Eregyrn Falls

Happy Crowy Yule! It's a reall whose who of Yuletide.

Charles Dickens stared.

It was a good stare. Men with eyebrows like that tended to have good stares. He stared at the scene before him like an artist studying the work of a master, pouring over every detail, canyons of cogitation forming in the furrows of his magnificent eyebrows.

He said: “I think I’ve got it, now.”

The time traveller blinked. “Yeah?”

“This device-” Dickens gestured vaguely. “It might be an elaborate zoetrope. The players are not actually performing, but we see a succession of images that are played so quickly, the eye is fooled into believing that they may be so.”

“That’s. Definitely a way of looking at it.”

“And in this instance, the zoetrope is depicting something like a Punch and Judy show,” said Dickens. “Only by some cleverness, the professor operating the puppets has managed to make himself invisible.”

“Could be.”

Dickens sat back. “Then really, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Although I do have one question.”

“Yes?”

“Why is Bob Cratchit a frog?”

The time traveller considered this. “Well,” he started. He stopped. “I guess - why not a frog?”

Charles Dickens’s magnificent eyebrows knotted together. Then he nodded. “Fair enough.”