home to his mistress and tell her how
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great things he had done for the Lord. And when she did look up to look upon her suitor, she could no longer see him down on North Drive. “How I wish that League were here,” prayed Threenus. “I am lonely.”
Just then her wyvern came down behind her in a great wind of wings and lighted beside her. “League,” she chided him in tease, “you’re messing up my hair with this wind you make.”
And she turned back and gave him an affectionate hug. And he said, “When does not your hair looked already messed up, my mistress?” Both laughed.
“I remembered to comb it this morning,” she said.
“I’m hungry, Mistress,” he said. And he began to eat. His breathing was heavy and difficult.
“League, you’re wounded,” she said.
“My God was with me and did protect me,” said the wyvern.
“Who did that to you?” she asked. “All of this fighting always scares me for you,”
He said, “It will heal in time, my mistress.”
“Tell me what happened,” she said. Indeed an arrow was sticking deep in his right leg!
“A centaur archer was going around and slaying King James Version Bible printers,” said League. “So I went after him. God sent me to slay him. He saw me before I saw him. He fired an arrow at me even before I lighted upon the ground, my mistress. And it stuck there in my leg as you can see.”
“I’ve got to get that out,” she said.
“It hurts, my mistress,” he said.
“Did that wicked centaur die, League?” she asked.
“I did shoot fire out of my mouth and burned him up,” said League. “That centaur archer is now quite dead. Now printers of our good Bible can continue their great work for the Lord.”
“Amen, League. To God be the glory,” said Miss Oughkeepsie.
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“I must stop eating for now,” said the wounded wyvern soldier.
“Let me help, O best friend,” said Threenus. And she went to work in great sweat of toil under the sun. And she broke the arrow, pulled it out, and assuaged the wound. And League endured this in great Godly determination and grit. And after all of this was done, the wyvern thanked his mistress and did come back to his eating. And Threenus Oughkeepsie remembered the man. She said, “I saw him again, League.”
“Your boyfriend, Mistress?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “This time he stopped and talked with me.”
“Is he handsome, O keeper?” asked League.
“Oh, he is. He surely is,” said Threenus.
“What did he say?” asked League.
“He said that he is a born-again Christian. That’s what I am,” said Threenus. “He was riding a white unicorn, and he had saddlebags that he said contained a King James Bible and a horn. He did not tell me what they were for. He did tell me that his ministry for God is being a ‘messenger-from-Heaven,’and that he used this horn and this Holy Bible to do his work. He wouldn’t tell me what that meant. He said to me that he would tell me the next time we meet.”
“Ooo, my mistress, a rendezvous indeed!”
“Alas, League, it will be the hardest thing that I have ever done. He said that our rendezvous will have to be at his house. And that is a road called ‘Far North Drive,” said the Wyvern-Keeper.
“Far North Drive,” said League. “That’s ten miles due north of here.”
“I have never before been ten yards beyond my yard, and now it seems that I have to go ten miles beyond my yard,” said Threenus.
“I could take you there and be with you, my keeper,” said League.
“He said the same thing,” said Miss Oughkeepsie. “He said that my wyvern could bring me to
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his road so far away.”
“What’s his name?” asked League.
“It is ‘Flanders Nickels,’” said Threenus.
“Ah, the great laborer-for-Christ,” said League.
“You know Flanders?” asked the Wyvern-Keeper.
“Everybody knows Flanders Nickels,” said League. “His work for Jesus is greater than my work for Jesus.”
“What does he do for the Lord that makes him so godly?” asked Threenus.
“If I tell you, would you go on that rendezvous with him?” asked League.
“Yes,” she said.
“If I do not tell you, would you go on that rendezvous with him?” asked League.
“Yes,” she said. “I need to find out what a messenger-from-Heaven does that makes him greater than my demon-slayer pet.
“I must let him tell you,” said League.
“I must go and see him,” said Miss Oughkeepsie.
“Allow me to take you there right now,” said League. Then his leg failed him, and he fell down upon his bottom. “Alas, my mistress. Evil has befallen your good wyvern. My leg will not hold me up right now.”
“What am I to do?” she asked.
“Keeper, thank God for your two good legs. It seems that you have to walk the ten miles. And I cannot go with you to encourage you in your ventures out of the yard,” said the wyvern.
“I must not keep Flanders waiting,” she said. “Would you be okay come tomorrow to take me there?”
“I think so, Mistress,” said League.
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“Tomorrow?” she asked again.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“He said that he would wait for me for as long as I needed him to wait,” said the Wyvern mistress.
“He is a man of integrity and true to his word,” said League of Flanders.
“Something bad happened to you today, League,” said Threenus. “Something bad might also happen to Flanders today.”
“Or to you right here in your meadow, Mistress,” said League in spoken thoughts impromptu.
“Today,” she said in most succinct avowal. “Not tomorrow.”
“You will not wait until tomorrow to go to Flanders?” asked League, knowing his mistress.
“I must go today,” she said. “I must walk ten miles away from home and see my new boyfriend.”
Still she hesitated. Her wyvern said, “Later on today?”
She took a breath in and let a breath out, and she said, “No. Right now.”
And Threenus kissed League on his head, said, “Pray for your Wyvern-Keeper,” and began her first trek of her young woman’s life.
After a couple hours, the woman journeyer, her legs tired, came upon the road sign that read “Far North Drive.” She did it! She left her house way behind, and she did not die. And God was with her all these ten miles. Surely were North Drive amid wild isolation, truly this Far North Drive was in a void of no people and many wild animals. She saw a house. This had to be the place. Flanders lived here. He was waiting for her. He promised to be here when she came. He was an honest Christian of virtue. She would go and knock on his front door. She was going to find out what a messenger-from-Heaven did in his work for Christ, indeed a mysterious mission that pleased God very well.
Just then she heard the sound of hooves upon the gravel road off to the side. This time, though,
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they were coming from the west. She looked and surely saw Flanders Nickels and his white unicorn.
“Milady!” he called forth. And he stopped his unicorn, dismounted, and ran up to her in an affection for her even greater than her affection for him. And they hugged in a short romantic hug.
“My lady,” he said in greeting.
“My gentleman,” she said.
“You’ve come for your lonely fellow,” he said.
“I have come, O my prince,” she said.
He then called forth to his unicorn, “Jupiter, will you come up to me now, if you would?”
The white unicorn came up to his master. Flanders said, “You inquire about what a messenger-from-Heaven is, O stunning Threenus.”
“I do, O Flanders,” said Threenus.
“A messenger-from-Heaven is a born again believer who wins souls for Christ,” he said. He then opened up the saddlebag along Jupiter’s left side, and pulled out his horn. Flanders went on to say, “When I wish to witness for Jesus, I need only to blow on this horn, and, behold, Jesus sends a lost person who is searching for the truth my way.” He then opened up the saddlebag along Jupiter’s right side and pulled out his King James Bible. And he went on to say, “And when that unsaved person comes to me, I open up the Good Book and share Christ with him. And often times, when that unsaved person is done hearing me witness of Christ, he prays and gets saved. And behold, another soul taken away from Satan and now given to God.”
“That’s glorious, Flanders,” said Threenus. “That’s truly glorious!”
“It is written, in the words of Jesus, ‘Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.’ John 15;8,” recited Flanders witness-warrior Scripture.
Having said this, this mighty and prolific messenger-from-Heaven went on to put his horn to his mouth and to blow a summons from it to a person out there who wanted the Saviour Jesus Christ.
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Suddenly a form of a great beast of the air crashed hard into this man’s back, and the horn flew off several feet from his hands, and he was thrown down hard upon his face, and he lay there prone in a daze. Behold, a griffin! And this proud griffin then went and stepped upon Flanders where he lay face down, and he did stand upon his back in defiance of God and of all that was good. The griffin saw Threenus standing there with big frightened eyes. And he said to her, “If you even think to do to me what this man did do to me, I will burn you down to the ground where you stand.”
Stammering and scared to death, Threenus asked, “What did Flanders do?”
And this griffin said, “He led my master to Christ, and now my master refuses to go with me hunting Christians out there like we always used to do, young lady.”
Finding courage for her first time, Threenus made a stand for her Jesus, and she said, “But I am a Christian, too.”
“That’s all that I needed to hear,” said the griffin. And he gazed upon her, and as he gazed upon her, smoke began to billow out of his closed eagle beak.
Knowing that she was about to die from fire from a griffin’s mouth, Threenus, knowing her great destiny in Heaven with Jesus, said “O Griffin of the Devil, if I have to die for my Jesus, I shall die for my Jesus.”
The griffin stepped off of Flanders, approached Threenus where she stood strong in the Lord,
and shot a burst of fire from his mouth. Suddenly an even greater force than this griffin came down and knocked this griffin upon his back where he stood, and the flame of fire missed Miss Oughkeepsie and went out upon a little sand dunes off to the side. Why, here was League, come to rescue his mistress in distress! The griffin screeched in consternation, and rolled over, and got back to his feet, and he faced the wyvern in a fierce stare down. The wyvern said, “Come and get me, griffin!”
And the griffin said, “The pleasure will be mine, wyvern.”
Then a stranger came walking up to them. Then Flanders revived, got back to his feet, and
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came up to him with the King James Bible in his hands. Flanders asked, “Have you come to be forgiven from your sins, young man?”
“I have,” said this man. “What must I do to be saved?”
And Flanders got alone with this man searching for God and began to share Scripture to him about salvation. In the meanwhile, Flanders’s unicorn Jupiter, clearly well-trained by his master, stood his ground between his master and the battle taking place before them. The messenger-from-Heaven needed a sanctuary of security in which to lead this lost man to so great salvation, and this unicorn had done thus before for him and was doing thus for him now again.
Threenus quickly turned back to her beloved League in his battle against the fell griffin. And the two combatants were sparring—the wyvern was lashing out his tail to strike the griffin with venom, and the griffin most adeptly was eluding that poisonous tail every time. Then the griffin sought to turn the tide, and he began to peck at the wyvern with his sharp eagle beak. And he was scoring with jabs into the wyvern’s chest. This was more sparring, but League was not faring so well in this sparring. And the griffin was wounding the wyvern, putting little holes in his upper torso more times than he was missing his mark.
Then League thought to take this battle up into the sky, and he lifted up off of the ground and challenged the griffin to continue this battle up here. And the griffin was eager for the challenge, and he ascended up to where the wyvern was waiting for him. The griffin said, “I can take you up here just as easily as I was taking you down there.”
And League said, “I shall burn you with fire just as you thought to burn my mistress with fire,”
The two had another stare down, this time a hundred feet in the air. His griffin mouth closed, smoke began to billow out of the griffin’s beak. The wyvern’s mouth closed, smoke began to billow out of League’s nostrils. And they both shot a blaze of fire at the same time. And the two fireballs crashed into each other at the halfway point between the two warriors in the air. And a great explosion
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blew up in a cataclysm. And wyvern and griffin began to fall over a hundred feet down toward the ground. The griffin was too disorientated by the blast to try to alleviate his fall with a moving of his wings. But the wyvern, bigger and stronger than the griffin, did rally, and he moved his great wings in flight just before reaching the ground. And when League fell, he fell lightly, his wings triumphantly spread out about him to both sides. Yet, in this fall, chance did fall in the griffin’s favor. Though he could not rally into flight to shield his fall, he still did nonetheless fall right upon the Wyvern below him hard upon the ground. League not only unintentionally shielded the griffin’s fall, but he also got the worst of the griffin’s fall down upon him where he lighted. League got himself sandwiched between the griffin and the hard ground. And League’s already wounded leg was now possibly maimed. And he could not get back to his feet for the moment.
Behold, the griffin stood before the fallen wyvern, ready to maul him up and down to death with his lion paws. Seeing all of this happen, the Wyvern-Keeper tossed aside all of her fears of strange lands beyond hers and all of her other fears as the hermit woman who stayed home with a pet, and she said, “Lord Jesus, Thy will be done!” And Threenus Oughkeepsie ran upon the evil griffin from behind with her mortal and frail woman’s form. She wrapped both of her thin lady’s arms around this griffin’s neck from his backside. And she squeezed and pulled back with all of her female strength. And she lifted her feet off of the ground to let her one hundred twenty-five pounds maybe to take the griffin off of his balance.
Lo, the griffin fell backwards upon his lion haunches. And when he fell backwards, Threenus was fortunate enough to land upon her feet where he had fallen upon his bottom.
Upon seeing his timid mistress show such reckless bravery in battle just for him, League rolled over upon his belly, rallied and got back to his two feet, and lunged upon the compromised griffin before he could get back to his feet. And with his wyvern teeth he grabbed the griffin by his neck in his powerful wyvern jaws, closed his two wyvern jaws together deathly hard, and took off the griffin’s
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head from the griffin’s shoulders. The evil griffin was slain in battle.
“My dear and courageous mistress,” praised the wyvern his Wyvern-Keeper, “you have just saved my life.”
“I did not know what I was doing,” she said. And she said, “But I am glad that I did it.”
“You are no longer afraid of the world, O keeper,” said League.
“Thank you for having finished him off like you did, League,” said Threenus Oughkeepsie.
Just then they heard Flanders and his disciple going through the sinners’ prayer, line-by-line, the dutiful unicorn standing ground before his master in his work of God. This was what they were praying: “Dear God. I am a sinner. Sorry for that. Do forgive me. Do cleanse me. Do help me to repent. I believe that the Saviour died for my sins and shed His blood for me on the cross of Calvary long ago. And I believe that the Saviour rose again from the grave on the third day. O Saviour of the world, do become my own personal Saviour now. Save my soul from Hell. Save my soul for Heaven.
In Your name I pray for all of this. Amen.”
This prayer for salvation done, League said, “Well done, good Flanders.”
“A miracle has just happened with you this moment, Flanders.” said Threenus.
“I am now a born-again believer,” exclaimed this honest young man with Flanders.
“Well done yourself with the evil griffin who had come to get me, League,” said Flanders.
“And stunning Flaurie, I and God both saw what you did with that griffin. You stood up to the griffin just like David had stood up to the giant Goliath. Would a woman like you deign to become my girlfriend-in-the-Lord?”
“Would any woman deserve to date so great a messenger-from-Heaven as yourself?” asked Threenus Oughkeepsie.
“There is a road even farther away from your home than this Far North Drive here,” said Flanders Nickels.
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“What’s it called?” she asked.
“Most Far North Drive,” he said.
“Let’s go there on our rendezvous!” she said most eagerly.
“Right now?” he asked.
“Right now,” she said.
And Wyvern-Keeper and messenger-from-Heaven ran away together as boyfriend-and-girlfriend-in-Christ.
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